XYO, a project focused around combining blockchain technology with location verification, has announced that it has taken huge steps forward in its mission by agreeing two partnerships – one with Nuggets, a blockchain-based e-commerce and ID platform that you might not have heard of, and another with Microsoft, who you might. But, not all is as it seems with the Microsoft deal, and it has immediately raised suspicions.
Microsoft…are you Azure?
XYO’s partnership with Microsoft is, naturally, the one that has grabbed all the headlines, although not everyone is convinced by the announcement. Indeed, in comparison with Enjin Coin (ENJ), which saw a 217% rise upon rumors it was going to feature in the latest Samsung Galaxy S10 phone, the price of the XYO token actually dived 23% on the news, having spent the past three days climbing by 50%, seemingly in advance of it.
XYO published a Medium post announcing the deal where, after spending the first half of it describing Microsoft’s greatest achievement as still being around, the “epic new relationship” is finally revealed – XYO “beacons”, and the XYO network, will be available on Microsoft Azure, the company’s “wildly popular suite of cloud services for business”. This feels like not so much of a partnership as the kind of provider-client deal often masqueraded as a partnership, which was not lost on some:
Mind clarifying if this ‘PARTNERSHIP’ is a business agreement wherein Microsoft benefits from $XYO in any way? or falls in the below categories
A) $XYO uses Azure for cloud infrastructure
B) $XYO is a part of MV accelerator.Why is not there any announcement from Microsoft https://t.co/uQf7Hw80Xk
— Crypto ฿rahma (@Crypto_Brahma) February 28, 2019
Indeed, Microsoft has not announced the partnership, and even small things like choosing a font that even Minecraft designers would baulk at to illustrate the computing giant’s name in the heading is somewhat suspicious – surely if this were a legitimate partnership, Microsoft would have allowed the usage of their branding instead of just the Microsoft Azure logo?
Nuggets Deal Could be Gold
The deal with Nuggets on the other hand seems like a genuine, reciprocal relationship between two blockchain enterprises which should be lauded. Nuggets’ technology removes the need for customers to share personal or payment data with merchants, and the partnership with XYO means that Nuggets users will now not even need to share their delivery address with the delivery company. This allows a completely private end-to-end purchase and delivery process, with the XYO network cryptographically verifying that the delivery has taken place, which could then trigger payment for the item via a smart contract.
“This is the final piece of the puzzle of personal data privacy and security for ecommerce transactions.”
-Alastair Johnson, CEO and founder of @nuggetsPAYandID on the partnership with XYO
Read more here: https://t.co/cjPNQfjMUD
— XYO (@OfficialXYO) February 26, 2019
This is in many ways a much more exciting partnership than a seemingly elaborated Microsoft one, but it is understandable why it has gone under the radar in comparison. Hopefully, in time, it will have turned out to be a bigger deal than the headlines are currently allowing.
 and Nuggets){kind=link}