Lately, I discussed with VC friends about the future of blockchain, and there is one project "Wolk" is mentioned few time by them. And then I started to read the White Paper and I can not control myself to write down this article to share with you guys about it!
Before introduction of Wolk, I will like to talk about two Bulls in stock market.
If you have been watching the Stock market of U.S., you may know that, in the past 8 years, this market is so prosperous. Actually, there are 10-20 listed companies are super valuable. Personally, I'm very focus on two of them: FaceBook & Google. Pls check their performance:
Facebook
Google
(The truth is, no matter when you buy, you are at the right time. This is so-called: value investing)
We can find there are some common characteristic in these two companies:
- Both are high-tech firms.
2）Both for information sharing.
3）>70% margin comes from: Digital Ad.
Let's take a look how Facebook performed in income:
There are two key facts about income of Facebook :
*79% income of Facebook is from Advertisement. *
Even though there are no clear official announcement about the income segments are formed in the financing statement, but we still can know that the main income from Facebook is Facebook app & Instagram according to Zuckerberg's information in press.
So, it's quite simple for us to understand how much potential ability for Facebook. e.g.: Only in Messenger & WhatsApp, there are around 1.3Billion users still not monetized, repeat again, 1.3Billion users still not monetized!!! Another scary truth is, the platform scale is till keep going up......fast.....
Then, let's take a look Google
Google's revenue worldwide from 2002 to 2016(in billion U.S. dollars)
***The main income comes from Advertisement: ***
Google search-engine, including the usage of Chrome browser, all together occupy around 71% traffic.
Another products like: Gmail, Google Maps & Google Play.
Youtube, but not including Youtube TrueView & Google Preferred.
In a long time, the impression in the public the Google is just a searching engine, so this part also generate huge margin for Google. At the meanwhile, Google is successful in Android as well, but the fact is Android didn't contribute too much benefit for Google. All in all, the main income for Google is Advertisement.
Here, you can know the status of global digital advertisement market:
Data comes from GroupM
GroupM global issued a forecast report** <This year, next year: The forecast of worldwide press industry>** : In every 1$ new investment in advertisement, 0.77$ will be belong to digital ad, and 0.17$ will be belong to trandictional TV ad. In spite of there are still many problems in digital advertisement industry, e.g. the standard, measuring way, the whole supply-chain with bad credit.... However, this industry is still flying up like rocket. And, we can quite confident see that in the near future, the consumers will increase fast, more and more online deal will happen, which including consumer-products, digital content & service, that will appeal to more budget go into digital advertisement. At this moment, in this planet, already have 10 markets where the digital advertisement investment is more than TV ad's. And in 2017, some new entrants will also be the same, they are France, Germany, Ireland, Hongkong & Taiwan.
Looking at this unbelievable numbers, I think you may ask if you should invest these two companies now? My point of view is: obviously, you should! and now is still the right time, actually, you can buy any time if you can keep it more than 2 years and don't do any trading. I have this conclusion is only because: the digital advertisement makes cap is so huge, and more important is still have many value is untouched. e.g. Facebook how to start to charge the users in WhatApp?
Some other friends may ask: Does it mean this market will be for ever captured by Facebook & Google like companies? I think it won't! For two reasons:
- Dialectical Materialisom makes us know, there is no any development always go up or down.
2）Blockchain technology maybe is the right game-changer.
If you ask who will be the role to challenge the big giants now? I will say "WOLK" maybe the one! Before we know more details about WOLK, we should know what WOLK is.
Definition of WOLK
Wolk is a decentralized/blockchain-based data marketplace, powered by the WOLK token. Created by experts and data scientists with decades of experience in digital advertising and performance-based marketing.
**Why WOLK? **
Actually, during our daily life, everyone of us create lots of data, e.g. you chat with friends in social networking, you buy a cloth online, or you just send an email. All of these data logically should belong to ourself, however, because it's not easy to use law to protect our data, and also people, as of now, don't care too much about their data(as don't know the value of them), so we can say we contribute these asset to the big companies for free! The fact is, the data is the blood for the big companies like Google & Facebook. They use the data to evaluate people, and help the product makers to find the right customers by pushing digital ad. And they make money(big money), BUT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!
