(How does UTRUST work in real world?)

There is a fine line between “The Idea” and actual practical application. In other words, your great idea can remain just a “great idea” if it has no use or value.

And many companies often fail because of this. For example, Juicero, a Silicon Valley startup with the aim to make juice-pressing effortless, has recently failed because it was simply useless. The company’s CEO, Jeff Dunn, has tried to defend the project by claiming that it was more about the experience than the product itself:

“The sum of the system — the Press, Produce Packs and App — working together is what enables a great experience. However, you won’t experience that value by hand-squeezing Produce Packs, which to be clear, contain nothing but fresh, raw, organic chopped produce, not juice. What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won’t want to repeat once, let alone every day.”

However, the users thought differently, and despite its impressive tech, Juicero is now a lesson not to overcomplicate things, to the future makers and innovators.

The rise and fall of various IoT startups has been noticeable over the past decade, but the ICO scene is still comparatively fresh and new. Nonetheless, there are already a number of projects that were either too ambitious to succeed or were simply a scam. From the historic failure of The DAO to “scamcoins” and “shitcoins” (there is literally a token called “Shitcoin”), the list keeps growing because the idea of building a useful and practical product is overthrown by inexperience, mediocrity, and greed. If not taken seriously, the vision of this “perfect utopian decentralised world” can quickly turn into a disaster scenario ruled by Doge and Pepe (of course, we all know those coins are for joke… right?).

But enough negativity. What is this article really about?

In our previous post, we mentioned that:

“The key [to the success of the ICO or a startup] is about turning seemingly complicated or mundane things simple(r).”

We also stated that:

“UTRUST comes with a bright ambition, to make crypto-payments a simple and effortless process, powered by the state of the art technology which is based on high autonomy, safety, and efficiency.”

This is all nice and pretty, but what about the practicality aspect this whole article is ranting about?

Let’s have a look at the real life example (taken from the Whitepaper, with some bits changed for readability).

The merchant puts up an exciting new article (or a piece of code if you like!) for sale on some marketplace (e.g. Steemit or CodeCanyon) and intends to receive a payment in their local currency. Being progressive and forward-thinking, this marketplace offers prospective buyers a wide range of payment options at the checkout, including the option to pay securely with UTRUST.

When a potential buyer selects UTRUST as a payment method, they can choose to use funds from any of their existing cryptocurrency wallets (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum), or use their UTRUST funds. If the buyer is new to the UTRUST system, they will be prompted to register for an account, which will then allow to proceed with the order.

During the order summary, the buyer is shown a description of the total outstanding amount, including a 1% service fee and an exchange conversion fee (from crypto to fiat). The description is transparent and updated every 2 minutes.

When the buyer completes the transaction, the total amount is sent to UTRUST. The UTRUST system then converts the cryptocurrency amount to fiat and holds it in an escrow account until it is released to the seller. The duration of this holding period will vary depending on the merchant’s performance history.

The merchant is notified of an incoming purchase and its status. If this is a trusted merchant with a high-performance rating, the funds will be released almost immediately. If the merchant is a newcomer to the platform with no prior history, the holding period might take several days. As the merchant establishes a track record of successful transactions, their performance rating increases, this way progressively decreasing the holding period.

If everything goes smoothly, the buyer receives their purchase and the seller receives the funds. Another happy customer and another successful sale for the merchant.

But what if something goes wrong?

For the sake of example, let’s say the buyer did not receive the article (or the code!) from the merchant due to an incorrect address. They decide to open a dispute and escalate the issue. At this stage, both parties enter a self-resolution discussion, a chat, where they try to come to terms in a friendliest way possible. This might result in the merchant acknowledging a shipping mistake and fixing the issue, and voluntarily refunding the buyer, or the buyer acknowledging the goods were received, and solving the dispute.

If both parties do not come to terms in 7 days, the buyer has the option to escalate the claim with the help of a mediator. In this instance, the UTRUST operator joins the resolution chat and serves as a mediator and arbitrator with a final say on the outcome of the dispute. Proceeding with an escalation will incur a fee of 2% over the amount which is currently placed on hold if a buyer refund is issued by the UTRUST mediator.

From this point onwards, the UTRUST mediator takes control over the chat, collecting the evidence from both parties and, either issuing a refund to the buyer, or releasing the funds to the seller. If the merchant loses the dispute (due to a scam or fraud) a corresponding downgrade in the merchant performance rating will occur, which will translate into a longer holding period for future transactions or result in more severe sanctions.

And that’s about it really, simple as that.