Carry Protocol (CRE) Review – Putting Transaction Data Back in the Hands of Consumers

| Publish date: 06/13/2018 (Last updated: October 24, 2018 10:12 AM)
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NameCarry Protocol
TickerCRE
Token TypeERC20
ICO Price0.00750 USD
Total Supply10,000,000,000
Website URLhttps://carryprotocol.io/

Carry Protocol’s goal is to make transaction data equally fair for consumers, marketers and merchants. It does this through incentivizing them via tokens that power the Carry Protocol network without revealing consumers’ identity.

Carry Protocol Website

The Idea and the Team Behind Carry Protocol

Most of the retail industry occurs offline, and this traditional brick-and-mortar industry has a market size of over $25 trillion. Offline commerce presents a number of challenges, however. Data is spread out among different players, and without a more unified picture, it is difficult to analyze accurately. Data that is successfully gathered is not owned by consumers, but by corporations. Finally, offline advertising lacks transparency and is not as effective as its online companion.

Carry Protocol’s mission is to put an end to these challenges by offering a platform that connects consumers, marketers and merchants. The platform not only allows consumers to control their transaction data and monetize the information from it but also offers a new advertising channel that is more transparent and effective than offline advertising.

Carry Protocol’s team is from Spoqa, a company that develops mobile marketing solutions such as Dodo, an SMS text coupon service for offline merchants like cafes, restaurants, and beauty shops. Leading the team are two co-CEOs, Grant Sohn and Richard Choi. Grant is a co-founder of Spoqa and has previous experience as the Managing Director of Asia at Wimdu GmbH, the European equivalent of Airbnb. He has a bachelor’s in economics from Stanford University. His co-CEO, Richard, founded Spoga in 2012. Born in Seoul and raised in Hong Kong, Grant has a bachelor’s in biomedical engineering from John Hopkin’s and a masters in the same subject from Cornell.

Together the two of them led Dodo to the leading tablet-based loyalty platform in Korea and Japan, with 15 million customers and 10,000 merchant partnerships. The app tracks over $2 billion of offline payment data a year.

The Carry Protocol Technology

The Carry Protocol technology aims to provide a platform where consumers and merchants can freely communicate while consumers are able to control their own payment data and monetization of that information. This will all be done through a transparent and effective new advertising channel.

In response to this, the Carry Protocol consists of two major parts:

  • A blockchain that carries a transaction database and smart contracts

This is a virtual database with transaction data generated and uploaded by customers. The smart contract allows tokens to be issued on the Carry Protocol.

  • A set of APIs that connects the blockchain to third party software

This enables other devices to support Carry Protocol and allow payment with cryptocurrency and the transfer of payment data to a consumer’s wallet.

Carry Protocol has three basic use cases:

  • Fiat Payment and Rewards – In this scenario, an office worker, Betty, frequents a lunch restaurant where she orders her salad. She pays in fiat currency with her credit card, and upon completion of the transaction, is asked by the merchant if she wants to collect points in the form of store tokens. Betty agrees and receives a message in her phone confirming that she’s collected the store tokens (without having to download another app). After also receiving her transaction data directly from the shop, she has the additional option of sharing her transaction data on the Carry blockchain and receive ads. She is rewarded with more tokens by doing so, what Carry Protocol refers to as Branded Tokens (BT).
  • Targeted coupons and crypto payments – Remember how Betty in the scenario above agreed to receive ads? Now she receives an ad offering her a free coffee at a nearby merchant. She goes to get her coffee, with a pastry, and is informed by the merchant that she can pay in cryptocurrency. She pays for the pastry with CRE. Similar to the above scenario, Betty receives her transaction data from the merchant, decides to share it, and receives Branded Tokens as a reward for doing so.
  • Targeting marketing by a third party – Betty still receives those ads and coupons, but now she gets a coupon telling her to come check out a new beauty salon – and she receives $5 worth of CRE with the ad! (This is yet another type of Branded Token in the Carry Protocol). The beauty salon is happy because it was able to target their marketing for this specific new product line to women in their 30s. Their entire marketing budget goes towards ads, without the need to pay a middleman such as Facebook or Google.

The features of Carry Protocol, payments (both in fiat and in cryptocurrency), branded tokens (what merchants use for advertising and coupons) and loyalty points can all be accessed through Smart Contract. Use of Smart Contract requires merchants to stake a minimal amount of CRE on the Carry Protocol or pay-as-they go for each use of Smart Contract.

The CRE Tokens

The total supply of CRE tokens is set at 10 billion, and the team plans to sell only 40% of them.

Here is a breakdown of the future token distribution:

CRE tokens are used to pay merchants within the Carry ecosystem. Consumers receive CRE from advertisers as payment for sharing their transaction data. In addition, merchants use it to create branded tokens or smart contracts. This is all achieved while protecting consumer privacy.

The Carry Protocol Network

The Carry Protocol supports both the use of fiat payments as well as cryptocurrencies. Carry Protocol expects most consumers to pay in fiat, at least in the beginning. In addition, it will accept CRE and Branded Tokens (BT) as well as other cryptocurrencies such as CTC and ETH.

Service providers are necessary to support the Carry Protocol, including:

  • Settlement service provider — Offline merchants can select to receive cryptocurrency payment through the settlement service provider of their choice. This will encourage further acceptance of cryptocurrency payment.

  • Wallet service providers – Consumers receive wallets in the form of mobile apps. Wallets allow consumers to manage transaction data and share it on the blockchain, use Carry Protocol cryptocurrencies (both CRE and BT) and other cryptocurrencies.

  • Device Providers – These providers assist in generating revenue from the user fee merchant pay to enable them to use Carry Protocol. Merchants must have these devices in their stores to use the Carry Protocol system.

  • Advertising Service Provider – Advertising service providers analyze transaction data to provide targeted advertising. These are generally businesses in the online ad market interested in offline data. They must pay a fee in CRE to use the Carry Protocol.

The ICO and Roadmap

The token sale for Carry Protocol is set to take place at the end of June and beginning of July. The fundraising goal is $23.6 million.

Carry Protocol hopes to complete its token generation event by Q3 of 2018 and to launch their TestNet by Q4 of 2018. Their long-term goal is to allow third-party advertisers to join the network in the first half of 2019 and have the product completed by the second half of 2019.

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