Bee Token (BEE) - The Future of Home Sharing

By creating a housing exchange platform around the Bee Token, we aim to make decentralized short-term housing a reality. Listing and booking short-term housing will be streamlined, transparent, secure, and affordable. All transactions will run on the Bee Token network which is powered by Ethereum and our own side chain. The Bee Token will appreciate in value along with the growth of the user base and number of listings on our platform. Our end goal is to give value back to the value creators: the people who are sharing their homes, and the people who are staying in them.

Key Points:

Bee token can accelerate user participation by giving everyone in the network the opportunity to earn tokens through referral programs and arbitration.
Beenest also welcomes newcomers into the ecosystem by allowing the use of fiat or other cryptocurrencies but for a small commission
In order to use Beenest, users have to first sign up and go through a basic KYC (know your customer) process to ensure that users are real and authenticated. Beenest can seamlessly integrate with 3rd party authentication platforms (CIVIC) and correlates identities with a weighted reputation score on the Bee reputation protocol.
Beenest encourages guests and hosts to review each other after the checkout date. Reviews are stored on the blockchain through the Bee reputation protocol and linked to the host/guest identities. To ensure privacy and keep gas costs at a minimum, reviews are encrypted and stored off-chain with only a hash of the review being posted on the blockchain. This ensures immutability and prevents post-hoc modification of any review.
Arbiters can signup on Beenest to join the arbiter pool by staking tokens to the arbitration protocol. All arbiters have reputation scores that fluctuate based on decisions made. When a dispute is initiated, a panel of at least 5 arbiters will be selected from the arbiter pool.
Arbiters are not penalized for incorrect decisions. They only lose their stake if they fail to render a decision within a time limit.
The Bee token is used within the Bee network to incentivize good behavior and punish malicious behavior. This creates network effects by aligning token holders’ goals and attracting early adopters through referrals. Token holders also have decentralized governance over the protocols, allowing for continuous deployments of backward-compatible improvements to the ecosystem.
In addition, Beenest plans to implement a referral program to incentivize user acquisition of host, guests, and arbiters. Users referring hosts who post a listing that results in a booking will receive BEE tokens. Likewise, users referring guests that result in a booking will also receive BEE tokens.
Beenest plans to half the the referral bonuses every time our number of monthly active users double. By doing so, Beenest will rapidly grow the user base, while ensuring the sustainability of the referral program.
The Bee token is non-inflationary; after the public token sale, no new tokens will be minted or mined.
If the ICO doesn’t sell out the remaining tokens will be burned.
Beenest uses the Bee payment protocol to allow guests to pay hosts for bookings. Both guests and hosts send Bee tokens to the payment smart contract.
The arbitration protocol acts as the hub for dispute resolution. Participants stake BEE tokens to the arbitration protocol contract in order to participate in the arbitration network.
The reputation protocol computes and maintains reputation scores of verified entities, globally on the Ethereum blockchain.

What are the tokens used for and how can token value appreciate?

As the number of users (guests, hosts, 3rd party devs, arbiters) increases so does the transaction volume, which increases the amount of staked tokens in the protocols. This means the number of Bee tokens in circulation goes down with user adoption, which decreases the total supply and causes the appreciation of the token.
Number of Payments: throughout any booking on our platform, a certain amount of Bee tokens (booking cost, security deposit, cancellation fees) is held in the payment protocol until the checkout date.
Number of Arbitration Cases: arbiters stake more tokens to be picked more often for judging
Number of Attempts To Change Reputation Score: users stake more tokens to increase their reputation score (to some extent)
Sponsored Listings: following the Yelp model, we’ll allow hosts with high reputation to promote their listings for a fee in BEE (we’ll burn 50% of the tokens received).
A key lever to stabilizing a currency is token burn. Beenest plans to implement host advertising as a means of delivering value to hosts who are invested in our network. Beenest will do this by only accepting Bee Token as a means of payment for advertising. When the advertising cost is paid, 50% of the payment amount will be burned immediately.

Competitors:

AIRBNB (Not using a blockchain)
HomeAway (Not using a blockchain)
Lockchain (Using a blockchain)

Pros:

The team is solid, and they have experience in the sharing economy
The white paper was very well constructed.
35% of the proceeds of the ICO is going to marketing. So, they will be able to increase market awareness.
There is a clear model for token appreciation.
Every participate benefits by using the network.

Cons:

Open source protocols can bring increase competition to the space, and the barrier of entry seems low.
Advertising as 0% commission but there are still fees associated with transactions.
This is a very long term project, so that could hinder the price in the near future.

Outlook:

After reviewing the white paper, I have decided to take a long term view on BEE. I feel that BEE has a strong leadership team, and it will take time to ensure there vision.

Disclaimer:

This disclaimer informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and I am not a financial advisor.