BEETOKEN ICO REVIEW – DECENTRALIZED HOME-SHARING NETWORK

Summary
Project name: Bee Token
Token symbol: BEE
Website: https://www.beetoken.com/
White paper: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/beenest-public/whitepaper/bee_whitepaper_v3.pdf
Hard cap: $15 million for 30% of total supply (including $5 million hard cap of public presale)
Conversion rate: 1 BEE = $0.14
Maximum market cap at ICO on a fully diluted basis: $50 million
Bonus structure: 60-100% for advisors, friends and family private presale; 30% and 40% (for strategic investor) for regular presale
Presale or white list: Presale starts January 2, 2018 (accredited investors only with minimum purchase amount of 50 ether, register here). There will be white list for ICO.
ERC-20 Token: Yes
Countries excluded: USA, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong (accredited investors are permitted from these regions)
Timeline: Public presale starting from January 2, 2018 / crowdsale beginning on January 31, 2018 (please refer to Bee Token’s website for the most up-to-date information)
Token distribution date: 1-2 weeks after ICO concludes; bonus tokens are locked for one month.

Project Overview
What does the company/project do?
Bee Token’s protocol aims to eliminate the middleman in the home-sharing market, and allow short-term home renters and tenants to directly transact with each other on the Beenest Platform.

Hosts and guests both benefit from the lower commission charge on all transactions on the Beenest Platform compared to other websites like AirBNB and VRBO.

Beenest also has protocols in place for resolving disputes, as well as managing reputation scores for users on their platform.

This diagram explains the Beenest platform in a nutshell:

The below are Beenest’s core protocols:

Payment

Hosts and guests both send their tokens to a payment smart-contract, which sends the tokens to the appropriate address on the check-out date when no conflicts arise.

Hosts are required to send tokens as well as a cancellation fee, so that if a host were to cancel their listing the day before the booking, the host is penalized. This platform is different than most other platforms that only punish guests who cancel their reservation.

Arbitration

In the case of a dispute, the payment contract sends the funds to arbitration. BEE token holders are able to stake their tokens in order to vote on the dispute. Arbiters are selected randomly from a pool and are penalized only if they do not make a decision within the time limit.

Reputation

Beenest will have a reputation score associated with addresses/accounts on the Ethereum blockchain, which will be calculated from an average of multiple reputation scores including their score as a host, guest, arbiter, etc.

The Beenest protocols, especially the reputation one, is not limited to being used by the Beenest platform. Users of the platform will have a score tied to their Ethereum address, which allows other dApps on the Beenest platform to piggyback off of an established reputation scoring system.

How advanced is the project?
Beenest is scheduled to launch its Alpha on the Ethereum testnet by January 2018 before the crowdsale. Below is a screenshot of the Alpha:

The project has been announcing numerous partnerships with various companies that would synergize with their product, including:

Request Network, which will provide the component for customers to request payments from renters.
Rentivo, which will provide the visibility within the travel/tourism industry and inventory while incorporating BEE token in its platform.
Connext, which will help Beenest to take payments with credit card.
Origin, which is a protocol for creating sharing economy marketplaces using IPFS.
Here is a summary of their roadmap:

Q4 2017

Private Alpha on Testnet
Q1 - 2 2018

Beenest Alpha live in San Francisco where they will be partnering with current super hosts on other platforms to try out Beenest
Launch Bee Protocols on Testnet
Q3 - 4 2018

Launch Bee Protocols on Mainnet
Launch iOS and Android Apps
Onboard 2-5 dApps on Bee Protocol
2019

Expand to up to 5 US Cities
Onboard 5 – 10 dApps on Bee Protocol
2020 and beyond

Target key cities worldwide including London, Seoul, and Singapore
Bee Protocols become the gold standard of sharing protocols
What are the tokens used for and how can token value appreciate?
BEE tokens will be used to make transactions on the Beenest platform with 0% commissions as opposed to a 1% commission for BTC, ETH and other ERC20 tokens, and 3.99% for fiat.

BEE can also be staked in order to be selected as an arbiter in Beenest’s arbitration protocol. The more BEE tokens a user has staked, the greater the likelihood of being selected as an arbiter and being paid a flat rate of BEE token per dispute the user votes on.

With 0% commissions on transactions paid in BEE as opposed to 3.99% using fiat, users are heavily incentivized to use BEE tokens on the platform. BEE token holders who want to take part of being an arbiter also need to stake their BEE tokens, thus reducing the transaction velocity of the token.

The utility value of BEE tokens should appreciate as more users begin using Beenest in order to find a short-term home rental.