QBUX - Native Token of the Qbix Platform

EMPOWERING PEOPLE UNITING COMMUNITIES MONETIZING JOURNALISM MONETIZING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DECENTRALIZED APP ECONOMY

Qbix, Inc.

COMMUNITY SOFTWARE 7 MILLION USERS ~100 COUNTRIES USED 1.2 MILLION TIMES A MONTH $700,000 IN REVENUES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE QBUX TOKEN
The QBUX Ecosystem
Web Development Today
Decentralizing Web Development
Gamification and Rewards
Services
Distribution and Discovery
Reputation and Dispute Resolution
THE QBIX COMPANY
Company and Mission
Redeeming QBUX with Qbix
Social Browser
Team
THE QBIX PLATFORM
Distributed Operating System for the Web
Powering Websites and Apps
Re-Usable Components
VIDEOS ILLUSTRATING QBIX PLATFORM
Chat
Videoconferencing
Events
Group Rides
Payments
Notifications
Edit HTML
Social Media
Why for Communities
Why for People
Qbix Apps
Qbix Platform
The Vision
ECONOMICS
Decentralizing the Marketplace
Current Ecosystem
Monetizing Open Source
Monetizing and Personalizing Content
Decentralized Ecosystem
Token Economics
DIGITAL MEDIA AND CONTENT
Paywalls
Managing Accounts
Aggregators
TECHNOLOGY
Implementation
HOW TO GET QBUX

THE QBUX TOKEN

The QBUX Ecosystem

QBUX is a utility token to power a global ecosystem of web-based content and software. Participants in this ecosystem profit for two major reasons:

  1. Near-zero marginal cost of making a copy
  2. Extreme re-use of and deduplication of work

As more and more software and content is widely shared, used and monetized, costs for everyone go down, due to these reasons. The QBUX token economy is designed to foster a free market of hosting solutions, software developers, content publishers, and communities that want to provide a great experience to connect and empower their members, without reinventing the wheel building their own software, content, or hosting infrastructure.

The QBUX token ecosystem is also designed to reward collaboration. It can finally help monetize open source software and content through a combination of cryptographic signatures, copyright licensing, and economic incentives.

Web Development Today

Companies want to deploy websites and apps to serve their users, so they pay software developers to build various solutions, and then pay hosting companies for servers and other infrastructure to be made available.

The developer may use re-usable components, but usually the end-software is exclusively licensed to the company. Although the company could license copies of this newly developed software to other companies around the world, in different languages, they aren't in the business of software licensing and distribution. And although the software developer could also make money from distributing the software solution more widely, there is no standard solution for the client and vendor to engage in profit sharing, and software distribution. As a result, a lot of work is duplicated around the world, until some SAAS company winds up hosting everything on centralized servers, controlling the whole platform and extracting rents. This is how we arrive at centralization: Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube are just some examples.

Decentralizing Web Development

The QBUX ecosystem is a generalization of the above scenario. It provides a distribution system for web apps and digital media content so everyone can benefit from software that was already developed, as well as photos, videos, articles, journalism, and more. In order to make money selling software or content, a vendor will need to partner with a hosting solution, payment system, and distribution network. The QBUX ecosystem will already provide all this, so even though the software is freely available for anyone to host and use, each participant is heavily incentivized to participate in the ecosystem. They can focus on what they do best, and let the rest of the stack be provided by other participants in the ecosystem. The result is a web-based ecosystem with massive re-use and collaboration, where everybody wins and wealth is spread widely.

Gamification and Rewards

Another aspect of the QBUX economy has to do with the economic relationships between the community which spends QBUX, and its users. The community may extend trustlines to users in order to let them try some features for free, or to reward them for regularly engaging or bringing new users onto the platform. Ultimately, the trustlines are represented by internal credit balances that need to be "topped" up by the user, either by certain actions, or simply by paying the community with QBUX or fiat. At the end of the day, most of these internal credits are redeemed by users for the same types of things that have near-zero marginal cost of copying. (Software, digital media, content, digital goods, etc.)

Services

A major focus of the ecosystem is on monetizing software and content that has been productized, and has very low marginal costs of deployment for additional clients. However, it can also support service businesses that have not yet productized their service, or simply provide ancillary services to customize software, manage communities, moderate user-submitted content, and so on.

