Early this morning I participated in a WeChat AMA that was organized by our friends at Unitimes. Over 800 people participated and I was impressed by the thoughtful questions and quality of the ensuing discussion. The conversation was largely focused on user adoption and scaling, but then Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, dropped in and asked a few questions. It can be challenging to give thoughtful responses in a chat format, so I wanted to expound a bit on my answers and share how we’re thinking about these topics with our broader community.

What are some initial use cases where you think Origin has the largest advantage over centralized alternatives and where it is most likely to be immediately successful? — Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin (left) with Jason Hsu (right) in SF last month

We talk a lot about the potential for open-source protocols to completely replace multi-billion dollar companies like Uber and Airbnb. However, we don’t expect to tackle these companies on day one. Instead, here are some of the biggest opportunities we see for early adoption:

Any marketplace that is currently charging egregious fees , especially if all they’re providing is an introduction. 90% of what any marketplace provides is simply creating a digital town square for buyers and sellers to find each other. Buyers and sellers can now find each other on the blockchain and cut out the middleman and their excessive finders fee.

, especially if all they’re providing is an introduction. 90% of what any marketplace provides is simply creating a digital town square for buyers and sellers to find each other. Buyers and sellers can now find each other on the blockchain and cut out the middleman and their excessive finders fee. Marketplaces which are currently restricted or censored. Instead of taking on Uber in San Francisco, we’re more interested in how decentralized ride-sharing can work in cities where Uber has been banned like London, Vancouver, and the entire country of Argentina. Can we provide home-sharing in Japan where Airbnb has lost 80% of their listings due to overzealous regulators?

Uber has struggled with local regulators in cities all over the world

Marketplaces that are native to crypto. We’ve seen people selling Binance accounts on Ebay and there’s a thriving secondary market for access to hot ICOs. While we’re committed to building technology that’s easy to use and designed for mass adoption, we think it’s likely we’ll see our initial users coming from members of the crypto community who are already familiar with how to use MetaMask and safely store their private keys.

We’ve seen people selling Binance accounts on Ebay and there’s a thriving secondary market for access to hot ICOs. While we’re committed to building technology that’s easy to use and designed for mass adoption, we think it’s likely we’ll see our initial users coming from members of the crypto community who are already familiar with how to use MetaMask and safely store their private keys. Marketplaces for nonfungible tokens and other digitally verifiable transfers. One of the biggest challenges with any marketplace with an offline component is how to verify that the good or service was provided as promised. You can address this with smart identity, reputation, and arbitration systems, but digitally verifiable transfers like nonfungible tokens are a much easier place to start.

Cryptokitties!

Emerging markets . There are 2 billion people on this planet who are unbanked and don’t have access to use centralized marketplaces which require you have a bank account or a credit card. However, a growing number of these people have inexpensive Android phones and therefore have access to cryptocurrency and truly peer-to-peer marketplaces that are built on Origin. In many regions, blockchain technology will leapfrog the traditional banking system just like mobile phones were able to leapfrog landline phones.

. There are 2 billion people on this planet who are unbanked and don’t have access to use centralized marketplaces which require you have a bank account or a credit card. However, a growing number of these people have inexpensive Android phones and therefore have access to cryptocurrency and truly peer-to-peer marketplaces that are built on Origin. In many regions, blockchain technology will leapfrog the traditional banking system just like mobile phones were able to leapfrog landline phones. New categories of marketplaces that were never before possible. There are incredibly high startup costs associated with creating two-sided marketplaces. Marketplaces often require millions, or in the case of Uber and Airbnb, billions, of dollars in venture funding to get started. As a result, there are many interesting, but niche, marketplaces which will never have a shot at receiving investor funding at that scale. Maybe we’ll see new types of marketplaces that didn’t make sense before. Perhaps we’ll see new networks for sharing kitchen appliances or infrequently used tools with your neighbors.

Thanks for great questions, Vitalik! And thanks again to Unitimes for hosting such an engaging AMA session.

Continue reading part II where I answer Vitalik’s questions on how we think about identity and privacy at Origin.

Learn more about Origin: