ICO Crowd - Issue #7

www.icocrowd.com

ISSUE #7, may 2018

Featuring XYO ORBS ENECUUM and The Rise of the Security Token

Price: 0.01 BTC

FOREWORD

ISMAIL MALIK Editor-in-chief

The Re-Birth of the Korean Crypto Market

DONOVAN OBOSI Head Analyst ANNEMIEKE DIRKES Managing Editor PAM TATRO Content Editor TZVI SHISHLER Marketing Photo credit © Shutterstock

by ISMAIL MALIK Chairman & Executive Editor ICO Crowd

South Korea has been the heart of many ICO projects and prominent crypto exchanges in the world. Moreover, many active investors in cryptocurrency have accelerated successful worldwide projects.

However, due to government intervention, the recent drop in the crypto market has crestfallen the majority of crypto and ICO investors in Korea. Moreover, the government has still not come up with clear guidelines on how to protect investors from scams or illegal ICOs, nor have they prepared a policy to nurture the market.

If you would like to advertise with us or have any other queries please get in touch at info@icocrowd.com Disclaimer. All opinions and views expressed in this publication are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent the views of ICO Crowd magazine, its Management or Advisors. All content of ICO Crowd Magazine, in particular but not exclusively, photographs, businessdetails, facts and figures, names, adresses and dates, historic details and offers, are the sole responsibility of the author of each artice. Copyright violations by the author are the sole responsibility of the author and ICO Crowd magazine can not be held liable, whether on the whole or on particulars. www.icocrowd.com

Yet, we are seeing large enterprises going for “Reverse ICOs”, last year we had Nexon (World’s top game publishing company) and more recently Kakao (Messenger Service) has decided to locate themselves outbound to start an ICO. Most likely in Singapore or Hong Kong.

Such news is a hopeful signal for the majority of crypto holders and investors.

Moreover, governments are also collaborating with other countries on building legal and tax frameworks to safely govern the crypto and blockchain market in Korea.

Kakao’s exchange (Dunamu), also has committed 100M for 3 years to invest in the blockchain community to accelerate and nurture its growth. The Government has budgeted 14M to start converged business for blockchain technology as well.

Both the Korean government and citizens realize that, legal framework is a prerequisite to building a healthy ecosystem and growth in the market.

S.Korea has learnt about the cryptocurrency market and industry, the hard way, due to a group of pyramid schemes and other incidents that have eroded the trust in the market. We are see that S. Korea to has huge growth potential, which will highly influence the market due to its young generation of blockchain technology enthusiast and developers.

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CONTENTS 4 5 7 10 13 16 18 20 23 24 26 29

Advisory Board XYO.Network: Next-Gen GPS for IoT Backbone // MARKUS LEVIN

Orbs: The Blockchain Built to Help Consumer Applications Transition Their Millions of Users to Decentralized Apps // BILLY ATTAR

Enecuum: Proof-of-Activity as a promising algorithm of work // JEV VAINSTEINS

Bubblo Empowers the Next Level Decentralized Discovery Platform // JAMES SOWERS

iOlite: Machine Training to Build an All-Inclusive Smart Contract Future // MICHIEL MULDERS

OLIVACOIN: The Financial Solution of the Olive Oil Market // ISMAEL SANTIAGO MORENO

The Siglo Protocol Is at the Forefront of Tokenization // JAMES SOWERS How to Reduce Volatility: Gold-secured Crypto Assets Already on the Market Squeezer: The World’s First Software Development Platform Offering Microservices for the Blockchain // JAMES SOWERS

IoT: A Unified Voice for the Blockchain Industry Introducing DATA, the Digital Asset Trade Association // ALEX LIGHTMAN

WIZBL, Fastest and Most Scalable Blockchain is Here

32 34 37 38 42 44 46 49 52 54 58 62 64 66 69 73 74

IoT: Decentralized Electronic Medical Records? Three Ways Blockchain can Remove Blocks to Medical Care // ALEX LIGHTMAN How Bountie Can Change Online Gaming’s Current Ecosystem // MARC BELL

My Thoughts on Wyoming’s “Open Blockchain Token Exemption” Bill // CHRISTIAN FERRI

BANDZ: Now you know // VIKTOR XHELILAJ

Dehedge: A Risk-Free Zone for Cryptocurrency Investors // MICHAEL CHERNOV

Meet LEE. This Research Bot Saves Time Spent on Data // SIMON SLIMAN Review of VideoCoin ICO A New Blockchain Protocol // MR. AZIZ ZAINUDDIN

Automatichome Xriba is Here, The Innovative Platform for Accounting Management // NAEEM ASLAM

The Great Disruption: Unleashing the Quantum Blockchain // BROOKE HART Bitcoin: A Trip Down Memory Lane // ANNA PALMINA

RAWG: Play Your Favorite Games to Earn Crypto // DASHA LYALIN

The Acute Crypto-Solution Called Acutecoin The Rise of the Security Token // TAL SHECHTMAN

Better Propositions, not Better Whitepapers // DANIEL STEEVES Banker and Hotel Owner Team Up For New Travel Booking

Overview of CargoCoin

76 78 80 82 85 88 89 90 95 98 100 104 106

Cryptoleaf: Crowdfunding a Better Environment // JON GRUDA

NOBAR: Driving the Usage of Crypto in Everyday Lives // SALONI JAIN AI CRYPTO // SUNGJAE LEE

How to build an ICO community // MICHIEL MULDERS

Things You Need to Know About CMO Before Launching Your ICO // HUGO JACQUES EMMARES ICO // IVAN JELIĆ

7 Reasons Why You Need Pryvate to Protect Your Privacy

The Advertising World Made Clear by Ubex A Wellness Guide Always by Your Side: How Psych-Tech is Poised to Disrupt the Multi-Trillion-Dollar Wellness Industry MuleChain - Global Decentralized P2P Delivery and Warehouse Services on a Blockchain // RALPH LIU spl.yt // CYRUS TAGHEHCHAIN

Koinon: The Bullies On The Block // PAUL KIRKITELOS

How the Crypto-Community and Blockchain Technology // SIMON HO

Advisory Board SUSAN POOLE

MARC KENIGSBERG

SIMON COCKING

Founder, BlockBridge Advisory Co-Founder, Blockchain Training Institute

Founder of BitcoinChaser.com

Senior Editor at Irish Tech News Freelance for Sunday Business Post, Irish Times, The Southern Star, Dublin Glob

ANDREY GOLUB, PhD

SEAD MUFTIC

SERGIO A. FERNANDEZ DE CORDOVA

Entrepreneur, CEO & Founder @ELSE Corp- a Virtual Retail company

CEO at Blockchain Information Exchange Security Corp

Chairman – P3SmartCity Partners, Inc Private Sector Advisory Group, SDG-FUND, United Nations

THEODOSIS MOUROUZIS, PhD

MUKHTAR MUSSABETOV

EMMANUEL R. GOFFI, PhD

Program Director of MSc in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics at Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) Research Fellow at UCL Centre of Blockchain Technologies (London,UK)

Blockchain Entrepreneur, Founder at BlockSpace Labs

Associate doctor with Science Po-CERI Research fellow with the Centre FrancoPaix, at the Université du Québec à Montréal

ALEX LIGHTMAN

DANIEL STEEVES

Award-winning and Amazon bestselling author.

Canadian-born, German-based consultant and entrepreneur, Strategist, Steeves Solutions

MAY 2018

Next-Gen GPS for IoT Backbone

by MARKUS LEVIN Co – Founder & Head of Operations

ABOUT XYO NETWORKS: XYO Network built the world’s first decentralized location verification system with more than one million location tracking devices in circulation around the world. After years of investment and breakthroughs in crypto-location technology, XYO is poised to help bring the promise and the benefits of blockchain technology to the real world on a massive and global scale. This can have a profound impact on businesses that rely on the delivery of goods and services requiring non-forgeable and verifiable location data. It can power current applications like eCommerce as well as the backbone for smart cities of the future including the Internet of Things (IoT), self-driving vehicles, autonomous delivery drones, and even location tracking on the Moon and Mars.

As the future rapidly becomes the present, XYO Network is poised to provide the next genera-tion of GPS functionality to serve as the Internet of Things

(IoT) backbone, building the founda-tion for smart cities throughout the world. The ability to tie accurate location data with crypto-technology can fuel innovative research, providing deep insight into countless fields from geo-spatial health to eCommerce.

HOW DOES IT WORK? GPS verifies a receiver’s location on Earth utilizing location information for any three of thirty orbiting satellites in a process called trilateration.

The XYO Network, however, acts as a distrib-uted mesh network that can accurately verify location with greater certainty using a few bea-cons that are earth, air, or space based through a digital handshake called Bound Witness. Cryptolocation technology incorporates the benefits of blockchain into the location-verification by providing a non-forgeable history of transactions.

out the middle party. The downside to smart contracts is that currently there is no single, authoritative, and decentralized way to execute a contract based on location data. For example, there is no way to create a smart contract that allows for payment on delivery for eCommerce orders.

The XYO Network is an ecosystem of connected devices that solve this problem by communi-cating with one another to create an unalterable history of interactions and locations stored on a blockchain. A user can independently verify that an item tracked using the XYO Network was in a defined place at a specific point in time. Since XYO Network devices talk to each other, every user augments the other. A delivery driver can help find a lost bike.

A parked car can help confirm a neighbor’s package arrival. Users are rewarded with XYO tokens whenever data Cryptocurrency smart contracts already they provide is used to help another execute contractual obligations, cutting user track or locate an item.

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WHY DOES GPS NEED TO EVOLVE? With a fully automated world on the horizon, the need for accurate location data is critical and growing rapidly. It is already a quiet cornerstone of our daily lives. Businesses rely heavily on the delivery of goods and services requiring proof of location documentation including online transaction enterprises. These industries will expand and become more efficient as delivery services transform with self-driving vehicles and delivery drones, amongst many other innova-tions not yet envisioned.

The current source of most location data is the Global Positioning System (GPS) which is a cen-tralized U.S. government utility that provides users with positioning, navigation, and timing ser-vices. The accuracy of the system for GPS-enabled smart phones is typically 4.9 m (16 ft.) and is worse vertically as well as near buildings, bridges, and trees. It is also easy to “spoof “the sys-tem by providing false positional data or jam it by masking the GPS satellite signal with noise. Incidents of this are increasing in frequency due to easily accessible hardware and software. Disruptions have occurred for everything from guided missiles to Pokémon Go. Solving these problems through cryptolocation technology while increasing certainty of location will enable innovation around location-reliant trade markets to flourish, along with the emer-gence of a whole new body of geospatial data across the planet.

WHAT ARE THE APPLICATIONS? The blockchain based platform is open-source which means a development of unlimited appli-cations and a reduction in the cost of location data. The XYO Network can power 6

It can power current applications like eCommerce as well as the backbone for smart cities of the future including the Internet of Things (IoT), self-driving vehicles, autonomous delivery drones, and even location tracking on the Moon and Mars.

Users are rewarded with XYO tokens whenever data they provide is used to help another user track or locate an item.

everything from automated parking payments to traffic flow optimization, self-driving cars, autonomous drone delivery, airline luggage tracking, e-commerce, car rental key tracking, package theft detection, and countless more.

On a grander scale, the applications extend beyond Earth to ve-hicle and equipment location services on the Moon or even Mars, utilizing the same technology with a network of connected devices. While it may sound like the stuff of science fiction with a horizon in the far future, the practical applications are nearterm and quite immediate. Nokia Bell Labs, in partnership with Vodafone, is building a 4G communication network for the moon which may be functional as early as 2019.

Theoretically, the XYO Network can provide an IoT backbone anywhere connected devices exist including throughout the solar system.

More long-term potential applications lead to the even-tual commercial transactions on extra-terrestrial surfaces such as on the Moon or Mars. Fortu-nately, crypto-economics are already shattering the concept of currency being backed by rare minerals on Earth like gold, long before minerals are mined on extra-terrestrial surfaces.

TOKEN SALE The XYO Network has a token sale on May 20, 2018 after which unsold or unreserved tokens will be burned. The independent industry voice ICO Rating ranked it as one of the top two ICOs in the world. The platform was recently featured in Forbes. The Advisory Board includes top blockchain expert Ismail Malik and smart city advocate Paul Hynek.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Keri Kukral 773-474-6195 keri@xyo.network

MAY 2018

Orbs

The Blockchain Built to Help Consumer Applications Transition Their Millions of Users to Decentralized Apps Large consumer applications with millions of users, like Kik and Telegram, are beginning to enter the blockchain space in search of their next phase of growth.

These companies understand the potential to disrupt their industries through decentralization, but they also have too much to lose if their dApps don’t work perfectly. by BILLY ATTAR VP Marketing

The masses of mainstream consumers making up their user bases present a unique combination of challenges that general-purpose blockchain solutions find difficult to adequately meet. Large consumer apps need a blockchain that can give them all of the benefits of decentralization (security, tokenization, instant payments, etc.) with the performance and reliability of centralized platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure.

Orbs envisions commoditizing blockchain infrastructure for consumer apps with millions of users. It is creating a fully decentralized public platform where consumer app developers feel comfortable to operate nodes and take part in a decentralized and balanced ecosystem, one that makes this transition easier for the industry as a whole.

By designing Orbs with the application developers in mind, Orbs is minimizing the chances of applications forking the blockchain or migrating to another.

The platform will be complete with a core product experience inspired by well-established infrastructure solutions such as AWS and speak in a familiar terminology like Service Level Agreements (SLA) and dedicated resources.

GUIDING PHILOSOPHIES BEHIND ORBS There are several guiding philosophies behind the creation and technical direction of Orbs.

1. Specialized blockchains will win out In the long run, Orbs believes application developers will prefer blockchains built for their specific use case. This is why Orbs has focused on building its blockchain specifically for use by large scale consumer applications.

What this means in practice is that all of Orbs’ features are designed based on 7

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the needs of its target market based on the input of Orbs’ consumer app design partners.

dedicated resources and isolation, gradual migrations, subscription fees, etc.

Requirement-driven and design partners As a requirement-driven company, Orbs is designing its blockchain based on the needs of its design partners, its first customers. Rather than launching a new blockchain and then seeking out the right market, Orbs is working with clients to address their needs inherently in the design of the blockchain.

3. App developers should have control of the platform The target customer of Orbs’ infrastructure are app developers. Different apps are likely to want similar things from the infrastructure, such as low operational fees for example. It’s the prerogative of the application developer to choose which blockchain infrastructure to use.

If a more competitive infrastructure solution comes along, the application developer is free to migrate. The millions of end users who’ll be transitioned throughout the migration process will have little say on the matter.

While years of academic research and groundbreaking tweaks in newer forms of blockchain are impressive, they might not address practical needs. Sometimes, these new blockchains only address a narrow aspect of a given problem.

The Orbs approach, identifying real problems and implanting direct solutions within its core product, is more pragmatic. This shifts the focus of blockchain innovation from theory to praxis, with emphasis on real-world business and practical application.

2. Clients compare you to centralized platforms, not other blockchains Blockchain is new territory for established businesses and it needs to offer a familiar experience and technological standard to get them to take the leap into decentralization.

The challenge of bringing blockchain to the mainstream is to convince established consumer apps with millions of users that they can launch a blockchain-based app without taking on any additional operational risk.

This means that Orbs must operate at the level of the centralized platforms these companies are familiar with, with features such as SLAs, 8

It’s no coincidence that the three trailblazing consumer applications like — Telegram, LINE and Kik — are all trying to build and launch on their own blockchain infrastructure solutions where they’ll be in control over their own destiny. Orbs is designed with one clear dominant controlling group in mind — the applications running on top of Orbs. By designing Orbs with the application developers in mind, Orbs is minimizing the chances of applications forking the blockchain or migrating to another.

ARCHITECTURE AND VIRTUAL BLOCKCHAINS Blockchain virtualization implemented over the Orbs platform provides the illusion of a dedicated blockchain while running on top of a shared physical node infrastructure, thus enjoying the same security and decentralization provided by the shared environment.

Virtualization separates the resources available to applications from the underlying phys-

ical ones. The properties of blockchain virtualization include isolation, quality of service, SLA, control, governance and elastic resource capacity.

The majority of blockchain implementations today, like Ethereum, are shared, where multiple decentralized applications run side by side without isolation, suffering from unpredictable performance.

Blockchain virtualization allows us to overcome these limitations without compromising on the risks of a centralized or private infrastructure. With blockchain virtualization, each component of the blockchain infrastructure, such as the consensus, the state and block storage, and the virtual machine (compute) layer are virtualized. This allows virtual consensus instances to be allocated with a desired transaction confirmation rate that can differ across virtual chains.

Moreover, different virtual consensus instances can operate concurrently, scale gracefully and provide better utilization of resources.

Unlike private blockchains, virtual consensus instances enjoy the security, resilience, decentralization and compliance benefits of the underlying shared infrastructure.

SHARDING VIA BLOCKCHAIN VIRTUALIZATION In systems engineering, scaling systems cannot always be achieved by adding more resources, due to bottlenecks that cannot grow easily. Sharding is a technique for scaling out systems by dividing them into smaller, nearly-independent parts called shards, each small enough to work well despite bottlenecks.

MAY 2018

Decentralized consensus is an unavoidable bottleneck; the Orbs platform decouples tenants to different shards allowing the network to scale out horizontally as new tenant apps are added. Contrary to centralized infrastructure solutions like AWS, simply adding resources is usually not enough to increase capacity. When the number of products that use AWS grows, increasing infrastructure capacity by adding hardware like servers and network connections, is usually enough to meet demand since separate products run completely separately.

This normally isn’t the case with blockchain.

Transactions on Ethereum, for example, even by different contracts, may affect one another and therefore must be performed in sequence. To make matters worse, the number of verifiers in PoW blockchains is related to the level of security the blockchain enjoys; reducing unit sizes by sharding is reducing the level of security in the same proportion.

Large consumer apps need a blockchain that can give them all of the benefits of decentralization (security, tokeniDifferent decentralized consumer apps zation, instant are independent and work with differpayments, etc.) ent unrelated assets. This is particularly with the perfortrue if fees are paid in bulk and not per mance and reliatransaction. By sharding decentralized bility of centralapps by default, the architecture can reized platforms volve around parallelization. like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or The Orbs infrastructure is designed to Microsoft Azure. support a large number of independThis problem is apparently much simpler to solve in the architecture for Orbs. Federated consensus models employing consensus committees, do not weaken its security properties when sharded.

ent consumer applications running on top. While applications are independent from one another by design, when running on top of a shared infrastructure they enjoy the benefits of sharing resources, but still allow the system to scale out thanks to the natural sharding of virtual chains.

The 3 types of cost factors in blockchain applications are consensus rounds, reads and writes of state storage, and compute operations. Consensus on transactions of different virtual chains can run independently as long as there are no ordering dependencies among them. Therefore, consensus of different virtual chains can be sharded and run concurrently on separate resources.

As there is no ordering requirement, the ledgers of virtual chains can also be maintained independently. Compute scheduling requires that depend-

ent transactions will be executed in order. As virtual chains have independent ordering, their compute can be performed in parallel. Moreover, the isolation of state for each virtual chain reduces the memory requirements of its virtual machine.

CONSENSUS Orbs’ Helix consensus algorithm is a decentralized, open and transparent consensus algorithm tailored to the ideals of mass-market apps. The assumption behind Helix is that app vendors hold most of the power in a platform that caters to apps, and that a consensus protocol must be designed from ground up to ensure that vendors’ interests are aligned with each other and with the interests of their users.

For network governance, this means the protocol has to work natively with chain virtualization, as it allows the governance of each app to be separate from that of other apps. Beyond that, voting power is distributed between known verifiers that are members of a federation, thus limiting the power held by a single voter. For real-time validation, it is fast, immediately-final and impractical for validators to manipulate the selection and ordering of transactions.

FAIRNESS A fair composition of blocks is necessary to guarantee all participants enjoy an equal level of service (transaction confirmation time, throughput, etc.).

Helix provides this by relying on a technique known as correlated sampling, utilizing the randomness inherent to the protocol.

In addition, Helix assures its users enhanced protection from censorship and discrimination relative to other typi-

cal solutions, but only requires them to utilize a negligible amount of resources.

This is achieved by having the users encrypt their transactions with a threshold encryption scheme prior to publishing them. The “blind” consensus allows Helix to offer a fair protocol to its users.

BYZANTINE FAULT TOLERANCE By relying on PBFT, an established consensus protocol for a Byzantine environment, Helix can deal with the existence of a limited number of Byzantine nodes which do not follow their expected behavior. Helix produces a single, agreed-upon chain, that avoids forks.

SCALABILITY In Helix, in each term a node is selected at random to propose the current block of transactions. Then the block is verified through a bounded-size committee of nodes. Reducing the number of nodes that actively participate in a costly consensus protocol enhances the efficiency of the protocol and its ability to scale to large throughputs.

REPUTATION-BASED Helix is is based on a unique reputation measure that is attached and dynamically updated for each node that estimates the quality of participation.

TEAM Orbs has put together a team of blockchain and crypto experts with deep domain expertise in building technology startups from the ground up. It’s three co-founders have backgrounds in Orbs’ target market of consumer applications and in the past, have founded their own consumer app startups with exits to Alibaba and Wix.com. In addition to this, the team is made up of academics from leading universities as well as experienced business and technical teams made up of successful startup veterans.

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MAY 2018

Proof-of-Activity as a promising algorithm of work Blockchain is more than just another trendy word; it is a complex ecosystem.

Digital ID entities are an important part of a technology which is built to eliminate third-party interference. However, not all of them are secure to use. Recent Microsoft research shows that to make decentralized digital identities safe, we need to take a more serious approach in terms of security and individual privacy.

According to Microsoft, hybrid consensus algorithms are far more secure than single ones. Reaching a consensus between the relevant parties have been a crucial part in the ledger-based history of the blockchain ecosystem, and we are now at a point where more effective by and sustainable solutions are needed.

JEV VAINSTEINS CBDO Enecuum

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At this moment exists mono algorithms: Proof-of-Work, Proof-of-Stake, Proof-of-Space, Proof-of-Authority, etc and hybrid algorithms that are deemed to be more secure. Enecuum platform build’s hybrid algorithm- Proof-of-Activity based.

MAY 2018

Enecuum designed a distributed cryptocurrency system that considers the advantages and drawbacks of various consensus algorithms, using the best and most valuable practices of previous initiatives. Enecuum is the first company to develop a hybrid consensus algorithm mechanism that allows PoW (Proof of work), PoS (Proof of Stake) and PoA (Proof of Activity) to be used simultaneously and proportionately.

themselves. In the second approach, upon finding the block hash, the PoW Miner keeps it open for PoA miners, who fill it with transactions.

PoA is to be applied at two different stages.

Enecuum is the first company to develop a hybrid consensus Proof of Activity is an innovative consensus algorithm mechalgorithm that will be used by Enecuum for anism that althe first time ever. The system is built upon a lows PoW (Proof foundation of three main mining stages: PoW, PoA, and PoS. The PoS miners play a different role of work), PoS in the ecosystem. They will need to (Proof of Stake) The original idea of Proof of Activity was deconstantly check the wallet balancand PoA (Proof signed by Charles Lee, Iddo Bentov, Alex Miz- es to receive a reward for mining. of Activity) to be rahi and Meni Rosenfeld. We have improved At the same time, the system autothis idea and implemented mobile phone min- matically determines the minimum used simultaneing on the system. and maximum levels of balance con- ously and prosidered during the miner’s activity. portionately.

Enecuum hybrid algorithm includes 3 steps:

There are two approaches to consider at the PoW stage. In the first approach, PoW miners who are connected to the network search for a block hash of various sizes. Upon finding a hash that satisfies the current complexity, the block is filled with transactions and transmitted to the network for the second stage - transaction verification by PoA miners, who then fill the block with transactions

PoA miners are to reach a consensus to form ‘a team’ of 64 participants.

Each team then validates a chain of 62 microblocks with 40 transactions each and publishes them on the network, filling the blocks opened by the PoW miners.

The reward of the miner is confined within these thresholds and will grow as the wallet balance increases from the minimum to the maximum level.

Unlike the existing reward methods, in which the network generates new coins immediately after a valid block is found, Enecuum will immediately calculate the wallet address,

with the actual mining reward distributed on average once a day. This helps to protect the network from hacking the mining algorithm or gaining control over most of the computing power.

In Enecuum, the reward for mining will be distributed among its participants as follows: PoA - 70%, PoW - 20%, PoS - 10%. However, due to its statistical awareness, the system will be able to change this distribution to avoid system imbalances.

PoA mining at Enecuum requires a strong and steady Internet connection but does not need high computational power and can even be performed on mobile devices. There, the system is not only less prone to hacker attacks, but also more truly and fully embodies the idea of decentralization.

Enecuum has recently launched a testnet emulation with the mainnet and emission scheduled in the next month. Additionally, our PoA code is open-sourced and is available on github.

Take a look and tell us what you think!

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Bandz Network

A Secure Global Extranet Powered By BlockChain

MAY 2018

Bubblo Empowers the Next Level Decentralized Discovery Platform MEET BUBBLO Bubblo is an intelligent discovery app.

It harnesses the AI power to help users discover their very own personalized TOP 5 venue recommendations. Bubblo is also able to help businesses develop a real-time advertising presence which by JAMES SOWERS they can track via automatic anonymous check-ins. The Bubblo App integrates both the digital and physical aspects of an experience into a simple presentable format. It does this by aggregating the digital and physical worlds and presents them in a simple visual way.

THE BUBBLO MISSION To essentially create a user and business ecosystem that is up to date with each other by incentivizing all parties concerned to share personal data, deals, discounts, and content: • User-friendly accessibility to information, deals, and videos of nearby vendors.

• Easy and fluid interaction between the businesses and their potential patrons.

THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES Bubblo’s philosophy can be summed up as follows: 1. To provide all the relevant information to users who are planning to explore the city they reside in or any city around the world.

2. To provide venues with the means to interact with potential patrons at the precise moment when patrons are making the decision to socialize.

3. To keep rates reasonable and easy to recoup.

4. To provide both users and businesses with valuable information from the content that they post.

5. By introducing Bubblo as an app that is intricately connected to the real world, by marketing it in numerous creative and on-the-ground

guerrilla campaigns, rather than solely online.

6. To pursue in becoming a high-octane company that is constantly working to improve its products and services, increase profits, and provides customer satisfaction while maintaining high ethical standards.

7. All features and designs must elevate and improve the nexus between B2B and B2C connectivity because when this is at its best, everyone benefits.

THE CENTRALIZED REVIEW PROBLEM: For Consumers: The discovery app landscape is not reflective of a myriad of elements such as: social media, the real-time deals and the actual environment of bars, clubs, and restaurants. Existing tools either provide large lists or show dozens of pins on a map to suggest places to go to. These suggestions are not very help13

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ful in narrowing down user’s choices to help them decide.

Additionally, current social networks and review sites are not transparent about what data they collect from users and who they sell that data to. Moreover, users do not currently benefit monetarily or otherwise from the use and sale of their personal data.

Venues can currently advertise on various discovery tools, but all these companies act as a filter between potential patrons and their advertising. There are no means for venues to reach out directly to nearby consumers as they would with a billboard or a staff member on the street trying to get people through the door.

a mobile ad campaign and advertise to customers in real-time.

rants from accurately and effectively advertising on mobile devices. Bubblo gives businesses the tools to track the success of

Venues will pay Bubblo to have sponsored Bubble ads on the home screen of Bubblo. These ads are independent of the “Top 5

Businesses in-turn can use the marketing platform to send deals, videos, and video deals directly to the users in their area, by searching for their services and can then see how effective the ads are through automatic, anonymous, check-ins. Bubblo has huge B2B possibilities because it truly is the first marketing platform integrated with a discovery tool for users. Venues can interact with potential patrons that are in the area looking for their specific services.

The Bubblo App integrates both the digital and physical aspects of an expeBased on social media likes, the number of followers and frequency of pictures uploaded as rience into a simwell as check-ins on social media, Bubblo can In the case of digital ads that ple presentable forutilize social media and review site data to rank venues do place on various other mat. It does this a variety of venues. Bubblo offers a simple and sites, they do not have a means a visual way of judging bars, clubs, restaurants, to accurately gauge how effective by aggregating the and retail before ever stepping foot inside. their ads were in attracting padigital and physitrons to their venue. cal worlds and preFor Businesses: sents them in a Bubblo seeks to solve the problems faced A lack of such data has preventBUBBLO’S REVENUE MODEL simple visual way. 1.Sponsored Bubbles: by businesses in participating in the digied local bars, clubs, and restautal world. Currently, most businesses have no means of accurately advertising in real-time to potential patrons in the area, through mobile devices.

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DIFFERENTIATION 1.Artificial Intelligence An AI partnership with IBM’s Watson Supercomputer provides a platform to innovate both the B2C & B2B components of the app.

Bubbles” algorithm but are instead based on the user’s preferences and location.

2. Marketing Platform: Using a dynamic pricing model Bubblo's marketing platform allows businesses to bid on sending deals, promotional and/or 360 videos.

3. Data Analytics: Bubblo’s automatic anonymous check-ins are a source for immense data analytics that can be then sold back to an endless number of firms and institutions. Amongst other metrics, venues can pay for analytics on the demographics of their current customers, nearby potential patrons, nearby competitors, and the preferences of their current customers.

Bubblo gives businesses the tools to track the success of a mobile ad campaign and advertise to customers in real-time.

3.Geographic Scalability Bubblo is easily scalable globally as it can build its database of bars, clubs and restaurants from existing open-source APIs allowing it to expand to any new city in the world within a week. Bubblo’s ability to integrate with local API partners in different geographies for reviews, taxi bookings and payment services can provide scalability and consistency to its content and services.

4. B2C Revenue: Bubblo’s venue screen is an open platform which integrates with any B2C services such as table reservations, taxi bookings, food delivery, event tickets, payment services and other services which can integrate easily into our platform.

4. 360 Video First Discovery app offering ability for venues to promote themselves in VR. BUBL BENEFITS EXPLAINED BUBL will be an innovative instrument to incentivize the major parties involved in the Food and Beverage industry (customers, businesses, and marketers) to stay engaged in conversation with one another and have access to information on each other in a safe, secure, and real-time manner.

5. Bubblo Video Ads Platform: Bubblo’s video platform shows vertical and 360 video ads and eventually could charge similar rates to Snapchat in the future. Benefiting additionally from the proliferation of vertical video ad content being created by Snapchat, WPP, and other advertising firms.

Customers for their part will get rewarded for reviewing and visiting venues and for sharing their basic information with the venues upon receiving exclusive deals and benefits.

Businesses in return will immediately have a means of reaching similar users by being able to use the tokens they receive for marketing.

3rd party marketers and researchers will have an opportunity to a huge amount of data to target and draw conclusions on consumer behavior from.

BUBBLO’S TARGET MARKET The first target users for Bubblo were tech-savvy smartphone users aged 18-35 who use social networks to plan their daily activities. This target group was comprised of university students and tourists who would frequently visit bars, clubs, and restaurants in major urban centers to find the best places to go.

After successfully marketing the app in London, Bubblo moved to India and the Middle East where we have large partnerships, less competition, cheaper operating costs, and most importantly larger markets.

The target segments in these regions are similar, 18-35-year old’s who quickly adopt new apps and enjoy socializing with one another in public places.

Additionally, tourists are also a major segment in these markets. To reach both these segments, we are using PR, Social Media, on-the-ground advertising, and our investment from the Times Group of India to give us traditional presence in newspapers, on radio, billboards, and TV advertising. We believe that combining these approaches will create a viral story and brand for Bubblo to rapidly reach large amounts of potential users.

2.Multiple Monetization Paths Bubblo’s numerous revenue streams and ability to adapt to capture revenue from multiple industries gives it the greatest chance to monetize successfully.

BUBBLO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES Bubblo’s competitive advantage both in the app space as well as in the ICO market is the numerous Blue-Chip partnerships, investors, and clients it has secured. Partnerships and clients in tourism, banking/credit card, mobile phones/telecoms, taxi bookings, and food & beverage companies allow the Bubblo app to have a clear advantage in its content, pricing and flexibility between popular brands, for both the app and BUBL token.

By establishing the Bubblo brand, Bubblo will enable continuous customer acquisition to the app and the future token; accelerating the adoption and cultivation of both.

In the same way that Bitcoin can be viewed as “backed” by the compute power required to mine one, the BUBL is backed by a contribution of data requiring human intelligence. The determination of what is intelligent, in addition to the assessment of value, is entirely the domain of artificial intelligence (AI) technology maintained by Bubblo. When a user uploads data to the app, this AI determines the number of BUBL that will be transferred to their account.

While this poses constraints on the AI – for example, a model should be highly immune to adversarial perturbations, even at the cost of accuracy – it presents a unique new solution to the unique notion of Byzantine faults in BUBL. For more info check out their telegram: https:// t.me/bubbloapp

Disclosure – The author is an advisor in the project.

