it's just bad that you still didn't fix the problem with fake users. I'm pretty sure Best people are going to earn a lot of tokens and the advertisers will lose their money.
hello. Of course it's hard to deal with the fraud but we are trying to do that! In AppCoins Store app we are planning to limit the number of installations for new users. You can download only one app a day but not more than three a week. After sometime we will increase number of installations but the maximum is going to be two a day per user.
that sounds interesting. How can I withdraw tokens to my Account?
You can't withdraw money. You can also make purchases in different apps.
But fraudster can register as a developer and add his own app to the system so he can make purchases.
Oh yeah, that might happen. But this person will lose 15% on commissions as well as AppCoins will have certain algorithms that after sometime will be able to spot a fraudster.
Hello. I'd rent that users can spend their tokens for purchases within the apps. What about the owners? Can they exchange tokens to fiat money?
That's a very valid concern. Our whitepaper (
https://appcoins.io/pdf/appcoins_whitepaper.pdf) on page 13 suggests a number of possible solutions:
• Thresholds: The app store sets a lower limit, e.g. one install a day and three per week
for unknown users. As the user has more transactions in the blockchain, the level of trust
increases and the threshold is slightly raised. The user would never be able to do more
than two installations per day in any case.
• Cash out: As mentioned before, the user is not able to cash out tokens. He has to use
the AppCoin tokens for in-app purchases. A fraudulent user could try to register as a
developer and buy items inside his own app, but 15% of the transaction volume would be
lost (app store and OEM margin) and it would be easier to detect a fraudulent pattern
for that user.
• User Fingerprint: The fingerprint of the user (a unique identification to detect double
attribution) is not done only at the smartphone level but, more importantly, at networking
level. The IP of the user smartphone, as well as routing information, is used in the
fingerprint.
• Shared information: The existent transactions with the fingerprint information will
persist in the blockchain, allowing the different app stores to access and avoid cross-store
fraud. The partial anonymity of the user is accomplished by using hash functions (like
SHA256) in the fingerprint.
• Targeting: It is the store that sends the Ads for the user, trying to do an intelligent
matching between the user and the running campaigns. The client cannot try to install
an advertised app that was not targeted to him.
As mentioned before, it is impossible to totally eradicate fraud since the smartphone is an
untrusted environment. The goal is to create enough difficulties for the attacker beyond the
point that the effort and resources needed to explore the attack vector do not compensate the
benefits extracted from that attack.