Continuing our series on companies and projects featured at Blockchain Expo 2017! Our first article was "4 companies revolutionizing industries with blockchain" - today, we look at 3 apps that either have, or are about to hit the market!
Props by YouNow
Props seriously has the potential to be a game changer. It's a decentralized, mobile video and streaming platform, and the company behind it is one that knows the space well - their flagship site YouNow has been in operation since 2011.
They already have popular YouTuber Philip Defranco on board as an adviser, and aim to become the new platform of choice for those who might be on YouTube Live or Twitch currently.
We asked their CEO & founder, Adi Sideman - what's the main reason a streamer might want to switch over to their platform? He told us:
"Currently they don't have any kind of personal stake in the platform that they're helping to build and bringing thousands of registered users to every month. On a decentralized platform, creators, developers, users, anyone who contributes to the network has a personal stake, they're getting paid in an asset that has a potential to grow."
Props is in it's first ICO phase for accredited investors, public ICO begins December 11th.
You can find Props online at PropsProject.com
Stack
Stack is out to solve what I see as the big issue in cryptocurrency. I view it this way - 2017 was the year the idea of owning cryptocurrency went mainstream. 2018 will now be about putting those cryptocurrencies to use in the real world. That's where Stack comes in.
The STK token is ERC20 token, funded by linking your ether wallet to the app, that can be instantly exchanged on the mobile app into fiat, then using a retailers existing credit card processing capabilities, complete the transaction.
We spoke to Stack's COO Nicolas Dinh, he says:
"There are 36 million merchants accepting credit cards today, so you're opening up the world of cryptocurrency. Money that exchanges between shoppers and merchants is at $22 trillion dollars globally, imagine if just 1% of that was cryptocurrency - how big that would be for the entire crypto community."
Stack is currently in pre-ICO phase and can be found online at STKToken.com
Shping
Shping (pronounced 'shopping') could really appeal to both ends of the retail business - the shopper, and the brands.
The one thing I found cool about this, is it's not some kind of 'shopper reward' program - you don't even need to buy the product to earn tokens - you just need to prove you actually looked at it. This would be done by scanning the items bar code on your phone, that's when a brand can partner with Shping and tell you more, play a video about the product, etc.
From a brands point of view, it presents a unique opportunity- promoting a product to someone who's holding it in their hand, and in a position to purchase it immediately.
We spoke with their founder and CEO, Gennady Volchek, he says:
"There's a number of way people can earn points, first by scanning the product, if it's a partner product they may want to show you some media about it for additional points, if we don't have a product in the database, you can scan it and enter it in and earn some additional points as well, even by leaving a review of the product - so there's a number of ways a consumer can earn".
Shping's ICO begins Jan 22nd of 2018 and can be found online at tokensale.shping.com
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A collaborative article from our Silicon Valley news team:
Ross Davis (Editor in Chief), Harvest Hill, Drew Jackson, and Kevin Williams.
Silicon Valley News Desk
