Forks, stars and comments: reviews guaranteed by the blockchain

Before leaving, booking a hotel, choosing a restaurant, we all end up looking at the reviews online. Starting from Tripadvisor to Google reviews, the need not to choose blindly and to be able to rely on the experiences of others to better organize trips and dinners is almost instinctive. But it is also a world where content control is complex, and the risk of fake reviews is widespread. There have been blatant and court cases, such as the company selling positive review packages to properties to improve their reputation on TripAdvisor. And others solved without the intervention of the law as happened, at the end of June, at the Milanese bar Crazy Cat which had been hit by (fake) 1-star reviews after having turned away a harassing YouTuber who had unleashed his followers. But more often these are borderline operations within the terms of the law, difficult to identify and punish, which pass through false positive reviews as well as negative ones created ad hoc to discredit a competitor. There is therefore room to look for upstream solutions, which certify reviews in a secure way, through the blockchain. An Italian startup, Yookye, relies on the Ethereum blockchain, which it uses to certify the goodness of reviews on locations, guides, tours. Thanks to this technology, every comment written by those who have used the services of this experiential travel agency is verified, and once entered and published it can no longer be modified. In Japan, Synchrolife uses a similar system. On its platform, users can leave certified reviews on the blockchain and receive tokens in exchange to be exchanged for rewards and discounts.TaboxChain, an Italian startup with a Lucanian soul, has taken a step further, which has created a device, the TBox ( Trust Box) able to communicate, through NFC technology, the accommodation or a restaurant with the reviewer, guaranteeing the veracity of what is written and helping to grow the reputation and trust in both of them online. The device, to be kept at the cashier of a restaurant or at the reception of a hotel and which provides the geographical fingerprint and proof of identity, i.e. certifies that a particular mobile device is connected to a real person and not to a bot or identity multiple, and that it really was in a specific place and in the immediate vicinity of the TBox. It then releases a cryptographic ticket archived via blockchain, which certifies the veracity of the review on the connected platform. TBox offers the possibility of expressing an opinion only to real customers, creating a network of trust in which proof of presence becomes the authorization step to write a review for restaurants, hotels and cultural services. All the activities carried out within the platform are rewarded and contribute to the calculation of the reputation of those who leave the review. The reward for users is called XTB, a digital loyalty point that becomes exchangeable for goods and services within the platform, and that each user can keep inside a wallet.