My Thoughts on Foodcoin

Hello Steemians,

I just finished reading the Foodcoin whitepaper. As we are all aware, the blockchain stands to revolutionize all aspects of our daily lives. The food and agriculture industry is one with which I have a fair amount of familiarity, and so I eagerly await the release of a coin/token/blockchain solution which will make my (potential) job as a food producer much easier and more profitable. Unfortunately, Foodcoin does not appear to be that solution, for the reasons I shall outline below:

First of all, and I may be wearing my heart on my sleeve here, Foodcoin appears to try very hard to ally itself with "the banks". Some quotes:

"We do not set ourselves the task to strive against the transnational corporations, and we don’t oppose globalization." (p. 3)

"The advantages of the FCE [Foodcoin Ecosystem] concept consists in the fact that our easily scalable platform does not imply confrontation with traditional financial institutions, excluding the competition with them as the cause of counteraction from their part. Instead, FCE will offer banks a cooperation and a wide range of instruments to generate new sources of income and profit channels. Banks will be offered a key role in the work of FCE [...] To date, the banks have a reliable and a proven user verification system, both for legal bodies and individuals." (p. 13)

I don't believe that I risk labeling myself a Luddite or a nationalist by asserting that I principally oppose both globalization and the global financial system. Furthermore, I think it's becoming harder and harder to keep one's head in the sand regarding the foregone conclusion that the current system is being obviated by advances in technology (thank God). My reading of this and other food and agriculture sector tokens (ripe.io, eHarvestHub) is that they are trying to appeal to the powers that be. In my opinion this is purely and simply bad business.

Second, Foodcoin is trying to provide many services, few of which appeal specifically to food producers or consumers and most of which are better provided elsewhere. I'll address these one by one:

• "database in a distributed registry" (p. 11)

This is a useful, but basic function of any blockchain which doesn't necessarily need to be decentralized.

• "own crypto currency – the Foodcoin (FdC) (FdC)"

This is going to be a big part of any similar project generating the revenue it needs to function (read: ICO), but they are making a horrible mistake by asking customers to transact using the FdC token.

• "multi-functional advanced crypto wallet – the Wallok"

I understand the need for a given token to offer a native wallet, but Wallok also offers to host fiat accounts and exchange operations (in cryptos and fiat). Why would I use this when there are so many specialized competitors out there?

• "own payment system – the DiPay (DP)"

Again, why offer a duplicate service?

• "remote user verification – the DIGID"

Now we are getting into the more useful ideas. As I will discuss below user verification is an integral aspect of digitizing the regulatory bottleneck which has throttled the very life out of small producers.

• "system for smart contracts multisign – the Smaco"

Here, Foodcoin has very nearly hit the nail on the head. But again, IoT (internet of things) has many suitors, and I can't see food production requiring completely different technology from that being developed for other sectors.

• "product authentication – the Product Origin ID (PRORID)"

And here it is that Foodcoin and I finally see eye-to-eye. Yes, this is what I and my consumers want: to ensure a quality, wholesome product without an unreasonable price increase.

Now, to reiterate: a new way to buy food is useless when cryptocurrencies in general supply a new way to buy anything. A new way to finance startups is useless when ICOs supply a new way to finance anything. (I should mention here that elsewhere in the white paper the developers discuss using traditional banks as escrow agents. Zuh?) There are a few technical fixes that are needed but there are thousands of non-food-related projects trying to solve them at the lowest cost possible, so why not use one of those?

I'm not going to provide numbers here, but if I want to get my pickles to market, the real cost isn't going to be raw material or equipment, but certification and licensing. By and large the need for certification and licensing is reasonable, as I do not wish to kill my customers. I can tell you this is because I'm a nice guy, but the more pressing reason is obviously that if I kill my customers I will have no one to buy my pickles. Even authoritarian leftists will have to concede that this constitutes a free market constraint on my business activities.

I remember when I heard of organic certification, my first thought was, "but we already have the FDA, why do we need another layer of certification?" Now, anyone who's looked into it knows that the FDA simply fails to protect consumers, but why then would I trust the word organic? Ultimately, this is why people shop at places like Whole Paycheck: not because they can tell they're paying more for higher quality food, but because they are so afraid of 'normal' food that they'll pay extra to have someone tell them that what they're buying won't kill them. Even so, in bad economic times people will look to cut costs and upscale grocery stores will fail; witness the sale of Whole Paycheck to Amazon last year.

Well, that's about enough content for what I'll likely make off this post. In closing I have to say that I'm quite a n00b in this space and if anyone wants to correct what I've said above I'd be more than grateful. I have been researching some of the other blockchain-based offerings in the food and ag industry and I'd be happy to share my findings, as well as my thoughts on the topic.

Thanks for reading! Please upvote, resteem, and comment below.

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