Can Decentralization Improve Trust Issues in E-commerce? Ink Protocol Thinks So!

Online marketplace shopping has grown exponentially in the last decade, but is heavily centralized and has become dominated by a handful of disconnected, monopolistic companies. Ink Protocol wants to change that.

Trust and reputation are fundamental values in creating a secure and reliable marketplace for both vendors and purchasers to trade on. Without this foundation, e-commerce becomes a highly risky and unattractive enterprise. So far, the absence of a decentralized force in this industry has led to the creation of online platforms with an overbearing control over their users’ reputation data; including the ability to filter out, alter, remove and censor a user’s feedback. This can have a damaging impact on a consumer’s experience and their perceived credibility.

Not only this, but these centralized marketplaces also ring-fence their users by preventing them from transferring this important data to other platforms. Instead, buyers and sellers who wish to conduct business on other marketplaces must rebuild their trustworthiness, which is a typically long and slow process. The deterrence of starting over is often what locks users into a particular platform and allows them to be exploited by exorbitant middleman fees.

Ink Protocolis an Ethereum blockchain-based solution specifically designed to liberate consumers and combat these domineering practices. Ink Protocol is a decentralized reputation and payment system that will allow users to transfer their accrued feedback across online marketplaces, as well as sell/pay for goods using a native ERC20 utility token, XNK. It also includes a decentralized escrow service and a third-party dispute resolution system managed by Ethereum smart contracts.

This ensures that transaction fees are low, all payments are secure and immutable, and disagreements are resolved without bias. Leaving feedback for both buyers and sellers after a purchase will also be executed by a smart contract mechanism, and will play a vital role in providing a totally decentralized trust system.

This concept has been developed by Listia, a live web and mobile e-commerce platform with 10 million registered users who have collectively sold over 100 million items. The main features of Ink Protocol have already been integrated into the Listia marketplace, including an XNK virtual wallet service and the new XNK token system, which has replaced the platform’s former ‘Listia Credits’ payment system. Now, users can not only buy and sell goods with XNK, but they can also earn tokens simply by interacting with advertisers, listings and fulfilling other tasks.

By incorporating this utility token as the underlying platform currency, it means that all transactions are recorded on the blockchain; creating an element of transparency and accountability that is unheard of in centralized marketplaces.

Ink Protocol will support integration with other existing platforms as more users migrate towards the benefits of blockchain-based services. Over time, this will radically disrupt the current peer-to-peer marketplace monopoly, as platforms are forced to adopt the protocol to keep their customers.

By placing ownership of reputation data back into the hands of the client, buyers and sellers will have the freedom to roam across online marketplaces without the labor of re-verifying themselves as honest, reliable and trustworthy individuals. Increased competition and customer reputation mobility could also assist in improving the high transaction fees associated with many existing platforms.

Perhaps the biggest advantage ofInk Protocolis the immutability of the blockchain and how it will motivate both parties to act honorably; helping remove the bad buyers and fraudulent sellers that have saturated the industry.