Interview with Gee-Hwan Chuang (CEO, Ink Protocol / Listia Inc) - Speaker at Global Blockchain Conference April 2018 Posted on : Mar 13 - 2018

We feature speakers at Global Blockchain Conference - April 2 - 4 2018 - Santaclara - CA to catch up and find out what he or she is working on now and what's coming next. This week we're talking to Gee-Hwan Chuang (CEO, Ink Protocol / Listia Inc) Topic - "Decentralized Reputation And Payments For P2P Marketplaces"

Interview with Gee-Hwan Chuang

1. Tell us about yourself and your background.

My name is Gee-Hwan Chuang, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Listia Inc, which runs a peer-to-peer marketplace with over 10M registered users. We also created Ink Protocol, which is a decentralized reputation and transaction sysytem for p2p marketplaces. My co-founder, James, and I started the company in 2009. Prior to that, we ran an online e-commerce and marketing business and first met while studying E.E. at Cornell University.

2.  What have you been working on recently?

Recently, we have been working on a project called Ink Protocol. The purpose of Ink Protocol is to provide a foundation to power transactions on decentralized marketplaces in the future. Ink Protocol helps users safely send and receive payments in P2P marketplaces while earning public reputation for every completed transaction. Sellers can then take their earned reputation with them from marketplace to marketplace, freeing their data from the huge centralized marketplaces that monopolize it today.

Our vision for Ink Protocol is to create a global and open system for all peer-to-peer transactions to flow, without the need for centralized third parties or marketplaces.

3. Tell me about the right tool you used recently to solve customer problem?

The best tool is the one that gives you direct interaction with your customers. These days, we use tools such as e-mail, support desk software and most recently live chat via Telegram to reach out and interface with our community. There isn't ever one best tool, but making use of many tools has been very helpful in our experience.

4. Where are we now today in terms of the state of Blockchain, and where do you think we’ll go over the next five years?

I think we are in the very early stages of figuring out what the Blockchain can be used for. There are so many projects and ideas out there that all make some sense individually, but overall it's very difficult to determine which ones will survive over the next five years. Our approach is to build up from the most basic layers, until we have a fully functioning ecosystem. For example, Ink Protocol fully encapsulates a single peer-to-peer transaction, but it does not try to build all aspects of a marketplace, such as listings, search, discovery, distribution etc. We think that over the next five years, the various players in the space will start to collaborate and consolidate, until these pieces all start working together. At that point, we will see the rise of both consumer and enterprise apps and services that are built entirely on the Blockchain.

5. What are some of the best takeaways that the attendees can have from your talk?

I want to present a clear use case for Blockchain technology and how it can actually solve an existing problem better than centralized solutions. While it's true that there are still scaling and distribution issues, we belive that more and more legitimate use cases are being built on top of platforms like Ethereum and others. The best takeaways you can have from the talk are both a practical understanding of how smart contracts can be used to power peer-to-peer transactions and also a new outlook on how Blockchain technology and decentralization in general can benefit existing real-world applications such as marketplaces.

6. What are the top 5 Blockchain Use cases in enterprises?

I don't think there are enough truly vetted use cases yet, but we are excited about things like reputation, identity, payments, contracts, and supply chain use cases.

7. Which company do you think is winning the global Blockchain race?

It's much too early to tell, but we love the vision of Ethereum (Ink Protocol is built on top of Ethereum) and companies like ConsenSys, who have fully embraced building applications and services on top of it. As the projects in the space evolve, I believe we will see some clear winners over the next few years.

8. Any closing remarks

I'm really excited to share our vision of creating a global p2p transaction system and also our recent learnings building on top of Ethereum with the audience. I think the blockchain community is one of the strongest and most collaborative communites I've been a part of in some time, so it's great that we are all learning from each other.