As the CEO of Bob's Repair I wanted to personally say hello to everyone from the STEEM Community! I wanted to thank everyone for the amazing support we have been receiving and for the multiple Steemit posts that have been written about Bob's Repair and our anticipated integration with the Steem Blockchain.
What is Bob's Repair?
In 2014 my AC Unit broke and I called a 5 star rated company on Google. This guy came over with his fancy truck full of gadgets and after 30 minutes told my brother and I that our unit was ruined and needed a complete replacement!
He told us we needed to pay $5,500 to get a new unit installed! We felt that something was wrong and got a second opinion from an independent worker. The first thing he did was check the air filter!
The air filter was old and dirty and all our AC Unit needed was for the air filter to be replaced. Once that happened the air started blowing perfectly! This is when Alex and I realized how corrupt and wrong some people in the skilled trade industry can be!
This is when we came up with an idea to connect honest repairmen to customers. Since 2014 we have serviced over 55,000 customers and have recieved over 300,000 calls and personally spoken to thousands of our clients and repairmen!
Our mission is to change pricing in America and create a company that the customer can trust and contractors can use. In December of 2017 we officially founded Bob's Repair and decided to stop charging our contractors for leads and create a decentralized marketplace for home repair and construction.
We soon realized the great advantages of building our platform on top of the Steem Blockchain, facilitating us in our mission to eliminate fake reviews and create pricing transparency!
In the United States alone the skilled trade is a 400 Billion dollar industry! Everyone consistently needs things fixed and a lot people don't understand how massive this industry really is.
Here is a link to a summary of our White Paper for a more detailed glimpse at what we at Bob's Repair are building and aiming to achieve: https://bobsrepair.com/docs/Whitepaper-summary.pdf
Why Steem?
The best option to build the BOB Application is on top of is the Steem Blockchain. For three main reasons:
- No transaction fees allow us to store data without paying any fees to do so.
- Three second block times. This would allow data to be stored practically and in real time.
- We will utilize a Blockchain that actually WORKS!!
Why Steemit?
We had to figure out a solution on how to stop bad actors and slanderous reviews. By storing these reviews on a public ledger we considered that there is the possibility of unjust reviews being published.
The Bob Application will tie the review to the transaction and only the customer receiving the job and the repair worker doing the job can leave one another a review. This doesn't solve the issue of bad slanderous reviews but the Steemit community does! If a slanderous review is posted the community will donwnvote this review making is almost obsolete. Also, lets not forget that Steemit has 200,000 members!
B. Now what happens with bad actors?
Let's just say I create 30 fake jobs (get my friends to do them) and now the 31st job happens to be real..if I am a bad skilled trade worker I will overcharge someone and/or do a bad job. Well, that will be seen on the public ledger. When the consumer is comparing thousands of other similar jobs in the area they will see that his work and pricing was indeed not competitive. The process will self adjust. Repair workers sometimes perform two to three jobs a day; therefore, price gouging or bad work would be extremly difficult to hide.
Bad actors can't survive on a public ledger!
What is Bob's Repair doing now?
- We are almost finished developing a working SMS API prototype (that will allow anyone in the world to manage an entire job and invite workers from their cell phone). This is being led by our API developer Evgeniy Tatarchuk.
- We have just finished our smart contract and sent it out to two major firms to be audited.
- We are creating a smart contract prototype that will show how BOB tokens are used in the ecosystem along with an escrow service.
- We are finishing up the development of the front end that will demonstrate these functionalities in a connected manner.
- I am currently in Seoul Korea: Finished the d10e conference and met with multiple purchasers and did two additional presentations.
Yesterday a mainstream Korean newspaper (Joong Ang Daily) interviewed me about Bob's Repair. The article should be out shortly.
I am heading to Hong Kong to do an interview with Bloomberg Magazine and will be on Bloomberg Radio Asia worldwide.
It's a good idea in theory - we are all tired of fake, forged, and bad reviews on Yelp, and extortion by Yelp itself. Ditto for other platforms (Glassdoor is full of fake, slanderous, and extorted employer reviews). However I don't think Steemit alone is the answer. How do Steemit users magically know which reviews are bad ones, that is inaccurate?
For example a customer is pissed because the worker is 10 minutes late due to traffic and then writes a really bad review with made up stuff saying the worker was rude and made a mess and made up items on the bill that didn't need fixing... How do Steemit users know who is right and wrong? Everything is hearsay.
Another example... Think about the rogue contractor with all the fake jobs and one one real one that gets a bad review. What if he has his 50 fake accounts all downvote the bad review of his real job. Or he has one whale account (or pays a whale for their vote) to downvote that bad review.
I think you might need your own Smart Media Token and integrate with things like Bloom for strong but private identity and reputation management, and Kleros for dispute resolution. Sure both those areas in early stages but in the time frame you have for roll out they might well be usable or at least in later versions of Bob's Repair. For now I would advise you at least consider making identity and reputation pluggable and independent of pure Steemit concepts of reputation and identity.
