Revain: The Future of Review Sites is on Blockchain

Once upon a time before Netflix, back when movie theatres and Blockbuster video rental stores reigned supreme there were two guys who I thought had the best job in the world. When a new movie came out, I wouldn’t even consider spending my hard-earned allowance on tickets until I heard what Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert had to say about the film. These guys were the most popular movie critics of their time and I remember being very envious that these guys simply got paid for watching movies and giving their reviews and opinions.

Fast forward 20 years and with the magic of widespread internet adoption, for better or worse, now everyone can voice their opinions online, whether asked for or not, with some folks even getting paid for it! I’m not talking about opinions in the form of your uncle’s crazy conspiratorial rants on Facebook, I am talking of course, about Revain.org.

Revain is a review website that pays users in crypto for writing reviews and rating other people’s opinions. With many people already doing this for free on social media anyway, why not put that time and energy to good use in a way that can provide useful and valuable insight and feedback for others, reviewing products and services while even getting paid for it?

With traditional review sites becoming a cesspool, full of fake reviews, fake accounts, spamming review bots, and review websites now essentially becoming a place akin to the schoolyard with all the bullying and name-calling included, Revain provides a refreshing, much-needed evolution to the world of online reviews. Here is my full review on Revain to help you decide if it is worth your time and effort to get involved either as a reviewer, or a reviewee.

What is Revain?

Revain was founded in 2018 by entrepreneur Rinat Arslanov, who studied at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics and has over ten years of experience in the blockchain industry. Rinat and the Revain team was originally funded by a crowd sale in 2017 where they raised 8.5 million dollars by selling R tokens which lead to the successful build and launch of the Revain platform.

Revain is a review website similar to Yelp, TripAdvisor or Rotten Tomatoes, but is the first to be built with blockchain technology and pays users rewards for productive and honest reviews in the form of cryptocurrency. Revain is open to anyone and encourages people to write reviews and while the community can attach ratings to them.

As posts are made, reviewed and rated, Revain averages the reviews and ratings then publicly displays corresponding scores, rankings and comments to the platform where other users can gain valuable insight by reading them. The platform was built using immutable blockchain technology on the Ethereum network to prevent anyone from tampering with reviews while also being able to reward users.

Since 2018, Revain has accumulated the biggest volume of user feedback on crypto-related projects across the entire internet. Revain currently has over 15,880 companies participating in Revain’s review ecosystem, attracting the attention of some of the biggest players in the blockchain industry such as Binance, Poloniex, and OKEX to name a few.

These companies pay a fee to be featured on the platform where reviews can be made for companies in the following categories: Blockchain projects, exchanges, wallets, blockchain games, mining pools, crypto cards, casinos, and blockchain-based training courses. Revain aims to become the “go-to” trusted review site for all things crypto-related, a place where reviews can be written by anyone and trusted by everyone.

What Problem is Revain Aiming to Solve?

According to their site, Revain’s ultimate goal is to “provide high-quality and authentic user feedback on all global products and services using emerging technologies like blockchain and machine learning.” Review websites have become like the wild west of the internet, and companies have realized the powerful impact that positive reviews can have on their revenue.

This has led to many companies becoming greedy and desperate for good reviews, with many reviews being flat out falsified as companies have now been caught countless times not only paying for positive reviews but also paying for negative reviews to be posted about their competitors.

According to the local consumer review in 2020, 87% of consumers read online reviews regularly with 91% of users stating that they trust reviews and allow them to influence their buying decisions. There is big money to be made and big wins to be had in the online review sector which is why marketers and businesses will do anything to boost their own positive reviews while posting less than flattering reviews about their competitors.

Review sites have quickly turned into a place full of paid reviews, spam, bots, fake accounts and essentially a childish game of name-calling as online feedback has become as valuable as Bitcoin in this modern age and reviews have become an important process of the consumer’s buying decisions with feedback reviews making or breaking sales targets.

Through the use of blockchain technology, Revain has created an economic and gamified model which allows everyday users to stay motivated, accurate, diligent, honest and trustworthy in their reviews while creating a transparent system that guarantees immutability and incorruptibility.

How has Revain Overcome These Issues?

