Your Voice-Controlled Assistant is a Backstabbing, Thieving, Insecure Lazyass
There it is, just chillin’ on the table. Doing nothing until it hears you talking. Pretending to be your friend in times of need.
Sure, these little gadgets are helpful. I mean, who has time to flip a light switch these days? No, we literally can’t lift a finger to do it ourselves.
Convenience is great, no doubt. Most of us are more than happy to pay premium prices for things that simplify our busy lives.
But in the case of AI-enabled speakers catering to our whims, the trade-off goes beyond bumps in cost. These things are spies in disguise.
You see, voice-activated assistants don’t have our best intentions programmed into their digital brains. Instead, they perform espionage missions on behalf of their manufacturers.
We pay to invite them into our homes, then freely give them our private data. House by house, individual by individual, mega-corps are capturing our information.
The likes of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft know nearly every detail about us and our spending habits. They’re empowered to — creepily — sell us more of what we may or may not want.
Well, it’s time to end the charade.
Blockchain startup — Plaza Systems—is creating a versatile, super-effective alternative. As you’ll read below, their upcoming smart speaker’s booming upgrades drown-out current offerings in the market.
But, before you hear about it, feed this into your mind’s processor…
Disclaimer: This is not investment or financial advice. I’m not a financial expert by any stretch of the imagination. Most information within this article is speculative and merely personal opinion. Always conduct your own research before contributing to any startup projects.
Always remember that what you do with your funds is your decision to make. And if that decision proves too difficult for you alone, seek guidance from a financial professional.
I may or may not receive a small allocation of tokens for creating this content. That said, I do my best to remain unbiased and fair. I try to avoid all FOMO and FUD and don’t wish to evoke those emotions in my fellow crypto-heads.
eCommerce is So 1991
Disrupting the status quo is what blockchain tech does best. Be it governance, speed, transparency, accountability, security, privacy, or disintermediation, blockchain developers continue to explore methods for improving entire industries.
And the Plaza project is tackling a giant. Retail web purchases reached $453B last year — a 16% spike from 2016. That’s according to one figure I read. Plaza’s number is much higher.
Point is, online shopping is huge and shows no signs of slowing down.
Plaza’s entering the fray with MerchantChain — a speedy, distributed, crypto-powered, blockchain-secured ecosystem in which sellers can build and deploy DApps. Users can even mint their own coins, similar to the Ethereum network.
Now, to kick-start the buying and selling of physical products on the platform — you know, a real-life use case for a blockchain startup — Plaza plans to sell their own hardware.
The PlazaConcierge IoT smart speaker is but a piece — albeit an important one — of the project’s massive undertaking: Total bCommerce.
If you’re a small business looking to create an online presence, you may buy services from Weebly or Wix. Larger enterprises may choose Magento or WooCommerce.
But soon, by joining Plaza’s MerchantChain platform, businesses of all sizes can seamlessly integrate into blockchain commerce and gain all of the efficiencies that come with it.
Uncommon Ground
Today’s smart speakers all share certain features. Each syncs with apps, and features Bluetooth and/or WiFi connectivity.
No matter which model you prefer, you merely project your voice in the general direction of an AI-powered chatbot to request songs, control other smart devices, place calls, order food, check scores and appointments… you get the idea.
Interact with Alexa or Cortana, Google or Siri, to power a world of control and entertainment. And, since AI gets brainier as you use it, smart speakers can quickly become our go-to allies for plenty of different situations.
Now, aside from speaker-phone functionality, the PlazaConcierge device boasts the same features as the competition, including the smarts to run Amazon’s Alexa cloud-based voice service.
However, while earlier products may qualify as ‘smart’ devices, that’s where the similarities end — none of them can operate smart contracts.
“Siri, Get a Real Job!”
Your smart speaker does nothing for you whenever you’re not using it. Maybe it’s secretly recording all of your conversations and sending them to govt. agencies — that topic is for a different article.
Plaza Systems gave their smart speaker a friendly function that rewards all users.
A quick and easy task — opening the box and preparing your new assistant for use — grants the ability to earn crypto passively.
Now, two distinct yet similar cryptocurrencies flow throughout Plaza’s upcoming ecosystem. Both are spendable for goods and services on the network.
First up is PLAZA, an ERC20 utility token powering the platform. This protocol token is responsible for network fees as well as mining rewards on the MerchantChain blockchain.
PL$ — affectionately and respectfully known as “please” — is a stablecoin that never fluctuates in value. Familiarity is high — this crypto uses only two decimal points.
For example, items may cost $9.99 (USD = PL$) rather than 4.20858374 tokens.
PL$ coins are pegged against USD and backed by reserve deposits. Steady value is maintained by coins burning upon redemption, and fresh minting as necessary.
And the good news is that you don’t have to buy or trade ETH for these cryptocurrencies to stash some in your wallet.
Your device harvests both of them for you.
The PlazaConcierge smart speaker doubles as a low-bandwidth crypto mining rig.
You need only connect the device to the web. Once it’s online, you’re mining PLAZA/PL$ and can perform all crypto interactions via desktop and mobile apps.
Traditional crypto mining is exceptionally costly and highly intimidating for the non-technical types out there. Conversely, this handy little feature is a big step towards getting crypto into the hands of the masses.
A plug-and-play mining rig — with the in-built familiarity of an AI-powered smart speaker — opens the crypto vaults to anyone who knows the basics of connecting to the Internet.
