I just re-read your Whitepaper again this time in a more thorough way, please see my statements and questions below.
“Grocery retailers are perpetually and aggressively extracting better terms from already squeezed manufacturers, going far beyond the benefits a player should receive for attaining economies of scale.”And how will manufacturers then feel if they are given a choice between making money with their current already established business partners or taking a huge risk by switching to Crypto?
You cannot say they can do both, because they simply cannot, the minute a supplier undercuts the retailer the retailer will drop them and replace them.
2.2 Of your Whitepaper (Founders’ Experience)
“Instamart, the largest venture-backed grocery delivery operator in Russia.”
Next to that you have some flash pictures of McDonalds, Allianz, Dior, Coca-Cola etc, why are those pictures there when you have zero contracts or deals with them and this is all part of what one of your founders previous job was, it has zero to do with INS at this stage so I believe you are misrepresenting yourselves by showing those logos, as though some kind of deal is pending. Why did you include those brand logos in your whitepaper?
“INS will enable consumers to buy high-quality groceries at cheaper prices and receive direct rewards from manufacturers, thus driving consumers to buy groceries online with convenience. “
While that may be true, you are assuming that the number of people who buy groceries on-line are automatically going to accept Cryptocurrencies as a part of their every-day life when statistics show that there are only very small percentages of adoption/acceptance of Crypto at this time. Many are aware of it due to the recent boom late last year but there are many who either do not understand it, do not like it, and do not accept as something tangible. How will you, one company convert thousands of people who have never used Crytpo into suddenly becoming okay with it?
4.2 ECOSYSTEM PARTICIPANTSI notice on your diagram that you have “Payments for products in fiat/BTC/ETH so if you are Facilitating payments in Fiat, which is what the majority of the World uses then how does that bring value to the INS token?
FULFILLMENT
INS will engage independent fulfillment center operators to join the ecosystem to ignite fast geographical expansion. What makes you think those centres are going to just say, okay lets do this? When the already have established mechanisms in place, to alter their existing model onto the INS blockchain they would need to spend money to change for something that may not be worth their while.
COURIERS
Couriers, employed by a courier company or acting as independent contractors, will follow instructions received via the INS fulfillment app to:
● Pick up orders from fulfillment centers
● Deliver orders to consumers
INS will seek to attract independent couriers and courier companies to join the ecosystem.
Most of the online supermarkets that I have experienced provide their own couriers so again, if a courier company has a contract with a supermarket why would they switch to INS an unknown…..?
As the existing blockchain platforms such as Ethereum have inherent limitation in transaction bandwidth (currently limiting to ozentx/sec),and prospective platforms and frameworks are only in the development stage, we also consider designing and developing our own INS blockchain platform in the future, where nodes are selected from a semi-trusted set of supporters. Given the trust in the nodes, we will implement one of much faster consensus algorithms from the BFT family (HoneyBadgerBFT/Zyzzyva/others), enabling up to thousands transactions per second. A smart contract virtual machine will run on top of the consensus algorithm. The state of the INS blockchain will be regularly anchored to the most popular smart contract ledgers (atleastETH) so that proof of state and proofs of transaction(withinINS)can be verified by Ethereum smart contracts (like it is currently done in BTC Relay or will be done in the future in Plasma). Common optimization techniques such as state sharding and payment channels will be also implemented.
Good luck explaining that to a non crypto person from the fiat world with whom you want to use your product.
MINIMUM BALANCE
Manufacturers will be required to hold a balance in INS tokens equal to some portion of previous month sales to guarantee the ability to pay all types of rewards. Manufacturers can either keep tokens received from consumers or buy tokens on exchanges to comply with the requirement.
Good luck with that, the minute you start imposing rules on those whom you are trying to start a business with they are probably going to say, thanks anyway but we are just fine how we are now thanks.
8.3. ADOPTION
That is going to be your biggest hurdle and I fail to see in your whitepaper how you can possible address this.
Whilst I support the concept and being a Crypto fan, I am all for this being a major success and I can foresee its everyday use – one day. But I think you have started this venture with too many promises and not enough thought has been put into three key areas.
1. Most people do not use Crypto daily, probably everyone reading this post does, however you are only speaking to the Crypto audience, the minute you start trying to sell Groceries and Crypto with convoluted pathways, payment methods and unknown delivery arrangements you are trying to run before you can walk. I think the project has merit and is ahead of its time, but it would be years before it came to total fruition IMO. Hope you guys prove me wrong.
2. Contractual arrangements. You even say so yourself in the whitepaper that manufacturers have contractual arrangements with retailers, why would I as a supplier break a profitable agreement just to try and see if I can make (maybe) some money using INS when as it stands everything is in place and working and there is not that Worldwide adoption of Crypto yet, I would love to see that day but again I think you guys are thinking that it will be adopted, just because it is a good idea. Try and look at INS as a person who has never used Crypto, and does not understand it. That and the fact that everything you are attempting to disrupt/improve is already in place and it would cost companies and retailers money to switch over.
3. Denial. Not talking about the River in Egypt either.
I have asked you guys several times about how is it that you can infiltrate a market full of contractual agreements and hand-shake agreements and you even acknowledge in your whitepaper that retailers really squeeze the most out of manufacturers. So tell me, why then would a manufacturer who is making a living and while he may be profitable but just marginally because of greedy retailers, why would they take the quantum leap to just dump their retailer and hedge their bets on a start up company that is crypto based?
I know you guys have said
“Manufacturers are free to choose the most effective, profitable and beneficial ways for them to sale their products. Secondly, partnering with INS doesn't make manufacturers to break their agreements. INS is another way to sale their supplies and btw the most effective cost cutting variant.”
Sorry but that is total B.S and you know it. There is no way a supplier to a large retail chain is going to undercut their core customer (the retailer) just to try something new and if the retailer does find out that the manufacturer IS undercutting them, they will be replaced before close of business that day.
So again, you guys seem to be willing to overlook the obvious issues and pretend that they either do not exist or that they are just small obstacles when really these are major hurdles.
I was invested in INS but have since sold up for all of the above-mentioned reasons, but I wish you well in the future and I hope your project is a success. However, as I have said what you are trying to do is great, but I do not think the World is quite ready for that just yet, I personally am but I am into Crypto, Billions of people are not.