Today Africa is dived in 54 countries. This division and country alligment happened 135 years ago with The Berlin Conference. This conference was called to settle how Europe would claim colonial land in Africa and to avoid a war among European nations over African territory. All the major European States were invited to the conference. No African natives were invited, meaning we (Europeans) divided a continent, separating, mixing different tribes and cultures, took over resources (and lives) and still reflect on a lot of the conflicts and problems Africa as a continent faces today. Actually, when looking up Berlin Conference, there are a lot of discussions about European powers and its disputing resources in Africa, rather than the impact it has created on its native people, like it’s a forgotten subject.

Thus, Africans were either killed, forced to move, migrate and a lot of them became part of the slave trade as we all know. Today, millions of Africans still lack resources, die of hunger and are still forced to migrate to survive. As a consequence, Africans around the world have become part of diaspora development, although there aren’t enough studies touching upon Africa and its Diaspora. I understand part of it is because of the complexity of the subject, and when we think diaspora, we often associate a country of origen. The division and effects of the Berlin Conference, and divition of families due to slave trade have an impact of lack of identity of African descendants today and even with DNA tests, the results are not transparent.

This more than anything has been haunting my mind lately. The disparity and misery of an undeveloped continent and people was caused by the western world and now not only it is our duty to understand this, but it also is important to re-write history and help Africa rise into the place it should have never left.

Studying the economic aspects of transnationalism, particularly transnational entrepreneurship, in diaspora communities has always been my interest. Transnational economic studies consist of types of trade and investment that have developed under the frame of transnational ethnic businesses; the ties of Diaspora business owners to the ethnic market, and, alternatively, the expansion of businesses beyond the diaspora/ethnic group.
(Source: http://portuguese-diaspora-studies.com/index.php/ijpds/article/view/20)

Migrants and diaspora groups are an important channels for transferring technology from destination countries back to origin countries.

We know that three sources of this direct transnational transfer can be through knowledge, remittances that are sent home, investments they make in origin counties and support they provide for enterprise development.

Working for the Mobile industry for the past decade, completes the importance of technology in transnational Diaspora, particularly through the digital connectivity offered by mobile phones and all the transactions we are able to do with them affecting all aspects of migration, giving access to information, facilitating remittances, and helping the connection between host and home countries.

Diving right in where my focus has been the last few years (Economic and Diaspora studies and Blockchain technology) and where it will be in the future:

1. African Diaspora and and new digital technologies in the emerging transnational space.
2. Blockchain technology as a facilitator to business transactions and features affecting the business output of companies and stakeholders
3. Social impact through technology and helping Africa rise through its Social, Private, Public sectors.

There are 2 major events that will influence how blockchain technology that could directly impact and empower Africa’s economy in the next 10 years:

There are 2 major events that will influence how blockchain technology that could directly impact and empower Africa’s economy in the next 10 years:

1. African Continent stepping into a free trade zone in 2020

Signing of Afcta (African Continental Free Trade Area) taking effect in July 2020, with the goal of exchanging goods with minimal tariffs and non-tarriff barriers. Afcta will become the largest free trade area since the creation of the World Trade Organization. 28 countries have signed the pact, which makes it a legally binding document. Africa is a $3.4 Trillion market, and with its population hitting 2.5 Billion by 2050, its trade will increase by 50%.
(Source: https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/2019-the-year-of-borderless-Africa-take-off/2560-5400384-q0sdrqz/index.html)

2. United Nations endorse Blockchain and AI technology for a more sustainable world:

The United Nations have triggered the use of blockchain technology and AI technologies to help solve the UN sustainable development projects. Decentralization and the fact that crypto is autonomous from governments could play a major role in the UN and the African community — as blockchain is ruled by users. Major projects that blockchain is playing will play major part, is in sending foreign aid (already excepting BTC and ETH) and identifying refugees. (Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blockchain-is-triggering-a-wake-up-call-at-the-united-nations-300810049.html)

The idea behind this investment is empowerment and sharing of resources, and António Gueterres (UN Secretary General) presented the United Nations budget, confirming a $2.87 billion set aside for 2020 plus additional $3.3 million, about a 10 percent increase over last year, for the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and other technical projects that required inter-agency cooperation (blockchain being one). (Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/12/28/secretary-general-says-united-nations-must-embrace-blockchain/#3625895b1379)