Disclaimer-This does not constitute investment advice. Please review their case purely on merit and proceed only if you are convinced or interested. Also, I do not encourage folks from USA, China etc. to invest in an ICO unless they speak to their lawyers. I only support genuine good people doing great in Blockchain innovation

15

MAY 2018

iOlite

Machine Training to Build an All-Inclusive Smart Contract Future Everyone has gone crazy for blockchain technology. Smart contracts are a byproduct of blockchain technology which has the power to disrupt many industries. Because of this reason, a new wave of smart contract adoption has been initiated by large companies who want to experiment with it to try and savor a first mover advantage.

Smart contracts are self-fulfilling contracts that release a form of a predetermined transaction once certain conditions have been met. This means that there is no need for an intermediary or any paperwork as everything gets recorded on the underlying blockchain.

by Blockchain technology has the potenMICHIEL MULDERS tial to increase the efficiency of existing business models and cut costs drastically.

This smart contract development race has led to a skyrocketing demand for smart contract engineers. However, small to medium-sized businesses don’t have the funds to pay for smart contract development.

The iOlite Foundation is a non-profit organization which aims to bring smart contract technology to the masses by bridging on technological gaps existing today preventing the mass adoption 16

iOlite uses a Fast Adaptation Engine (FAE) which can translate natural language to smart contract code.

of smart contracts hence making them available to any end user — technological or not. iOlite wants to lower the cost of smart contract development by using a community of Solidity experts. iOlite uses a Fast Adaptation Engine (FAE) which can translate natural language to smart

MAY 2018

contract code. The engine itself is derived from the Stanford Natural Language Processing engine. iOlite has modified this to work with blockchain and supports its native iOlite token (iLT).

Contributors, which are solidity experts, can define structures (one or more sentences) and attach it to the corresponding smart contract code. The Stanford NLP engine has been created to understand complex language. The level of language complexity depends on the amount of machine training. Basically, Solidity experts must train the engine with new structures to make it smarter. After appropriate training, the engine will understand and differentiate between: ‘sell blue bicycle’ and ‘bicycle blue sold’.

For example, as an ‘Author’ I can request a translation for my specific needs. In this case, I want to sell my house, all I have to do is write: “I want to transfer my house to a new owner when this person offers an amount of $330,000 or more’’. Next I sign the document with my signature or a private key and request a signature from the buyer. When the buyer signs the agreement, the property rights is transferred and the transfer is registered.

Done!”

The iOlite parser will start looking for smart contract codes which takes care of these kind of structures. In case the parser finds a translation in its expression pool, it will compose the Solidity smart contract.

It is possible that the parser is unable to find a solution for this request, however, a solution is available in the staging domain which is not yet approved by the iOlite team. The requester can then decide whether he wants to use this solution.

If a parser fails, contributors will receive a notification bringing to their attention that this part of the code failed and no alternatives were found. If a contributor finds a solution, the missing structures can be submitted to the iOlite blockchain to be stored. This solution gets added to the staging phase, waiting for approval from the iOlite team.

After receiving approval, the requester can actually deploy the created smart contract on the iOlite blockchain. The blockchain then requests a signature for the new block containing the solution from the iOlite miner. If the contributor used other contributors’ work, they will receive iOlite tokens as a reward because of this reuse. The initial contributor will receive a fee for their work from the miner who processes the deployment of the smart contract. This way, the author doesn’t need to pay anything for creating his smart contract.

Besides natural language, iOlite wants to remove the barriers for smart contract developers to learn a smart contract language like Solidity. They want to support normal developers by enabling them to write smart contract

code’s using any preferred language like C++, JavaScript etc. The Fast Adaptation Engine (FAE) will convert the programming language to an intermediary language that gets further translated to a fully functional Solidity smart contract.

HOW TO DETERMINE A CONTRIBUTOR IS SKILLED ENOUGH? iOlite has developed a selection process to determine if the developer has the required level of expertise.

1. If the contributor is new, the system will generate tasks for her, the moment her account is created.

2. The user will be required to write a smart contract that will trigger events that enable the next step in registration.

3. After a user has passed the smart contract test (only engineers who understand smart contracts can be contributors), the user would be required to pass a KYC process.

4. After the contributor has passed the KYC process, she can write new code for a staging tree.

iOlite wants to remove the barriers for smart contract developers to learn a smart contract language like Solidity.

They want to support normal developers by enabling them to write smart contract code’s using any preferred language like C++, JavaScript etc.

5. A contributor who provides structures that passes review by foundation engineers, receives a proposal to join the foundation.

USE OF IOLITE TOKEN iLT is used as a means for value-transfer inside the iOlite network. As an author of a smart contract, for example, you don't need to use iLT, however, if you use a smart contract that was created by another author in the network, you will have to pay a fee for reusing it.

It is important to understand that iOlite is using its own blockchain. This means that the iOlite token is not an ERC20 token. ERC20 is the standard for a protocol that is built on top of Ethereum. Since they are not building on Ethereum and they are "forked" from Ethereum code, iLT will be like "ETH" itself. Instead of being a token on the existing Ethereum blockchain, iOlite will have its own blockchain and its own nodes. However, since iLT is based on Ethereum code, ETH wallet clients will be able to work with iLT, as the API will be compatible with Ethereum.

ROADMAP • May 8th, 2018: iOlite blockchain mainnet.

• May 31st, 2018: English to Solidity translation baseline created.

• June 1st, 2018: Fast Adaptation Engine integrated into the network nodes.

• September 2nd, 2018: English to Solidity translation with high usability (expected).

CONCLUSION iOlite is a great product that can save businesses a lot of money in their search for new business opportunities using smart contracts.

The Fast Adaptation Engine requires training before we can reach a baseline where smart contracts become usable. We like the fact that iOlite requires its contributors to write tests for their pieces of code. You should never trust a code that has not been tested before. At last, the Stanford NLP engine iOlite uses has proven itself before as a very quick learner. The greatest benefit of iOlite is the possibility to create contracts for free, while still rewarding the original creators through the iOlite token mining reward.

17

MAY 2018

OLIVACOIN The Financial Solution of the Olive Oil Market

In recent times, the accurate and timely traceability of products and activities in the supply chain has become a new factor in food and agribusiness.

Increasingly, consumers in many parts of the world demand for verifiable evidence of traceability as an important criterion of food product quality/safety.

The mission of OLIVACOIN is to contribute to the development of a global Culture of Food Knowledge, thanks to its own traceability technology, which will improve consumer protection and safety. by ISMAEL SANTIAGO MORENO PhD. University of Seville

A recent example is Deoleo, which has been forced to pay compensation of 5.8 million euros to avoid a collective trial in the United States. Plaintiff Scott K. accused the company of falsely labeling Bertolli extra virgin olive oil, Bertolli extra-clear olive oil and Bertolli Classico olive oil.

The analytical traceability technology of OLIVACOIN allows strucOne of the big problems in this false la- turing the digital history of olive oil beling class action was the true country to end up executing in a smart conof origin for the olive oil. The labeling tract, thus ensuring the veracity of indicated that the oil was strictly 'imthe product and enabling the execuported from Italy'. tion and access to the funds associated with each intervening agent.

The product can pass through Italy, where Bertolli extra virgin olive oil and other olive oil products are mixed and bottled. But according to the applicant, the oils come from olives grown and pressed in several countries. Only some 18

of those countries were Greece, Chile, Spain, Australia, Turkey, and Tunisia.

If Deoleo had used OLIVACOIN's traceability technology, this situation would not have occurred and would have saved an amount of money that represents more than 2% of its market capitalization on the stock market.

The analytical traceability technology of OLIVACOIN allows structuring the digital history of olive oil to end up executing in a smart contract, thus ensuring the veracity of the product and enabling the execution and access to the funds associated with each intervening agent.

In economic terms, the objectives pursued by Olivacoin are to contribute directly to the drastic reduction of the fi-

MAY 2018

nancial costs borne by companies in the olive oil sector and indirectly to the reduction of 5% in the supply costs of the companies in the sector. This in Spain accounts for 90% of sales, which generates low levels of Ebitda.

In addition, Olivacoin makes it possible to minimize the financial risks of an adverse fluctuation in the prices of olive oil, through the use of a Blockchain Futures Olive Oil Market (MBFAO), using Smart Contracts technology, as instruments for guaranteeing the Clearinghouse.

The purpose of Olivacoin is to provide the sector with greater financial autonomy, creating a system of exchange and payment for the agents involved in the global supply chain of such raw material, allowing greater agility, profitability, liquidity and disintermediation thanks to the integration of our own blockchain and an analytical system of traceability for olive oil.

Olivacoin's technology will allow integrating, in a more efficient way, the global supply chain of olive oil, which would result in a drastic re-

duction of intermediation and supply costs of the companies.

The purpose of Olivacoin is to provide the sector with greater financial autonomy, creating a system of exchange and payment for the agents involved in the global supply chain of such raw material.

In order to know the financial situation of the olive oil sector, an exhaustive study of the thirty most representative companies in this sector in Spain has been carried out, for which the balance and the representative results account of the olive oil sector in Spain have been obtained, from the sum of the different items.

The study has shown us one of the main financial problems in this market, the provisioning/ sales ratio is considered at 90% levels.

The methodology used for the financial valuation of the sector has been the discount of free cash flow for the shareholder and for the discount rate the CAPM, according to the listed company Deoleo and a risk premium of olive oil of 25%.

The resulting data, based on a discount rate of 6.25% and an intangible ratio of 8%, is a valuation of the olive oil sector of 1.180.714.003.11 euros and its intangibles of 94.457.120,25 euros.

Olivacoin technology could reduce the value of the supply/sales ratio by 5%, which would give us new and promising figures: an assessment of the sector of 4.053.003.989,35 euros and its intangibles of 324.240.319,15 euros. So a reduction of 5% in the cost of provisioning in relation to sales would cause an increase in the value of knowledge of 229.783.198,90 euros.

Part of the increase in value added should be mainly due to OLIVACOIN. 19

MAY 2018

The Siglo Protocol Is at the Forefront of Tokenization WHAT IS SIGLO? Siglo is a protocol that facilitates the use of mobile applications to accrue value and exchange it for increased mobile access and other goods and services. Users accumulate this value by sharby ing information, attention, and engageJAMES SOWERS ment with Siglo brand partners, and then exchange it for mobile connectivity in the form of airtime top-ups. Mobile apps built on top of the Siglo Protocol monetize the use of data with the consent of users and pass these earnings back to the user.

The Siglo Protocol will facilitate unbanked users’ increased access to networks via the creation of decentralized mobile networks that are incentivized, encouraging access to populations which were not previously covered by mobile networks. Network providers without major infrastructure would have the ability to provide services and still charge customers without having a traditional OSS/ BSS stack. The use of blockchain and smart contracts allows 20

Siglo to redistribute the value to the creator of the data: the consumer, in a fair manner.

Siglo is the key to accelerating the growth of digital economies in emerging markets.

THE ECOSYSTEM An active Siglo ecosystem will exist from day one through the Pig.gi Android app, which has 1.1 million registered users and 200,000 monthly active users in its first two markets: Mexico and Colombia. Millions of off-chain transactions have been made via Pig.gi users in the last 18 months using the existing off-chain data reward point, called the Pig.gi Coin. Now with the Siglo Protocol, the ecosystem uses the blockchain and smart contracts to manage this relationship between the app, users, and the brand sponsors. Siglo is the key to accelerating the growth of digital economies in emerging markets.

WHY USE SIGLO? With the historically high cost of computers and limited access to a stable power grid and landline connectivity, much of the developing world was late

MAY 2018

to adapt to personal computers. Factoring in cost and the fast advances in the functionality of modern smartphones, the emerging market has largely gravitated towards accessing the internet through their phones, rather than computers. In 2016, smartphones accounted for 55% of internet connections, a number which is expected to grow to 71% by 2020.

Research shows that consumers in these markets spent a total of $2bn USD on prepaid data and airtime. According to a GSMA Intelligence report from Q4 2016, 72% of the world’s mobile connections are pre-paid. Steady, affordable access to the internet is already bridging the “quality-of-life” gap in emerging markets at increasing rates. Access to mobile connectivity has been synonymous with socio-economic development, leading to cultural enrichment and communication across larger geographical barriers.

Factoring in average wages and the cost of top-ups in Mexico and Brazil, it takes an estimated 8-40 hours of work for consumers to earn just 500MB of data. Using the Pig.gi app, these same users can earn airtime top-ups

during their commute, at home, or at any time their schedule permits them to interact with the app. This means that users are more connected than before and can use income otherwise used for mobile access for any multitude of other expenses such as education, and better food. Studies have clearly shown the correlation between upward economic mobility in emerging markets and digital inclusion, including access to the internet.

blockchain layer for transactions, and as part of the existing top-up reward model in the Pig. gi app today, we will be able to scale the model across emerging markets and support the unique value of top-up coins in each market using a universal clearing protocol.

As these developing markets continue to see economic growth and connectivity, brands are showing high interest in reaching these populations. However, they are challenged by the fact that they cannot reach emerging segments with the same level of efficiency as can be done in long-established markets such as the U.S. and Western Europe. In these highly developed markets, brands have a plethora of historical data and active communication channels through which they can understand consumer preferences.

From its inception, the Siglo ecosystem will have sizeable participation through Pig.gi, and upon reaching the milestones outlined below, Siglo will release the open-source protocol for other applications that offer an exchange of value between users and brands and have digital and financial inclusion as their modus operandi. Siglo’s value proposition is unique in that it is being launched into a market where loyalty and significant participation have already been achieved through Pig.gi’s existing user base. Historically, user acquisition for Pig. gi is low, $0.10 - $0.25 USD per registered user, tangibly demonstrating a mechanism for mass adoption is already in place and functioning.

THE SIGLO PROTOCOL The Siglo Protocol is built upon a proven model with a critical mass of users. By adding a

We anticipate that with time, the Siglo will increasingly become a medium of exchange for digital transactions in emerging markets, as 21

MAY 2018

these same users leapfrog traditional banking solutions, arriving at more inclusive and accessible ways to transact online.

certain value may vary between markets since the rate of redemption is a function of local fiat and advertising cost.

THE SIGLO TOKEN The motivation for creating a tokenized blockchain protocol layer is threefold. Key transactional pieces of the ecosystem benefit from immutable, auditable ledgers on the Ethereum blockchain.

To purchase products and top-ups from local carriers, users can exchange their data coins.

Users can also redeem Siglo Token with their coins to exchange them on third-party exchanges for other token or between different Siglo apps. They intend to build an exchange for inter-protocol exchanges and peer-to-peer transfers.

1. Brand transactions, where tokens are held in escrow, backed by an inventory of products, and then distributed to users who choose to share their data, attention, and opinions.

2. User transactions, when Pig.gi Coins, or other app points in the future, are exchanged for products, like airtime top-ups.

3. User to user transfers, where current alternatives are inefficient and costly. This includes, but is not limited to, cross-border remittance payments.

4. In the future, other applications can use the protocol for transparent and accurate ledgers of value-transfer between users, providers, and brands.

CHALLENGES The challenge of a token economy, such as this, is balancing the volatility of a free-floating token with the need for a stable user-facing currency in markets where the cost of advertising and cost of mobile airtime are variable. They address this problem by having two tiers, the Siglo Token and 22

Siglo will increasingly become a medium of exchange for digital transactions in emerging markets, as these same users leapfrog traditional banking solutions, arriving at more inclusive and accessible ways to transact online.

Even as the Siglo Token price on the open mar-

the data reward coins that are always fixed and backed by an inventory of products.

ket may fluctuate, the price for local top-ups in-app coins remains stable. This is desirable for transactions by users, especially in emerging markets, where less understanding of financial dynamics exists. On the other hand, there are market forces that may drive the price of the Siglo Token up, like an increase in demand by brands, increase in demand and velocity of use by users, and the increasing value of the consumer data that these users share. By separating the user-facing connectivity coin and the Siglo onchain token, we can insulate end users from volatility and inflation of the open market token.

The current off-chain points are the data connectivity “coins� that are given to users when they interact with content and brands. Today this is the Pig.gi Coin, but in the future, this could be any reward coin or point distributed in different markets. The total value of these app coins is always less than or equal to the value of inventory held, like airtime top-ups.

The amount of time it takes a user to earn a

DISCLAIMER This does not constitute investment advice.

Please review their case purely on merit and proceed only if you are convinced or interested. Also, I do not encourage folks from the USA, China etc. to invest in an ICO unless they speak to their lawyers. I only support genuine good people doing great in Blockchain innovation.

MAY 2018

How to Reduce Volatility:

Gold-secured Crypto Assets Already on the Market The spring of 2018 is a good time for the implementation of a reliable tool for securing the profits of traders on the cryptocurrency market.

Since March, Bitcoin has dropped nearly 30%, and ETH has fallen almost 50%. Leading to a significant outflow of funds from the market. The traders, without a reliable tool for profit-taking, are increasingly forced to sell cryptocurrency and buy fiat, which inevitably leads to an even greater depreciation.

Tether (USDT), previously widely used in trading, is rapidly losing credibility with users due to the spontaneity of the issue, and the non-reinforcement of the token with real money. In addition, the company itself disavows responsibility in every possible way. The first wake-up call for cryptocurrency users was the delisting of USDT from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and now, despite the growing capitalization, there is even less confidence in Tether.

Meanwhile, two Singapore companies Digix and GoldMint, announced the launch of new stable gold-secured crypto assets. It took two years for Digix to develop and launch gold coins. According to Digix’s white paper, a pawnshop with ValueMax Singapore is securing the token with gold, and MalcaAmit is the provider of physical storage. Value Max is a medium-sized pawnshop chain with a turnover of less than 270 million dollars for 2016; the data for 2017 wasn’t published by the company. According to statistics, the network turnover has been falling rapidly since 2014. Thus, the actual security of gold DGX remains the subject of discussions and disputes. In addition to this, the company uses only one depository for its assets, which adversely affects the confidence of investors and

it’s hard to say what will happen if the partnership with MalcaAmit is ever broken.

which for hundreds of years was considered a universal investment tool, is an important step in its development.

GoldMint, in turn, brought GOLD's digital asset to the market four months after the completion of the ICO. According to the quarterly report of GoldMint, GOLD is secured by the futures of Chicago (CME) and London (LME). SGPMX (Singapore) was chosen as the subject of the over-thecounter currency market. The storage of delivered gold, Chicago-based CME carries out in the two nearby banks of the US Federal Reserve - New York (FRBNY) and Chicago (FRBC). It’s also possible to operate with any of the four SGPMX stores in Singapore (storage facilities not only in Singapore). The choice of well-known depositories and suppliers by GoldMint, as well as their diversification, is a logical step that will certainly influence the confidence of traders and investors. Currently, GOLD assets are traded on the Bancor, Idex and Simex exchange markets. The company is also actively working to launch the personal account, where investors can buy and sell gold assets using fiat.

In comparing Digix and GoldMint, the different purposes of the company's domestic currencies deserve to be mentioned. Digix offers its currency as a DAO tool (a decentralized autonomous organization with the right to vote and receive passive income from commissions on operations with gold assets, which was deemed illegal from the of SEC’s side on the example of THEDAO in 2017). Meanwhile, the GoldMint MNTP token acts as a tool for confirming transactions in its custom blockchain and provides holders with preferential terms for transactions with gold (reduced markup and the small commissions on transactions, up to 0.03%).

The appearance of gold-secured assets on the cryptocurrency market will positively affect the overall capitalization of the market by attracting traditional investors in the securities and precious metals markets. The presence of gold in the crypto industry,

The company is also actively working to launch the personal account, where investors can buy and sell gold assets using fiat.

The presence of gold in the crypto industry, which for hundreds of years was considered a universal investment tool, is an important step in its development.

Another key difference is in the technological implementation: Digix uses the Ethereum blockchain, while GoldMint has two blockchains: Ethereum and the custom, based on Sumus blockchain, which will be launched in the second quarter of 2018.

Digix and GoldMint, similar in purpose, but still qualitatively different projects, are designed to significantly change and simplify the process of trading on the cryptocurrency market. However, only time will tell who will win the gold race for users’ confidence.

23

MAY 2018

Squeezer The World's First Software Development Platform Offering Microservices for the Blockchain

Squeezer is creating a unified blockchainconnector that will allow developers to connect to multiple blockchains. They offer a sandbox in which developers can test their applications and make rapid production deployments.

in the production environment represents another complex task; the developer now needs to create both a stable environment and containers that can replicate hundreds of gigabytes. Blockchain data is stored in logs and each block consists of a log of transactions.

es, in which each service runs a unique process and communicates through a well-defined, lightweight mechanism to serve a business goal. The top cloud companies have already designed platforms where you can deploy auto-scalable code pieces. Among the various microservices platforms are AWS Lambda, Google Functions, and Azure Functions. When you combine the power of microservices scalability with When you combine blockchain technology, the power of micro- the result is a finely-tuned stack that can basically services scalability with blockchain support any enterprise organization, at any level.

With regards to Bitcoin blocks, for example, every 20 minutes, a new block is generated. Imagine having to retrieve all transactions for a specific wallet address.

To do this, you would need by to set a node and parse all JAMES SOWERS The Squeezer Platform will empower de- available blockchain data, technology, the rewhich requires a phenomvelopers to compile and deploy blocksult is a finely-tuned The Squeezer framework chain applications in multiple stages di- enal amount of computing power. Third-party vendors stack that can bais currently being successrectly from GitHub, among other code are now offering API servic- sically support any fully utilized on large web repositories. Squeezer Framework is downloaded more than 75,000 times per es for doing such jobs. Howenterprise organiza- and API projects that scale ever, when dealing with and expand as microservicmonth according to the NPM and has sensitive data, it is better to tion, at any level. es. However, to integrate it been present in the market for 2 years. find and implement a soluwith the blockchain, contion that is hosted on the same datanectors are needed.

As a relatively new technology, blockcenter network as the rest of the techchain development presents several challenges. To start developing a block- nology stack to ensure that all data is ac- Building robust, reliable connectors that counted for. can process any amount of blockchain chain project, an individual requires data or any number of requests within to download all the blocks onto a maTHE SOLUTION: MICROSERVICES a reasonable time frame is not an easy chine’s local storage (which for BTC Essentially, microservice architecture task because of a blockchain’s size, as represents 400 GB; for ETH – 100 GB; is a method of developing software ap- well as the variety and number of blocks and for LTC – 200 GB approximately) plications as a suite of independentit contains. Nonetheless, we know that which will eventually decrease the dethis is achievable alongside the right veloper’s velocity. Replicating this with- ly deployable, small, modular servicSqueezer applications are powered by microservices platforms, such as AWS Lambda and Google Functions, which means that the auto-scalability feature is enabled by default. Microservices also support auto-healing and allow for silent cloud deployments.

24

MAY 2018

numbers and types of resources assigned to the job.

The solution of connecting microservices to the blockchain involves creating a simple interface that will enable software developers to conduct blockchain transactions without having to deal with the blockchain genesis code or create complex components.

PAY AS YOU GO Now you can enjoy developing your projects for any preferred time frame without the pressure of monthly costs. The Squeezer platform will support multiple code repositories integration and SSO third-party vendors. Forget the server guy that owns your infrastructure velocity. Just stay focused on adding new features to your business logic. Simulate the cloud provider environment on your local machine, there is no need to deploy the code at every iteration. Speed up the entire development cycle 10x

CROWD SALE The Squeezer crowd sale and the corresponding token creation process will be issued by Golden Data INC, a Belize Company, and will HISTORY be organized using smart contracts running In 2015, the founder and CEO, on Ethereum. Contributors willing to supNick Chisiu, came up with the idea port the development of the Squeezer Project to create a framework that would can do so by sending payments via multiple be able to develop, compile, and methods. The rate for SQZR tokens is fixed at deploy traditional projects on mi1 SQZR = 0.20 USD. The tokens are automaticroservices platforms. By providing cally transferred to the purchaser’s nominated consultancy services to various top Ethereum wallet at the time of purchase. For 1000 US INC companies, he was more information please visit: https://tokenable to implement the framework sale.squeezer.io in production environments and sustain unlimited requests based DISCLAIMER on real users’ demands.

This does not constitute investment advice.

Please review their case purely on merit and In 2017, Nick joined ConsenSys, a proceed only if you are convinced or interesttop-five blockchain development ed. Also, I do not encourage individuals from company, as a blockchain consultthe USA, China etc. to invest in an ICO unless ant. By providing consultancy ser- they first speak to their lawyers. I only supvices and delving deeply into block- port genuine good people doing great in Blockchain technology, he discovered a chain innovation. connection between microservices and blockchain, adding the ProofDISCLOSURE of-Concept (PoC) for the blockAUTHOR IS AN ADVISOR ON THE PROJECT. chain connector. and split your project features on how many microservices you want, the sky is the limit!

Now you can enjoy developing your projects for any preferred time frame without the pressure of monthly costs.

25

MAY 2018

The Internet of Tokens

with ALEX LIGHTMAN

The Internet of Tokens is an ICO Crowd column that offers a broader longer-term view for both Blockchain industry professionals and for a wider audience interested in understanding the market, regulatory and other forces behind the prices that are making headlines, written by an award-winning and Amazon bestselling author.

A Unified Voice for the Blockchain Industry Introducing DATA, the Digital Asset Trade Association A conversation between Alex Lightman and Alanna Gombert, Steering Committee, DATA

1.What does DATA stand for and who does DATA stand for?

DATA stands for the Digital Asset Trade Association and we seek to offer a unified credible legitimate voice for the 3,000 or so companies working hard to make the world a better place via Blockchain and cryptocurrency.

To maintain decentralization we must ral2. Why is the Blockchain industry important to the US? To the world? ly around a few Blockchain is the solution to a decenbasic tenants. tralized world, bringing disparate voic- DATA will work es and incentives together to create a with the comnew paradigm. munity to de3. Who came up with the idea for fine and deDATA? How did it come about? fend these basic We all came together around an idea truths. that Jill Richmond sparked over a lunch almost a year ago. Many of us met in Davos and two weeks later convened in DC to form DATA. As a bit of histori26

cal lore, DATA was initially going to be named the Digital Currency Trade Association. Alanna Gombert asked to not use the word currency and John Wise immediately came up with the Digital Asset Trade Association and the corresponding acronym. DATA was born.

4. Who came up with the acronym?

How is being received?

John Wise, CEO of Loci. The community loves it as it speaks to our mission. Protecting all digital assets: cryptocurrency, data, blockchain and new innovations like crypto commodities.

5. Who can join DATA as a member?

What are the categories of membership?

Anyone can join!

6. What are the costs and benefits of DATA membership?

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7. How does DATA make decisions?

We make decisions in a standard working group way. Our steering committee and founding board guide the organization and our specific working groups e.g. The Token Working Group drive strategy and policy.

8. DATA went 5-0 in Wyoming. That’s amazing. How did that happen? Who led that effort? What is the beneficial impact in the month or so since those victories?

Caitlin Long from the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition led the charge in Wyoming with a stellar support team that included David Pope and Rob Jennings. The DATA team including Brittany Kaiser, John Wise, and Alanna Gombert went on the ground in Wyoming and helped out wherever we could. Jill Richmond and Blain Rethmeier ran PR and media communications from offsite. Wyoming established that this team could work together to achieve great things.

9. What is DATA doing in Colorado?

We are in Colorado currently lobbying for a utility token definition and also money transmitter laws to be amended to support the blockchain and crypto industry. HB 1220 which deals with utility tokens passed the House of Representatives unanimously on April 12th, 2018. Alanna Gombert is working with Ally Medina and our DATA lobbyist Micki Hackenberger on the bill language and Jill Richmond testified in Colorado on April 27

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12th with various members of the local blockchain community.

10. What is DATA doing in Utah?

There is a move in Utah with Sovrin and Evernym to establish specific identity legislation. More to come on this.

11. What is DATA doing in Virginia?

Because of MAE-East, for decades Virginia has been a hub for all Internet connectivity in the United States as well as the headquarters state for many government agencies and government contractors. We would like to mirror our work in Wyoming in Virginia, especially as it pertains to money transmitter laws and utility token definitions.

12. Did the Federal Reserve serve as a motivation for DATA? How? The United States Federal Reserve, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies have all provided motivation for DATA. At least one of these entities asked DATA steering committee members to create a unified entity to speak with one voice for the industry, to bring order, coherence and clarity while building a community capable of some level of legitimate self-regulation. It is fascinating to watch all these agencies move so quickly to adapt to this ever-changing landscape and this new industry and smart evolving community of innovators.

The crypto/Blockchain companies in the United States want to stay in the United States, with clear guidance on specific asset classes especially utility/consumer tokens and direction on banking. They don’t want to have to move their lives and families just to work in the industry that they love and are good at, especially since many are excited about upgrading the US along with the rest of the world economy and financial markets, while increasing computer and network security. Trillions of dollars are moving around the world each day. It’s in the interests for our civilization to make this faster, less expensive, more secure, and more personalized and customized, while adhering to laws including Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering.

13. If a large donor gave, say, $100 million to DATA, would that be a smart move? What would DATA do with the money to put it to the highest and best use?

We are putting donation rules in place where we maintain a fair and balanced trade association. No one single individual or company or even government will have a majority vote within DATA 28

Blockchain is the solution to a decentralized world, bringing disparate voices and incentives together to create a new paradigm.

and we will monitor and manage all donations and interactions accordingly so that our credibility and legitimacy is maintained and increased over time.

Cambridge Analytica. Her #ownyourdata campaign has all inspired us to consider data and self-sovereign control of data to be a basic human right.

We would use all donations for the best interest of the crypto/blockchain/data industry in pursuit of favorable legislation, data as a human right, property rights for digital assets, and standard definitions so that we are all talking about the same thing when we talk with each other.

15. Is DATA going to seek United Nations NGO status? What will you do if you get it?

This is on the agenda for the next steering committee meeting. More to come!

16. How will DATA make crypto more legit?

Legislation, education, and the preser14. There has been a lot of attenvation of decentralization. To maintain tion on Brittany Kaiser. Has that decentralization we must rally around a impacted DATA? If so, how? few basic tenants. DATA will work with We are proud of Brittany Kaiser and the the community to define and defend message she has been spreading after these basic truths.

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MAY 2018

WIZBL, Fastest and Most Scalable Blockchain is Here Do you own Bitcoins? If you do, this means you have faced the trouble of being in the waiting list for sending them, although you have paid money to do so. It is a hassle to have to wait only for confirmation status of transactions- this is what we call a scalability problem.

real-time transactions. It’s P2P verification function is the best among many blockchain platforms and it keeps the risk of hacking at the lowest level.

All these characteristics make WIZBL a must-have cryptocurrency in 2018.

Fast transactions, secure payments, options to buy anything any time and much more under one roof is like a plate of salad with all the nutrients for the body. Therefore, we can call WIZBL a complete set of opportunities for a person who wants to make fast and secure transactions or wants to invest his extra money in crypto.

Although blockchain was introduced to increase the transaction of cryptocurrency, with the huge volume of transactions small number of transactions per second wastes a lot of time and makes things slower. Can you believe some ethereum accommodate only 20 transacby ICO CROWD tions per second on the other hand Visa SOMETHING MORE THAN process 24,000 transactions per second? JUST A BLOCKCHAIN WIZBIL is not a simple blockchain, it is IT’S TIME FOR WIZBL one of the first 5th Generation blockIf you are tired of these scalability chains which not only makes the transproblems and looking for more soluactions of cryptocurrency fast, scalable tions, then it’s time to shift to WIZand secure, but it also helps people to BL blockchain platform. The compaperform transactions among other peony has built a platform which can prople with P2P protocol on the network. cess 1,000,000 transactions in no time. Now people can enjoy the luxury of buyWIZBL can process 1,000,000 transacing anything within the blockchain, tions in one second. whether it is a tech gadget, a fashion bag pack, a fancy dress or anything people WIZBL is 5th generation blockchain love to buy. WIZBIL makes transactions technology by Moon youngchul and his fast and secure like no one else does. development team. This 5th generation blockchain technology, is the specialWIZBL can also work with distinct platly designed protocols that help to make forms and manage cryptocurrencies,

Thanks to the Oldies of blockchains, they helped them to do so. It takes the shortest time once P2P transaction is made into WIZBL coin. Every other second a new block of the verified transaction is made over WIZBL network. That’s why WIZBL does not use extra resources and we can call it a scalable network. Moreover, WIZBL structured platform is much easier than other networks and a user can learn and imply it quickly.

FAST TRANSACTIONS WIZBL offers the ultimate fast transaction speed. It offers a million transactions per second, none other blockchain offers this much speed. Which is unbelievable, now people don’t need to wait for hours just for the confirmation of their transactions.

This is three times faster than the Ripple coin, they claim to be the fastest before the arrival of WIZBL blockchain technology. In short, 1,000,000 transactions per second means the receiver will receive his money there and then.

There is no doubt WIZBL is the future of blockchain technology in a nutshell which can explode anytime.

What Currencies do they accept?

WIZBL is all set for ICO token sales, they have set up all the arrangements and the event is scheduled on 15th of 29

MAY 2018

June, 2018. It will include a 40% bonus too. They have plans to accept all big currencies like BTC, BCH, ETH, and others.

Right time to invest and earn the profit?

Yes, it is the right time to invest in WIZBL they have a lot of tokens-30% of all the tokens which is 150,000,000. Right now, its exchange rate is very low, only 1US for 1BL. And being 5th generation blockchain with the future of blockchain technology it is right time to invest in WIZBL blockchain. With an investment of $1 for 1 BL analysts predicts huge profits soon.

in the same wallet. This makes the WIZBL a smart currency and future of blockchain.

