INVEST NOW at https://www.zeex.me/
The Problem: promising (but imperfect) markets
Despite its many advantages, rapid propagation and revolutionary implications, cryptocurrency suffers from some notable disadvantages. First among these is its lack of fungibility: cryptocurrency is not yet readily convertible into the goods and services people really want.
By contrast, gift cards and vouchers, for example, are readily convertible into goods and services. Indeed, that is their primary purpose. However, some disadvantages affect these vouchers as well, like difficult transfer between holders due to the high risk of double spending, and demand for gift cards outstrips the supply. Here, we describe these currencies and the friction involved in converting them before describing how Zeex can and will solve the problem rapidly, efficiently and elegantly.
Cryptocurrency: a growing market tied to media
The revolutionary potential of cryptocurrency and the market growing around it is hard to overstate. As for the market, total cryptocurrency market capitalisation has grown over 30,000% in the last five years and 2,500% in the last year alone to its current level of over $500 billion USD. Such remarkable growth is not surprising given the range of advantages cryptocurrency offers relative to traditional fiat currencies:
1. The underlying blockchain technology makes intermediaries obsolete by embedding transaction records in a distributed database, which reduces transaction costs and market friction.
2. The distributed nature of the database makes transactions transparent and highly resistant to risks like double-payment and counterfeit.
3. The mathematical logic underlying blockchain technology makes it a natural vehicle to store value, making guarantees by issuing and regulatory agencies in the form of mints, central banks and other government agencies obsolete.
4. Encryption is literally built in to the currency, making illicit tampering or manipulation impractical.
Gift cards: in high demand, but tied to individual holders
The gift cards and other forms of voucher issued by retailers and ecommerce platforms can be exchanged for their goods and services, just like fiat currency, but they also have strengths and weaknesses that present a mirror image of cryptocurrency
One advantage both types of ‘currency’ do share is recent growth and growth potential. One source valued the market capitalisation of retail vouchers at nearly $700 billion USD in 2016 — an amount expected to more than triple by 2023. That yields a CAGR of 24% from 2017 to 2023
While many vouchers are issued in a physical medium like a card, most issuers also accept them at digital points of sale. Further, the supply of digital vouchers is growing at 25% annually and is expected to reach $120 billion USD by 2020.
The Solution: using each market to fix the other
Zeex solves the deficiencies of both gift cards and cryptocurrency by making each seamlessly convertible to the other. On the one hand, Zeex frees cryptocurrency from the confines of digital media, making it readily convertible into goods and services via gift cards. On the other, it frees gift cards from being tied to individual holders, making them as easy to transfer between holders as cryptocurrency with the same safety and transparency. It is the liquidity network connecting cryptocurrencies to products and services that everyone has been waiting for.
The Zeex platform includes an elegant frontend, a blockchain-based and fully transparent backend, and a digital wallet to effortlessly store and manage all the user’s tradable units. The frontend provides the user clear and intuitive access to the broad catalogue of gift cards
from top brands, the cryptocurrency units they have available to spend, and their ZIX tokens, which hinge the two types of currency together and allow users to pivot smoothly and easily from one to the other. Zeex allows users to buy and sell their gift cards and — finally — to spend their cryptocurrency
The Vision
The Zeex vision consists of three consecutive steps: Tap, Engage, Disrupt
Tap – creating the link between crypto and commerce
Because they remain largely separate, both the cryptocurrency and consumer markets have unrealised potential. Tapping is about accessing and multiplying the potential on both sides by integrating each with the other
The Zeex protocol is the key to tapping these markets because it benefits users and vendors alike. On the user side, the protocol provides direct access to consumer products and services for cryptocurrency holders at no fee, tapping the value of cryptocurrency assets and bringing them into the consumer market..
Engage – integrating wallets and financial instruments
To engage with the market, we respond to existing needs by making value convertible directly from users’ existing crypto-wallets to purchase. Integrating Zeex into leading wallets is the next essential step in successful engagement. And it is simply common sense that consumers are sensitive to prices and convenience in the cryptocurrency market — as everywhere. In response to this sensitivity, Zeex provides discounts to encourage consumers to adopt and use Zeex. The more ZIX tokens they hold and keep, the greater the discount. And as soon as users are in their wallet’s interface, Zeex is a one-tap proposition.
