Using XNK in the Real World

Our vision for Ink Protocol is to create a reputation and payment system that can be used in peer-to-peer marketplaces all over the world. Most importantly, we want to make sure XNK is usable immediately at launch. The whole team has been working hard, and the tech has come a long way, so we are happy to say that Ink Protocol will be fully live and usable as intended on day one.

This means that unlike other blockchain projects out there, you don’t have to wait months or years after the token sale to be able to use your new XNK. Anyone will be able to send and receive XNK for goods and also give and get feedback for their own decentralized reputation immediately. The best part is, it will also be integrated directly into our existing peer-to-peer marketplace, called Listia, right away. Just transfer your XNK into Listia, and you will be able to buy things like clothing, accessories, toys, video games, electronics, gift cards, jewelry, collectibles, and much more.

However, even though Listia is a great way to kick off the usage and network effects of Ink Protocol and the XNK token, the main goal of Ink Protocol is to be useful everywhere that people transact in a peer-to-peer way. Decentralized reputation will allow buyers and sellers to feel safe transacting with each other, no matter what marketplace platform they choose.

We have so many ideas around ways Ink Protocol can be used and want to share some of the best ones with our community. If you are interested in building cool user interfaces for any of these, please reach out to us and we can send you some details about the specs and how the contract works. Remember, Ink Protocol is a completely open system that ANYONE can build on. You can even interact with it directly via the contract on Ethereum. In the coming weeks, we hope to release an alpha version to make development even easier.

1. Simple Peer-to-Peer Payments App — This mobile app would act as your XNK wallet and allow you to send and receive payments in XNK using the Ink Protocol contract features like escrow, mediation and leaving feedback. On one hand, it is super simple because it just needs to act as a consumer-facing user interface into the Ink Protocol contract. On the other hand, it is also super powerful because it allows anyone to safely buy and sell on any local marketplace, like Craigslist, FB Marketplace, or even your own local market. This is one of the biggest and easiest opportunities for Ink Protocol to start creating decentralized marketplaces.
2. BYOM / Build Your Own Marketplace — Ink Protocol lets anyone quickly and easily create and build their own marketplace. All you need to take care of is a place to host the images and item description. Then, the sellers just add their XNK address into the item description and you have an instant identity, reputation, payment and dispute resolution system. This is great for quickly building vertical marketplaces that are focused on specific items like shoes, bags, toys, collectibles, bikes, etc. It is far easier to grow a super focused marketplace from scratch, rather than building another generic marketplace for everything.
3. Sell on Social Media — This is an interesting variation of the BYOM. Instead of writing any code or building anything at all, you could easily run a marketplace for something you are passionate about and put all the listings on social media, like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook or Twitter. That way, you have your distribution channels and image/description hosting figured out already, and again all the seller needs to do is include their Ink Protocol address in the description. Anyone can then look up how reputable the seller is and also pay that seller directly, while the listing itself just exists as an Instagram or Twitter post.
4. Ink Protocol Browser/Explorer — We imagine this is a simple web site that can take any Ink Protocol address (it’s also just an Ethereum address) and tell you everything about that person’s Ink Protocol transactions. It would show you the transaction history, marketplace history, feedback history, amounts bought and sold and even a summary of how reputable this person seems to be. This data is all viewable from the Ethereum blockchain so you just need to read it and display it in a friendly way. You could optionally include a way to pay that address in XNK directly from the web page. This could become the standard site that people use to check on an address, much like Etherscan.io is used today for general Ethereum transactions.
5. Share Your Reputation on Forums/Classifieds — As you build up reputation on your address, you can easily share it in all kinds of places, like discussion forums, blogs, classifieds sites etc. For example, if you are selling some bicycle parts on your favorite bike forum, you can paste your Ink Protocol address in your post to show off your reputation and receive payment for the parts with integrated escrow and dispute resolution. This way, people can quickly feel comfortable buying from you, and it works everywhere because the interface is just your public address. Paste it or use a link to the browser/explorer from #4 and you have instant credibility.
6. A Signal For Your Broader Reputation — We believe Ink Protocol is not only useful during peer-to-peer transactions, but also in a person’s broader reputation. The reputation built-up on Ink Protocol can be a signal for other forms of reputation, like credit scoring, rental agreements, contracts, service agreements, and much more! The open nature of Ink Protocol means that anyone can start pulling in this data freely, and you can share it with any service that asks for it.

Have more ideas? We’d love to hear them or reach out to use if you need help building them! Join the conversation on Telegram :)