WIZBIL is not a simple blockchain, it is one of the first 5th Generation blockchains which not only makes the transactions of cryptocurrency fast, scalable and secure, but it also helps people to perform transactions among other people with P2P protocol on the network.

P2P TRANSACTIONS MADE WIZBL A SECURE NETWORK WIZBL is building upon P2P method, it means every transaction will be in the record. This will lead to a completely secure and safe transaction network, it’s verification algorithms are secure with latest technologies and are safe for use without any fraudulent and suspicious activities.

WIZBL FOR LARGE COOPERATION Yes, it is true. WIZBL works perfectly with large cooperation, WIZBL wallet can be used anywhere to buy anything from anyone.

On the other hand, people can receive WIZBL coins as service providers and can be exchanged for any currency or kept in the wallet.

It gives a wide range of use for WIZBL holders, they can pay, and can receive at the same time 30

WIZBL is in real business, they are investing a big time for solving issues of blockchain technologies.

WIZBL is all geared up, they are offering 100 real gold coins with WIZBL printed on the top. Every coin has a serial number, and anyone can buy it, meanwhile, boxing legend Manny Pacquaio has the #17 coin.

WHO IS THE REAL TEAM BEHIND WIZBL? Its Youngchul, Moon and his development team who are behind the 5th generation WIZBL blockchain technology. It’s a really hard work of real professionals which made this WIZBL as competitive as it is.

The team WIZBL claims that WIZBL is the most scalable and fastest blockchain technology the world has ever witnessed. The developers said “it’s not good when in the real-world people make transactions and they have to wait in ques for a confirmation status. The blockchain must work as real-time service such as Visa or paper money.” And with efforts over the years WIZBL is all set to make one million transactions per second.

The WIZBL team know the fact of diversified and verified technology for fast and simultaneous technologies. The team with diversified skills have made a perfect system for smooth workflow and user security. The team is care-

fully selected from multiple organizations according to their experience and skills to create 5th generation blockchain. WIZBL has a programmer that has experience of 10-16 years in the development of various technologies.

WIZBL ROADMAP TOWARDS SUCCESS The journey of WIZBL was started back in 2017 when a team of programmers sat together to formulate a new research on blockchain technology. It was a group of ambitious professionals who were looking to improve the transaction speed and scalability of blockchain as it was not possible to make large transactions in a short time period. It took about 2 quarters to complete the research and enter the new step which was the creation of the WIZBL wallet. In the first quarter of 2018, WIZBL team took the initiative of creating a good, easy and transparent wallet for WIZBL coin. In the same quarter, WIZBL started their campaign to inaugurate the coin in the same year by calling a WIZBL 100 conference in the Philippines. The conference took place on March 21, 2018, and WIZBL introduced their 100 real Gold coins, the logo of WIZBL and the serial number was printed on these coins.

After the first successful campaign of WIZBL coin, they organized WIZBL 200 Conference in Hong Kong on May 14, 2018, and later opened WIZBL R&D Center. Now the time is near when WIZBL will officially start their public sales on June 15, 2018.

WIZBL has planned their 3rd and 4th quarters of 2018 too. In the 3rd quarter, WIZBL has planned to list their coin on multiple exchange platforms for open selling

MAY 2018

and buying of coins. Moreover, they have also planned to launch their own WIZBL exchange platform for WIZBL wallet user. This will facilitate the user to purchase or sell the WIZBL coin at ease. The last thing WIZBL said to do in the third quarter is to build a big project which is WIZBIL crypto town project. These are some big news from WIZBL 3rd quarter, meanwhile, they also have small programs planned in this quarter which they have not yet publicly shared.

ICO BONUS AND TOKEN DISTRIBUTION: WBL has presented complete ICO Bonus details and token distribution in their whitepaper. ICO has brought bonuses for everyone.

The maximum bonus is 40% which will be presented to buyers who will buy the product on inauguration date till 18th of June.

• Start date: 1:00 PM (UTC+9) on June 15, 2018 • Payment methods: ETH • Soft cap: 5 MM USD • Hard cap: 48 MM USD • Token exchange rate: 1 USD = 1 WBL • Total token supply: 500,000,000 WBL • ICO Bonuses • 15th June 2018 13:00 ~ June 18, 2018 24:00 (UTC +9): 40% Bonus • 20th June 2018 13:00 ~ June 23, 2018 24:00 (UTC +9): 20% Bonus • 25th June 2018 13:00 ~ June30, 2018 24:00 (UTC +9): 0% Bonus • If the soft cap is not reached funds will be returned to the participants • Upon reaching the hard cap, the ICO will end immediately • Token Distribution • 30% Token Sale

• • • • • • • • • •

20% Community & Strategic Partners 20% Reserve Fund 5% Early Backer 13% Founders & Management Team 12% Partnership & Advisory Use of Proceeds 20% Development 15% Diversification and New Areas 15% Licensure and Legal Support 10% WIZBL Team 40% Marketing and Expansion

THE BEST GROWTH STRATEGY FOR A BLOCKCHAIN NETWORK The WIZBL token is named WBL, the team has proposed a great growth strategy for the coin.

The WBL team believe that the expansion and continuation can scale the token as the fastest growing blockchain network. They believe that the fast incorporation of blockchain technology in businesses will increase the exposure towards crypto and WBL have a huge market to penetrate. WIZBL team has developed a new standard blockchain technology that will be beneficial for the business and it will continuously evolve in the means of efficiency, algorithms, and structure.

WBL is a native cryptocurrency, in other words, it’s a utility token that will give access to the distributed apps on the platform.

WIZBL has the same basic algorithm as BTC, it will generate more coins for the coin holder as the growth of blockchain technology. Every newly generated coin will have a specific value based on the original coin. Nothing to fear, it does not mean that original coin value will decrease, it means that the original coin value will increase as the number of generated coins

will increase. In other words, the net value will increase as the number of coins will increase organically.

JOIN THE FUTURE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE The blockchain is the future of currency, the technology trends are changing at a rapid pace and so does the trends of life. The world shifted from paper money to plastic money in the past and now it’s time for cryptocurrency. The boom of cryptocurrency brought many players in but not all got the attention and neither all of them survived.

Now in 2018, WIZBL has brought some new inventions in crypto with high speed and scalability for the user. It’s time for WIZBL now, with public sales starting in June 2018, WIZBL has high expectations from WBL coin. WBL has come with 1,000,000 transactions per second which are largest among all, no coin has ever brought this much transactions in one second.

The speed, scalability, price, growth plan and blockchain model are all a package under one roof. With competitive growth plan and strategies, WBL blockchain will be the future of 5th generation blockchain technology.

Details about WIZBL blockchain can all be found along with other recourses about WBL at their official website (http://www.wizbl. io). The team WIZBL has presented all the information for prospective customers and user so they can see and decide about their future plans and learn what WIZBL is going to bring for them. http://www.wizbl.io 31

MAY 2018

Decentralized Electronic Medical Records?

Three Ways Blockchain can Remove Blocks to Medical Care How much time do U.S. primary care physicians spend face-to-face with each patient? On average, between 13 and 20 minutes.

How much time is spent updating Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) for a primary care appointment? On average, about 20 minutes.

How much time will it take the patient to obtain a copy of results from the visit?

32

While many physicians can deliver copies of medical records soon after request, HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) gives providers 30 days to address inquiries, with an optional 30-day extension.

Helping patients gain control of Time devoted to EMRs is edging out their healthcare the time spent treating patients. And for the patient, getting access to EMRs is MedChain’s takes exponentially more time than the mission. The actual appointment. company is creating a platform Most healthcare providers use EMRs. for EMR storage But with at least 350 EMR solutions available, the likelihood of a primary using blockchain care physician and a dentist (two proand Distributed viders most people will visit during Storage Network the year) sharing the same EMR softtechnology. ware is slim, making it challenging for

age, increasing the risk of poor treatment due to incomplete information.

Joe Biden’s recent op-ed in Fortune raised a rallying cry for improving EMR accessibility. His involvement with the White House Cancer Moonshot, the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Veterans Affairs Department has included initiatives and funding to make comprehensive patient medical records available. But Biden acknowledges more can be done – and needs to be done to improve access for patients.

the dentist to know if the patient has a medical condition to consider before dental treatment. The responsibility of informing the dentist about recent healthcare issues becomes the patient’s burden.

Interest in a blockchain-enabled solution for managing EMRs has been heating up in the past two years, with thought-leaders at Harvard and MIT recognizing the need for change and citing (and exploring) blockchain’s power to transform the current system. Information professionals and consumers are having conversations about using blockchain elements – distributed ledgers, tokens, and ‘key’ devices – to better manage EMRs.

For older consumers, most of whom have two or more conditions requiring treatment by specialists, the number of unique EMRs becomes difficult to man-

HOW BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY ELIMINATES EMR DATA SILOS The roadblocks preventing EMRs from working more effectively for patients

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and providers centre in three areas that can be addressed by blockchain-based solutions: 1. ROADBLOCK #1: OWNERSHIP Although patients own their medical records, the current bureaucratic system makes it almost impossible to control and manage access. With blockchain-based technology, access would be owned by the patient who could grant permission to access with a ‘key’ that would decrypt sensitive information including patient name and identification.

Smart contracts on a blockchain would provide checks and audits of EMR accuracy and completeness.

2. ROADBLOCK #2: SECURITY The move to digital medical records was made, in part, to enable physicians to proactively identify patients needing preventative care. But the absence of controlled access resulted in almost 15 million patient records being hacked in 2017. Using blockchain technology, patient data associated with appointments, x-rays, test results, procedures and prescriptions could be available at a moment’s notice and would eliminate unauthorized access or data manipulation.

3. ROADBLOCK #3: INTEROPERABILITY Biden cited the lack of interoperability – the ability of different software applications to communicate and exchange data across physicians, labs, hospitals and pharmacies -- as a leading challenge to EMR effectiveness. With a patient ‘key,’ providers would have access to EMRs. Importantly, patients would be able to review all EMRs from a single system, saving time and any associated costs that may be charged to get copies of records.

tion (PHI) because the blockchain ledger verification process relies on mathematically-derived pseudonyms, prohibited by HIPAA’s Privacy Rule. In addition, a system allowing direct posting of patient information to the blockchain would require each provider to maintain a private database with the complete medical records of all patients – data storage and ease of access would quickly become large problems.

MedChain has created a solution to help physicians spend more time with their patients while providing MedChain offers a creative solupatients with setion that acts as an intermediMEDCHAIN’S COMMUNITY-DRIVEN ary between the providers’ HIcure, complete SOLUTION FOR ELECTRONIC MEDICAL PAA-compliant database and the RECORDS EMR ownerHelping patients gain control of their health- blockchain network, delivering the ship -- ensuring benefits of blockchain while maincare is MedChain’s mission. The company is they get full valtaining the HIPAA Privacy Rule. creating a platform for EMR storage using ue from healthblockchain and Distributed Storage Network THE MEDCHAIN SERVICE technology. care providers PROVIDER SOFTWARE who now have a THE MEDCHAIN PATIENT APPLICATION Available for little-to-no upfront cost, the MedChain Service Provid- holistic view of A versatile app for iOS, Android or desktop er software requires a subscription patient medical use, the MedChain Patient platform mainneeds. tains patient documentation and medical re- for use and blockchain access. Incords. This ‘wallet’ of medical information is tied to a unique patient ID, accessible only with a patient’s personalized key that is used to decrypt information. A user-friendly interface lets the patient give permission to providers, and notifies the patient of access requests from physicians, hospitals and health insurance companies.

The app will be available through online stores and the MedChain website as a no-cost download.

COMPLYING WITH HIPAA REQUIREMENTS HIPAA regulations limit the direct use of blockchain to store protected health informa-

ternal non-transferrable ‘entry tokens’ are purchased to add patient information to the Distributed Storage Network with a price tied to a fiat currency to minimize cost volatility for uploads.

After patient information is encrypted, the MedChain software hashes it and creates chains of entry to the blockchain. This process verifies data integrity while eliminating unauthorized access or manipulation. The software acts as nodes, authorized and federated by MedChain to reduce on-site maintenance.

REFOCUSING HEALTHCARE DATA MANAGEMENT The time needed to maintain EMRs is slowing patient care as physicians spend more time entering data than treating patients. The extra workload and associated reduction in productivity are undermining physicians’ commitment to healthcare, causing some to reduce hours or leave the profession.

Patients are being advised to ‘keep track’ of their medical records as ‘key to protecting’ their health.

The current EMR system is mired in bureaucracy, meaning patients face the burden of obtaining copies of all medical records and making them available to each of their healthcare providers.

Efforts to improve the efficiency of healthcare data management have also been undermined by ransomware attacks, cyber breaches, IT staff shortages, and a slew of software providers (with no clear market leader) encouraging healthcare systems to switch vendors, making interoperability difficult.

MedChain has created a solution to help physicians spend more time with their patients while providing patients with secure, complete EMR ownership -- ensuring they get full value from healthcare providers who now have a holistic view of patient medical needs.

Find out more about how MedChain can transform EMRs. Invest today and become part of the solution.

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How Bountie Can Change Online Gaming’s Current Ecosystem Esports. That’s a buzzword we’ve been hearing all day since the Counter-Strike series, the Quake series, and the WarCraft series (and its Dota mod form) made it popular in the late 90s. And yet it’s the one that draws the most attention.

LET’S START WITH A GENERAL CONSENSUS OF ESPORTS’ PARENT: GAMING (STATS BY NEWZOO). (i) the gaming industry earned US$106.4 billion in revenue in 2016 by and managed to hit beyond US$116 MARC BELL billion by the end of 2017.

Gaming Advisor (ii) The industry also has an impressive projection of +8.2% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 34

2016 to 2020. Basically, it’s just growing because of people showing huge interest in console, PC, and mobile games.

Now that you have a scope of that, here is a breakdown of esports: (i) The esports industry has reached about US$696 million in revenue streams in 2017. (ii) That is a 41.3% increase since 2016, with analysts projecting its numbers to reach an outstanding US$1.5 billion. (iii) The mainstream audience has begun to pay more attention to the field. With 46 million unique online viewers for the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice World Champi-

onship 2017 tournament, that was broadcasted to the huge US$24 million prize pool for Dota 2 The Internationals 2017 tournament; esports is incredibly relevant in this day and age.

In short, there are no signs of this specific movement slowing down and showing signs of oversaturation yet.

However, the reality is that this only caters to a small percentage of the gaming populace worldwide, much less in Southeast Asia. There are a lot of talented Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: GO players out there, but there can only be a few who can do what teams like Mineski, Fnatic, and TNC Pro do.

It’s their lifeblood, and they put in a lot of hard work while fending off the pres-

MAY 2018

sure of being in the spotlight. They love it, but not all of us can do this. Yet we want to.

The revenues and viewership numbers are inspiring and show signs that esports is not going the way of the dinosaur anytime soon. In fact, these numbers mean that esports is, and will be, a huge market for people to jump into, that may possibly generate huge returns.

What if there’s a way to stay away from that spotlight? What if that other percentage, the 90% who are decent and have the drive to play well but cannot commit to such a “glamorous” lifestyle, can earn money nonetheless from their skill and passion?

Perhaps it can even be a full-time thing for these gaming souls if that new ecosystem and new platform can pull this off. A new lifestyle that can even help open more business opportunities and create jobs as an added bonus.

This is where Bountie comes in and, hopefully, changes the current gaming landscape for the better in Southeast Asia.

A LIFESTYLE REVOLUTION IN THE MAKING? In a nutshell, Bountie is a startup that is creating an upcoming platform that enables gamers to get paid playing games. This is completely different to entering a major esports tournament because (i) all Bountie tournaments are easily accessible online affairs, and (ii) all participants will get some form of winnings.

portantly, it is the entry fee for all Bountie-sanctioned tournaments. The startup also plans to host “free tournaments”, whereby players without Bountie Tokens can participate and just prove their worth and valor to win them in the game of their choosing.

utors, and Bountie itself. It will be funded via advertising, sponsorships, tournament fees, sales commissions, tournament API, and more.

Apart from that method, Bountie Tokens can be: (i) bought on Bountie’s platform, won by being on the top 10 Bountie gaming leaderboards list. (ii) accumulated by doing Bountie daily quests (winning 10 games, getting 50 kills in a row, and so forth) and participating in referral programs, (iii) won from promotional and marketing giveaways.

Bountie itself is creating an ecosystem that caters towards the gamers, publishers, distrib-

Gamers just need to worry about winning, while publishers and distributors make sure their games work prim and proper. Bountie will handle the backend that connects everything and makes sure gamers get their due. After all, what is the point of such a lifestyle-altering system if our base players and users aren’t getting paid for what they’ve trained hard and smart for?

On the flip side, creating such a platform means opening an untapped business opportunity; instead of catering to the aforementioned 10%, you help out the 90%.

GAMING FOR COIN, THE 2018 WAY Bountie will be able to support any game that has competitive and multiplayer modes: Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, Fortnite, Overwatch, and more. Bountie’s platform will be able to generate its own tournament and leaderboard system.

All you have to do is go online, turn on the game, then turn on the platform side-byAll you have to do is go online, turn on the side. What can the platform do? It can help game, then turn on the platform side-byfind the best players to match you up with side. What can the platform do? It can help find the best players to match you up with for for your team, help find players with simyour team, help find players with similar skill ilar skill rankings to fight against to keep rankings to fight against to keep the playing field levelled and give you your well-deserved the playing field levelled and give you your well-deserved wins into your account if you wins into your account if you and your team manages to secure victory. and your team manages to secure victory.

All profiles under Bountie will be protected by blockchain technology. This isn’t the first time blockchain is being used for gaming: Enjin Coin helps make microtransactions easier and secure to pull off. Some games don’t allow in-game trading, so a platform like Enjin Coin can make it doable without any fear of bad transactions or fraud happening due to blockchain making that particular virtual ledger transparent for all.

These winnings are predominantly in the form of a new cryptocurrency called Bountie Tokens, and work just the same as highly-trusted cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can trade them for fiat money or for online purchases. But most im-

Bountie plans to use blockchain in a more competitive manner; it can help search for better players to team up with and worthy opponents to compete with. The tech and its smart-contracts can also make all transactions and transfers in Bountie safe with no fraud or 35

MAY 2018

third-party charging fees or any of that nonsense in your standard online gaming platform-slash-distribution service.

“We want to incentivize gamers all over Asia to keep playing games while also creating this new lifestyle. No one so far is building a product that incentivizes day-to-day gamers to ea`rn money doing what they love. We want to build a product for ourselves to enjoy at the same time as well. The drive is there.”

Imagine your gaming profile being divvied up into multiple versions of a safeguarded ledger. The decentralized system in blockchain is one instance that separates Bountie from the rest.

By creating and building better players on Bountie, the startup plans to have these players take the next step: participate in bigger offline tournaments with bigger prestige and bigger glory. The startup is not taking pro players away from that high-level esports scene, although they are free to participate on the platform if they choose so. The startup is catering for the 90% out there who want to be in the top tier esports scene, but cannot fully commit to it. If they are fully motivated by this new lifestyle and ecosystem from Bountie, perhaps they too can aspire to go beyond that.

Even if they cannot reach that pinnacle of esports, at least the fallback plan isn’t as harsh, and they don’t have to stop gaming as a job. Think of Bountie as a safety cushion for people who still want to be playing and winning games as a day job that doesn’t require much travel, if any at all. Bountie is covering that sizeable niche who are willing to continue playing for Bountie Tokens and then cashing them out when the time is right.

MEN (AND WOMEN) ON A MISSION The 16-person team at Bountie are highly motivated and are actual gamers, so they know what they are doing with the platform and its long-term vision. CEO Lex Na is a former WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne professional player in Singapore back in the game’s heyday. CTO Darren Lee usually plays a lot of Overwatch in his spare time.

The startup is also chipping in to help out esports gaming teams like Team Impunity and Girlaxy. The former team are renowned for placing high in world36

A NEW WORLD GAMING ORDER In the end, Bountie is certain that this is what gaming and esports needs: having its audience do what they love while getting more financial stability out of it.

If Bountie fulfills even half of what it promises on its public white paper, like its grand plan of opening an esports arena to further accentuate the ecosystem and making the platform work on mobile games the following year, then the future of gaming and esports in Southeast Asia is looking grand.

class Vainglory tournaments while the latter team champion and empower the female gaming space in the Singapore region, hosting all-girl tournaments like Eve of Legend.

On top of that, gaming brands like MSI Gaming, Logitech, DXRacer, and Creative, as well as esports bodies like SCOGA, are also partnering up with the startup to realize their vision and help the gaming and esports side of things.

In fact, Bountie is getting advisors from Twitch.tv and esports luminaries like Marc Bell from MogulArena to make sure its app works as intended while also realizing the lifestyle it is going to shape.

CEO Lex Na feels that with these names on board, it adds a huge level of credibility to Bountie and how realistic and feasible its plan is. “We used to be gam-

ers,” said Lex. “That’s why we want to change this landscape to cater to both the gaming community and ourselves. That’s why we need legitimate gaming partners to help us. That’s why we want to make this idea come through and continue for 5 years and beyond. All this is motivation enough to create a platform where you get paid doing what you love.”

Imagine your gaming profile being divvied up into multiple versions of a safeguarded ledger. The decentralized system in blockchain is one instance that separates Bountie from the rest.

If you wish to contribute to this new and exciting kind of vision in gaming, take part in Bountie’s Initial Coin Offering that is scheduled from 2nd June to 13th June. The pre-ICO period is 29th April to 2nd June, with a great incentive of 15 percent bonus Bountie Tokens up for grabs during this period.

Head here for more information.

MAY 2018

My Thoughts on Wyoming’s

“Open Blockchain Token Exemption” Bill On March 8, 2018, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead signed into law House Bill 70, entitled the “Open Blockchain Token Exemption Act.” Wyoming has been at the forefront of business and corporate regulation for many years, having invented the limited liability company, or LLC, in 1977, and its recent foray into the cryptocurrency space is no exception.

by CHRISTIAN FERRI

In this article, I will provide a brief overview of the new Wyoming law as well as what impact I think it will have on both Wyoming and those U.S. companies that are currently developing (or thinking about developing) blockchain-based projects.

THE LAW IN A NUTSHELL At its core, House Bill 70 creates an exemption for what it refers to as “open blockchain tokens” from Wyoming State securities laws as follows:

chain token” for that matter, will automatically avail a project of taking advantage of this exemption for their issued tokens. However, what it does provide is much greater clarity, at least at a state level, as to what can and cannot be done if a project wants its token to qualify for the exemption.

can find more information about federal securities law impact on blockchain tokens in my article here.

Regardless, I consider the passage of Wyoming House Bill 70 a very positive move, for the following reasons: 1. For the State of Wyoming, it means an enormous inflow of companies Also important to note is that although doing cutting-edge development in A developer or seller of an open blockthis law is welcome news for blockchain the blockchain space; chain token shall not be deemed the is- project developers and founders, it has 2. Clearly defining security tokens as suer of a security and shall not be subno impact whatsoever on U.S. federones which are “promoted as inject to the provisions of [the Wyoming al law and regulations (which preempt vestment” sends a signal to anyUniform Securities Act] if all of the fol- state law), so all the uncertainty that one caught up in the cryptocurrenlowing are met: still exists in the space regarding the cy “pump and dump” industry that U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission such behavior is inappropriate; and (i) The token has not been marketed and how it will deal with the utility vs.

3. This move by Wyoming, where resiby the developer or seller as an insecurity token issue still remains. You dents are still required to pay federvestment; al taxes on crypto transactions, will (ii) The token is exchangeable for goods encourage similar attempts in othor services; and er jurisdictions, such as the efforts (iii) The developer or seller of the token of Brock Pierce, founder of EOS and has not entered into a repurchase board member of the Bitcoin Founagreement of any kind or entered dation, who is pushing a similar bill into an agreement to locate a buyer in Puerto Rico, which has the addi[...] Although the Wyoming bill for the token. tional benefit of being exempt from is not a panacea for all the confederal taxes.

House Bill 70 is the first state-level law cerns present in the cryptocurrency in the United States that explicitly recspace, it is an enormous step in the In conclusion, although the Wyoming ognizes the concept of “utility tokens” bill is not a panacea for all the concerns (which are described in my previous ar- right direction [...] present in the cryptocurrency space, it ticle here) and provides an exemption is an enormous step in the right direcfor them. This does not mean, howevtion, and will certainly benefit the peoer, that simply declaring one’s token ple and businesses setting up shop in as a “utility token,” or an “open blockWyoming moving forward.

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MAY 2018

BANDZ

Now you know When I first entered crypto in 2013 I met, connected, and worked with some of the biggest names in the space: Vitalek Buterin, Anthony Di Iorio, and Peter Todd. I was present at Bitcoin Decentral in Toronto prior to the $30 Million Ethereum raise.

I was at the CES convention in Las Vegas in 2013 backing KryptoKit, there I met Daniel Larimer of EOS when he first introduced the concept of BitShares and saw the birth of Mastercoin as well. by VIKTOR XHELILAJ CO-Founder, BandZ

I pride myself in having been at the forefront of the newest ideas during the stages of their early conception, and I have had a history of backing the right projects. These details, experiences, and connections have allowed me to embark on the vision this article hopes to share with the world.

INTRANET

EXTRANET

Enter BandZ, a protocol conception as old as Ethereum, whose time has now come. I literally began iterating the idea while I was employed at Decentral in Toronto five years ago, despite the advice of some of my peers that it was a stone too far.

BandZ is the token for a global P2P extranet, denominating the transfer of bandwidth between the peers that exchange private internet services on its network.

For our less computer-oriented technical readers (whether you be a legal, financial, or marketing expert) I will go 38

over a very high-level explanation of what intranets and extranets are.

INTRANETS AND EXTRANETS Intranets are private networks accessible only to the members of said networks. Intranets serve an organiza-

tion’s digital communications needs.

They also provide a secure space for storing, accessing and developing electronic materials.

Extranets are intranets that allow access to authorized sets of external us-

MAY 2018

ers as determined by the members of that intranet, without granting full access to the intranet itself.

Their major use in the business world is to facilitate cooperation between different companies on joint projects, initiatives, and information sharing. They also allow companies to connect with customers in a more controlled setting than the Internet. Extranets also allow multiple companies to access network services provided by another company, such as a data-processing application developed and maintained by one company that other companies utilize on their own intranets.

Furthermore, the applications themselves are not all that exciting. Many of them are legacy models looking for free money on the speculative nature of the ICO market (not blockchain) bubble which we found ourselves in until March of this year. None of these new apps need blockchain to operate. There is no granular integral “must-have” factor to these models that elevates them to the size required to survive the ups and downs of the fickle ICO markets.

Okay, so what? I understand what an intranet and extranet are now (sort of).

Why do I care?

WHY IS BANDZ DIFFERENT? BandZ is much, much more than a blockchain. The blockchain is not even the focus of the project, just an ingredient in a larger technical architecture which seeks to improve on the forefather of blockchains; the internet. And even despite its lack of focus on the blockchain as a central piece (ironic isn’t it?), the application of consensus algorithms is still more useful, elegant, and valuable to BandZ than it would be to some airline or rental company trying to build an ERC token.

90% of the new projects which have received funding, hype, and prestige over the past two years are merely applications and not protocols in of themselves (projects such as Enecuum and Hashgraph are exempt from this criticism).

BandZ wants to reinvent the digital individual as their own private intranet and re-engineer the internet into a global extranet. BandZ (denominating bandwidth) will allow these user-intranets to exchange all sorts of service with one another in a secure, cost-ef-

In a cosmic black hole of a nutshell, extranets make available to external users any sort of internet service that the private intranets within have set up for its business.

fective, and quality manner. It will raise the bar for low-level internet infrastructure.

BandZ is the token for a global P2P extranet, denominating the transfer of bandwidth between the peers that exchange private internet services on its network.

To do so is a large endeavor and thus BandZ will roll its development out in stages. Our team will begin focusing on three profitable and undervalued markets: bandwidth sharing, virtual private networks and proxy servers, and mesh networks.

THE VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK MARKET VPNs are often associated with illegal and devious behaviors by the mass media. It is one of the worst misconceptions in technology. Companies use VPNs all the time... they’re called intranets and you cannot really be a working company in the tech sector without one.

Individuals, too, can secure their communications with VPNs or circumvent internet geo-restriction and censorship in certain countries. The application comes with risks and benefits, but so does innovation and freedom.

Proxy Servers are an application of VPNs which allow users to access the different IP addresses (and internet freedoms) of the countries in which those IP domains are attributed to. By 39

MAY 2018

rotating groups of IP addresses, identity and traffic can be cloaked to become surveillance proof and difficult to analyze statistically.

The worldwide VPN market is currently estimated to be $1.26 Billion USD. By 2022, it is expected to grow to $106 Billion USD. If that growth rate seems too bullish, it’s probably because the current valuation of the VPN market is wrong and heavily understated.

The potential for VPN growth is like a powder keg, and blockchains are the spark. Decentralization cannot add more value to any other single industry more so than to secured P2P telecommunications.

The VPN internet use case is even more powerful than money and currency.

The internet is a bedrock for blockchain technology, redefining the internet with VPN properties is analogous to reinforcing the foundations of the world’s blockchain temples.

Decentralizing VPNs will not only make them censorship and back-door proof but will also reduce the friction currently present to novices in accessing the technology.

MESH NETWORKS Believe it or not, this part of our business model was designed to help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and not to “disrupt” them like every other naïve startup claim in the space.

Mesh nets are groups of smart devices (phones, tablets, etc.) which connect to each other’s Wi-Fi so that internet ranges and accessibility can be improved (cosmic nutshell, again).

A lot of remote areas are not profitable enough for ISPs to develop infrastructure towards. Even now your router does not cover the entire area of your home. Finally, that beautiful concept called the Internet of Things (IoT), does not work as superfluously as it could without greater signal ranges and lowered data costs.

Without a mesh-net the congestion of all these smart value-added, wireless services would be unbearable. BandZ personalized bandwidth limits and packet synchronization would do much to utilize the truly global opportunity of the IoT. BANDWIDTH BUYING, SELLING, AND SHARING This feature alone is one of the hot picks for 2019 in the crypto-space. I am calling it right now; quote me.

It is also the original idea I had in that earlier mini-novel I call this article’s in40

BandZ wants to reinvent the digital individual as their own private intranet and re-engineer the internet into a global extranet.

troduction. Where Bitcoin and Ethere- • These represent untapped customum have made strides as currency via er basis (even in countries outside their strengths as a store value, BandZ of their own national borders) (and other, lesser protocols specifical- Mesh Networks help extend ly intended for Bandwidth exchange) their customer base to unwill make their own path to an economtapped regions: Africa, the Midic revolution in currency as a medium dle-East and part of South of exchange.

America - 700 Million customers are exBandwidth is a consumable commodipected in the Middle East and ty, we all know this. Your IP address is a Africa this year digital asset (maybe you did not consider that second fact).

Research and Development • Large ISP companies work in deOne of the hallmark blockchain probvelopment silos lems is that, even though the consen• They have little-to-no-incentive to sus and transaction validity are amazcreate networking solutions with ing, many of the physical assets and other ISPs commodities which blockchains will be • The costs of changing an ISP busiused to represent do not actually live ness model is large because of the within the machines and computations fixed assets and distribution netthat define them. Hardware cracks, works already in play such as lies and coercion, still compro- BandZ Software Development mise physical assets and commodities.

Kit (SDK) solves this by enaI know you already guessed, but here I bling ISPs to work with each go anyways: bandwidth and IP addressother’s physical infrastructure es exist within your software and hardthrough the circulation of the ware! They can be rigorously metered BandZ token and optimally utilized without falling prey to the abuse of tangible manipuAverage Revenue Per User (ARU) lations.

• Tends to be flat for ISPs, they need to sell more services to increase Therefore, the blockchain is that ARU non-central but integral pieces I men- Mesh Networks, VPNs/Proxies, tioned earlier. For this reason, BandZ is and Bandwidth Markets are all an extranet, and not one of the strictnew services offered by BandZ ly bandwidth-sharing protocols which (with more deep learning and you will 100% see enter the market this neural networks to come) year (please quote me; some of them are already there anyhow).

