ICON/ICX integration and listing with Travala

Contribution Proposals
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ICX integration and listing with Travala

Greetings ICON community. We have an exciting opportunity to integrate ICX with crypto powered travel booking business Travala.com. ICON is an international community with many ICX holders being avid travellers.This partnership will enable ICONists to spend their ICX directly on hotels, flights, activities, holiday packages, and more.

Project Category

Development - This CPS funding request is to pay the development cost for integration of ICX into Travala.

Who are Travala, and why should we integrate with them?

Founded in 2017, Travala.com has grown from a small start-up to the world’s leading blockchain-based travel booking platform trusted by thousands of customers worldwide as their preferred online travel agency.

Travala is firing on all cylinders. It achieved its highest quarterly revenue ever in Q3 2021 with $9.8million USD (the core of this growth was driven by hotels, flights, and activities). A growth of over 650% on the previous year’s quarter (transparency report is linked below).

Travala.com offers one of the world’s largest selection of incredible places to stay. These include everything from hotels, apartments, villas, hostels, and 5-star luxury resorts. The Travala.com platform currently offers 2,200,000+ properties covering 90,124 destinations in 230 countries and territories, and with prices up to 40% cheaper than mainstream travel booking platforms.

Travala was founded by a team of seasoned travel, fintech and blockchain industry experts. Travala.com’s mission is to bring to the travel industry as a whole transparent pricing, innovation, authentic truth, enhanced security, and efficient stakeholder interaction.

Travala.com’s vision is to align travel booking with the ethos of decentralised technology. That being, promote accessibility to anyone, anywhere, offer censorship resistant and peer-to-peer transactions, and build open-source technology controlled by software and governed by users.

Transparency Report

What will this integration offer us besides a listing?

Listing ICX with Travala is the first step towards ICON ecosystem tokens being accepted. There is potential to list stable coins and/or other ICON dapp tokens in future.

Transparency and marketing and exposure are extremely important. Joining Travala will be a great way to boost that.The Travala marketing team will make an announcement of the upcoming listing to create buzz for the community. Once the listing is live the team will host some travel credit giveaways to the community.

The ongoing support that the ICON community will have from Travala includes 2x posts per month that speak directly to this new utility for ICX. Additionally, throughout the year Travala will create discount and promotional campaigns.

Shane Sibley (Head of Business development) & Ben Rogers (CMO at Travala) will be joining the Eye on Icon podcast. They will give us an introduction into Travala, and then share some information about all the things we could spend ICX on. An AMA will be held as well with some prizes being given away.

Project Start Date

Immediately after the CPS application is confirmed/paid.

Project Duration

Integration time is three weeks.

Funding Request

Integration cost is quoted at $50,000 USD. 50,000 $bnUSD is requested (+ conversion fee to their desired stable coin).

Contact Details

Applicant: Icon Nation aka ICONation

Sponsor P-Rep: ICONation

Website: https://ICONation.team

Twitter: x.com

Email: iconation.team@gmail.com

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I really like this idea. It adds more usability to the token. travala is also a recognised brand, and if presented right to the market, I believe it would be a positive step in the adoption process.

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I’m a huge fan of Travala, so it’s pretty cool to see a potential ICON integration. With that said, I think the first priority should be bnUSD support instead of ICX. I don’t have any stats regarding what percentage of Travala users buy tickets with non-stablecoins. However, my gut feeling is that ICONists would rather make ticket purchases by borrowing against their ICX via Balanced or Omm, rather than using ICX directly. As we all know ICX holders are some of the most hardcore folks with regarding to holding, staking, accumulating, etc. Also, selling ICX to purchase a ticket has some tax consequences that some people may not want to deal with. With all of this in mind, I think integrating bnUSD should be higher priority.

Ideally, I’d like to see one of these options instead:

  1. Only bnUSD support.
  2. bnUSD support and ICX support.

Regarding the funding amount, I recommend calculating the bnUSD amount with the assumption that 1 bnUSD = 0.975 USD instead of 1 bnUSD = 1 USD because the rebalancing thresholding is 2.5%.

