We had a great Ask me Anything session with one of our telegram groups yesterday. Here’s an extract:
Can you kick off this evening (or morning’s) “Ask Me Anything” with an intro on ShareRing?
Hi, sure.. ShareRing is an on-demand platform that connects the highly fragmented sharing economy by bringing together sharing services across all industries and geographies. Using our decentralized marketplace, users can securely access, connect, and pay for services anywhere in the world.
In other words, we’re developing an ecosystem that is essentially the Amazon for the sharing economy.
good, Can you talk about the problem of the sharing economy being centalised?
One of the issues is that there’s no real way to find all the ‘sharing’ services that are available around you. There are the giants like Uber, Airbnb, etc.. but what if you want to rent a lawnmower, or a wedding dress in Vegas, etc? Where do you go for that?
Hi @TimothyBos, I’d like to ask, with the SEC doing subpoenas to differnet ICO’s. Can you tell me whether you guys classify under securities? or what is your rational with it? Do you have legal advise?
Sure.. we’ve had legal advice in a number of jurisdictions. The legal opinion we have had is that we are classified as a utility token. We will still be avoiding the US for our token sale, as they have some ‘quirks’ around their classification when you sell tokens prior to the blockchain being completed.
excellent to hear
what particular problems are you solving by being decentralised ?
About 6 years ago, I founded a company called Keaz. The purpose of this was to build a ‘platform’ for the sharing economy. We started building it, and quickly realised that there was no was we could build a single centralised platform that covered the variety of businesses and providers that would cover the sharing of anything. So we focussed our effort on vehicle sharing and built a white label platform for that.
Wind forward a few years, and along came blockchain and smart contracts.
After doing a heap of research and engaging wtih a number of developers, we saw that having a distributed blockchain techology, with smart contracts, a custom (global) payment mechanism and a distributed API would allow us to build a scalable blockchain platform that providers could plug into so that we have a single, distributed platform for the sharing economy.
sounds awesome, How does the partnership with BYD benefit the Sharering platform?
BYD are a technology partner. We are working with their automotive division to interface with their in vehicle sensors to assist us with one of the building blocks of the blockchain we are developing (IOT integration).
One of the functions of the smart contracts is to use the oracles to query external devices to validate the status of an asset.
So it will be your own independent blockchain.
Correct. We looked at using an existing platform, but it wasn’t possible to do it with our list of requirements and the scale that we will be rolling this out on.
Can you explain what set you apart from your competitors? What make you different than Origin for example?
I think Origin is a good project, with some strong initial partnerships, but there are quite a few key differences.
Firstly.. one of our values in building out ShareRing is to help reduce waste. With Origin being built on top of Ethereum, with its Proof of Work consensus, this goes against our core values in a big way. The amount of energy that’s wasted in validating transactions on ethereum is crazy.
Also, my longer anwer is, Origin is basically building a smart contract (what they’re calling a ‘protocol’) on top of the Ethereum platform. This puts them at the whim of Ethereum and whatever direction it takes (i.e. what if a fork essentially breaks the contract, or what if the Ethereum trading volume spikes again, and all transactions take too long to process). It also limits their ability to scale and offer a true one size fits all ‘platform’ for the sharing economy.
ShareRing is developing an entire sharing ecosystem, building a blockchain and utilizing a two-tiered token system. This means that we can allow complete custom smart contracts within our platform (i.e. one sharing provider might have very different requirements to another), identity management, controlled transaction speeds, a stable token for payments, and so on.
Also, our focus is going to be on both B2B and B2C sharing. We’ve got a number of projects in the pipeline that focus on B2B at the moment.. some examples are:
Agriculture — We are working with some companies in Australia around the sharing of farm machinery.
Brewery — Monitoring of the beer kegs that are sent to hotels/discos. The brewer doesn’t sell the kegs, they loan the kegs, but they often don’t get them back.
Corporate car sharing — we have a number of projects in this area from Keaz.
Concierge services — a tailored version of ride-sharing
Can you share some stats about Keaz?
Sure.. Keaz have about 34 employees in Australia, NZ, Vietnam, Hong Kong, San Diego, and Denver.
Their primary focus is around their whitelabel car sharing platform.
The platform caters for B2B and B2C car sharing (including community car sharing, corporate pool car, etc)
They white label for companies such as Toyota, BMW, Envoy USA, Yoogo NZ, Merchants Fleet, Enterprise Fleet.
They have deployed car sharing in 300 locations globally.
They have integrated their system with all major makes and models, including Tesla, BMW, Ford, GM, Toyota, Porsche, etc.
ok, a profitable company?
Yes, Keaz has been profitable since the middle of last year.
awesome, always good
The growth is incredible at the moment. They’re in a real sweet spot for the market.
Where would you say your main traction areas are? Asia ?
For Keaz or ShareRing? In terms of Keaz, we’re gaining traction very quickly in each country that we enter. At the moment, the main focus of Keaz is the USA, with the UK soon to follow.
For ShareRing.. Asia has been where we are gaining the most traction, but we are receiving a lot of enquiries from the US and Europe too (from potential providers).
Why did you decide to go with LPOS for the consensus mechanism?
We did a lot of research around this. LPOS gives a good balance between security and speed, whilst also allowing more people to easily be part of the consensus.
The LPOS model also allows us to use lightweight wallets, which is appealing, as we can build it into our mobile app and web app without having to be part of the consensus (ie. hosting the whold db).
Will anyone be able to easily stake their tokens in the network?
Yes, it’ll be an easy process. We are still working out the total cost to run a masternode. We need to manage a balance between good rewards for the masternodes (and the leased nodes) and maintaining a healthy number of nodes on the network to ensure security.