In official UN Documents — 10 Year plan, on UN’s strategy on New Technologies (2030) major goals are fostering inclusion and transparency and work in partnership (knowledge and ideas). Also in the UN CDP report for 2030 one of the major motivations are “leaving no one behind” — building technological platforms and frameworks that promote equality and inclusion and not the contrary. (Source: https://www.un.org/en/newtechnologies/images/pdf/SGs-Strategy-on-New-Technologies.pdf https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2754713_July_PM_2._Leaving_no_one_behind_Summary_from_UN_Committee_for_Development_Policy.pdf)

Blockchain has all the resources to be the chosen technology to empower Africa, specifically because it is a software protocol that facilitates secure transfer of money, assets, and information via the internet, without the need for third party intermediation. Bypassing these centralized intermediaries, a blockchain thus transmits and manages data through a consensus among a distributed network of users. In theory, it is trustless because it eliminates the need to know and trust human and institutional counter-parties.

Thus, Blockchain technology is a facilitator to transactions among people and businesses (even the unbanked) and features affecting the business output of companies through:

- Transparency in the transactions (registered in the ledger)
- Wallet to wallet transactions cutting off all intermediaries
- The offer of real-time (or almost real-time) payments to suppliers — in payments this is important, suppliers usually have to wait 30 to 60 days to be reimbursed by centralized billing systems.
- Higher revenue streams, and revenue share
Incentives for users — user adoption and community

Important challenges to tackle: Mobile phones have been a key enabler for payments, accounts and enhanced consumer information, but we all know that the great challenge is its penetration rates in Africa. Some of the most recent mobile usage statistics from 2019 looking at West Africa specifically, found that across the region there is an 86% SIM connection penetration rate, and that mobile internet has only a 26% penetration rate. This means that feature phones are still dominant throughout the continent and that leaves us developing technology to explore working with aggregators to form a way in which the message/transfer could be delivered throughout a feature phone, with all security. (Source: https://www.geopoll.com/blog/mobile-phone-penetration-africa/)

As an example, Cardano blockchain protocol explores this and replicates the cash money experience offline, with a blockchain backend by creating a hierarchy where the small percentage of people with internet micro banks and then they can manage the issuance of these “tokens” to people and then their local phones or infrastructure can verify.
(Source: https://nairametrics.com/2020/05/23/cardano-to-give-crypto-a-cash-like-experience-without-internet-access/)

Not forgetting that smartphone usage and mobile internet penetration is expected to grow even more quickly than overall mobile usage in the next few years, and it is predicted that by 2025 mobile internet will have a 40% penetration rate in West Africa. However we tend to focus on future goals, global problems, but the essential right now is that Africans need access to basic resources and we need to create the means for it with what exists.

Diaspora and special movements, and even investors are playing a significant role in this development and the inter-networking between the Continent and communities is truly important. We will see a rise in numerous projects empowering Africa specially in the sectors of crossboarder payments (Wala, Tari, BitPesa, SureRemit, NairEX); energy (sun exchange); tracing assets (Bitaland, Chapapesa, Tracr); Agriculture (Fairfood, Agrikore, Hello Tractor)… and many more. Some are successful but my hypothesis is still that most don’t have the right product-market-fit. Companies need to explore both online and offline features (USSD) in order to influence the market as a whole especially when right now the major user base is still using feature phones and that is our direct access.

How many of you set super high expectations for 2020? I did, but I set them for any year, to be honest. For all of you who know me, know that I am a long-term planner. I set career goals for most part, but this year, I wanted to focus on my personal plans (the plans that always get shoved aside).

When I finally got ready to focus on what really made me happy and on myself, Covid-19 hit and my universe was cut into little pieces in a matter of two weeks, maybe even less. Quickly I had to come terms with the fact that all the plans I had for the rest of the year were going to be set “on hold” because anything “long term” became unknown. Had to adapt to work full time at home, I can’t see my friends and family, still can´t go out, but what is most difficult is blocking of the plans to travel, work on my ongoing projects, some that are abroad, seeing the ones I love, or places that I’ve been dreaming about visiting for decades. Although I feel worried and sad, I still wake up every morning, I continue to have my job and my family and I are healthy (up to this date).

