Can the Newton Project create a better blockchain business model than Amazon’s Jeff Bezos by fostering a decentralized e-commerce community and ecosystem?
By Ke Jack
On September 19, 2018, Jeff Bezos, the famous founder of Amazon and world wealthiest man sat down for an intrepid interview with David Rubenstein of Bloomberg. During this wide ranging and fascinating discussion, it was revealed that Mr. Bezos would be donating 2 Billion or roughly 2% of his reported 165 billion net worth to charitable causes notably geared towards education and fighting homelessness. One could quibble about the somewhat miniscule percentage of his wealth he has earmarked for charity compared to others on the top 1o rich list such as Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, but it is probably best to commend Mr. Bezos’s gesture and contemplate the good $2 billion can do for early childhood education and homelessness.
However, it is worth pondering whether the world is best served by the charity of Mr. Bezos, whose net worth is primarily due to his founding/ownership stake of Amazon, the global centralized giant of e-commerce. Interestingly, Mr. Bezos has countered those who bristle at his enormous net worth and argued that Amazon has also made others financially wealthy because he only owns 16% of Amazon stock and the fact that it is a public company, it allows others to join in the growth. Yet not every human on earth can afford the price of a share of Amazon stock currently around $2000/per share.
A strong argument could be made that if all participants in the Amazon ecosystem such as buyer, sellers and contributors are financially rewarded directly according to the level of value they provide to the platform, the wealth generated and distributed would possibly dwarf the charitable contributions of Mr. Bezos and perhaps do more for society. If only there was a way to create such an ecosystem that could efficiently account for and allocate value to contributors of the online community.
Blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt or transform current centralized platforms yet provide the same convenience and advantages of centralization but with the shared benefits of decentralization. One of the most ambitions blockchain projects that seeks to among other things decentralize the current e-commerce landscape is the Newton Project.
This project led by Xu Jizhe endeavors to provide a solution that allows ecommerce participant such as buyers and sellers of products to exchange value without the services of commercial intermediaries like Amazon, resulting in lower costs and greater sharing of rewards to the platform community members from increased utilization and network value. The Newton project which has adopted the ethos of “everyone should benefit directly from economic growth” has completed 2 rounds of token exchange and is gearing up for its third round token exchange event in October 2018. It has attracted technological luminaries such as Theodore Gray who has signed on as an adviser and the project is developing rapidly having recently launched its flagship New Chain testnet powered by Newton token (NEW).
If the Newton project accomplishes its bold vision including shared rewards for economic growth perhaps the need for charitable contributions from billionaires would be less pronounced and regular people can have more opportunity to contribute and earn financial rewards for their efforts.
Find out more about the Newton Project and its ambitious vision of changing the e-commerce landscape and how you can get involved by visiting https://www.newtonproject.org/
