This is my entry into the @aggroed business plan v2 competition for incorporating a custom Steem Engine token into a new service.

Say hello to Gift Card Marketplace

A marketplace for Steemians to sell unused gift cards for cryptocurrency. Sell those unwanted and forgotten gift cards today. List a gift card, set an asking price and wait for it to sell.

Who am I?

My name is Dwayne and I am a front-end developer with over eleven years experience in web development. I started out as a backend developer, before transitioning into a full-stack developer and then finally became solely a front-end developer a few years ago.

I live in sunny Queensland, Australia and in my day job, I work as a lead front-end engineer for a company in the insurance space creating tools dealing with complex data and workflows. I lead a small team of front-end developers (three including myself), across different time zones. The apps I build at my day job require due care and skill, as they most directly relate to real money and any serious flaws could cost real money.

I have experience architecting both simple and complicated web applications, from idea to execution. Two years ago I developed an interest in blockchain and in January 2018, I discovered Steem and instantly fell in love. Ever since I've been scheming and building Steem applications.

I recently launched steemflip.com a site where you can bet on the outcome of a coin toss. I also recently launched steemboxes.com selling mystery boxes on the Steem blockchain. I am now in the early stages of expanding out the gift card marketplace idea detailed in this proposal.

The problem

Gift cards are a convenient gift for the person buying them, and however thoughtful they may be, gift cards are highly inconvenient for the receiver. You have to remember to use them, it is hard to track how much is left on them and the expiry seems to creep up on you and many go unused.

According to a finder.com.au report, AUD $148 million went unclaimed in gift cards in 2017, in Australia which is a relatively smaller country compared to the likes of the USA and countries in Asia. That is one in every seven gift cards sold in Australia in 2017 went unused.

According to WalletHub statistics, in 2015 USD $1b (that's one billion) went unused in gift cards in the USA. In 1999, $19 billion in gift cards were sold, increasing to USD $130 billion by 2015 and reaching USD $160 billion in 2018.

The popularity of gift cards is increasing and has been consistently the most popular gift option for over twelve years in a row. This means that the problem of expiring cards and money being lost into thin air is only going to continue to get worse the more the gift card market continues to grow (and it is showing no signs of slowing down).

There is a serious problem here.

The Vision

Fortunately, solving the problem of unused gift cards has quite an easy and obvious solution. A simplistic marketplace is a clear solution, where users can sell their unused gift cards (physical and digital) for a custom Steem Engine token, this token can then be exchanged for traditional liquid STEEM.

The marketplace would incorporate a trust-based system where users have a publicly displayed reputation score based on their previous sales and dealings on the site. All feedback and transactions would be publicly visible.

In the interest of protecting users, funds will be held in optional escrow (at a small fee) until the buyer confirms that they have received their purchase (either in the mail or digitally via email). Any disputes will be manually arbitrated in a process similar to sites like PayPal, eBay and Flippa.

Sellers can choose whether or not they want to offer Escrow for sales. If the seller chooses to offer escrow (increasing chances of a sale), this will incur a small escrow fee at the time of disbursement from the final sale. Escrow is optional, but providing it would increase buyer safety and the chances of selling a gift card.

Because sellers do not have to pay to list gift cards, the site will utilise the Steem reputation score to determine how many gift cards a user can sell at one time, as well as what kind of limit they have on selling said gift cards (to prevent money laundering and other possible illegal uses).

A user with a Steem reputation score of greater than 60 might initially be able to list up to four items at one time and have a total value limit of $250 per week. In comparison, a Steem user with a reputation score of 25 might only be able to list one item at a time and have a limit of $100 per week.

There will be a system in place to allow users to request additional limits (if you have say a $500 gift card you want to sell), in a process that will be done on a per-user basis. However, the likelihood of users wanting to sell a bunch of gift cards for high values is unlikely but still plausible.

All limits will be adjusted based on end-user feedback. If limits are too strict, they will be loosened, however, the primary goal of preventing illicit user will always be a top priority.

After the initial MVP launch, the site will offer additional features including the ability to sell gift cards to the site itself at a reduced price and then the site itself sells the gift card and recoups the cost, so the seller does not have to wait if they want the money in a hurry. Another future feature is also the ability to swap gift cards with other users, as well as the ability to create listings with a bid-based mechanism instead of fixed price.