The challenge for me is being forced to shift to a short term planning mindset.

Together with my full time job, I put in workout plans at home, started to learn how to cook some major recipes (it is my meditation), reading, I even watched Tiger King (yes I know…)! Other unique and very cool things that Covid-19 gave me recently was the chance to see Lisbon’s major tourist marks empty so I could take those pictures I wanted, the kindness of neighbors clapping and even putting on a show late afternoon so I could come out of my terrace, dance and stretch a little. The talking and having a virtual drink with someone 1000 miles away (which we could have done before) is also fun….And the list goes on.

In the abundance of all new things I started to do, I took advantage of a few courses that Ivy League schools started offering for free, one was Harvard’s Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies. This course interested me because I mentor Startups and am involved in a few other projects in emerging markets and I could take some ideas of cases that proven successful. The big surprise was that this course focused particularly in how entrepreneurs turn undeveloped cities into emerging cities through innovation hubs, solving the problems with institutional voids of those countries. Two success stories made me link to what the rest of the world is facing right now in the western world:

The first is Taobao villages in China.

E-commerce giant Alibaba turned 600 poor villages into rural e-commerce hubs that feature Alibaba’s platform (logistics, etc). This program trains local farmers and encourages salesmen to perform sales on-line of their farm specialties, local goods and services. Alibaba’s partnership with the government not only fostered entrepreneurship, it also created flexibility and inclusive employment opportunities for younger generations, for both men and women.

Narayana Hrudayalaya’s healthcare model, created by cardiac surgeon and entrepreneur Devi Shetty is the second interesting case:

Narayana’s model belief is that the cost of healthcare can be reduced by 50% if hospitals adopt the idea of economies of scale.

The truth is that in India, he’s made possible to cut the price of coronary bypass surgery to half of what it was a few years ago (down to about $800) when the same procedure costs in American hospitals about $106k USD. His vision went beyond hospitals, he also fostered a low cost health insurance scheme that covers about 4 million people. This is obviously all possible because of economies of scale, and India’s high population rate.

These two cases caught my attention because throughout the course, instructors keep referring to undeveloped economies and their problems with tech innovation and healthcare, so entrepreneurs identified these particular voids and tried to address them. With Covid-19 pandemic poor countries and rich counties are united together on the same boat. Some doing better than others, though we are seeing major nations struggle. Large corporations in developed countries are struggling to work remote, are being forced to be technologically advanced and perform their sales online in order to survive. Healthcare systems are failing because there aren’t policies put in place prepared for a major health problem such as this pandemic, when we have had examples in the past, and multiple warnings.

In the western world we usually link high prices to high quality, but with these two cases, and now Covid-19, what matters is surviving. With Taobao villages, it was proven that an e-commerce platform doesn’t necessarily need to have high levels of development in order to work. The proof is the increase from 20 villages in 2013 to 3202 in 2018. With Narayana model, millions of heart patients were operated for free and some at a very low cost.

Economies of scale represent the cost advantage that arises from increased output of a product. The Narayana model is based of charging a few cents or dollars in a (for example) telecommunications bill coming from millions of people in India and this is enough to pay for medical care and start an affordable insurance plan for most of the poor population. Without scale the low costs are unattainable. The particular scale success is also the investment made in telemedicine, and insurance due to the high volume of patients. Transportation (how patients get to hospitals) and outreach (recommendations and access to information) plans have to be put in place in order to “produce” high quantity of care as the per unit cost of that care lowers.

We’ve been talking about digital transformation and disruption for years now, and what I’ve been particularly curious lately about how blockchain fits in the social sphere of smart cities. While taking this online course, the concept of smart cities wasn’t brought up in my vision these are two great examples. Blockchain technology is just an add-on. For example, there are prospects of bringing in blockchain technology in order to solve some problems in healthcare.

The use of blockchain recording digitally, without the loss of paper, preservation of patient information and confidentiality, reduction of the number of mediators, creation of medical products for each patient.

