Name: Balancing The Ledger: Origin Protocol's Mission to Decentralized Sharing Economy Marketplaces
Uploaded: 2018-09-21
Duration: 10 min 35 s
Description: Co-Founders Josh Fraser and Matthew Liu hope to see decentralized versions of Airbnb and Uber built on the Origin blockchain.

[ MUSIC ] Welcome to Balancing the Ledger, where finance and tech intersect. I'm Robert Hackett, I'm Jan Viachner, And today we're here with Matthew Liu and Josh Fraser, the cofounders of Origin Protocol, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having us. Origin, tell us exactly what it is, you're helping build decentralized marketplaces Take it away, what does that mean? Yeah, so we're trying to build a platform that will enable many different decentralized marketplaces hopefully all over the world. And so when we're talking about marketplaces we're talking about these two- sided internet websites or mobile applications that pair buyers and sellers. Today, so these digital meeting grounds. In the future, we would like to enable the decentralized versions of Uber, of Airbnb, of Craigslist. Of any other type of marketplace where these peer to peer transactions should be happening, but right now they're actually peer to a corporate monopoly, such as Uber, to that peer. Josh, I use Airbnb, I use Uber, they're pretty good products. You know? They work quite well. Why would I want to move to something else? Like, what's the advantage that comes with a decentralized marketplace? Sure. So there's three big improvements that we think we made to these types of marketplaces. First, it's pretty obvious. When you cut out the middle man, the fees go with it. And so we see these marketplace like the Ubers and AirBnb's of the world, charging twenty, thirty, sometimes forty percent out of every transaction. And so we can have, give the buyer and the seller a better deal, by getting rid of that middle man. Secondly, we see these companies at single points of failure. We've seen Uber and AirBnb, get banned in cities all over the world. And when you have a truly peer- to- peer system it's impossible for overzealous regulators to just come in and shut it down in one fell swoop, like that. And lastly, we've got 2 billion people on this planet who are not welcome on those platforms because they don't have credit cards, they don't have bank accounts. And so cryptocurrency enables us to open this up to anyone who has an inexpensive Android phone. And for billions of people on this planet, the very first digital marketplace of any kind they're ever going to use is going to be built on a peer- to- peer system, something like Origin. And there's an aspect of this where they actually can derive values from the tokens? Absolutely, so if you think about The people who contribute the most value in a network. The first 100 drivers on Uber had a [ UNKNOWN ]. He was the 30th driver on Uber. Wow. And he's still driving for Uber today, and he's complaining that he's making less money today than when he first started. Wow. And when Uber finally IPOs for billions of dollars, that guy's not gonna see a single penny. And we don't think that's, we don't think that's right. And when we think about how do we create the right incentives to go up against those multimillion and multibillion dollar companies, the solution is giving the participants for early users a stake in the network. And we can do that with our token and reward for those participants for. Their part in growing the network, and inviting their friends, and making it all a success. And you already have some indications of interest from potential customers, or startups that want to use Origin. Tell us a little bit about how that's going to work, how they're envisioning it. Yeah today we have over 40 companies that have signed letters of intent planning to build on top of the Origin platform. So again we're building developer tools And we want to empower anyone who wants to create their own decentralized marketplace, to be able to do that in a very easy and seamless way. You can think of it a little bit like Stripe, which abstracts with all the complexity of a traditional finance world, and makes it possible for any developer to start accepting credit cards on their website in 15, 20 minutes. The same way we're abstracting in a way, but abstracting we have a block chain In all the complexity there. So like I said, we have over 40 companies that have committed to building on the platform, and we're planning to continue to work with more. And these are across all different types of articles from home sharing, to ride sharing, to service marketplaces. And we're excited to see All of the possibilities of what people are going to use this technology for, and build on. What do you see as the earliest, easiest wins on Origin's platform? Airbnb and Uber are very big companies. It's hard to go head to head against them. What do you see as the likeliest candidates to have a sustainable business? We talk about those examples a lot, because everyone knows these products and can relate to them. What we think is more likely is not Uber in San Francisco. What about Uber in Argentina where Uber is banned, right, or Airbnb in a city where Airbnb has been banned? We also think, again, emerging markets are huge for us. We've got billions of people who aren't able to use these existing marketplaces. But [ UNKNOWN ] we'll be able to get started on this new peer to peer market place with some [ UNKNOWN ] Do you think you'll have an easier time persuading regulators of those countries to let you guys in versus- [ LAUGH ] So, I think it depends on a country by country basis. For example on a recent trip to South Korea we're talking to People familiar with how regulators have kind of come down a little bit on some of the sharing