A Message from Andy Tian, CEO and co-founder of Uplive

Hi everyone,

Welcome to our second weekly update. First of all thanks to all of you who have read our update and given us great feedback! Some of your suggestions have already been incorporated into our operations, so please keep them coming! Once again, if you are interested in becoming one of our Giftoer’s who help to grow and maintain a positive community, we would love your participation! Please pin one of our admin’s for more information.

This week I want to talk to you guys on our first milestone, the Alpha test, and share a bit of my past experiences on adoption of new technology. I built Google China’s mobile business from 2005 to 2007, in particular, helped to introduce Android to the Asian market.

The first milestone: Alpha Test

End of January: Web-based gifting solution Alpha test for influencers to use on Facebook/Instagram/Youtube

Web-based gifting solution Alpha test for influencers to use on Facebook/Instagram/Youtube Gifts will be available for purchase with internal Diamonds from Uplive

Our first milestone is coming up, the Alpha test. Here are a few screenshots of the interface that we will be releasing to our own selected broadcasters/influencers to test.

Gifting Interface Choosing gifts to show to fans

In this Alpha version, our goal is to test and iterate the web-based gifting product flow. One of the biggest lessons in making consumer based products is that the only way to make a good product is to release it early and develop it along with your target users. This is very very different from building a purely technical protocol, as in many other blockchain projects. The target users for many of those are engineers and developers, therefore the focus is on pure technology, with less regard to product interface and consumer experience development.

GIFTO is not making another decentralized exchange, a new public chain, or another revolutionary protocol. GIFTO’s goal is to enable millions of content creators and their fans, numbered in the 100’s of millions around the world to use virtual gifts that retain their value across any platform. Many of these creators and fans don’t understand blockchain, and most of them never want to. But they understand the benefit if the product can actually deliver it. With GIFTO, the unique proposition with blockchain is that these gifts actually reside on the blockchain, making them permanently valuable and potentially unique, just like crypto kitties. In fact, crypto kitties are a version of virtual gifts/virtual assets, except in this case, you don’t give them away. Virtual gifts that were previously only valuable in Uplive and that closed system are now valuable anywhere on the Internet, just like Rare Pepe, and a number of other blockchain virtual assets.

One note on the Alpha test, the currency to purchase gifts is still using Uplive’s own in-app currency, Diamonds. This is in parallel with our blockchain-based gifting system. By releasing the Alpha on existing, tried and true Uplive currency first, we can focus on testing the end consumer product flow faster. And when GIFTO token purchasing functionality is fully tested, we can just plug it straight in. We are implementing the virtual gifts using ERC 721, which as many of you know, supports many unique properties and are great for virtual assets that can be individually configured. The ERC 721 version of gifts that can be purchased with GIFTO tokens will come in Feb.

2018 is shaping up to be an exciting year for blockchain: next generation protocols are being developed, real consumer and industrial applications are being deployed. So far, the biggest issue with most tokens is that they are not really being used, as reported in this Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-23/only-one-in-10-tokens-is-in-use-following-initial-coin-offerings

We aim to change that, and that’s why we have started developing our back end server, our crypto wallet, blockchain based gifting, and end consumer product way before our token sale. We will be one of the earliest projects to release a product right after token sale, and we are proud of that.

Days of Android

During my meetup in Seoul, I spoke about how the current state of blockchain reminded me of the old days when I introduced Android to the Asian market. I was with Google China from 2005–2007, and responsible for the mobile business in China. Here’s an article from way back in 2007, where you can read a bit about what I was doing: https://venturebeat.com/2007/09/28/qa-googles-andy-tian-on-chinas-mobile-market/

Andy Rubin, the founder of Android, unveiled Android to the world in 2007, and I was responsible for its introduction and promotion in China and Asia. The first version of Android was both awesome and also crappy. It was the first modern mobile OS with clean architecture, beautiful UI, and easy to program language. Prior to Android, the mobile OS’s were all awkward adaptations of PC based OS’s, such as Linux, Windows, etc. And most of all, it was open. But it was also crappy. The G1, the very first Android phone, crashed constantly, had a really awkward scrolling wheel, and uncomfortable keyboards. In a word, it was barely usable. Just like the current public blockchain. But Android evolved quickly, driven by the thirst of consumers for a powerful new smartphone. By version 3, Android was usable, and by now, Android is the most widespread mobile OS on the planet. Here’s a great history of Android evolution. I am still, to this date, a loyal Android user, now in the Xiaomi camp, co-founded by my friends from the Google days. (For those of you who are interested in how Google is faring in China, take a look here)

Blockchain right now is very much like Android in the early days, awesome technology, lots of promise, but the consumer experience is very poor. In Android, what really pushed the improvement in technology was scale: sheer number of consumers actually using Android phones. If we can all push harder to get blockchain in the hands of more and more real users, we will see blockchain improve very very quickly.

Lastly, in the early days of Android, since it was open source, many companies developed different versions of it, and all of them touted their version as better and faster, than anyone else. Today, most of the different versions have largely disappeared. Because after a while, it’s the number of users, and size of real businesses running on Android that mattered, not necessarily the most perfect tech. And, after deploying to real users, many of those early versions turned out to be not as great as they promised. That’s true of any new technology: it’s only great if they work as advertised.

Uplive Update

That’s it for our GIFTO update this week! Now here are some updates on Uplive, our fast growing live streaming business: last week more than 350,000 users from all over the world joined Uplive, a clearly accelerated growth of new users vs. last quarter. Also last week a superstar on Uplive was born: Taiwan celebrated the birth of the first streamer on Uplive, Pei Pei, who earned more than 100M uCoins to date, which is equal to about a USD$2 million income. You can see Pei Pei in action below, and follow her by searching for her Up ID below:

Our overall goal in 2018 remains the same: to create the biggest consumer application for blockchain technology, measured not by hype, but by the actual number of users.

Until next week!

Andy and the GIFTO Team

Uplive, Gifto and our partners in the news

We were featured on Invezz.com about our 60-second token sale, as well as our upcoming project timeline.

2. Andy meets with IT Chosun, one of Korea’s largest newspapers. Look out for their interview later today!

3. Watch Andy’s interview with BABI Finance’s “100 Blockchainers” programme, as he shares his thoughts on the global live streaming market, and how Uplive aims to leverage on blockchain technology to supercharge its business. (Chinese language)

SCAM ALERT

It has come to our attention that there is a channel on Telegram that has been promoting a “gifto.tech” website as well as the handle @GiftoTech. Please be informed that we are NOT in any way affiliated to them.

For more information on our project, please refer to our only official website www.gifto.io and official telegram channels @GiftoOfficial (https://t.me/giftoOfficial) and @GiftoAnnouncements. (https://t.me/giftoannouncements).

Stay safe out there everyone!