[ANN][UMC] Unity Matrix Commons - Democratized Risk Management

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

It's good to see a professional team working on a truly decentralized project; often we get amateurs, while the Microsoft devs are put to work on bankcoins and other permissioned blockchains

[jibrelnetwork]

This definitely has a use-case in MENA / Asia / Islamic countries.

This type of insurance would be fully compliant over there (maybe with a few adjustments), and could be a massive disruptor.

[cryptoisdafuture]

Someone mentioned you guys as an example on the core uses of blockchain technology/ cryptocurrencies in general for the future in a Quora answer:

https://www.quora.com/How-are-cryptocurrencies-being-used-intuitively-around-the-world-to-make-money-besides-standard-investing/answer/Siddharth-Bhattacharya/

Going good, guys!

[karanj]

Very Nice Concept.It could prove to be a game changer in the insurance industry.Its a well though program.Wish good luck to the team.

[ticterine]

Did anyone else see this article on cryptocoinsnews? https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/umbrella-coin-seeks-to-disrupt-insurance-industry-using-blockchain/

[umbrellacoin]

Hey everyone! We just made a big design update to our client prototype:

http://staging.umbrellacoin.meteorapp.com/

We're using cards now to display the dashboard, including policy summary, outstanding claims, and adding a new policy/claim. Check it out!

[MadPanda]

So beyond the 100% multiplier on the first 5000 Eth do you guys plan on any more bonuses during the pre-sale?

[cryptoisdafuture]

Wow I checked it out, I could actually login, and look at the cards and details of the policy. I am hoping the contracts can start executing soon, and then we can get close to production level. I haven't seen the code, but I hope you're close.

UmbrellaCoin, before I was a little skeptic but now you got my money, I am buying a policy from you. Done with those damn expensive deductibles!

[BitFarmer75]

i was reading this article here https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/umbrella-coin-seeks-to-disrupt-insurance-industry-using-blockchain/. I didn't know that it's a trillion dollar market.

[cryptoisdafuture]

I went through your Github, and delved through the UI code as well as the smart contracts individually. It seems like some of the blockchain integration is pending, but apart from that as a professional developer I found the work done already very interesting and a good division of responsibility between the contracts like Claims, Contributions, Voting (Democracy). Given you aren't doing lots of actual computation over the blockchain and rather over the server itself, it will save much of Ether (gas) and I can see you guys will do a job with cutting costs. I am now eagerly waiting for you to integrate the blockchain solutions.

I might jump in on a Discord session with you guys, can you send the link?

[Angel Di]

So beyond the 100% multiplier on the first 5000 Eth do you guys plan on any more bonuses during the pre-sale?

I subscribe to the issue

[umbrellacoin]

So beyond the 100% multiplier on the first 5000 Eth do you guys plan on any more bonuses during the pre-sale?

I subscribe to the issue

No. The bonus is 100% for the first 5000 ETH, so 1 ETH = 1200 UMC. There are no other tiers or scaling planned. We want to reward people who believe in our project as early adopters.

I went through your Github, and delved through the UI code as well as the smart contracts individually. It seems like some of the blockchain integration is pending, but apart from that as a professional developer I found the work done already very interesting and a good division of responsibility between the contracts like Claims, Contributions, Voting (Democracy). Given you aren't doing lots of actual computation over the blockchain and rather over the server itself, it will save much of Ether (gas) and I can see you guys will do a job with cutting costs. I am now eagerly waiting for you to integrate the blockchain solutions.

I might jump in on a Discord session with you guys, can you send the link?

https://discordapp.com/invite/mwKSgTK

Anyone is free to come and say hi or ask questions! We also have a link to the Discord on our website https://www.umbrellacoin.org/

[cryptoisdafuture]

Wow, I had a great conversation with the CEO of UmbrellaCoin on Discord. I will encourage everyone out here to go on the Discord link, and ask out some questions. I feel much more confident to be their customer after this discussion. I will paste the transaction in a succeeding post.

[cryptoisdafuture]

This is a transcript from the conversation:

------------------------------------
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:28 PM
Hi guys, I have been following your coin for a while and had a questions, both regarding your code base and your business model. Is this a good time?

terry - Today at 3:28 PM
hey thanks for looking at our work. we're always happy to answer questions

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:29 PM
Great. My first question was what sets you apart from other insurance offerings on the blockchain such as InsureX?

terry - Today at 3:29 PM
great question. first of all, I think it['s important to note that we're not insurance. we're not offering any services in that space and we're not having customers sign insurance contracts.