With this I have some questions:
The possibility of recording data from monitors for diagnostic purposes, is it being done?
Record keeping diagnostics (for covid-19 patients for example). How is this data being recorded, saved by hospitals around the world?
Speed and access to information from any region of the country? How accessible is the information and at what speed? Specially in large territories?
…the list of questions are long, and I still have to be quarantined for probably another month…but it looks like we, the developed world have a lot to learn from the so called undeveloped.

My education background is Economics, and for the past decade I’ve been working with the Apps industry, mostly leading business development teams (which is a fancy way of saying sales, but with some more creativity and product management in the middle). I took a break from economics until I came upon blockchain technology and started to learn about its effects in the economy.

Exactly 2 years ago during Web Summit17, Lisbon, I was working towards an ICO.

To recap, blockchain is a movement against centralization, and even though during the early stages it was largely focused on cryptocurrencies, the technology behind it is what generates empowerment. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger (record keeper) of transactions. For the start, the idea of bitcoin was to decentralize currency from central banks. With digital currencies and blockchain technology, the user maintains their own copy of the transaction and in — what is known to be — a consensus algorithm — a copy is also maintained in the ledger.

In 2017 I was collaborating with the writing of the AppCoins Protocol whitepaper, so I was focused on the business opportunities that this technology could leverage. Blockchain technology offers a list of features that could impact the business output of any company:

- Transparency in the transactions

- Wallet to wallet transactions cutting off all intermediaries

- The offer of real-time (or almost real-time) payments to suppliers — in payments this is important, suppliers usually have to wait 30 to 60 days to be reimbursed by centralized billing systems.

- Higher revenue streams, and revenue share

- Incentives for users — user adoption and community

Therefore, many companies are exploring this technology, either through public or private blockchains.

But how can blockchain change people’s lives? This is where I want to focus now, in 2019.

One way is through cross border payments. There are more than 2 billion people in the world today without a bank account. This technology can be a life changer and population in developing countries which have access to a smartphone or a computer, can, with blockchain technology, have access to payments. This integration might be easier than adding credit cards (need for banking services) or using wire transfer services with large fees.

Foundations or Non-Profit organizations adopted blockchain technology for the use of donations. Especially for the ones doing work in developing countries this is extremely important considering that many foundations aren’t trusted due to corruption and manipulative governments. The level of trust that this technology offers leads to an increase on these donations, and the support the ones in need.

Cross-border payments fall under the financial services, but what about Government for instance? Governments could (and some are already running pilots) use blockchain technology to track the payment of benefits for the disadvantaged, social care, reducing fraud cases. This also supports digital transformation by using digital track records, registered in a ledger, and avoiding paper. The same with population identification. Everyone’s data could be recorded and secured in the ledger, as the transfer of that same data, like property or land deeds.

Healthcare is another sector where blockchain could be crucial, because of the amount of patient data that is needed to be recorded. These records can be available with consent without the threat of it being hacked or leaked. Having the possibility for matching datapoints that could help research, and this would be breakthrough for medical care.

The energy industry is often vulnerable to fraud due to lots of intermediaries. Blockchain enables people to share, buy and sell energy through smart contracts forming a sort of smart community where there is a reduction of energy waste, control over the power and most importantly helping the environment.

These are just a few examples where blockchain applications could be of use affecting directly people’s lives. When I start to deep dive in all of these possible use-cases, I think of smart communities or a smart cities, don’t you? Some of the challenges for smart cities are the large amount of data transfer and ensuring security. Blockchain not only ensures those two aspects but also the possibility to empower those who didn’t have access to basic needs.

Will be exploring blockchain and smart cities this week at the Web Summit 19 for a next project, so please be in touch!

The official launch of the App Store Foundation took place last November 5th and a month later the app industry community is still creating some buzz around it. I think now is a good opportunity to do a small recap of the event and dive in to what’s coming next.

First of all, I’m very proud to say that it was the first time I witnessed all players of the app ecosystem joining together in the same room to discuss the potential of disruptive technologies, blockchain being the main focus. I knew, right from beginning of the event planning that it wouldn’t make much sense to do another summit that only focused on blockchain. Our vision was to bring live examples of the technology already implemented in apps, and in app stores, together with the input of the OEMs as the payment facilitators that work the technology.

