The announcement of the business alliance between Earlyworks Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq: ELWS) and Service Innovation marks a significant step toward leveraging blockchain technology to enhance the reliability of online gourmet reviews and ratings. By integrating Earlyworks’ proprietary high-speed Grid Ledger System (GLS) with Service Innovation’s expertise in managing the gourmet website “Yummeet!”, the partnership aims to address long-standing issues in the industry related to transparency and trust.
The primary goal is to create an immutable record of user reviews and ratings on “Yummeet!” using GLS technology. This integration ensures that once data is recorded, it cannot be tampered with, mitigating concerns over review manipulation or inaccuracies often associated with advertising revenue models.
Earlyworks Challenges Addressed:
- Trustworthiness: Many users face difficulty finding reliable information due to manipulated or false reviews on current platforms.
- Transparency: Blockchain’s immutable nature guarantees that the integrity of reviews and ratings is preserved.
- Strategic Significance:
The collaboration symbolizes a move toward adopting blockchain in consumer-facing industries beyond finance, showcasing the versatility of Earlyworks’ GLS. For “Yummeet!”, this technology can enhance user engagement and build a reputation for reliability in the competitive gourmet platform market.
This alliance reflects a growing trend of blockchain integration to solve real-world challenges in digital platforms. The immutable nature of blockchain will likely attract both users seeking reliable information and businesses desiring a trustworthy review ecosystem.
Our blockchain technology serves as a critical foundation to address these challenges. By leveraging blockchain, reviews and rating data can be stored without risk of tampering or deletion, ensuring users have access to trustworthy information. This creates an environment where users can more easily find dining establishments that match their preferences.
We aim to establish a new “user-first” standard in the gourmet website domain, delivering innovative value creation.
Market Potential of Web Technologies
The global blockchain market, a cornerstone of Web3 technology, continues to expand. It is projected to grow from approximately USD 10.6 billion in 2023 to approximately USD 404.1 billion by 2030—a remarkable 38-fold increase over seven years, highlighting its rapid growth and global attention.1
In contrast, Japan’s blockchain market is estimated at approximately JPY 142.7 billion in 2023, capturing roughly 10% of the global share.2
In Japan, the government has launched initiatives like the “Web3.0 Research Group” under the Digital Agency, following the Cabinet-approved “Priority Policy Program for the Realization of a Digital Society” in June 2022. These initiatives aim to create an environment conducive to advancing Web3, including blockchain-based NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
Necessity and Benefits of Blockchain Technology
- Establishing Trust and Building Communities:
In a digital age where consumers increasingly demand transparency and trust, the reliability of information, especially restaurant reviews, becomes crucial. The current gourmet platforms face challenges in maintaining unbiased review systems. Blockchain enables more transparent and trustworthy services by ensuring data immutability. Additionally, rewarding users for contributions like reviews fosters higher satisfaction and the development of user-driven communities. - Enhancing Review Transparency and Trust:
Blockchain ensures that reviews and ratings are recorded immutably, enabling users to trust the information they access. - Strengthening Dining Experiences with Incentives:
Blockchain facilitates systems to reward users for posting reviews, sharing photos, or promoting restaurants. These rewards, such as NFTs or points, increase user satisfaction and engagement. - Evolving into a Community-Driven Gourmet Platform:
Introducing DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) mechanisms allows users to participate in platform governance, event planning, and new menu proposals, fostering a collaborative and evolving platform.
Key Areas of the Partnership
- Integrating Web3 Solutions into “Yummeet!”:
We will provide cutting-edge blockchain solutions to enhance Service Innovation’s “Yummeet!” platform. This includes developing new features and improving products with the aim to establish “Yummeet!” as the most trusted gourmet site in Japan. - Providing Web3 Expertise:
We will contribute our Web3 expertise and technical resources to efficiently drive joint projects and strengthen the technological foundation.
Future Business Development
- Building a User-First Rating System:
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- Blockchain ensures transparency and trust in reviews, helping users make informed decisions.
- Smart contracts automatically detect and manage inappropriate comments, enhancing the quality of content.
- Visualizing Dining Experiences:
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- Assign value to user activities (e.g., dining, reviewing, promoting) and make contributions visible via NFT rankings or point accumulation.
- Reward highly engaged users and those who post trustworthy reviews with additional perks.
- Strengthening Community Engagement:
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- Encourage fans to support small and independent restaurants through self-sustaining communities, awarding NFTs as proof of support.
- Enable participation in platform governance and content development based on user contributions.
Synergies and Expected Outcomes of the Alliance
- Revolutionizing Gourmet Platforms with Web3:
This partnership will transform “Yummeet!” into an interactive, cutting-edge gourmet platform, redefining the gourmet industry through blockchain innovation. - Enhancing Service Reliability and Growth:
Our blockchain technology and ongoing support will be utilized with the aim to enable “Yummeet!” to evolve into Japan’s most trusted gourmet website. - Creating New User Experiences:
By combining our blockchain expertise with Service Innovation’s domain knowledge, we aim to foster stronger connections between users and their favorite local establishments, delivering unparalleled dining experiences.