economy companies there. And the reason there is that there are a lot of these small businesses. So there's individual taxi owners, there's boutique hotel owners, boutique home sharing owners. They have kind of formed this web Of business in South Korea. And so, when Uber comes in, or when Airbnb comes in as this monopolistic power, there are a lot of people that are afraid they're going to take away business from the little guys. However, if you actually build a peer to peer, decentralized marketplace, it actually becomes an empowering thing for these small businesses. These small businesses are able to get more coverage, more visibility in the market without having that centralized middle man take their 10, 15 , 20, 30 % fee without them imposing their arbitrary rules and regulations on these companies. And I think it actually creates a much larger pie for everyone. And it creates this ability to have free, open, transparent commerce. And I think that's great for these markets where regulators have already come down hard. And I think that over time we'll see some of these businesses actually embrace this decentralization we're talking about. Do you think the companies that are going to succeed with that model are going to be new startups that are seeking to displace companies like Uber and Airbnb, or could we see some of those big incumbents start to use blockchain technology and integrate it into their businesses? We're seeing a little bit of both. So, we're seeing a lot of newer companies that are native to blockchain, just getting started, doing their own ICOs. And we think that's actually terrific, right? Because It takes a lot of money and marketing dollars to create a two sided marketplace. In fact, these companies have been able to go out and raise, in some cases, tens of millions of dollars for their own projects. That's great because every new user on one of these market places is also a new user for Origin. So we're very happy about that. On the other side, we're seeing existing market places and companies that have In some cases, hundreds of thousands of users that are seeing the writer on the wall, understand that block chain is the future, and they want to get into this space before they're disrupted by it. A good example of this is Service Hero out of southeast Asia, they have hundreds of thousands of users But if you're importing your business to a blog chain, and doing all of it on Origin platform. One thing that's not going to change about all of this is people are still going to need a way to pay for these services. Do you see that as being in dollars, bitcoin, ether, or we have stable coins that are coming up everyday it seems. Stable coins are really interesting to us on the platform Because whenever you add time into the equation, so imagine if you book an Airbnb on Origin and then you're not staying there for six months, the price of [ UNKNOWN ] could double, triple, or drop by 80 % over that period. So that's problematic for either the buyer or the seller And so we're planning to support all ERC 20 compatible stablecoins, on the Origin platform, we think that's really valuable and useful, for people to be able to transact on our platform. All ERC 20 compatible, whether they're asset backed, or some other model, or? So, there are multiple models for stablecoins. So, you have the asset backed ones, let's say, like The Gemini Dollar to USD that are matched with an actual US dollar per coin. And there are newer algorithmic models as well that try to mimic let's say what the Federal Reserve does. So Basis is a good example of a company there. There's no company fragments that swings Sitting quite interesting as well and so I think it remains to be seen which of these stablecoins becomes most popular over time. And there may be just a couple, or there may be dozens, and I think part of our jobs as the platform operator's origin is to figure out Which of these stablecoins that consumers will want to use. And I also think that the long- term trend here is there needs to be some sort of interoperability, right? There might be five different stablecoins, it all represents a US dollar amount like $ 1. And a buyer might be working with Gemini dollar and a seller might be using [ INAUDIBLE ] and they should still be able to do business even though they are holding different currencies. And so I think there are going to be some interesting technical innovations to figure out how all these different types of [ INAUDIBLE ] coins come together. And provides a very seamless user experience. Which stable coin, or which approach is your favorite? [ SOUND ] That's a great question. [ LAUGH ] I think that there is going to be a gradual move from the purely asset backed stable coins, let's say like a true [ UNKNOWN ] to things that are a little bit more algorithmic over time. And I think part of the reason that we wanna see that is these early versions are much more similar to existing financial systems. So it's something that's very similar to the US banking system versus some of the algorithmic stuff. If it works in the future, it can actually truly create a decentralized form of money that is worldwide That doesn't really need the permission of local governments or banks, and that can really be driven by the supply and demand of it's users. Well hey, thank you both so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much. That's all we've got time for. I'm Robert Hackett. I'm Jen Wieczner, and for more Balancing the Ledger, come to fortune. com. See you next time. [ MUSIC ]

Balancing The Ledger: Origin Protocol's Mission to Decentralized Sharing Economy Marketplaces

The_Ledger

Co-Founders Josh Fraser and Matthew Liu hope to see decentralized versions of Airbnb and Uber built on the Origin blockchain.