A Seller’s Dilemma in e-Commerce and Blockchain
With a widespread e-commerce industry, there comes great responsibility on the shoulders of the businesses to deliver the best services to the users. However, with the growth of e-commerce, some challenges in this industry have also surfaced. Just in the last three years, 570 e-commerce stores were hacked and the data was leaked. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
1.Data-Security
Data on the e-commerce platforms including user preferences, seller records, product reviews, or even regarding the loyal customers of a seller, is stored in third-party servers or cloud providers. This data is easily available to the competitors and can be used for different purposes, affecting the business of the seller over the e-commerce platform.
Furthermore, manipulation of this data becomes a major concern too. For instance, fake reviews allow low-quality products to become more popular.
Even though sellers spend extensively on data protection and other anti-data-fraud initiatives, they can never be safe from such instances as the platform itself is tendentious.
2.Fake reviews
Usually, the products sold over the e-commerce platforms have their user rating listed alongside their description. These user ratings help the new buyers to understand the quality of the product from the experience of the previous buyers.
The traditional e-commerce system not only lacks the credibility of reviews but is sometimes responsible for producing such reviews to increase the sale of a particular product. Alternatively, some sellers usually pay reviewers to post a fake review for their products to increase their sales or even a fake review for their competitors. These fake product reviews can downgrade the brand value.
3.Payment Issues
To complete a transaction in the present system, users rely on a centralized authority that charges a considerable amount to process the transaction. Either it passes these prices on to the consumers or e-commerce companies have to bear them because of competition in the market. Besides the costs, other complications such as payment delays, failures in money transfer, server outages, and many more are present in the current e-commerce sector.
While these challenges were ignored in the recent past, it has become the need of the hour to optimize this sector.
The advent of revolutionary technologies such as Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning have opened up the doors to innovation in the e-commerce sector. Specifically, the incorporation of ‘Blockchain’ technology in the e-commerce industry is the most promising solution, accommodating the needs of the modern customer.
Blockchain in e-commerce
Being a distributed ledger, Blockchain is built using advanced mathematical concepts, consensus algorithms, cryptographic and hashing techniques, and a decentralized network that introduces a plethora of benefits in any industry.
Specifically, in e-commerce, Blockchain-based applications such as Curate are modernizing this sector with the inclusion of a decentralized database governed by complex algorithms.
The benefits of Blockchain in the e-commerce sector can be realized in the following areas:
1.Data Security
Blockchain offers a decentralized ecosystem. Different properties of Blockchain introduce different benefits for the sellers.
The use of cryptography eradicates the need for spending on data security and protection. It also restricts access to confidential data as it requires the private key of the person for granting access.
The provision of a consensus algorithm removes the need for a central authority, making it an unbiased ecosystem.
The provision of traceability and trackability allows the sellers to know exactly where their data is being accessed and by whom.
2.Authenticity
Blockchain provides a perfect use case to maintain the product’s authenticity across the e-commerce market. Due to its real-time monitoring functionality, all product-related information has to be verified before disclosing it to end users. This ensures that the customers buy genuine products, building trust and loyalty with the seller on the e-commerce platform.
3.Faster payment process
Blockchain eliminates the requirement of having third-part regulators, which simplifies the entire transaction process. This helps to perform transactions quickly and in real-time, along with reduced operational costs.
The fact that transactions are happening peer-to-peer, there is no transaction fee involved. Even cross-border payments are completed over the Blockchain network in a frictionless manner.
For instance, in the Blockchain-based marketplace, Curate.style, the financial interactions can be completed using its native token XCUR. This allows the Curate marketplace to offer a truly digital solution.
Conclusion
The inclusion of Blockchain in the e-commerce sector comes as a natural solution, providing solace to the sellers. The 21st century has witnessed the advent of e-commerce and it is bound to witness the evolution of e-commerce too. Blockchain-based applications such as Curate are the perfect example of why a decentralized marketplace should be the future of e-commerce.
Authentic reviews, faster and frictionless payments, optimum security, and several other features of Curate make it the perfect marketplace of the present and the future.
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OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @coinidol.com By Guest Author, @Khareem Sudlow