What is WONO?
WONO is a peer-to-peer platform for sharing and freelancing. Literally, you can share what you have (including your time and talents) and get what you want from other users.
In simple terms, WONO combines functions of Airbnb, Turo, Upwork and TaskRabbit on blockchain, solving major problems of the existing sharing services: high commissions, vendor taxation, non-transparent ratings and reviews, currency exchange loss and risk of fraud and deal cancellation.
WONO users can act in four different roles at the same time: vendor (rent something out or perform jobs), customer (rent something or post a job), guarantor (stake for successful deal termination) and arbitrator (determine affected party in disputes). WONO users can earn and spend tokens on one platform which lets them never withdraw tokens and legally avoid any kind of taxation or exchange loss.
Now we’re close to the ICO stage. The market launch is scheduled for Q3 2019 and before that, we’ll launch alpha and beta versions.
— Alexander Esaulov, CEO & Founder
ICO Alert Quick Facts
- P2P platform for rentals and freelancing
- $0.50 = 1 WONO token
- Pre-ICO: August 6, 2018 — August 20, 2018
ICO: September 3, 2018 — October 1, 2018 - 47,500,000 total available / 79,166,667 total supply
Q&A with Alexander Esaulov, CEO & Founder
ICO Alert: For those who are not familiar with WONO, can you explain what it is and what the team aims to accomplish?
WONO is a peer-to-peer platform for sharing and freelancing. Literally, you can share what you have (including your time and talents) and get what you want from other users.
In simple terms, WONO combines functions of Airbnb, Turo, Upwork and TaskRabbit on blockchain, solving major problems of the existing sharing services: high commissions, vendor taxation, non-transparent ratings and reviews, currency exchange loss and risk of fraud and deal cancellation.
WONO users can act in four different roles at the same time: vendor (rent smth out or perform jobs), customer (rent smth or post a job), guarantor (stake for successful deal termination) and arbitrator (determine affected party in disputes). WONO users can earn and spend tokens on one platform which lets them never withdraw tokens and legally avoid any kind of taxation or exchange loss.
Now we’re close to the ICO stage. The market launch is scheduled for Q3 2019 and before that, we’ll launch alpha and beta versions.
ICO Alert: How does the WONO token function within the platform and why is it needed?
WONO token is an ERC20 token which is used for all operations within the platform: paying for rentals and jobs, and also for crowd deal insurance and crowd arbitration mechanisms. Users can place stakes in tokens for the successful deal completion. If this happens, they get their stake back plus an insurance part of our commission. If not, the stake goes to the affected party. The latter is determined at the crowd arbitrage. And again, arbitrators vote using their own tokens.
ICO Alert: One of the most difficult things to accomplish in creating a marketplace is achieving a network effect. How does the team plan to market the marketplace and attract both buyers and sellers?
User acquisition has already begun. We’ll do our best to involve our early token buyers in the platform, this time as vendors and customers. I’d like to emphasize that every user can act both as a vendor and as a customer at the same time. Then, of course, there will be significant bonuses for early adopters, and a referral program. Plus we’ll use all well-known marketing and PR techniques which we’ve successfully used at our previous offchain projects: influencer posts and contests in social media, PPC, CPA, media hype, email campaigns…
ICO Alert: How is WONO planning to compete against existing companies with a well developed user base like Airbnb, Turo and Upwork? If these companies implement blockchain technology, what will happen to WONO?
The answer is easy: we’ll offer the same, but much cheaper and with all transparency benefits of blockchain. Just count how much do you pay to third parties when you, for example, work as a freelancer to rent a vacation home somewhere abroad. You pay a high commission to a freelancer platform, probably pay an income tax, then you pay an even higher commission to a home sharing platform, your landlord for sure pays an income tax and includes it into the price… Plus if you go, say, from the EU to the U.S., you pay for a EUR to USD conversion. On WONO, there will be no direct taxation until you exchange tokens to fiat (WONO token is not a security and crypto transactions are not taxable), thanks to decentralization, the commissions will be significantly lower and you won’t have to exchange currencies!
At first, we’ll have a very small base of assets, that’s true. Despite the fact that we’ll start to collect this base long before the market launch. But strong benefits mentioned above will let us grow the base rapidly.
And to compete with WONO, Airbnb, Turo and Upwork should first unite and tokenize their business together making an environment. “Airbnb on blockchain” just makes no sense, no one will use it since you won’t have any opportunity to use your earned tokens within the platform.
Actually, this opportunity which will be available on WONO, will help us to increase LTV and accelerate token demand and price growth.
ICO Alert: Can you briefly describe the process for proof of ownership and how it will help users demonstrate clear connection to the assets?
