Did you get a gift card recently?


If the answer is yes, you're in good company. 95% of Americans surveyed last year have used gift cards. With a volume approaching $160 billion dollars per year, and an annual growth of 5-6% for the past decade, consumer enthusiasm shows no sign of slowing down.

The gift card industry isn't without issues. Consumers can lose their physical gift cards. Digital cards require users to become familiar with specific apps for each brand. Operating costs put a floor on the minimum value a card can hold.


Enter our blockchain solution for businesses: MICROTIP


Using Ethereum, we believe the gift card industry stands to benefit from tokenization:
- transaction costs can be significantly lower, with scaling solutions in the pipeline (Raiden, Plasma, state channels, etc.). Gift cards don't have to be constrained to dollar value and above.
- the common standards of ERC-721 tokens allows for interoperability between different brands. Users can be provided with secure decentralized exchanges to trade and resell their cards, instead of the informal barter systems we see currently.
- the blockchain takes care of validation and security, freeing up valuable resources for smaller businesses.

Thanks to the great minds working tirelessly on Ethereum, there is no technical hurdle stopping these improvements from becoming reality. This isn't an entirely new protocol that needs to be invented. The tools are there, and current lack of adoption results from inertia and unfamiliarity with blockchain technology.


Our vision

In the short term, we want to be a bridge between local businesses and blockchain technology. Our mobile app will let companies emit digital gift cards as ERC-721 tokens, distribute them to their clients, and implement personalised loyalty programs. Users will be able to hold these gift cards in a common wallet, use them, and trade them for other gift cards in a peer-to-peer market. Neither companies nor users will need any blockchain experience to participate.

Looking further ahead, we want to nudge participants towards a different model. As gift cards become more fungible, new use cases emerge: microtransactions, loyalty programs amounting to savings accounts.


Who are we?

We're a team of seasoned professionals with more than 10 years of experience in retail business, law, and economics. We're operating out of Orléans, France.


The MIP token

To pay for MICROTIP services, companies will be required to use MIP, our own ERC20 token. The process will be unobtrustive: if the company doesn't have any balance at the moment they decide to order any particular service, MIP tokens will be bought seamlessly in the background through the application, either from MICROTIP or from any individual seller should they offer a better rate. When MIP tokens are used to pay for a service, they are burned instantly. The given cost for a particular service will remain constant in local currencies, while the amount of MIP required per action will become lower as tokens are burned.

As for end users, our app will function like a limited ETH wallet, letting them hold any number of gift card emitted through MICROTIP services. Not only users can convert gift cards to other gift cards, they will also be able to convert them to MIP (of course, more technical users will be able to trade them for any other ERC20 token).


Token Specifications

MIP will be an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. There will be a total supply of 90 million MIP tokens at creation, and no more will be created. The company will hold 10 million tokens for operations and marketing, while 80 million tokens will be made available to investors in two different offerings.


Presale Structure

We will run a presale on February 13th 2018. 16 million MIP tokens will be made available to investors, at a rate of 50 000 MIP per ETH.

The above numbers assume a valuation of $1,250 per ether. We might tweak numbers should ETH be worth more or less.

This presale is open to any investor, without any form of AML/KYC. We believe following AML/KYC regulations have their place in the context of companies raising dozens of millions of dollars. However, in smaller blockchain startups such requirements have little purpose beyond projecting a false sense of respectability.


Crowdsale structure

By Q2 2018, we plan to hold a crowdsale for 64 million MIP tokens, at a rate of 25 000 MIP per ETH. Like with the presale, numbers are subject to change depending on ETH valuation. This crowdsale will implement normal AML/KYC checks, and will not be open to US investors.

To ensure crowdsale participants are not unfairly undercut by presale participants, we will also offer a buy back of presale tokens, at the crowdsale rate.


Budget breakdown

We hope to raise the ether equivalent of $200,000 USD in our initial presale, with a hard cap of $400,000 USD.

We will be paying ourselves the equivalent of minimum wage salaries during our first six months of operation. In France, this comes out to $1,800 per person per month.
With 4 people on the team currently, total expenses amount to $43,200.
$18,000 will be set aside for operating costs.
$30,000 will be reserved for marketing costs before our crowdsale.
The entirety of the remaining money (from $120,000 to $320,000) will be used to hire qualified developer talent at competitive rates, in order to help bring our vision to fruition.


Our roadmap

Q1 2018:
- meetings with retail marketing professionals to present our project and form partnerships for our pilot program
- presale (february 13th to february 27th)
- hiring extra developers
Q2 2018:
- internal testing with selected partners
- hiring campaign manager and community manager
- crowdsale
Q3 2018:
- full development work
- ramping up with more hires
Q4 2018:
- first public release in local markets


Additional information

Website: https://www.microtip.org (work in progress)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/microtipmip
Contact us: contact@microtip.org
Bounty campaign: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2745297.new#new



Thank you for taking a look at our project! We welcome any question, criticism, feedback. We will share more information in the following days.