Munchee Announces The First Decentralized Food Review And Social Platform

The social networking and food review mobile app has announced MuncheePlatform, a blockchain-based food review platform aimed to disrupt traditional food and restaurant review websites and incentivize influencers. The platform will also integrate with local restaurants and delivery services to provide enticing rewards for MUN token holders and users of the platform.

By
Richard Kastelein
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Munchee, a popular food review mobile app, has announced MuncheePlatform, a new Blockchain-based social platform that incentivizes users and restaurants using the Munchee token (MUN), to be released by the company in an upcoming public token sale.

The platform looks to disrupt traditional restaurant review sites such as Yelp, FourSquare, Google Places, and Zagat, by introducing an immutable and verifiable blockchain-based user review process that is based around a crypto-token to incentivize ecosystem participants.

The Munchee mobile app was first launched earlier this year for iOS and is a social-networking application for food lovers that focus’ on reviews and recommendations of individual restaurant dishes via photos and videos. The app is also a marketing channel for restaurants to highlight their favourite dishes to nearby hungry foodies.

The Problem – False Reviews and Little Incentive

Munchee was created to disrupt the traditional food and restaurant review sites like Yelp, Zagat, FourSquare, and Google Places. All of these major sites all share a number of problems, but the most notable is false reviews. False reviews run counter to the stated purpose of a crowdsourced review site and generally lead to low-quality listings. A study by Harvard professor Michael Luca revealed that fake reviews of establishments in Boston rose from 6% in 2006 to 20% in 2014.

With the closed and centralized platforms operated by Yelp and these other sites it is impossible to prove there is truth in the review and rating system.

Furthermore, it is believed the reviews listed on our these websites are skewed to the negative due to the lack of incentive for the standard end-user. In short, end-users who have a neutral or positive experience are far less likely to post a review than an end-user who had a negative experience.

As has been noted by Roy F. Baumeister, a professor of social psychology at Florida State University,

“…losing money, being abandoned by friends, and receiving criticism will have a greater impact than winning money, making friends, or receiving praise. Put another way, you are more upset about losing $50 than you are happy about gaining $50. … Bad events wear off more slowly than good ones.”

The same is true when it comes to restaurant reviews, and when paired with no incentive to participate following a neutral or positive experience, the reviews of our general competition should be placed into question.

The Solution – an Immutable Blockchain review and rewards platform

Munchee proposes a better solution with their new, decentralized, blockchain-based MuncheePlatform, which aims to be an immutable and verifiable review platform that rewards users and restaurants for participation in the community.

Munchee’s Peer Review system will be implemented to ensure that only quality reviews are accepted in the Munchee ecosystem. Every new submission first goes through the peer review by other Munchee users, which makes the Munchee platform truly social and transparent. Munchee uses Machine Learning to mine user preferences to suggest suitable reviewers for peer review based on criteria, such as location, language, food category, food preference, etc.

Everyone in the Munchee ecosystem participates in improving the quality of the platform through active participation–instead of being just passive user of the content provided by others. This fosters valuable content and a collaborative community. Such a platform attracts many first-time users to the platform since they can’t just only access trusted content but also earn MUN tokens by actively participating in improving the validity and quality of the content.

The Munchee token (MUN) is a method of exchange inside of the Munchee ecosystem, built to facilitate meaningful advertising and promotion for restaurant owners while building a quality base of content by rewarding content creators for their activity. The platform will generate a unique economy around the Munchee mobile app by rewarding users with MUN tokens for content creation and also incentivize restaurants to offer rewards and promotions to Muchee users.

The MUN token Model

MuncheePlatform Rewards

Users will be rewarded with MUN tokens for actions on the MuncheePlatform. These MUN tokens can be used to redeem rewards from restaurants within the app or are fully transferable and can be sold on an exchange. To generate rewards users can:

  • Create content: Users who create new posts which successfully pass peer review will be rewarded with MUN tokens. To encourage quality posts, the top 20% of users (in terms of contribution volume) each 7-10 day period will be rewarded additional tokens.
  • For high-quality content contributors: contributors who regularly perform in the top-tier (top 20%) will be rewarded with additional MUN tokens. Top-tier reviewers are determined based on the accepted reviews as well as the total number of likes and pins in a period.
  • New restaurant listings: Contributors may also be rewarded with MUN token for creating a new restaurant, pending restaurant detail verification. These MUN token will be offered from Munchee’s company reserve.
  • Referrals: each user will hold a unique referral code to share with those in their network. Should a new user join through this referral process and contribute to the platform, the referring user may be rewarded with MUN token.

To encourage users to hold their MUN tokens, the company will introduce a tiered rewards program for users. Tiers will be based upon the amount of MUN tokens a user is holding on the Ethereum blockchain. The higher the tier, the more rewards a user will receive for actions on the platform.

For example, by creating a new peer reviewed post a user could receive the rewards:

  • Tier 1= 10 MUN
  • Tier 2= 12.5 MUN
  • Tier 3= 13.5 MUN
  • Tier 4 = 15 MUN
  • And so on

Upon activation of the token system in production, MUN owners will be offered the ability to exchange their tokens for advertising and promotion inside of the Munchee app. This promotion will take place in the form of a listed bounty, with the token presented to the end-user as an incentive to post a review of the business and other social activity related to their experience at the restaurant. Upon successful completion of the review, the end-user will receive the bounty. Since the direct function of advertising is executed in MUN, the value of the token is intrinsically linked to the value of the MUN coin.

MUN Token economics

The resulting structure will encourage users to hold their MUN tokens and contribute more to the community as they become more active. Users will be further incentivized with special offers redeemable in MUN tokens from restaurants and, eventually, delivery services for dishes that have been reviewed on the platform. The result, will be a strong, decentralized, economy built around a community of food lovers within the Munchee app.

The Munchee mobile app already has tremendous engagement on social media, including more than 3,500 Instagram followers and 16,000 Facebook followers. The company plans to begin the initial pre-sale of MUN tokens on October 15.

Roadmap

The company will be rolling out their blockchain platform in 2018. They also intend incorporate a wallet for users to redeem rewards and a special wallet for restaurants to purchase advertising and create special offers using MUN tokens.

To learn more visit: https://www.token.munchee.io/