SPLYT Summary Recap with Shin Chan Community
We held a live AMA with CEO, Cyrus Taghehchian & CMO, Lindsey Mallon from SPLYT on 23rd July 10:00 PM (UTC+8). Here’s the recap for those who missed it.
Introduction
Jack | ShinChan: Before AMA start, can you introduce yourselves and the team background?
Cyrus Taghehchian: Yes!!! I’m a ex-Deloitte consultant in e-commerce and digital marketing who brings enterprise experience into the blockchian space. I grabbed my first BTC in 2014 so I’m no slouch in the blockchain space either. Built my first Smart Contract on Ethereum in 2016 and developed the first version of Splyt in 2017!
The rest of our team brings a great blend of blockchain and e-commerce experience. Big shoutouts to Lindsey for her design and community xp, Jason for his product and blockchain expertise, TJ for his operations and business development acumen, Angello for his astute blockchain and development prowess and Joshi for helping architect one fo the fist NFT standards (now the Splyt eNFT)! Love being part of this team 🙂
Lindsey Mallon: Hi everyone!
A little bit about Splyt — Splyt is an ecommerce protocol which utilizes the eNFT to resolve pain points from supply chain through sales.
Fun fact! Cyrus founded the NFT concept back in 2017, prior to the coined term NFT (he called it a tokenized asset).
Since then, our collective background and experience between consulting with enterprise brands and every aspect of supply chain and retail has been applied to our protocol. We’ve used that background to create an ecommerce NFT (eNFT) that can
- track from raw material sourcing through supply chain to propvide transparency in sustainability
- enable a brand to sell across multiple retailers, affiliates, and influencers with live-updating inventory to resolve double-sell problem
- has smart contracts which enable transparency in sales between brand and retailer/affiliate and dispenses the agreed profit shares to each party upon a completed sale
- acts as a proof of authenticity after the completed sale which is especially critical in resale market (think of a Chanel bag) and enables big data for brands across lifetime of product!
My own background is in retail, everything from launching a brand thorugh supply chain and sales and marketing. I’m a RISD graduate (fun fact- it’s the first design school in the USA!) who spent a decade in the fashion/luxury industry! My career has been focused on sustainable commerce, with an emphasis on sustainable communities, labor standards, and business landscapes!
Jack | ShinChan: Do you have any news/update about SPLYT would like to share with us?
Lindsey Mallon: We do! We are launching the Splyt Reserve mid-August. This is the very first staking program which creates everyday utility rewards! The Splyt Reserve is a brand VIP loyalty program. Members earn VIP status with brands, which in turn gives them exxclussive access to new products, discounts and VIP retail prices, access to brand events and so much more!
We also have V1 of our Shopify app dropping in about 2 months! Our ap is made to effortlessly plugin to the back of existing ecomm stores so that all brands can mint eNFTs and benefit from the technology, whether or not they understand the technology. After we’ve perfected the Shopify ap, we will build out plugins for other ecomm platforms such as Salesforce, WooCommerce, and Magento!
the next 2 months are going to be very exciting for us here at Splyt!
Cyrus Taghehchian:
sneak peak 😛
AMA Twitter Section Begin:
Q1: I see that you are creating a Shopify App as a way for brands to reduce counterfeit products & verify authenticity. However, a successful app should have a trial version to know the impact on the community before the final product, so are you planning to build a beta version?
Lindsey Mallon: We agree! We have a pilot program launching the Shopify ap with us to test both the technology and UI! We’ll use that information to tweak before it’s publicly live!
We also have a major influencer launching the ap with us as well, which we can’t wait to publicly announce!
Q2: You talk about ShopX, on your website, you mention that SHOPX represents the selling power for retailers and the buying power for consumers, but could you expand the information and explain us a little bit more detailed, its utilities, benefits and importance?
Cyrus Taghehchian: Yes! In order to post an item for sell, you need to use SHOPX as collateral to signal to potential buyers that you have a real product in stock and are going to fulfill the order. Many times, like on craigslist where posting items is free/no cost, you get a lot of scammers. On the flipside, using a service like eBay and Amazon might reduce the fraud, but also costs you an arm, leg, few kidneys and your soul lol. Theyre expensive.
Splyt flips this paradigm on its head. By using the powers of SC escrows and the blockchain, we can create a “no cost to post” system like craigslist but with all the benefits of an Amazon/eBay without their costs bc we can return the inital staked depsosit to the seller after a successful sale!
If the seller is a bad actor, they lose their initial depsoit, creating proper incentives within the ecosystme.
So if you’d like to sell more through our ecosystem, you need more SHOPX 😉
For buyers, hodling and using SHOPX gives you tons of rewards, discounts and access.
We mentioned our MagPark Splyt Reserve program, where users can become part of a VIP program but they have OWNERSHIP in the VIP program and as it gorws, they get rewarded with sataking APY for being part of the VIP program
First of its kind loyalty program where the users see the upside along with the brand, its a win-win-win!
