MailTime, a YCombinator company that makes email as quick and easy as texting launches its own crypto token to reward users for sharing anonymous data.
It’s no longer a secret that technology companies are collecting and mining user data. Users download an app which seems to be a free, but unknowingly they compromise their data as a trade-off. Users’ data has value and companies are reaping massive profits from it. The team behind MailTime believes that some of the value users are generating should come back to them.
Built on Ethereum, Measurable Data Token (MDT) creates a cryptographically secured, blockchain-based data exchange economy where users are compensated with tokens for the actual anonymous data points exchanged. It also proposes a new data exchange model where all transactions are based on smart contract technology, which helps enforce performance of the deals.
Debuted at the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield SF, MailTime was awarded one of the App Store’s Best of 2015 by Apple and has now reached more than 5 million downloads. Meanwhile, the company has also been working on its own email data intelligence product which extracts the value of over 15 billion anonymous email data collected from its service. MailTime attracts paying businesses from merchants, game companies to investors. After years of experience in data intelligence, the team realized that no solutions fairly compensate consumers for contributing data.
“What distinguishes MDT is it’s built on established projects with millions of users,” said Heatherm Huang, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of MailTime. “And it’s proposing a new ecosystem where mainstream users can relate to and actually participate in.”
By installing the SDK provided by MDT, any service provider will be able to share data revenues with its users. The team added that they would first introduce two features in its own MailTime app for users to earn and spend MDT tokens by 1) Advertise with your own email signature, 2）Send VIP mail to those who won’t disclose their email addresses.
The MDT team are veterans of consumer apps and and big data. They have successfully developed two popular messenger apps, MailTime (with 5 million users) and Talkbox Voice Messenger (which was the first voice messenger app with 13 million users) and an email intelligence product syncing over 15 billion anonymous data.
MailTime has raised over $3M VC funding from investors including Mark Pincus (Founder of Zynga), ZhenFund, Gary Rieschel (Qiming, Softbank), Crystal Stream (VP of Engineering of Baidu), Y Combinator, and DHVC. The foundation of MDT just finished its private sale of around $6M from many prestigious cryptocurrency investors within only 4 days, and is looking to run its Token Distribution Event in the following month.
MDT’s website: https://measurable.net Telegram https://t.me/measurabledata
Kastelein has an Honorary Ph.D. and is Chair Professor of Blockchain at China's first blockchain University in Nanchang at the Jiangxi Ahead Institute software and Technology. He has over a half a decade experience judging and rewarding some 1000+ innovation projects as an EU expert for the European Commission's SME Instrument programme as a startup assessor and as a startup judge for the UK government's Innovate UK division. Kastelein has spoken (keynotes & panels) on Blockchain technology at over 50 events in 30+ cities.
