HOQU: Decentralized Affiliate Marketing Platform

What is HOQU

Friends, imagine when we shop online or use various services, we often see activities like “refer and earn” or “invite friends for rewards”—this is what we commonly call “affiliate marketing” or “performance marketing.” Simply put, merchants (advertisers) promote their products or services through promoters (affiliates), and only when the promoter brings actual results (such as a purchase, registration, or click), does the merchant pay a reward.

The HOQU project (abbreviated as HQX) is like a “digital steward” in the traditional affiliate marketing world, aiming to move this process onto the blockchain to make it more transparent, efficient, and fair. Its goal is to build a decentralized ecosystem where advertisers, affiliate networks, and affiliates can interact directly on one platform, eliminating intermediaries and reducing costs for everyone.

For example, traditional affiliate marketing is like needing a “middleman” to help you sell something, who takes a large commission, and you may not be sure if they’re doing their job well. HOQU wants to turn this “middleman” into a public, transparent “smart contract” system, where everyone can see the rules, supervise execution, and pay lower fees.

On this platform, advertisers can easily publish their promotion tasks and set rewards for completion; affiliates can choose tasks they’re interested in to promote. Once a task is completed, such as a user purchasing a product through an affiliate’s link, the smart contract will automatically and transparently pay the reward to the affiliate, with the entire process recorded on the blockchain and impossible to tamper with.

Project Vision and Value Proposition

The core vision of the HOQU project is to bring a “trust revolution” to the affiliate marketing industry. In traditional affiliate marketing, advertisers often worry about affiliates cheating (such as inflating numbers), while affiliates worry about advertisers defaulting or underpaying commissions—there’s a lack of sufficient trust between both sides. HOQU hopes to solve these “trust crises” and “inefficiency” issues through blockchain technology.

Its value proposition is mainly reflected in several aspects:

• Eliminating intermediaries, reducing costs: Traditional affiliate networks usually charge 15% to 25% commission, while HOQU aims to reduce transaction fees to about 0.5%, greatly lowering the “toll” of the middleman.
• Increasing transparency, combating fraud: All promotion data and transaction records are openly and transparently recorded on the blockchain, making fraud impossible. HOQU has also designed a smart anti-fraud system to effectively identify and prevent fraudulent behavior, protecting advertisers’ interests.
• Ensuring fair payment: Through smart contracts, once a promotion task meets preset conditions, the reward is automatically paid, avoiding situations where advertisers delay or refuse payment, ensuring affiliates are rewarded promptly and fairly.
• Building an open ecosystem: HOQU is not just a platform, but an ecosystem, allowing developers to build various affiliate marketing services and products on top of it, driving industry innovation.

In summary, HOQU hopes to make global internet marketing simpler, fairer, and more efficient, benefiting everyone involved.

Technical Features

HOQU’s ability to realize the above vision is mainly thanks to its adoption of blockchain technology. You can think of blockchain as an “immutable public ledger”—once records are written, they cannot be changed, and the ledger is maintained by all network participants, not controlled by any central authority.

HOQU’s technical features include:

• Blockchain records everything: All key data on the platform, such as advertiser information, affiliate reputation, detailed records of promotion activities, and every “result” (such as a click or purchase), are recorded on this blockchain “public ledger.” It’s like stamping every transaction with an unforgeable timestamp and notary seal.
• Smart contracts for automatic execution: The core of HOQU is “smart contracts.” Smart contracts are automated protocols written on the blockchain; once preset conditions are met (such as an affiliate successfully bringing a sale), the contract automatically executes and pays the reward to the affiliate. This avoids human intervention and ensures fairness and transparency in transactions.
• Decentralized anti-fraud system: To address common fraud issues in affiliate marketing, HOQU has developed a decentralized anti-fraud system. This system can identify and block fake traffic or cheating, protecting advertisers’ ad budgets from being wasted.
• Decentralized arbitration center: If disputes arise between advertisers and affiliates, HOQU has an independent, decentralized arbitration center to handle these issues and ensure fair resolution.
• SDK toolkit: HOQU provides a software development kit (SDK) to help existing affiliate networks and developers integrate their systems with the HOQU platform or develop new applications on top of it.
• User identity verification: HOQU integrates with the Civic blockchain platform to solve remote user identity verification, helping reduce fraud and increase user trust.
• Modular design: HOQU’s decentralized software solution uses a modular design, meaning even if one module fails, it won’t affect the operation of the entire platform, improving system stability and reliability.

Tokenomics

The HOQU project has its own digital token called HQX. You can think of HQX as the “fuel” or “currency” circulating within the HOQU ecosystem.

• Token symbol: HQX
• Issuance chain: HQX is an ERC-20 token, meaning it runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is one of the most popular smart contract platforms.
• Total supply and circulation:
  • According to some sources, HQX has a total supply of 888,888,000 tokens.
  • During the initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, 35,000,000 HQX were offered in the presale stage, and 520,000,000 HQX in the main sale stage.
  • As of October 2025, the circulating supply of HQX is about 215.77 million tokens.
  • The ICO hard cap (maximum fundraising target) was $14,791,000.
• Token utility:
  • While specific details are not thoroughly explained in available sources, HQX tokens are expected to be used within the HOQU platform to pay transaction fees (such as the aforementioned 0.5% fee), and as rewards paid by advertisers to affiliates.
  • It may also be used to incentivize platform participants or play a role in future governance mechanisms.
• Inflation/burn: There is currently no clear information indicating that HQX tokens have inflation or burn mechanisms.
• Distribution and unlocking: Existing sources do not detail the specific distribution ratios or unlocking schedule for the tokens.

