Why UChain — the next gen sharing economy ecosystem for seamless autonomous transactions — is hotly tipped to be one of the biggest ICOs of 2018.

UChain is the first blockchain peer to peer network intended for the global sharing economy. The company aims to create a multi faceted blockchain network to solve the problem of trust through a decentralized network. The entire transaction process will be handled by cross-chain technology and smart contracts.

The sharing economy is used in all walks of life including ride sharing (e.g. Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing), bike rental (e.g. U-bicycle), medical services (Medicast), knowledge (Quora), workspaces (WeWork) and accommodation (e.g. Airbnb, CouchSurfing). It provides numerous benefits to customers, businesses and the environment including economic growth, social development, industrial development and environmental protection. Didi Chuxing’s car pooling services in China have demonstrated cost savings (in terms of driver fleets and saving as much 510m liters of fuel over one year), traffic planning/congestion reduction, improvements in customer efficiency and reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

UChain will create a credit passport mechanism that will be opened to all the sharing service providers. Users will be able to use UChain in the accommodation, transportation, knowledge and travel industries, among others. Users will use the UChain token (UCN) to facilitate transactions. User data will be stored on the blockchain, such as property information, identity, and transaction records. Through the use of blockchain technology, UChain will minimize transaction fees, create a chain of trust and secure user data through elliptic curve cryptography.

UChain will cut out the middleman by creating a peer to peer transaction network, using digital assets to tokenize their sharing service. The tokens will act as the primary currency for each transaction that takes place in the UChain ecosystem. Any dApps built on UChain will be able to issue their own tokens and develop sub-ecosystems.

China is the world’s largest sharing economy according to the World Economic Forum. The volume of China’s sharing economy was over $500 billion in 2016, involving over 600 million people. The sector is expected to grow 40% over the next five years. According to the State Information Center, by 2020 the sharing economy will account for 10% of China’s GDP. UChain aims to be at the forefront of this revolution.

Through their exclusive partnership with UB Group Holdings, the parent company of leaders of transport sharing technology including bike sharing pioneers U-bicycle, UChain will have access to over 100 million users across 200+ cities in four continents.

UChain’s testnet is scheduled to launch in Q3 2018. The mainnet will be live as soon as Q4 2018.

The UChain Token

UCN tokens will be used to purchase services provided by the network. There will be token rewards for community developers and operators. Users will be able to earn tokens as an incentive for referring users to the platform. The tokens will be used for supply chain vouchers, value-added services, user incentives, community reward, ad delivery and fees.

Furthermore, to incentivize token holders UChain will provide staking. Users who lock their UCN tokens in their wallet will receive UCP tokens which can be converted back to UCN. UChain aspires to build a long term ecosystem and this is clearly reflected in their incentives to their token holders.

Token sale

In total, UChain aims to raise 42,000 ETH for 40% of tokens. Private sale allocation is 22,000 ETH with a 50% bonus. Public presale is 8,000 ETH with a 15% bonus. UChain have announced plans to host a Community Airdrop in place of crowdsale.

The Team

The UChain team is highly experienced in the tech industry. Since September 2017, UChain has been recruiting team members, community managers and developers.

Ian Yu is the CEO of the company. He has an excellent reputation as an entrepreneur in China, primarily as the CEO of U-bicycle, the fourth largest bike sharing company in the world with 30 million active users. He was a part of the founding team of one the world’s most highly valued startups, Meituan-Dianping ($6B revenues). Yu is a true all star CEO and has been selected in the Forbes China 30 under 30.

Will Zhou serves as the CTO of UChain. Zhou has worked in the technology sector since 2009 following his masters in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He initially worked as a software developer for a number of firms including eBay and Dianping before becoming the CTO of U-bicycle.

Grace Min is co-founder and the CEO of U-bicycle North America. She is a serial entrepreneur, founding Oval Town Properties and SG International Travel, and an ambitious academic who is on her way to completing an MBA in Washington University.

Chris Tao is the Chief Strategy Officer of UChain. He has over 10 years of experience in distributed systems and peer to peer networking. Tao is currently a lecturer in the University of British Columbia.

Other members include Jason Wu who is Senior Architect, with experience at IBM, Tencent and Dianping. Chief Product Officer Benny Liao is the former product manager for AutoNavi,Yitong Map and Meizu. Mandy Chan is the Chief Marketing Officer. Raviv Litman is the Operation Director.

