The e-commerce industry has been booming over the past two decades and has led to the emergence of online shopping giants such as eBay, Amazon and Alibaba. This industry is only growing and shows no sign of stopping, however, it is far from perfect. The rapid growth of these e-commerce giants has caused large centralization issues such as the misuse of power, unfair pricing, hidden costs and data abuse.
The problem lies not with the e-commerce giants themselves for they are just running a traditional business looking to maximize profits. The problem stems from profit maximizing behavior which persuades large companies to extort their users This mindset. is an inherent and trending problem that occurs in companies which are built on centralized models. Blockchain has presented a technology that, if designed and employed impeccably, will channel the growth of a platform to benefit all users, not just the central party running the show.
Meet ApolloX
ApolloX is a blockchain-based protocol empowering decentralized global e-commerce. The protocol has been created to enable e-commerce services and applications, but in a much fairer and efficient manner than currently is the industry standard. ApolloX is certain it can decrease e-commerce costs by 40% and create an ecosystem that thrives based on its active community. The ApolloX platform has set out to empower the world’s first online marketplace fully operating on blockchain technology.
It will enable this through its ApolloX protocol, which is the foundation for the ApolloX platform and is able to utilize existing public chains. The ApolloX protocol will empower a blockchain-based ecosystem for all things e-commerce. The team behind ApolloX has already created an e-commerce platform back in 2016, the ApolloBox platform, from which the team experienced the current issues and inefficiencies of the e-commerce industry first hand. By leveraging novel concepts introduced by blockchain such as tokenization and decentralized governance, the ApolloX protocol is set to disrupt global e-commerce.
The problems ApolloX is solving
Even though the rise of e-commerce is a leap forward in regards to offline shopping, it still has significant downsides for the users of e-commerce platforms.
Trust is expensive
Establishing trust between two parties is very difficult in an online environment. Therefore, reputation and dispute settlement arrangements have become essential for e-commerce, both of which are provided by the well known online shopping platforms. Buyers know they can trust these platforms and enjoy a secure e-shopping experience, however, both buyers and sellers are paying the bill.
For example, sellers have to pay Amazon at least 15% of sales just to be listed. Even though e-commerce platforms do provide solid services to their sellers, they handsomely overcharge them for this. This is because platforms such as eBay and Amazon know that sellers almost have to use them to reach a sizeable audience. Costs for just running a storefront range from 10 to 25% of the gross sales.
Broken cost model for sellers
Additionally, there are the hidden costs of advertising and marketing that are centrally, monopolistically, controlled and often higher than the market price. Middleman fees for other services such as transport, dispute settlements, storage and overseas logistics on the larger e-commerce platforms are in a lot of cases excessively expensive.
Because of this, both buyers and sellers lose money, yet the platform profits more. This misalignment of interests stems from the huge power of organizations like Alibaba and Amazon and the presence of middleman and intermediaries that all need to profit. Veteran Amazon sellers indicate that their profitability has vastly decreased over the last years. There is a clear misalignment between the interests of the e-commerce platforms and the sellers on that platform, in which an increase of the platform’s profitability decreases that of its sellers.
No data integrity
Both buyers and sellers do not have the right to control the data they produce. Buyers’ behavior and personal information is monitored, packaged, profiled and resold to sellers and advertisers without consent of the users. On the other hand, sellers do not have access to this data directly, even if they have produced it themselves. They either have to pay for it, or can’t access it. In the latter case, this data can be used by the platform to compete with sellers on its own website, giving the platform a tremendous, yet unfair, advantage over the sellers.
The five components of the ApolloX protocol
The ApolloX protocol is designed to cut out middleman costs at each layer of the e-commerce process and create a self-governing, decentralized e-commerce ecosystem. Moreover, users of the ApolloX platform are in charge of their own data. This is all possible by the smart contract system designed by the ApolloX team and powered by the ApolloX protocol. This protocol has 5 key components;
Attribution protocol
ApolloX’s attribution protocol allows shops and sellers to directly monitor all traffic related to their sales in a transparent manner at lower costs. On the other hand, the protocol is used to incentivize community members to drive traffic, for which they are awarded tokens. Because this traffic data is stored in a decentralized database, all users with permission have access to this data.
Payment protocol
This protocol guides the payment process within the ApolloX ecosystem, but also enables third party insurance services and fiat to crypto conversions. This protocol is a set of smart contracts that allow for an automated, decentralized payment system that can prevent the majority of online shopping scams.