Much in the same way that transactions on the blockchain cannot be edited or modified, Revain uses blockchain technology to ensure that every review remains as it was originally published by the original writer. Reviews are limited to five per day per user which protects against mass registration and multiple reviews from the same user, removing the possibility to spam reviews and comment sections.

Each user needs to provide KYC to sign up, this ensures that one user is not able to make hundreds of accounts and littering the platform with false, non-useful reviews for either malicious purposes or posting pointless reviews to earn extra rewards.

The way that the platform protects against companies simply paying for reviews is by the fact that paying for reviews would get very expensive to the point where it would not be economically advantageous.

The more reviews a company allows, the more it will cost them as review numbers increase exponentially by each basket level of reviews that a company opts in for. In doing this, the Revain platform makes it unprofitable for companies to purchase or generate a large number of false reviews while also being affordable at lower review numbers which allows small companies the ability to afford reviews as well, making the playing field a lot more level.

Revain overcomes the issue of false reviews by utilizing artificial intelligence that was developed in close collaboration with IBM AI system. Reviews undergo a comprehensive IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence enhanced screening process to identify fake and malicious reviews. The artificial intelligence ensures that bots and false reviews will be filtered out through Revain’s Review Automatic Filtering system or “RAF.”

The filtering system has two stages, the first review filter is through artificial intelligence, where the review is checked for originality and accuracy, then it goes through a manual review. Once the reviews have passed the review automatic filtering system successfully it will be reviewed by the company that is being reviewed itself where the company’s moderators can either approve or reject the review, but regardless of the company’s decision the review will still remain visible to users.

If a user believes that a company should not have rejected their review, they can file a dispute. In this case, the dispute will be handled by a decentralized system of oracles. Oracles are users with high reputations within the platform who will review these disputes. If a review gets rejected by the company, the reviewer will be asked to provide proof of their claim. If the reviewer is able to provide evidence, they will receive a reward and the company receives a warning and is penalized for 10 tokens.

A company may receive a total of three warnings for falsely rejecting reviews, the fourth warning will lead to the company being blocked from the platform. Reviewers can also receive warnings which can happen in two cases. The first case is if three of the user's reviews within two weeks get rejected by the automatic filtration system, and the second way reviewers can receive a warning is if five of their reviews have been rejected by companies in a two week period. The fourth warning will lead to the user being blocked from the platform without being able to withdraw their funds. This is how the Revain platform ensures that everyone is being open, honest and transparent.

How Users Can Earn

Activity on the platform and earning achievements will give users valuable experience which equates to new levels and rewards. Revain gamifies the reviewer experience to keep them motivated and reward them fairly for their efforts. Users get paid to write reviews on the platform and other users can comment on those reviews. The more comments a review gets, the higher the level that user’s post reaches which means the more RVN tokens they receive.

Users’ earning potential is also based on their level which can be increased by earning experience (XP) on the platform. Users gain XP by remaining active on the platform, ensuring they are regularly active by posting reviews and comments. Users can also gain XP by completing achievements that are much more challenging to complete but result in significantly more experience points being earned. These achievements can be found in the user’s “Achievement” section. There are a total of ten levels that users can reach, with each level unlocking new features and rewards.

By posting reviews, users earn Revain tokens (RVN) which are dollar-pegged stable token that exists solely within the platform which is used to reward and penalize users and companies. This helps ensure that users are always receiving the same amount of RVN tokens for the same amount of work and that penalties are consistent.

The Revain platform uses a two token system, with users earning Revain (RVN) in the platform which can then be converted to REV tokens when users are ready to send to an exchange and cash out. The REV token is also the platform currency that companies can purchase and use to pay for reviews and is the token that investors will hold with hopes of capital appreciation. The REV token exists on the Ethereum ERC-20 network and can be bought and sold on HitBTC, BitMart, KuCoin and Bittrex

Users can also become “Experts” on the Revain platform which unlocks extra benefits. “Expert” is a special status that is given to the most skilled and knowledgeable review authors and allows for them to promote themselves among the entire crypto community. Experts earn substantially more tokens and have exclusive access to airdrops as well as additional rewards.