Hence, WOLK comes and say, in the future, everyone put the data on my platform, and the seller can use these data much cheaper. Why cheaper? Simple, all middleman gone! Not only this, the one provide the private data, also can make income.
The logic is:
Currently, all the expenditure of digital ad. is token by the middleman(Google, Facebook).
Wolk cut all the margin from the middleman and distribute to users and sellers.
Let's see how Wolk officially describe their mission:
Wolk Mission and Core Value Proposition
Wolk’s mission is to create open data systems for the world. Wolk introduces the Wolk Protocol, supporting decentralized data exchange among data buyers and data sellers. The Wolk Protocol enables data buyers and sellers to share data tied to IDs. Our first use case is to share data about IDs that are commonly used consumer identifiers for digital advertising and marketing (device IDs, email, phone number) and then to expand into neighboring identifiers with the same Wolk protocol:
A new ETH-backed WOLK token is used as a key input to fully functional Wolk APIs (http://docs.wolk.apiary.io/) that enable data buyers to obtain data about consumers (e.g. age, gender, app usage, emails, ...) and enable data suppliers to get compensated for the onboarded data. In the domain of digital advertising, Wolk provides the following core value propositions:
● Marketers can improve data-driven targeting of mobile advertising, email marketing, telemarketing or texting campaigns. They can do so by buying WOLK to obtain data via Wolk APIs and the Wolk Protocol. With improved targeting, advertisers can increase the overall efficiency of their marketing dollars.
● Publishers, while staying anonymous, can increase their revenue from appropriate valuation of their data assets. They can do so by earning WOLK when supplying valuable data that buyers retrieve via the Wolk APIs.
● Consumers can experience more relevant advertisements and personalized messages from marketers. Rather than having their data used to build up massive walled businesses, consumers can support Wolk Protocol and participate in the ownership of WOLK.
The technology
According to the white paper,
WOLK is based on the Ethereum(ETH) blockchain;
WOLK is the token name of WOLK protocol;
WOLK will process all the deal based on Smart contract;
WOLK currently run on the Ethereum, but may be developed for other blockchain(e.g. Qtum or EOS....)
WOLK with a very power API development.
WOLK is very professional in Cloud storage, which can help in the future more data process.
WOLK ecosystem
Wolk Inc., a for-profit Delaware corporation, and Wolk Foundation, a Swiss Foundation, promoting the development of the Wolk Protocol for decentralized data exchange and working with data suppliers and data buyers to use the Wolk Protocol in APIs
● Data Buyers, who get data in exchange for WOLK
If any one want to use the resources(data) on this platform, firstly, you should own the WOLK tokens, you use the WOLK tokens to buy the data.
● Data Suppliers, who get WOLK in exchange for quality data
If you are willing to provide your data and put on the WOLK, you can get compensation, WOLK.
● Data Scientists, who get WOLK in exchange for analyzing data
If you are researcher, you can use WOLK to buy the data and use for projects.
So, You can imagine, the WOLK token is one kind of currency like Bitcoin. But this currency is only running on Wolk platform.
If you don't want the WOLK and just need to sell it in exchange and get back your legal tender.
WOLK team
For my opinion, the team is always the key for a project. And most important role in a team should be the CEO. So, let's take a look the back ground of the CEO via LinkedIn.
Name: Sourabh Niyogi
1992~1995: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, master degree of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
1996~1995: Work in Perceptual Systems as the entrepreneur. Built, licensed and sold agency software to performance-oriented ad agencies and companies that served them [Matchlogic/Excite, Netgravity/Doubleclick] in the early days of web advertising.
2007~2008: Cofounder(VP Engineering) of Social Media Networks. Social Media Networks helps publishers and advertisers with social advertising with its social ad platform.
2009~2017: Cofounder, president/CEO of CrossChannel. CrossChannel is a leading programmatic advertising company.
2017~now: Cofounder/CEO of Wolk.com.
The key points:
All experience about advertising industry.
