BELGRADE, SERBIA – Blockchain startup Review Network this month received a $1.4 million Seed round of funding from private investors that will be used by the company to help grow the team and further develop the platform.

Review Network, which amassed 100,000 beta users in just five days, provides reviews and market research, billing itself as the Yelp! of Blockchain.

The company claims to transform the way companies do market research. They reward this heavily segmented and targeted user community for replying to surveys and reviewing products and services. A social network will be created with feedback through this reward system to give companies impartial data on key demographics.

The company is currently in pre-sale and will launch an Initial Coin Offering on Sept. 1. It is currently in talks with OKEx, Huobi, Cryptopia, Bitfinex, Bittrex, Kraken, Poloniex, Bibox, Bcex and hitBTC, to be listed on their exchanges.

“Worldwide, consumers often form opinions and make decisions, like where to eat, sleep, drink, play and even work, based on online reviews,” said Filip Karaicic, CEO and Co-Founder of Review Network.

“However, as it stands today, there are two major problems with the review industry – efficacy and transparency,” Karaicic said. “Reports and data have proven people are more inclined to leave reviews when there is a negative experience, which means there is not an accurate representation of all experiences; and that many reviews are often fake.

“Thanks to distributed ledger and AI [artificial intelligence] technologies, we have figured out a way to incentivize reviews – positive and negative – and ensure their accuracy. We also figured out a way to allow brands to tap into our validated reviewer base for market research. This funding, which we’re thrilled to announce, validates our approach and will help us develop this event even faster,” he said.

Review Network’s platform, outlined in the company’s whitepaper, contends it improves the efficacy and transparency in two basic ways: First, it has a well-designed token economics system that provides monetary incentives to those who contribute in a way that benefits the community as a whole and punishes those who do not.

Second, the platform has a decentralized community consensus system in which the community self-regulates. For example, when someone writes a review, it is then validated by chosen community members (either at random, by reputation, by blind auction or even depending on the size of their stake in the system).

The network will also allow companies to directly interact with people providing reviews for the most honest and accurate market research. The platform, which will work across all industries (restaurant, hotels, etc.), will launch in Beta in the fourth quarter of this year.