We're really concerned about how millions of people have to pay huge out of pocket expenses, even when they already pay so much in premiums and that's true in almost every sector - auto, home, life ,health etc. we're trying to fill a certain niche and there are not many other offerings like us
and we're not in this to gouge you like regular insurers, our plan is to give you the principle of your policy back after one year if certain conditions are met. you don't get that with traditional insurance

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:32 PM

wow that full refund idea is wonderful.  Do you intend to operate just in US, or other countries as well?

terry - Today at 3:33 PM
personally, I'm most comfortable with US jurisdiction, but we have a diverse team from Asia, Australia and Central America and the community in MENA / East Asia seems to be enthusiastic about this working there too. healthcare is much less of an issue in countries with socialized medicine but there are still auto mandates in a lot of places
if there are any issues supporting many different places, we can always make adjustments to our smart contracts but yeah initially we're aiming to cover as much as possible

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:36 PM

Right, I have some friends abroad as well who complain about out-of-pocket costs of auto insurance. However what do you think about legal challenges? Insurance and healthcare in general is such a regulated area and cryptocurrencies continue to have changing regulations by SEC. How do you plan to stay on the right side of law?

terry - Today at 3:36 PM

another great question, and a difficult one we get asked a lot. we've spent a lot of time ensuring we're on the right side of law and the SEC. we wrote up a terms and conditions you can see on our github and we link to on the website. Let me find it
https://github.com/umbrellacoin/umc/blob/master/documents/umc-terms.pdf

Basically, US and HK residents can't participate in the crowdsale, we're not insurance and we're not here to promise if you help fund us that you will see any monetary gain
that's what a Ponzi scheme would do; we're trying to fill a legitimate customer need and we think blockchain is the best way to address the issue due to the efficiency of smart contracts and the security they provide so we're not going be a security

After the crowdsale, US customers are free to use our service, just not as an investment; you need to suffer real damages to have a chance at using our service - at best you should break even as far as insurance regulations go. we think we'll face licensing challenges from the insurance lobby, but the decentralized nature offers us time to build a customer base who actually love the service we provide. we go to this example a lot, but Uber and AirBnB would have been considered illegal because of licensing requirements when they started
but regulators weren't ready to deal with apps in 2008 and they were playing catch up so by the time they did catch up, there was a real user base and real demand for their services - regulators worked with them to coexist with taxi companies and ensure customer safety, driver background checks etc.
we'll be compliant with HIPAA for information privacy to begin with, but if regulators ask us to do more in the fture we can enable our contracts to do the same

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:44 PM

Wow, that was a lot of explanation to my simple question.  I will check the link for sure.  Thanks a lot for going through the pain to type all that out :smiley:

terry - Today at 3:45 PM

no problem. we've debated this a lot amongst the development team and it's questions like this which help us ensure high standards of customer service
do you have any other questions?

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:46 PM

Yeah, I did. It was on your code. So I am a software developer by profession, and I was going through your Github. I really like how you’ve created a separation of concerns in your frontend, server, blockchain and smartchain logic. Even though I have developed an idea myself, I just want to make sure I am on the same page so- how are you making sure you’re reducing the amount of gas (Ether) spent on verifying transactions?

terry - Today at 3:47 PM

great technical question - we don't get many of those from potential users but we are thrilled to answer this. we were founded on a passion of creating software
basically, we're trying to move as much of the code which executes smart contracts to the server as we can. we want to keep the critical business logic on the blockchain
for example, when you file a claim, the results from the vote will be processed on the server and based on the next action we will continue executing on the server
only when we know what the actual change will be (refund, claim state or some other core business logic) will we make a call to our contracts
you can see some examples in claims.sol or contribution.sol

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:50 PM

great. yeah, I went through some of those files and I will go through it again, might even tweak with your code if I find time. It sounds efficient. I see the blockchain integration code is not there yet. Is that something in the work yet?

terry - Today at 3:51 PM

we're focusing more on verifying the crowdsale and token contracts for now and standalone development of business logic contracts. we want to make sure the sale runs smoothly
but we also have the server piece being developed separately, mostly using mock data.

when we iron out more of the contracts to the point where all of the base cases are functional, we will start integrating smart contract calls with our javascript application
you can try our prototype at http://staging.umbrellacoin.meteorapp.com/
in the whitepaper and on the website, we gave an estimated date of launch around October-November of this year I think we're well on track for that

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:53 PM

sounds excellent.
I will play around with the prototype, thanks. I tried it once a week back or so, but will see any if there are more developments. Thanks a lot for answering my questions, I feel much more confident to use your services after this discussion and I hope other people also see the utility of this. If it's fine with you, can I share this discussion on the original BitcoinTalk thread

terry - Today at 3:54 PM

yeah sure, that's fine. we always appreciate the community getting involved and votes of confidence from our potential users. we want to make this product great and we want to make it work for the people using it. we love any feedback or further questions you might have
if not, have a great day 

cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:56 PM
Thanks again

[Alexandr Korelko]

A lot of this is intriguing, but I'm confused by the focus on preventing fraud through making it easier to deny claims -

We're incentivizing the community be on "the winning side" of the vote so, unless that bias exists collectively, the voting process will pick the right outcome in the long run. "Guaranteeing" a claim is a risky proposition as that would leave us open to fraud - that would also require a central authority to basically say "no, we override the community" which kind of kills the decentralized concept in the first place. The community will be able to have an open discussion on claims as they're voting to compile/share evidence. Worst case scenario as a policy holder is you get your money back.