Continuous entrepreneur.
Mr. Sourabh has very good working background in his field, this is very sweet. I have read so many ICO projects, this is my favorite about the CEO.
Investment Analysis
Even Google's advertising income margin is increasing, but their scale percentage is decreased. Which means, the expending speed of global internet advertising market is faster than the growing of Google.
As the internet market is still keep spreading into the new field, and we believe that there will be some monopolists come out. Perhaps the new monopolists & the old monopolists in different territory, but they may still in competition.
Such as, the business mode between Google & Facebook is different, one is searching engine, the other is social networking, but they still compete in digital advertising field.
In internet industry, there is no No. 2, people only will remember No.1. just like if use searching engine, you will only choose Google. But in internet industry will always have new trend, new turbulence, and many new winners will appear. These new winners will continuously grab the market share from the old monopolists. Just like new press arise, then most of the news paper will have problems. Of course, the old monopolists is big enough, they won't disappear suddenly, because they are still monopolist, the core business is still big. All in all, the whole internet market is still under fast growth, and this speed is more than the growth of Google.
(sometime I think, maybe WOLK-like projects really have chance to replace Google & Facebook)
Investment Chance:
1）Market is huge enough, and it's keep increasing, which may create some new winners.
2）Blockchain technology is very suitable to solve the problem of data, and the system also can protect the privacy for data providers.
3）Data providers can make income via WOLK, and for data buyers, who will have the channel to get useful data in cheaper and efficient way.
4）CEO has 15 years experience in advertising field, and the team already have greater than 400,000,000 users' data in hand. That means, this project is much more realizable....
- In the WOLK system, the token will be burnt in some specific time. Means, this is deflation system, so, logically, the token you bought will be more & more valuable.
Investment Risk:
1）The final product is not finished yet, so nobody can guarantee an unhappen thing. This is objective risk.
2）How to make sure the data uploaded by provider is 100% correct, the team should always think about it.
Token Sales
Our goal is to distribute a minimum of 50MM WOLK and maximum of 200MM WOLK tokens in a "Token Generation Event" from September 10, 2017 (block # 4260350) until around October 9, 2017 (block # 4370000) in the following distributional pattern:
• Token Generating Event:
Minimum: 50MM WOLK [around 42.5K ETH]
Maximum: 200MM WOLK [around 188.8K ETH]
• Presale Start Date/Time: Block # 4260350 [est. September 10, 2017 23:00 GMT]
• Token Generation Event Start Date/Time: Block # 4289200 [est. September 18, 2017 23:00 GMT]
• Token Generation Event End Date/Time: Block # 4370000 [est. between October 9 and 12, 2017]
Summary
In my point of view, it's very adaptive to use blockchain technology to solve some problems like IP confirmation & distribution or Digital advertisement, because use decentralized system can help to save lots of cost and enhance the efficiency. Because no right way to protect our data, people know our data is abused, but no choice. Maybe you have received many strange incoming call from others, this is because your information is used but without your approval.
We remember Google said "Don't be evil", but there is a news this year, maybe you still remember:
June 27, 2017, the European Commission announced that the Internet giant Google has violated the EU competition regulation of the act, so the Google fine of 2.42 billion euros (about 2.7 billion US dollars). This figure also broke the EU in 2009 out of the 1.06 billion euros fine record. The European Commission issued a statement that day, Google into the shopping parity market, the use of their own online search field in the dominant position, manipulate the search results, unfairly to customers to their shopping services.
So, I think now it's a quite a good timing for WOLK,
On the one hand, Google and other large companies, although the advertising revenue is still growing, but the lack of follow-up growth momentum.
On the other hand, with the development of technology, it will lead people to pay more attention to their own data ownership, the right to use, one day may become as important as the right to life. Therefore, such applications such as WOLK have been accepted by people as high probability events.
Other Prompt
Whitepaper channel: https://www.wolk.com/whitepaper/WolkTokenGenerationEvent.pdf
Token sale channel: https://www.wolk.com/app/register
Website: https://wolk.com
Eric (2017/9/21)