A real-world marketing application for the Ethereum platform

The Rouge Network protocol is a suite of smart contracts using a specific token – the Rouge token – on the Ethereum blockchain. This open-source platform reduces costs, friction and the need for trusted middlemen to produce non-falsifiable, non-repudiable and unique usage coupons. The Rouge platform will foster an ecosystem of decentralized applications (ÐApps) opening new possibilities for coupons. Trackable, verifiable, monitizeable, secure, frictionless and unique coupons are the future of digital marketing. The growth of the digital coupon market is phenomenal, and this market is a perfect use case for the smart contract paradigm.

Q&A with Naira d’Arcollières, Rouge Project founder

Q: Hi Naira! Thanks for your time and for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and The Rouge Project?

A: I have a background in marketing and law. Me and Christophe created the Rouge Project to bring a real life application use-case of the Ethereum blockchain. A blockchain public ledger is a perfect fit to solve many pains of managing coupons.

Q: What do you think is the biggest problem The Rouge Project will solve and why is it important to solve?

A: The process of clearing house, that is to say correctly matching redemption between issuers and users is expensive and tricky to solve without blockchain. The Rouge Network solves that completely at a very low cost.

Q: How do you came up with the idea of The Rouge Project?

A: I was active in the internet advertising industry and saw how coupons as they existed now on the internet needed to be reinvented.

Q: Give us a Rouge coupon example story.

A: It can be very simple. You preferred make-up brand is sending you a Rouge coupon – which is unique – by email. It’s a 50% off on all lipsticks! You may use it directly on the online shop or in-store by showing a QR code. You may also sell it to anyone using online secondary markets.

Q: Talk a bit about this E-coupons – the future of digital marketing: trackable, verifiable, monetizable by customers or publishers, secure and frictionless. How does that work?

A: it works using the magic of the blockchain which eliminates fraud and double redemption the same way bitcoin eliminates the problem of double spending. The problem of currencies and coupons are very symmetric, this is why the same kind of solution works well.

Q: There is a mention in the whitepaper that The Rouge ecosystem shares a few concepts and ideas with BAT (Basic Attention Token). Tell us more about this.

A: Yes, The Rouge protocol implement the mechanism to let coupons be advertised by publishers, for example a blog or a news website. The payment between the issuer of the coupons and the publisher is handled automatically by the protocol when a user is acquiring or redeeming a coupon.

Q: What about the differences?

A: Contrary to an traditional ad, which the same version is displayed the same way on many devices, a Rouge coupon is a unique object.

Q: What has been your happiest moment so far working on The Rouge Project?

On the flipside, what has been the most painful, or perhaps the most regretful decision you’ve made with The Rouge project?

A: Is it a great privilege to be active at the frontline of technological progress with so many great minds around to exchange with. A small pain is that we are constantly travelling across time zones from conference to conference.

Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge or obstacle The Rouge Project will face? How do you plan to tackle that challenge?

A: The biggest challenge is the adoption of the protocol. This is why we are actively speaking with potential partners like traditional coupon solutions providers.

Q: Where do you expect The Rouge Project to be in a few years in terms of progress and success?

A: The success would be to have the majority of coupons using as a backend the Rouge protocol.

Q: Moving on to more personal stuff, what does a typical day in your life look like?

A: We spend our days on telegram, emails and phone meeting when it’s not a conference where there is a lot of networking and chat. Otherwise, as I mentioned earlier a too long time in airport and planes.

Q: Express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain. It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

A: My only negative comment would be that cryptocurrencies and blockchain assets are still very much concentrated in the hands of insiders. I would like to see a more fair distribution of them.