UChain Review: Wheeler Dealer — Paving the way for Sharing Economy 2.0
Overview
Welcome to one of the most anticipated and practical ICO projects available this year. UChain seeks to solve some the major problems in the sharing economy space:
- Excessive transaction costs
- No effective credit system reflecting parties involved
- Data leakage and abuse (Yes, this is a problem — Scammers !)
UChain aims to tackle these problems within the shared economy space with a P2P network using blockchain technology with an underlying sense of sharing economy.
Think Airbnb, but transactions are made using smart contracts, having secured data , all the while removing the EXORBITANT fees being paid to a third party.
Sharing-service providers are able to build dApps on the UChain blockchain and issue their own tokens for their respective sharing service platforms. These tokens will be derived from URC-1 standard , the standard token issuance on the UChain blockchain.
Plans to create a wallet to store UCN and these URC-1 standard tokens are underway as well. Once an abundance of sub-ecosystems are made on the UChain blockchain, a DEX will be integrated into the wallet to provide liquidity possibilities.
So dude, what do the tokens do?
UChain (UCN) tokens have a variety of use cases:
A. Staking
Users who stake UCN tokens receive UCP. UCP is just UCN but with voting power and is non-tradeable. UCP hodlers (Yeah thats how we spell it) are rewarded UCN over a period.
Longer UCN holders will receive better bonuses. This incentivises the need to hold UCN tokens, and thus will help retain its value.
B. Transactions
1. Payment : Circulated on dApps as payment for all transactions
2. Fees : Transaction fees from sharing services and DEX
3. Ad delivery : Ads can be paid for through the UChain and system
4. Voucher : Used as voucher for the purchase of assets from suppliers
5. Value-added service : Option as payment for API services on UChain
C. Rewards
- Data Contribution
Users are rewarded UCN for contributing data to developing the ecosystem
2. Community Rewards
Users who contribute to the community, such as third-party developers and community operators will be rewarded UCN
3. User Incentive
UCN will be rewarded to users who help expand the community by on-boarding new users
Team Members
This is the part where the excitement, hype, and all good things to high heaven begin. They’re a well diverse team covering important aspects such as, marketing, strategy and operations. Most notable are:
Ian Yu, CEO
The CEO has founded other companies before UChain, a good track record for business. He is the founder and CEO of U-Bicycle, the 4th largest bike sharing platform in the world, and is also a founding member of DianPing.com , China’s largest service e-commerce platform. Among the many awards he has won, includes the “Entrepreneur China” CEO of the Year. This is just the start!
Will Zhou, CTO
Vast experience in developing systems with throughput that’s capable of handling high transaction rates. His previous experiences include being the Director of Technology in Dianping, Technical Director at eBay and CTO of U-Bicycle.
Jason Wu, Senior Architect
Jason has 3 years of experience in developing blockchain. He was the co-founder of HiCircle — a tech consultancy firm for blockchain related services. He was also the Senior Developing Engineer for IBM China.
Benny Liao — Chief Product Officer
Has years under his belt in RnD for smart devices. An IoT and blockchain specialist in improving efficiency in data Transmission and security. He was a manager in Smart device Department at U-Bicycle. Oversaw development of smart devices
Advisors (This is where the fun starts)
The advisory team includes some big names and people who have previously advised other ICOs, such as:
- Richard Wang , Partner at Draper Dragon Fund (So much Win).
He has over 20 years of experience technical marketing in the high tech space and was also an advisor for Skrumble Network, incidentally did 2–3x on the back of listing on a decentralized exchange recently.
2. Jimmy Hu , CEO of one of China’s leading data-driven companies APEX Network
3. Jonathan Ha , CEO of RedPulse (Yeah you remember him from that ICO ;)
4. Kenneth Hsia , Partner at Badwater Capital and also advised the first ICO based on the NEO blockchain, Red Pulse.
5. Ding An Fei , Managing Partner of Ledger Capital
6. Aaron Choi, Vice President BTCC
7. Ray Valdes , CTO Consensys
Other members include from World Blockchain Organization, ZJ Ventures, Water Drop
Note: If all else, we shouldn’t need to write more about the ICO, the advisor list is a testament to the project itself, but hey, if you’re not convinced, check out the Partners .
Partners
AliPay : World’s LARGEST mobile payment platform (Overtook Paypal in 2013)
GRAB : Southeast Asia’s biggest player in ride-hailing , ride-sharing , and logistics services App and dominates this sector so much that they successfully knocked UBER out of this region and in FACT , Uber bought equity into them a few months ago. GRAB owns close to 100% of the market in Singapore, Malaysia, and a number of SEA countries. Did we mention they’re heavily backed by SOFTBANK and have 68 million app downloads, 3.5 million daily rides and are worth over USD 6 billion?
Other members include, China Unicom, Translink and World Blockchain Organization
Investors
Ledger Capital, Badwater Capital, Black Hole, Max Capital, and a whole other Chinese based investment companies
Tell Me More, Baby
Multiple partnerships with big companies in Asia which includes, U-Bicycle, DianPing.com, Grab and more, further increases confidence in this project.
U-bicycle, which has 30 million registered users plan to migrate and launch their dApp on the UChain blockchain in Q1 2019. If the parent company of U-Bicylce, U.B Group Holdings, launch dApps for their many other successful sharing platforms on the UChain blockchain, the success of this project is pretty much guaranteed.
UChain uses RPCA (Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm) which is already proven to be high speed and effective. This consensus algorithm has a high Byzantine Fault tolerance.
Notable effort in Closing Down pools in the ICO space, this is a confidence boosting effort for the value of their tokens — preventing dumps upon listing, this also creates scarcity of the token in the market before listing which leads to incredible demand upon listing.
Social Media
Telegram: Close to 17k members
Twitter: 1700 followers
Token Metrics
1. Hard Cap: 42,000 ETH
4. Token AFS : 40%
22,000 ETH Strategic Partners (50% Bonus), Bonus 6 Month Lock Up
8,000 ETH Public Presale (15% Bonus), Bonus 3 Month Lock Up
12,000 ETH Crowdsale (No Bonus)
What’s Lit?
Please refer to section on Team , Advisors, Partners and Investors.
Just Kidding.
The sharing economy is expected to reach a size of over USD 500 billion in 2018. With the multiple partnerships they have with massive Asian corporations, coupled with the user base that it brings, UChain is in the best position to absolutely explode in this space.
The Founders of the company have a good rep sheet with success in the companies that they have founded. It’s difficult to see where the challenge is at the moment for them; aside from having to cycle under the hot asian sun.
What’s Not?
UChain aims to reach 1k tps in their blockchain. Multiple new blockchains claim to be much more powerful. But highspeed is not UChain’s goal. Their goal is improving the sharing economy market with the aid of blockchain and decentralisation.
Competition already exists , most notably with Origin Protocol , who have also started working with notable startups in the ASEAN region (We’ll do a review of that when those ICOs start popping up)
There are still curiosities regarding the liquidity of the tokens, given that there needs to be an abundant of tokens before there is a DEX to trade their native tokens , it might be medium term before we see liquidity for the UCP tokens that can have price action impact on the UCN tokens. Till then, great investment flip — with the bonus tied up, would be ideal to wait till mainnet which is widely anticipated in Q4 this year.
References
Website : https://uchain.world/
White Paper : https://uchain.world/css/img/pdf/uchain-whitepaper-dbe5656d6c.pdf
Telegram : https://t.me/UchainEcosystem
Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/UChain/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/UChainEcosystem
Verdict
absoluteFOMO; This will be LIT
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, simply a review from the authors perspective based on information made available , be it scarce or in abundance. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO or other investment.