Research On Multi-sided Platform Competition Mechanism In Blockchain Era

The rapid development of blockchain technology has brought a huge impact on the business model of multilateral platforms,resulting in the competition of multilateral platforms becoming more complex due to the advent of blockchain era.First of all,the blockchain network itself is a new multilateral platform that is not found in the traditional platform economy environment,and the blockchain multilateral platform has a new intra-platform competition problem due to its unique characteristics of consensus mechanism.Secondly,the prosperity and development of blockchain multilateral platforms and the information barriers between each other have led to the development and application of cross-chain technology that can realize the interoperability of platforms becoming a hotspot in the industry.However,the existing research has not paid attention to the compatibility strategy in the external competition of blockchain multilateral platforms.Finally,blockchain technology is expected to transform traditional multilateral platforms and enhance competitiveness,but few studies have analyzed the specific mechanisms and effects.Therefore,this paper studies the competition mechanism of multilateral platforms in the era of blockchain from three aspects:internal competition of new multilateral platforms,external competition and competitiveness of traditional multilateral platforms.Details are as follows:Firstly,this paper takes the EOS blockchain multilateral platform as the research object,comprehensively analyzes the issues of platform policy making and candidate election strategy in the internal election competition from the perspective of platform and users.This paper proofs that there is no absolute good or bad in campaign policy.The relative reward value determines the optimal campaign policy of voters and candidate user groups,as well as the evolution process and final evolutionary stability of candidate’s long-term campaign strategy.When the relative reward value is small,the prohibition of dividend policy is more favorable to the user group of voters,while the allowance of dividend policy is more favorable to the user group of candidates,and the long-term evolution result is that all candidates participate in the "price war" to compete for voters.The opposite is true when the relative reward value is large,but candidates tend to collectively choose bonus strategies that are against their own interests.When the relative reward value is in a specific range,prohibiting dividend policy is the optimal choice for all users,but the long-term evolution results in that some candidates still adopt dividend strategy,and finally present a mixed equilibrium result.This paper,for the first time,carries out a theoretical study on the internal competition of platforms,to fill the research gap of multilateral platform management.It has made important theoretical contributions to the unique internal competition problems of new multilateral platforms and provided rich management suggestions for the internal governance problems of new multilateral platforms.Secondly,this paper takes the competing blockchains ETH and EOS,that have different consensus mechanism characteristics as research object,studies the cross chain compatibility decision problem from the perspective of both platform sides,and selects realworld DApp data from two platforms for the simulation analysis.It is found that the optimal compatibility strategy is related to industry development stage and size gap.In the early stages of industry expansion,blockchain multilateral platforms should use incompatible strategies and focus on developing the characteristics of their platform’s unique technologies,products and services.When the industry enters the stage of maturity and saturation,the optimal strategy of ETH platform with competitive advantage is still incompatible,while the weak EOS platform should decide whether to change its compatibility strategy according to the platform scale gap.If the platform gap is large enough,EOS platform should choose compatible strategy and actively develop and apply cross-chain technology;If the gap is not large and relatively close,the incompatible strategy should be maintained to maintain the same competitive environment.This paper for the first time focuses on the compatibility strategy in the competition of similar blockchain multilateral platforms with different characteristics of consensus mechanism.It makes up for the deficiency that academic research lags behind the prosperity and development of the applied field and the competition becomes increasingly fierce.In addition,different from the static optimal compatibility strategy generally obtained by existing studies,this paper finds that the long-term compatibility strategy that platforms comprehensively consider and dynamically adjust according to the development stage and scale gap of the industry is very innovative,which enriches the research on the choice of compatibility strategy in platform competition.Finally,this paper takes e-commerce,a typical traditional multilateral platform,as the research object,uses reputation model to analyze the specific role of blockchain technology adoption in competition from the perspective of platform and users,and uses real industry data to assign values to theoretical model parameters for simulation analysis.The study found that the use of blockchain technology can effectively curb fraudulent behaviors of sellers,helps e-commerce platforms achieve effective reputation management,provides consumers with a safe and transparent shopping environment,and achieve a huge transformation from "losing together" to "win-win".Moreover,e-commerce platforms can be extended to high-end brands through the use of blockchain technology to achieve transformation and upgrading.This study is the first one to deeply analyze the influence of platform’s technology adoption decision on the gaming relationship between internal sellers and consumers from the perspective of platform,seller and consumer.This study proposes the research point of view on reputation management by means of blockchain technology,analyses how to use technology to reshape the tripartite principal-agent relationship among platform,sellers and consumers,provides novel solution ideas and important management enlightenment for traditional multi-sided platforms on solving reputation management problem,improving competitiveness and upgrading to high-end e-commerce.To sum up,through theoretical modeling and simulation analysis,this article discusses the new platform competition problem emerged in blockchain era because of new muti-sided platform appearing and traditional multi-seded platform adopts new technology.In addition,this article studies the multi-sided platform competition mechanism in blockchain era from internal and external competition and influencing factors of competitiveness three aspects.It has made a breakthrough exploration and important contribution to the research of platform competition,and provides much-needed scientific guidance and suggestions and management inspiration for the industry application practice,which is developing much faster than theory.