TRAVELING MADE EASY ON THE BLOCKCHAIN: COOL COUSIN IS THE ANSWER

donnest (63)in #blockchain • 6 years ago

Have you ever imagined or desired visiting a place you know no one or nothing about? The truth is that there are lots of really beautiful places in the world, it takes information to discover these areas of the world. But, information could be incomplete as they don’t give you all you need about that place you want to be. Traveling has a way of impacting tremendously into someone’s life. I have friends who never left their town to see other places, they are always bereft of ideas, experience and exposure.

My friends always ask me how travel has been able to change me. If I look back at who I was before I began traveling and compare that to who I am now, I would have to say that travel has made me a better and more well-rounded person. I’m way cooler now than I was, simply put; I’m a lot more awesome now than I used to be, much more exposed than I used to be, know more people than I knew before and also happier than I used to be

GENERAL BENEFITS OF TRAVELING

More social – You can never overrule the impact of travel on socialization, you are meeting new minds and people, You either get better at making friends or you end up alone, crying each night into a pillow. You learn to make friends out of strangers and get more comfortable talking to new people. When I first started traveling, I was kind of an introvert and uncomfortable talking to those I didn’t know. Now, I’ll happily talk to strangers like we’ve been best friends for years. Recently, I moved to Edo state for my National youth service corps and the level of socialization in the midst of over 5000 people is amazing Link to my new location

Better at conversation – Travel not only makes you comfortable talking to strangers, it makes you better at it too. After talking to people all the time, the same questions get boring. You start to even bore yourself. After a while, you don’t care about where people are from, where they are going, how long they’ve been traveling, and all that. Those kinds of questions don’t actually tell you anything about the person. You’ll get better at small talk and how to ask interesting questions — the ones that matter and tell you more about the person.

More adaptable – You’ve dealt with missed flights, slow buses, wrong turns, delays, bad street food, and much, much more. After a while, you learn how to adapt your plans to changing situations. You don’t get mad, you don’t get angry; you just alter what you are doing and move on. Life throws you curve balls and you hit them out of the park. Why? Because you’re awesome like that. The power of travel

More adventurous – When you become confident in your ability to do anything, you do anything. I had to start eating a whole new type of food when I traveled to Edo state such as amala and ewedu and the rest. These are foods that I can’t imagine to eat on a normal day. Traveling has made it possible for me
In fact, I think travel makes everybody a more awesome person. We end our travels way better off than when we started.
Source

CHALLENGES

1. SOCIAL MEDIA FLAW

Everyone desires to travel without stress and find value in whatever reason why they traveled. Most online websites give information about travel locations, but are not completely honest about information. They tend to hype the benefit they would get when you visit the town rather than the pleasure you will derive.

They give more than what you will get and also less than what you might get. In essence, they give a false hope and expectation. This is a major problem because travelers do not have trust in online and social media info. They don’t completely satisfy the tons of demands a traveler might want to know about a place. Hence, it is limited and unsatisfactory

2. INFORMATION GAP

One problem people experience is where to go and where to avoid. Getting information about this will go a long way in solving the challenges people experience. But there is a hope….

Check out some travel statistics

• In the past 15 years the total number of overseas visits peaked in 2007 at 31.23 million
• The lowest year for number of travelers was in 2002 when only 23.4 million visits were taken overseas
• Yearly visits have fluctuated from -7.3% to 11.9% from 2000-2015 (omitting incomplete data from 2016)
Reference

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INTRODUCING COOL COUSIN

Cool Cousin is a decentralized blockchain technology designed to connect individuals travelers with the well-informed details of their destination. Just blike the second word sounds, it is like having a ‘COUSIN’ in the desired place you want to travel to. Having a relative makes it completely easy to adapt and enjoy your travel experience

Cool Cousin removes the stress of searching for details online which could waste your time-- probably give you less than you desire. It allows users to connect with one another for the purpose of acting as travel agents. Instead of wasting precious vacation time on research about local events and places, a user can find a "Cousin" that has similar tastes as themselves and get recommendations that are fit for them.

