Stox: Predicting the Future with Blockchain and Smart Contracts

 

By Peter Lee and Niv Abramovich, CMO of Stox | 1/7/2018
Stox – https://www.stox.com/
LinkedIn Profile: Niv Abramovich

Peter Lee: Niv, tell us a little about your background and Stox?

Niv Abramovich: Hello, I’m Niv Abramovich, CMO of Stox. Back in 2014, I founded Apprival, a mobile competitive intelligence platform. I am a fan of big data, a marketing ninja(!) and I love seeing projects growing from inception to fruition. In regards to Stox, I joined the company in October of this year, and am very charismatic about my role as CMO and where our marketing and communications efforts will take the company in Q1 and beyond.

Peter: Who benefits from Stox and how?

Niv: Anyone and everyone can benefit from using Stox prediction markets platform. It’s simple to use, entertaining, and allows you to use your own instincts and/or research to answer vote on a prediction. The Stox platform however is most powerful when used to harness the wisdom of the crowd to predict events outcomes – everything from popular social events like the Grammys or the Super Bowl.

Peter: To help our members understand your platform better, could you elaborate on one of the use cases a little more, one where a member could actually derive a monetary benefit from your platform? What would that look like and how would it work?

Niv: Our platform is a work in progress as we approach our Beta version release, and we are working according to our Roadmap. At this stage, since our platform doesn’t work on real STX tokens as that requires a license, I prefer not to refer to the monetary benefits in regards to the use case on the platform (there may be a legal argument that once we are fully decentralized, we may not even require licenses).

Having said that, in order to attract more users to our Community, we allow people to predict with demo money without any risk and win real STX tokens. Currently, it is running on a tournament/leaderboard model.

Peter: Given that there are multiple uses for your prediction platform, do you think that eventually there may be a dominant use for your platform (if so, what would that be), or do you think that the platform will always have multiple uses and different types of users?

Niv: We believe the dominant use for our platform could be similar way to other prediction markets platforms such as academic projects like PredictIt; but powered by our smart contracts, the STX token and our transparency on the blockchain. In that respect, we are a bit similar to Augur and Gnosis; yet we have a functional platform currently being used to base predictions on everyday things such as sports, weather, economics and politics.

Peter: What’s the one biggest thing people don’t know about Stox that you wish they did?

Niv: Stox it is easy and fun to use, and I’m working on spreading the message of the power of our prediction markets platform. Everyone wishes they were able to predict the ‘’future’’; entire movie franchises have been based on the concept of what you could do if you were able to go back in time with the knowledge gained from a time in the future. The Stox platform scientifically allows a person to make an educated prediction, while being executed via smart contracts.

Peter: What has surprised you most about your journey with Stox?

Niv: In one word: potential. The sky isn’t even the limit for what Stox’ prediction markets platform can achieve, especially on the blockchain with smart contracts.

Peter: Tell me about the future?  What does Stox look like 5 or 10 years from now?

Niv: Wow, that almost sounds like a prediction! In all seriousness, we see Stox developing in the B2B and B2C sectors; continuing our development according to our Roadmap, which includes our marketing kickoff in Q1.

In five years I see us as being one of the leading tokens on the Ethereum network, ideally being used in the exchange of actual goods.

In ten years, I see us as a firmly established as the world’s best decentralized prediction platform with hundreds of thousands of users and hundreds of operators from tier 1 to tier three using the platform for their predictions and increasing the community; and as a major data provider that affects the liquidity of predicting the outcome of future events.

In addition, we’ll be a mainstream prediction platform for any sort of question a person would want to pose.

Peter: What about the other blockchain based platforms out there (or, that will be created) that compete in the same ‘prediction’ space? How does or will STOX differentiate itself?  What is your competitive advantage or unique selling proposition?

Niv: On this, we would like to refer you to our Roadmap where we specify exactly the differences between us.

Peter: This is not directly related to Stox but how can we save the earth, this world and humanity?  Name one person, company or organization you feel is really having an impact in this area and why?

Niv: We all share this one, precious world, and it is important to me as a husband, father and human being that we leave a better world than what we were given. I believe the cryptocurrency world will begin to develop smarter uses of the vast amounts of energy we use, especially given the innovation this sector offers. As far as influential people in the world, and especially in business, I am definitely a fan of entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

Peter: What is your prediction? Will we Elon take us to Mars in our lifetimes? (Am also interested in what the wisdom of the crowd will tell us one day on Stox!)

Niv: As far as Elon Musk, I definitely think we’ll see Mars through his vision at some date, given the sheer amount of determination, research, development and scientific expertise he has on his projects. In regards to the wisdom of the crowd on Stox, we definitely think the future is bright and that we’ll “hit the moon” as we say in the cryptocurrency world.

Peter: What can you tell us about yourself that our audience probably doesn’t know?

Niv: I absolutely love interacting with our thriving online Stox Community. From communicating with them via our Telegram group, my video updates and our social media presence, interacting with our Stox Community is one of the motivating factors of my work.