I divided the day in distinct parts, closing the morning for app developers and their current problems in the industry. The truth is, blockchain technology, and AppCoins protocol in particular, mostly benefits app developers. It was interesting to start off with a keynote presented by Nuno Folhadela, from ONTOP, an app developer that is an early adopter of the technology, integrating AppCoins protocol as a billing system. As the integration is very recent, the immediate effects reflect most on the engagement and retention of the user when they receive incentives (tokens) for playing and interacting with the game. Of course, we had interesting inputs from the audience, top grossing developers such as GoodGame’s, Caglar Eger, raised very interesting questions, such as: How does a top grossing game benefits if they already have the gross of the market coming from play? Is user engagement through incentives enough?

The Fortnite mobile distribution case study was the starting point of the morning panel. Epic Games made a gamble, by not distributing on Play Store, because of their centralization and control over both the distribution and the 30% of revenue share out of IAP. Chris Jones from Dragonscale led the panel discussion, stressing that the next big step for any business is to bring blockchain into the mix to avoid some of the pitfalls that face centralized systems. Ronnie Tan from Gumi, and Pedro Almeida from Aptoide defended that initiatives are being created and it’s up to all the players to draw them in and spark mass adoption.

The afternoon started off with two panels about how borderless payments impact app store’s revenues and bringing in OEM’s into the app store’s business analyzing also their input about app stores distribution using blockchain technology. The main problem for app stores at this moment is that there isn’t an open, standard solution for app distribution. Both Tran Quang from Appota and Ren Tang from Aptoide, reflected on the fact that open protocols such as AppCoins are built to solve the industry problem to lower acquisition costs and promote trust and transparency.

Tiago Alves from Aptoide led the discussion with OEMs and saw both Cherry Mobile’s Randy Tejada and Xiaomi’s Yue Shen agreeing that manufactures are in fact major players of the app industry, and they should be part of the game and be rewarded for being the ones distributing the software into people’s hands. Blockchain technology and standard protocols could be major solutions for this problem.

But if there are app distributions, there is in-app purchases, and for that we also need to bring in the payment’s ecosystem players. Jordan French, from Blocktelegraph and The Street led the closing panel. Uphold, Kyber Network, UTrust and Brainbot Technologies are all catalysts in building platforms that provide merchants and service providers with an easier and more reliable way to accept cryptocurrency payments. In the app store industry, players will receive revenues in tokens, therefore powerful and adaptable platforms have to be set in place in order to accept and process these payments.

To close off the day we had a powerful presentation by Paulo Trezentos, the Co-Founder of the AppCoins project, explaining what brought the team to develop this project, showing also what is live at the moment — Be it AppCoins integrated into the Aptoide App Store, as well as appcexplorer.io, a site where you can track all AppCoin transactions, and future rollouts.

Ending the day with the App Store Foundation’s presentation, we have underlined the knowledge that our ecosystem knows that mass adoption will not happen overnight, but it is important to build these bridges and start this consortium. That is the App Store Foundation’s responsibility, giving this sponsorship with a long-term perspective to solve problems that the app distribution world faces at the moment.

Disruptive technologies, apps distribution, payments innovation, and technology changes have been my focus for the last 10 years, and not only because I find it interesting, but because my career path ended up touching upon these topics.

So far, the fundamental development of my career has been in Portugal and not in the US where I grew up and studied. Curiously enough, I’ve been lucky to work with the best of the best in Portugal, maybe Europe, or even the world. I spent the first 5 years at SIBS (Portugal’s payments processor) with the most advanced POS and ATM systems in the world, and the last 5 years at Aptoide — a decentralized Android app store with over 200 million users worldwide. Besides being one of the leading players in the apps world, Aptoide was the first app store to have a billing system supported by blockchain technology and became one of the founding members of the App Store Foundation which supports the AppCoins protocol.

When I first started working at Aptoide, I did a bit of everything, but I focused mostly on a program specifically designed for Android device manufacturers. In this program, when a manufacturer uploaded Aptoide’s native app store or a white label solution, they’d have a chance to reach millions of active users, and in return, they’d get a revenue share of in-store advertising and in-app purchases.