Either way I wish you good luck.
BTW I think you should include a link to your main website and the actual white paper not just the summary...
@bobsrepair Welcome to the Steem Community 🍸
Thank you for the feedback.
Hi @virtualgrowth, are you working with Bob's?
Hello! VG is our advisor and also a great friend.
Hi @o1o1o1o, yes I am working with Bob's as their advisor.
Once solutions like Bloom are ready, they’d definitely be a great value-add to the platform. We haven’t finalized the process for how Bob SMTs are distributed, but we’re looking at ways to airdrop them based on factors like verified background checks and platform participation rather than pay-to-play. I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. We are open to all suggestions and any help from the community is greatly appreciated.
p.s Thank you for posting the website and Full White Paper.
I have enjoyed your presentation great job
Welcome Bob! It’s so motivating to see someone build something so unique on the Steem blockchain.
I was actually just listening to a podcast about the locksmith industry in the USA. Apparently it is incredibly corrupt in a similar way to the way you describe the aircon industry. Scary stuff! So many people are getting ripped off.
Anyway, welcome!
Welcome to the most amazing platform @bobsrepair, that i like to call it my second home!
Looking forward to read your future posts and i wish you a long and prosper time here... don't forget the most important thing here is to enjoy what you are doing and all the rest will follow!
Have a fabulous Sunday!
Thank you @georgemales! :)
This is a very cool idea. I hope it takes off.
Thank you for the support @hanshotfirst.
Yeah i also think so....
Welcome to Steemit @bobsrepair, delighted that you're considering the Steem protocol to take your business to the next step!
Thank you @kevinwong!
The Steem community has great hopes for Smart Media Tokens. Your implementation of them is a big step forward.
We are very excited.
I will stay tuned to hear more from you :)
Welcome to Steemit.
Good luck :)
Thank you @rayne122
It's my pleasure !
You should have use the #introduceyourself tag. Welcome to steemit!!!
This is great, been loosely following the progress as you guys will be a great example of what can be done on the steem blockchain.
Thank you for the support @scaredycatguide.
Hello there! I have one question:
I don't understand why are the tokens released as ETH tokens, if you plan to use the STEEM blockchain? Will the tokens need to be exchanged, at some point in the future?
Good info.
Another question, how can you develop smart contracts, when steem doesn't support smart contracts?
You do realise, that Upvotes here are for sale?
Bad review? Good review?
Everything can be up or downvoted to the biggest bidder.
It will be fun, to watch how this can play out in the open.
New up and downvote bots will rise soon I guess.
And this time with big business money.. Awesome :)))
Amazing amazing amazing! :) Finally found one. I absolutely always think of this kind of thing. Steem blockchain is very unique among others. With its zero transaction fees and three second transaction time, this will be a big bang to industries.
I absolutely can't wait some companies in our country to implement this kind of thing!
very nice project , you got my vote ! :)
I will love to follow you
your great bro,good info,i am very interesting.
😊😊😊
It sounds amazing but what is the guarantee that over time you guys won't join the corrupt upper companies? Power corrupts the mind and with the power comes the free will to do as you guys wish.
"Cincinnatus was a conservative opponent of the rights of the plebeians who fell into penury because of his son's violent opposition to their desire for a written code of equitably-enforced laws. Despite his old age, he worked his own small farm until an invasion prompted his fellow citizens to call for his leadership. He came from his plough to assume complete control over the state but, upon achieving a swift victory, relinquished his power and its perquisites and returned to his farm. His success and immediate resignation of his near-absolute authority with the end of this crisis (traditionally dated to 458 BC) has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, humility, and modesty. As a result, he has inspired a number of organizations and other entities, some named in his honour."
With Great Power comes Great Responsibility - Uncle Ben from Spider-Man.
Great to see the platform making more and more use cases!
Very interesting and exciting concept! Upvoted and followed. Good luck!
It's a good idea. thank you @bobsrepair and upvote.
Congratulations @bobsrepair!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade for newcomers in the following category:
I also upvoted your post to increase its reward
If you like my work to promote newcomers and give them more visibility on Steemit, feel free to vote for my witness! You can do it here or use SteemConnect
Good project! I'm taking part in your bounty campaign
welcome to steemit community you have choosen the the right platform
The post is quite amazing, please permit me to post again .....
Good idea @bobsrepair - The Bob Application will tie the review to the transaction and only the customer receiving the job and the repair worker doing the job can leave one another a review.
You have a great business idea that will improve peoples' lives and it's nice you are building on Steem. I'm sure the community here will enjoy participating in your project also.
Thank you for your feedback @donkeypong.
Wow, this is really nice and welcome to steemit, u chose the perfect platform and i hope to see more post from you.WELCOME.
Thank you!
This is a great project! Here's how you can participate in the bounty programme: https://steemit.com/tokens/@raxan1987/bob-s-repair-tokens-endorsed-by-john-mcafee
Thank you @tts