Hey Mom! ASTRA removes your handcuffs!

Blockchain for Today’s Social Sellers

Whether you’re an avid follower or a first time visitor to Gemstra’s Medium page, I would like to call attention to the powerful industry that is social selling. In the US alone, Social Selling is already a $35 billion dollar market ($180b worldwide) with foreseeable growth of 7–10% every year. Despite this upward trend, the social selling or direct selling marketplace does not come without its own challenges. The social selling landscape is littered with monolithic giants due to high barriers to entry. New merchants are stifled from joining the industry, enticing a market constricted to a select few. Consequently, each merchant holds their sellers captive by making it difficult, if not impossible, to transfer customer data, transaction data, and genealogy (network) data. Sellers risk losing income they worked hard to earn should they seek mobility. One may ask, why would anyone want to enter this space? Well folks, the answer may be Gemstra’s ambitious exploration into blockchain technology, more specifically, ASTRA.

Why ASTRA?

So what is ASTRA? The origin of ASTRA can be traced back to Gemstra’s platform, BOUTIQUES. BOUTIQUES is a proof-of-concept social selling marketplace that gives sellers the ability to choose brands and products they want to sell. Remember those pain points I described regarding seller immobility? Well, the BOUTIQUES concept was one step ahead of the competition, granting sellers a myriad of options to build their direct selling business. BOUTIQUES attracted 3000 sellers and 8 brands generating 7-figure annualized merchandise sales within 9 months. The BOUTIQUES success story proved retail brands favor social selling while sellers desire freedom. Gemstra’s goal is to not just improve the system, but rather, deliver a complete overhaul of the unfair marketplace that exists today. The technological innovations of blockchain has made this paradigm shift a possibility for the first time in social selling history. ASTRA is the tool, a blockchain integrated solution for social selling, that opens the industry to the retail economy. This smart contract platform serves as cornerstone for the Gemstra ecosystem. ASTRA enables:

. Sellers to keep customer and network data they generated. Sellers control their private keys on the Ethereum blockchain
thanks to ASTRA smart contracts enabling sellers to access any merchant they please while controlling their hard earned sales communities

. Merchant barriers to entry wash away. The ASTRA platform unlocks the merchant social selling infrastructure for any business that has built a brand based on thoughtful product creation. Merchants are able to host transactions between multiple brands and sellers.

. Brands to get more exposure as their products can be listed across multiple new merchants. Brands control the settlement economics of each transaction via smart contract and may offer customized commissions and rewards as well as a portable catalog to be integrated with any variety of merchants.

. Customers access to more options and deals on a wide range of products available to their friends and family actively social selling.

ASTRA promotes fair behavior and creates a trustless ecosystem for all actors in the social selling model. ASTRA is tokenized with the GMS token (ERC 20 token), the default utility token. The natural benefit of GMS tokens are a reduction in friction for each social selling transaction. GMS is the default method of commission payment to sellers and can be used to purchase products at any merchant. More importantly, GMS powers a gamification system that can be customized by brands and merchants for sellers. Gamification is a subject that I will cover exhaustively in a later article. The GMS token serves as a well-engineered vehicle in ASTRA’s ecosystem by allowing its users to:

. Purchase products across the ASTRA platform

. Withdraw GMS tokens paid out as commissions directly into their wallets

. Exchange GMS tokens on the open market

. Pay fees to actors in the economy

So if ASTRA is the tool in fixing the broken system of social selling, is Gemstra the mechanic? I asked the team how would they define their part in the social selling marketplace. Their answer… “We are both merchant and technologist, we are not just working on a platform or a protocol or another blockchain, but rather, a transition of power away from the few and towards the many” (Jay Cheng, CEO). The team is on track to be the first commerce-focused crypto with real, impactful utility. Are you ready for the journey?