Universal Reward Protocol (URP) announced that it has appointed ConsenSys France as technical advisor for the design and development of the blockchain layers of its protocol. ConsenSys is a venture production studio building decentralized applications and tools for the blockchain ecosystem.
Universal Reward Protocol has just released its Technical White Paper, written with input from ConsenSys. The paper focuses on the blockchain components of the URP protocol, and how it intends to leverage the current state of the technology to build the product, detailing the use of a sidechain pegged to the Ethereum mainnet. The paper outlines the technical solutions envisioned to make the protocol scalable to millions of daily transactions, to back the URP tokens with an array of redeemable offers, and to protect the privacy of consumers.
URP is creating a protocol for shoppers and retailers to interact in real-time, and on a personalized basis. The URP technology will allow retailers to reward consumers for any type of shopping behavior, online and offline, and for sharing the corresponding shopping data. Retailers can use the collected ‘Proof-of-Behaviour’ data to offer deals tailored to each specific individual shopper’s activity. The URP solution will provide shoppers complete control over the use and sharing of the data, using blockchain to store all opt-ins (and opt-outs) to each individual reward campaign. Shoppers earn URP tokens by fulfilling the behavior described in the campaign, and agreeing to share their data. They can then redeem these tokens through personalized offers from a retailer of their choice.
“We are pleased to be working as technical advisor to the Universal Reward Protocol team, and excited by the possibilities offered by the use of a hybrid main chain/side chain design to achieve application scalability in real life. Members of the ConsenSys Paris team will advise the URP development team in the coming months, in order to optimize this innovative blockchain application design.”
URP was spun out from a research project at UC Berkeley and Ecole Polytechnique in 2015, the founders behind the Universal Reward Protocol started building an end-to-end technology solution allowing brick and mortar retailers to identify and analyze each visitor’s path and to interact with them before, during and after their shopping experience. This solution, called Occi, is now live across more than 100,000 m2 of retail space in France, including stores of leading retailers such as Galeries Lafayette, Auchan, and Carrefour. Occi will operate as the first decentralized app (dApp) on the Universal Rewards Protocol platform.
“ConsenSys is the best technical advisor you can get in the Ethereum ecosystem. This appointment will enable us to architect a solid protocol backed by the best experts of the Ethereum community.”