I see a real use case and some nice examples in the car industry here in the chat. Is this also the industry where you have the most focus and trust in for the coming months? Or are there some other strong industries that you guys are leaning towards.
Car industry is obviously our low hanging fruit, as that’s where we have a lot of contacts in our network, but our sales team are now focusing very heavily in a number of other areas in both B2B and B2C areas.
Some areas are:
Travel (ie. focus on things like bike rental, hotel rental, other travel services at destinations).
Agriculture (this is a big area.. particularly in a number of ag communities).
Hobbyist (ie. the DJI relationship, and some others).
We had a workshop with one of our partners last week where we walked through about 20 use cases for some IOT related hardware we will be working on.
Can you tell a bit more about your team. i see a team of 5 on the whitepaper, mostly there are a lot more on the background.
Our team has grown by a lot since then. We’ll be announcing some of the new team members over the next 2 weeks.
We currently have:
Community Management Diretor — Helen started last week and is focused on building our online and ‘real world’ communities. This will also encompass the pitch fests that we’ll be doing with startups in the sharing economy.
Sales Director — Kempton also started recently.. his focus is around bringing on more providers. He’s basically running our sales team and outbound calling.
Development — We just had another 4 developers start with us on Monday. We’ll do a full intro next week, but all of them have substantial blockchain experience (in addition to the ones we already have).
We have a number of other partners, but we are under NDA at this stage, so can’t reveal who they are yet.
We also have a strong PR and marketing team working for us. Our PR has been fantastic so far, and our paid marketing will be kicking off over the next 48 hours.
listened to jeremy rifkin talking about the zero cost marginal society/sharing economy and think its inevitable. Really like the idea
Thanks.. I love his view of the Sharing economy.
What are your thoughts on the current market and how is ShareRing anticipating on this
The market has it’s ups and downs.. that’s the nature of crypto. I think a lot of the drop in prices is due to the fear of regulation. We take the view that regulation is actually good for crypto in the long run, so we believe that the prices will recover for the solid projects.
Will you dive into the area of energy sharing?
Funny you ask that.. we’re looking at some use cases for energy sharing… more around community based energy sharing.
Just a point on China Tim, What is SR’s plan for China? It’s got the most vibrant sharing market outside of the USA.
We’ll have an announcement around that within the next few weeks. China will be a large target market for us, and we have a number of exciting things in place that will help us succeed there.
Would you also be organising/planning some ground game events to raise awareness? Like roadshows?
Yes, we are going to announce a launch event in HK in the next few days. The event will be during the 1st week of May.
Why should a “company” use ShareRing. How can they make money on a p2p platform? Why should they chose a decentralized system instead of creating their own centralized version where they have all the power?
A provider can chose to use any part of the ShareRing network.. we may have some providers who only choose to use the ‘catalog’ to list their sharing services.. but if they want to take advantage of the lower cost of running their business (ie. lower technology costs), increased scale, far stronger security, better identity management, etc, then they may choose to fully integrate with our blockchain.
Basically, we’ll offer them building blocks that they can choose from… such as:
Catalogue (not much more than a listing on our app)
Smart contracts (the agreement between provider and renter, plus the validation and oracles)
Identity validation
Asset management
Payment services
IOT integration
Each transaction will cost them a few cents.. as opposed to the $20+ per asset, per month that traditional sharing platforms would normally charge.
The most interesting aspect of Sharering imo is its dual business model, besides being a platform for the Sharing Economy, the protocol will also be used by participating partners such as recently announced but who may not be interested in the Share Economy aspects of the business, could you elaborate for instance why they would consider using ShareLedger vs other protocols such as IOTA, etc…
IOTA as a service allows companies to charge for the use of IOT devices. The use case is completely different. I think my answer to nancy around the ‘building blocks’ helps answer your question.
Also in terms of BYD, and DJI.. they are clearly interested in utilising the sharing economy to assist in the growth of their business. If BYD can say that they are ‘ShareRing optimized’ (or something like that), then it’s more likely that car sharing operators will use their vehicles, as they’ll have a greater level of service and security.
do you think its possible that luxury items such as private jets, lambos and yachts will become shareable through the app?
I can’t see why not.
What about partnerships with insurance companies for managing risk on sharing items? Is this being worked on or will you work mostly with escrows?
We’re working on this… but it’s ultimately the responsibility of the provider to make sure they have the insurance covered. What we are working on is some potential partnerships that will allow us to do ‘just in time’ insurance so that the asset it covered only during the rental period.
Can you talk a little bit about how SharePay works? How am I as a user be able to cash out SharePay to fiat?
SharePay will be a ‘stable token’ that’s pegged against fiat (initially). We will be providing an onramp from fiat into SharePay and vice versa in each region that we onboard. We will hold the funds in a trust. A big benefit is that someone in the US can pay for a service in HK and not incur any FX fee’s at all, as they’re all using 1 currency (sharepay). We won’t be charging for the fiat conversion, except for standard credit card fees.
In terms of business scope, I don’t believe that there anything out there that has your scope of vision, as yet. In your mind, what would the challenges be for cash-rich business such as Amazon, Uber or AirBnB to throw money at trying to create what ShareRing is trying to create?
Thanks Dave. If Amazon wanted to get into the sharing economy, it would require a very large change in their technology and operational processes. There’s a big difference between selling and sharing/renting/fractional ownership.
As for Uber and AirBNB.. they still have a lot of growth ahead of them in their respective markets, plus their systems are very very focused on a single category.
Thanks Tim, I look forward to following ShareRing as it grows…
Thanks Shane. Don’t forget to check out our website, and join our community. We’ve got a lot of exciting things happening over the next few weeks.
