The sharing economy is fast growing as more industries gradually adopt the idea of global markets. Today, close to 35% of Americans offer skill-based services at the comfort of their home, thanks to the booming gig market. A recent report by PWC estimates that it will have grown to $2.7 trillion by 2025, given the ongoing paradigm shift to a sharing economy. While this market is quite promising, the centralization of services continues to be a big challenge for stakeholders looking for and providing services.  

Intermediaries like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Upwork have gone ahead to take advantage of their market positions to implement high rates for those contributing to these sharing economy platforms. In fact, some cases can go as high as 20% for a single transaction, which eventually makes it costly, defeating the purpose of a sharing economy. Well, this is now set to change following the development of decentralized protocols that leverage blockchain.

Blockchain Protocols’ Evolutionary Leap is the Shared Economy 

Back when Bitcoin was launched, the underlying value in its supporting tech was yet to be discovered as more emphasis was placed on the digital asset itself. A decade later, blockchain has not only proven to be transformative in digital currency transfer but a building block for the sharing economy. Consequently, protocols based on this decentralized tech have come up in a bid to solve existing challenges in the gig market. One such notable innovation is the TimeCoinProtocol

As opposed to intermediaries, the TimeCoinProtocol creates an avenue for contributors in the sharing economy to develop dApps on its decentralized protocol. This blockchain-built innovation is optimistic about creating an ecosystem where participants in the sharing economy are in control of their services as well as an opportunity to create more value within the gig market. Typically, these are limited by the varied shared platforms based on their operational scope, which sometimes limits growth or discourages new market entrants.  

The TimeCoinProtocol, however, will eliminate such market inefficiencies based on the supporting tech, which sprawls through a wide range of modern tech, including smart contracts. Through these digital contracts, dApp developers looking to create a sharing economy ecosystem can virtually integrate the terms, requirements, and other necessary information. Therefore, the execution of a given agreement only depends on the pre-set smart contract specifications. With the current challenges in dispute resolution and talent matching, digital contracts could be the butter of gig markets.  

On the issue of reputational value, traditional centralized platforms have proven to be incapable of transferring goodwill. For instance, freelancers working through a platform such as Fiverr would find it difficult to use this experience in another market place like Upwork. The same applies to the hailing-economy, where firms hold data in their centralized databases. The TimeCoinProtocol operates on entirely different grounds from these traditional firms as it is a decentralized network. Freelancers using a dApp on the TimeCoinProtocol can carry along their experience across the platform, which means they don’t have to start over anytime they join a new dApp for service scaling.  

The TimeCoinProtocol team is, therefore, optimistic about creating a sharing economy whose fundamentals are pegged on a decentralized community to develop trust and reward contribution accordingly. This project has been hailed as the shared economy game-changer in a recent review by Cointelegraph,  

“The TimeCoinProtocol provides a platform so that fledgling projects can build a sharing economy service.” 

Sunrise for Decentralized Protocols in the Shared Economy  

Decentralized protocols facilitate the open development of dApps and decentralized organizations looking to build on any form of sharing economy. It is not surprising that a sunrise phase of this tech is gradually setting in with traditional shared economy value providers jumping on the bandwagon. TimeTicket Inc. is one of the firms that seem to be setting the stage for the adoption of decentralized tech in sharing economies. This Japan-based entity enjoys a usage of over 250,000, operating in the sharing economy. It has since signaled the launch of a dApp on the TimeCoinProtocol to scale its operation through decentralization. Through this initiative, buyers and sellers from all over the world will now be able to trade services by acquiring TMCN to initiate agreements as per the underlying blockchain protocol.  

Other than the TimeTicket professional services shared economy, an initiative dubbed ‘eSports’ with a focus in the online gaming market will launch on the TimeCoinProtocol. This project will allow interested players from anywhere in the world to host competition tournaments. In doing so, fans will also be able to compete against professionals despite their level of experience. Such an approach goes a long way in opening up shared economies whose growth continues to be limited by centralized entities acting as watchdogs. To bring more value in the sharing economy, blockchain protocols will come in handy as decentralization eliminates third parties in this market.