We are happy to announce the launch of CHOOSIT, the first decentralised e-commerce store built on the Elastos DMA platform. We officially launched on June 21st, Beijing time!

The long supportive members of our community know that the original engineering name was ‘DStore’. We decided to put a call out to the community and come up with a brand new name. The response was overwhelming and we thank everyone for their contributions.

After several rounds of brainstorming and deep discussion, the dev team has picked CHOOSIT as the official product name. Submitted by the long time ‘name master’ of our community — Chris Parker. The meaning of the name is ‘Choose it’, representing a consumer centric philosophy. We believe that by cutting out the middle-men, consumers will be free to choose the way they transact on this new wave of e-commerce, resulting in competitive prices and a completely fresh and upgraded decentralised platform for sellers to participate in.

The StarryMedia application development team spent less than a month of their spare time on CHOOSIT. Because the Elastos DMA biz framework was already in place, it was a fairly seamless process for the team to turn the concept of CHOOSIT into a business level product. The team accomplished everything that was set out, beyond what we expected, including the CHOOSIT dApp, an open decentralised e-commerce service layer on Elastos DMA.

Since the pre-release article last week, we have received many questions and comments from the Elastos DMA community. Today, we want to take the time to share more thoughts on CHOOSIT.

Why do you want to create this decentralised e-commerce store?

What problem do you solve with this dApp?

What is the competitive advantage for merchants?

618 (June 18th) is the online retail festival created by major online e-commerce platforms. Celebrating the birth of JD.com, the marketing campaigns have been steadily going on for 1–2 months. While you might not be totally aware of this in the West, this is actually the second largest e-commerce event in China (after Singles Day.)

However, such a large retail event raises many questions:

Are you satisfied with the deals you got?

Did you really save money?

How was your shopping experience?

The traditional e-commerce environment has been greatly improved over the last few years. That is undeniable. But there are still many problems that are difficult to solve because of the deeply engrained business models. At some point, you must have encountered some of these issues:

Greedy merchants raise the original price and then post the ‘discounted’ price to attract unknowing consumers. You spent a long day trying to find ‘good deals’ but it turns out you didn’t really save any money after you placed the order. The product looks amazing online. When you actually buy and receive it, there is a massive discrepancy in the quality. All the ratings, comments and reviews of the store are again, amazing. This begs the question: How can you trust that data? Many retailers hold back unwanted stock from last season, then when the sales hit, add a measly discount onto the price and try to convince you that you’re getting a good deal. Designer’s graphics are used to promote the next hot sale, but the designer receives absolutely no share of the profit. Sometimes they are not even recognised creatively for their efforts.

These problems that traditional e-commerce platforms face are actually quite easy to solve with decentralised technology and blockchain.

After nearly a year of hard work, the decentralised marketing and commerce platform ‘Elastos DMA’ has been steadily established on top of the Elastos infrastructure. With a large desire to solve the many e-commerce pain points, we have decided to build CHOOSIT on Elastos DMA. The perfect choice for next generation e-commerce. This is another commercially viable dApp to validate the DMA framework. The first dApp is the first decentralised and open e-ticketing platform ‘Uptick.’

All the critical information of the products, such as the specifications, prices, pictures, manufacturer links, certificates, etc. will be registered on the blockchain. All of this information is open, transparent, and traceable. This effectively avoids problems such as dishonest pricing and the spread of false information.

With our reputation system, merchants who set up decentralised stores on the CHOOSIT platform are completely trustworthy. This is achieved by building a strict auditing and credit system. Before opening a store, the qualifications of the merchants will be meticulously checked and recorded on-chain. As will the products and services the merchants publish in store. The release of the purchase fund will be subject to the feedback of consumers, and will be strictly managed by smart contracts for the clearing and settlement.

Along with solving several major problems, such as merchant reputation, product quality, misleading campaigns, and business and consumer credit, we also spent time on the issue of ‘IP protection’.

Over the last few years, awareness of IP protection has increased not just in China, but globally, yet the situation from the designers perspective has not been greatly improved. For example, the artwork of the designer is usually bought out at a very low price, meaning they are not entitled to any future profit if the product goes on to become a hot item. The designer is forced to spend day and night creating massive amounts of artwork just to create a steady income.

There are also situations where talented designers cannot find a suitable way to monetize their creative efforts. Their works are also at the risk of being pirated when they are publicly posted on social media platforms. If it isn’t posted in such a public forum, nobody really knows about it and consequently, there are no buyers. This is a longstanding dilemma in the current creative works community.

Therefore, we have added a ‘profit-sharing’ model in CHOOSIT. Each item can be associated with one or more designers. After negotiating the profit share ratio for loyalty with the designer, they are then able to obtain the corresponding share for each item sold. All transaction records can be clearly seen in the designer’s personal account. This in turn motivates the designer to create better works, promoting a healthy and creative environment for designers to flourish.

CHOOSIT is the combination of trusted merchants, with the added bonus of a decentralised online store that enables real time profit shares deriving directly from the content creators. This is more than just a ‘decentralised Amazon’. This is a completely transparent and open platform, which truly gives the power back to the creators. CHOOSIT is the first version of the online store with a minimum set of basic flows. At this stage, we will limit the scope of goods to copyrighted artwork designed products. The first store in CHOOSIT is operated by the StarryMedia team (yes, you can trust us!). The store will focus on selling t-shirts, hats and other cultural and creative products. We welcome consumers to purchase, and designers to participate.

Since this is still a simple online store, we know there are a lot of problems that need to be optimised and solved. We want to hear your comments and suggestions for making CHOOSIT the best dApp it can possibly be.

Last but not least, how can you participate in the next wave of e-commerce?

Please join our Telegram group as an early participant. We will publish the download link for CHOOSIT (Android only for now) at 9pm, 6/24 (Beijing time)

For the first ten orders we receive, we will send you 1 ELA as a reward. Join the group and stay tuned!

We are very confident about the future of CHOOSIT and we hope you will join us on this journey of product and business development. By demonstrating the power of CHOOSIT on Elastos DMA, we hope you will be inspired to develop and operate your own unique decentralised applications on Elastos DMA.

The purpose of the DMA platform is to enable commercial application developers to quickly and easily develop decentralised applications for their business models, and proceed to operate without the need to understand blockchain and decentralisation techniques at a deep level.

Choose to enable a fair environment for content creators to thrive.

Choose a sorely needed paradigm shift.

Choose to participate in the next generation of e-commerce.

CHOOSIT.

By the way, if you recognise and appreciate the work the Elastos DMA team has been doing, please show your strong support by voting for the ElastosDMA Supernode!