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Fantastic news. I like the plan however I have to side with @bwhli here and say that bnUSD would be a better option. We can still use this opportunity to advertise ICX but then bring the focus on ICON’s native stable coin.

I would also like to see a breakdown of the 50,000 bnUSD costs.

Thank you!

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Great minds think alike.

My original plan was a duel listing for both ICX and bnUSD. Unfortunately bnUSD is a touch too new for them to list. They were however extremely positive about the idea.

We agreed to revisit it soon! Step 1 for us is an Icon integration/ICX listing.

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Nothing to break down mate. They quote 50k for integration/support, it’s honestly that simple.

ICONation receives no funding from this request.

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I like this alot. I know its been on the table before.
50k is alot of money tho, but i think it can be worth it in the long run.

I as an iconist support this proposal.

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I see. Thanks for clarifying.

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Thank you for asking, I’m extremely appreciative of the engagement!

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Nice things cost money! I like this idea a lot … I would love to use my ICX to travel…

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Hey @NorskKiwi - thank you for bringing this opportunity forward for discussion!

I’ve got a couple questions for you if you’re able to answer them:

  1. Looks like you said $50,000 is the standard integration/support cost for Travala. Does this include the costs for 2x posts per month and the discount/promotional campaigns? Or would those be additional costs?

  2. If this is the cost for ICX to be listed, would there be an additional $50,000 integration/support cost for bnUSD?

  3. How long before bnUSD isn’t “too new” for them to list?

  4. I think it would be awesome to use ICX/bnUSD to pay for travel, however how popular do we actually think this will be within the ICON community? Or would this be more of a marketing integration than utility?

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@NorskKiwi very nice idea! I am getting excited to know that I can travel arouynd the world with paying ICX. Good thinking and also this should be advertised properly by both parties. This could be yet another thing that will improve ICX in the rankings.

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Really, I don’t feel Travala is worth a $50k integration. I don’t think it economically makes sense, nor does it bring activity/demand to offset the $50k.

$50k would be better off on exchange listings like Kucoin or marketing.

Travala will eventually be replaced with credit cards by Coinbase/Binance for booking flights. It is not a long term strategy. No one ever invests in a coin because it uses Travala.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts Ali.

The highlight of this listing is the utility it brings to ICX holders. Being able to pay directly with ICX saves time and money. If you are to pay via credit card (or other means) you have to swap ICX to a different coin, there might be 2-4 swaps in the progress where with each one you are losing % points. Paying directly cuts out the middle men.

With regards to a listing on KuCoin, I don’t believe this has any impact on it. Taking this opportunity wouldn’t cause us to miss out on something else. Our CPS is full and there are funds to fill it up with. Word on the street is a KuCoin listing now costs 6 to 7 figures ($100,000 - $1,000,000+).

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Hey TJ,

This is 50,000 usd for ICX integration, no additional costs for the content they produce.

With regards to bnUSD it is too early to be able to answer those questions specifically. One thing they did indicate to me is that they’d like to see some exchange listings for bnUSD before taking it on board as a payments option.

The ability to redeem bnUSD for ICX in the interface is currently disabled, and there are no exchange listings, so I can understand them wanting to revisit the idea at a later date.

About the popularity, it’s a great question! That’s really what this all boils down to. Do we as a community want a cheap and convenient way to pay with ICX for hotels/flights/holidays? I know I will use it, and I’ve seen dozens of others say the same, but are there more people like Ali who don’t like it?

If anyone else is reading and doesn’t think they would use it I would greatly appreciate you saying (no offence taken at all).

One of the reasons why we included zero funding request for setup of this partnership is that we wanted it to be judged 100% on its merits, and not have any bureaucracy mixed in.

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50k is 1/20 of the way for a Kucoin listing :slight_smile: , but it’s not the main point.