Disrupt – revolutionising the prepaid market
While blockchain continues to disrupt the market for financial services, it has yet to make serious waves in the consumer market. But by connecting cryptocurrency to pre-paid gift cards, which are a form currency retailers themselves issue, Zeex effectively lets retailers issue their own blockchain-based money on their own terms
Thinking about gift cards as currency inspired another radically disruptive idea: bring the basic processing of gift cards onto the blockchain. Just as fiat currency benefits from the security, convenience and transparency of the blockchain, the same technology can revolutionise the production and distribution of gift cards. Consumer spending hasn’t seen a disruption like this since the credit card
Available assets
Zeex relies on a number of existing assets to overcome the uncertainties and pitfalls of the token-based marketplace and the challenges involved in trading gift cards. These include a well-established sister company, Zeek, with a successful record and valuable portfolio of supplying retailers and innovations, strong financial backing by prominent venture capital (VC) firms, and a qualified and ambitious team.
As Zeek’s sister company, Zeex enters the market with a head start. Founded four years ago, Zeek is a platform that allows users to buy and sell gift cards — whether in digital or physical form — using fiat money. Perhaps the greatest advantages that Zeek offers Zeex are the rapid growth of its transaction volume and experience. With four years of success in the gift-card market, Zeek has established itself as a vibrant and trustworthy platform to buy and sell gift cards and digital vouchers. Zeek sold over one million gift cards in 2017. In just the last two years alone, Zeek has grown tenfold year-over-year. Such growth is never an accident. The second advantage Zeek provides Zeex is its catalogue and the deep commercial relationships that the catalogue represents. Since the demand for gift cards outstrips supply, securing supply is a key challenge. Zeek has established relationships with 350 brands, including such household names as Amazon, Adidas, Nike, Ikea, Starbucks, iTunes, Steam and many more. Zeek, therefore, avails of unparalleled access to gift cards, so users can realise their value immediately
Zeek’s investors
Zeek managed to convince prominent VCs of its existing value and future potential, leading these prescient VC collaborators to commit secure and solid funding. Zeek’s VC supporters include Blumberg Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Scale Up Venture Capital and more. Perhaps the best reassurance about the current and future prospects of the Zeek platform is that such eminent firms are already backing it with their capital and expertise
Technical implementation
Although the basic concept behind the Zeex platform — making cryptocurrency spendable and gift cards tradable — is very simple, the technical implementation is complex. Indeed, realising this idea involves a range of commercial and technical considerations. Here we cover the technical aspects of the Zeex platform, principally the ZIX token and the Zeex protocol, as well as business aspects, including the token-sale process and the product roadmap.
The ZIX token
While not currency in itself, the ZIX token is the key to making cryptocurrency an effective payment method in an extremely active market. The token has five basic functions. First, since the token also serves as a login method, it unlocks access to the Zeex platform. Asking users to login using data from another service, like Google or Facebook, would not only compromise their privacy, but it would also effectively outsource the job of keeping user data secure to an outside agency. Zeex is not willing to compromise its users in either way. Letting users log in with their ZIX tokens also gives them the shortest possible route from the app icon to the platform’s marketplace.
The Zeex protocol
The Zeex protocol handles gift-card purchases between suppliers and buyers over the Ethereum blockchain, while keeping sensitive data, such as serial codes and verification values, confidential and secure.
Supplier Verification
Initially, Zeex will verify and approve suppliers who are seeking to use the Zeex platform. Later on, suppliers would be able to tap in independently by pledging ZIX tokens as collateral. The amount of ZIX tokens to pledge will be based on the trading volume and reputation of the particular supplier. Verified suppliers are then added by Zeex to the ‘approved suppliers’ list on the smart contract.
Purchase Flow
Buyers initiate the purchase flow by sending a detailed purchase request (brand, face value, etc.), including their unique encryption key, called the BuyerKey, and sufficient payment to cover the cost of the gift card and Ethereum’s internal transaction fee. After verifying the payment, the smart contract checks for an available gift card or set of cards worth the requested face value. It then assigns the card(s) to the buyer and holds payment for the supplier.