Also, to be fair, anytime you're trying to extract money out of someone for a cause, you have to provide whatever they claim is sufficient evidence. The UMC community will be a reflection of all of our policyholders.

As a community member with a stake in the float, don't I actually just want to deny every single claim including the good ones just to keep my own stake higher? If anything I would expect there to be a sizable group of people who try to be as stingy as possible. Related to this, we all know that the (real or not) hot girl in trouble is going to get 3x the votes a man in the same situation would, another sizable chunk of the community will be pretty biased against everyone who doesn't look like them and so on. Decentralizing oracles work for prediction markets where there is a clear right answer that anybody can look up, but I don't see a good way to make this work for something with this much subjectivity. Am I missing something obvious? How do you plan on incentivizing the 'right' side as opposed to simply the side with the bigger bias?

[umbrellacoin]

A lot of this is intriguing, but I'm confused by the focus on preventing fraud through making it easier to deny claims -

We're incentivizing the community be on "the winning side" of the vote so, unless that bias exists collectively, the voting process will pick the right outcome in the long run. "Guaranteeing" a claim is a risky proposition as that would leave us open to fraud - that would also require a central authority to basically say "no, we override the community" which kind of kills the decentralized concept in the first place. The community will be able to have an open discussion on claims as they're voting to compile/share evidence. Worst case scenario as a policy holder is you get your money back.

Also, to be fair, anytime you're trying to extract money out of someone for a cause, you have to provide whatever they claim is sufficient evidence. The UMC community will be a reflection of all of our policyholders.

As a community member with a stake in the float, don't I actually just want to deny every single claim including the good ones just to keep my own stake higher? If anything I would expect there to be a sizable group of people who try to be as stingy as possible. Related to this, we all know that the (real or not) hot girl in trouble is going to get 3x the votes a man in the same situation would, another sizable chunk of the community will be pretty biased against everyone who doesn't look like them and so on. Decentralizing oracles work for prediction markets where there is a clear right answer that anybody can look up, but I don't see a good way to make this work for something with this much subjectivity. Am I missing something obvious? How do you plan on incentivizing the 'right' side as opposed to simply the side with the bigger bias?

Thanks for bringing that up. We've had very long discussions amongst our team members on both opposite scenarios- policyholders intentionally voting “No” to prevent the pool’s amount to be used for other agents, as well as colluding on “Yes” votes by making false claims and splitting payouts amongst pools. The first we’ll address here since you ask, it is a very fine example of the tragedy of the commons. Ideally, we’d want everyone to know we’re trying everyone on our end to keep solvent, so denying someone else’s legitimate claim doesn’t help their claim in any way. In no way are they entitled to "a bigger share" by denying a claim. We're not an investment fund and the most you can possibly own without making a claim is what you paid in.

However, we understand that might not be sufficient, and we need to infuse some incentives and regulations. Therefore, we intend to provide some incentives in the form of reduced cooling period, increased maximum amount attainable for good “citizens” of our democracy who execute their civic duty in a timely manner and with good results. For every user, we’d be storing their voting history and would tally it against the outcome of the vote in smart contract itself. If there’s a sharp discrepancy in the alignment of results over a sustained period, we’ll notify the user with a warning. We aren't publishing user identity and we're not publishing vote results until the vote has concluded. We’re also working on alternate ways of “reputation” in community, but might work on it in upcoming iterations.

To answer your bias vs correctness problem, we do intend on having a claims adjuster on the team to help identify the "right side," at least initially, while the community is built up. This will not necessarily swing votes, but it will give us better insight on who is more in-line with sound analysis. We're trying to build a community built on trust. People trust their insurance assessor even though they can carry the exact same biases as a group collective. We need to help get the community off the ground to build this trust.

Thanks for your questions!

[MissHope]

I think it is a good project with strong team. Will wait for an ICO.

[umbrellacoin]

Hey everyone!

We're still making daily updates to our github and our prototype, which I always encourage you to check out and give feedback on. http://staging.umbrellacoin.meteorapp.com/

I also want to announce that tommorow, August 13 20:00 UTC we will be holding a live Q/A session in our discord to kick off the week long countdown to the launch of our crowdsale! If you have any questions, or just want to listen in, please come and drop by!

https://discordapp.com/invite/mwKSgTK

[ticterine]

Their twitter just posted this https://themerkle.com/umbrella-coin-aims-to-change-the-insurance-industry/

Another prominent blog picked them up, and they gave some good answers.

[hihihishi]

I like the new website update. I like how it now shows the press listings to prove that they are a relevant business. Anyone else like the update?