Network Congestion Collapse • Generally, occurs at choke points WHAT IS THE VALUE ADD? in the network where total incomFor ISPs: ing bandwidth to a node exceeds Remote areas outgoing bandwidth • Some places are not profitable • DSL 10-1,000 mbit/s incoming enough to receive internet infraand at most 8 mbit/s outgoing structure development - Mesh Networks solve this

MAY 2018

P2P Traffic • Many P2P architectures have their customers only sharing their demand with the network, but not their resources • As more customers join the network fewer resources become available to serve each new user - Mesh Networks and Bandwidth sharing allow the ISPs customers to step in with their excess digital commodities and resources - The customers can profit and fill in the service gaps for the ISPs who they are signed to Security • Protecting networks from attacks and maintaining balance between supply and demand for data is becoming harder each day - VPN and Proxies solve this - Cybersecurity attacks are estimated to be worth $2 Trillion by 2019 USD Inability to Monetize Packet Traffic • The delay that a packet experiences in each router across the network is influenced by the level of network congestion and the number of routers along the way of transmission • This isn’t sustainable for service providers, especially on wireless networks where bandwidth is constrained - Mesh Networks and Bandwidth sharing allow the ISPs customers to step in with their excess digital commodities and resources - The customers can profit and fill in the service gaps for the ISPs who they are signed to Customer Churn • Customers are often fickle and leave their ISP for cheaper alternatives at the first opportunity • Customers do not like to purchase additional services from ISPs and this results in low Average Revenues per User (ARUs) - By selling BandZ with their data plans ISPS can offer the token as an additional product and can: • Provide their services to foreign customers travelling to the ISP’s home country • Provide security services at no additional cost • Generate advertising revenue with sponsored Wi-Fi channels • Create self-sustaining payment plans for their customers to the extent that the user’s internet experience feels free without being unpaid for

(Blue is good internet coverage; red/brown is bad internet coverage)

Decentralizing VPNs will not only make them censorship and back-door proof but will also reduce the friction currently present to novices in accessing the technology.

For Individual Users: Roaming • Access to internet is often restricted by geographic locality • Roaming fees are very expensive for people who have no other option • Buying a sim card in foreign countries is an incredibly cumbersome experience - Mesh Networks extend the user’s range of access - Bandwidth markets create a lower fixed cost of hardware for ISPs and therefore cheaper data services for end users - The price of services will decrease, but the amount of services consumed will flourish (benefitting ISPs as well) Security • Most internet users are not sophisticated, nor care to implement basic security features • Most internet users care about their privacy • Most users store valuable information on their mobile and desktop devices - The VPN and Proxy Services are built-in at no extra cost - They are easy to use, literally at the click of your touch-screen Data Plans • Most internet users have never been able to monetize their data • The cost of data plans is very high for 4G+ devices - Bandwidth Market places in different regions will create competition which will decrease the price of data services around the world - The customers receive financial rewards for helping their ISPs with their digital commodities and assets

Empty Wifi Zones • Some countries have less infrastructure distributed across their geography than others • Users are powerless and unable to utilize the internet in empty zones - Mesh Networks makes these zones available to ISPs via their customers - The customers receive financial rewards for helping their ISPs with their digital commodities and assets Costly Services • Many enterprise-grade software services are bundled for companies so that the price per user becomes manageable • These bundled prices are not available to individual users • If the bundled price were available, it would still be too high - The global extranet of BandZ is designed to build these services into the foundations of the future internet, and to make them financially accessible via bandwidth and easy to use via UX design So, there you have it. The argument for BandZ as the next important global software company, where and who it came from, and why it matters to you.

Remember to quote me when you see the market swoon with many data-sharing protocols Q4 this year.

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MAY 2018

Dehedge

A Risk-Free Zone for Cryptocurrency Investors Pioneering project DeHedge set to securitize cryptocurrency market with its risk-hedging platform

Blockchain fintech company DeHedge, established by Skolkovo graduates and successful investors from Russia: Michael Chernov, Bogdan Leonov, and Dmitry Ansimov are poised to be the first on the global market to provide securities and insurance services to back by cryptocurrency projects worldwide.

MICHAEL

algorithm based on insurance reserves and liabilities, thus making it impossible for the latter to exceed the coverage.

The smart contracts are programmed to automatically pay out in full. In case of an insured event as the project uses Ethereum, which is a public blockchain the investor can waive an automatic payout and opt not to make an insurance claim.

already guaranteed ensures that DeHedge can provide entirely deregulated cryptocurrencies market with an instrument that the participants require.

DeHedge also serves as a launchpad for ICO projects by guaranteeing trust in the stability of their offering, thus ensuring an influx of inCHERNOV Investor The risks involved in investing into a vestors inspired by the guarantees allucrative ICO are many of which are ready backing the project. This genambiguous. An almost complete lack DeHedge is aimed at becoming a hub of eral atmosphere of trust simultaneof government control, bylaws, regula- interest for investors by providing inously provides for reducing risks and tions or established guidelines makes vestment securitization and hedging of attracting investments into the ICO it difficult to distinguish sound investrisks and by offering a full-cycle deriva- market. Needless to say, a measure ment from a fraudulent project. The tive platform with different risk-hedgof guarantee on the market is sure to crypto market is different from tradiing instruments in the future. Those boost blockchain technology develtional economics as it lacks brokers, un- seeking to join the ever-growing toopment, driving massive changes in derwriters, sureties, banks and hedging ken market have always been uncerworldwide business processes and the instruments. This lack of intermediartain of the safety of their investments – global economy as a whole. ies and pillars of stability automaticala point of great interest that DeHedge ly creates a paralyzing effect of distrust seeks to satisfy by emerging as a pillar Having garnered great interest in the and robs market players of the instruof stability on the volatile market. domestic and overseas markets already, ments they require to ensure the safety DeHedge is certain to appeal to the of their investments.

DeHedge offers hedging options, under players of the volatile and deregulated which tokens are provided with limited market of crypto economics. As recent DeHedge operates both with pre-ICO timeframes of hedging, as well as price events have shown, the alienation of and circulating token projects, to enranges. The obligation of a client to accryptocurrencies by many jurisdictions sure the security of its clients. DeHedge quire another project’s tokens in case has not had a significant deterrent efevaluates ICO projects using a unique of an insurance event allows DeHedge fect to sway investors as they continue scoring model developed by DeHedge to fulfil insurance conditions with min- pouring funds into ICO projects worldin collaboration with one of the largimal risk of liquidity and stability both wide. Though progress is unstoppable, est consulting firms. An investor reto itself and the client. the novel market in its infancy stage is ceives a risk coverage for various cases, in need of securitizes and DeHedge is such as a project cancellation or token The comprehensive risk-hedging conpoised to capture the important niche, exchange rate fluctuations. DeHedge’s tracts and sound investment stratejoining effort with its partners (Priority smart contracts use a binary relation gy backed by significant investments Token is one of them).

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ICO Project Tokens with Hedging Protection Invest in ICO projects with financial protection against risks.

Free hedging of ICO project tokens against up to 50% of price drops

Hedging for up to 6 months!

Project Overview 1

2

DeHedge conducts scoring of projects headed for the ICO stage.

3

Projects that have successfully passed all stages of scoring are transferred for approval to the DeHedge Investment Committee.

Tokens of approved projects are redeemed at the Pre-Sale stage with a discount and are augmented by a hedging option.

Projects

Projects selected for hedging

The rate of the tokens falls

The investor acquires tokens with free protection

The project turns out to be a scam or is closed

In the event

for 6 months on the

that during the

product.dehedge.com

hedging period

The tokens of the project are not listed on the exchange

website

DeHedge will reimburse the investor’s losses.

Example An investor acquires

Two months later Project

The investor requests compensation for

20,000 Project A tokens with

A is listed on the exchange

losses in their personal account on the

hedging protection at a price

and is traded at a price of

DeHedge website and receives payment in

of 0.1 ETH, for a total sum

0.055 ETH per token. The

the amount of 900 ETH. In this case, the

of 2000 ETH.

investor loses 900 ETH.

investor keeps the tokens of Project A.

1. The number of purchased tokens;

A request for hedging compensation is

Receipt of hedging compensation

www.dehedge.com

made directly through the investor's personal account.

Help@dehedge.com

The investor’s personal account displays

2. The price of the tokens at the time of purchase; 3. The current price of tokens on the exchange (loaded in real time via the API).

MAY 2018

Meet LEE.

This Research Bot Saves Time Spent on Data Research by Combining AI with Blockchain

With the current information overload, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find quality data quickly, this makes business research time-consuming. Whether professionals use public search engines or private subscriptions, finding the right data point in a sea of by sources is labour intensive.

SIMON SLIMAN

Lee combines AI and blockchain in an easy-to-understand framework. (1) We leverage AI in two ways: First, to semantically understand business research questions and turn them into search inquiries, second, to rank data sources. (2) We use CEO This is what this LEE is trying to solve. blockchain to build an ecoLee is a project launched by a team of system of human contribuseasoned research professionals that tors that include individual were very active in the B2B research in- researchers and data providdustry for the last decade. The team has ers, which are paid with utillaunched a custom research marketity tokens� Said Simon Sliplace, a private marketplace for enterman, CEO, and founder. prises, and a syndicated research marketplace for reports.

Simon and his team have reached this solution after 3 “We learned from our operations and years of research and market from the previous traction that the experiments. In more practimost optimal model to provide instant cal terms, they use AI which affordable research is to combine AI can help professionals find and blockchain. Our mission of killing the data, by understanding the time spent on research, triggered the search intent, translating the creation of LEE, the intelligent that intent into search quebusiness researcher. ries using semantic technolo-

44

gy, and finding the best data using ranking algorithms. The human analyst role is to train the AI, feed data into machine learning models.

Our mission of killing the time spent on research, triggered the creation of LEE.

The blockchain is used to create new sources of business data supply by tapping into individual researchers, which are rewarded with Lee Tokens (LT) for each data contribution.

These utility tokens are used to access more data creating a decentralized loop. The LTs are calculated based on a set of algorithms that score the quality of each data provided.

If this ecosystem succeeds to decentralize access, it will level the playing field for high-quality data, making it accessible and affordable to every professional.

MAY 2018

Currently, large data providers are dominating the business research market. When it comes to financial data, Bloomberg and Thomson share more than 1/3 of the market while Google essentially owns the public data search market. For specific verticals, the market is scattered with millions of data providers and data subscriptions which are limited to specific niche markets and is typically targeted to large enterprises.

From the supplier perspective: 1) Researchers contribute data to Lee database using the blockchain system. 2) If the data passes the quality test. A token reward will be assigned to the data provider based on a quality score. 3) Tokens can be used to pay for Lee research services with lifetime discounts, exchanged to fiat currencies, sold to other users. Lee tokens can be eventually used to access other complementary research services provided by Lee partners.

We use blockchain to build an ecosystem of human contrib“Many industry reports can be expensive for inutors that individual analysts. What if you only need access clude individual to a single table without paying for the whole researchers and report? The status quo is that the most valuadata providers, ble information is obtained when it is not easily Lee is launching a presale token available. The more an information is exposed, sale this year. The first lot is to be which are paid the more it loses its value. Our counter-argulaunched in June 2018. The token with utility toment is that the more you increase access to re- price is $0.05 with a minimum kens search data, the better its use will be. And that’s why we are using blockchain” added Simon.

purchase of $50 which is equivalent to 1000 Lee tokens. Since the current price to access Lee is There are three steps involved: From the user $500/year, the first participants perspective: 1) Lee users pay a subscription fee in the next batch will receive a using Fiat currency or Lee tokens, then 2) Lee 90% discount. would source data from the repository, which contains data from the blockchain communiThe team intends to use the ICO ty, public datasets and licensed data vendors. funds to buy data in bulk and ac3) The data point requested is delivered to the celerate the product developuser via the chatbot interface. ment program to meet the month-

ly scheduled releases with planned functional upgrades. The majority will go to business development, operations, and technology where 10% will be invested in partnerships and token alliances.

When asked about the token liquidity, Simon said: “Lee tokens can be used to access Lee service and other token alliance partners. Regardless of the market price of the tokens, we guarantee that the tokens can be used to access high-quality data within our system. The good news for the liquidity is that the total token supply available for users is limited. For data providers, as we reach high levels of data in our database, the overall token supply will also decrease gradually.

We will increase the rate of buybacks as we increase our data coverage. This means the more data is contributed, the fewer tokens will be available, and the excess supply will be destroyed via buyback program to ensure market price appreciation”.

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MAY 2018

Review of VideoCoin ICO A New Blockchain Protocol

by MR. AZIZ ZAINUDDIN Co-Founder of Master the Crypto

OVERVIEW Video’s constitute to 80% of Internet traffic and is consumed by 2.15 billion people every month. In 2017, $12.5 billion in revenue was generated from video streaming. VideoCoin plans to disrupt the video market by creating a decentralized video infrastructure network that will provide end-to-end cloud-video services. This includes video encoding, storage and a content delivery network (CDN) via a peer-to-peer (P2P) algorithmic market. VideoCoin’s elevator pitch is “AirBnB meets the video ecosystem”.

VideoCoin is building a new blockchain with a native protocol token (the VID) to operate its decentralized video network. Video processing requires super-fast transaction times, especially for streaming and on demand video.

Bitcoin and Ethereum (ERC20) cannot handle video processing and streaming due to long transaction times, limited computer capacity, and proof of work that is not scalable. Consequently, VideoCoin is building its own new blockchain with super-fast transaction times and enhanced scalability to power video processing on its network. VideoCoin deploys useful proof of work to make use of Hardware accelerated Video functions on GPUs and CPUs and implements a novel proof of stake model to power complex decentralized video infrastructure.

VideoCoin aims to solve 2 major challenges in the traditional video market: 1. 60-80% Reduction of Video Costs: Utilizing idle computing servers through its cloud-based blockchain platform to process, store and distribute videos much

46

VideoCoin plans to disrupt the video market by creating a decentralized video infrastructure network that will provide end-to-end cloud-video services.

VideoCoin is building a new blockchain with a native protocol token (the VID) to operate its decentralized video network.

cheaper when compared to Google and Amazon. They’ve estimated that the cost of streaming can be reduced by up to 80% or more.

2. Next-Generation Video Applications: A unique proposition of blockchain-based solutions is the innovation of next-generations applications that can be built on VideoCoin’s platform. This allows the creation of a wide-range of services that wasn’t possible through traditional mechanisms due to obvious infrastructural and costs constraints.

APPLICATIONS VideoCoin implements decentralized versions of the core components pertaining to the video infrastructure process, thereby creating a competitive environment for a new breed of video miners that’ll compete to earn rewards by providing computing power.

These video miners can run on data center servers, household desktop computers or even mobile phones, creating a powerful network of computers which would otherwise go unutilized.

MAY 2018

VideoCoin incentivizes miners to use such unused resources and provide as much compute, storage and bandwidth available.

There are 3 main components of the VideoCoin network: 1. Distributed Video Encoding: VideoCoin implements a Distributed Video Processing platform that splits a video encoding task into several sub tasks and processes them in parallel, thus effectively producing much higher frame rates on commodity hardware.

2. Distributed Video Storage Network: VideoCoin will implement Sonata, a distributed file system on top of commodity hardware provided by storage miners. Sonata is a scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed storage system that works closely with a wide variety of concurrent data access applications. Sonata splits videos into playable segments and distributes them across the storage network created on top of disk space provided by storage miners.

3. Content Distribution Network: In VideoCoin, distribution miners act as paid proxy servers for storage miners that will store data. An algorithmic market will be in-built to the network for clients to negotiate contracts directly with distribution miners and storage miners, in a bid to deliver high quality video to the end-user via a proxy server that is in close geographical proximity.

Here’s a breakdown of the participants within the VideoCoin network: • Storage Miners: Those who provide their computing hardware for video storage receive rewards in the form of VID. Their role is similar to origin servers • Distribution Miners: Paid proxy servers that earn tokens by delivering videos to users, acting as the gateway between the VideoCoin network and Internet • Compute Miners: Execute video functions -mainly transcoding - by

providing CPU time; the more computation the higher the rewards • Relay Miners: Miners that relay storage transparently to third party cloud storage servers (e.g. unused capacity on AWS) UNIQUE DIFFERENTIATOR Here are several unique selling points of VideoCoin: • Video Cost Reduction: The utilization of computing power – with VID tokens as an incentive – from those who possess additional disk space and excessive bandwidth allows VideoCoin to tremendously lower the data costs by up to 60%80%. VideoCoin is the first decentralized project to solve this issue through an end-to-end infrastructure network that can compete with the big boys.

• End-To-End Video Infrastructure: VideoCoin’s focus on being a full stack video infrastructure protocol layer easily differentiates it from similar projects in the space, including Filecoin and Storj that’s focused only on decentralized data storage.

This is just one focus of VideoCoin’s infrastructure plans.

• Limited Barriers to Entry: Anyone with a computer – and more importantly, servers and data centers - can load VideoCoin’s software and start encoding video since all modern computers have equipped encoder. No additional hardware is required. This allows for greater participation from anyone looking to earn rewards in the form of VIDs. • Savvy, Prescient Veterans: No stranger to the trappings of startup challenges, while many ICOs have squandered their escrow treasuries in this bear crypto market, (unnamed publicly closed ICOs of $40MM now have less than $17MM in escrow due to ETH drop) VideoCoin has smartly converted $36MM+ smartly to fiat during the raise. They have a healthy war chest and have not gambled on crypto volatility with contributor funds.

KEY DETAILS Token Symbol

VID

Total Token Supply

882,000,000 VID

Tokens Offered for Token Sale

105,000,000 VID (12%)

Hard Cap

USD $50million

ICO Price (USD)

1 VID = $1 USD

Currency Accepted

ETH / BTC / USD

Main ICO Period

Public ICO Cancelled

FOUNDER/CEO // Halsey Minor is a proven tech visionary who has founded some of the most successful companies with a cumulative value of over $100 billion. The organizations he founded includes crypto service Uphold, CNET Networks, Google Voice and Salesforce.

CTO // Devadutta Ghat was the founder and Chief Architect of the Intel Video Transcode Service, the basis for Facebook’s video platform. He was also a Senior Product Manager previously at Cloudera after completing his MBA in Berkeley.

HEAD OF STRATEGY // Seth Shapiro is a two-time Emmy Award winner and a leading advisor in business innovation and media. His impressive accolades include being the Governor of The Television Academy and Professor at USC. Seth has launched over 25 services at DIRECTTV, including NFL Sunday Ticket Interactive and TiVo, the world’s first major DVR platform.

ENGINEERING TEAM // VideoCoin has a healthy line-up of experienced engineers that are well-versed in cloud systems, video processing applications and frontend development.

TRACTION // The development of VideoCoin’s infrastructure commenced 2 years ago, with over 200,000 lines of codes and 10,000 hours of videos processed. The video infrastructure layer, which involves distributed encoding and distribution, is already in production, running on as many as 250 nodes at a time.

ROADMAP // VideoCoin’s roadmap is rudimentary, only showcasing the token generation event and the scheduled dates of the alpha and beta launch.

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ADVISORS & INVESTORS Videcoin is backed by a powerful list of advisors and investors. Prominent advisors include Hanno Basse (CTO of 20th Century Fox Film), Ted Schilowitz (Futurist in Residence at Paramount Pictures), Michael Terpin (Co-founder of BitAngels) and John Ward, (Senior VP of Content Operations at DIRECTV).

In addition, Videcoin has raised early-stage investments from big names in the crypocurrency sphere such as Michael Novogratz of Galaxy Investment Partners. Other prominent institutional investors include notable funds such as Alphabit, BaseTwo Capital, Arcadia Crypto and Binary Financial, which was a seed investor in Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter.

TOKEN ECONOMICS Even though the hardcap looks relatively high compared to other ICOs at USD $50 million, the nature of VideoCoin’s project of creating an end-to-end video infrastructure as well as its huge potential in disrupting the video space warrants a sizeable valuation. Most of the tokens (70%) will be allocated towards the mining process.

The ERC20 tokens that will initially be released in the middle of 2018 time frame are useable immediately on the network. In fact, several large scale alpha node players have already acquired their stake.

NETWORK SUPPLY & RELEASE SCHEDULE The block rewards for the VID currency supply will halve approximately every 4 years, with 93% of all mineable tokens distributed by the tenth year. With the passage of time, block rewards will become scarce and will only affect the Verifier Pool. Miners will not be impacted as payment to miners through microtransactions is independent of block rewards in the VideoCoin Network. The Verifier Pool will remain incentivized through wattage and transaction fees.

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oligopoly market with the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Even taking a small chunk out of the pie would mean billions of dollars of market share.

Solving a Real Need: Reducing video streaming costs by up to 80% or more would undoubtedly disrupt the video market. If realized, traditional video giants would need to competitively slash prices to effectively compete.

Natural Blockchain Use-Case: The commoditization of computational power – under the structure of a sharing economy – has the potential to make the system much more efficient as it allows the sharing of computer resources globally.

Strong Team/Advisors/Investors: Highly experienced top-level management, a powerful line-up of advisors and investors makes this project a strong contender against traditional data services provider such as Amazon and Google.

Pragmatic Go-To Market Strategy: VideoCoin will employ a phased approach in entering the industry by focusing initially on acting as a bridge between existing CDN systems and cloud providers such as AWS, Google and MSFT. This ensures that quality, speed and proven adoption are constantly improved to attract market share.

STRENGTHS • High-Profile ICO: VideoCoin has cancelled its public ICO ahead of schedule due to oversubscription from private investors.

There is unmet demand from the retail side WEAKNESSES of the market, which will tend to push price • Lack of Marketing Spend: Minor has a history of building world-class companies upwards when trading starts. that solve real-world problems but does not • Massive Market Opportunity: Given spend big on Marketing in the process. This that video represents internet’s largest ecoICO is not widely known and has not been system (80% of internet traffic), Videowidely publicized. Want to see published Coin is well-positioned to compete in this

announcements and prototype development from their partners, including Paramount, ATT/Uverse, and Fox. • Long Roadmap Ahead: VideoCoin’s Alpha is expected to be ready only in the first quarter of 2019, and its beta will be scheduled for release on July 2019. In this highpaced market, it will be a relatively long wait for early investors to start getting excited about the developments.

• Rudimentary Roadmap & Token Metrics: A more detailed roadmap, token metrics and go-to market strategy are yet to be made public as of this moment.

SUMMARY VideoCoin is poised to be a full stack video infrastructure protocol layer solution that could match the likes of big players in the space, including Amazon and Google. Given the promise of significant cost advantages, speed and efficiency, many are looking towards VideoCoin favorably. Combined with an all-star team and powerful backing, VideoCoin looks set to be a promising investment.

CONTACT FOR INVESTING IN VIDEOCOIN ICO PRIVATE SALE. VideoCoin has cancelled it public ICO sale.

VideoCoin is only conducting a Private Sale.

To gain exclusive access to VideoCoin’s ICO private sale with a discount on token price, please email Christopher O’Donnell at christopher@automatic.vg with your details and desired investment size. Act quickly, we expect VideoCoin hard cap to be reached within the next 2 weeks.

Network Supply & Release Schedule 48

MAY 2018

Automatichome

Blockchain technologies have gained a lot of attention recently, promising users more security, privacy and new functionalities than what is currently being offered. It is a huge market, currently being capped at over $400 billion dollars, forecasted to exceed $5 trillion by 2025. Another similar industry that is forecasted to grow in the next few years is the IoT industry, where estimations say there will be 50 billion interconnected devices in the Internet of Things in 2020. Currently, the market doesn't have a good consumer solution that can satisfy user needs, so here we have addressed this problem.

Existing solutions require multiple applications to control multiple devices making it inconvenient for stakeholders. Having such a set up can be off putting and can shun people away from even considering having such useful technologies, that can help on long by ICO CROWD term savings and convenience, present in their household and on their devices. Using the system that we are creating will allow and eliminate the need for having a complicated setup and simplifying the entire method of having a smart home app. This will therefore attract a wide range of people to consider using this tool and provide automatichome a large segment of the market.

Our mission is to provide a simple and powerful tool that anyone can use and enjoy the benefits of. We would like to make smart home technology available and affordable to a wide range of people. We believe that homes should be technologically advanced as the convenience is outstanding and we are living in the 21st century which is already technologically advanced. We want to shift peoples style of living with the trend of the technological market which is moving towards having smarter capabilities.

THE PROBLEM WE FACE The problem is easily identifiable by looking at existing home automation solutions- they are not plug and play,

and currently, a user without specific technical knowledge and equipment will not be able to run devices from any manufacturer. Having complicated and restricted setups do not allow common people to have flexible smart home technology in their households. These competitors show that there is a present gap in the market where we believe automatichome can fill. First mover entry in filling gaps can always reap huge benefits because it will always be remembered by the market.

Consumers usually like to have simple tools where they are not limited by certain attributes and feel that they are content with. Once this trust is established between the customer and the provider it is very rare that they will shift to a more complicated platform where they are burdened with increasing their overhead costs. Another problem is that a lot of common people do not have the resources to purchase so many gadgets in order to be constricted with technological appliances.

Furthermore, many apps that are currently developed are not user friendly. You have to jump over the documentation or watch a video to understand what is going on. Our app changes this outlook, proposing a system that doesn't require any previous background of using the app. Anyone can 49

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use it: a child, a techie, a grandma and a person that has a full-time job with enough problems that he/she would have to worry about, instead of this.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? The solution we propose has a set of very elaborated yet simple features. For instance, it allows automatic detection of devices which are present in a home. The user can manually control them, or integrate more than one device in a "routine" - which executes a series of actions when certain conditions defined by the user are met. An example of a routine could be: "if the temperature in the room is above 80F, turn on the air conditioning". This feature opens doors to the limitless creativity of the future users, which can now obtain easily whatever they want from the smart home.

for no error or complication. Our priority is to provide customers with a reliable application where they don't need to confuse themselves with going into technical details, hence plug and play. Automatichome would like to make living with smart home technologies as easy as we currently do with our phones, only integrated into your home.

WHY AUTOMATICHOME AND NOT ANOTHER HOME APP? UNIQUE SELLING POINT! Any business should have a unique selling point - it is the competitive advantage of the product/service they deliver: • Our interface is unique in the sense that it's unbelievably simple and intuitive (user friendly), without any actual similarities in the market.

These "routines" will be executed by the block- • Our analogy between automatically executchain on which the app will be stored, in a simed routines and smart contracts is special. ilar way to how smart contracts are impleThis allows not only the user to have a limmented right now. To create another analogy, itless creativity, but it makes the execution the communication between the central hub of them secure, private and flawless. of the smart home and the back end will be done like transactions.

• A newcomer to the IoT should use our app because it is simple and flexible, making anThis not only makes the smart home network ything achievable without much effort. It is hard to hack, but it defines a structure and cresecure and private because of the way it is ates an ecosystem that can contain any home built on the blockchain. that has smart appliances. We believe that having a safe network for people to control • A veteran of the IoT industry shall be their homes is a key variable in the creation of convinced to make a change only by playing automatichome. The blockchain will allow for a few minutes with the app and testing it to smooth functional capabilities that leave room discover that it can fulfill his needs.

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IOT MARKET Forbes says that the global IoT market is projected to grow from shy of $3T in 2014 to $8.9T in 2020. PwC says $6T will be spent on IoT solutions between 2015 and 2020. The market is very promising and it can potentially grow even more if a good solution is launched.

Since the market is big, even a percentile share of the market can bring back huge profits. The largest growth, according to BI Intelligence Estimates, is in home-targeted solution (43%) between 2014-2019.

THE DOMOCO TOKEN The DOMOCO token will be an ERC20 token which operates on the Ethereum network, which can be stored on any compatible wallet.

It will consist of the main source of payment to our app - several tokens will be exchanged for certain features of our app in a certain period of time. Upgrades will be done through the token, as well as refunds. A token economy can't work without the circulation of the token, so the fact that it will be used as a utility to pay for the service will cause it to maintain its value.

An additional feature of the tokens is that they will allow early investors to have early access to the application and receive newsletters on updates and special developments being made with automatichome. The more tokens an investor is willing and able to purchase, the more features they will be able to access as the application is being developed. There will be three to four different segments of accessibility in the long term.

MAY 2018

DISCLAIMER: DOMOCO is a utility token used to have access to the automatichome platform services. DOMOCO does not grant their holders ownership in the company or any dividends.

Therefore, DOMOCO cannot be seen as a security.

ICO An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a fundraising in which a company attracts investors looking for the next big crypto score by releasing its own digital currency, according to MarketWatch. These tokens are generally offered with Ethereum Smart Contracts, which take a specific amount of Ethereum and give you, in return, a specific amount of tokens.

These events have gained popularity in 20162017, but the big boom was in Q1 2018 when they raised $5 billion across over 150 companies, which is more than what 2016 and 2017 offered added up. This means that the public show a big interest in these fundraising events, making big technologies skyrocket and gain plenty of funding to implement the idea.

We consider that having an ICO is an essential part of the project because it will bring exposure and it will raise interest in the community for a project like this. This is also a way to test the market, and it will help to establish forecasts for the first few years of the company.

The pre-launch period will last 6 months and access will be established between ICO investors depending on how much they invested.

This will help us concentrate on the feedback of the most prominent early investors.

THE MANAGING TEAM Our managing team consists of Tudor Coman, Chris Henien, and Mihail Feraru. They have

. We believe that having a safe network for people to control their homes is a key variable in the creation of automatichome.

Automatichome would like to make living with smart home technologies as easy as we currently do with our phones, only integrated into your home.

entrepreneurial roots and spirit, so are determined to turn their idea into a reality. In 2017, they buckled up for the long trip to success with a high-minded ambition and determination. Tudor Coman, the CEO, has been previously awarded by NASA and Oracle Academy for his work. Chris Henien, COO, is a Hult International Business School alumni, while Mihail Feraru, CTO, has been tinkering with hacking, now being able to identify security flaws and leaks with ease.

Most of our operations are being held in Bucharest, while our tech HQ and operational HQ are situated in Cairo. Los Angeles is the R&D center where we test the market and come up with new ideas. The core team is backed-up by professional business & technology advisors and mentors. Our current challenge is to raise interest in the VC market, to set up a rock solid business model for them and acquire funds for a token distribution event, also known as an ICO. A big community is also important for a project like this.

Our company will be incorporated in Estonia, as it is both a great legislation for remote companies and digital nomads, as well as a hub for ICOs, having good regulation and permissive, especially on utility tokens.

This is how we believe we can change the near future with our idea and this is how we imagined bringing the living standard of the 21st century in the 21st century while excluding problems such as surveillance, security leaks and lack of flexibility.

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MAY 2018

Xriba is Here,

The Innovative Platform for Accounting Management Xriba is a blockchain based company that adds transparency and accountability to token sales. The company works with partners to distribute funds made from token sales to companies that are still starting up and have a potentially bright future.

by NAEEM ASLAM Chief Market Analyst

Xriba has a community that can be likened to the token distribution model. Their company carries out the review and analysis of the fund's release schedule, oversees the distribution of funds to companies, and finally follows up on funds released.

THE ADVANTAGES OF XRIBA Xriba offers businesses the possibility of automating billing processes, managing the relationship with customers and suppliers optimally and without intermediaries and freeing up time from low added-value tasks to focus on business development activities.

Security is another major advantage: using an automatic billing management system allows you to track every single payment within chains of blocks that

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remain unaltered over time, thanks to of finances more effective. This is made the technology behind Xriba, the Block- possible because Xriba uses the blockchain, for a fraud-proof database. chain and allows payments through a decentralized method.

Xriba also allows users to be aware of the level of reliability of their business HOW TO PAY INVOICES counterparts: through its decentralized WITH XRIBA system, it is possible to check the solid- From theory to practice: this innovative ity and trustworthiness rating for each corporate administration management customer at any time by consulting the software allows companies to first reworldwide trust ranking. cord and then pay all bills in a very simHere's why with Xriba the transparency ple way: of business relations becomes reality: Each user has a personalized email adA CORPORATE CASH FLOW dress to send accounting documents to.

PLATFORM Through a sophisticated optical reading The corporate cash flow platform of system invoices are scanned, read and Xriba allows for a transparent analysis recorded in the application, automatiof funds sent to a token contract. The cally generating the payment schedule. corporate cash flow platform to effectively function makes use of the block- Upon expiry, personnel in charge of auchain artificial intelligence and decenthorizing payments will receive a notralized wallet through the hash time tification on their device to pay the inlocked contracts. voice, with a simple click to confirm the transfer of the money.

IMPROVES PERFORMANCE WITH THE BLOCKCHAIN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS By making financial transactions much USED ON BEHALF OF COMPANIES faster and easier between companies, Xriba’s potential is unlimited: in adXriba improves the performance of the dition to an easy management of paycompanies and makes the management ments via Blockchain – which will take

MAY 2018

place by making use of cryptographic safety and cryptocurrencies’ dynamism – the software will make available to users the artificial intelligence to manage the invoices in an easy and automatic way.

Thanks to an OCR complex machine-readable and machine-learning system, recording invoices will be as easy as sending an email. After issuing an invoice in digital format to the e-mail address associated with Xriba’s Company account, the documents will be automatically filed within an in-house timetable.

Artificial intelligence software, with the help of a team of professionals, will take charge of every single invoice, and generate independently the whole set of payment dates.

TIME CAN BE CONVERTED TO ADDED VALUE THANKS TO XRIBA All companies are nowadays forced to face a huge amount of working time to manage payments, invoices and, more in general, the business accounting.

There is so much bureaucracy which cannot be procrastinated and which, consequently, takes time out of added value activities, so very precious to increase the business and make each company on the market get off the ground.

Xriba plans to make changes by: the new innovative platform which will enable all cash management transactions to be automated, and by saving time and staff they will be then finalized to the company development.

make payments with other cryptocurrencies.

This is an excellent method employed by Xriba, as it means they have helped companies eliminate the services of middlemen and escrow managers, as well as the high cost that comes with engaging their services.

The company works with partners to distribute funds made from token sales to companies that are still starting up and have a potentially bright future.