As Paul Romer, from the University of Chicago states: “(…)technological change arises large part because of intentional actions taken by people who respond to market incentives.” (Romer,1018).

The Aptoide app store has been by far one of the pioneers in the disruptive app economy, creating an innovative model, and a multi-store platform, which allows for both users and Android manufacturer partners, to create and share their own content and to distribute it among the community.

As Paul Romer stated, “people respond to market incentives” and we not only had market incentives going through the roof, but also increasing smartphone penetration rates, increasing projections (36%) of the world’s population projected to use smartphones by the end of 2018, and closed partnerships with more than 60 OEM Android players. So, what’s next? A sustainable business model.

Most of the closed partnerships were for white label solutions, where manufacturers still depended greatly on Google’s certification and restraints. Monetization coming from those 3rd party app store users would always be threatened. Since the market incentives played an essential role in this process, Aptoide connected with Tier 1 manufacturers that had their own app stores and platforms. Although they didn’t need a platform, they needed Aptoide’s international content and API services: thus we managed to leverage the opportunity into a service with practical value.

Today, the number of users coming from Aptoide’s API service to Tier 1 Android manufactures counts for more than 50% of the total user base, with about 20 million Monthly Active Users (Aptoide’s internal statistics).

Still, because app developers have to integrate different billing systems for each store — and there are so many intermediaries in the advertising market leading to poor app conversion rates — monetization in third-party app stores continues to be limited. Together with a few team members we worked on a solution based on blockchain technology that disrupts the apps ecosystem by adapting to its market incentives. This translated into AppCoins, the first cryptocurrency created for the app economy.

AppCoins, APPC and the circular model

AppCoins is an open and distributed protocol for app stores based on Ethereum and smart contracts. It redesigns app advertising, in-app-purchases and app approval flows through a circular model. As an open protocol it provides trust to all parties involved.

A Foundation — the App Store Foundation (ASF) — will govern the protocol, allowing for multiple app stores to implement it, benefit from it and contribute to its development and adoption.

Putting all this into practice:

One year later, AppCoins has been launched in the Aptoide app store, and now its +40million MAU can perform in-app purchases with APPC tokens.

APPC transactions rely on smart contracts, meaning that all parties have the mathematic assurance that they can trust each other — we promote privacy, because cryptography ensures that we can verify transactions without accessing private data.

All AppCoins transactions are publicly available for anyone to access in real time including IAP and PoA transactions from developers, and APPC transfers between all AppCoins compatible wallets. The App Store Foundation promotes an open economy creating a safe plug-and-play environment for innovation.

The App Store Foundation (ASF) is now on the verge of being launched, with its first annual event taking place on November 5th — exactly one year after the AppCoins Pre-Sale event. With its first Early Adopters and Founding members such as Aptoide, Cherry Mobile, MobileStreams, Multilaser and up to more than 25 developers integrating AppCoins, we are now ready to create a consortium to unite all stakeholders and discuss the protocol’s opportunity:

• Apps distribution: games like Fortnite prove that blockchain is the solution -AppCoins enables a unified billing system compiling one SDK for all 3rd party app stores.
• Borderless payments on the blockchain lead to app stores new business models — in-app purchases will be accessible to billion of users without credit cards and Paypal.
• Blockchain enabled app stores provide OEMs with promising revenue streams — the AppCoins protocol rewards OEMs for distributing an app store with APPC enabled transactions.
• A new era for global connectivity and peer-to-peer transactions — APIs can move cryptotokens from a wallet to another, just like transfers available in crypto exchanges. This will power micro transfers and payments from people.

The App Store Foundation is ready to bring on more app stores, foster top app developers to integrate one and only SDK that is standard for all third-party app stores. This will promote an efficient way to acquire users and monetize through IAP across multiple stores.

Most importantly, the Bootstrap strategy is getting started with a very interesting incentives plan for the first app developers who integrate and create network effects to the community.

• For more information about the App Store Foundation (ASF), how to become a member and the Developer’s Incentive Program, go here: appstorefoundation.org
• For information about the AppCoins protocol, wallets and exchanges, and to read the Whitepaper, go here: appcoins.io
• To be updated on the first annual event of the ASF and book your seat, go here: summit.appstorefoundation.org.