I could summarize it as a therapy to the incessant frustrations people EXPERIENCE while trying to discover relevant information about their new desired travel location

Sounds too good to be true right? There is more to it… stay with me

Cool Cousin acts as a middle man, connecting a user to a local resident which is known as ‘COUSIN’. There are over 65 desinations currently being covered by this blockchain technology. Each cousin has a unique guide to details of their resident, so travelers could easily call on their cousins to assist them locate favorite football viewing centres, local bands, tourist centres and various others. It is simply magnificent. I am personally intrigued over this, am sure you are too

MISSION STATEMENT

Cool Cousin is on a mission to revolutionize the travel industry by connecting travelers with like-minded locals - Cousins - in every city on the planet for an unmediated exchange of personalized information and customized services. By building a global decentralized ecosystem of locals and travelers, powered by a new cryptocurrency called CUZ, Cool Cousin is establishing the grounds for a new travel agent. Our Cousins are diverse, independent agents who can monetize their hard-earned city knowledge while saving travelers a great deal of time and money before and during their trips. In time, Cool Cousin will emerge as a sustainable autonomous economy that enables users to access relevant information and a broad range of affordable commercial travel services.

HOW TO USE

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A:Choose a destination and get a local’s insider guidance
B: Browse our community of locals who we call Cousins
C: Filter by bio, age, photos, tags and preferences, and connect with Cousins who suit your taste
D:Select a Cousin and get instant access to their city guide, available online and offline as a map or list
E: Get your Cousin’s personal recommendation for the spots they love and save places from all Cousins to curate your own list
F:For personalised guidance that is customized to your needs, message your Cousin and get advice straight from a local in the know, within a few hours

AREAS COVERED BY COOL COUSIN

These are some of the areas covered by Cool cousin. Over 60 cities. This is simply wow…..

WHAT IS THERE TO BENEFIT: THE CRPTOREWARD

Most blockchain platforms have reward systems where users benefit from participating in the community. Cool cousin is not left out in this. As a matter of fact, Cool cousin has a reward system which is built on the Ethereum platform. It is an open source cryptographic token named CUZ, which is created for the exchange of travel services and unique local information.

As our unit of account and store of value, CUZ will incentivize Cousins to create content and offer services through coin exchange, while allowing all members of the community to benefit from future growth. In character, CUZ is a pure cryptocurrency of fixed supply. It is fractionally divisible and long-term non inflationary. Only a small portion of the token supply will, however, become liquid in the near future, as part of the CUZ supply is reserved for the Community Pool – a reservoir of CUZ that rewards actions within the ecosystem. Like other cryptocurrencies, units of CUZ will be expected to trade on cryptocurrency exchanges.

PARTICIPANTS IN THE COOL COUSIN COMMUNITY

COUSINS

Locals in cities around the world can create a digital profile on the Cool Cousin platform that will be accessible by travelers. Cousin profiles include information about places in the city, bios and personal preferences. Cousins can earn tokens for keeping their guides up-to-date, for editing their profiles, answering travelers’ questions, for promoting Cool Cousin, content creation, answering user questions, onboarding users and Cousins and more. Eventually, Cousins will also earn tokens for platform governance actions such as dispute resolution, content validation, approval of new Cousins, etc.

PRO-COUSINS
Cousins who wish to expand their services can function as travel agents, offering tailored services to travelers in exchange for tokens.

USERS
Travelers can get free information from Cousins on the Cool Cousin platform, or buy tokens to purchase extra layers of info and services. They can also earn tokens for different levels of implicit and explicit engagement, and become contributors.

CONTRIBUTORS
Users can become contributors who earn CUZ tokens for actions that add value to the platform, from thanking their Cousins and signing in to a spot, to contributing to the growth of the community by taking photographs for spots, flagging inaccuracies, onboarding new Cousins, changing bad photos, reviewing recommendations and promoting Cool Cousin on other platforms, such as social media.

EDITORS
Users who have made enough content contributions that have been accepted by the Community, can earn the status of Editor. Editors will validate Contributors’ content corrections in exchange for CUZ tokens. The Board of Representatives will have the final say on content-related disputes.

BOARD OF REPRESENTATIVES
Voting power in the Board will be divided between the Company and the Community, with the former given 35% and and the latter 65% of the capacity. Select Cousins—20% of the most active Cousins worldwide who have been live on Cool Cousin for at least 6 months, have been highly responsive to users and have updated their map at least 3 times—will be able to apply to join the Board of Representatives alongside members of the Company, in order to decide on matters of community standards, conflict resolution, sponsored materials, and Rewards Engine policies.

BUSINESS OWNERS
In the future, business owners, AirBnB hosts and independent vendors whose businesses have been recommended by a Cousin, will be able to manage their pages on the platform. Promoted content and special offers will be distinguished from Cousin content, and must be approved by the Community.