It should be noted that HQX tokens currently have limited market activity and low trading volume, which may affect their price and liquidity.

Team, Governance, and Funding

The success of a project depends on the people and mechanisms behind it.

• Core members: The CEO of the HOQU project is Alexey Shmonov.
• Team characteristics: The HOQU team is described as composed of experts in advertising, fintech, and technology. This means they have professional knowledge in their target market and technical development.
• Governance mechanism: Available sources do not detail the specific governance mechanism of the HOQU project, such as how the community participates in decision-making or whether there is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
• Funding status: HOQU attracted some investor interest during its early token sale phase. In a closed token sale, it raised 2,111 (currency not specified) from 11 contributors. Additionally, the ICO hard cap was $14,791,000.

Understanding the team background and funding status helps assess the project’s stability and development potential, but the lack of detailed governance information means community participation in the project’s direction may currently be limited.

Roadmap

The roadmap is like the project’s development blueprint, showing what it has done and what it plans to do.

HOQU released a relatively clear roadmap in its early days (around 2017):

• March 2018: Launch of decentralized affiliate/advertiser application.
• May 2018: Launch of decentralized affiliate network application.
• September 2018: Launch of the world’s first decentralized affiliate network on the HOQU platform.
• February 2019: Launch of mobile application for the decentralized platform.
• March 2019: Release of developer toolkit (SDK).

From these early plans, HOQU had clear product development and ecosystem building goals at the start.

Recent developments (2019 to present):

• December 2019: Participated in industry conferences such as Affiliate World Asia 2019.
• 2020: Participated in events such as India Affiliate Summit 2020.
• February 2021: Launched the new HOQU.com website.
• April 2021: Participated in events such as Russian Gaming Week.

Although the early roadmap has been completed, recent public information mainly focuses on website updates and conference participation. To fully understand the project’s current activity and future plans, you may need to consult its latest announcements or official channels.

Common Risk Reminders

Investing in any blockchain project comes with risks, and HOQU is no exception. When considering this project, here are some common risks to note:

• Market liquidity risk: Currently, HOQU tokens (HQX) have very limited market activity and trading volume, meaning it may be difficult to quickly buy or sell large amounts of HQX tokens, or prices may fluctuate significantly.
• Technical and security risks: Although blockchain technology aims to improve security, smart contracts may have vulnerabilities, and the platform may face risks such as hacking or code errors. Additionally, if project development stalls or maintenance is insufficient, security risks may arise.
• Operational and adoption risks: Any new platform needs enough users (advertisers, affiliates, affiliate networks) to succeed. If HOQU fails to attract a large user base or its solution is not widely adopted, its long-term development will face challenges.
• Competition risk: The affiliate marketing market is highly competitive, with established giants and other emerging blockchain projects. HOQU needs to continuously innovate and maintain competitiveness.
• Compliance and regulatory risk: Global regulatory policies for cryptocurrencies and blockchain are still evolving. Future policy changes may affect HOQU’s operations and the legality of its tokens.
• Information timeliness risk: Most detailed information and roadmaps about HOQU were published between 2017 and 2019. Although there are records of website updates and conference participation in 2021, the project’s current actual development progress, team activity, and ecosystem status may differ from the early whitepaper vision.
• GitHub activity in doubt: The official GitHub page shows some core code repositories with loading errors or inaccessible, which may mean the repositories have been privatized, deleted, or are no longer active—a potential risk signal for a blockchain project claiming to be open source.

Please remember, these risk reminders are not exhaustive. Be sure to conduct thorough personal research before making any decisions.

Verification Checklist

As a rigorous blockchain research analyst, when evaluating a project, we focus on some key “hard indicators”:

• Official website: hoqu.com (Please visit for the latest information)
• Block explorer contract address: The Ethereum contract address for HQX tokens is
  0x1B957Dc4aEfeed3b4A2351a6A6d5cbfbbA0CeCFa
  . You can check this address on Etherscan or other block explorers to view token holder numbers, transaction records, etc.
• GitHub activity: HOQU has an organization page on GitHub (github.com/Hoqu). However, its main code repositories currently show “loading errors,” which may mean these repositories have been privatized, deleted, or are no longer active. For a blockchain project, code openness and activity are important indicators of development progress and transparency—pay special attention to this.
• Social media activity: You can follow its official accounts on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, Telegram, etc., to learn about community discussions and the latest project updates.
• Whitepaper: It is recommended to consult HOQU’s official whitepaper for the most comprehensive project design and technical details.

Project Summary

The HOQU project (HQX) is an early platform aiming to use blockchain technology to revolutionize the traditional affiliate marketing industry. It envisions a decentralized, transparent, efficient, and low-cost future, hoping to solve long-standing trust and efficiency issues between advertisers and affiliates through smart contracts and anti-fraud mechanisms.

Technically, HOQU plans to use blockchain for data recording, smart contracts for automatic execution, decentralized anti-fraud and arbitration systems, and SDK toolkits to build its ecosystem. Its HQX token, as an ERC-20 token, is intended to serve as a value medium within the platform.

However, it should be objectively noted that most detailed information and roadmaps for HOQU are concentrated in 2017-2019. Although the project has records of website updates and conference participation in 2021, its GitHub codebase activity is in doubt, and current market activity and token liquidity are very limited. This suggests the project may have passed its active development phase or its direction has shifted.

For anyone interested in HOQU, it is recommended to focus on the project’s current actual operational status, latest team developments, technical progress, and community activity when conducting in-depth research. Please remember, the above information is only an introduction and analysis of the HOQU project and does not constitute investment advice. The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile and risky—be sure to fully understand the risks and think independently before making your own judgment. For more details, please conduct your own research.