The decentralized wallet of Xriba also means payments and transactions on the Xriba blockchain are well secured, this limits the activities of hackers breaking into firewalls of its companies, which originally characterizes the centralized payment system.

Xriba is the right choice to stand out of the crowd, as it is highly innovative and is Managing corporate administration effectivedesigned to eliminate delays in payments ly is one of the greatest challenges of the future of technology applied to the business world. and the need for constant reminders.

Not only that: thanks to Xriba, transferring timings of financial resources amongst companies will be reset, in an easy, practical and above all, in a safe method. This is possible because of cryptography.

The innovative software will manage to register the whole process of payments and will automate all financial reporting practices making them remain always visible and available thanks to the unalterable Blockchain technology.

XRIBA USES A DECENTRALIZED WALLET Xriba as a company working on the blockchain uses the hash time locked contracts to affect a decentralized wallet payment system. These companies working with Xriba's token can

Xriba can now make this become a reality: this new software is designed to record transactions quickly and simply thanks to artificial intelligence, allowing you to automate payments of invoices and the receipt of proceeds from sales, exploiting the potential of the Blockchain.

This is a real turning point for entrepreneurs who want to give a concrete boost to their businesses: a solid company with great prospects is judged by how efficient the management of its whole accounting system is.

Above all, in today's global market, where only 35% of companies meet payment deadlines, Xriba is the right choice to stand out of the crowd, as it is highly innovative and is designed to eliminate delays in payments and the need for constant reminders.

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MAY 2018

The Great Disruption: Unleashing the Quantum Blockchain

by BROOKE HART

Hubezoo, an internetwork protocol which utilizes a quantum blockchain, is expected to be one of the largest ICO’s of 2018. Their ICO launch begins on April 30th, 2018. UnaGold is the digital gold standard token that powers Hubezoo network.

Hubezoo is expected to use ICO funds for the first phase of the Bankezoo protocol, to be introduced in August 2018. It will then expand through 2020 for the complete development of the internetwork.

The objective of the Hubezoo inThe objective of the Hubezoo innovative novative platplatform is to introduce quantum appliIDENTIFYING THE form is to incations for social media, commerce, and QUANTUM BLOCKCHAIN more effective online information interWhile blockchain is expanding troduce quanfaces. opportunities in a decentraltum applications ized format, there are known for social media, The premises of this futuristic technoloissues with scalability and ingy are a framework which streamlines so- teractivity. Hubezoo quantum commerce, and cial media, commerce, and information blockchain functions simulta- more effective into an all in one global interlink or inter- neously in a centralized and online informanetwork. The consolidated approach cre- decentralized fashion creating tion interfaces. ates 100 x faster searches and more effective interactions online than all current models.

Hubezoo quantum platform approach works with big data, organizing it into niche hubs. Hubezoo uses AI – IA, or artificial intelligence for interactive analytics. The AI-IA innovation organizes relevant information and disseminates what users are navigating and looking for. The result is hyperspeed, direct searches, and social media with new navigational features to find relevant data.

a global interlink with all tech platforms.

Hubezoo has scalable quantum power because it offloads most of big data which does not need to be block chained. Hubezoo quantum blockchain approach is the great disruptor to the current structure of the internet and the new blockchain models as well.

Quantum applications are not only able to move from node to node; block to block. They also discern the most relevant information at hyperspeed, finding the data which is most relevant to the blockchain. The technology is currently offered with a qubit structure, now used in the banking arena.

The architecture of Hubezoo is divided into 22 niche categories which hold and guides relevant big data. The organization and navigational features offered through the technology provide a needed upgrade for users to find trustworthy and The quantum approach changes the transparent information. blockchain interactions. It has the capac54

ity to interlink blockchains by organizing the information in each blockchain.

While blockchains and information all remain separate with each platform, there is also an interlinking structure, offering a decentralized – centralized equilibrium.

Brooke Hart, co-founder of Hubezoo, states “Quantum applications help us to think in 3D instead of through linear equations. With our innovative algorithm, we navigate differently. We don’t go in a straight line, which often leads to fragmentation, but create a matrix of information, finding the most relevant points to connect to; layer by layer. The innovation helps the blockchain and the Internet to become accessible and transparent to everyone.”

With the quantum applications, the platform has the capacity to expand and scale with both known and unknown factors relating to big data.

THE UNAGOLD ICO TOKEN A feature of the Hubezoo ICO is with the introduction of Unagold, the official ICO token.

Like other features of the interlinking platform, Unagold has the capacity to connect to other platforms, acting as a “revolving door” for all currencies.

MAY 2018

When using Unagold, users have more power in their decisions with transactions. Cryptocurrencies, traditional currencies, big data and smart contracts can all be interchanged within the platform or interlinked to other blockchain or traditional centers. The transactions offer a compatible interface between the real world of financial institutions and all virtual platforms.

When using quantum applications with Unagold, users find the most relevant ways to hyperspeed compatible transactions, dependent on the consumer spending and personal requirements. AI – IA navigates the commerce for better applications with the token.

Unagold will function with quantum releases of the token. Multiple layers will be introduced by category, offering several formats of the digital currency. For instance, government, banking, and countries can integrate Unagold with their own currency layer for an open but secure trading platform.

Babaji Maharaj, the founder of Hubezoo, states “The Unagold token is based on a smart design which perfectly creates the digital gold standard token. A functional and practical cryptocurrency that has diverse applications is absolutely necessary for the global community.”

The Unagold token is not only designed as a quantum, open, revolving door. 3% of the token will go into the Hubezoo’s global reserve fund.

The global reserve fund is an intermediary for the company. It works as a savings or vault system for the UnaGold token. The Global Reserve fund will secure the tokens within the site, so the monetary system is stabilized, and all users are protected.

THE BANKEZOO INTERFACE Phase 1 of the Hubezoo protocol will introduce the Bankezoo. The Bankezoo functions as a core component of the internetwork. It is the first social media, commerce and data platform for all global finance.

Bankezoo provides an online platform which integrates traditional and cryptocurrencies. While remaining decentralized, institutions work with consumers for different experiences.

The Bankezoo consists of a fluid interchange with social media, commerce, and information. Users expand their use of social media.

There is the ability to use official correspondence with banking officials or cryptocurrency blockchains as well as public or casual conversations.

Commerce within the Bankezoo hyperspeeds transactions. The first layer deciphers information for relevant data for a transaction, allowing consumer opportunities for all account formats as well as digital currency applications.

Information is also offered within the Bankezoo, providing a service which allows users to identify and remain educated with banking data.

With AI – IA, relevancy, and transparency within banking systems are readily available to users.

parency and trust of information which is offered online.

The tech triad is inclusive of the three major hubs introduced with the technology. Govezoo, Bankezoo, and Shopezoo create the central interlinking system with the quantum technologies.

By offering organized information, commerce, and social media in these three areas, it alters our online interface.

The trust is not only identified with central hubs.

The AI – IA approach, as well as quantum applications, create transparency. When information is organized and navigates with a better infrastructure, it helps relevant information to immediately be available.

It also halts the requirements which tech companies now use relating to data breaches and abusive use of information.

The tech triad and the interlinking system between institutions and the community creates a balance or golden bridge. There is an infrastructure for decentralization as well as centralization, creating a median which users use for a combination of openness and privacy as well as security.

The Bankezoo interface interlinks to other niche hubs, specifically to hyperspeed transactions while providing multiple layers for accounts, transactions, and use of all formats of currencies.

THE FUTURE OF COMMERCE A powerful feature which is available through Hubezoo is the commerce interlinking system.

Information is divided by category as well as by how users want to shop.

THE TECH TRIAD OF TRANSPARENCY AND TRUST The approach of Hubezoo is to offer what is called a “tech triad.” The approach offers trans-

The interlinking system expands to a physical – digital interface. The organization of the system is designed to create more opportunities to sell products and services online.

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There is an organization of different types of commerce, ranging from large e-commerce businesses to individual entrepreneurs. Consumer and business empowerment is central to the expansion of the Hubezoo protocol.

WHERE SOCIAL MEDIA IS TRULY SOCIAL Current approaches to social media are fragmented and limited, while data breaches continue to accelerate with today’s popular platforms.

The launch of the Hubezoo The features used with commerce ICO introduces and the integration with AI – IA as the world’s most well as quantum applications are designed to create opportunities for powerful, all-inevery individual. With the proper clusive platform organization, it allows consumers to which utilizes be directed to the choices they deinnovative techsire for a purchase. nology to interAs the protocol develops, mirror change how we platforms will be created for busiinteract online. ness exchange. The design is expected to assist corporations, medium size businesses, and entrepreneurs.

The founders have projected the system will introduce over 1 billion new entrepreneurs and opportunities through the blockchain.

The design is created with the vision of creating prosperity and sustainability for the global economy.

Hart states, “Our platform was created so everyone wins. We are interested in opportunity and prosperity for the global economy. We believe that the proper, organizational platform can create a sustainability wheel, where there is prosperity for everyone instead of poverty.”

The commerce approach offers over 8 streams of income. Hubezoo does not rely on selling ads as a primary source of revenue. Integrating other forms of interactivity helps to expand the revenue for the company and how it can be used.

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The Hubezoo social media platform changes the way which users connect, mirroring the physical experiences of networking and social interactions.

Allocated funds will be used to develop the Hubezoo business and the innovative technologies. A total of 8% is designated for prototype development and the technology team with 3% designated for R&D. Another 8% of Hubezoo funds will be available for marketing. Of these, 1.5% will be designated as a part of their bounty program.

To start with the global reserve fund, 3% will be provided for the security of the token. Advisors have an allocation of 8% and manageSocial interactions are divided by ment has 10% available. A total of 60% of the category and discerned with AI – IA. funds will be provided to the public.

Users use greater controls with privacy or open networks, specifically The beginning of the ICO offers a 25% disby identifying how they want to in- count of Unagold tokens within the first 14 terface with specific groups. days and the next 14 days will receive a 10% discount of Unagold tokens.

Security within social media, as well as other interfaces, include five layers THE FUTURE IS HERE of security. This is not only for public utilization. The vision of the Hubezoo began with the deGovernment officials, for instance, use security sire to create transparency, trust and economwith interactions with other officials or the public. ic opportunity within the global community.

The fluidity of the social media system offers a logical and transparent approach not only for the public but also for those interested in private online conversations or group-based data.

WHAT INVESTORS NEED TO KNOW There are currently 200 million Unagold tokens available for the ICO launch. These are available at the price of $1.50 or .0026 Ethereum. They function as an ERC – 20 with a smart contract.

The launch of the Hubezoo ICO introduces the world’s most powerful, all-inclusive platform which utilizes innovative technology to interchange how we interact online.

Maharaj states, “The Hubezoo internetwork, quantum blockchain, and AI – IA are clearly positioned on the new tech frontier and are ready to catch the next big evolutionary wave into 2020 and beyond. This is why we like to call Hubezoo the internetwork of the future....because that is exactly who we are.

As quantum layers are available with the toWe are excited for everyone to join us for kens, there is no hard cap with the ICO launch. this great journey to make the world a betAfter using all tokens for layer 1, Hubezoo will ter place for us all. more happy, successful, introduce a second, diverse layer for new inhealthy, and peaceful.” vestments. With the technical development from the ICO, the token investments will Get involved with the Hubezoo ICO by visiting transfer to the Hubezoo protocol. www.hubezoo.com.

Blockchain - this is the thing that secures transactions today. We were sending coins around however were being faced with the big problem that they could be cracked or hacked.

MAY 2018

Bitcoin: A Trip Down Memory Lane Anna Palmina from Palmina Invest Interviews Bitcoin Pioneer Joerg Molt

by ANNA PALMINA Founder & Managing Partner of Palmina Invest

ANNA PALMINA: Hello, Joerg! As far as I know you are one of the founders of Bitcoin, one of the team members of engineers, software developers and programmers who did it. How and when did everything begin?

JOERG MOLT: The creation of Bitcoin was a long journey. My parents bought me my first home computer which came out in 1982. They sent me to courses all over the world, I was travelling and studying computer technology during school vacations.

In December of 1994, a good friend called me and asked me: «What do you think of the idea of creating a digital land with all the freedom and power by creating digital money? » At first, I thought he was crazy! He said: «Think about George Orwell's book «1984’», where digital slavery is built on computer technology». He went on to say that soon we will see how fast the computer world progresses, and if it goes the right way for the wrong guys - they will control everything. It was at this point when I began thinking about it.

We believed that all people should regulate a new thing, which was coming out so that people have the freedom of money. This is a totally different point of view in comparison to what people think. And then Satoshi Nakamo-

And he's from Canada, right?

Yes. Many people from former times know him, but no one knows his real name. He never left any footprints anywhere. You meet him and then he rushes away, and you never see him again for a long time, and then he pops up again. Today we have a system that no one can crack. Even if you try, you will not be able to do it in 150 years, Nakamoto is the only guy in the world who can rebuild it.

to came along, it was the beginning of 2008. He understood the problems we had and found solutions for them.

So, there were a few other cryptocurrencies before Bitcoin?

Yes, but these were not the cryptocurrencies which we have today, there was no blockchain behind it. It was only a monetary system based on computer services. Blockchain - this is the thing that secures transactions today. We were sending coins around however were being faced with the big problem that they could be cracked or hacked.

We could not find a solution until Satoshi Nakamoto came up with the genius block idea.

What did you think about Bitcoins and Mt.GOX? When it came to 2012-2013, this was the big time for trading. No one recognized Bitcoin as a payment system. We were waiting for what was going to happen in the next few years. We were all guessing, after the crisis of 2008, that something was going to happen.

When we created Bitcoin, we did not know that the crisis was coming. But it was good for us, because if it did not happen, maybe, Bitcoin would have been as any other coin today.

Today Mt.GOX would be Coinbase.

The first is that at MT.Gox people did not care about private keys. What happened at Mt.Gox was that the guys saw that there were a lot of money in it and 59

MAY 2018

today we know that the New York State was behind the crack of Mt.Gox. If you do not have your private key - you do not have ownership. Many people did not understand, and they did not listen. They were greedy, they were running for money and wanted to make money in a way that was not normal.

other coins you can crack because they do not even understand what proof-of-work is. They say: «oh, it's high energy costs! ». But these high energy costs are the security of Bitcoin. This is what we call a «physical thing». When a computer validates a transaction - it must prove it. The other coins make it by a protocol -a proof-of-stake, it is a computer protocol.

When we created Bitcoin, we did not know that the crisis Do you know where are those bitcoins now?

Who owns all these bitcoins now? was coming. But There’s no ownership. The keys are gone for But when a coin is created, or a it was good for good. No one can access them. For example, block is created in the computus, because if it you can paint US dollars. If they are stolen er world - there is a heat, a physidid not happen, from a bank, there is a painting on them and cal heat. The computer may be on you can see if you hold them in your hand if full time, and then you see the com- maybe, Bitcoin one is from the bank robbery. puter is running high, it’s getting would have been warm. This is what happens in the as any other coin We can paint bitcoins. This is why Mt.Gox is bitcoin blockchain: if a block is cretoday. trackable, they can say the funds are there. But ated, the computer must approve now we have a technology like TumbleBit. We can mix it all up so that you cannot say that it comes from one address to another.

You will not be able to track any bitcoin transactions. We now have a system which is creating one million transactions in a second. It’s called Lightning. We would have four million transactions which are completely blind. It is more secured than Monero, for example, and it is going above privacy.

You can not crack down Monero, Litecoin, DogeCoin - this is not possible because these are coins on the Bitcoin blockchain. But all the 60

this block and a million of computers must approve this block. They must calculate a key code and this calculation is making energy. And this energy, for example 35 TW, is reported and so we can prove that the computer has done this work.

If a computer says that it has done it, but it cannot say how much energy it has wasted for it. it is kicked out of the network. Therefore, the energy prices are saving the Bitcoin network and many people don't want to accept this thing.

What about difficulty increase?

One needs a year to close the block using my home computer. What will be in one or two years? How to reduce the energy costs?

Bitcoin is a monetary system. And there are 21 million bitcoins coming out and the mining is going up.

We have a high peak: about 4.8 TW per hour. The whole dollar economy spends 350 TW of electricity per hour. Bitcoin has it for security reasons and makes a small effect.

If you want to produce 4.8 TW per hour, you have solar plants, but their energy efficiency is not enough. We are going for mining with a water craft. For example, in Austria we have green energy with windcraft. We have a new project that is called «Free energy». People are moving, and you can gather energy from moving.

What we will see in five years is companies, running everything on electricity in a different way, for mining as well. But you need this electricity to make sure that the proof-of-work was done, and no one can crack it down. This is a key element of the security. There are other blockchain choices, but they are crackable.

MAY 2018

So, it will be proof-of-work? You will not move Bitcoin to the proof-of-stake?

No. The proof-of-stake, for example, has a problem called double spend. I can reset the network and if I have an offline wallet and store my Ethereums in an offline wallet. And you have an online wallet also.

I can set the whole network of Ethereum, for example, if it goes to proof of stake make a reset and then that is like you set your computer back to earlier time, when the problem was not there. Then you can load your offline Ethereums back to the online system. And then you have a double spend.

An efficiency of Bitcoin blockchain is that it is telling the truth because no one controls it.

Today the computer can create the code, it is not able to recreate its own code. This is the power of Bitcoin today and even a quantum computer can not go for hashing a code because this code was created this way. You have one code here and another code is created behind. if you want to get this code we have to crack down the whole system. It is impossible because the algorithm of Bitcoin has a hash code, a time lock.

How many Bitcoins are in circulation?

Six and a half million.

And all other Bitcoins are lost, yes? So, it is six and a half million?

Some people will hold bitcoins because they are waiting for the price to rise.

And when all Bitcoins are mined, can you do something to issue more Bitcoins? Is it possible?

No. You can not go into the protocol, you cannot do anything in there. It is locked.

That's why the price is going up. 21 million and the last ones are coming out in 2140. And then it is gone.

What do you think about the current price of Bitcoins?

This year the price of Bitcoin is always going up and down: volatility is a good thing for Bitcoin because it was created as a monetary system, not as a trading system.

What will be the price of bitcoin by the end of this year or in five years?

Well, I expect it would be about $35,000$40,000.

What is the name of the wallet which we can use for low transaction [costs]? And what about Lightning?

It is called AirBitz and it is only a mobile wallet, a decentralized wallet. You can use it for cheaper transactions. It is not controlled by anyone. If someone is doing ASIC mining out there, you can route this wallet to your ASIC miner. This is a very good and strong wallet: you can set your transaction fee by yourself.

You must play around, try it out with small amounts. But you will see that you can do ten thousand-dollar transactions for $10 or something like this, it is working.

Investors see one thing: the price is going up, we must stabilize the price. If it is going down - we can not satisfy our customers, and it is the same. If the transaction fee is going down the people who invested in mining will be disappointed. This is why they are always talking about mining fees.

We have six million accounts on Coinbase and they push the blocks out in a slow way, so, we have this problem. We have already tested Lightning on Litecoin and it is working fantastic. Bitcoin is working in a different way from Litecoin.

Many people have not got education and they do not know which wallets are in the market.

Regarding education: could you tell us a few words about Satoshi school?

Satoshi school is working in a two-day course.

We make two days course: one day is about the philosophy behind Bitcoin, why it was necessary to create. The second day is about alt coins and trading, about setting up a wallet. It is about all the technology, Lightning, how the blockchain is working. We have courses starting from twenty people. If you can organize 20 people or more, we come to your site. This is the magic about Satoshi School.

We do not have offices, we save this money. The main thing about is that we will do the two-day course and if people are willing to become teachers - we will stay one week and train new people to become teachers and spread it around.

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MAY 2018

RAWG: play your favorite games to earn crypto Video games have come a long way since cartridge consoles of Nintendo in the 80s to the gargantuan $100B industry. It is one of the few growing markets in media and entertainment with over 2B people playing on PCs, consoles, and mobiles.

And yet it has two major problems that haven't been solved.

by DASHA LYALIN Chief Operating Officer

More than 70% of gamers today do not limit themselves to one platform. Close to 90% of console gamers also play on desktop computers. People enjoy playing on multiple devices, and these devices do not interconnect or share their data. In the world where tens of thousands of games are released yearly for a dozen different platforms and stores, it is hard to navigate in this sea of choice.

Every entertainment industry has its central place with a universal database and recommendation algorithms to help you make the right choice—IMDb for movies, Goodreads for books, Spotify for music. Whereas the gaming industry is too fragmented and platform owners do not wish to collaborate because they don't want to lose you as a customer to a different platform.

What's more important, gamers invest lots of time and skills into play, but they do not get anything practical in return. An average AAA title costs around $60 with a few paid expansions or in-

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game purchases that push the price higher to around a $100 price tag. And every game like this demand at least some hours just to understand if you like it or not.

media outlet GamesIndustry.biz.

RAWG is now developing RAWG tokens, an internal currency to reward gamers for in-game achievements—the best measure of users’ time and skills invested in a game. RAWG users will be able to sync their achievements from Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox with the platform in exchange for tokens, with rare achievements being more valuable than common ones.

People always seek ways to monetize their hobby, some succeeded by becoming game journalists or Twitch streamers, but the competition is already too tough there, which means that your dream of earning by playing will remain a dream.

RAWG utilizes cryptotech and blockchain technology to power its token.

THE SINGLE SOLUTION TO THE The tokens value is backed by advertisTWO PROBLEMS ing: one token equals 10 impressions of Launched in 2017, RAWG has over premium ads on RAWG and can be ex56,000 games now from around 50 changed for partner offers or traded for platforms and stores including Steam, gaming-related goods and services. The PlayStation, Xbox, and mobiles. RAWG initial price of one token is $0.03, and users can interact with games from an- one token is equal to 10 impressions of ywhere and don’t have to jump from premium display ads on RAWG. That platform to platform through this damakes up $3 for 1,000 impressions, tabase. The company has already creat- which is tenfold less than game services ed a centralized community amongst usually have. The funds raised will be ingamers and, through the data collected vested into developing a rewarding sysfrom users, RAWG will also bring the tem, recommendation algorithm, sofirst personalized cross-platform reccial and pro features, and marketing, beommendations to the gaming industry. cause the number of users and targeting data will directly affect the advertising RAWG was publicly presented in beta costs—and thus the token price. this February and got praised for its ‘people first’ approach. It aggregated BEHIND THE GAMES over 700 upvotes on Product Hunt and RAWG is being developed by Behind was featured among the best products The Games, UAB, a Lithuania-based of the day. The ‘IMDb for games’ was company located in the biggest techalso featured in an interview with its park in the Baltics and Nordics. It alCOO Dasha Lyalin in leading gamedev ready has a working product with a vast

MAY 2018

content-rich database of over 56,000 games and 18,000 game creators. RAWG has a set of unique and fun UGC-tools including games collections and emoji reviews. It supports automatic synchronization of games from Steam, PSN, and Xbox, and the team is working to add more platforms in the future. Packed with social features, smooth UI, and deep insights to personal gaming statistics across platforms, RAWG is rushing to become the central place for every gamer and the first video game discovery platform that converts your skills and time into goods and services.

RAWG team boasts of entertainment and media veterans with several successful projects in the past: 2 Gadji Makhtiev. Founder and ex-CEO of a leading Russian gaming outlet — Kanobu.

Gadji raised the valuation of Kanobu from zero to around $9M while keeping the company profitable.

2 Alexey Gornostaev CPO of Kanobu.ru. Former Project Manager of Game Insight, one of the largest mobile game developers in Eastern Europe.

2 Dasha Lyalin. Ex-CEO of mobile VAS and entertainment streaming service inside the largest Eastern European mobile retailer Svyaznoy.

2 Samat Galimov. Former CTO of leading Russian news media Meduza and social e-reading subscription service Bookmate.

The company also closed a $2M investment round this year from venture fund Altair Capital, game developer Wargaming, private inves-

tors, such as Igor Matsanyuk (Game Insight founder), Misha Lyalin (ZeptoLab CEO), Pavel Roytberg. RAWG also secured the help of advisors who are professionals in entertainment and blockchain.

they need. Gamers will be rewarded for their data shared with RAWG while content creators and editors will also be rewarded with tokens for contributing to the community.

RAWG users can Tokens can be exchanged for goods, 2 John Hanke. CEO of Niantic services, or discounts from RAWG’s interact with Inc., responsible for Pokemon partners or changed, gifted or sold. games from an- Advertisers will buy tokens on the GO. Ex-VP Google of Geo Prodywhere and uct Management. market and change each one for 10 2 Vyacheslav Makarov. Head of the don’t have to views of premium display adverWorld of Tanks Product Group, jump from plat- tising on RAWG, thus generating head of R&D at Wargaming.net. the value and investing in the crypform to platform to market. RAWG aims to have a Co-creator of World of Tanks. through this da- unique set of data about its users for 2 Eugene Tartakovsky. Founder of Siberia Capital & Research Center tabase. advertising purposes including what and ex-CTO of Santiment. and how people play on multiple de2 Vladislav Kreinin. VP of Sberbank, the larg- vices. Finally, developers will get an insightful est bank in Russia, Central, and Eastern Eu- way to deeply understand gamers’ preferences. rope.

To achieve optimal tokenomics, RAWG has RAWG has reached agreements with some big announced a crowdsale with a target to raise partners to work further on RAWG and RAWG $10M, some of which has already been covtokens. This includes Wargaming, whose game ered by Crypto Bazar, an early stage investWorld of Tanks has 140M players; Xsolla, the ment fund, which closed the softcap of $2M, leading billing provider for game companies; and the company has already raised $3M more OMD, one of the largest advertising compaduring the private sale. RAWG is still accepting nies in the world; Deloitte, a Big Four account- some private investors starting with $100,000 ing firm; and more game companies, that pro- and plans to hold the public sale late in May. vides legal and tax consulting services for the crowdsale.

ADDITIONAL INFO RAWG token: https://token.rawg.io/ RAWG TOKENS, LIVE THIS SUMMER RAWG website: https://rawg.io/ RAWG tokens will be live in the summer of Video about RAWG token: 2018. RAWG tokens will create a one-of-awww.youtube.com/watch?v=IDViQi5fV6g kind open ecosystem for gamers, advertisers, Telegram group: https://t.me/RAWGeng and developers where everybody will get what Media-kit: https://goo.gl/nX1VWQ 63

MAY 2018

The Acute Crypto-Solution Called Acutecoin Cryptocurrency has opened doors for different innovations in recent times and changed the way the world envisions, imagines, and thinks finance. One of the greatest cryptocurrency revolutions to occur is the entrance of the new cryptocurrency ICO coin, AcuteCoin.

AcuteCoin is made up of a team of Cryptocurrency traders, effective miners and highly informed blockchain technology consultants, making its ICO the forerunner to the most productive idea in the blockchain world.

The AcuteCoin team instituted a colby ICO CROWD lection of professionals from every aspect of the industry to ensure that they achieve the highest degree of success thereby serving you better. AcuteCoin is a multi-platform investment opportunity which offers investors a myriad of investment potential. Our lending platform has vast benefits way beyond lending. Away from the regular crypto-lending, the coin also allows you to earn revenue through mining, trading, buying, and selling of Bitcoin and Altcoin’s.

WHY ACUTECOIN IS A DIFFERENT MACHINE Income Sharing AcuteCoin members will enjoy the benefits of sharing in the overall growth 64

The funds generated will be used in the following ways highlighted in the diagram below:

of the platform. The operations will establish physical mining operations within an economically friendly environment. The AcuteCoin team will be accumulating and managing a crypto-

currency portfolio with a focus on small cap coins and tokens with the greatest potential. The income earned from these efforts will be shared amongst the members of AcuteCoin community.

MAY 2018

Security Our cryptocurrency offers an ICO built after the Litecoin concept on which POW, POS and x11 algorithm have been installed. These security features are preventative measures from theft or duplication and are based on cryptographic protocols that are extremely difficult to breach, giving you a complete assurance that your investment is safe with AcuteCoin. The developers of AcuteCoin place high sensitivity on functionality to ensure the highest level of security for its investors.

share investment possibilities and strategic trading ideas.

AcuteCoin is a multi-platform investment opportunity which offers investors a myriad of investment potential.

Ease of Use The AcuteCoin platform is fortified with a mobile cryptocurrency exchange, APP, which will be attached to the post-ICO AcuteCoin Debit Card. Users will have access to the mobile cryptocurrency exchange APP, enabling the AcuteCoin members to trade and transfer profits to their debit card. The debit card allows users to spend, earn and much more.

The Merchant Debit Card Idea AcuteCoin is not built for the sole purpose of lending; instead, it offers its users a debit card platform setup to serve other cryptocurrencies thus allowing other income streams within the community. Your income is not limited to AcuteCoin, the ICO provides users with a broad horizon to earn from anywhere and everywhere.

Exciting Games and Rewards AcuteCoin will offer exciting games within its member’s area allowing users to play and earn AcuteCoin’s. Our gaming platform allows you to have fun while earning rewards in AcuteCoin. Here at AcuteCoin, we thoroughly follow the saying “All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy”, except that here even when playing, you are getting paid.

Social Interaction To ensure a marketplace where users interact, meet and trade, AcuteCoin integrates Social platforms into its design system to ensure ease of access to user accounts and quick access to support staff. Now you can deal with real people, with whom you can connect to

Additionally, there are several ways through which you can earn profits as an AcuteCoin member. Trading, Buying and Selling, AcuteCoin Affiliate & Bounty Programs, Cryptocurrency Portfolio, AcuteCoin Staking, Mobile Crypto Currency Exchange and Debit Card service provider. You can earn so much more

than you imagined possible. We will now proceed to shed more light on some of the ways listed above: • Referrer Program: The AcuteCoin team believes in the theory of rewarding members in every way they can. So, they came up with the referrer program, the scheme works thus; for every new member that joins the team courtesy of a previous member’s recommendation, the inviting member gets paid. This, in turn has fostered both organizational and individual growth.

• Staking for Profit: Members can also get massive return on investments by holding AcuteCoin in their wallets. This can be done through the AcuteCoin Web wallet or Desktop wallet which will be launched in August 2018. Another massive bonus this brings is AcuteCoin runs a “no limit” staking policy i.e. you can hold as many coins as you want in your wallets thereby increasing your profits. The staking will be 4% per month for the first quarter and then 10% annually.

• Lending: This works by utilizing the AcuteCoin algorithmic trading bots. Members receive interest daily by lending liquidity to the AcuteCoin algorithmic trading bots.

Don’t Miss this Revolutionary blockchain based Lending Platform, Join NOW! 65

MAY 2018

The Rise of the Security Token As many believe, security tokens are the next big thing in the cryptocurrency and blockchain spheres. The reasons for investment in an ICO may be that the ICO's token or coin has an innate advantage - it gives the owner of this asset access to a service, a say in how the ICO develops or even a share of the project's earnings; if the project is a viable one, its innate benefits will increase over time, which in turn will push the price of the token up, which means the buyer will make a profit.

The first ICO debuted in 2014 seven projects were able to raise a total of $30 million for their individual projects.

2015 saw another seven projects using token sales to raise money - garnering a total of $9 million in the process. It was in 2016 that ICOs started proliferatby ing, with 43 new projects raising funds TAL SHECHTMAN through digital crowdfunding. The total amount raised was $256 million. It was also during this year that the infamous DAO hack attack took place, which caused the project to fail and even led to a hard fork in the Ethereum blockchain. Then, in 2017, ICO activity exploded: 342 new tokens were issued through ICOs, raising more than $5.4 billion worth of funds. ICO sales were frenzied affairs. The fear of missing out kicked in and fundamentals were thrown out the window. By that time, ICOs had overtaken the more traditional venture capital as the number one method of raising funds for blockchain and cryptocurrency related projects.

2017 has also introduced the turning point for ICOs as securities, when the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that if any token sold to US investors had the attributes of a security, then the US Securities Laws would be imposed on that token sale. However, the challenge that ICOs are facing is whether their token offerings are classified as utility tokens or

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security tokens. The difference is that security tokens are backed by external assets that are tradeable. They give companies the ability to issue tokens that can represent shares of its stock.

Such tokens fall under the purview federal securities laws. Utility tokens can be used to access a project's services or products. They are not meant to be investments and they do not give the token holders any ownership of the company (the way security tokens do). Such tokens can be compared to gift cards that can be exchanged for services or products.

To figure out whether a token is a utility or a security, the Howey Test is applied. This helps clarify whether a sale can be qualified as an investment contract. If it is, then the token sale is a security and therefore must follow securities regulations. The four premises in the Howey Test are: the buyer is investing money or assets; the buyer expects to make a profit by investing in this project; the investment or project is in a common enterprise, and the profits depend only on the efforts of a third party. However, there are a few grey areas which is the reason for the lack of clarity on whether tokens would qualify as utilities or securities. The definition of 'common enterprise' is not clear. This term has not been properly defined, which has led to several litigations with

MAY 2018

regards to investments. Also, there is no clari- and, restrictions are imposed which ty on how the SEC plans to use the Howey Test can severely limit a project's ability on cryptocurrencies. to create a widely adopted platform that is necessary for its success.

