Blockchain’s awakening in 2017 has come about thanks to a drive to create value in new ways. BMCHAIN, a Blockchain-powered platform which launched its pre-ICO this week, is aiming to take the target audience for this value creation one step further by monetizing the skills of users themselves.
The potential worth Blockchain conceals is becoming increasingly mainstream knowledge – entrepreneurs, investors, users and even regulatory authorities are fast cottoning on to the potential and spawning an industry already worth at least $1 billion.
How they choose to gain control of this value varies, but so far this year, efforts have focused on pure revenue in the form of cash, gained through issuing tokens via an ICO or token sale.
Tokens Do Not Equal Success
Already, however, the notion of selling a token for profit to sustain a business is wearing thin with the market.
It is now reputation, not profit potential of an offering, which exerts an influence on whether a Blockchain business can survive years rather than months.
A key example lies in recent ICO sales, with identity startup Civic garnering praise for placing strict controls on issuance and ownership of its CVC token.
Other schemes meanwhile suffered from so-calling ‘whaling’ – a small number of rich investors buying up the majority of the market and creating a profit-driven ecosystem.
Other than strictly controlling an ICO, what alternatives are there to leverage the international community to produce a Blockchain product or service that will endure? This is the issue now facing and preoccupying the next generation of startups.
Perhaps the first of these was Steemit, which monetized the crowd to create a distributed social network, rewarding users for quality content with tokens.
BMCHAIN To Reward Users For Benefits They Bring
Since its launch in 2016, however, technology has moved on. Russian-based syndicate Biznes Molodost is busy preparing a brand-new platform, BMCHAIN, which aims to involve and create Blockchain value from anyone, simply by monetizing their natural capabilities.
“Golos and Steemit began what we intend to take much further,” BMCHAIN cofounder Roman Moiseyev explains.
“Users will be able to monetize not only written content like articles but also any kind of work, assistance and experience-sharing.”
Such a wide scope for promising to create tangible value for users is tricky to get right, and an entire mini ecosystem will appear in order to turn the vision into results.
This ecosystem is already in a strong position thanks to Biznes Molodost’s community of entrepreneurs, of which there are around 200,000 in Russia and its neighbors.
The plan all hinges on the concept of reputation. Calculated using a scientific formula, BMCHAIN will use its bespoke BMT token to evaluate a user’s monetary value. The token’s pre-ICO is already active, having launched August 20.
“Our project will be a one-off in its capacity to evaluate exchanges, and this evaluation will function as an estimate of reputation,” Moiseyev continues.
“Each participant’s digital reputation translates into a specific number of tokens awarded by the system. Trustworthy partners are thus easily located using Blockchain – a verifiable reputation is available, and clients transact solely using BMT.”
Longer-term, BMCHAIN will serve as an umbrella operation for Biznes Molodost extension tools, among which will be a prepackaged ICO service called Token API.
“Token API as a solution will allow entrepreneurs with no prior understanding of Blockchain to see their ICO through from start to finish – including issuing the token itself and engaging interest from exchanges,” says Moiseyev.
Security: Blockchain Immutability ‘Most Important’
With Blockchain wholly in fashion, BMCHAIN will likely find as much success as Steemit did upon its market entry.
As with Steemit, however, which succumbed to a hack shortly afterwards, the risks associated with such a large-scale concept are obvious.
“Data being tamper-proof is the most important aspect of the Blockchain tech we employ on our platform. It means we can understand risks associated with user interactions right there and then, leveraging automatic arbitration to do so at a fraction of the time and cost of before,” Moiseyev says.
“This is in addition to processing thousands of Blockchain transactions every second at next to zero cost, without worrying about authenticity issues.”
With plans in the offing to enter the international payments market in a manner reminiscent of Ripple, security is without doubt a major concern for BMCHAIN going forward.
“500,000 entrepreneurs are in line to test the system in its first year,” Moiseyev concludes. “In terms of funding, we achieved 1506 ETH during a pre-token presentation ($466,000 at the time, August 16) and another 245 ETH on the first day of the pre-ICO, August 20 ($70,000).”
