Birdchain introduces a blockchain-powered solution that solves many of today’s SMS marketing problems while at the same time reducing inefficiency in SMS usage.
What the platform does is it offers great delivery speeds to a business’ customers at a fair and transparent while still keeping costs low.
The reason why costs are kept low is because of the decentralized and distributed nature of the platform.
What does that mean?
Birdchain is going to distribute the workload to regular people by providing them with a way to earn money from sent messages. This means that normal users can make passive income with just their phone!
The Birdchain mobile application does this by allocating unused regular people’s SMS’ to businesses for a fee.
Anyone with a phone will be able to download the Birdchain app, sell their unused SMS quota to businesses, and receive payment for every SMS message sent from their phone.
We recently sat down with Audrius Vrubliauskas, the CEO of Birdchain to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.
Hi, Audrius. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about your company and Birdchain?
Mobile operators are increasing prices of their services to an indecent level while at the same time they are lowering delivery speed and overall service quality. And then there are big players who keep SMS delivery market closed to new companies which means that there are very little of competition and virtually no innovation.
Keeping in mind these flaws, we came to the conclusion that we have to start a change. And we joined transparency revolution that is already happening – adopted blockchain technology with smart contracts. It will guarantee companies that all SMS were sent and it will prevent fraud and misconduct. Moreover, using phones of regular people will decrease the price for companies and people will get their share of the $63 billion market.
First off, why did you decide to use the blockchain in building Birdchain?
Transparency is our number one priority. The current generation of A2P services heavily lacks transparency. In fact, there were cases when aggregators offered much lower price of services than average, but they delivered only a fraction of SMS and claimed the delivery rate of 100 percent. That is 100 percent cheating. Sadly, there are no tools for clients to check the delivery rate.
Blockchain and smart contracts solve this problem easily. Each sent SMS will have its own smart contract, so the payments for selling SMS will only be provided when the message is actually sent.
What do you think is the biggest problem Birdchain will solve and why is the problem important to solve?
I believe Birdchain will solve several problems. Transparency is the first of them. It will also decrease A2P SMS prices drastically and will allow smaller companies to use SMS marketing. It is a very powerful tool, but until now it was mostly accessible by bigger and well-established companies.
And last but not least – people are paying for unlimited SMS plans but do not use them. That means that they are overpaying for the service. Birdchain will enable them to cover costs of their mobile phone and even have passive monthly income.
I even believe that Birdchain will help to create Global Basic Income. That would be the first ever non-governmental initiative to provide earnings to almost anyone everywhere.
How does Birdchain determine the relevancy of ads to users?
While SMS marketing is extremely effective, not everyone would appreciate ads via text messages as much as an ad on Facebook or Google.
How does the platform target audiences to ensure that ads only reach people who are interested?
It is a common misconception. That is not how Birdchain is going to work. Birdchain will not send SMS to random people.
Birdchain will only facilitate service of SMS distribution. We will not provide contacts for the companies. They will have to gather this information by themselves. It means that people will receive transactional or promotional SMS only from companies they gave consent to.
Aside from the high costs, why do you think many companies neglect SMS marketing? Are they unaware of the benefits or do you think SMS marketing is not as exposed as other advertising channels?
The high price is the only reason why some companies do not communicate via SMS. In Germany single message cost 0,08 euro. If you have 10 000 customers, a single campaign will cost 800 euros. And our clients usually have several campaigns per month and much more clients. And most of the price goes to operators, not A2P SMS aggregators.
Birdchain will not only send out unused SMS. We tried your simulation app and it looks a lot like any other instant messenger. Why did you choose this approach?
Birdchain app for people first of all is instant messaging app. They will be able to use it to communicate with their friends and family, but at the same time app will automatically sell their unused SMS in the background.
We chose this approach because instant messaging is more convenient and more intuitive solution. We use such apps every day. It is something very well-know.
To make Birdchain fly, we need at least 50 000 app users. If the app would look distant or unfamiliar, people would not use it. So, the decision was made for the comfort of Birdchain app users.
How are you planning to distinguish Birdchain from other instant messaging apps?
We will have our ICO in 10 waves. Each wave brings different bonuses for our contributors and they also represent how much more Birdchain can be. The instant messaging app is just the first step on the ladder.
Higher waves will allow us to add the ability to watch video ads and receive our tokens as payment. This feature proved to be very effective and desired in our other projects.
Then we will implement in-app purchases so that Birdchain app users could spend their earnings in the app without the need of using exchanges and paying fees there. When we will reach the eighth wave we will develop Voice call gateway and even personal data marketplace. It means that people will be able to sell their data to companies and get paid. Now Facebook and other companies do the same (sell personal information of their users), but people do not get rewarded. We don’t think that it is fair, so we would like to change that too.
What has been your funniest moment so far working on Birdchain?
We want to have proper ICO that is held under all laws and regulations. That is why we decided to have KYC check of our contributors. It was funny when we addressed financial authorities with a request to review our KYC procedure and they were shocked.
You see, now the crypto world is unregulated, but we believe that the situation will change soon and when it will, a lot of companies that raised funds in ICOs will be in a lot of trouble. ICO can be described as anonymous crowdfunding when projects are funded in cryptocurrency. When companies will decide to exchange collected cryptocurrency into fiat money, governmental institutions will ask where the money came from.
If there will be no proof of where funds came from, it can be interpreted as money laundering scheme or affiliated with criminal or terrorist activities. In that case, authorities can confiscate the funds, freeze the accounts or order to return funds to contributors. Either way, it will mean the end of the project and contributors will lose all or portion of their funds.
We don’t want that to happen, so we will implement our ICO differently – we will have KYC check. It is a procedure similar to the ones held in banks – our contributors will be screened and whitelisted to contribute. It will guarantee that our contributors do not have a criminal background, prevent any money laundering activities and much more. Our goal is to make our ICO 100 percent transparent and compatible with the law.
When we addressed authorities with this idea to do transparent and properly legal ICO, they were very surprised and did not know what to do for a while. They make the rules, but they did not expect any ICO to contact them and ask for advice. A couple of weeks they were checking our safety, privacy and screening procedures only to approve it.
Editors Pick: Birdchain ICO
Birdchain – The Decentralized Instant Messaging App That Lets You Sell Your Phone’s Unused SMS
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