In this presentation, Niko Laamanen introduces Weconomy, a Bitcoin‑based decentralized marketplace app aimed at making cryptocurrency usable for everyday people. He argues that current crypto adoption is hindered by technical complexity comparable to the early internet era, and proposes a smartphone‑only interface where users need only know how to download an app. The platform will attract users with a treasury‑funded airdrop that credits a local‑currency‑denominated amount of Bitcoin (e.g., €20 worth) upon sign‑up. Transactions are secured by a Rootstock‑based escrow smart contract; once both parties confirm satisfaction, funds are released. A peer‑rating system called “Karma” provides decentralized trust, similar to eBay reviews. The alpha version (alpha.weconomy.io) will accept the first 200 users, primarily tech‑savvy students, to gather data and feedback. Weconomy is being built without a traditional corporate structure, leveraging Rootstock to run ERC‑20 smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain, which Niko cites as the most secure chain. The long‑term business model focuses on accelerating Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption, earning revenue from the appreciation of Bitcoin’s value, and sustaining development through a treasury that takes a micro‑fee from each transaction to fund bug bounties, feature development, and developer rewards. The talk concludes with an invitation to join the alpha and a handoff to Fred Darstier.
Chapters
So this is another project that I'm really passionate about now, and I got in it early this year. And if you recognize any of these words, probably some of them you do, some of them you don't. The point is that a regular user, if you think about what it's going to take to make cryptocurrencies a reality for everyday people and, and basically get the mainstream adaptation to start, what we need is to make it a lot more simple. We are like in the '95 of internet level of technical knowledge needed to actually use cryptocurrencies effectively. So what We Economy is proposing to do is to create an interface for cryptocurrency, namely Bitcoin. The underlying asset will be Bitcoin. The only thing is The user wouldn't have any other knowledge except how to use a smartphone, how to download an application, and everything will be taken care of by the application. So this would be a way for anybody in the world to trade anything with anybody else anytime. So the idea is that when you open the app, First of all, how we lure the new customers, there will be a treasury model which will be a decentralized smart contract that would then pay out a small so-called airdrop of Bitcoins that will be denoted in the local currency. So let's say that you live in Finland and you download our application, and then you will get €20 worth of Bitcoin that you can use on the platform to buy services or goods from anybody in the world. And how this would work is that there will be no central party. There will be a smart contract that is an escrow that then the funds get transferred to that escrow. And once both parties are happy with the transaction, the funds will be released from the escrow. And there will be a feedback system that we call Karma. And then each of the participants will rate the other's Karma. And this way there will be like this decentralized trust system built in, kind of like what eBay popularized, this kind of review system of your peers. And actually, I'm just going to quickly announce that we are opening the— we're opening the sign-up for the alpha. And actually, I was thinking it would be the best— It would be an awesome place to test it out, like the village here. There's already a community of tech students that are probably— some of you are students here and probably are interested in using these kind of new applications, and we would get a lot of valuable data from that. So if you're interested at all, I'll give you the address later. It's alpha.weconomy.io, and that's where you will find it. And if you want to, there's only— we're only going to take 200 people who register first. And that will be the— we already have an application that is actually functioning. It's not quite on MVP level yet, but there's— we can make it work. So here's some screenshots of the app. As you can see, we paid a lot of attention, or rather our founder, Alexei, has paid a lot of attention to make it look neat, make it look appealing. And of course there's a lot of more work to do, but this is already, in my opinion, way more than most projects have at an ICO stage. And when it comes to ICO, we are actually— we're not even thinking about incorporating a company around this because for this kind of platform to succeed, I think it needs to be totally decentralized. So we are attempting to build it without a company. and on top of Bitcoin blockchain using Rootstock smart contracts. So that's going to be interesting, or a similar system. So what Rootstock does is it enables ERC-20 smart contracts to be built on Bitcoin blockchain, which, like we discussed earlier, at the moment is the only provenly safe chain. And that's why I think we have to try and use it. So yeah, about the business model, the main business is that we want to expedite the mainstream adaptation of Bitcoin. And that will be the long-term revenue coming from there, the value increase of Bitcoin. And then on top of that, there needs to be an incentivization system for developers to keep fixing bugs and adding adding some features. So there will be an incorporated voting system and flagging system for bugs and suggestions that will get voted on to this Weeconomy-like development pipeline from where prospecting developers could just pick up some tasks that need to be done. And it will include a reward that will be payable from treasury. And the treasury will be a smart contract that will take a small, tiny microcut of each and every transaction going on in the network. So that way, it will be autonomous, decentralized application, at least in theory. So here's the address. If you're interested, if you want to learn more, I'm always happy to talk about my projects. And if you want— if you're interested in joining the first wave, go to alpha.weconomy.io and register. And we'll We'll be in touch with you shortly once we have managed to actually have a downloadable app, which I assume will be during the summer. All right. That was rather quick. Yeah, like I said, let's save the questions for the after-party. And without further ado, I'll give the mic to Fred Darstier. Thank you, Niko.
