Permission CEO Charles Silver and Patrick Jin of RocktreeLEX participated in a recent AMA with members of the blockchain community where they dove into some key topics about the project. Below is a transcript of the event.
Date: August 26th, 7 PM Beijing Time
Welcome Charles Silver, CEO & Founder of Permission. Could you please give us a brief introduction of yourself?
Hello Everyone. My name is Charlie Silver, CEO and founder of Permission. I am glad to be here and share our project with you. My career has been in finance and technology. I’m also the co-founder of Reality Shares, an SEC registered investment adviser with five NASDAQ and NYSE-traded ETFs, as well as co-founder of BlockForce Capital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund. Prior to founding Permission, I’ve had two very successful exits and have a deep understanding of how to build a winning team. My last company we had over 60 million users, and I sold it for over nine figures.
Welcome Patrick Jin from RockTree Capital. Please also introduce yourself.
Hello everyone, I am the project director of Shimu Capital, responsible for business development, project execution and customer relations. I have more than 17 years of professional experience in market development, business cooperation, market planning and financial services.
I am currently in charge of the promotion and operation of the Permission project in China. If you have any questions, please feel free to communicate with me.
Questions
Q 1: Permission is getting famous and the marketplace is coming online this week. Can you give us a brief introduction to permission?
Charlie Silver: Permission.io is dedicated to helping individuals be rewarded for their time and data while engaging in e-Commerce. Web 2.0’s business model is driven by tech giants who harvest and make billions from our data when we shop or search for products online.
Permission is about changing that model. We want to make sure that individuals receive value for their time and data in Web 3.0. That is why we are creating opportunities for people to share their data and earn our cryptocurrency, ASK, while engaging in eCommerce.
Q 2: Can you introduce the operation team of permission?
Charlie Silver: I have introduced myself in the beginning. On the development side, we are fortunate to have some of the best engineers in the world. Our CTO, Hunter Jensen, has over 20 years of software dev experience, including building technology for companies like Samsung, Salesforce, Cisco, Avalara and more.
Hunter brought to Permission a partnership with Helmes, a leading engineering firm in Estonia.
We now have access to more than 800 engineers, including the engineers who built the digital identity blockchain solution for Estonia, one of the most advanced blockchain countries in the world.
And, we have an incredible research and development capacity with our team of mathematicians, Phds and data scientists who have worked for the world’s top tech companies, including Microsoft, Oracle, EOG Resources and 3M.
Q 3: Can you tell us something about how shoppers actually earn and what they can do?
Patrick Jin: Shoppers earn from signing up to become Permission members on Permission.io and begin earning ASK for watching product videos, engaging with branded content, clicking on ads and shopping over 10,000+ products from name brands.
Shoppers also earn for providing profile data and referring friends.
Permission.io is like a decentralized Amazon where you can Earn and Spend crypto
Shoppers can spend their ASK on the platform and other sites that accept ASK, over 4,000 other eCommerce vendors have the opportunity to accept and use ASK through our partnership with coinpayments. Permission.io also accepts Bitcoin and Ether to purchase goods.
Soon, shoppers will be able to earn and spend ASK on other 3rd-party sites where retailers use ASK to reward their customers.
Q 4: What do you think of digital identity and what does that mean for advertising?
Charlie Silver: Digital identity is a key component of the next generation of advertising. It enables an individual’s personal data to be tied to an authenticated ID.
But, digital identity alone does not solve problems for advertisers because it does not address the problem of data silos. Currently, personal data is trapped in silos, stifling e-commerce advertising and entrenching data monopolies.
Permission has invented deep technology with 9 issued patents that enables us to access and have visibility over personal data that is currently trapped in silos and applications. We connect lots of different personal data sources like social media, email, shopping data and unify it into one wallet where you can earn from it.
The vast majority of shoppers have a complex, non-linear shopping journey. If you’re an advertiser with siloed tracking, you aren’t getting the full picture.
Our ability to connect personal data that is currently in silos allows us to influence and engage with users as they research, compare, and consider different options available to them. Retailers have access to a robust and permissioned data set that allows them to pick up on real-time signals of intent.
Q 5: How does Permission scale?
Charlie Silver: Our consensus mechanism is Proof of Authority, we’re a fork of Ethereum and operate our proprietary blockchain.
The combination of operating our own Permission.io blockchain and deep-tech IP, means we don’t pay transaction costs, can operate efficiently and have the capacity as we scale into the millions to serve permissioned advertising that shoppers want to see.
Q 6: How does Permission attract new users and retain them?
Patrick Jin: We are starting from a strong position with over 350,000 users already accumulated and the approach is to heavily incentivize signups and referrals and demonstrate how shoppers can be rewarded with ASK for their ongoing sharing of data along the buying journey on Permission.io. Apply strong network effects and audience mobilization.
We will expand by releasing a series of plugins for major eCommerce platforms, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, etc. that will allow users to earn from shopping on potentially more than five million independent eCommerce retailers.
The ability of users to earn ASK on other eCommerce sites allows user scale to achieve exponential growth, creating a powerful network effect. The more users, the more advertisers, the more demand and retention for ASK.
Q 7: What is the vision of permission?
Charlie Silver: Permission’s vision is to make ASK a primary advertising option for eCommerce retailers. Retailers that deploy our plugin and use ASK to engage customers will drive conversions and increase sales.
Users’ personal data wallet, enriched daily with data from our browser plugin and ASK rewards funded by its use by advertisers create compounding network effects, it attracts more users who want to be rewarded by more advertisers who see the increase in ROI when you ASK Permission.
We’re investing heavily in marketing ASK globally in the US, Europe, Korea, China, and Indonesia initially and will push awareness and adoption of ASK to become a global crypto ad-rewards program working and thriving outside of the Permission Platform.
Q 8: Are there any challenges and opportunities in the implementation of permission?
Charlie Silver: Yes, the opportunities are enormous. We have the opportunity to massively scale a simple-to-use crypto that allows people to monetize their time and data while shopping online. We think about the permission economy and having ASK permission as a vehicle to support this new form of win-win advertising model.
We also have an opportunity to enable permission advertising for eCommerce and give advertisers a significantly improved return on their ad spend.
Advertisers are currently restricted by ad blockers, bots, data silos and data usage regulations.
We can solve these problems by making it easier for advertisers to engage customers by incentivizing them to interact with their ads. We can help them drive conversions and build loyalty by delivering superior datasets based on permissioned information that advertisers can reach in a highly targeted way.
Our biggest challenge is demystifying cryptocurrency and making sure it is so simple and delightful to use that it will go mainstream to be adopted by advertisers and Ad agencies all around the world. They want a solution just like ours, have been crying out for it for years now we need to show them all the benefits that blockchain and ASK can deliver to them and the brands they manage.
We are lucky enough to know some of the major players in the US Advertising industry and have a signed letter of intent with a global advertising agency that controls 100’s of million of dollars in Advertising budget spend a year, who can’t wait to start trying campaigns soon.
Q 9: How can users get ASK tokens? What makes up the value of ASK?
Patrick Jin: Users can earn ASK tokens while doing things they normally do online, watching videos, shopping, learning about brands, products and content as well as other activities.
It starts with individuals, then grows with merchant advertisers; the larger the audience, the more demand for ASK to reach that audience.
And it all starts with a simple email sign-up.
The statements made here represent a high-level plan based on assumptions and estimates and are subject to change, without prior written notice or explanation. This publication contains forward-looking statements, which, by their nature, are subject to significant risks and uncertainties.