An open decentralized ERC-808 smart contract-based booking protocol which facilitates the reservation process between resource providers, bookers, and booking applications.

Welcome to our Medium blog, we will share here all the updates about the project, our vision on the development of this venture, precisions about the technologies used, tutorials on how to participate to the different steps of the token sale, etc.

But before anything, what is Booking Token Unit Protocol?

The Booking Token Unit (BTU) Protocol is a building block for any decentralized application (dApp) or website willing to implement booking features for their end-users. Our mission is to create a complete open source decentralized booking protocol along with reference implementations that can be leveraged by participants in industries such as hospitality, travel, finance, healthcare, retail, automotive and any other industry implying a resource to be booked.

Why is that interesting?

Do you remember when one said that Internet would be the end of intermediaries? That it would be a fantastic tool for service providers and buyers to exchange directly?

Quite ironically centralized online platforms have market power over the actual services providers bearing the costs and investments… As a result, services providers are experiencing high commision fees ranging from 15% to 35%, paid to centralized “winner takes all” booking platforms. Indeed, they have benefited from powerful digital network effects due to the very nature of the Internet technology. Centralized platforms have exploited this market power to win it all and eventually collect higher and higher incomes.

Centralized platforms have also multiple others disadvantages! For instance, users information can be stolen through large-scale hacks (remember the one that exposed the data of 57m Uber users), loyalty points are specific to one platform or service, and complementary services are very limited.

It’s now time for Token effects to break Network effects!

We strongly believed that Blockchain could be the opportunity to create different power structures… and we came up with a solution: a protocol, standardized as ERC-808 and powered by the use of the Ethereum-based BTU token.

All applications implementing the BTU protocol would benefit from a hybrid approach that combines an on-chain smart contract and off-chain software components, providing more scalability.

It will allow stakeholders or components of the reservation process (the service provider, the booker, the booking infrastructure and the RES smart contract) to work together to book efficiently and quickly the desired service.

The BTU Protocol potentially involves ten steps but to put it simply it is designed to drive the network of participants to behave rationally and with aligned economic interest :

Deposit value for booking a resource : the deposit is an incentive for any Booker to cancel its reservation in time. If the resource is not released, the deposit will be kept by the resource owner.

Reward mechanisms : BTU tokens can be used to reward usage of the protocol. In essence, Bookers are effectively rewarded with tokens as they are “mining” successful bookings.

Anti-spam parameters are also making use of token staking in order to enforce fair use.

Different industries could adopt the same token, thereby amplifying the network effects that would otherwise be limited to one industry.

Towards a new way of booking!

In addition to these “built-in” incentives, the BTU Protocol brings considerable improvements to any reservation process.

First, a public inventory and an open protocol lowers operational costs while allowing a fair competition between a higher number of market participants. It should also encourage a new wave of developers to deliver innovative and open services, leading to better functioning markets.

Then could be built innovative offerings that enable booking of bundled services; and existing players in any industry could offer new services to their existing customers (cross-sales).

In which industries could the protocol be used?

Our protocol could be used to book many services across multiples industries:

Real Estate : Offices, Meeting Centers, Flats, Stores, Studios and Warehouses.

Travel: Hotels, Car rentals, Flights, Jets, Trains, Buses, Cruises, Yachts and Ferries

Recreation : Shows, Concerts, Events, Sports, Visits, Museums and Restaurants

…and more : Tests, Medical appointments, Car repair, Spa Photographers, TV ads, Computing power, Token sales …

One more thing…

The protocol is 100% Open Source, 100% free and 100% accessible!

The up-to-date specification is described in the ERC-808 submitted to the EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) process. It is publicly available on github : https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/808 https://github.com/appyhour770/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-808.md

About us

The project is initiated by Vidal Chriqui, a recognized Bitcoin & Ethereum Expert and inventor of the ERC-808 and Hervé Hababou, a serial software entrepreneur. Vidal Chriqui has been involved in the Blockchain sector since 2012 and an advisor in several Blockchain Startups.

We have not gone into the technical details here, for more information, please request our White Paper.