I feel it’s far from a priority of getting ICON on the map or offsetting demand, we should spend that $50,000 with current market advertisement. And due to not offsetting demand, I feel it’s taking a step back.

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For a bit more clarity - I took a look at the blog you linked to in the OP.

Q3 2021 Revenue: $9,769,604
Q3 2021 Bookings from other crypto: 41%

I count about 50+ “other” crypto integrations on their website, so if ICX accounted for a proportional amount of those revenues that would mean we account for 0.82%, but I’ll be optimistic and say 3%.

3% * $9,769,604 = $293,088.12 (Q3 2021)

So Travala revenue from ICX could be estimated as about $100,000/month in the bull scenario.

Since ICON doesn’t see any of this revenue, my assumption is that this is just further utility for ICX holders?

My assumption is that Travala also needs to sell this revenue from “other” crypto into some type of base currency/stablecoin, so that would mean about $100,000/month in selling pressure on the ICX token assuming that purchases come from holders and not new purchases.

But I’m highly confident Travala ICX revenue would come from holders, because why would someone purchase new ICX to pay for a Travala trip when they have options for regular payment, stablecoins or ETH/BTC?

Overall I just wanted to explain my line of thinking when it comes to things like these. I don’t think the $100k/month sell pressure is that important of a detail, but I’m looking at it from an opportunity cost perspective.

An additional assumption I’ve made is that the bnUSD listing would cost an additional $50k for integration.

I personally wouldn’t use my ICX to pay for travel, rather I would probably use stablecoins (if any crypto at all). This is likely where my bias comes from however.

I would rather see the $50,000 used towards something else, but I’m always open to having my mind changed.

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I fully support this - Yes no one wants to use their native coins to buy stuff, however, it is good to have options.

The other day I used the site, I moved my funds from bnusd to icx to a exchange then to TRON trx of all coins (to avoid fees) to then pay for my travels. Why? Because I had my money in stables and with us not having integrations like these we have to keep using central exchanges.

This gives ICX further utility, If we keep assessing sell pressure then might as well not do anything. ICX hold and don’t do anything else. It’s insane!
This stuff costs money, and we need to start spending money to make it happen. Foundation won’t comment on listings and such things… Now we have CPS and have to think of all ways to use it. Good work @NorskKiwi for pushing this. This to me is a much better spend than what I have seen CPS funds used for in the past.

This integration removes an exchange from the equation, this is a good thing. be damed if it only gets used 10 times. It’s there, Icon is on the stage with all other assets and it can be used.

Has anyone chased down a kucoin listing? chase it and let’s discuss that separately. Once iiss3.1 is in this is 15 days of CPS funding.

I can track down many different communities celebrating that their coin has been listed by Travala and can be used in the real world because of it.

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I know this is partly an exaggeration, but I wouldn’t call spending $50,000 for something to be used 10 times a successful use of funds.

Maybe we need a community poll or something about who realistically would use their ICX for travel, because there is a chance that I’m underestimating how many people from our community would actually use this.

My concern isn’t about the sell pressure, it’s about the use of funds and demand for this use-case within our community. Even if the option is there, if it’s not used then I wouldn’t call it a utility for ICX.

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I have spent A LOT of time talking to people about ICX over the last 3-4 years. Something that sticks firmly in my mind is this: When talking with friends, family, and no coiners about ICX, what do we have to say in reply to this question “If I buy ICX, what can I do with it”?

Right now ICX can be used within our ecosystem on gambling, gaming, and DeFi. We don’t have a direct way to spend ICX on something as practical as tourism. Almost everyone uses hotels or travels at some point in their life. Direct spend on tourism could be one of the best use cases for cryptocurrency to date.

I think an excellent way to judge ICONist sentiment on this proposal is Eye on Icon hosting a podcast with the Travala team. ICONists will be able to learn and ask questions of the Travala team directly.

1 Like