Experts have their own rating table and are highlighted as the platform’s top authors. Experts are ranked by their karma and their reviews are featured on top of other user reviews. An expert’s likes and dislikes on user comments have more influence on the user’s karma than a regular user’s likes and dislikes. Experts are chosen manually by the Revain team, who give preference to active members of the community, looking for authors who write high-quality feedback. Authors need to reach a level 9 status before being able to apply for expert status.

Users can earn between 0.5 to 1.5 RVN per review depending on the user level and the company they are writing about. The minimum length of a review is 600 characters or around 150 words. Users earn RVN for levelling up once enough XP has been earned, and there is also a “featured companies” section where users can earn an additional 60 RVN after reviewing 60 featured companies.

Revain also has an affiliate program where users can earn rewards for inviting friends and users can earn extra RVN for writing reviews for companies that have 8 or fewer reviews to help ensure that each company has fair exposure to reviews.

It is hard to give an estimate on how much users can earn as it is highly dependent on the user’s level and how quickly they can write reviews and whether or not they reach expert status.

One user wrote that they earned around $40-80 dollars per month writing reviews until they reached level ten. Once you reach level 10, users earn a base 1 dollar worth of RVN for every review written. Another user mentioned that they were able to make $143 dollars in a week, but these figures are variable and depend on expert status, the user level, whether or not they participate in extra achievements or review companies promoted by Revain and if they participate in the affiliate program by inviting friends to use the platform.

Revain Price History and Recent Action

Revain’s token REV hit an all-time high shortly after launch in February 2018 of just over $4 per token. As with many tokens, REV fell after launch as early investors sought to take profit crashing all the way down to $0.005 where it remained steady for a number of years.

Since then, the REV token has remained fairly flat during the bear market years with the rest of the altcoin space, but enjoyed a rise to the $0.049 price range early in the 2021 bull market before crashing back down with the rest of the market during the May correction. Since then, REV is now trading consistently higher than its all-time low, showing increase in strength and currently trading at $0.015. The REV token price has been gaining in strength as more companies and users begin to use the platform and build a stronger community around the crypto review platform.

 Revain’s Rev Token Enjoyed a Yearly high of $0.05 early in the 2021 bull run and is now Remaining Steady at Around $0.015 Image via CoinMarketCap 

Revain Team and Partners

The Revain team have over 20 members, with some notable founders who make up the main management team behind the project. It is always important for a project to have a transparent and verified team to earn the trust and confidence of users which Revain has, making their team public. The CEO is Rinat Arslanov, a venture capitalist, entrepreneur and blockchain enthusiast with over 10 years of experience with different businesses. Grigor Aproyan is the CFO and Co-founder who studied at Bauman Moscow State Technical University and has been a part of the Revain team since its inception. You can do a deep dive on the rest of the team on Craft.co

Revain has formed some highly impressive partnerships that lend credibility to the project. There are far too many to name them all here, but most notably, Revain has partnered with the Kucoin, DigiFinex and Uniswap exchanges and have integrated with Kucoin, Hyperion, Zilliqa, Ravencoin and Fusion. The Revain site page shows a full list of their partnerships and integrations if you want to dig deeper.

Conclusion

With the massive success and popularity of online review platforms such as Trust Pilot becoming the industry standard for how consumers research their purchasing options, Revain has achieved a first-mover advantage in this niche for crypto services and building out their platform using blockchain technology.

Revain has already seen massive growth and success as a project, as crypto adoption becomes more mainstream, it is likely that the platform will continue to grow exponentially as Revain has positioned itself well to become the trusted “go-to” place where consumers can read verifiable and honest reviews about the products and services that they may consider using.

The number of companies actively participating on the Revain platform has grown enormously from just 5,300 companies and 35,000 reviews in April of 2021 to over 15,500 companies and 72,000 reviews at the time of writing.

Revain provides a fantastic platform where users are fairly compensated and rewarded for the time and effort they put into their honest and useful reviews, while also making it fun and motivating through the gamification of the platform, encouraging users to write reviews for the growing crypto ecosystem.

Revain has found a way to successfully overcome the shortfalls and issues found in the traditional review websites, removing many of the problems with fake and paid reviews by companies and the reviews posted by bots and fake profiles, providing a much-needed solution and service to the consumer reviews industry, helping ensure the transparency, honesty and protection for both consumers and businesses.