Android device manufacturers (OEMs) are one of the key players for bootstrapping the app economy by distributing innovating technology directly into the hands of users worldwide. One would think that most OEMs are getting a cut for being an influential distribution channel for software, including app stores. However, in most cases, they are not. In fact, most times it’s the opposite: OEMs actually have to pay expensive licenses to feature app stores, and don’t have a share of the revenue from the app stores business.

The Aptoide Android app store has been one of the pioneers in the app economy, and is mostly known for its disruptive model and multi-store platform, although one thing it stands out for is its business model towards OEMs and Partners. As part of Aptoide’s partner program, many of these OEMs have had the chance to reach over 200 million users worldwide, and share the content within Aptoide with their own local community.

Aptoide shares all of revenue generated in the app store with its OEM partners. Revenue streams from the store are advertising and IAP (in-app purchases) and they are split between parties.

Having been working with OEMs around the world for the last few years, it is clear how much they want to be part of the App economy — they are always looking for a larger and engaged user base, as well as for extra revenue streams. Aptoide has made it possible, either through a white label, SDK or API integration solutions. Providing this flexibility to OEM partners is the reason that tier one Manufacturers (such as Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo) choose Aptoide’s disruptive technology and services.

What if Aptoide decides to take it to another level, where blockchain technology would accelerate three critical flows that today are major blockers in the apps economy?

Introducing AppCoins Protocol

AppCoins is an open and distributed protocol for app stores based on the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts. Aptoide is proposing an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) and blockchain technology to redesign app advertising, IAP and app approval flows through a circular model.

As a higher share of the advertising and IAP revenue is kept within the app ecosystem, more value is rooted back to the app economy.

Being an open protocol based on the blockchain, it also provides more trust to all parties involved. This allows for multiple app stores to implement and benefit from the open protocol and more stakeholders will contribute to its development and adoption.

This is breakthrough, and AppCoins is the first ICO serving 200 million users with the goal of creating a trustworthy economy without intermediaries. AppCoins will not leave OEMs out of the equation, as Aptoide never did.

Recognizing that OEMs play a fundamental part in this circular model, AppCoins ensures a 5% cut on all app economy transactions for all mobile device manufacturers. As this protocol is based on Ethereum, the different app stores (both Android & iOS) act as oracles of the smart contracts which are associated with each one of the platform’s core transactions (see AppCoins whitepaper for details).

This system creates a trust layer for the economy, rendering many middlemen obsolete and inviting OEM Partners to be part of the AppCoins universal language of the app economy.

To illustrate AppCoins’ added value to the app economy, we need to compare the new distribution of value with the existing one. In regards to mobile app advertising, the revenue share difference is very clear:

Regarding IAP, currently the value paid by the users when purchasing something within an app has the following distribution of shares:

With AppCoins, the shares are defined in public smart contracts, which brings transparency and trust to the economy.

In both cases, OEMs will have a share of 5% to foster the wide market adoption of AppCoins. By powering app stores with AppCoins by default on OEMs devices, these entities are seen as key drivers for AppCoins’ success.

Putting all of this into practice

There are a lot of OEMs with a good market share in the Android devices industry selling millions of devices to the world (ie: Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Samsung). OEMs at times choose to have their own pre-installed Android app store. In theory, they could get a large number of apps given their reputation as an OEM. However, developers prefer to upload their content to the well-known stores. Their main issue is attracting new and updated content to make their app store useful to their user base.

In most cases OEMs are left out of the app monetization cake, but they are one of the main drivers of app economy growth. AppCoins allows the OEM to monetize their users through the 5% share included in the smart contracts. It also allows them to scale their content offer by partnering with app stores. They still keep their own proprietary app store and catalog while generating leads for existing app stores.

Accordingly, if there are predictions that by 2020 70% of the world population will have a mobile device, and only 5% of mobile users are making in-app purchases today, a more inclusive app economy is a huge untapped potential. AppCoins is the opportunity to be part of the change.

AppCoins pre-sale starts November 6th, so join our Pre-sale and whitelist now. OEMs have exclusive access to our pre-sale period with 30% discount on token price. Join us in the development of this revolutionary project.