It won’t significantly change comparing to the existing offchain services. Every user will pass a standard KYC procedure and then will have to prove his or her ownership of the asset sending us documents. That rule will work with homes and cars. And if we speak about bikes, musical instruments, gadgets or sports equipment (everything can be shared on WONO), no proof of ownership will be required.
ICO Alert: In an unfortunate event of accidents, what kind of insurance functions does your platform offer? What advantages does your insurance function have over traditional third party?
As I mentioned before, WONO platform will use a crowd deal insurance mechanism which will cover the risk of deal cancellation but can’t insure risks of damage to assets, deal parties or third parties and their property.
These risks will be covered by professional insurers. With that, WONO platform functions — KYC, asset and user scoring, in fact, stands-in for underwriting job of an insurance company. Using the WONO PROTOCOL and WONO API, we can transfer asset and client data to the corporate CRM of an insurance partner.
Thus, a policy of insurance issue for the WONO community will be seamless — on the insurer’s side, one will have to fill in a minimum of documents. Insurance companies pay 15–20% of the policy price to the agents. We’ll not only be a stand-in for them but will perform the part of the risk evaluation work.
ICO Alert: Which users can participate as Arbitrators? How does your platform prevent rouge Arbitrators that unfairly resolve deals? How does the platform aim to prevent arbitrators being cheated on a deal?
Any user can participate as Arbitrators, except for the deal parties. The platform can’t exclude the risks of cheating. Actually, there’s no way to do it on centralized services either. I’ve recently had 2 cases. On Ebay I didn’t receive the item from the U.S. and the platform moderator couldn’t make the seller return my money. Nobody took the responsibility. On Airbnb, the owner of a flat in Croatia canceled the deal which we signed a couple of months ago, but the platform moderator didn’t make him send me any kind of a compensation, though I had to rent a new home two weeks before the vacation and the prices were “slightly” different. I bet you’ve also got a couple of such stories. But the good news is that we’ve got a KYC procedure and a reputation system. You can try to cheat someone and even succeed. But if you try this many times, your reputation will drop to the bottom and nobody will sign deals with you. And if there will be a proof of fraud, you’ll be banned permanently.
ICO Alert: What kind of experience does your core team have that will help WONO achieve its goals?
The core team (I mean Alex Esaulov, Hermam Solodov, Anton Gulijakin, Maria Polzik and myself) have already worked together in several projects that were launched and then sold, including Burn to Earn in the U.S. and Greeder in Russia. So starting a new business is not a terra incognita for us.
As you can see on our website, we’ve attracted a solid dev team, who just finished our ICO smart contract. It was successfully audited by Coinmercenary and that’s a kind of their proof of professionalism.
Speaking about sharing economy experts, we simply don’t need them in the core team right now, while the ICO is running. Although, we’ve attracted four experienced guys from Booking, Airbnb, Expedia and Turo as advisors to improve our business model and documentation. All of them are officially mentioned on the site and take part in our work remotely.
ICO Alert: What is WONO’s primary geographic target? What are your plans for expanding to other regions?
From the first day, WONO platform will be available worldwide and you’ll have an ability to list your property from anywhere. Here we speak about out marketing and PR effort. The initial market launch will happen in California (the “big L.A.” and San Francisco, target — 500 listings), then we’ll continue in major U.S. cities: NY, Boston, Miami, Orlando and Chicago (target — 5,000 listings). By the end of 2020 we plan to operate in all states and expand to Europe acquiring 100 listings in five key cities: London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Berlin. The whole expansion strategy is described in the section 9.2 of our whitepaper.
ICO Alert: As a non-WONO question we like to ask for unique predictions for the ICO and cryptocurrency space in the future. Where do you see both in the next 3–5 years?
I believe that there will be less easy money and, consequently, less scammers on the market. Blockchain technologies will be widely implemented to existing business models and cryptocurrencies will become more a payment method rather than a speculation instrument. That’s the optimistic scenario.
ICO Information
Pre-ICO will begin on August 6, 2018 and end on August 20, 2018. The main ICO will begin on September 3, 2018 and will end on October 1, 2018. There are a total of 47,500,000 WONO tokens (WONO) available during the main ICO, representing 60% of the total WONO supply. A hard cap of $20,000,000 is set for this period.
$0.50 = 1 WONO token
Current accepted currencies for WONO include Ether.
WONO is an ERC20 token, so it’s important that contributors use ERC20 compatible wallets to send funds to the ICO smart contract, and to receive the WONO tokens.
Token Information
There are a total of 79,166,667 WONO tokens being created, with 47,500,000 available during main ICO.
Contributors will have their tokens distributed shortly after the end of the ICO. Visit the WONO website for more information and the contribution address.
Allocation
Source: ICO Alert
