The experts believe that blockchain technology has a promising future and it may be integrated into a lot of industries. TimeCoinProtocol is designed to enable the creation of decentralized sharing economy apps.
Sharing is not an entirely new way of life. Shared goods have been around for ages, with the simplest example being hotels. Technology and ease-of-connection have, however, boosted the accessibility and convenience of users who seek to participate in the sharing economy. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, Lensrental, Upwork, and Fiverr, all operate within the sharing economy and have become quite popular in recent years.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the sharing economy is expected to grow from $15 billion in 2014 to around $355 billion by 2025. In 2016, McKinsey Global Institute estimated that 20% to 30% of the U.S. and EU workforce provided their services on sharing platforms. The sharing economy is also one of the fastest-growing trends in modern history, attracting over $23 billion in funding from investors between 2010 and 2017. With such stats, it is apparent that the world is shifting towards a shared economy.
Despite these impressive stats and a booming industry, power in the sharing economy is skewed towards third-party service providers. Leading sharing economy marketplaces have grown into monopolies, making it difficult for competitors to enter the market. The industry is laced with a lot of inefficiencies.
From a monopolistic shared economy driven by the desire to maximize profits to possible data breaches from centralized data centers, and the inability to transfer creditworthiness across platforms, traditional models have inherent limitations that stifle growth.
Decentralized Platform for Sharing Economy
Since blockchain managed to pioneer a successful proof-of-concept of blockchain tech and its boom in late 2017, several similar projects have joined the industry. Data on CoinMarketCap reveals that there are over 5,500 cryptocurrency projects. As a matter of fact, blockchain has found use cases in multiple industries including decentralized finance, logistics, entertainment, and healthcare.
TimeCoinProtocol is revolutionizing the sharing economy. The decentralized protocol will be built on the EOS blockchain and is designed to enable the creation of decentralized sharing economy apps. With the help of an open-source catalog of software development kits and Common Version Libraries, developers can easily build, deploy, and operate a vast array of such dApps and services. TimeCoinProtocol is practically addressing some of the bottlenecks of the traditional sharing economy.
Users of the protocol can migrate from one service to another whilst keeping their data private and still maintain their hard-earned reputation. This makes the model attractive for dApp developers to adopt, since their services will be available to a much larger pool of users attracted by the ecosystem.
In addition to its open-source, community managed protocol and the blockchain which TimeCoinProtocol runs on; the project features a distributed storage facility which collates the product information for decentralized apps. This storage facility is called the Inter-Planetary File System.
Whether the move to decentralize a monopolistic market is possible or not remains a subject of heavy debate. Proving that it is possible to create truly decentralized sharing products and services is arguably the first step to disrupt this marketplace. TCP is gearing up for real life adoption as two decentralized applications are already being built to work with the protocol – eSportStars and TimeTicket.
eSportStars, for example, will allow gamers worldwide to host tournaments and compete against each other. The platform which will support English, Chinese and Japanese languages will also allow players to compete against eSports professionals. This will in no doubt boost engagement and participation. The dApp version of TimeTicket, on the other hand, is building on the success of TimeTicket Inc.’s already successful premier sharing economy service. The existing TimeTicket platform has grown both in popularity and user base in the last 4 years. TimeTicket’s parent company, Globalway Inc. has over 50 million users and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
High fees have always been one of the downsides of traditional sharing economies. Blockchain transactions have been touted for their relatively lower and near-zero fees. By eliminating the need for a trusted party, transaction costs can be significantly reduced. TimeCoinProtocol uses smart contracts to enable simple, fast, and cheap service.
To fund its operations, revenue generated from token sales, transaction fees, inflation, and TimeTicker’s business will be channeled towards improving the platform, and its native token TMCN.
The world as we know it thrives on new discoveries and innovations. Several experts and blockchain enthusiasts believe that blockchain has come to stay and will disrupt a number of industries. It is possible that the sharing economy may be one of them and TimeCoinProtocol believes in this dream.
Conclusion
The ability to connect and collaborate across the world is changing. Digital assets and their associated blockchain have shown that industries and processes can be decentralized. TimeCoinProtocol is gearing up to push the frontiers of a decentralized sharing economy. If successful, their efforts will spur the adoption of it that is beneficial to dApp developers, freelancers, service providers, and buyers.
Cryptocurrency investor, journalist, analyst, and growth hacker. I cover crypto, blockchain, crowdfunding, and education.