SOMA — Using decentralized blockchain technology to improve socialization on the Online Market Platform

This article will start by giving the meaning of the term ‘Market’. According to Investopedia, a market is a medium that allows buyers and sellers of a specific good or service to interact in order to facilitate an exchange. This type of market may either be a physical marketplace where people come together to exchange goods and services in person, as in a bazaar or shopping center, or a virtual market wherein buyers and sellers do not interact, as in an online market.

There are so many differences between the Physical market and the Virtual market. Let us take a look at some of these differences.

Personal interaction: The main difference between the two selling formats. In the physical market, the buyer and seller usually talk prior to the transaction while the other is very impersonal i.e purchases often occur without a direct conversation.
Target search: This method of searching is very common in the Online market as buyers go straight to the items they need. However, in the traditional market buyers have to browse from one shop to another until they get to the shop that has what they need.
Privacy: On the Online marketspace secrecy of personal infomation of both buyers and sellers is high. While in the traditional market the peronality of buyers and sellers are plain and open.

If we take a closer look at these differences, The Online marketspace has a very big issue with human interaction. The online marketspace allows people to interaction with electronic gadgets and the internet rather than with humans which is basic need of every person. Little wonder why the quality of friendship nowadays is very poor.

These two very different markets however share a very prominent similarity which is the issue of centralization. The prices of goods in these markets are usually controlled by a particular set of people which includes the middle men, custom officers, government policies and interest groups.

SOMA therefore came into existence to tackle these issues and bring viable lifetime solutions. Soma tackles the problem of socialization on the online marketspace and the problem of centralization of the market.

What is Soma?

Soma stands for Social Market. It is a revolutionary decentralized platform which facilitates trade inside the Soma Community through a rewarding system that enables beneficial collaboration of the community members. Users are encouraged to engage in actions that will benefit other members and the community as a whole by rewarding such actions with Soma Community (SCT), a cryptocurrency designed to incentivize the members of the decentralized community to perform value-adding services and act as a fast, secure and cost-effective way of compensation.

Soma Platform

This is the application on which all Soma transactions happen. It runs on both iOS and Android operating system.

Features of the Soma Platform

Interactive Item Card (IIC): Every transaction that happens inside the SOMA™ platform will not only change the ownership of the physical item but also the corresponding ownership of the Interactive Item Card (IIC). IIC is a digital representation of the physical item. It includes information about the ownership data, the condition of the physical item, the genuineness of the item and the price history. Most importantly, the IIC will accumulate social value inside the Soma Community through different social interactions from the users, which may be reflected in the value of the physical item.
Social Contributions: Within the Soma community, trading can be done in a fun way by utilizing the concepts known from the traditional social media platforms. The community members can interact with each other socially by liking, following or sharing the relevant content. The social interactions will increase the social capital of the digital content, which can be monetized by the Soma Community Token.
Peer to Peer (P2P) Marketing: The decentralized platform incentivizes the community members to provide aid to the other members of the community in various ways. The P2P marketing enables users to gain Soma Community Tokens by promoting the items that are listed for sale on the platform, facilitating the organic expansion of the Community and popularity of the Soma Community Token.
Secured Payments: Payments inside the Soma Community are delivered securely. The Soma Rewarding System enhances the security of the transactions by providing an incentive for a community member to act as a trusted escrow agent in a transaction. The escrow agent is compensated after a successful transaction in Soma Community Tokens.

Technology Behind SOMA a cryptocurrency running on the Ethereum Blockchain.

Transactions will run on the Ethereum blockchain. The web platform will be compatible with Metamask and Myst browser, making it easier to bridge non-crypto users to our platform for the first time. Our front end is hosted on AWS CloudFront in multi geo locations, which scales automatically to handle any load of users.

What Makes Soma better?

One of the biggest differences between Soma and traditional C2C marketplaces is that it will be run on a decentralised blockchain with its own token.

This will enable to use the SCT tokens in ways which help to grow the platform and as a way of making purchases and receiving payments. Users will be rewarded for contributing back to the Soma marketplace.

Social actions like sharing and liking will be incentivised with SCT tokens. The more active are socially within Soma the more SCT tokens they will be able to earn.

This will in turn create a social aspect to conducting business on the Soma platform. Users will be able to recommend specific products for sale to their own audiences. Soma users can reward those who do so by providing commissions using SCT tokens.

Interactive Item Cards

But perhaps even more interesting than the SCT tokens is an innovative feature called Interactive Item Cards.

Every product that is sold within the Soma platform will be assigned an Interactive Item Card. This Interactive Item Card keeps a unique record of that particular product.

This will include everything that someone might want to know about an item before choosing to purchase it. Like it’s ownership history or how much it sold for last time or how the quality of the product is rated. Factor like its authenticity will also be included.

Because all of this information will be recorded on the blockchain it won’t be possible to be changed by buyers and sellers. This means that when someone is buying a product they won’t have to just trust that it lives up to the seller’s sales pitch. They will be able to check it for themselves easily.

This is something that is not on offer at any other C2C Marketplace. It’s possible because Soma is run on the blockchain

Below is the response to an Interview Between Jukka, Co-Founder of Soma Project, and Michael Gord, CEO of MLG Blockchain Consulting when asked this question ‘What are the differentiating factors for Soma and your token in comparison to your competitors? Why is this technology revolutionary?’

When compared to traditional platforms, there are many differentiating factors from the Soma project. Firstly, Soma will implement well-recognized concepts from the traditional social media platforms, such as liking, sharing and commenting. We see that users are shifting currently to localized facebook groups since the old platforms do not facilitate social interaction in any manner. Thus, Soma will be initially designed to support social behavior together with the smooth trading experience. (In contrast to Facebook, which has been initially designed as a social media, not a trading platform).

Secondly, Soma will have a concept of IIC, which in its designed form is a new and unique way to store crucial information and monetize social capital. IIC is a patent-pending innovation and as we conducted a preliminary novelty research, authorities did not find any obstacle for the patent application to proceed.

Thirdly, SCT will ensure that Soma as a platform is designed to support the crypto currencies from the beginning, thus responding to the inevitable shift from the traditional payment systems to a decentralized payment facilitation.

In addition to above-mentioned issues, Soma will provide a better user experience comprehensively by ensuring that item adding, negotiation, chatting and all the necessary core functions of a trading platform can be done smoothly.

Our Plan

Considering the aim of Soma, It would be impossible to work without a detailed step by step plans intended to take till the completion of the project. Thus the need for our Roadmap.

Soma ICO

Type — Ethereum20

Max Supply — 60,000,000 SCT

Required limit — 54,000,000 SCT

Value — 1 ETH = 450 SCT

Maximum ICO cap — 120,000 ETH

4,500,000 SCT available for presale.

Maximum Raise 8,000 ETH in presale.

The last 6,000,000 SCT units will be used for growth, such as marketing, rewarding active community members, and incentivize the founding team. Note that the pre sale bonuses are paid out of this (6,000,000 SCT) fund. Funds are managed by Soma.