In this case, QBUX would typically be used like Groupons, able to cover some portion of the bill with the rest paid in fiat as a "co-pay". QBUX obtained in various ways can thus be used to obtain discounts on various services. Just like with Groupons or ticket sales, customers may be throttled — there may be limits on how much of a service a customer can use. Instead of breakage through unredeemed coupons, unspent QBUX can be spent by clients on other services, or re-sold to others similar to how StubHub allows resale of tickets.

Distribution and Discovery

At first, Qbix Inc. will be the largest developer of software products in the ecosystem, but as other developers build atop the Qbix Platform, it will become more decentralized. The marketplace of available software and content will have many different participants, but the initial distribution and discovery will probably be through Qbix apps such as Groups, which has already attracted over 6 million people around the world, in many languages and countries. Communities will be able to deploy the software they want for their members, and customize their experience, without all the hassle of dealing with software developers and hosting companies.

Reputation and Dispute Resolution

Developers, Hosting and Service Companies may be required to stake some QBUX tokens with a QBUX marketplace (such as the ones operated by Qbix, Inc.) in order to be listed there. That will enable customers to discover and connect with them. Each marketplace can have ratings and reviews to manage reputations of vendors and clients. In a typical marketplace, as vendors attract more simultaneous business to their linked wallet, their reputation grows, and so do their QBUX staking requirements. The staked QBUX are essential to effectively resolve disputes over service refunds, as well as for incentivizing transparency about how many transactions the marketplace has led to, which resulted in mutual satisfaction.

THE QBIX COMPANY

Company and Mission

Qbix Inc. was founded in 2011, with a mission to empower people and unite communities. This mission was borne out of a need for better software to connect people without centralized platforms operated by rent-seeking corporations. All around the world, studies show that "social" networking platforms were not really fostering social connections, and the more people used them, the less social they were in real life.

Since then, apps built by Qbix have reached 7 million people in countries all around the world, and generated nearly a million dollars in revenue to date. Most of that money was reinvested over the years into the open source Qbix Platform, in order to democratize access to the kind of technology that powers Facebook and other large platforms, allowing any community, organization, or startup, to release an app to unite their members and help them connect and collaborate with one another.

Redeeming QBUX with Qbix

Over the last 8 years, Qbix has already built up the Platform, and a growing business building apps for paying customers. These apps are typically multi-user apps that connect people and let them collaborate on various activities and documents. The types of communities they serve include festivals, political campaigns, religious and political organizations, educational institutions, and more. Increasingly, companies and organizations are looking for alternatives where they can own their own data and relationships, than trusting a centralized platform like Facebook. They can customize everything and exercise the same kind of control they would with Wordpress, instead of relying on whatever software and policies are provided by the closed-source, monolithic platform.

Qbix, Inc. is the first company to redeem QBUX, which can be used to pay for hosting a growing number of ready-made social web widgets, for viral invitations driving traffic to a website, or for custom software development. Redeeming QBUX at Qbix is subject to two limitations, at least until May, 2020:

  1. Each customer (organization) can only redeem up to 1,000,000 QBUX per month
  2. QBUX can be used to pay for up to 50% of the charges, the other 50% must be paid in fiat, Bitcoin or other currency acceptable to Qbix, Inc.

These limitations are similar to Groupon deals for a merchant, or insurance copays at a doctor, or to ticket sales to a venue. Any unused QBUX can be sold to others, to help QBUX holders avoid losing money to breakage. This is similar to secondary markets like StubHub for tickets.

Social Browser

Qbix is launching a Social Browser, that will enable people to share news, events, articles, videos and other digital content on the Web with one another, and discuss them. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, people will have the option to keep their contacts and data securely on their phone, and privately share in a peer-to-peer manner. They will be able to browse the Web, see personalized content, and see what friends are reading, without the website knowing anything about them or their friends.

Team

Gregory Magarshak, CEO and Chief Architect
A concert pianist as a child, Greg entered college at 14, finishing with a master's in math from NYU. With over a decade of experience in web development, Greg is a seasoned entrepreneur who is passionate about the power of social applications to improve people's lives. He is the architect behind the technology that powers Qbix applications.
Igor Martsekha, CTO
Since programming at the Polytechnic Institute in 2007, Vlad has had wide-ranging development experience including web development, but ultimately found his passion in developing for mobile devices. He develops native apps for both Android and iOS and integrates with the web via PhoneGap.
Andrey Tepaykin, Platform Director
Over the last 13 years, Andrey has developed a wide range of websites for startups and small businesses. He has extensive experience with web technologies as well as open source frameworks like Joomla, Magento, CodeIgniter, Kohana — and now — with the Qbix Platform. Andrey works on our web apps and trains future Qbix Platform superstars.
Ivan Alekseev, Designer
Graphic design was a hobby for Ivan for over 10 years until he turned professional. Very skilled with with Photoshop, Illustrator, and having designed icons, logos, websites and user experiences for dozens of companies, he now brings his skills to help Qbix design its applications.