The encryption Swapper, a trusted and isolated off-chain process, scans for purchase transactions on newly mined blocks. Upon detection, it decrypts the assigned gift card with the hidden decryption key (the SwapKey’s counterpart) and re-encrypts it with the appropriate BuyerKey. The re-encrypted card is then stored on the smart contract, which finalises the purchase by transferring the payment to the issuing supplier. The blockchain publicly records the buyer’s purchase, but only the buyer is able to decrypt and read the gift card’s serial code and verification value
Security and confidentiality
The supplier:
1. Generates an ephemeral symmetric key and encrypts it using the SwapKey,
2. Encrypts the gift card using the symmetric key,
3. Sends the encrypted card together with its encrypted symmetric key to the smart contract
The swapper:
4. Decrypts the symmetric key using the SwapKey’s counterpart (private key),
5. Decrypts the gift card using the symmetric key,
6. Generates a new ephemeral symmetric key and encrypts it using the BuyerKey.
7. Re-encrypts the gift card using the new symmetric key,
8. Sends the re-encrypted card together with its encrypted symmetric key to the smart contract.
The buyer :
9. Decrypts the symmetric key using the BuyerKey’s counterpart (private key),
10. Decrypts the gift card using the symmetric key.
The apps and roadmap
The business model
Providing Working Capital
Working capital is one of the most urgent issues for any gift card supplier, and providing it is the most basic financial service Zeex offers to them. While tapping the cryptocurrency market would open an attractive new source of revenue, entering that market will also require capital to get started. By providing suppliers with working capital, Zeex eases the transition and incentivises their suppliers to take the plunge. In fact, Zeex is launching a Working Capital Fund (see below), which attracts finance for exactly this purpose with fixed returns backed by hard, tradable assets.
Financial Services
Zeex will engage third-party, white-labeled services, all of which have been carefully scrutinised and pre-approved, to support suppliers financially. As the cryptocurrency market helps suppliers to grow, they may face a number of hurdles, which Zeex can help them to overcome. For example, one profitable service Zeex provides is to exchange suppliers’ cryptocurrency holdings for fiat currency and vice versa
Marketing Services
The cryptocurrency market, with its own media, language and selling points, will present a considerable challenge to many suppliers. Since Zeex has already mastered these industryspecific marketing channels and has been engaged in community building for a significant period, its in-house marketing team is already equipped to help suppliers build their own communities and maximise their value per transaction. The marketing services will start in 2019 since perfecting the protocol is currently our highest priority
Platform adoption & market penetration
Zeex also helps suppliers to integrate cryptocurrency into their business makeup, which can include adapting their inventories to shifting demand, bringing gift cards to the Zeex market and managing such issues as security, preventing double-spending and conducting the most sophisticated profit and loss management.
Operations support
Some support services Zeex provides, like customer support management and performance reports, are scalable across the full spectrum of suppliers and promise significant efficiency gains. Others, like troubleshooting and problem solving, demand a more tailored approach and offer commensurate returns.
Business-intelligence data
Zeex can provide retailers with intelligence they can obtain nowhere else, and it is the only venture in the blockchain industry that can provide and monetise high-value data about correlations between the usage patterns of cryptocurrencies and trends in the market for real-world products and services.
Token utilities
Zeex will offer owners of ZIX tokens a lifetime precedence for discounted corporate currencies over any other user, based on an offering catalogue Among other utilities, the owner of a ZIX token will have the right to:
1. Priority - When there's more demand than supply for highly-desirable assets, Zix token owners will have priority over other users to secure those assets.
2. Pledge – Zix token owners will not have to wait long periods for transactions to clear, their tokens will be used as collateral to ensure an immediate settlement.
3. Login – Zix token owners will have the ability to log into Zeex securely and anonymously using their token.
Use cases
Zeex is amenable to a very broad spectrum of use cases because the underlying idea is so simple, generally applicable and fundamentally useful: the platform brings cryptocurrency into the real economy. Literally anyone seeking to spend cryptocurrency assets on realworld goods and services and anyone seeking to save and multiply the value contained in their excess or unwanted gift cards can benefit from Zeex. To make this broad utility more tangible, let us consider some likely use cases for the Zeex platform.
Use case #1: Joseph, 28, Toronto, cryptocurrency trader
After finishing his BComm in 2013, Joseph, 28, decided to invest his graduation present rather than spend a year backpacking. Joseph made some clever decisions and was able to ride the burgeoning crypto market up. With his thirtieth birthday now in sight, he’d like to start settling down and enjoying the fruits of his hard work. However, his portfolio is mostly denominated in cryptocurrency. Therefore, his personal wealth is impressive ‘on paper’, but it remains relatively illiquid and vulnerable to market volatility.
