Introducing Accept.IO: A Decentralized Marketplace for Goods and Services

The global economy is undergoing a major shift. Some are calling it the ‘Uberisation’ of the economy. Others are calling this new economy on the horizon the sharing economy. And you’ve no doubt heard the terms gig and freelancing economy thrown around.

But no matter what term you use, you’re basically talking about the same thing: the peer-to-peer exchange of goods and services.

The sharing economy emerged as a sort of counter-economic movement. So it’s a little bit ironic that the concept has become a powerful business model. There’s no shortage of peer-to-peer online marketplaces. And some of them, namely Uber and Airbnb, are immensely successful private companies.

This isn’t surprising. If you can create a network or platform on which users trade actively peer-to-peer you can generate revenue simply by taking a fee from every transaction. And if you can make your platform sufficiently sticky, making it hard for users to leave, you can take a hefty fee.

And that’s exactly what companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Upwork (the largest peer-to-peer marketplace for freelancing) have done. These sites take 10–25% off typical transactions.

This begs the question: is it really possible to create a sharing economy marketplace in the original spirit of the idea?

The Limits of Centralized Marketplaces

Online marketplaces have no doubt filled a real need. They’ve made it easier for people to earn some extra cash or even make a living without a traditional full-time, 9–5 job. But as these marketplaces have grown, it’s become harder for individuals to succeed.

More users means more competition. And competition drives down prices and user profits. In an ideal world, you would just leave a marketplace that gets too saturated. But many of these marketplaces are basically monopolies, so you don’t have many other options.

Plus, if you choose to leave one marketplace for another, you have to be ready to start from scratch: All the reviews and feedback you’ve accumulated will be lost. The marketplace owners could purposely block you from exporting your data.

Centralization puts marketplace owners in control of your reputation. They can charge exorbitant fees because they know you can’t easily leave. But that’s not the only problem.

Centralization also imposes limits on marketplace transactions. In real life, you and I could negotiate a trade involving any combination of goods, services, and currency. But online marketplaces force users into simple transactions, like cash for services or goods.

A more efficient marketplace — one with lower transaction fees — would let users trade just about anything they choose.

The Opportunity for Decentralization

It’s now possible to build a secure decentralized marketplace thanks to the development of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Such a marketplace could charge users much lower fees for two reasons.

1. A blockchain-powered marketplace would be self-regulating. Users can be incentivized to carry out critical market regulation tasks like dispute resolution, which would drastically reduce labor costs.
2. Trust-less transactions carried out on a public blockchain provide advanced security while circumventing financial institutions and their high fees and sluggish settlements. And smart contracts combined with native escrow give buyers and sellers the assurance they won’t get ripped off.

Fees can actually be reduced to zero when two users decide to trade goods or services without exchanging currency. This is only possible in a decentralized marketplace.

Accept.IO aims to be such a marketplace.

Of course, fee-less marketplaces have existed for a while (think Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Kijiji), but they lack the security and privacy of a blockchain-powered marketplace.

Introducing the Accept Marketplace and the Fulcrum (FULC) Token

The Accept.IO project will be the world’s first true peer-to-peer sharing economy marketplace where users can trade freely, safely, and privately. A new ERC20 token, Fulcrum (FULC) will serve primarily as a means of exchange in the Accept Marketplace and as a store of value for its users.

Our vision is to create an online marketplace with:

• No/low fees (max 2.5% per transaction involving FULC and 0% for non-monetary trades)
• Fast payments (settlements take about 15 seconds — not 3–5 business days)
• Innovative incentives to make the platform better for everyone and share profits with users

The Accept Marketplace lets you trade goods and services in any combination you want. You can trade things you no longer want/need or offer up your skills in exchange for FULC. And you can trade securely, because Accept.IO protects you from fraudulent activity with smart contracts, native escrow, and a sophisticated reputation system.

Incentivizing Participation in the Growth of the Marketplace

A FULC Rewards Pool will be reserved for users who help maintain the Accept Marketplace and contribute to its long-term growth.

One of the important ways users can participate is by serving on the Star Chamber, an accredited group of users tasked with resolving disputes between buyers and sellers. If a Star Chamber user is assigned to a dispute resolution team (called a Star Council), they receive a small FULC reward for voting on the outcome.

Other ways you can earn FULC from the Rewards Pool include participating in open coding challenges (Accept.IO is open-source software) and referring friends and family.

A Little Background Info

We’re not the only team working on solving the centralized marketplace problem.

• dock.io and Indorse are working on introducing profile portability between marketplaces.
• OpenBazaar is a decentralized marketplace where users can transact with Bitcoin. But it doesn’t let you sell services. And it doesn’t let you make non-monetary trades.

Our hope is to fill this void with a truly open marketplace for goods and services.

So, is it possible to create a true sharing economy marketplace?

Not without decentralization. As long as marketplaces are owned and controlled by a central authority, the sharing economy will never be realized.

We think a true sharing economy marketplace should be open-source. If it’s set up as a private company, it won’t be optimized for its users, but for profit instead.

The best marketplaces are self-regulated, frictionless hubs where people meet to trade freely and securely. That’s our vision for Accept.IO.

How to Get Involved …

• Visit our website to register for our token sale
• Join the Accept.IO Alpha Launch to start using the marketplace
• Read our whitepaper
• Join our Telegram community to be the first to get our updates
• Follow us on Twitter
• Join our Reddit Community
• Follow us on Medium

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Questions?

We’ll be answering your questions about Accept.IO in the comments