Q3: Does Splyt really offer advanced smart contracts that allow us to offer users confidence and guarantee when it comes to commercializing NFTs? These NFTs can’t be hacked? How have they achieved such security? Other projects could be integrated with you to obtain security from NFT?
Cyrus Taghehchian: Yes, we have confidence in everything we build and go through rigorous QA. the NFTs aren’t the vector of risk, however it’s the SC escrows inside NFTs that need the care. We have audit, code review, testing processes in place to reduce that risk. Not all risk is technical either, so working with vetted partners are important.
Reach out to use re: NFTs — we are always down to collab 🤙
Q4: You guys put a lot of emphasis on Splyt’s ability to “track product”, but what is that “Track” really focused on? Will it only be in the value that it maintains in the market? or is it to track the evolution of the market and much more?
Lindsey Mallon: yes! after the initial sale is made, the eNFT acts as a proof of authenticity and it stays with the product.
so this means two things:
- our universalized eNFT can dismantle the counterfeit industry and
- the eNFT can give lifetime data around the product in the resale market. brands can now track value retention, the longevity of that value, and basic geo/demo information around both the initial sale and and resales!
So going back to our Chanel bag, if I buy a Chanel bag today and resell it for 50% of the original price 5 years from now, then it’s resold again 10 years later… Chanel can gather that information. They now know what their true legacy products are, which products retain value. This could inform specialty runs of certain items. This can inform the ever-growing sustainability efforts. The possibilities are endless!
Q5: I could see on their website that they will soon integrate a SHOPX staking service for users, but what are the estimated dates that this staking service will be available? What is the APY estimate that the users will generate? And besides this, what other rewards will be awarded?
Cyrus Taghehchian: Thanks for the question!
Estimated date is mid-August. APY estimate will be 100APY for the first months to celebrate our community and 100x launch, and besides APY rewards, we are working with our partners to give you first access to hyped goods up to 30% off internally held stock/products, exclusive VIP benefits from brands like access to events etc, and most importantly, you’ll be part of the Splyt community ❤️
Telegram Live AMA Begin:
Q6: Last month, Splyt was accepted in to polkadot link program, that’s great!!
How will it help Spylt project to grow faster?
Cyrus Taghehchian: We are gtting connected with DOT holders to finance parachains, other projects where we can collab on learn eveerythng polkadot, so very excited for all of this 🤙
Q7: While you build your project, do you take into account community feedbacks and demands?While you build your project, do you take into account community feedbacks and demands?
Cyrus Taghehchian: Absolutely, it’s part of our product cycle. We solicit feedback via surverys, interviews, TG, app usage, data feeds, and take that all into account when creating future roadmaps 🙂
Q8: They recently published a strategic partnership with Mag Park, so can you give me more information about this? How will Mag Park contribute to the collective and positive development of Splyt? What does the membership program mean?
Lindsey Mallon: MagPark is one of the top hype brand retailers in the United States! Their products have an immense resale market so our eNFT is very valuable to them in proving validity thorugh resale. They are the brand we are launching the Splyt Reserve with, which will enable token holders to stake SHOPX and earn APY, but also enter a lottery for a spot in the Splyt Reserve x MagPark VIP membership.
VIP Member Benefits:
Exclusive First Access to Mag Park x New Era release
VIP Member Curated Website at Discounted rates
30% on Magnolia Park Merchandise
Q9: Many projects are just projects that make deceptive promises created by cloning existing ones and are similar to existing ones. Do you have features that are unique to you, that you have developed and that make you special?
Cyrus Taghehchian: We have built everything in house. We were one of the first pioneers of NFTs back in 2017 and the FIRST using NFTs as programmable data.
If you read our white and tech papers, you will see that we have a novel and innovative approach and technology. I can see others starting to clone us… in fact about few months ago, someone in our open source community forked our our repo lol
Q10: From technological and commercial perspectives, how can traditional companies be integrated into the blockchain? What are #SPLYT plans for traditional companies that continue to exist with their own systems?
Lindsey Mallon: we’ve built our tech out so that it easily integrates into the back of existing ecomm stores. that’s what really sets us apart. we are not building a beautiful blockchain protocol and then asking brands to leave behind their existing infrastructure behind to build on ours (for enterprise brands, those ecomm platforms can cost millions). we are bringing the techology to you. we have partnered with cartrev to enable affiliates and influencers to turn their social media channels into shoppable posts (wihtout having to own an ecomm website themselves). we’ve thought through all sides and how to bridge web2 over to web3 and take ecommerce into the future!
Q11: what can users in your NFT ecosystem do and earn?
Lindsey Mallon: the eNFT is attached to physical inventory so it functions in all of the ways we had mentioned above!
Q12: Who can buy your tokens? are only those who are whitelisted able to buy tokens?
Lindsey Mallon: SHOPX can be found on ascendex (bitmax) and uniswap
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