Marc Serafino
Simple Token is one of those super-promising projects that we fell in love the second we saw it. What it offers is simple to explain, yet super-powerful nonetheless — it allows every company to create its own token or cryptocurrency.
You don’t have to be a big box retailer or a huge chain to have your own cryptocurrency; suddenly every small and medium sized business can join the party. And, for instance, use Simple Token to power their loyalty program. That’s because regular points suck, blockchain-powered ones are the future.
So without further ado, here are 5 things you should know about Simple Token.
1. Simple Token lets any company create its own cryptocurrency
The software / platform is made to make it easy for just about any business, from a global brand to an emerging app maker, to create its own blockchain-based branded token / cryptocurrency. Simple Token removes the need for complex programming and ICOs, making the process as easy as integrating with an online payment service like Stripe or PayPal.
The following video highlights the key features of the platform:
Simple Token has already scored a few member companies, including Gushcloud, XAIN, InterviewBit, Digital Knights, Pepo, Floship and Vidi-VR.
2. Simple Token is built on top of Ethereum
Simple Token’s own cryptocurrency, marked as “ST“, is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum mainnet that will be freely tradable with a value that fluctuates. The main benefit of relying on Ethereum is that it allows users with tokens made using the Simple Token platform to turn them into other Ethereum-based tokens, as well as cash them out when they please. Also, this move gives Simple Token an access to a sophisticated software stack, vibrant community, and ever more liquidity.
However, Simple Token’s technology allows branded token transactions to be processed quickly and efficiently at high volumes, unlike the Ethereum mainnet, which currently has significant capacity constraints and high transaction fees.
3. Branded tokens can have their own rules
You may not like Bitcoin’s strict monetary policy; guess what, your own branded token doesn’t have to be limited to 21 million coins. Also, you can pick the name for your token and set all the rules. For instance, you can use token for rewards of you loyalty program, instead of points and miles, like hotels and airlines do. Or you may use tokens as incentives for user contribution to your service, and actually pay customers for their reviews. And finally, your own token can be used to buy stuff from your own store, with blockchain ensuring openness, transparency and immutability of transactions.
As an example, Simple Token asks us to imagine a digital music service issuing a branded token called SongCoin. Every new customer of this service could get 25 free SongCoin to warm them up to the benefits of the platform, but which they cannot cash-out themselves until they reach or buy 100 SongCoins, which translate into $1. In the meantime, they could use SongCoins to pay for streaming and/or earn them for writing reviews that other users appreciate. The price of the song could be set at 99 SongCoins each, so the user may earn their way to free songs. Or turn its dollars into SongCoins to buy all the songs they could get. And the same goes for artists as they are in this as well — they could cash out their SongCoins or use them to buy other people’s music on the platform.
The basic premise is to use tokens to help companies unify their relationships with customers.
4. Simple Token is open
The team behind Simple Token has published the core code that drives the creation of branded tokens as an open-source protocol called OpenST. It is governed by the nonprofit OpenST Foundation, and its source code is available on Github, allowing developers to build experiences with branded tokens that can interoperate with any other system built on OpenST.
“Simple Token is ready for use by developers to build apps on OpenST, and by companies who want to tokenize their communities,” Simple Token CEO Jason Goldberg said in a statement.
In the coming weeks and months, Simple Token will offer a suite of branded tokens setup, management, fraud-detection, and analytic tools. Its vision is for a robust on-demand suite of software that gives companies everything they need to create and manage their branded token economy without developers having to learn blockchain code.
If you are interested in learning more, you can check out the Simple Token project website and review the 58-page Simple Token Project Deck / Whitepaper. Also on the site, you will find the technical white-paper which presents the OpenST protocol.
5. Simple Token ICO is now live!
Simple Token has launched its public token sale (“ST” tokens) on November 14, inviting all interested parties to register at sale.simpletoken.org.
There will be the finite supply of 800 million ST tokens, 240 million of which are available for purchase through the Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The price per token is set at $0.0833, and there are also three accrual bonuses, designed to benefit the community by lowering the price for all purchasers based on the amount sold in the sale:
- ST Target: When the sale target of 100 million ST has been reached, all participants will receive an automatic 20 percent on their purchases. The ST Target Bonus will be on top of any other bonuses participants have earned.
- ST Kicker: When a total of 120 million ST have been sold, all participants will receive an automatic 25 percent on their purchases. The ST Kicker Bonus replaces the Target bonus.
- ST Power: When a total of 180 million ST have been sold, all participants will receive an automatic 30 percent on their purchases. The ST Power Bonus replaces the Kicker bonus.
According to the CEO, Jason Goldberg, the purpose of the token sale is to “foster and build a vibrant ecosystem of innovation around the OpenST protocol.” He added: “We’ve designed the token sale to provide increasingly more benefits to the community based on the number of participants, and so far we’ve seen extremely strong interest that we expect to continue accelerating.”
The sale is scheduled to close at 12:59:59 UTC on December 1st, 2017. So if you ever wanted to participate in a hot ICO, now’s your chance! 😉
