The Rouge Project: Re-engineering the Digital Coupon Market

The Rouge Project is an open-source platform seeking to transform the digital coupon space using the blockchain technology. Its main agenda is to cut on costs associated with coupon marketing, eliminate causes of friction between key players in the space and rule out the need for intermediaries. The project envisions a future in which digital coupons can be tracked, monetized, secured and verified with ease.The coupon industry has been undergoing a gradual revolution by becoming paperless and moving to the mobile device. This has reduced production costs and made it possible to link them with big data tools, CRM software, and loyalty reward programs. This has led to unprecedented growth within the sector. However, the frameworks used have not kept pace with the developments and as such the industry still faces significant hurdles.It takes a lot of resources to keep track of the issuance, ownership, and redemption of coupons using traditional databases. As a result, fraud has become prevalent within the sector with a devastating effect on both issuers and publishers. Merchants usually have a fixed budget for promotions and discount which means that fraudulent redemptions take a toll on their finances and also ruin brand perception for publishers.Benefits for All Key PlayersThe Rouge project will build a disruptive coupon platform on the ethereum blockchain making use of the smart contract paradigm to generate and manage coupons. The distributed blockchain ledger will make it possible for issuing brands and merchants to account for each coupon thus reducing fraud. The system will make double redemption impossible and ensure that coupon issuers only make payments to publishers for their advertising efforts only when coupons are distributed to actual users.Users of the platform will enjoy getting verifiable guarantees on the real value of coupons as well as the marketing terms for each one. The familiar error term “This coupon is not valid anymore” will finally be past tense. Additionally, they will have the option of transferring or even reselling their coupons.Publishers will no longer have to split profits with third-party intermediaries thanks to the automated, trustless and decentralized nature of the blockchain protocol powering the platform. This will translate to higher revenues from coupon ads. Marketing coupons that their users can resell will have a higher intrinsic value-boosting their customer base.A Unique Payout ModelThe payout model on the platform protects all parties involved as publishers will only get paid for acquired (Cost Per Acquisition or CPA) and redeemed (Cost Per Redemption or CPR) coupons. Every coupon will only be associated with one user at a time with digital signatures from the issuer, publisher and user authenticating its validity. This will prevent repudiation by the issuer before the expiry date and also eliminate the possibility of double consumption.In addition to this, issuers will be able to whitelist all of the publishers for their CPR and CPA campaigns so as to limit malevolent acts.This will act as a reputation system that will get publishers in a competition and motivate appropriate behavior. Using this mechanism, issuers will be in a position to determine who fits the bill to get inclusion on their whitelist. There is an option for issuers to bypass the use of publishers and distribute coupons to their target audience directly. This model will mean zero payouts and further decrease coupon marketing costs for issuers.However, whether using this approach or the regular one that pays publishers for advertising coupons, unredeemed coupons will always trigger a fee to be paid by the issuer. This measure is put in place as a negative incentive to reduce low-quality campaigns.A Wider Scope of ApplicationsThe Rouge project coupon platform is only one of many possibilities for marketing initiatives within the network. The team is planning to incorporate additional e-commerce functions in the future to develop a more holistic online marketing model. The capability to track and verify transactions on the network as well as the security measures could also enhance the purchase and sale of other online inventory.Token Sale DetailsThe project aims to create an ERC20 compliant token (ticker RGE) for use by all players on the platform. It will create a total of 1 billion RGE and offer half of this amount, 500 million, for sale during their upcoming Token Generation Event (TGE). The rest of the tokens will be held in reserve, 300 million RGE for a minimum of 1 year and 200 million RGE for a minimum of two years.The TGE is scheduled to start on June 4th, 2018. Each token will be sold at a price of $0.176.More information on the Rouge project and the upcoming ICO is available on the platform’s official website.Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Insider Financial and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.Image courtesy of ccpixs.com