At the end of the day, the Chairman of the SEC, Jay Clayton, seems quite clear in his However, there are many advantagmind that all tokens are securities. While ICOs es to an ICO being a security, and may have designed their tokens to be used as no longer should a token be strucutility tokens, the SEC looks at how they are tured to avoid regulation (or avoidbeing used: the "substance over form" rule. ing the US altogether in many casThis means that if you bought tokens issued es). These advantages will help overduring an ICO in the anticipation that they come the issue of scalability in would increase in value (and so generate a the long run. Issuing security toprofit), then that asset would qualify as a sekens that are compliant with Fedcurity token - even if the ICO wants it to be a eral laws is cheaper and more effiutility token. cient than issuing utility tokens in an ICO. There are multiple ways in Hence, the security token is indeed the future. which security tokens can be issued The cryptocurrency world suffers from lack of while being compliant with regularegulation leading to a certain amount of law- tory frameworks - under Regulation lessness. Governments across the world will A+, Regulation D, Regulation S, and not allow this sort of a free for all to continue. Regulation Crowdfunding. Legal The SEC has already begun its crackdown on risk is reduced, and both the issuer ICOs and their related coin offerings in the US. and the investor are protected unAnd other countries' regulators are also taking der securities laws. This means that steps to regulate this nascent industry. With more institutional investors rathlawmakers looking at regulating the industry, er than get-rich-quick speculators it is becoming more and more likely that sewould be interested in investing in curity tokens will be the next big thing in the an ICO. It is very positive for the cryptocurrency world. project as it would have solid backing to succeed. Also, security tokens Since the regulator crackdowns on token offer- carry some enhancement to conings, many ICOs have been desperately trying ventional financial products by getto avoid having their tokens classified as secu- ting rid of the middleman from the rities. This is because of the belief that once a investment transactions (normaltoken has been deemed a security, regulations ly some banker). The elimination of

intermediaries’ results to free market exposure, faster deal execution, lower fees, lack of financial institution manipulation, automated service functions and bigger potential investor base.

The elimination of intermediaries’ results to free market exposure, faster deal execution, lower fees, lack of financial institution manipulation, automated service functions and bigger potential investor base.

Furthermore, projects that have already registered their tokens as securities will not be troubled by the crackdown on entities that do not comply with the securities regulations. This means that their business will not suffer major interruptions because of SEC enforcement actions on unregistered securities offerings. If an ICO issues tokens as utilities but they are later deemed as securities, then that project could end up in trouble - even to the extent of being shut down. The issuance of unregistered securities is in violation of the Securities Act 1933.

And over and above financial penalties, the issuer could even face up to five years of prison. The secondary trading market could also face criminal charges.

Even if the SEC does not have the bandwidth to deal with violators of the law, the people who invested in the ICO can initiate private litigation against the issuer and even against the secondary trading market that facilitated these unregulat67

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ed transactions. It is not only the Federal Securities laws utility token issuers need to worry about. There are also the Blue Sky laws, which are the state-specific securities laws.

And this plays a critical role in ICO transactions as issuers also need to be compliant with the laws of the states in which their buyers reside - if they are not registered as securities.

However, ICOs that are issuing security tokens can seek SEC exemptions such as Rule 506(c), Rule 506(b) as well as Regulation Crowdfunding. Federal laws trump Blue Sky laws. Most buyers do not use their tokens as the utilities they were meant to be. The larger percentage holds their tokens waiting for their "investment" to grow. If an ICO registers its token as a security, then it can offer even greater benefits to its investors such as profit shares, dividends as well as voting rights. The beauty of security tokens is that the same asset can also double up as a utility and still do what it was designed for - to be used in native transactions within the entity's services or products. Utility tokens do not have that versatility of being a "dual-token".

The objective of regulators like the SEC is not to strangle nascent markets such as the ICO and cryptocurrency market. It is, however, the regulator's duty to protect ordinary investors from being taken advantage of by scammers. The more legitimate ICOs are also struggling with the bad press the industry is getting because of a few rotten apples. Most of the pioneers in this ecosystem have welcomed regulations and structure in these new markets.

The bottom line is that where there are rules 68

and laws in place with regards to a code of conduct, not just for the issuers but also for the buyer, it leads to a more stable and fair platform on which people can trade, which in turn leads to growth and evolution. And while these are early days, security tokens proponents believe that they will have the advantage over utility tokens in the long run.

assets (fractionalizing, sensible investment opportunities). Then it is possible to trade those assets along with other investors, establishing liquidity. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs can access bigger pools of capital and maintain greater control of their corporations than they would along with traditional investment schemes. On top of that, the cryptocurrency could build unparalleled opportunity in industries like real estate development wherein 3000 investors may acquire a project, instead of having three private equity companies. In this way, security tokens offer democratized access to investment for investors and entrepreneurs alike.

prospect of tokenized asset ownership can soon entice retail investors and businesses. Whereas traditional stock markets bear by opening hours, proponents think that there is a chance for financial markets to work with the same globally, around-the-clock reach, which makes the digital currency market appealing to the public. Additionally, security tokens allow every member in a big group of investors who may lack the resources and connections to invest in venture capital to take on a small portion of the pie with real, reasonable

raising funds for utility tokens to make speculative gains. But this defeated the entire purpose of the ICO - to foster innovation by offering entrepreneurs funds, scale, anonymity, and fungibility. Therefore, there is a high-likelihood that security tokens will take center-stage in 2018 and 2019. The coming years are about to introduce a massive rise in the figure of prominent security tokens. It is now time for the entire crypto industry to re-evaluate its stance on security tokens and look at it as the path forward in the evolution of crypto and blockchain ecosystems.

The beauty of security tokens is that the same asset can also douCurrently, more and more projects ble up as a utility are looking to release their tokens and still do what in compliance with the SEC guideit was designed lines and this trend is only going for - to be used in to grow. Emerging projects such as Polymath and Tokenise.io, and plat- native transacforms such as Poloniex, Equibit, tions within the and tZERO plan to boost the imporentity’s services tance of the security token indusor products. try. Many advocates think that the In 2017 the major trend was ICOs

MAY 2018

Better Propositions, not Better Whitepapers No, this isn’t yet another article promising the path to the whitepaper (wp) that lays the golden tokens: a wp is simply one element of an orchestrated and managed set of activities, albeit a significant element. While a solid wp is critical to a successful ICO, yours can only ever be solid if it is cohesively presenting and representing a solid, sustainable business proposition with an intelligent, integrated token model… without that, well, I would suggest that maybe you aren’t yet in need of a wp.

by DANIEL STEEVES Strategist, Steeves Solutions

SO, WHO AM I? (and why should you listen to me?)

Starting with full disclosure: by trade I have been providing business & technology consulting for too many years, collaborating with my clients to better position their businesses to accelerate delivery to their goals. I write, advise, critique, fine tune and orchestrate ICO whitepapers and token models, pitch decks, business plans and market propositions. I have raised money; I advise businesses seeking investment; I advise investors in the angel, VC and ICO space on their positions; and I occasionally invest.

All that to demonstrate that, over the years and across my roles I have the interesting and beneficial position of having gained the insights from roles on all sides of a typical ICO ‘square: - the business who are planning the ICO to seek investment (financial or otherwise) - the ICO authors, business stakeholders and advisors who seek to enable that investment

The whitepaper is the window to your Business Vision and how it makes money. It is how you are selling your business to investors and partners, current and future. It describes and connects your business proposition with your markets and your token model.

- the technology, business, implementation and delivery partners investing in a relationship - The readers – those reviewing, typically in consideration of buying your tokens / investing.

Of course, everything written here are simply my views. They’ve been formulated by a lot of lessons learned over the years while designing, architecting and directing very large-scale enterprise projects and products– and working with dozens, of fintech, and other, start-ups, good and bad. But, in all, these are my opinions as to what matters, and why.

TRADITIONAL V. NEW (VC etc v. ICO) At the recent Blockchain Summit in Frankfurt, I was sitting in on a round table at the last minute when I realised the topic up for discussion was ‘should I be looking for VC funding or doing an ICO?” I was, well, more than a little surprised at a table of experts naively asking what I would have thought was a rhetorical question.

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Why rhetorical? An ICO should be considered if you have a viable business model that suits the space (in brief: problem defined; solution provided; revenue paths; intelligent token ‘connection’ to business model). Now, such a model could also go for VC funding – but a model without those basic characteristics will be suitable only for more traditional investment vehicles (VC, Angel, etc.).

THE WHITEPAPER: a pitch deck by any other name And that is the hidden lesson in all of this: no matter how amazing, magical, precise, concise, illustrative, warm and cuddly your whitepaper might be, it only succeeds if the marketing and investor relationship / amplification / ICO execution team gets a strong token model front of the right investors, and in the right context.

The root key word above is “invest” which you might recall as the “speculative placement of resources in anticipation of making a profit”.

It is important to start there because without focus on that definition, you are not positioning yourself to succeed.

The investment element – and the risks – are all that a standard investor is looking for. Yes, 70

the crypto-world might seem to be redefining just what is a standard investor but there are still plenty of them out there, and they’re holding a lot of capital. And the sheer amount of choice, let alone the quality variances mean that they are being forced.

The whitepaper is the window to your Business Vision and how it makes money. It is how you are selling your business to investors and partners, current and future. It describes and connects your business proposition with your markets and your token model.

It is selling the concept primarily on its own merits… which happens to be the key to the mechanics and psychology of selling: the ideal position is one where we put something in front of someone, which allows them in turn to easily see and work out, for themselves, something that is worth buying. We don’t want to be in the position of trying to convince them to buy and we do that by ensuring that the wp is a co-

hesive connected story that enables just that and, in so doing, moves them from the role of passive reader to that of active investor, and a request for your wallet address.

I developed this framework over the course of authoring or collaborating on more than a few whitepapers, augmented from years of directing and delivering complex solutions, proposals and pitches.

THERE ARE TRICKS, but they are obvious The first is in realising that all four sides of the ICO square discussed above actually have the same interests, merely expressed differently, or using a different lexicon.

A “good” whitepaper must present all of those interests in a manner that appeals to the priority of, and is readily accessible by, each reader. Everything needs to be targeted at – and apply directly to – those multiple audiences, with different measurements of value and different prejudices.

“Trick” two is defining a comprehensive structure – and the plan – to make it all happen. This is more than a table of contents: it is an indication that thoughts, concepts and message delivery are alive and well in your organisation – and that

MAY 2018 the problem / the markets Abstract

solutions brief

track record “mission” and aproach

the token Founder’s Introduction

Markets / Business Roadmap Business Overview

free trade opps

written comments video (later, for public offer)

Revenue Paths

Payments

First Targets

Why?

expansion Targets & Timing Primary / Projections Licensing / Francise etc Ancillary

the Requirement

Future Markets & Positioning Expansion / Scaling

Replicate product sets Approaches Targets Progress to date

Direct Franchise Licensed

the challenge The Problem

the flagship product

Products & Services NewCo Whitepaper Framework

Ancillary Products & Futures Roadmap the Token

Token Mechanics Token Model

the Solution

the concept the Benefits Stakeholder Value-Adds Key Components

Token Usage

Commercial Models Stakeholders Players

Proof of Concept where we are Technical Architecture Business Architecture

complementary / enabling services “add-in” services xlsx modelling spreadsheet (basic)

ICO Background ICO Process the Offer

token supply and distribution token value

Abstract

ICO specifics

Founder’s Introduction

3

use of funds

Business Overview

18

Products & Services

20

the Token

3

Founding / Management Team the Team

Advisors Technical Service Providers & Partners

the Contacts

e-mail for info; to invest telegram, reddit, twitter, facebook etc

NewCo Whitepaper Framework

5

the Offer

6

the Team

3

the Contacts

2

References, Disclaimer, Appendices References, Disclaimer, Appendices

someone was organised enough to do it right and think it through… that to many is a KPI used in evaluating the business behind the wp).

The structure also guides the reader directly to their choice of a starting point (and, .doc or PDF format, make sure the table of contents is live, clickable and working). The goal is to make the information as accessible (again, back to the psychology: people find it easier to consume and retain information that was easy to find more than when they work hard to do so.

The third “trick” is to remember that while whitepapers may well be critical, they aren’t everything… just because it is called a whitepaper that doesn’t make it something special… it is yet another form of your sales collateral, plain and simple, in the exact same way that pitch deck, business proposal, tender response, CV or even a takeaway pizza menu would be. It represents your business, your product, your vision.

So, to do that, like any sales collateral, you need to hit a list of Ws to ensure the reader is informed: - What problem is being solved / what is the solution?

- Why is it needed?

- What are the differences from what is already out there?

- When will it be done?

- Who are you proposing will do it?

- Who is going to “buy” it?

- Why is it THE WP STRUCTURE IS THE PLAN TO DELIVERING IT You will always find, in the framework above, the right place to position the answer to these questions. I developed this framework over the course of authoring or collaborating on more than a few whitepapers, augmented from years of directing and delivering complex solutions, proposals and pitches. While it may not suit all, exactly as it is, it remains comprehensive enough to ensure that nothing is missed. From there it needs to fit your specific needs.

This expanded view surely indicates (yes, it is too small to see the detail but is meant to make the point) that creating a whitepaper is not a trivial piece of work.

Now, just a quick note on size. I have seen whitepapers in 10 pages or less: chances are pretty high that 10 can’t do your business jus-

tice. On the other hand, I’ve seen them break 100 pages, loaded with algorithms, in-depth technical dissertations and complex architecture diagrams and explanations.

My view on this is simple: No. That is not the content that the audience is seeking and it likely contains at trade secret or two. So, at most have it prepared for distribution, should in-depth detail be requested but don’t include it in the published wp. It needs to be the right size to tell the story, from beginning to end, the way it needs to be told.

From what I’ve seen and read, I’d estimate the ‘sweet spot’ for a whitepaper to be a well-structured and well-organised is a 35-45page document. It may vary a few pages, up or down, but if you can’t tell the story in that space then maybe you have too much details.

On the other hand, if you are struggling to hit twenty, it could indicate that the business hasn’t been well-enough thought through (and so just may need a little more work!).

THE CONSOLIDATED EXPERT VIEW OF TODAY’S ICO MARKET No, not mine (not this time)… a recent report from the big brains behind ICOBox discusses how to 80/20 rule – also known as Pa71

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MARKETING COUNTS, but it isn’t Job One! Yes, of course, publicity and presentation count, but only once there is something of substance to be marketed and presented – and sold: the very best of sales teams armed with the best marketing armed with glossy material won’t succeed if the product doesn’t do what is written on the tin (or if the tin has no writing!)

So, your wp has many functions, none so different from the pitch decks that preceded it: the wp puts your name out there which invites me to do that google thing and see what there is to see. How many times do you show up in a search? How many calendars are you listed on? What is the consistency of your messaging? Are you present in all the ‘right’ places? What do the scam websites have to say? What does your website say? Are your team all on LinkedIn, listed as connected to your business which has an LI presence. Who are the team and do they seem suited, capable and competent to deliver what the wp promises? Who are your advisors, and your tech / service partners - and what roles will they have post-raise?

ANTI-SCAM HIGHLIGHTS (Business, Products, Markets, the Token,the Team) Quite simply, these are the sections that provide comfort that the reader is looking at a real business. And, assuming you’re not a scam, it is easy not to be appear to be one.

A credible business model, with clear revenue paths and an intelligent plan to get to your markets and a team that has the promise to be able to get you there… otherwise, the page might not be turned.

While a strong, clear, appreciating token model available for trade on secondary markets have become standard expectations for purchasers of both utility and security tokens (and are often the first section of your wp that will be read) each of these sections are critical and elemental in achieving your raise… Never forget that the business and token system that you are promising (and are asking for their money to invest in) will, if successful, be available later for their investment pleasure. reto’s Principle (and how Tim Ferriss became a best-selling author) - applies in full measure to the ICO process.

Now, this principle states that 80% of successes stem from of 20% of efforts (leaving 80% of efforts to deliver the remaining 20% of results!). And, in the case of ICOs, the actual results, measured from 2016 to date, indicate even more severe results: 20% of ICOs account for 90% of funds raised. You can do the math, or take a look at the chart above.

Why does this seem disproportionate? It is actually quite simple: they are published 72

by well-established companies, teams with track records and solid experience, great ideas, better positioning their projects to be promoted and publicized… and to subsequently succeed.

In other words, because they have demonstrated, expressed, presented and / or illustrated the viability and scalability of their business model; they have introduced a competent team positioned and capable to achieve and delivering; they have selected intelligent and reputable business and technical partners, and advisors; and, of course, they have a clearly specified, workable token model.

Or not … but they have a choice to invest, to not invest, or to consider investing later… your wp needs to demonstrate clearly why – and compel readers to – investing early, and that now is the right time.

CONCLUSIONS After repeating my disclaimer that everything you’ve read are my views, my opinions and my position, for you to take and do with as you please. Just remember that you are in the ‘wild west’ of investments but the basic rules remain the same: put your information and your offer into the context of the investor: their risk, their return, their exit… after all, that is all that (most) investors care about.

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Banker and Hotel Owner Team Up For New Travel Booking "Many of us experience the same problems with booking sites such as Expedia, Hotels, TripAdvisor etc. The main reason the same issues occur is that they all are owned by IAC. I am asking for your support because we are all together in this struggle and are getting hammered by ICO CROWD from dealing with these companies (IAC). www.bookwithbit.com is built by a property/hotel owner to help take our industry back!" stated Miles Jarvis, Chief Operating Officer of Bookwithbit.

Among the hospitality industry, there have been many constant problems affecting everyone. Consolidation, high fees, archaic payment processes and the inability for hotel owners to control their own business. Bookwithbit was an idea Kalpesh Patel, regional hotel owner out of Oklahoma had in 2013. "The idea of having a decentralized currency to make transactions had me thinking about how to make the hotel industry more efficient," Patel stated.

In 2013, Kalpesh Patel quit thinking about how to change the industry and began the process of revolutionizing this industry. Partnering with Miles Jarvis, a young Wall Street up and comer, they embarked on the journey to create Bookwithbit.

Bookwithbit has dedicated themselves to creating a product that allows for people to book their favourite locations at the lowest possible price. Many hotel owners may be thinking how this is possible? To explain this matter, we need to dive into the hospitality industry as a whole.

Many of your common names; Expedia, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor etc. are all owned by the same holdings company,

IAC. These entities have controlled the market by two business models, monthly fee and/or percentage-based commission. These commissions being charged to both the hotel and consumer are often greater than 20%. The booking agencies all use the same inventory data platforms known as channel managers.

ate their own account and manage inventory directly on the platform. "While we have partnerships with channel managers, we want to offer the hotels the opportunity to control their business directly" spoke Kalpesh. Having the ability to manage inventory without a third party will allow significantly fewer errors in inventory availability.

Channel managers provide an efficient process but have downsides. Often, a Mr. Patel's passion toward cryptocurrenconsumer will book a room at a hotel cy has lead Bookwithbit to go beyond and when they arrive, find out there is CoinBase. Bookwithbit has partnered no availability. The consumer gets anwith a third party which allows any crypger with the hotel and will most likely tocurrency payments to be made directnot return. Furthermore, they will have ly. Bookwithbit's crypto payment system to find costly last-minute hois in a blockchain platform oftel bookings. The hotel will fering the highest level of secontact the booking agency curity. to cancel and explain there are no rooms available but Additionally, Bookwithbit has will be charged a cancellaofficially started offering group tion fee. The booking agency booking opportunities. "Many keeps their original commis- “The idea of havcompetitors have focused on sion and the additional canproviding bare minimum oping a decentralcelation fees. A complicated tions and mediocre customer ized currency process which only benefits experience. We want to change to make transthe large corporations, this that!" said Miles Jarvis. actions had me rubbed Miles and Kalpesh thinking about the wrong way.

Miles further expressed how to make the "Bookwithbit is humbled to be hotel industry Bookwithbit offers a low a part of the crypto communimore efficient,� commission rate of 6% cash ty and hopes to bring the real booking or 5% on crypto pay- Patel stated. value back to the people inments. This means the constead of the corporate elite’s sumer and the hotel get the pocket". cheapest rates possible! Bookwithbit has made it priority No.1 to build a plat- Please check out this exciting new form which benefits both the owner and Start-Up! the consumer. "We believe in a business Web page: www.bookwithbit.com based on trust and client experience List your property: extranet.bookwithrather than turning large profits for inbit.com vestors," said Miles Jarvis. This had held For more information or interested in intrue since they have zero hidden fees. vesting, please contact Miles Jarvis at Bookwithbit allows hotel owners to cremiles.jarvis@bookwithbit.com 73

MAY 2018

Overview of CargoCoin

The overarching goal of the CargoCoin platform is to optimize interactions in the international trade industry. This includes the interactions between traders, freight forwarders, shipping lines, booking agents, and various other groups that are involved in the process of international trade/transport of cargoes. The CargoCoin platform provides businesses with a global marketplace for international trade and transport.

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF CARGOCOIN? CargoCoin will be able to optimize interactions in international trade for businesses by providing the highest quality possible security, transparency, and accountability for businesses that by ICO CROWD use the CargoCoin platform. All these services will be provided for businesses at an incredibly low cost so that businesses can save more money. Largescale businesses can potentially save millions of dollars using the CargoCoin platform; this is money that businesses would otherwise spend on unnecessary fees with traditional platforms.

can also create custom negotiated conditions and forms if they wish to.

that time and money could be more efficiently used elsewhere.

WHY IS CARGOCOIN NEEDED Businesses have also faced situations The sheer size of the transportation in- where payments for transportation have dustry is immense. The global value of been delayed by banks. These bank dethe seaborne trade is over $12 million. lays are caused by major inefficiencies The value of freight rates in 2018 was within the banking institutions. Deliver$380 billion. Unfortunately, ies can take weeks before they although the transportation first begin their journey. These industry is one of the largest delays and excessive delivery (if not the largest) industries times can lead to unexpected in the world, there still have opportunity costs for a businot been that many technoness. The CargoCoin platform logical advances within the removes these inefficiencies shipping industry in the last The CargoCoin with blockchain technology, several decades. CargoCoin is platform provides HOW CAN BUSINESSES a revolutionary technological businesses with BENEFITS OF a global marketIMPLEMENT CARGOCOIN? improvement for the shipCARGOCOIN Businesses that wish to implement the ping industry. place for interna- What are the exact benefits CargoCoin platform into their existing of the CargoCoin platform tional trade and business architecture can do so easily.

Although unbelievable, this that no other platform can transport.

This is because the CargoCoin platform is completely true: original provide? is completely modular, which means documents are still delivered that businesses can mix and match the using a courier. The fact that these doc- CargoCoin uses the blockchain to revvarious tools of the CargoCoin platform uments are delivered by courier in the olutionize the transportation industry to fit their exact business needs. Busi21st century is ridiculous! You don’t by eliminating inefficiencies and creatnesses that don’t want to worry about need a genius to understand that. This ing massive value for businesses in the customizing their documents can use process takes up a massive amount of industry. CargoCoin will help with the standard forms and terms. Businesses time and money for a business when following:

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2 Reducing Fraud: CargoCoin minimizes the possibility of fraud by providing a new wide range of accountability and transparency, thanks to the immutability and high level of trust of the blockchain.

2 Lowering Costs: CargoCoin will significantly lower costs for businesses by simplifying the fee structure. With CargoCoin, Businesses won’t have to worry about hidden fees from banks, brokers, and insurers. All fees are completely transparent, so businesses know that they’re being given a fair price.

2 Minimizing Delays: CargoCoin will minimize delays by providing all parties involved with instant exchange review for approval of documents and payments.

In traditional systems, delays are often caused due to obvious inefficiencies. Thanks to the blockchain, CargoCoin’s platform works 24/7. Unlike traditional systems, CargoCoin’s platform does not require human intervention to work. Simply reducing these delays will add massive value to the industry, as payment delays alone cost businesses approximately $19 billion per year. Now that’s a lot of money!

2 Maximized Security/Trust: CargoCoin uses the public Ethereum blockchain for its platform. This allows for complete security for businesses. Ethereum is a proven and trusted technology. Because of this, Ethereum guarantees the maximum possible security for its users, and that includes businesses that use CargoCoin as well.

WHY IS THE CARGOCOIN TOKEN VALUABLE? The benefits that the CargoCoin platform provides has already been stated. However, you might be wondering how the actual CargoCoin token itself fits into all of this. The CargoCoin token is used to facilitate smart Bill of Lading (B/L) and smart Letter of Credit (L/C). CargoCoin refers to it as “smart” B/L and “smart” L/C because the CargoCoin platform uses smart contracts which provide businesses with the benefits mentioned earlier.

THE TEAM The CargoCoin team combined has decades of experience in their respective industries. The CargoCoin team consists of experts in block-

chain development, experts in shipping and transportation, and experts in business/finance. Our team’s experience and expertise are second to none, and the CargoCoin team is working hard to make the goal of CargoCoin a reality: help businesses in the transportation industry save money. Furthermore, the expertise of CargoCoin’s advisers is unparalleled.

CargoCoin uses the blockchain to revolutionize the transportation industry by eliminating inefficiencies and creating massive value for businesses in the industry.

CONCLUSION CargoCoin represents a technological revolution within a technologically stagnant field, the international transportation industry. CargoCoin will add a massive amount of value to businesses by increasing trust and security, as well as reducing fraud and other inefficiencies in the process.

Furthermore, CargoCoin’s approach of creating “smart” Bill of Lading and Letter of Credit will upend the traditional methods used in the industry. Overall, CargoCoin will lead to millions of dollars saved for business owners, money which they will be able to use to further innovate and expand their businesses.

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Crowdfunding a Better Environment

by JON GRUDA Founder of CryptoLeaf

CROWDFUNDING AND ITS ISSUES Crowdfunding is a method of building capital for a concept or business by collecting many smaller contribution, mostly via an online sourcing platform.

This form of alternative financing has become very popular with online platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In 2015 a whopping US$ 34 billion was raised by crowdfunding (Statista, 2018). Kickstarter alone has launched almost 400,000 projects in total as of this year (Kickstarter, 2018). However, there are some risks tied to this form of financing an enterprise. The use of smart contracts and programmable tokens can limit these risks.

One of the largest issues with crowdfunding is the public fear of abuse and distrust. Take this failed crowdfunding campaign as an example. A product named Crystal Wash posted on Kickstarter for funding, promising to be able to clean your laundry without any detergent. However, they reused the

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idea of a 20-year-old multilevel ‘trick’. They tricked people by using fancy scientific words to praise their product. Because we all know when companies use difficult terminology it must be true!

The company got away with thousands of dollars and all Kickstarter and crowdfunding received was bad publicity. The world of crowdfunding, sadly enough, is filled with bad campaigns like this one. This is making people doubt and distrust even very beneficial big potential projects. Now, what if we can take away this doubt?

The use of cryptocurrency and blockchain provides a variety of security protocols that would help minimize potential risk. The open form of a ledger records transac-

Due to the high volatility and passive profits that cryptocurrency offers many fintech investors are thinking about how to save their funds or actively make money with them.

tions between the parties in a permanent way and that data cannot be erased or altered without the approval of the network majority. This protocol would make it quite difficult for fraudulent organization to haul in an easy payday and disappear into the sunset because it records every event or transaction into a new encrypted block.

Sooner or later these frauds get caught, and rightly so.

NEW FORM OF CROWDFUNDING – MEET ICOS An initial coin offering is a more modern version of crowdfunding via cryptocurrency. Since 2016 ICOs have attracted a lot of investors’ attention. In 2015 there were 7 coin offerings according to Coindesk.com (Coin-

MAY 2018

desk, 2018) in 2016 and 2017,43 and 343 respectively. This is an increase of 800% in 1 year. With crowdfunding campaigns, raised money is basically a donation. Let us look at Kickstarter for example. You choose to donate x amount of money; some projects have different brackets in which you get something in return, what you receive varies with how much an investor donated, but these are one-time only ‘gifts’. However, with ICOs investors are motivated by a prospective ROI in the form of equity, profit share or even revenue share.

Due to the high volatility and passive profits that cryptocurrency offers many fin-tech investors are thinking about how to save their funds or actively make money with them. Early investors in token offerings buy tokens in the hope that the platform becomes widely successful after their launch and they can use their tokens. At a later point in time investors might also sell their tokens for a higher price.

The downside to an ICO lies within their volatility and risk. The market of cryptocurrency doesn’t have a global regulatory system in place which does make it vulnerable and prone to fraud.

“WHERE ENVIRONMENT AND DIGITAL FINANCE MEET”.

Trying to combine the benefits of traditional financing and cryptocurrencies. They decided to create Leaf tokens (CLF) as means to that end. The token creates liquidity and allows people to participate and even benefit from existing, approved and listed ecological projects.

Their initiative is to guarantee security, due diligence and democratising wealth.

STEP 1 DUE DILIGENCE The first step is to make sure that projects that require funding undergo extensive background checks and a due diligence process, conducted by independent experts on the team in their respective areas of expertise. This assessment is based on multiple criteria: - Impact on the environment - Financial feasibility - Team composition Only after the first step is completed a project will be listed on the website, at this point it can begin to receive funding from the contributors.

THERE IS A BETTER WAY However, some tokens have been designed with a usage and potential in mind. Take green initiatives or ecological projects. Environmental issues are one of the most pressing matters Crowdfunding is a fantastic initiative in the world at this moment. Technological advancement and ecological projects help resolve to give smaller enterprises the option to get funded without having to go through these issues. 17 % of the world’s CO2 emissions by 2020 will be produced by the largseveral rounds of meetings with VCs. est transportation industry in the world, ShipListing company projects on a platform ping. Governments are trying to resolve these with an innovative and secure structure, problems by regulating everything and pushguaranteed by the usage of blockchain ing proposals to reduce CO2 emission. But every other year these quotas are not met, and and smart contracts, that could shape a a new proposal is made, this is not the solugreener world and economy. tion, projects with innovating ideas could be.

But most of these advancements happen behind closed doors and a lot of projects are STEP 2 LISTING funded on a global or governmental level. This Here begins the next step. After the assessis where an ICO could be the solution. ment the project is listed. From now on a token holder can fund any project they like and As explained earlier traditional crowdfundcan even support multiple projects at the same ing has some flaws that can be helped with the time. All information about any project and a use of blockchain and smart contracts. A lot of final advisory report will be provided with full green projects are supported with crowdfund- transparency to ensure investors can make ining, but these offer no mutual economic bene- formed decisions. fits, a coin offering does. You can make a profit with the offered equity or profit share, while STEP 3 MILESTONE BASED FUNDING helping to save the planet.

Reducing risk. An ICO as stated before can be a risky investment because once a token sale is CRYPTOLEAF completed by reaching its soft cap, companies CryptoLeaf is Europe’s first eco-cryptocurren- usually receive all these funds at once. This incy. It is an initiative with support of partnercreases the possible risk of a project running ships from private investors and experts. It is off with the collected funds never to be heard a business founded in 2017 after years of exof again. Cryptoleaf ensures that contributors perience in management and investment. They fund listed projects on a milestone achievewant to help SMEs and entrepreneurs reach ment basis to prevent this exact thing from success and turn their visions into a reality happening. by creating a new cryptocurrency. Providing everyone on the planet with an opportunity to Concretely this entails that projects must give support these people and fund environmental information about their plans and the timeprojects all around the world is their mission. frame in which they want to complete these

plans. When the project reaches their first milestone they will receive a first stage of funding. Every contributor is contacted when a funded project reaches a milestone and they can choose to invest in the next stage or stop contributing. In the latter case all remaining funds are returned. This system gives contributors a democratically proportional way of voting together. If the majority wants to continue funding the next stage will be made available. Whenever contributors decide to withdraw their support and the funds are returned, you will NOT benefit from revenue sharing.

STEP 4 REVENUE SHARING AND TERMS AND CONDITIONS The next step is a big one, revenue sharing.

Every listed company must agree to share a portion of their revenue with the projects’ contributors. The reason for this is simple: Startup companies have a low net profit because they tend to reinvest a large portion of their profits into the project itself. They deduct this reinvestment as an expense hence the low net profit. Each project agrees on a set percentage of revenue they will share with cryptoleaf contributors. This information will all be included in the terms and conditions.

STEP 5 TOKEN PAYOUT The revenue share is paid out over time in either LEAF token or ETH this is the last step.

Contributors receive 80% of the payout, cryptoleaf receives 20%. All the individual terms and conditions are provided on the platform for full transparency. And important thing to note is that the token payout is always pegged to current token prices.

TOKEN SPECIFICS Leaf (CLF) is an ERC-20-standard-based Ethereum token.

2 Token Cap: 80 000 000 LEAFs 2 Made available for public: 40 000 000 LEAFs 2 Token Price: 1ETH = 2000 LEAFs 2 Pre-launch duration: 3 weeks 2 Token Sale duration: 2 weeks For more information please visit: www.cryptoleaf.io EVERYONE CAN CONTRIBUTE AND PROFIT FROM A GREENER TOMORROW Crowdfunding is a fantastic initiative to give smaller enterprises the option to get funded without having to go through several rounds of meetings with VCs. Listing company projects on a platform with an innovative and secure structure, guaranteed by the usage of blockchain and smart contracts, that could shape a greener world and economy.

Imagine if even only a small portion of the US$ 34 billion was conveyed into funding like this. People didn’t stand to make (any) profit on crowdfunding and supported it anyway.