I also invision an exchange marketplace where users can barter by agreeing to swap gift cards for goods or services, taking the site beyond a simple user-customer platform and a peer-to-peer marketplace where gift cards are used as a currency of sorts.

The Mission

Prevent unused gift cards from being lost or expired. Allowing users to easily sell their gift cards for cryptocurrency to someone else who might find them useful.

Competitors

It would be naive to say that a gift card marketplace is a unique or new concept because it is not. There are many preexisting gift card marketplaces where you can buy and sell unused gift cards.

One of the biggest is raise.com however, they do not allow you to sell and buy using cryptocurrencies. Another is cardcash.com which offers a similar platform to raise.com, but does not allow you to buy and sell in cryptocurrency.

There also exists gift card sites which accept cryptocurrency, but in my research, I could not find a single site that allowed to use STEEM/SBD, all of them seem mostly focused on the most popular cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. One of these sites is gyft.com and another focused only on Canada is coincards.ca.

The one thing that all of these competitors have in common besides being marketplaces for unused gift cards, is they all charge fees. Gift Card Marketplace will only charge fees to topup your account (and quite low as well), and not charge fees for buying and selling the platform, no commission or hidden costs.

There is a proven demand for this service, as people have attempted to sell gift cards in the PAL server on Discord before in the swap-buy-sell-trade channel. A proper platform for these users to transact on would undoubtedly be safer than a Discord channel.

Risks/Challenges

There is a risk that a larger more established competitor could start accepting cryptocurrency, including STEEM or SBD as payment. However, given Steem is under the radar in terms of market awareness in the cryptocurrency market in comparison to larger projects like Bitcoin, Ripple and Litecoin, the likelihood of an established competitor is low.

Like any project dealing with real or digital currencies, security will be the biggest challenge. I am an experienced developer, however, no matter how experienced, security breaches can affect anyone (just ask Facebook or eBay). To compound this risk, the codebase will be audited independently.

Storage of tokens and processes for withdrawal will also be implemented, as well as complete transparency with the Steem ecosystem thanks to the blockchain and all site operations utilising it.

A frequent report will also be released detailing statistics on the site, including sales and the amount of profit the site is making from topups as well as selling additional optional perks on the site.

Product/service being sold

The service is being offered for free, however, users will need to purchase custom Steem Engine tokens to "credit" their accounts which are used to buy gift cards. Buying $10 worth of custom Steem Engine tokens on the site would net a small fee. No fees will be charged on a transaction basis, only at topup.

How the Steem Engine token will be incorporated

The site will use the Steem Engine token as the primary means of transacting between users. Users will top up their accounts with a custom Steem Engine token (name and symbol to be determined). A small fee at the time of purchase of said tokens is the only time a fee is charged.

The process will resemble the following:

• User logs into the marketplace using their Steem account
• User purchases Custom Token using either STEEM or SBD
• The custom token is used as a credits based system, where credits can only be used on the site
• This custom token is used to purchase gift cards sold by other users
• No STEEM or SBD is used to transact on the site, except topping up and withdrawing your funds

An additional token might also be introduced at a later date, to reward users with rewards for using the platform. Allowing users to earn additional Reward Token which might eventually be used to reduce fees, give additional perks, discounts and transferrable to the sites main custom token.

How the platform will make money

The site will charge a fee per user topup. Because topups are essential to transacting on the site, anyone who wants to buy a gift card will need to have custom tokens in their account. No fees will be charged for listings, no fees charged on sales and no fees for withdrawing custom tokens.

While withdrawals will always be free, a priority and standard withdrawal will be offered. Standard withdrawals will be free and incur a waiting period of X amount of days. Users can pay a small fee to prioritise their withdrawals and have them processed in many cases within hours or a day.

Eventually, the site will introduce additional paid-for listing extras (entirely optional) allowing the user to make their listings stand out (bold title, highlight listing, featured on the homepage).

As mentioned previously, the site will also offer escrow services where funds are held until the buyer receives their item. Escrow is an additional and optional paid for cost in Steem Engine Token. Sellers not wishing to pay, do not have to pay for it.

Using escrow would increase safety and chances of a successful sale (thus increasing the likelihood of sellers paying for escrow on listings). This would be a small fee, as to not de-incentivise using escrow.