The wind of blockchain is blowing hard in Silicon Valley, the global center of information technology, too. Numerous talents in Silicon Valley eagerly watch for a chance to enter the blockchain industry, and some of them already did so. Origin Project is a blockchain-powered platform - based in America - Silicon Valley’s bigwigs joined forces to found.

“A Silicon Valley dream team has been formed to realize what the internet failed to make through blockchain. We will let people use sharing economy services with minimum transaction fees.”

Meeting Decenter in southern Seoul Monday afternoon, Origin Project officials said they gathered with a common vision that the world becomes more transparent, decentralized and democratic than in the current internet era and pledged to “write new history, emerging from old technology.”

Origin Protocol is designed to integrate various sharing economy platforms to enable customers to use services without paying onerous transaction fees. Now customers must log on to monopolistic intermediary platforms such as Airbnb and Uber independently to use these sharing economy services, but Origin Protocol enables the use of these services with a single subscription.

While the company has yet to show services fully, what’s notable is how the corporate team has been constituted.

Startup big names taking part in Origin Protocol include a PayPal co-founder, a former Dropbox chief technology officer, an investor in Airbnb and a former project manager at YouTube.

Why did they leave such “dream” companies and gather for the Origin project? “When the internet appeared first, what we dreamed was not the centralized world but a distributed one where we share information,” Origin Protocol co-founder Matthew Liu said, adding, “But now such platforms as Facebook and YouTube built a centralized system and undermined the initial dreams users tried to achieve through the internet.”

What he sees as the most problematic with these sharing economy businesses is that some of them have gained excessive control. According to him, the internet had been designed to operate as a decentralized network of knowledge at first. But some platform businesses unveiled centralized business models later with an aim to expand users. Consequently, users have been forced to allow platforms to control their information data or see ads instead of using services conveniently. In connection with this, Liu emphatically said, “We will offer services with lower fees to redistribute financial incentives to all participants.”

Then why the sharing economy platform? “That’s the very business segment whose profit structure needs to be transformed most urgently,” said Origin Protocol officials in unison.

Liu said: “The combined profits from the sharing economy marketplaces is expected to surpass $33.5 billion (about 37.6 trillion won) through 2025 and most of them are taken by such internet firms as Airbnb and Uber as transaction fees.

“As monopolistic companies appear in the sharing economy, the sharing economy platform is also becoming centralized.

“The side effect, for example, is that the price of a home one can borrow merely with $200 a day might go up to $268 on the Airbnb platform.” Liu claims that profits must be shared at a time when the market keeps expanding.

Origin Protocol has formed partnerships with more than 40 blockchain marketplaces, including Bee Token, a decentralized home sharing network and Airbnb in the blockchain industry; Blocklancer, a decentralized freelancing platform; Propy, a real estate store; and CanYa, a gig economy-related marketplace of services.

Korea is an important market to Origin Protocol just as it is to other blockchain projects. Kay Yoo, who leads finance and operations at the company, said, “We know that Korea, as an IT powerhouse, has many companies nurturing great talent. Korea has become a leader in embracing the blockchain technology, and we see optimism because Korea is a big cryptocurrency market, ranking third or fourth in the world.”

Original Protocol also plans on forming partnerships with Korean companies. Yoo said her company has entered into partnerships to build decentralized marketplaces for hanok home-sharing services with Wehome. Origin is looking to expand its partnership efforts in Korea to grow the platform.

Asked if some internet-based companies in Silicon Valley such as Uber and Airbnb might hold a grudge against Origin Protocol, Liu said, “Not necessarily. They are looking at blockchain technology brightly.” As a matter of fact, Uber unveiled its cryptocurrency Eco in March.
/by Kim Yunji yjk@decenter.kr

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yjk@decenter.kr