Arbitration protocol
Disputes and complaints are ubiquitous in the e-commerce industry. To solve this, the ApolloX has implemented a Deposit-Challenge-Vote mechanism for dispute settlement. In this model, disputing parties can stake tokens on their dispute after which the case is brought to a random group of community arbitraries, which vote for the verdict and are rewarded tokens for their effort.
Reputation protocol
Reputation is key in e-commerce and generally stems from ratings and reviews. To ensure the honesty of reputation, authentic reviews are rewarded whilst fraudulent ones are penalized. For this, the ApolloX token is used. Reviews are filtered by an automated review algorithm and the questionable cases will be reviewed by a randomly selected committee.
Oracle and data protocol
Outside information concerning matters such as logistics, personal information and advertising is an important part of the e-commerce process. To ensure the trustworthiness of this outside data, oracles are used to provide the external information to the smart contract framework of ApolloX.
ApolloX token (APXT) economics
A key element in making the ApolloX decentralized e-commerce ecosystem work is the ApolloX’s native APXT token. A decentralized platform can only work if there is a proper incentive and governance model in place, which is directed by its native token. The token serves two main purposes in the ApolloX ecosystem; it’s the platform’s native currency that facilitates transactions within the ecosystem and is used to incentivize contributions to the ecosystem. The APXT token is deeply integrated into the ApolloX ecosystem and has been given many functions to ensure a natural, long term demand and thus valuation of the token.
To create a natural demand from the start, sellers need APXT to pay for services such as logistics, customer support, advertisement and listing fees. Sellers can also choose to accept APXT tokens as a form of payment in return for a discount. Fiat payments will also be integrated in the ecosystem as to not force buyers to use cryptocurrencies.
As with most token economic models, the APXT token is also used as a means to incentivize miners. A highly innovative model introduced by ApolloX is that buyers can mine by sharing their shopping history and social profiles in return for APXT. Other ways for buyers to mine are referrals, active dispute mediating and posting and reviewing reviews.
Sellers mine by listing and selling best-selling products. The latter incentivizes users to sell products that are high in demand. This form of mining is directing users to contribute to the network by giving the e-commerce ecosystem all the components ity needs to grow.
Who’s behind ApolloX?
The founders of the ApolloX protocol understand the current issues with the e-commerce industry as they’ve experienced them first hand through their earlier founded e-commerce platform ApolloBox. This platform was designed to be a social e-commerce community and is now a global marketplace that is focused on selling creative home and lifestyle products. Today ApolloBox is serving over 1 million active users with an annual gross sales of $12 million, has reported a staggering 400% growth in its two active years and has 800 vendors from 20 different countries listing their products on the ApolloBox website.
The founding members are supported by an experienced team with plenty of academic background. Founder Li is a serial entrepreneur having founded 3 companies, involved in blockchain since 2013 and MIT graduate. Co-founder Claire used to work as senior marketing at Google and Newell Group. Marketing lead Shannon Ma received a PhD in economy from Stanford and is an expert in online marketing channels and affiliate networks. Dr. Yusi Zhang and Dr. Qing Ren are the team’s core blockchain engineers and are supported by Zheng Ma (PhD in computational chemistry) as backend engineer.
ApolloX; a more transparent and efficient model for e-commerce
Where there are inefficiencies, there are opportunities for disruption. The global e-commerce industry definitely has inefficiencies, especially for its users, in the form of high middleman costs, high commissions, no data integrity and overpowered centralization. The ApolloX protocol has been created to solve these issues leveraging blockchain technology. The team estimates that it can reduce the total costs of e-commerce by 40%.
Through processes directed by smart contracts and the 5 components of the ApolloX protocol, the ApolloX ecosystem is automated, transparent and decentralized. ApolloX will allow for all kinds of applications and services to be built on top of its protocol to create a complete e-commerce ecosystem. The APXT token is deeply integrated in this ecosystem to ensure a sustainable, natural growth in demand for the token. Because of this, network members will be highly incentivized to contribute to the ApolloX ecosystem.
The platform was built with the previous experience of the team in the e-commerce industry and the understanding that it will be extremely hard to compete with the online shopping behemoths if you play by the same rules. Through its decentralized approach directed by ApolloX’s strong token economics and ApolloX protocol, the platform is geared to take on this challenge.
Follow ApolloX:
Twitter @apolloX_network
Telegram: ApolloX Group
