Distribution of Mobile Apps Using Ethereum Blockchain

If you live in North America or Western Europe, you may believe that almost everybody in the world has and uses a smartphone. However, according to latest reports, the number of smartphone users has reached an incredible number: 2.1 billion (at the end of 2016). In 2014, this number was much lower - only 1.5 billion users. Trends predict an increase in these numbers - by 2020, there could be almost 3 billion smartphone user. Currently, South Korea leads the way with 88% of its population owning a smartphone; it is followed by Israel, with 74% and US with 72%.

You may ask yourself: since when did smartphones become so popular and how come they have become so indispensable? Although smartphones have been launched in the 2000’s, other events marked the way - the launch of Apple’s App Store in July 2008 (during the peak time of iPhone 3G; a month later, in August, Google also developed its own mobile application store, called Android Market. And since then, many other app’s marketplaces have been created. So, the intenet connection (improvements of data connections and speeds), the numerous apps and other technical features have made smartphones essential in today’s lifestyle.

Unfortunately, even today, despite all technical improvements, checks, protocols and security updates, malware is still a problem; moreover, app purchases are inaccessible to most of the users; advertising inside these platforms is hampered by too many intermediaries or strict conditions.

In order to address this issues, a new, open and distributed protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain was designed. Called App Coins Network, this innovative platform tries to put together app store technology and blockchain technology - in doing so, its main vision is to improve aspects such as app advertising, in-app billing and app-approval. More than this, its desire it to sped up through disintermediation and redistributing the unlocked value to end users and developers.

In order to create ads for the new apps added here, developers will be able to use “AppCoin” - an ERC 20 token. The coins are utilised for the acquisition of apps (in-app purchase) - all sorts of apps and games - this generates the return of investment to the developers. From every advertising investment inside the app store, 85% goes to the user. The implementation of the Blockchain guarantees against repudiation, fake identity or double attribution.

In the same time, the Advertising and IAB (Internet Architecture Board) transactions are used to establish the reputation of the developer - by doing so, developers are ranked as Trusted, Unknown or Critical.

Thus, App Coins manages to address the exact issues that we stated at the beginning of the article (concerning current app markets):

• In-app Purchases - available for users through App Coins acquired with fiat currency or earned through advertising
• App Approval - quicker and safer
• Advertising - with the use of Blockchain, a new standard for advertising has been created.

Find out more about App Coins by visiting https://appcoins.io/ and prepare to join the presale. Here you can discover answers for most of the questions you may have and download the latest version of the App Coins white paper.

App Coins is supported by the Aptoide App Store, with 200 million active users and 4 billion apps downloads.

You can also participate into Bitcointalk Discussion and stay updated about the project.

AppCoins Protocol from AppCoins on Vimeo.