And who doesn’t like free crypto? Especially the kind with its own marketplace so you can actually spend it rather than merely looking at a balance on a screen.
Putting Your Crypto on Lockdown
You may be asking yourself where all that mined crypto ends up. I think you’ll like the answer: The PlazaConcierge IoT device is also a P2P, multi-currency hardware wallet.
The gadget is essentially a lightweight node maintaining a local copy of MerchantChain’s distributed ledger. And, like any node worth its code, the PlazaConcierge securely encrypts and stores your private keys.
If you’ve ever gone through the process of setting up — and backing up — a software wallet, you’ll be right at home here.
“Hey, Google, You Ignorant Sieve, Stop Leaking My Info!”
Entrusting mega-corps with your private information is a thing of the past.
Breaches of personal data are no longer a rare occurrence. The major players have proven, repeatedly, that they can’t be trusted to maintain our digital files.
By nature of its distributed design, the PlazaConcierge IoT device sidesteps the ever-present threat of data theft.
Your data isn’t on a random server providing a single entry point for hackers. Instead, pieces of data live within a global puzzle of individual devices. Good luck trying to piece them back into place.
Better still, the team trained the device’s native chatbot to never ask users for personally identifying information. Thus, there are minimal data for a hacker to target in the first place.
“Alexa, You Work for Me Now!”
If you’re the proud owner of an Echo device, you and Alexa are already BFFs. But that two-faced, snitchin’ narc shares all of your shopping secrets with master Amazon.
AZ, FB, MS, and plenty of others, turn around and sell any of the data we freely hand over. They make loads of cash from stealing our data while we get nothing but further theft in the name of convenience.
Seems a little unfair, don’t you think? Team Plaza thinks so, too.
On the consumer side, shopping the MerchantChain through your PlazaConcierge can be anonymous. There’s no banking info to relay, and your shopping habits are invisible to merchants.
So long as a seller receives your PLAZA and/or PL$, why do they care who you are unless they’re trying to hit you with retargeting ads themselves?
On the flip side of the token, customers know the merchants they’re dealing with — sellers are heavily scrutinized to help combat fraud on the network.
Cloaked MerchantChain transactions mean your personal shopping habits won’t end up within a distributed series of marketing databases.
“Cortana, Your Suggestions are Biased!”
Microsoft has plenty of products to sell. The mega corp’s wares, hard and soft, are diverse.
There’s something for (almost) everyone within their ecosystem of goods and services.
Now, when you ask their chatbot a question, you can bet your bottom MSFT stock that you’ll get an MS-friendly response.
It’s kind of like walking into the Microsoft store and asking if they know an honest guy who can recommend a non-MS laptop.
You see, Cortana is the Microsoft store. And when you talk to your “assistant,” you create a vocal pipeline straight into their sales machine.
PlazaConcierge hardware accurately delivers shopping recommendations via aggregated, AI-boosted meta-search. There’s no branding — Bing or Google, for example — to sway search results in one company’s favor.
Moreover, on top of improved and unbiased search results, browsing on the platform is anonymous. No need to worry about stalker sidebar ads that follow you all over the Internet.
Final thoughts…
The PlazaConcierge IoT smart speaker carries the spirit of blockchain tech within its circuitry. A global network of lightweight nodes, easily deployed by the average consumer, is a natural progression for the industry.
And, by the simple act of preparing a new purchase for use, you’re part of the overall crypto-economy.
Auto-HODLing alone is a reason to want one of these in your home or office. I especially appreciate the hybrid approach. Since you’re simultaneously mining two separate coins, you can trade one and spend the other.
MerchantChain is an end-to-end solution where buyers and sellers meet in a secure, transparent environment.
By blending crypto and blockchain tech into things people are already familiar with — shopping online and using smart assistants to do that and so much more — Plaza Systems offers a unique hook for their project.
I feel the “Trojan Horse” angle is solid fodder for an entire PlazaConcierge marketing campaign. Echo and its ilk can be ninjas, swindling pirates, 007-type agents … it only takes a little imagination.
The gadget brings cryptocurrency use cases into the real world, which is essential for the space’s growth. Crypto and blockchain benefits are evident to some of us, but others still miss the point.
Now, as of writing, the Plaza project is still in their midst of the public TGE. 22 days remain.
In addition, the PlazaConcierge and MerchantChain won’t see life until Q2 of 2019. We’ll have to wait to see how well each performs.
One hardware concern, as with any speaker, is sound quality. Let’s hope the team won’t trade feature-set for high-quality audio.
Cost-balancing is an important subset of product management. My guess is that the team sources the very same components as the big guys, but without the bloated branding.
Low fees. High security. Fast transactions. Rookie-level crypto mining. Integrated hardware wallet. AI-powered assistance. Anonymous product browsing. Transparent marketplace.
All controlled by the sound of your voice…
“Alexa, buy PlazaConcierge.”
DYOR
Just because I want one, along with the tokens they run on, doesn’t mean you need to go sign up.
Formulate your own opinion on blockchain startups before getting involved. Trust your gut and dig beneath the surface.
Here are those resources I promised you earlier:
Plaza Systems Website | Plaza Whitepaper | Plaza Yellowpaper
By the way…
If you like what you read here and want help getting your crypto message to the masses, I’d love to hear about your startup.
Even if you just want to chat about crypto or your favorite blockchain projects, you can find me here: blockchainauthor at Gmail
This article was created in exchange for a potential token reward through Bounty0x ***username = blockchainauthor***
