Peerwith Uses Blockchain In Peer-2-Peer Marketplace, Introduces New Payment Token

By Benjamin Ross

August 30, 2018 | Peer-to-peer scientist marketplace, Peerwith, recently launched their blockchain-based payment token, PeerScienceCoin (PSC). The Amsterdam-based company is planning future expansion for the token, launching initially on Peerwith’s online marketplace and moving to other platforms and systems.

Peerwith developed PSC with the hopes that it will increase the efficiency, reliability, and convenience of the Peerwith platform, as well as hold value for the wider researcher services ecosystem, and help solve current problems around payments and micro-payments in academia.

Peerwith connects academics and experts across the world, aiding collaboration and improving the quality of academic work. Peerwith offers copy editing, language editing, scientific editing, translation services, and manuscript writing help. Experts join the platform and when researchers post requests for help, experts can choose jobs they’d like to take. Experts quote a fee for a particular job, and Peerwith adds 12%-20%, depending on the service category. The researcher selects an expert and transfers the fee to Peerwith.

Ivo Verbeek, co-founder and director of Peerwith, told Bio-IT World that the peer-to-peer approach is in direct contrast to the standard “middle-man scenario” in Researcher and Author Services.

Often a researcher who needs help during the process of writing an article doesn’t know where to get expertise until she submits her article to a scientific journal. The journal may then send the article to an agency, who will then send it to someone who is an expert in the article’s content who will actually do the editing, Verbeek said. “We thought this middle-man scenario is not going to last because through the internet there are so many marketplaces, we have networks and freelancers available. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

By using blockchain technology, Peerwith users work in close contact, allowing more of collaboration between the author and the expert. The payment model for PSC, Verbeek said, reflects that collaborative spirit as well.

“Blockchain technology depends on if you have a group application for it,” said Verbeek. “It’s not rocket science. The technology works itself out, but the application needs to be right.”

Peerwith’s model of one-to-one partnerships between the scientific researchers and experts is the perfect application, Verbeek believes.

“The majority of researchers [in our marketplace] want to help out their peers, they think that should be a part of their job, but not necessarily for free. They also want to get something back. Something to help their careers.”

PSC enables the differentiation between parties paying for a service and parties consuming a service on the Peerwith platform. According to Verbeek, PSC simplifies budgeting for clients, allowing real time overviews of spend and remaining budget.

“It’s easy to complete payments through one entity (the institution), and then transfer that money to the researcher, who can then spend it on the marketplace using [PSC],” said Verbeek. “We think there’s a good way to use [PSC] as a reward-based token.”

The problem Peerwith faces, though, is in the naming of the payment token itself. According to Verbeek, every time you mention PeerScienceCoin, you immediately think of it as an initial coin offering. “Maybe we did that to ourselves,” Verbeek laughed. “People think of it as cryptocurrency, as IPOs. But that’s not what we’re doing.”

For Verbeek, he sees PSC functioning more like a gift card than an actual currency.

“We engineered [PSC] so that it’s not possible for investors or speculators in the Peerwith marketplace to make money out of the coin itself,” Verbeek said. “For example we have a fixed exchange rate, so one PSC is one USD. It’s as simple as that.”

Peerwith hopes PSC will be used as a science token within the broader researcher services ecosystem, enabling publishers and academic institutions to reward researchers with tokens for use on the Peerwith platform.

Looking ahead, the company has been developing partnerships with scientific publishers, which they will be announcing in the coming months. “We’re looking at the bigger picture and seeing that that includes the publishers,” Verbeek said. “So for us, the scientific publishers are logical partners.”