Advisors

The team also has an incredibly strong set of advisors.

Jimmy Hu is the founder and CEO of Apex Technologies, a Shanghai based data technology and AI company. More recently Hu founded Apex Network (CPX) which is a B2C applications blockchain which completed its ICO earlier this year and has gained much recognition across the crypto community. Hu completed a BSc in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Berkeley. He was selected in the Forbes China 30 Under 30 and was awarded China Internet Weekly’s Person of the Year for AI.

Jonathan Ha is another pioneer in the digital asset space. Ha founded Red Pulse (RPX) in 2015, a market intelligence and research platform covering China’s financial markets. He was previously a director at Z-Ben Advisors — a Shanghai-based consulting firm specialising in investment management. He completed a Computer and Telecommunications Engineering degree at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA at Haas School of Business, Berkeley.

Richard Wang has been a partner at Draper Dragon fund since 2011 with a keen eye on AI and blockchain technologies. A veteran in business development, Wang has more recently served as CEO for QunZhong E-Commerce and as Managing Director in Olea Systems. He completed a PhD in Telecommunications, Wireless and EM at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.

Managing partners from a number of well established venture capital funds, including Badwater Capital and Ledger Capital, also act as advisors.

Partnerships

UChain has a number of top international partnerships as outlined below.

Alipay, founded by the Alibaba Group, is a leading third party payment platform in China. As part of Alibaba’s core commerce strategy, Alipay processed an astonishing 1.5 billion payment transactions in 2018, up over 40% since 2016. It has overtaken PayPal to become the world’s largest mobile payment platform, and has in more recent years expanded across Asia and North America. The two companies will work closely, with Alipay helping to promote UChain’s sharing transport solutions.

China Unicom is a Chinese state owned communications company headquartered in Beijing, with annual revenue of $43 billion, and 284 million mobile subscribers. UChain will cooperate closely with China Unicom in IoT technologies. The backing of China Unicom, the world’s fourth largest mobile firm, is a testament to UChain’s team and vision.

Translink is the authority responsible for the transportation network in Vancouver, this includes bus, rail, ferries, roads and bridges in an area spanning more than 1,800 square kilometres. UChain will be working closely with Translink to facilitate offline operations.

Last valued at $30bn, Chinese ecommerce platform Meituan-Dianping is considered one of China’s next generation of tech giants. As China’s largest lifestyle platform, Meituan-Dianping provides Chinese consumer services including food delivery, movie tickets, discount coupons and even online cab hailing. With $57 billion in transactions in 2017 between 320 million active buyers and 4 million merchants, Meituan-Dianping is an excellent fit for UChain as it looks to improve the sharing economy model.

UChain have recently announced a strategic partnership with the highly ambitious Apex Network, the blockchain for the next generation of business to consumer applications. Apex have built a world class research and development team to optimize B2C interactions with 300+ brands already in the ecosystem — in a market which is expected to reach a size of over $3.9 billion by 2022. Apex is the first blockchain company to be selected in the Forbes “China’s 50 Most Promising Companies” list.

This unique strategic alliance will allow UChain to integrate into Apex’s ecosystem and vice-versa, allowing interoperability between the two chains. This partnership enables technical, ecosystem-level, and application-level synergies. For example, UChain will be able to use Apex’s consumer data protection module ATDM (Apex Transactional Data Management) to encrypt and protect customer data with secure decentralized off-chain storage and on-chain indexing.

Origin X Capital (OXC) is one of the leading international digital asset funds. OXC’s team of analysts, traders, developers and marketing consultants incubate and invest in innovative digital asset projects, with experience spanning back to 2013.

As strategic partners, OXC provides sizeable capital infusion, financial, legal, and technical expertise, as well as highly sought after industry connections, PR, marketing, community management and other best in class services to accelerate the growth of a project. The team, which includes private equity, venture capitalists, securities lawyers, professional performance marketers, market makers, OTC traders and hedge fund investment professionals, are located internationally with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. OXC’s impressive track record, which includes ICON, Fantom, APEX, Oracles and OneLedger, and combined 30 years of experience, provides UChain with an excellent platform to flourish into a growing and sustainable business with investors’ best interests at heart.

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Please be aware that no portion of this article should be construed as financial advice or a solicitation of investment. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed financial advisor before investing, speculating or trading in any digital currency or in any other asset class.