ICO Spotlight | Birdchain - Monetize Your Unused SMS Messages And Fix The A2P Market

I know that I’m the owner of at least one of the 56+ trillion SMS messages that have been sent this year (43+ trillion were went in 2016). However, what I didn’t know, is that there is a growing 63 billion application-to-person (A2P) SMS service industry. The A2P SMS service industry uses SMS messaging to communicate transactional and/or promotional information. A two-factor authentication (2FA) message is an example of a transactional message and "We are having a grand opening widget sale at Widget Warehouse!" is a promotional message.

As more people communicate through instant messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Viber, or WhatApp, you would think that the SMS industry would be on a decline. Nothing could be further from the truth. The A2P SMS market is estimated to hit 84 billion in revenue by 2024.

However, no market is perfect. The A2P SMS market has several flaws and inefficiencies that prevent it from growing faster. Here are some of the main reasons:

• The market is controlled by a few key global players. Those players have tremendous power and leverage to influence SMS prices around the world.

• Due to the rising SMS prices, SMS aggregators are forced to use other aggregators to be profitable. This leads to lower quality service as message delivery slows and may not even get delivered.

• Slow SMS delivery speed.

• Too many corporate middle-men.

• Lack of transparency.

• Few innovations.

In the end (and due to the reasons above), the market is distorted and overly complex than it is has to be.

The diagram below is an example of how complex the current market is structured.

The idea of Birdchain was born out of the need to search for solutions to fix A2P SMS market flaws.

Birdchain belongs to Vertex. Vertex is a well-established A2P business with approximately 10 years market experience. Vertex owns several other businesses companies and operates an A2P SMS aggregation business named VertexSMS.

SMS MESSAGING BUSINESS VALUE WILL SUSTAIN MARKET GROWTH

You might wonder why SMS is growing when messaging apps are now the preferred method to communicate between each other. Once you read the reasons you will understand that SMS messaging has a ton of value.

1. SMS an effective and cheap way to reach customers. 98% of people read a SMS message within three (3) minutes from receiving one.

2. SMS has a ton of technological advantages. It is network/platform/geographically/app- independent (as well as non-proprietary) and much of the population carries a mobile device.

3. Increased use of two-factor authentication (2FA) and security via SMS. 2FA also has a stunning 99.9% reachability rate across mobile users. A person doesn’t have to have an internet connection, just on a mobile network.

4. No complicated set-up; no need to install anything. SMS messages can be received and read on any mobile phone in any network without a need for an app, anywhere in the world.

In sum, the reach, technological advantages, efficiencies, and ability to protect private information through 2FA make SMS messaging an attractive service.

THE BIRDCHAIN SOLUTION

Birdchain realizes that blockchain technology offers a unique opportunity to change the A2P market rules by identifying two key problems:

1. People have unlimited SMS plans which they do not use; and
2. Companies overpay for the A2P SMS service and are constantly looking for opportunities to decrease the price.

To resolve the above issues, Birdchain will create a messaging app that will allow people to sell their unused messages to businesses. Birdchain will use blockchain technology to establish smart contracts between the people that sell their messages and the businesses. Once the delivery of the message is confirmed, the contract is fulfilled and the reward (the winning auction bid that a business paid for the messages) is equally distributed among the app user messages that were used to deliver the message.

BIRDCHAIN MANDATE

Birdchain has stressed that they will not collect a customer’s personal data, use customer contact lists to send messages, or provide customer phone numbers to companies. Birdchain will only facilitate the service. Lastly, Birdchain will not allow the service price to exceed 80 percent of the country’s average.

SWOT

ICO DISTRIBUTION DETAILS

TOKEN: BIRD

CIRCULATION: 4,614,750,000 at ICO

TOTAL CIRCULATION: 9,402,750,000

TOKEN TYPE: ERC 20

ACCEPTED CURRENCY: ETH (max 2000/min 0.1)

BIRD TOKEN DISTRIBUTION

ROADMAP

DATE	MILESTONE
11/2017-12/2017	ICO
01/2018-06/2018	Alpha Development and release to community members only (hint: subscribe to their mailing list)
07/2018-02/2019	Business Development & Messaging App Tweaking
02/2019	Official Launch at Mobile World Congress! Birdchain opens to the public.
03/2019	Birdchain App Upgrade Phase. Birdchain will prioritize and implement upgrades such as video ads/streaming/persona data marketplace/purchasing content/design market/unifying messengers/personalized ads. For more info see pg. 35 in Birdchain's Whitepaper (see reference links section)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Sign me up Birdchain! You can have all my SMS messages if it means I can earn a little extra cash on the side.

While Birdchain does NOT guarantee revenue for the Birdchain holder, or Birdchain app user (they have to say this), a person might be able to make 30-300 USD per month by their estimates (Birdchain estimates a person in the US market can make 30-100 USD). Just how much a person can make will depend on the country and market, but even a few extra dollars for something that I don't fully use seems like a good deal to me.

Birdchain wins when more people sign up for their service as businesses that want to execute marketing campaigns will flock to a service that can offer a wide range of possible auctions. In other words, how big of an auction Birdchain can offer will largely be determined by how many users sign up. A larger set should also mean stopping the rising SMS costs - something that only helps the key players but not the other actors in the market.

Birdchain doesn't just have SMS on their mind. They have a vision that their service could become a viable source for universal basic income by offering different methods to earn revenue through their app. This will be an opt-in basis. In other words, a person will be in control of how much of their data they want to expose.

As i've said in some of my other posts, we are are walking data goldmines, but we don't usually don't have the means or control to let businesses tap into the data we generate on a daily basis. We give our data away in exchange to use online services (read your terms of agreements). However, those services don't let us control how much we want them to use. It's all or don't use their service.

I don't know how much a person will ultimately make on Birdchain, but they seem to be onto something that a lot of people would be interested in. I hope you consider supporting their service as I have.

REFERENCE LINKS

Birdchain Website
Whitepaper
FAQ

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