Because they believe in it. Here, they support CryptoLeaf while at the same time they receive economic benefits. This is a new opportunity no one should miss out on.

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NOBAR

Driving the Usage of Crypto in Everyday Lives Do we know how many cryptocurrency exchanges are out there? There may be 500 exchange websites worldwide where the daily trade volume is as high as 3 billion, for example in Binance. So why are the exchanges such a hot cake in the crypto market? The answer is obby SALONI JAIN vious. Users are more driven into short Content Marketing selling of cryptocurrencies and crypto tokens rather than using them in real life applications and the reason is, compared to the exchange websites, the number of sites or platforms where people can spend their crypto other than exchanging is very few. If there were a substantial number of effective platforms through which people can really spend their crypto for day-to-day life transactional reasons, then the driver of valuation may turn from nervous speculations to the volume of spending. This is what exactly NOBAR is planning to do.

waiting for a suitable bull run of the cryp- some are providing advertising opporto market and to then sell it when they tunities, some are providing POS gateare at profit. However, gaining profit is way, and some are providing dealing with not always the case as data from the rehouses with crypto etc. However, they are cent crypto market shows that there have all providing a partial or fragmented solubeen more dips in price than upwards tion to this problem. None of them are movement. This will happen in the marproviding all these functions into one sinket if the base of valuation is gular platform like NOBAR. nervous speculation. Therefore, NOBAR is providing subA project providing only a sinstantial spending opportunigle or handful functions with ties on the platform with cryptheir platform have limited tocurrency and NBR token so functionality. For example, if that there is more space for aca token holder wants to spend ceptance created into the mar- Anyone ranging his token on something other from internation- than what his token permits ket. al business mag- then he must go to a crypto Their platform will facilitate nate to everyday exchange and exchange it with local and global businesses, some other token that faciligrocery shopper selling used products, sharing can use the NOtates some other spending opor selling cars or houses, postportunities. This creates much BAR platform to ing job advertisements, payhassle for the user and obvifulfill their puring automated salaries, operously some transactional losspose and make WHAT IS NOBAR REALLY DOING? ating virtual offices and proes. NOBAR is facilitating all NOBAR is building a multifunctional moting goods and services on transactions with kinds of commercial and day platform where users will be able to enthe platform to the network of their native NBR to day transactional activities gage in B2B, B2C, C2C, C2B, Jobs, Ads users. They are also providing token and other on their platform so that NBR and POS (Point of Sale) activities with an innovative and integrable cryptocurrencies. token is substantial for these cryptocurrency and crypto token. Their “Shop-App” function through purposes. What this will do plan is to make a “GO-TO” platform for which NOBAR’s crypto payment gateway is, NOBAR has the potential to create a all kinds of cryptocurrency and crypto to- can be integrated with other e-commerce massive usage commonality and user acken spending purpose. To elaborate the and physical stores so that people can use ceptance for the token holders, which is functionalities of the platform https:// their NBR token also in other stores and a key element for any kind of sustainable nobar.io states that anyone ranging from platforms. By building this robust platsteady growth. international business magnate to every- form, NOBAR is planning to solve the day grocery shopper can use the NOBAR “purchasing with crypto” problem with a KEY FEATURES platform to fulfill their purpose and make strong approach.

OF NOBAR PROJECT: transactions with their native NBR token Creating the purchasing power and other cryptocurrencies.

WHAT MAKES NOBAR DIFFERENT? One good question to ask the crypto We all know that some innovative procommunity is: what can you purchase WHAT PROBLEM DOES jects are working on providing the purwith your token? The answer may be that NOBAR SEEK TO SOLVE? chasing with crypto facility into or there are not many opportunities unAs there is less opportunity for people through their platform. There are protil now, but the scenario is changing, and to spend their crypto, most of them are jects offering only B2B and B2C activities, mass adoption is happening all over the

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world. NOBAR can create a great boost to the mass adoption as it is creating myriads of spending opportunity for users on their robust platform.

the platform. This is very necessary because all the other e-commerce and even social platforms are filled with fake reviews and fraudulent activities which are causing losses for users.

Two decimal token One interesting aspect of NBR token is that it is two decimals. As people are more familiar with valuing something with two decimal positions like 52.66 USD or 85.99 EUR, it will create convenience for the token holders to use NBR token as a regular mode of payment. Most of the cryptocurrencies out there are constructing with eight or more decimal places, which creates a state of confusion with the users when dealing with micropayments.

THE NOBAR TEAM Notably, the CEO of NOBAR, Joyjit Bhowmick, has certification from MIT and he is experienced in analyzing International trade markets. Maybe, that is why he understands the crypto market’s supply and demand gaps. It is this very reason that led him to come up with such an innovative and challenging idea related to international commerce.

Bug-free solidity code A recent report showed that almost 95% of the codes deployed were full of low and medium severity bugs. If we can look at some of the earlier projects, there were complaints from the users that there are some operating difficulties with those tokens. This happens because the codes are not carefully examined and have not been deployed by expert smart contract developers. Surprisingly, NOBAR has been careful to deploy their smart contract. If we track their code from etherscan.io then we will be able to find that they have done their research and deployed some test contracts before they can deploy their final, bug-free and verified contract.

Md Ariful Haque, the CTO, has done many projects related to national and foreign data security, digital product development, and led teams in some cases.

Catching the smallest value with every token As they are planning to make NBR token a regular mode of payment, NOBAR has set the value of each token at 0.01 USD at the token sale to represent the smallest value 0.01 USD by every NBR token.

User Protection The NOBAR platform ensures the protection of the users from fraudulent activities on the platform by verifying every user prior to accessing

segment of users and fulfilling different needs of users, NOBAR is planning to build a singular unified platform that is substantial for most of the commercial activities that we are very familiar with. Therefore, the vision is to penetrate to global market gradually to make the NOBAR platform one of the most used ones for online transactional and commercial activities.

NOBAR is providing substantial spending opportunities on the platform with cryptocurrency and NBR token so that there is more space for acceptance created into the market.

The person handling the Marketing & Promotional activities is Likhon Amin who has experience in working on projects under the World Bank. He is also experienced in digital marketing and has been working for quite some time now. This creates a unique mixture of Finance and Marketing which is very rare to find.

WHEN WILL THE TOKEN SALE START? The main token sale will start from 15 May 2018 and it will end at 30 July 2018. Currently, NOBAR is running a private presale. The main token sale would start from 30% bonus only.

WHAT ABOUT REGULATION ANALYSIS? NOBAR team has done a pretty good and clear analysis of their regulatory stand which can be found from their whitepaper. It seems very clear that they are concerned with the future development of the platform and that is why they have restricted some of the countries where their model is not compliant. Also, to comply with the AML (Anti Money Laundering) acts, they are going to verify every contributor with proper government-issued photo ID.

They also have a decorated team of professionals to help the team bring this project to fruition.

From their website: https://nobar.io you can also understand that they have some of the most reputed personnel in the cryptocurrency world.

To conclude, NOBAR seems like a much-needed project that the crypto world needs right now.

We all require moving the tension from the exchanges to other areas where cryptocurrency and crypto tokens can make a difference. ThereWHAT IS NOBAR’S VISION? fore, the world awaits to see the outcome of the According to Behavioral Economics, if any reNOBAR project. source has more practical functions attached to it Website: https://nobar.io than any other similar resources then it is more Join the Whitelist: likely to increase user acceptance over time. NO- https://portal.nobar.io/registration BAR is following the exact same path. By incorRead the Whitepaper: porating a multitude of use cases for a different https://nobar.io/data/nobar-whitepaper.pdf 79

MAY 2018

AI CRYPTO

AI technology is no longer obtainable in the future, but rather more so in the present. It’s easy to find some demonstration of AI technology these days, such as AlphaGo™, Watson™, autonomous vehicles, and so on.

However, most of these are concentrated only on a few giant corporations such as Google, Apple, and IBM. With their large capital, only a few companies can access to computational resources that are sufficient enough to conduct machine-learning researches.

by Capacity to process and utilize big data SUNGJAE LEE CEO of Aircrypto and private information is also concentrated on these giant corporations.

THAT’S WHERE AI CRYPTO COMES IN Many talented AI Researchers cannot convert their ideas into reality because of the high price of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) devices, which are essential for the AI industry.

AI Crypto, a team of AI and blockchain enthusiasts, presents a game-changing model of a blockchain-powered ecosystem revolving 80

around artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the AI Crypto Ecosystem, the GPU power, quality data for AI learning, and machine-learning models can be shared and used in a fair way. Every network participant will be eligible to get rewarded with AIC tokens in exchange for sharing their relevant resources. AI Crypto’s mission is to develop a network where a value is shared in a righteous way and converted into real-world applications.

the machine learning algorithms will be shared and consumed. Individuals will be able to provide their idle resources of computing power, create data needed for AI research and be rewarded for their worth.

To make this goal a more concrete reality, AI Crypto Team proposes AI Crypto Society; an alliance of AI researchers, developers, and start-up companies.

The goal is to share the capabilities in the AI field so that fair rewards can be given to those that deserve it. The CEO WHY AI CRYPTO of AI Crypto stated, “AI should be the IS NEEDED property of all mankind, not a private It is expected that AI will eventually fol- property of a certain.” low the process of owned by the state, and then owned by a few large capitals, GPU (general processor unit) is the core then nongovernmental. This process that keeps the AI Crypto network funccould be defined as decentralization as tioning. DATA is a blockchain-based it goes from a few public to numerous platform for creating and distributindividuals. ing AI-related data. MODEL is a machine learning module for smooth and HOW AI CRYPTO WORKS cost-effective operation.

To restore the value of AI as a property for humanity from the private assets of THE AI CRYPTO TOKEN AIC AI giants, AI Crypto proposes AI Cryp- AI Crypto’s token AIC can be used withto Ecosystem as a global shelter for AI in their ecosystem. engineers, scientists, and small startup companies. In the Ecosystem, comIt creates models for voice recognition puting hardware (GPU), quality data for engine using deep-learning and individlearning and the models implementing ualized voice synthesis technology, em-

MAY 2018

bodies voice recognition services by collecting dataset specialized for specific domains.

It also provides a platform where complex factors of voice recognition models are composed of simple GUI tools without needing the knowledge for programming and to be serviced. It also provides items if necessary for voice recognition and synthesis, making it easier for users to create and deliver data, enabling other users who want to develop services to use the data easily through rewarding the providers properly.

AI Crypto’s mission is to develop a network where a value is shared in a righteous way and converted into real-world applications.

tion, and fingerprint/iris recognition can be provided via the AIC platform. Unidentified data necessary for training AI model for image analysis will be distributed through the AIC platform, and various image analysis services will be provided using this technology.

Autonomous vehicle service requires collecting a massive amount of data and processing it, as well as conducting numerous calculations quickly. For this, an embodiment of a complex artificial neural network and a high-performance computer is required.

It analyzes dialogues between users and conThrough the GPU network provided on the sultants, or just users using dialogue analysis AIC platform, users can develop the AI modtechnology based on natural language underel for autonomous vehicle and make it into a standing. This can be used to make customized service. suggestions and to increase sales or enhance the quality of customer counseling. Also, it WHO IS AI CRYPTO? analyzes emotion, intent, and context from AI Crypto has master’s and Ph.D. AI profesthe previous conversations of the person it is sionals from Seoul National University and talking to, training the analysis model to draw KAIST and top universities in the US and Euthe best answers, and helping the AI agent rope. Jaeho Seol has a Ph.D. and has carried to make fluent conversations in the finance, out research for over ten years in AI field is the shopping, medical fields, and so on.

Co-CEO, and he is leading the core research as a Chief Scientist. He said with confidence that AI-based services operating on blockchain “We will lead the AI and blockchain technolosuch as categorizing images, facial recognigies that are expected to grow explosively.”

AI Crypto has great advisors including Tiago Costa Alves who is CEO of AppCoins, Ismail Malik who is Editor-in-Chief of ICO CROWD and Changki Park who is Founder & Chairman of BOScoin who has a significant influence in the blockchain industry.

Since AI business is the hot topic of the fourth industrial revolution, they are looking forward to various attempts in developing and utilizing AI applications through blockchain technology, starting from the AI Crypto Ecosystem. The AI Crypto team is open to all kinds of technology if they fulfill the idea of ‘righteous usage of impartial resources’ and are willing to include them in the AI Ecosystem based on the consensus; this is more than just adding the contents to the ecosystem. Even though the AI Crypto Ecosystem grows more massive in scale, this does not mean the birth of a massive centralized organization, but the expansion of the decentralized society, resulting in more members agreeing to the righteous usage of resources.

AI Crypto’s platform will serve as a global hub for AI industries, enabling the participants to share their data and idle computing power, eliminating monopoly, and making AI and its benefits accessible to anyone. AI Crypto Ecosystem Beta Release is scheduled for April 2019, and Official Release is scheduled for June 2019.

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How to build an ICO community Let’s admit the ICO space is bloated with new crypto projects. Only outstanding projects receive the interest of cryptocurrency investors. It’s not an easy task to find the right resources, tools, and portion of luck to build a strong and large ICO community. This article will walk you through the different tools you can use to grow your community and give you practical tips you can implement.

by MICHIEL MULDERS Blockchain Developer & Writer

The Power of Community Managers Many consider community managers as a low paying job for which he must talk ‘to the moon’ memes all day. However, nothing is worth more than a qualitative community manager. He is responsible for creating daily interactions with the community. A community manager acts as the first point of contact and as well as the Q&A person. New members often do not take the time to read pinned messages or search info themselves, so a community manager must answer those questions. An active chat is a positive sign and makes users feel at home.

FRIENDS-OF CONTEST & EARN.COM Let’s take the example of iOlite. They have recently created a “Friends of iO-

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lite” campaign, which can be considered a bounty program. The goal of the campaign is to increase the number of users in their official Telegram channel. Members of the iOlite community can invite new members (mostly friends) they think will be interested in the project. If the invited member stays till the end of the ICO, the inviter will receive a small reward in the form of X number of tokens per 3 new members. It’s a low-cost method to find new members. In fact, you are transferring the responsibility to find new members to your community members.

Earn.com is another way of finding new members or interactions at a lowcost. Individuals can join lists of people with similar skills or interests.

They can earn money by completing targeted, paid microtasks. A user can apply for a list like ‘JavaScript Developers’ where he has to prove his coding experience. An ICO focused on blockchain development tools can create a campaign on earn.com targeted at JavaScript developers. Every JavaScript developer earns some project tokens or a small amount of Bitcoin for completing a microtask like joining the Telegram channel or upvoting a project post on Medium. With a budget of $15.000, you can grow your telegram an extra 5000 users approximately.

BOUNTY PROGRAM First, is it even worth to run a bounty program? If you do a quick LinkedIn search for the keyword ‘bounty hunter’, you’ll find many of them.

Nowadays, people falsely see bounty programs as a way of getting easy and free money to be sold as soon the token gets listed. This has a negative effect on the long-term tokens holders as the price of the token immediately drops because of these short-term gold seekers.

MAY 2018

In addition, the influx of these short-term cash-grabbers, whom often do not even visit the project’s website for a prolonged period, let alone read their whitepaper, and lack much, if any, understanding of the project.

These types of people are toxic to blockchain startup communities and contribute no value to them, unless “when moon” is the type of question you like to read twenty times per day in your Telegram.

It’s a better idea to focus on qualitative content production by offering high stakes for well-written pieces of content.

Other ways of bounties are possible if the focus is on quality, not quantity.

PROOF-OF-CONCEPT Do not underestimate the power of providing a Proof-of-Concept to your community. It will give your members the opportunity to play around with an early version / concept of the product you are building. The chances are big people will share the prototype or even write about it, which is free promotion. The presence of a Proof-of-Concept is a positive sign.

Paid advertising can be a possible solution for your ICO. It helps you to target cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investors directly via several social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

PAID ADVERTISING VS EVENTS Paid advertising can be a possible solution for your ICO. It helps you to target cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investors directly via several social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Outsourcing this to an agency will cost you easily between $100,000 - $150,000 (budget and work fees).

For starting projects with a smaller budget, you can do it yourself or hire someone with a lower budget of ~ $3,000 per month.

but attendance should be factored into any ICO marketing strategy.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT BUFFER Buffer is a powerful app that can take your social media posts and engagement to the next level. With Buffer, you can save both time and energy trying to handle all your social posts manually. It allows you to schedule posts, so you can create a continuous social media stream.

Buying a banner on ICO listing websites or crypto news websites can be beneficial as well. It will give you a lot of publicity and awareness.

REDDIT Reddit is famous because of its critical users and strict guidelines. Every subreddit has its own rules like an account age, a certain amount of comment karma in the subreddit, … It prevents new accounts from spamming.

You must be careful with posting promotional content as that’s something what is heavily moderated.

Events are very important. This should be the focus of your activity since this is where you can find and communicate with investors face to face to get your first capital. You should remember that crowd capital will come if you manage to raise the initial capital from the big-league investors. The costs and benefits of attending or hosting events will come through trial and error. Some events will be more successful than others,

On the other side, Reddit is a very powerful tool for reaching tons of people. It’s a good idea to let people not related to the ICO project share interesting articles about the project. Some Reddits worth mentioning: • /r/blockchain • /r/technology or /r/tech • /r/cryptocurrency or /r/altcoins • /r/BitcoinTechnology • /r/Bitcoin or /r/btc • /r/CryptoCurrency • /r/BitcoinMarkets • /r/ethtrader 83

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Another great use case is to start a weekly newsletter that highlights a variety of industry insights and information about the ICO. Anything you can do to stay top of mind and relevant to your community is a big plus.

CONTENT CREATION It’s important to create content on a regular basis. This shows your community you are active, and people will start to share this, reaching even more potential investors.

OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS QUORA Quora has proven to be a good channel for ICO coverage. You can post interesting questions about your own project and have them answered by other people. Quora has a very active community. It’s a nice way of raising attention for your project. A good starting point is the ‘Initial Coin Offerings’ Quora Page.

lect a smaller number of valuable and trustworthy ICO listing websites. You can check the estimated traffic and bounce rate via similarweb.com.

Buffer is a powerful app that can take your social media posts and engagement to the next level. With BuffLINKEDIN (GROUPS) er, you can save LinkedIn is a strong network for both time and enerreaching a lot of like-minded people. You have the potential to reach gy trying to handle 1000s of viewers by just sharing all your social posts your article. In addition, LinkedIn manually. offers groups about various topics where you can share content. There are many ICO and blockchain focused groups.

Don’t be fooled by the bounce rate.

A high bounce rate is for most websites is very bad, but for ICO listing websites it indicates that many people click through to the project itself or any related social media channel.

There are very few ICO listing websites that provide exclusively objective reviews of ICOs. We must face the reality that this is the current state of the blockchain industry and ICOs.

CREATE A MAILING LIST Early on in your days of marketing for your BITCOINTALK.ORG ICO, one of the best things you can do is start BitcoinTalk.org is still the mother of crypto dis- an email capture list on your website. While not cussions. It’s the most active crypto forum. everyone who lands on your homepage is ready Every well-respected investor has an account on to become a token holder, there are people who Bitcointalk. Almost all ICO projects get first an- are interested (not yet ready to pull the trigger) nounced on BitcoinTalk in the ‘Announcement and want to stay up to date with important in(Altcoins)’ thread. formation.

ICO LISTING WEBSITES It’s still an ongoing discussion if it’s worth to list on as many ICO listing websites as possible, however, in our opinion, you should select only a few qualitative websites that will bring in sufficient traffic to your website and Telegram.

ICO listing websites are the pinnacle of money grabbing. Some ask skyrocketing prices even though they barely have traffic. It’s better to se-

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You can use your email list in a variety of ways.

The most common is to deliver important roadmap updates to your community so that everyone is on the same page regarding the state of the project. This way, when the token sale goes live, you already have a willing and primed community ready to invest in the project. Minimizing the amount of surprises will be a recurring theme for you and your team as the entire process can be a rollercoaster of ups and downs.

Not only talk about your project but try to show off your skills and technical knowledge of the product you are going to develop. Give them valuable insights.

Watch out with sponsored content via media outreach. It does work, but it’s not cheap.

Nowadays, people detest it when they read highly promoted content as it feels unreal like you are not telling the truth. It’s even considered to be a red flag (scam sign). A better solution to this is by uploading a hidden sponsored article. Start off easy with some information about a technical matter or general problem blockchain can solve and spend one paragraph on explaining your project. It will have a much better effect and you will tickle people’s curiosity.

SEO STRATEGY Many ICO projects do not consider or just neglect search engine optimization (SEO) in their early stage of fundraising. However, if you have a long-term vision, you should consider this. SEO optimization will ensure that there is exposure to your ICO long after the launch.

Where there is no SEO strategy, it indicates a short-term vision. Link building and online reputation management are as well part of SEO. THE BOTTOM LINE You must consider many aspects when building an ICO community. Attending events is one of the most important things to do when you are building relationships with early investors.

A community manager is as well a very valuable tool when it comes to interacting with the members of your community and keeping them engaged. We recommend putting in as much effort as possible in the above-mentioned items to grow a steady community.

MAY 2018

Things You Need to Know About CMO Before Launching Your ICO According to EY, the ICO market presents big risks for investors. Flawed token valuations, unclear regulations, heightened hacker attention and congested networks.

In such context, the ability of ICO to meet fundraising goals is declining.

by HUGO JACQUES CEO of Arrano Consulting

90% of projects with funds raised via ICOs reached fundraising goals in June 2017 compared with 25% in November 2017 (see ey-research-initial-coin-offerings-icos). In such context, and increasing scam %, start-ups need to rethink their ICO strategy by re-centering the participants (users/investor) at the centre of the game. Build trust and transparency in a pre-ICO marketing strategy will make the difference to reach fundraising goals.

Hundreds of ICOs are scheduled for 2018 (See this interesting article: The Top 10 ICOs in 2017 & What’s in the Pipeline for Q1 2018), competition is really tough out there with 1,500 cryptocurrencies in the market. To stand out from the rest, one needs to focus on marketing even more so then the product itself. To have a successful marketing campaign is becoming more difficult and requires expertise in media chan-

nel communication, inbound marketing, content management, latest exiting tools and a good understanding of the blockchain technology and its ecosystem. A successful ICO will be managed by a multi-faceted approached strategy by leveraging all the existing tools.

It is not surprising that start-up is now investing in atypical resources under CMO name, able to implement the right marketing strategy, coach the team and influence the organization in their ICO. The CMO is becoming the key executive person, not just an advisor but a doer, a coach and an influencer. He or She must obtain strong knowledge in blockchain, ICO processes and a clear vision of how to apply marketing strategy and tools.

“A CMO WILL ENGAGE AND MENTOR YOUR TEAM” The most important challenge is to build trust and transparency to recover the investors’ attention and create evangelist of your product and token. Common sense, right? Yes… But there are many industries with all the hyped up and trendy environment that can inadvertently make us forget the basic rules consciously or unconsciously, and the survey results are a good proof. The new

ICOs should be users and investors centric strategy and not a simple display of honeypots. Investors deserve simplicity, transparency, clarification, easy understanding as it is with their money you will run your company. As Ether is the gas of the smart contract protocol they are the fuel of your project.

HERE ARE SOME 5 MAJOR POINTS A CMO MUST COVER TO SUPPORT YOUR ICO: 1. A website with great content, context and design: Your website is one of your killer features to sell your product. In CMO language, work hard on your UX Strategy: I always ask my team to insist on basics to help them to step back. Make it simple, clear, fluid with amazing design. The “whoa experience” that makes the visitor discover your solution. Your product needs to be clearly displayed and easy to understand. I advise to use info graphic or video and make a clear and a short statement of the key features.

Details are for later (like a marketing funnel). Help the visitor get the high-level picture, their interests, the innovative solutions and its potential. Don’t overwhelm them with full of data. At the end, nobody understands 85

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what you are doing and keep in mind they are not specialists and experts in blockchain as you are.

Technical point to consider: You will need a high performance, providing fast, tidy, and appealing experience. Optimize your video, pictures, and structure to avoid download latency and other bugs that create user frustration.

Brainstorm a lot, benchmark what participants like, get user website feedback, compare with ICO success story to see what you can do better. Implement the customer experience strategy to attract them and facilitate the access and the understanding of what you are selling.

2. Content Strategy: Let’s make it clear: Product, Goal, Roadmap, Team, Project, technology, Customer partnership, Compliance. EVERYTHING that helps the investor choose you. (Make them realize you are the right choice by educating them). Be clear on where you are on your roadmap and if you’re late tell them why (transparency). It is ok to be late in such technology.

investors, And the second as a technical one for experts to support you to sell and show why it is innovative and how you will meet your features and performance goals.

5. Team: You should have experts in blockchain, project core business, marketing, IT, Web development and not an anonymous team (Red flag for a scam). Your team need to be reachable (LinkedIn, telegram, website., etc) and you should answer to people. If you are overwhelmed, pay an agency, discuss with your CMO but do not pass a request without an answer.

The big question is: what if we are not experts but we know enough to launch the start-up? Do it!!! Be clear about your experience and counterbalance with your other experiences and the fact your organization is backed by experts and mentors.

CMO KNOWS THAT ICO IS ABOUT COMMUNICATION AND TIMING. THAT’S IT The CMO communication strat3. Roadmap: egy will focus first on your offer, Again, use the simple term, investors your goals, your team and investors’ need to understand you. Focus on func- terms. He will make sure your protionality and results ject description, roadmap and goals are clear, easy to understand, realis4. White paper: tic and attractive. As an investor, if I strongly recommend using 2 white pa- they do not understand, they will be pers: A general one for all non-technical frustrated by doing more research or 86

CMO manages data analytics from the consumers and market to accelerate and optimize the fundraising processes.

worst, assume it’s a scam. Remember, if you are capable to explain clearly, it is because you master your project. This is the huge difference with other competitors. Apply this rule to everything: Roadmap, whiter paper, articles…The challenge is to get the attention of the audience in a growing market where there is a pop up of ICO almost every day. How can you make a difference?

PWC shows clearly in their E-Book -the section of marketing and the duration. From my perspective and experience, a 4 weeks job is not enough.

You need time to create an audience and deliver the message. The website needs to be as clear as possible (even a child should understand) and fluid (UX/UI) to avoid any short visit.

Iteration, feedback is the basic. PR, communication campaign should be triggered 3 months or more before the ICO Launch. Here’s why: You give time to gather an audience, your strategy is customer oriented, you get feedback on your product and understanding of the product. The people will thank you for that and will talk about you. Unless your ICO has no plus value, then that is another story.

“FEW PIECES OF ADVICES FROM CMO EXPERT”: 2 Communicate constantly in the forum, official websites, blockchain

MAY 2018

Here’s a graphic representation of a Strategic CMO responsibilities perimeter within your organization

port. Be clear on what happens if you don’t reach your target and how you will roll the campaign back.

2 Details of the Pre-sale, Sale and Post-sale (lockup periods, vesting schedules.). CMO will help you to avoid some basics mistakes such as changing your scope, features, rules or team member during the ICO process.

2 For Token distribution, pie chart graphics is NOT enough, you need to include specifics. All is about building trust, the less transparent, the worst. Investors’ main concern is where their money will go and do, hence clear details.

A CMO IS A GROWTH HACKER EXPERT No doubt it is the central point all CEO dreams about. Nice KPI with huge traction, traffic generation, and conversion rate. CMO goal is not to get only buyers, he/she need evangelists to support your reputation during the sales and after the sales. The more they get addicted to your solution, the more you will get buyers, users, activities and token value.

communication channel and of course, on media channels. You have Reddit, Quora, Discord, Telegram, your blog, Bitcointalk.

2 You can also use the WAVES platform allowing you to set up a digital token in a few minutes at low cost. (Just a suggestion pending on your project complexity but keep in mind you don’t have all the control) 2 Don’t launch your ICO ASAP, be prepared.

2 As the landscape channel is reduced since the recent bans (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn), you have to leverage your resource to do more with less. Welcome to the regulated world. At this stage, we do not recommend outsourcing but to get a doer (someone who participates in the team) and coach more than an adviser. A permanent position or interim position (better solution to see if you want to carry on even if the results are beyond your expectations). Outreach is the key and you will have to pay the price.

2 Keep in mind the marketing strategy and activities will influence your whole organization. you need to focus on customer experience, build trust, transparency and interactivity.

2 Investors need to know where you are on the roadmap and your challenge. Most important, they want to know you control the situation.

2 Important advice: Remember, reputation is fragile, and the devil is hidden in details, and please, don’t do any major change during your Pre-sale.

A CMO RESPECTS YOUR AUDIENCE AND WILL IMPLEMENT TRANSPARENCY He will focus on your plus value, service, technology and impact to educate your evangelist, audience and community. Give them the tool and data to go to you with true data and not a fake honeypot. You cannot ask a CMO to sell anything at any price.

The only project with a clear value can be supported.

A CMO WILL GIVE VISIBILITY ON YOUR ROADMAP STATUS Evolution of the project, sale and post sales. Operational performance report: Give comparison/comment on key metrics mandated in all ICO White-papers and signed off by the CTO. Means he will work closely with your technical team to spread the customer experience and will support you in what to communicate first and what is not a priority. An interactive roadmap is one of the best solutions (Be careful to not overload the structure, keep it visual).

Final Words and opening door to discussion: The CMO is not an advisor but your Executive team member, a mentor and a coach in your governance. He/she must interact with your team to get the insight about products, features, organizations, goals and roadmap. CMO manages data analytics from the consumers and market to accelerate and optimize the fundraising processes.

Use experts in a permanent CMO position to lead your marketing strategy and sale. Don’t limit your need to advise, ask for doers and mentor to inspire your organization with customer experience. CMO selection is a tough choice, no place for mistakes and failures. Be prepared to some changes in your processes and some impact in all your services. This is the price you must pay in order to build the attention your ICO deserves. Marketing is not an appearance game, it is a new way of clarity, transparency and communication to create a trustful connection.

A successful ICO will be managed by a multi-faceted approached strategy by leveraging all the existing tools.

A CMO will make sure you are on the right track to meet the Regulation requirement: 2 Legal aspect, token functionality and nature, organizational structure, team and resource identification. Explain clearly how the wallet will work, level of security, terms of investment, and early bird discount rules., etc. Get an audit 30 days or 60 days prior to your ICO and communicate the re-

Your goal is not a coin offering through ICO but to create an ecosystem to give benefit to participants who will promote your company in the blockchain communities and social media.

Food for thoughts to guide investors in their research: Which is well conceived is clearly stated.

Food for thoughts for CEO who wants to sell his/her products: Simplification is the ultimate sophistication.

Author: Hugo Jacques is a CEO of Arrano consulting (www.arranoconsulting.com), a blockchain consultancy agency in Canada. He is also CMO advisor to help a smart city start-up to raise fund and launch the Media activitieshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/hjacques/ 87

MAY 2018

EMMARES ICO An email marketing rewarding system

which was recently compared to Google in early stages, reached the soft cap EMMARES, an innovation in the Email marketing world, recently launched an ICO campaign, aiming to raise 35.000 ETH for development and globalization of EMMARES platform.

by IVAN JELIĆ Emmares.io Ambassador for Croatia & Canada

With their MVP about to be released, their goal is to create a global digital reputation of email content providers and their contents. Searchable reputation directory will transform email from one-sided push media to an interactive trusted digital channel.

And the best part – users will be rewarded with EMA tokens for rating the content they get via email. It's as simple as that and the possibilities to expand are enormous.

Email is considered as being one of the most effective marketing tools.

EMMARES is an evaluation system that highly benefited email marketers (senders) as well as email recipients (all email users). Want to know how?

EMAIL MARKETERS -By signing up to the EMMARES system, email MARKETERS get a chance to reach more targeted customers that are interested in their content. As they are sending content that is well accepted by their recipients, they get a chance to use EMMARES system for expanding their reach and work toward better results and higher ROI. They invest in the rewarding pool, which is a base for rewarding EMMARES users (Email recipients), who evaluate their content.

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EMAIL RECIPIENTS-In return for evaluating the content that they receive from various email marketers (senders), the recipients get tokens from the rewards pool. For each assessment, the email recipient (user) receives tokens from the email marketer whose content was evaluated.

In February 2017, the Radicati Group estimated the number of email users worldwide to be 3.7 billion and the number of emails sent per day to be around 269 billion. Using the existing marketing revenue and allocating part of it to the email rewarding system will be beneficial in terms of new customer targeting. EMMARES will make it possible for everyone to demand a certain level of quality for a specific area of content.

EMMARES ICO, #1 among TOP5 ICOs of April 2018, (published by The Coinshark) has entered their public pre-sale on May 5th, 2018 and the token sale is divided into 6 stages: "The team worked hard over a period of many months to bring EMMARES project to its ICO stage. We undertook many live events, and everywhere we went to present our idea, we always received a very positive response from people of many different backgrounds. Marketing professionals, Small and Big business owners, Investors and many others have expressed their interest in our project. These kind of responses gives me the confidence that we stepped on the right path and that we are on to something big, something that has the possibility to revolutionize the whole industry. It’s an incredible feeling" proudly explained Bojan Oremuž, CEO and Founder.