Having just bought a house, Joseph would like to furnish it, but retailers like Amazon and Ikea do not yet accept his cryptocurrency assets for payment. Exchanging his assets for fiat is slow and expensive, which is not only inconvenient, it does little to shelter his wealth from market fluctuations. Using Zeex, Joseph can easily and cheaply convert his cryptocurrency assets into gift cards. In his case, this means a raft of gift cards from Amazon, Ikea and other retailers. Within hours, he orders a new kitchen and dining room suite, a bedroom suite, and the new Xbox to go with his home entertainment system. Zeex allowed Joseph to extract his wealth from the market and apply it to improving his life and realising his dreams. Whatever happens in the market, his new home is safe and comfortable, giving him the peace of mind to go out and pick the next winner.
Use case #2: Sarah, 39, London, HR/Office Manager
As the Human Resources and Office Manager of a small advertising firm, Sarah is responsible for organising the firm’s overhead outlay as well as the employee rewards programme. Recognizing the growth potential, her firm started accepting certain cryptocurrencies as payment a few months ago, and one FinTech client in particular regularly settles its account in ETH. While the conversion value of these receivables steadily grows, it is difficult to convert them into payables for reinvestment or to service operating expenses. Meeting with the management team, Sarah presents Zeex and its potential to her colleagues. She shows them how to tap their cryptocurrency assets by converting them into gift cards. The management team approves a limited budget of ETH for her to test the plan.
Use case #3: Mei, 19, Tokyo, generation Z consumer
Mei recently graduated school and moved from Kyoto to Tokyo to study design and animation. As an only child with plenty of extended family, Mei regularly receives gift cards from her relatives, but as a student, she needs little more than textbooks and her iPhone. She hates to watch the cards’ value diminish as the expiry dates inevitably approach. Instead of letting the gift cards expire or giving them away to her friends, Mei decides to start saving now so that she’ll be able to stay in Tokyo after her studies are complete and avoid moving back home. The problem is how to turn those gift cards into something worth saving, like an appreciating asset.
Mei has heard about cryptocurrency from the news and has even started using it for purchases. She was thrilled when she heard about Zeex, because it allows her to convert her gift cards into cryptocurrency. The proceeds from the gift cards give her both more flexibility in her spending and the means to start building her nest egg. Now the gifts she receives for her good grades do more than pay her phone bill; they’re securing her future.
Use case #4: Andreas, 44, Berlin, VP Sales at large retailer
Although his background is in finance, Andreas has just made a lateral move to a large German sporting goods retailer as Vice President of Sales. The board sought a finance expert to manage the sales department because the combination of international competition and online shopping have squeezed the firm’s profit margin, and they need to reconsider their pricing strategy
After looking at the books, Andreas realised that the problem is not so much the pricing strategy, but the distribution of profits over the year. Even though profits are high before Christmas and in late spring, the firm maxes its operating line in the lean months at whatever interest rates the banks are charging that quarter. By March, the bank has siphoned December’s profits.
Use case #5: Adam, 31, San Jose, privacy aficionado
Adam is a network security analyst on the cybersecurity team of a large Silicon Valley tech firm, and he takes his work very seriously. His home computer runs Debian, he never browses without his VPN, and all his passwords are salted. As much as Adam cherishes his privacy, he can’t use cash everywhere, and every digital payment method compromises that privacy. His bank, credit card and digital wallet are especially weak areas in his privacy bubble, because they have access to so much of his behaviour and so many of his purchases. PayPal (and his bank) know what kind of computer he uses, what games he plays, and when he needs an Uber to get home. He’s been looking for a means to make his digital purchases private for a long time.
So join now and invest at https://www.zeex.me/
Source- https://www.zeex.me/
MORE INFORMATION :
BTT ANN THREAD : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3109781.0Website : https://www.zeex.me/Twitter : https://twitter.com/Zeex_meTelegram : https://t.me/zeexmeReddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/zeex/Bounty Bitcointalk : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4579968
Authorized By:
My Bitcointalk account : jagadlangit
My ETH address : 0xA2BFa48A6AfEFaBF498B6541f609E6cef4700D91
No comments:
Post a Comment