The sharing economy has been one of the fastest growing industries we have seen in the last decade. Companies like Uber and Airbnb just popped up and overtook traditional businesses like taxi-companies and hotel booking websites. In a time where more-and-more people seek comfort in going back to the core values like sharing, increasing the social cohesion and spending more time with family, the sharing economy is trying to set an example. According to a research study by Ronald Berger, the sharing economy is projected to reach a total market capitalization of 520 Billion USD in 2018.

UChain is a company that aims to disrupt the sharing economy industry by developing and implementing an innovative blockchain ecosystem. UChain is using blockchain technology to solve the current problems that the sharing economy faces.

✅ The paradigm shift from Business-to-Consumer to Consumer-to-Consumer has already happened. Technology has enabled more and more people to start looking at their social network contacts for what they need, rather than visiting traditional businesses for the goods and services they desire. The sharing economy can be applied to a lot of industries, for instance, accommodation, transportation, work spaces, education and medical services.

How does it work? A traditional sharing economy platform allows for peer-to-peer transactions to be executed through their network. Supply and demand will come together and the platform functions as an administrative intermediary third party. The sharing economy platform will get paid a set amount of money or a percentage of the total transaction value. After the share is complete, both parties can be rated based on the overall sharing experience.

There are however some challenges the sharing economy is currently facing. Four of these problems will be specified below:

➡️ All four challenges are related to this first issue, which is that the traditional sharing economy businesses are all centralized, meaning you cannot execute a transaction fully peer-to-peer as a third party is always involved and has the ability to intervene.

➡️ Excessive transaction costs is the second issue that comes up, because the third-party company is in it for a monetary reward. They need to pay for office space, staff and have several other business expenses. These excessive costs are not necessary when you use a decentralized network for sharing goods or services.

➡️ The third issue is trust or more specific the absence of trust.

➡️ Lastly, data leakage and abuse can fall victim to centralized organizations.

✅ UChain, initiated by parent company UBicycle, aims to solve these current problems, by developing and implementing a next generation decentralized blockchain ecosystem for the sharing economy. UChain intends to build a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO) that thrives on enabling a tamper-proof, peer-to-peer fully autonomous sharing ecosystem, that anyone can participate in. By using a decentralized network, the extensive transaction fees can be cut by at least 20%. Transactions will be safely executed through the blockchain. This distributed ledger technology is transparent, tamperproof and fully traceable. UChain will establish a digital credit passport to verify members. UChain sharing economy service providers can access these credit passports, but any personal data can only be accessed by the data owner with the use of a private key, as it is safely stored on the blockchain.

UChain initiates a Proof-of-Activity (PoA) algorithm to reward contributors, individuals and organizations with Uchain Tokens (UCN). There will be several reward programs available on the UChain platform. For instance, you can get rewards for locking UCN tokens in your wallet; you can get rewarded for lending a Red Envelope bicycle (a bicycle that has gone below its lending threshold) and you can perform operational tasks in exchange for a token reward.

All UChain tokens are initially minted as Ethereum based ERC-20 standard tokens. The UChain mainnet is set to launch in the Q4 of 2018, at which point all the ERC-20 based UCN tokens in circulation will be swapped for native UChain mainnet tokens.

Enterprise service providers are welcome to develop and deploy decentralized applications (DApps) on the UChain network. A special Software Development Kit (SDK) will be made available by the UChain team. Every project developed on the network can launch their own cryptocurrency token based on the URC-1 token standard. As more-and-more sub-projects are launched on the network, UChain will develop its own Decentralized Exchange (DEX).

✅ UChain has recently announced it has cancelled its public sale to replace it with a community airdrop, where they will give away 8,000,000 UCN. In the presale a total amount of 2,000 ETH was raised and in the private sale 33,000 ETH in UCN tokens was sold. You can still register for the community airdrop, using this link.

A lot of influential venture capitalist firms and professional investors have already placed their bets on UChain.

✅ Some people might say that sharing economy platforms have forsaken their idealistic aim as a lot of sharing economy platforms are successful, multi-million dollar, centralized businesses that are not giving back to the community.

Bike sharing competitor oBike recently announced it is shutting down its operations in Singapore due to the lack of sustainability, because of an increase in local competitors. As the market is getting flooded with new bike sharing ventures it will make it harder for sharing-economy platforms to survive and continue to own a piece of the market share.

However, the fact that Uchain is building their own decentralized blockchain, that they have an experienced team and that they already have a solid business behind it (U-Bicycle); gives me confidence in the project’s ability to be successful. Only time will tell who will be innovative and business savvy enough to succeed in the sharing economy space.

✅ UChain’s official channels:

Website: https://uchain.world/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/UChainEcosystem

Medium: https://medium.com/uchain

Telegram: https://t.me/UchainEcosystem

Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/UchainAnn

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UChain

✅ Full disclosure: I have not invested in the UChain presale and I do not currently own any UChain tokens. I am however incentivized by UChain for writing this article. This article is not intended as investment advice. Needless to say, you should always do your own research and never invest more than you are willing to lose.