As a technology, blockchain disrupts the e-commerce market.

From everywhere we hear about bitcoin and crypto currencies. But not so many people get involved in the technology backing these concepts. In the meantime, the blockchain technology opens fantastic possibilities for fundamental changes in entire markets, industries, organizational and legal structures, etc. Now very many projects coming up to an ICO are trying by any means to fasten the blockchain technology to their products as it increases contributions. The problem is that many of them try to think according to old paradigms. But all repeat over and over again: we must work on projects which can not be implemented without blockchain. It always seems strange to me, as bitcoin itself can be actually done without blockchain. It is a different story that blockchain significantly increases trust of all the system participants and sometimes this trust is crucial for the project existence.

That’s how it goes in the e-commerce market. Imagine that you have a set of market players: brands, manufacturers, suppliers, retailers and end customers. Also there are service providers, for example, logisticians or developers. They all interact quite intensely. The main thing is that they shall exchange information on goods, amount, prices and sales themselves with each other. At that, there are such players as Amazon. It would seem that they have all necessary information and, in their own database, information on sales via their trading venue. But what shall happen so that, for example, Alibaba had decided to sell goods via Amazon without usage of their own venue? It’s hard to imagine since they are global competitors and a part of information they have is exclusive. Exactly such information exclusiveness and restricting hinder development of the whole e-commerce market.

In 2012 we created project Miiix, and our goal was to facilitate operation of the e-commerce market, create a product classification standard, preserve the full stock inventory of all the market participants and all price lists for goods in one place. We have been collecting information for 6 years, and all the time we felt the harshest resistance of the market. And only in the end of 2017 we understood why. All the market players resist and don’t want to give their data to an unaffiliated company which further makes money off of that. The bigger such company becomes, the less it will be loved. And then the blockchain technology comes to the rescue. Imagine that instead of an unaffiliated company, the technology becomes the basis of the market. The technology that belongs to the entire market: to every of its participant. Imagine that the market players, by starting supporting the technology, instantly gain competitive advantages over those who don’t work with the system. How is that possible?

Imagine that the product classification standard is unified, i.e. every market participant can easily use it and obtain data on any product in the world, in any language with all data on the product. In this case, for example, if a supplier has purchased goods and wants to sell them at the regional level, it can immediately spread the information on availability of the goods in its warehouse among all required retailers. The supplier in its own discretion chooses who will be provided with data on full depth of the stock, who will see just availability/absence, and for whom access to the information will be actually denied. And all this information is stored being decentralized and encrypted, by all participants of the market. Those who are most concerned in possession and availability of the information, are engaged with support of the infrastructure. Thereby, there is no conflict of interests. All participants of the market are willing to increase amount of information in the system. At that, they are all owners of the information at a time. In addition to that, availability of the data can be differentiated.

Actually, it is the essence of project Elementh. If you are a participant of the e-commerce market or keen follower of the idea, so as we, join us!