What’s wrong with a sharing economy and what are we going to do with it?
WONO is going to be a part of booming P2P economy. It combines functions of Airbnb, Turo, Upwork, TaskRabbit and partly Craigslist. The question is: why someone may need a blockchain-based hybrid of all mentioned services if they are cool enough to attract millions of users and increase their income every year?
Most of recent startups use blockchain just because of the crypto hype. Everyone speaks about blockchain, everyone wants to invest in it and become rich. But if you look closely, you might find out that most of the businesses don’t need any blockchain or cryptocurrencies at all — everything is working offchain just fine. But not in a sharing economy. Let’s find out, what’s wrong with it and how we’re going to change the way the things are done.
1. High commissions. From 10% to 30% for each deal — it’s a bunch of money. OK, you should pay something for using the infrastructure, but such commissions are definitely more than middleman services really cost. WONO doesn’t offer you commission-free service (in one of the next articles we’ll explain, why zero commission is a bad idea), but our rates are 1% — 5%, which lets vendors offer better prices and get more customers.
2. Taxes. As a vendor on Airbnb or Turo, you must pay income tax. How much? You should contact your local authorities and find out, usually not less than 15%. But not when you use WONO. In most countries a token is a digital asset. Since you can earn and spend in tokens, you can avoid taxation in a 100% legal way.
3. Lack of trust. You can never be sure that the deal you’ve signed on a P2P platrorm won’t be cancelled. Usually there are some compensation programs. But customers often get nothing if the vendor changes mind. We think that’s a shame. WONO has a deal insurance system and an affected party is fairly determined by the community. In our whitepaper (https://wono.io/#wp) we explain these processes in details.
4. Non-transparent ratings and reviews. When the system is centralized, administrators can edit everything that’s published. When the platform uses blockchain, that can’t be done unnoticed. So you’re sure that a high-rated vendor would offer you supreme quality product or service.
So, as you can see, blockchain is essential for P2P services. OK, but why should we combine home, car and other assets rentals with freelance jobs? We’ll discuss it in the next article. Spoiler: that helps you to save loads of time, nerves and money.
Andrei Chepelev, COO at WONO