THE QBIX PLATFORM

Distributed Operating System for the Web

The Platform is essentially a distributed operating system for the Web. Currently in version 1.1, it powers a growing list of reusable components that anyone can use to assemble a new website, release an app, or simply enhance their existing sites and apps with new features. Just like other operating systems, it is architected in a unified way that allows all the components to work together.

There are times in the history of computing that efforts like the Qbix Platform have produced a massive explosion in wealth and productivity, and allowed humanity to accomplish things at a scale previously unheard of. Here are three examples:

  1. Desktop Computers: There was a time when graphical user applications had to be written custom from scratch. MacOS and Windows changed the game by releasing a unified framework in which many reusable components were already implemented, such as windows, buttons, menus, mouse cursor handling, and so on. This freed app developers to focus on delivering much more sophisticated features, leaving the basics to the operating system. Word processors, Paint programs, Spreadsheets and others took advantage of the new possibilities. Plugin developers could create components that app developers re-used and re-mixed in their apps. The result was an explosion in user-friendly software that ushered in the era of personal desktop computing and helped improve productivity in countless ways for people across the planet.
  2. The Web: There was a time when networks serving content and connecting people had to be written from scratch. The software to dial in, discover news, chat, and connect with people was hosted by proprietary platforms like AOL and CompuServe. The Web changed the game by documenting an open protocol called HTTP, and languages like HTML, CSS and Javascript, which standardized how people would connect, receive and interact with documents and information. That allowed anyone to run their own web server or download a free web browser and interact with any website (or even view its HTML source code). This freed companies from having to build their store or portal on top of proprietary networks like AOL, leaving the basics to the web browsers servers. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia and others took advantage of new possibilities and built businesses on top of this permissionless platform. Plugin developers like Flash created software like video players that website developers re-used and re-mixed in their websites. The result was an explosion in information delivery that ushered in the era of e-commerce and online marketing, and helped improve information access in countless ways for people across the planet.
  3. Blogging: There was a time when dynamic websites had to be written from scratch. The software to publish articles, collaborate and present them with good-looking themes was hosted on proprietary platforms like blogger.com . Then Wordpress changed the game by releasing an open source framework in which many functions were already implemented, such as writing and editing blog posts, adding photos, indexes, commenting, and so on. This freed publishers, who may not have had the skills to develop their own website, to focus on what they had to say, leaving the basics to the blogging platform. Intellectuals, News agencies, Thought leaders, Brands and others took advantage of the new possibilities. Plugin developers could create components that publishers re-used and re-mixed in their blogs. The result was an explosion of good-looking blogs that ushered in the era of web publishing and helped give a voice in countless ways to people across the planet.
Community Apps: Today, if you need to build a following, unite your community, or release an app to help users do anything significant together, you have to spend a lot of money to write it from scratch. If you're a startup, you hire a "hacker" CTO and hope for the best. To build any sort community for their members, companies wind up relying on centralized, closed software, such as from Facebook to YouTube, which control the platform and only allow certain limited customization. They are often ad-supported, and manage the monetization through their own, centralized economics. They accumulate tons of data which they use for their own purposes, and sometimes become targets for hackers and state agencies to obtain bulk information on everyone. Qbix is working to make sure the story plays out along the same lines as the previous examples. Humanity is liberated by an open platform that empowers people and unites communities.

Powering Websites and Apps

Building modern, social websites to connect community members is currently so labor-intensive that the typical Qbix customer spends around $10K-90K for a custom-built solution. This enables them to launch not just a website that works in every browser, but also a native app that can be downloaded from app stores, and integrates with native notifications, contacts, calendars, payments and so on.

Qbix has already developed hundreds of reusable components, which all work together seamlessly and can be combined in different ways. This allows Qbix to assemble complex multi-user apps very quickly, and at a fraction of the time and cost of other companies. These components are also more reliable, having subjected to third-party security audits and being battle-tested across many apps.

Re-Usable Components

The key to this is extreme reusability. Every component is built once, then re-used across many projects. For example, network-enabled apps typically all need the same basic features: