Last week, several media outlets reported in unison that the shopping app Lolli formed an alliance with China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba in time for China’s Single Day Festival. Lolli is a service app that pays off reserves with bitcoin when shopping online.
However, Alibaba Group has repeatedly denied the partnership, which Lolli CEO Alex Adelman claimed from the time the report first released, was not true. The conflicting claims by Lolli and Alibaba show a cross-section of misunderstanding often arising in the blockchain industry.
Who to blame on this Alibaba-Lolli conflict?
It seems difficult to clearly blame one side for such conflicting claims.
In fact, blockchain companies have many times extensively promoted itself. Often claiming they have formed “formal” partnerships after indirectly collaborating with any famous brand. Or forming alliances through third parties, or participating in proof-of-concept work.
However, before the announcement of the controversy, representatives of the two companies had already signed the documents. And people using the Lolli app (at Ali Express) received a bitcoin reserve.
It is also a matter of a slightly different way of defining “partnership” in the e-commerce and cryptocurrency sectors.
At the mall, Lolli could have considered expanding collaboration with customers who already have contracts (through Ali Express) in time for the Single Day Sale period. On the other hand, Alibaba Group (to borrow a spokesman) saw it as a “private contract in the form of a single transaction” by a third party. Naturally, Lolli sees the outside appearance of the partnership as expanding. While Alibaba has been forced to see it as not a formal one.
Alibaba explained that using AlliExpress, you can get Bitcoin reserves through Lolli. But based on that doesn’t mean that Lolli and Alibaba have signed a direct contract between the groups. This is because Alibaba does not have formal business relations with Bitcoin-related companies under its in-house regulations.