Another day another thread!

Let's talk about TRUST - $UTU

@UTU_trust is building the trust infrastructure needed to make the internet safe.

'UTU' literally means 'Humanity' in Swahili

First, lets talk about the need. Tech will follow.

In any transaction, you must have faith in two things - the data involved in the transaction, and the other actors that are part of it.

When I give a friend a loan, I would want to know the interest rate he would receive, when he will pay, etc.

I also need to know his intention

When I hire a financial advisor, I want to know his historical performance, the types of assets he will allocate funds to, etc.

I also want to know he won't take my money and run.

This is a vast oversimplification, and some of this falls on legal, but in the end, trust is BIG

On the internet, it is MUCH harder to get this sense of trust, especially as we continue to build and iterate.

'Overwhelmingly people chose personally trusted service providers over others with higher star ratings, shorter wait times, and even lower prices'

Let's go back to star ratings. Isn't that a form of trust for services?

Sure.

My first venture was selling watches on a small Shopify store. It was hard to get customers. What did I do?

I created fake reviews.

My store had 20+ five star reviews, all fake, and performed well.

MOST reviews online are not genuine. MOST.

Reviews are a form of building brand reputation, and any store designer worth his weight knows this, and also how easily they could cheat this fragile system.

A universal trust layer is the solution to this issue.

'In a trust economy, consumers and providers give way to a third key actor in each transaction, that of endorsers that give both buyer and seller confidence to execute a transaction together'

currently, middlemen are paid by providers to drive customers. Doesn't inspire trust..

Besides that, think about when you give reviews. When is the last time you had a pretty good experience, and ran to yelp to tell strangers??

There is no incentive. Trust must be an economy. Users must be incentivized to participate, and incentivized to do so HONESTLY.

Well... who do we trust? Family? Very close friends?

Why?

Because these users have incentive to keep us happy. We might say they have a high 'trust score'.

What if we could use machine learning to accurately assign a 'trust score' to all reviewers?

No more anon star ratings.

Look at these use-cases: (there are many more).

My favorite is P2P E-commerce and lending. Defi falls in this basket. Everyone hates KYC, and I get that.

Still, this place is FULL of bad actors.

What if each had a trust score? This seems inevitable to me.

$UTU has already piloted this service with MARAMOJA, a taxi app with tens of thousands of users across Africa - and the trust infrastructure in place led to 20% higher user satisfaction.

back to #defi - 'In some cases, it might be possible to employ technologies like zero-knowledge proofs or ring signatures for certain services to function adequately. Our platform shall therefore enable the use of such technologies.'

zero-knowledge proofs will allow users to participate in @UTU_trust trust infrastructure, while still keeping their personal information and data private. This is a huge barrier to current trust infra.

How do we trust anons? How do we incentivize anons to dox?

ZKP

this is my favorite excerpt of the white-paper.

Truly incentivized. Any spite ratings will only hurt the participant.

I don't know about you, but I rarely leave positive reviews. I don't have time.

Now this is properly incentivized -> more participation

$UTU trust api can be thought of as a 'wager' on the quality of my review.

If I was THRILLED, and know others will be, I can endorse with more tokens, and receive a larger reward for later endorsements.

If I was off, and the service then stinks, I will eventually lose these.

Another favorite:

Users are in complete control of their data. As a consumer, I can even place a 'paywall' on my data, and services can then pay me to use my recommendations, similar to how current services pay for middlemen - but with a whole lot more trust involved.

Instead of relying on faked scores and reviews, the internet of trust relies on social relationships and endorsements. Same as a friend's recommendation of the local bar. People trust people that have incentive to provide accurate information. $UTU makes this set of users HUGE

This service, $UTU, will rely very much on network effect. The more users, the more data available to consumers. If not many use the service, it does not produce value.

The incentivized participation is the first step. Users will want this, because they will profit.

The next step, is integrations. Imagine if google implemented $utu, it would immediately become the standard.

We aren't quite there yet, but what they have done so far is impressive. The $utu trust api and sdk make $utu very easy to implement on existing services

By my count, $UTU has integrated 20+ projects as a trust oracle (making it the third or fourth largest oracle overall), and rumors of huge partnerships coming (looking at you $LINK).

Even better, $UTU isn't an oracle competitor. They can IMPROVE other oracles by integrating.

( @AceOfCrypto is an incredible source of info on $UTU, and he drops partnership analysis often. You should follow him for updates on $UTU partnerships, and related alpha)

He is the reason I bought in Jan at $0.03

Here is another fascinating thread on the need for under/uncollateralized lending in the crypto space. The only way, for this to happen, is to have more trust in the involved actors. $UTU has an excellent chance to bring this to defi. S/O @Melt_Dem https://twitter.com/Melt_Dem/status/1307305633050497025?s=20

a few more notes.

Exceptionally experienced team.

Bastian Blankenburg has previously been a CTO, of the before mentioned successful service MARAMOJA

Jacob Eisen is an experienced founder that has raised billions in capital for other projects.

I think $UTU has a great chance to be the second most-used oracle in crypto, also has many, many use cases outside of it.

Most oracles are $LINK competitors. $UTU can work with other oracles and platforms in synergy.

$LINK brought trust in DATA

$UTU brings it for ACTORS

@mikewchan is their Chief Commercial Commercial officer, and a great guy. You will see him around #CT. He has been big in getting these partnerships.

Team is GREAT - Need is GREAT - Opportunity is here.

10M MC is GOOFY. Yelp has a 3B mc. This is a much more robust solution.

and once again, twitter threw me for a loop with their goofy thread limit.

Just some final notes.

This isn't a meme coin. This isn't going to 10x in a day.

This is REAL tech solving a REAL issue, in active development, iterating towards something huge.

I think this could eventually be a billion mc project.

Also, this is a great entry. $utu is down about 60% since its ATH in mid feb, as HODL's are shaken out chasing memes and other pumps.

I think the next move will be huge, and large partnerships are coming. Those that find great FA projects early are always rewarded in the end.

not financial advice .

Thank you for your time and the recommendations frens.

More threads will be coming. At least two per week, and looking like more. One community voted per week. Consider following if you enjoyed this