7 Reasons

Why You Need Pryvate to Protect Your Privacy With all the crazy headlines going around about huge hacks and everyone’s personal information leaking from our trusted financial institutions, insurance companies, social media and even grocery stores, it’s hard not to think that we really need to take that extra step to betby ICO CROWD ter protect our personal communications and transactions. That’s where Pryvate comes in.

Pryvate allows you to reclaim your fundamental human right of privacy.

That’s right. Pryvate is a Secure Communications Platform that allows business and personal communications to remain private and free from hacking. Their app, PryvateNow, is super user-friendly, and it enables military-grade encryption for your mobile, landlines, voice and instant messaging, video and conference calls, and includes anti-global blocking, encrypted email and file storage. It is widely used around the world and it has been in the market for almost five years. You can use it on your phone or from your desktop to communicate with your business partners and loved ones without worrying about what you say or where it may end up.

military-grade encryption services are certainly worth their accessible subscription fee!

They are now tapping into blockchain technology and its huge potential for cyber-security Already experts in encryption technology, Pryvate now has their eyes set on exploiting the huge potential that blockchain technology has to offer cybersecurity. They are evolving into a hybrid of Centralised and Decentralized Autonomous Organization or DAO with Decentralized Applications services. This means that with your subscription to their app, you will be able to choose whether you want to remain with their already amazing military-grade encryption services, or move on to their super-secure, decentralized new features, like email and file storage among many others.

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One of their new and exciting features is the Pryvate CryptoWallet with simultaneous cold and hot storage Kudos to Pryvate for finally tackling the headache that is having to keep your crypto-money in separate hot —easily accessible, spendable— and cold —offline and safe from intrusions— storage. Their new Pryvate CryptoWallet will enable a hybridization of hot and cold storage available in a single app and device, with no extra storage needed and total-security provided for both mobile and desktop environments. It will be highly secure, containerized, lightweight and fully built into their app. No more running around trying to get your crypto out of cold storage when you need it the most.

They are willing to take on the challenge of crypto-hijacking With PVC, Pryvate will also address the universal concern of crypto-hijacking with a multi-sig enterprise wallet to be implemented by major cryptocurrency exchanges: a system of military-grade encryption technologies custodying and safeguarding fiat and cryptocurrency trade. This process has already started, Pryvate has joined forces with Coinexeo, an upcoming cryptocurrency exchange that should become a benchmark of security, privacy and transparency for the community.

Their fully secure Pryvate Ecosystem is likely the future of fullyprivate cross-platform communication It’s much safer than using Whatsapp Pryvate’s goal of establishing While Whatsapp boasts about having end Their ICO for PryvateCoin an easy-to-use, cross-platto end encryption for their instant mes(PVC) just launched and form, multi-use utility that saging, calling and video features, well, you can get free coins! simultaneously provides init is also owned by Facebook, a compaThe PryvateCoin (PVC) token valuable services and grows ny that is currently in very hot waters will be a critical component of PVC’s value is remarkable. for leaking your personal information to the app: It will enable the imWith PVC they aim at solvWe really need companies that they didn’t even bother plementation of a number of ing the crucial issue of crypto properly vet. PryvateNow is really the key functions within the Pry- to take that exto-hijacking with an incenonly fully secure, mobile encryption app vate ecosystem, like the effec- tra step to bettive-based, fully-secure ecoplatform that allows business and pertive decentralization of many system of military-grade enter protect our sonal communications to remain totally of its features and an equitacryption technologies. This personal comprivate. While Whatsapp supposedly en- ble and transparent system fully-secure ecosystem that crypts your instant messages, voice and of rewards. As Pryvate’s CEO, munications and the PVC token will allow to video calls, Pryvate secures your voice, Jonathan Parker-Bray puts it: transactions. develop, is of vital imporvideo and conference calls, instant mes“Pryvate is fully dedicated to tance to the world in which saging, email and file storage. It also inthe token model for our platwe live today where everycludes an anti-blocking feature to tunnel form, and we look forward to one’s information is comprothrough firewalls, and 4096-bit encrypthe app becoming entirely tokenized and mised in vulnerable centralized servers. tion keys —Whatsapp’s encryption key the incredible advantages that this move Accessible, military-grade encryption are a mere 256-bit— that are never exwill offer our users.” You can sign up now thoroughly integrated into communicaposed to anyone, including Pryvate them- here to get Whitelisted, and follow their tions and cryptocurrency trading platselves. Although not completely free like Twitter account for all you need to know forms is the elegant solution proposed Whatsapp, PrvateNow’s state-of-the-art about their Airdrops.

by Pryvate.

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The Advertising World Made Clear by Ubex The advertising industry has experienced many issues over the course of its most modern existence, including such troubling phenomena as inefficiency, fraud, and the predominance of various brokers and agencies that charge high fees for their services, offering close to no transparency and lackluster results. All of this has been leading to a massive inflation of costs for advertisers, poor ad slot load opportunities for publishers, and a degradation of trust among market participants for years.

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However, the market is headed for a true revolution as blockchain technologies have stormed the industry and introduced new opportunities. Ubex is a blockchain based advertising exchange with integrated AI and neural network solutions aimed at pioneering the way by ICO CROWD for a better advertising industry based on fairness and unprecedented efficiency for both advertisers and publishers.

The digital advertising market has been actively growing for the last 4 years as its size has exceeded the size of the television segment in 2017. This is a historic event for the advertising market.

One of the most promising segments of digital advertising is programmatic advertisement, which shows an average annual growth rate of more than 23% against a 4% growth rate of non-programmatic segments. According to the forecasts of Magna Global, the market size of advertising software will reach $42 billion by 2020.

Ubex is the solution – a global, decentralized advertising exchange based on the fusion of Neural Networks, AI, and blockchain operated by smart contracts. The mission of Ubex is to create a global advertising ecosystem with a high level of trust and maximum efficiency. The goals will be achieved thanks to the unified application of decentralized blockchain technologies al-

lowing unlimited data access and processing possibilities, Neural Networks granting intelligent analysis and tracking of market participant dynamics, and Artificial Intelligence for efficient decision making. All this combined with UBEX Token monetization within the internal platform economy ecosystem based on smart contract algorithms will ensure complete transparency and immediate payment for impeccable results.

At the heart of Ubex’s advertising purchasing algorithms lie neural networks that process information about each visitor to the member networks’ websites. The neural networks evaluate the interests of users, calculate the likelihood of targeted actions for all advertiser offers, and choose the most suitable advertisement. Thanks to this, member network website visitors see only those ads that are maximally confined to their interests, and which would convince them to fulfill the target action with maximum probability.

Thus, Ubex maximizes the targeting of advertising and the economic efficiency for advertisers.

Ubex aims to solve the problem of low confidence in the purchasing of digital advertising. Smart contracts allow for making the relationship of advertisers and publishers (owners of

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ad slots on sites) as transparent and fair as possible, as well as minimizing the risks for all parties. By applying such an approach, Ubex allows passage from the traditional pay per click scheme to the model of payment for targeted actions, the fairest and interesting model for advertisers.

Most companies routinely lose large percentallow directly buying target audiences, based ages of their advertising markets to fraud, inon blockchain and smart contracts, all impleefficient placement, and conflicts with publish- mented in Ubex. ers. The latter is no less affected by the market’s issues of trust as non-payment of fees With Ubex, the process of acquiring advertising owed by advertisers seriously hampers pubslots and selecting the most effective websites lishers from developing their websites and re- for placement of ads is simplified and transacsources. All these factors combined shrink tion risks are minimized with the application of PROGRAMMATIC APPROACH the market and do not allow it to create new smart contracts employing strict, tamper-proof, According to Magna Global, the size of the and effective instruments and platforms that criteria compliant algorithms. After payment is global advertising market was $465 billion in would ultimately result in the greater good concluded, the advertiser automatically purchas2015, $493 billion in 2016 and $500 billion of decreasing final prices of goods and services advertising based on specified requirements in 2017. Programmatic advertising is a set of es. This would have attracted more customers set for their target audience. Thus, with the help methods for purchasing advertisements on and led to the natural economic development of Ubex and its decentralized blockchain soluthe internet using automated systems and alin general. Until recently, there was no silver tion, it becomes possible to purchase advertising gorithms to make decisions about a transacbullet, but the advent of blockchain technolo- without brokers, reducing costs and ultimately tion without human participation based on so- gies has radically shifted the situation for the reducing product and service prices. cio-demographic and behavioral data about us- better. ers available to both the platform and the adThe programmatic concept that Ubex is based vertiser. The programmatic advertising marPREVALENT INEFFICIENCY on is popular due to its automation, simplificaket has been growing by more than 25% anThe structure of the digital advertising martion of obtaining leads, precise targeting, and nually demonstrating growth rates much fast- ket consists of a chain of participants repreoptimization of advertising budgets and strater than any other segment of the advertissented, on the one hand, by advertisers and on egies. An advanced Artificial Intelligence coning market and reached $24 billion last year. the other, by publishers with several interme- struct, or AI, acts as the key element of the The market size of advertising software will diaries between them, Ubex platform that alreach $42 billion by 2021 and its share will ex- performing a varielows the entire system ceed the non-programmatic segment, continty of functions. Large to coordinate as a uniuing to displace the old format of work from and medium-sized adfied whole in searchthe market. vertisers purchase ing for the best soluThe mission of Ubex digital advertising tions of placement, is to create a global Under the programmatic algorithm, when through media agenconsidering the readvertising ecosystem a user visits a web page, that user is shown cies, which in turn, quirements of both ads. For those fractions of a second, while deal through affiliated publishers and adwith a high level of the website is loading, the system analyzes trade desks or directly vertisers. The impletrust and maximum the composition of the audience of the web- with purchases directmentation of AI along efficiency. site, correlates this data with client targetly from the publisher, with Neural Networks ing and selects the appropriate advertising through banner netthat analyze the enformat. After that, an auction is conductworks, or through adtire market database ed among advertisers whose target audivertising exchanges. is based on blockchain ence corresponds to this visitor of the webtechnologies. The posite and who want to show their advertising. External technical services like demand-side tential of programmatic algorithms is immense, During the auction, the highest bid and the platforms (DSPs), the supply-side platform but it cannot be realized without blockchain winner of the auction are selected. The ad(SSPs) and Ad Servers are also used for purtechnologies and neural networks. vertisement of the winner is uploaded to the chasing and monitoring. Each of these servicwebsite and shown to the user. es solves a certain task but increases the final Advertisers can easily purchase advertisements cost for the advertiser as the costs for these from publishers through the Ubex advertising The segmentation of the entire advertising services are added to the commission of agen- exchange without resorting to the expensive sermarket reveals two key competing segments cies. Advertisers and media agencies use anvices of agencies and other intermediaries. Ubex in the form of the digital segment and the tel- cillary services to increase the effectiveness combines the functionality of an advertising exevision segment. As part of the overall marof advertising, such as creative optimization, change with a service to monitor all the perforket trend, the cost of television advertising ex- data suppliers/data management platforms, mance indicators of each ad placement of each ceeded the costs of internet advertising unretargeting, etc. publisher, thereby eliminating the need for aptil 2017. In 2017, there was a historical event propriate external tools. Similarly, Ubex comfor the advertising market – the volume of the However, the process of placing digital adverbines the functionality of a DSP / SSP. world market of internet advertising exceedtising is not straightforward as advertisers ed the volume of traditional television adverwork through digital agencies, do not receive Ubex aggregates proposals for the provision of tising for the first time and reached a size of reliable information about advertising budget advertising slots directly from the publishers. $192 billion. spending or results and carry the risk of fraud. Combined with the use of additional data proAppLift and Forensiq both revealed that about viders, Ubex grants a synergistic effect, since the In several countries, the digital segment al34% of all mobile ad displays are suspicious more data that is input into the neural network, ready occupies more than 50% of the market. and 22% is blatant fraud. Videology estimates the more accurate its predictions are with respect The main contribution to the growth of the losses from fraud in 2015 at $6.3 billion USD to the probability of a targeted action of each digital content market over the past 5 years and $7.3 billion in 2016. Juniper Research user in response to advertising materials. has been provided by the countries of Eastern forecasts that losses from fraud by 2022 will Europe, the Middle East, and South Amerireach $44 billion.

There is no single instrument by which a large ca. According to the forecasts of Dentsu Aegis, advertiser could easily filter out the most effecthe share of internet advertising can exceed There was no solution to inefficiency, mistrust, tive websites for their advertising and remain 50% of the total advertising market in 2018 in and fraud, until the advent of programmatcertain that their media budget for digital advercountries such as Australia, New Zealand, Chi- ic algorithms, a set of methods for purchasing tising would be spent efficiently. In addition, the na, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherinternet advertising using automated systems budgetary policies of large companies often do lands and the United Kingdom. that make decisions about transactions and not possess sufficient flexibility to allow employ91

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ees to purchase advertising slots on various websites (which belong to different legal entities) in the volumes necessary.

Another drawback of the current system of working with agencies is that advertisers do not always receive up-to-date and reliable information about how their advertising budget is being spent and what results can be guaranteed for the effectively applied funds.

In addition, many media agencies do not disclose the algorithms they apply and what audiences have been attracted to the sources of advertising.

THE BLOCKCHAIN AND COST PER ACTION APPROACH Ubex offers a solution in the form of smart contracts on the blockchain. Thanks to the Ubex purchasing system, the process of acquiring advertising slots and selecting the most effective websites for placement is simplified to the maximum and transaction risks are thereby reduced to a minimum. Ubex transaction algorithms automatically solve the issues that advertising agencies traditionally undertake (for a large commission). Once the payment is made, the advertiser can automatically purchase advertising according to the specified requirements set for the target audience, geography, time of displays and many other parameters. In addition, advertisers with high ratings have an option to defer payments. Thus, with the help of Ubex, it is possible to purchase advertising directly without any brokers, which significantly increases the economic efficiency of cooperation.

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With the help of smart contracts on the blockchain, Ubex allows for the transition to the COST PER ACTION model of payment, eliminating fraud and the need for clicks. At the same time, Ubex solves the problem arising from the transition to the COST PER ACTION model of payment from other websites, as Ubex tracks all user actions on publishers’ sites (as well as on the advertiser’s site in case the user moves to it) and saves all data on the blockchain. Based on the results of actual actions, which the publisher can easily verify in the blockchain, payment is made for targeted actions only.

Using neural networks and accumulated data, the Ubex algorithm selects the most current advertising offers relevant for certain visitors, maximizing the probability of obtaining the desired results. Moreover, the Ubex neural network evaluates the probability of targeted user actions. By applying such an approach, the Ubex algorithm estimates the economic efficiency of displaying various advertising options to each user. Thanks to the use of neural networks, the relevance of advertising displays is increased, along with predictability of advertising efficiency and the need to burn through budgets on trial and error approaches is reduced.

Many publishers lose revenue due to reduced displays of advertising. Mainly the number of hits becomes smaller due to the increased use of adblockers by users (according to the IAB study, penetration of adblockers among desktop browser users is more than 25%). This leads to a reduction in the volume of working capital, which is often limited by long delays in pay-

ments from advertisers or digital agencies. Financial difficulties compel publishers to look for new sources of raising funds for contribution, in the development of their websites and increasing future advertising revenues.

Ubex offers publishers the opportunity to tokenize their advertising slots. By utilizing all the statistics of users and advertising platforms available inside the exchange, Ubex algorithms provide forecasts of potential publisher earnings and give an opportunity of forecasting future earnings, provided the necessary rating is available. Thus, through tokenization, publishers can improve their financial performance. The tokenization of future incomes is based on blockchain-based smart contracts, while the amount of potential future income is forecasted by the neural networks.

The Ubex platform will provide ample opportunities not only to publishers and advertisers but also to companies that need regression analysis of user data. The system’s neural core, which is responsible for making decisions at all stages of the life cycle of the advertising material, will have an API, access to which can be provided to partner companies.

THE TECHNOLOGY The system core named Advanced Decentralized Advertising Marketing (ADAM) is responsible for making the decision to display advertising materials. This decision is based on the data stored in the blockchain as well as on the model data of the neural network stored internally. The behavioral decision-making block-

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chain allows one to evaluate user data and make a judgment about the perceived interests of the user. This regression estimate can be used not only to display advertising materials but for other purposes as well. The API will provide an opportunity to retrieve a list of expected categories with an estimate for each based on a query with user data.

In addition, as mentioned in the previous section, the Ubex platform will enable the owners of websites, who are providing statistical data for training of the system core, to receive UBEX Tokens as a reward for their actions (like mining). 5% of the income from all Ubex transactions will be distributed to the data providers. Using a proprietary Token allows a smart contract, that allows such actions, to be written. The use of cryptocurrency does not directly provide such opportunities.

There was no solution to inefficiency, mistrust, and Training the system core to obtain relevant and fraud, until the adaccurate forecasts is a laborious process. In this regard, the platform will provide the ability to vent of programadd statistical data to the site user’s actions, matic algorithms, a which can be used as a training sample for the set of methods for system’s core. The site owners who provided data purchasing internet will receive a reward proportional to the contribution of the data provided for training the sys- The Ubex platform will allow the in- advertising using tem core. These actions are like mining when us- put of Tokens into the system and automated systems ers are rewarded for labor-intensive work. their output for a wide range of that make decisions crypto and fiat currencies. The exabout transactions THE UBEX TOKEN change rates will be determined by and allow directThe UBEX payment Token will act as a paythe needs of the market and based ment unit on the Ubex platform. The need for on the trade data of the UBEX Toly buying target a Token is based on the need to credit funds ken. audiences, based from advertisers’ accounts for the displays of on blockchain and advertising materials that they have bought.

In addition to being a dedicated smart contracts, Basic cryptocurrencies do not allow the credpayment unit, the UBEX Token is iting of funds from third party accounts even also endowed with a unique buyall implemented in if one has permission from the third parties. back option. The buyback option in- Ubex.

The Token allows for setting quotas to a specific address within which the owner of the address can use the funds available on the account. Crediting is possible only on condition that the account holder has established the size of the quota and only from the address to which the quota is issued, otherwise the funds cannot be credited.

volves the use of 20% of all commissions to buy UBEX internal platform currency units from the market every quarter and burn them, thus increasing total project value. The option will be in effect until 50% of all units are reacquired and burned.

The project team consists of high-level professionals with extensive experience in areas of marketing, neural networks, and blockchain, who know perfectly know and understand all the advantages of these technologies, which we can apply effectively in order to achieve the maximum result. The infrastructure developed within the framework of the project will allow it to take the process of buying advertising and its economic efficiency to a new level.

PROSPECTS Ubex is entering the market of programmatic advertising, which will reach $42 billion by 2020. Due to the transition to the pay per action model, the blockchain, and neural network technologies, Ubex is set to become a cornerstone in the advertising industry and offer market participants the platform they need to have peace of mind when conducting their advertising operations. The project operates on a fully legal basis from the Crypto Valley in the Swiss town of Zug and has full compliance with the SEC and observance of FINMA regulations. And with its first stage of entry onto the market through the sale of UBEX Tokens already near, the project is set to revolutionize the advertising industry.

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A Wellness Guide Always by Your Side:

How Psych-Tech is Poised to Disrupt the Multi-Trillion-Dollar Wellness Industry Imagine you had someone who knew exactly what you feel, want and need, any time, without even asking. Imagine if they knew exactly what’s holding you back from living the life you want.

Imagine if they knew exactly how to motivate yourself to make the positive changes you need.

Yoo-Mi is the EmpathAI™ -powered and Blockchainbased Wellness platform that understands and responds to your unique psychology to give you all the personalized insights, guidance, and support you need to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.

THE MISSING PIECE OF THE WELLNESS INDUSTRY: PSYCHOLOGY The global wellness market is incredibly lucrative and poised for disruption.

Over the last three years, the wellness market size has grown by 10.6%. By by YOO-MI 2015 the market reached $3.7 trillion and continues to expand at an average pace of between 3-6% per year depending on the segment. Today, the wellness market presents more than 5% of global economic output and almost half of all global health expenditures.

This industry expansion is in large part supported by a greater willingness to be proactive when it comes to self-care, higher disposable income, and readiness to pay more to sustain a higher quality of living.

However, the staggering amount of money spent on wellness products and willingness to self-improve does not necessarily translate directly into actual improved wellbeing. The sheer volume of players in the market, the constant churning out of new products, the use of grouping and segmentation in AI targeting, and a generalized mar-

keting culture that sees every person as their target audience, all translates to a skewed environment in which too many people consume irrelevant products and information, and too few people end up achieving their goals.

In addition, despite a rapidly expanding artillery of technology to help us improve our minds and bodies, one gaping hole is the ability to effectively address the motivation to take the action we need to fully achieve our wellness goals.

The reasons behind low motivation and productivity are intricate and complex and susceptible to a whole range of psychological, emotional and situational factors. For example, while one person may be skipping the treadmill because they are too tired after caring for their young children, another might be skipping it because they’re self-conscious and intimidated by the beefcakes at the gym.

Unfortunately, most of us have no choice but to be self-reliant in motivating ourselves. Existing fitness, diet and wellness apps lack the integration of psychology into AI, rendering them incapable of tapping directly into our in95

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With this game-changing technology, we have unprecedented, exclusive insights into the thoughts, emotions and internal motivators of the individual that can assist in efforts to tailor only the most relevant information, target needed products and services, and motivate positive behavioural change in the area of wellness.

ternal motivators and addressing the complex psychological reasons we so often fail to achieve our goals. When wellness technology fails to take into account the context for your barriers to success - the fundamental “WHY” factor – they fail to succeed, period.

ENTER EMPATHAI™ AND YOO-MI Yoo-Mi Wellness is a wellness platform powered by state-of-the-art EmpathAI™ - Empathetic AI - technology. While most AI today uses broad statistical probability to understand customers as part of a segment, EmpathAI ™ uses Deep Psychology to drive Deep Machine Learning, thereby enabling machines to gain an incredibly detailed picture of the psychology of every individual user and boost motivation through its intricate incentivization system that rewards users for taking proactive steps towards self-improvement.

Powered by this technology, Yoo-Mi Wellness provides users with unprecedented 360° data-driven insights into their physical well-being, and offers hy96

per-personalized tips, prompts and guidance to help them achieve their individual wellness goals. Yoo-Mi Wellness users are encouraged to complete tasks that contribute to their wellness goals, via a friendly avatar that knows exactly how to adapt interaction with each user and encourage them to be proactive in their self-care. Each YooMi Wellness avatar is designed to look just like its user, to create a powerful psychological mirroring effect that incentivizes them to follow the avatar’s guidance.

What sets Yoo-Mi Wellness apart from any other wellness platform is that it was created by a large team of clinical psychology and machine learning experts, with the objective of tapping into the complex personal and psychological elements that so often distract, tempt and discourage people away from persevering with their wellness goals.

The platform is operated and powerfully secured using Blockchain technology and users can pay for services using our dedicated UME tokens.

The platform is operated and powerfully secured using Blockchain technology and users can pay for services using our dedicated UME tokens.

THE YOO-MI WELLNESS MARKETPLACE While the Yoo-Mi Wellness Avatar is the face and mentor of our platform, the comprehensive marketplace behind it caters to all the wellness needs of our users. The marketplace uses Blockchain technology to provide direct user access to entities that facilitate every wellness need in an affordable, efficient and customized way. The entire Yoo-Mi Wellness marketplace operates using our UME currency exclusively.

Yoo-Mi Wellness is designed to revolutionize how consumers interact with wellness brands while supporting and motivating them every step of their progress. Using a personalized avatar and a unique incentivization system, Yoo-Mi Wellness targets the complex psychological factors that inhibit your wellness progress and help make your wellness goals a reality.

This is supported by a comprehensive, open and decentralized marketplace where users can purchase the specific products and services they need to achieve their individual wellness goals.

By using Blockchain and completely opening our API, the platform is entirely decentralized and open to every service provider and supplier, thereby creating a large, competitive and healthy

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able to utilize the incentives within the marketplace to further aide in their wellness goals.

ecosystem. By predicting, pre-empting and understanding the needs of each individual user.

Yoo-Mi is redefining traditional approaches to marketing and maximizing efficiencies by connecting brands with the specific users who already want or need their products and targeting them at the exact time they will be most receptive.

Yoo-Mi Wellness targets the complex psychological factors that inhibit your wellness est of customers has never been higher. progress and Fuelled by efficiencies enabled by Emhelp make your pathAI™, Yoo-Mi is redefining the well- wellness goals a ness market… reality.

With our Yoo-Mi Wellness platform, not only are we using Deep Psychology to incentivize and empower users to take the initiative and take care of themselves better, but we are also uniting all wellness products under one roof and making sure the products each user Not only will a wide variety of wellness needs to support their specific goals are products be directly available to order readily available. Equipped with intrifrom the marketplace, but users will re- cate knowledge about each individual ceive customized offers for service pro- user, we are able to direct users to the viders that align with their personal ob- products they already love or introduce jectives, budget and psychological com- them to new ones and will help speed patibility. The menu of wellness servic- up their progress. es and products will include everything and anything from spas to personal Understanding and talking to customtrainers, weight loss support groups to ers as individuals is the most effective nutritionists, therapists to masseurs. way of standing apart from your comOver 70 world-leading brands have alpetitors, and those not leveraging availready signed on to the platform, includ- able technologies and techniques will ing Walmart, Weightwatchers, Nike, notice a significant impact on their botSephora, New Balance and many more. tom line.

By combining pioneering AI with wellness and Blockchain technology, YooMi Wellness has an unbeatable platform to help users make positive, lasting, long-term change while providing unrivalled targeting and maximizing efficiencies for wellness brands.

DISRUPTING THE WELLNESS INDUSTRY The wellness world is rapidly evolving and the bar for grabbing the inter-

LEVERAGING BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY The entire Yoo-Mi Wellness platform, including its dedicated wellness marketplace, is operated using blockchain technology and a strong token economy. This economy enables Yoo-Mi Wellness to offer users incentives to take steps towards attaining their wellness goal, such as losing weight, choosing a healthy meal or tracking the vitals in their blood test results. Users are then

Our Blockchain technology serves four primary functions: 1. Security: Secure encryption of the personal information gleaned from interaction with our avatar and purchases of products and services on our marketplace. Our entire operations happen within a closed dedicated ecosystem.

2. Incentivization: Smart contracts are used to facilitate the distribution of tokens among our suppliers for excellent service and among our users based on their successful completion of wellness-enhancing actions, thereby incentivizing better fitness, lifestyle, and self-care.

3. Transparency: Blockchain is used to disclose all the properties of each product we offer, including features, ingredients, quality standards, and pricing structure. All third-party suppliers will also have to submit detailed and substantiated information about their products and services, which will be verified and published on the blockchain.

FUNDING THE WELLNESS REVOLUTION Momentum is building rapidly around our Yoo-Mi Wellness project, with its game-changing potential for businesses and consumers alike being increasingly recognized by major players.

We are delighted to have already exceeded our initial expectations by raising over $34 million in private sale.

Welcome to the Yoo-Mi era…and it’s only just the beginning…

For more information about Yoo-Mi Wellness, visit: http://www.yoo-mi-wellness.com/ To get involved in this project contact: contact@yoo-mi.com Or follow us on Facebook or Twitter

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MuleChain - Global Decentralized P2P Delivery and Warehouse Services on a Blockchain For the People and By the People

The MuleChain business (http://mulechain.com) is a global decentralized P2P personal delivery service managed by smart contracts on a blockchain.

by RALPH LIU Editor of MuleChain

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There are three essential parts of the business: The mules can be 1) non-professional occasional travelers working as the cross-border mules, 2) local professionals conducting last mile e-commerce delivery to households, or 3) the usual local messengers for documents, couriers for parcels or even food delivery moped drivers in local cities and neighborhood communities. The mule's service is kind of like an Uber for goods and freight if you will, but to work for Uber, one needs to own a car. To work for himself/herself as a mule on the MuleChain platform, one only needs a subway token, a train pass or an airline ticket to compete in price with UPS, FedEx or DHL.

The mule’s service is kind of like an Uber for goods and freight if you will, but to work for Uber, one needs to own a car. To work for himself/herself as a mule on the MuleChain platform, one only needs a subway token, a train pass or an airline ticket to compete in price with UPS, FedEx or DHL.

There are also opportunities for independent individuals who can use their under-utilized living space to set up on the MuleChain platform to act as a Pack Station to earn income for themselves. The pack station business is more like an Airbnb for packages and parcels whereas to work for Airbnb, one needs to own an apartment or a house. To work for himself/ herself as a pack station owner on the MuleChain platform, one only needs a rented apartment or a rented house to compete in price for offering delivery services with those centralized corporate giants.

Here is a simple example for somebody who wants to send a jacket from Singapore to London to his daughter who is studying at a university there. He finds a mule who has an itinerary (e.g. with an $800 round trip flight ticket) posted on MuleChain, contacts her directly and they both agree on the price (e.g.

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$100). He then finds on the MuleChain map via his mobile phone where the nearest pack station is around him in Singapore. It may happen to be only two floors above him in his own apartment building near Orchard Road.

He goes up, takes a picture, drops it off there and pays the pack station owner $10 via the MuleChain token MCX. The mule then picks it up and flies to London. Upon arrival, the mule takes a picture, pays 8 pounds and drops it off at a pack station near Oxford Circus tube station. The daughter or the receiver picks it up there and confirms the receipt on her mobile phone. The mule then gets paid and both the pack station owners already got paid too along the way, all automatically by the smart contracts on the MuleChain platform.

There is a transformative power of this new service to our society. Think about how many new jobs could be created globally, not just for those travelers but also for those under-privileged handicapped persons and the senior citizens. They could all become pack station owners and switch on their part-time voluntary service occasionally to generate some income for themselves; while sitting at home to allow requesters and mules to drop off and pick-up only those small parcels, sentimental trinkets or documents out of their approved choices.

While mules may be Republicans, the pack stations owners are most likely Democrats. We are glad that the MuleChain business might be able to please both.

service, especially in developing countries in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. We may have a chance to offer MuleChain as an improved alternative to the many current national postal package delivery services in those countries via this new decentralized peer-topeer trust-less system enabled by the blockchain technology.

As for the business strategy for Our goal is to MuleChain, in the beginning, we be able to create will focus on Part 1, i.e. cross-bormillions of new der mules business where we curjobs in the new rently have zero competition to build and season our technoloOur goal is to be able to create milgig economy gy platform before we move on to while we bring lions of new jobs in the new gig compete with existing businesseconomy while we bring these exthese exciting es in Part 2 and Part 3. In terms citing new benefits to consumers of deployment, apart from the US new benefits across the world. and China where we will try to to consumers implement all three parts of the Below is a link to MuleChain CEO across the business, we have also set up 10 Ralph Liu's recent podcast interworld. other peripheral countries around view with FutureTech, April 25, the world with regional direc2018 tors to focus only on Part 1, the cross-borhttps://www.futuretechpodcast.com/podder mules business. With regional directors casts/ralph-liu-mule-chain-world-wide-p2pdeveloping the local business plans in each delivery-storage-service-people-people/ country, will be able to execute these busi-ness plans immediately right after the sucMuleChain, Inc. cessful launch of our platform.

2901 W Coast Hwy, #200, Newport Beach, CA 92663 Our corporate mission is to reach out to most Tel: 1-888-456-8881 of the world’s population and invite them to http://mulechain.com use mules and pack stations as a day to day info@mulechain.com

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Spl.yt has created a revolutionary smart contract protocol, enabling Web 3.0 capability for the e-commerce industry. “Ecommerce is the fastest growing industry in the world poised to hit $4.5T by 2021, a 246% increase from 2014. Yet, in the US, one online marketplace controls 44% of the total US market share causing systemic bottlenecks that costs time and money for affiliated vendors.

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We can improve many aspects of e-commerce by utilizing blockchain technology to enable synchronization between marketplaces enabling efficient, fair, and secure transactions. This will save time, money, and improve security for everyone involved” - Cyrus,

by Founder of Spl.yt

CYRUS TAGHEHCHAIN CEO & Founder of Sp.lyt

Spl.yt’s protocol is powered by SATs, which allows the tech to incentivize behaviour changes not before possible.

These SATs allow for: 1. Access to buy and sell inventory on the decentralized “global inventory" blockchain.

2. Disincentivizing harmful behaviour (spam, fraud).

At its core, Spl.yt’s purpose is to con3. Compensating individuals, (such as nect existing marketplaces to the blockarbitrators and listing validators,) chain to facilitate the creation of a globwho help ensure the integrity of the al inventory listing across all connectSpl.yt ecosystem. ed marketplaces. This system will save buyers time and money, enabling them Utilizing the Blockchain and Smart to view all inventory available on all Contracts, e-commerce vendors can sites. No longer will shoppers have to benefit from increased asset liquidicompare products from different webty and lower fees, and their customers sites to find the best product at the best save time by accessing more products in price, nor will sellers have to upload less time. Affiliate marketers, too, have their inventory to different marketplac- a trust less public ledger that records es to reach different customers. The de- their participation in a sale, automating centralized global inventory that Spl.yt and verifying their payments for their powers eliminate this unnecessary recontribution. Spam and fraud become petitive process allowing a one-click up- costlier in a marketplace powered by load for sellers and an easier product Spl.yt, as users now have a stake to acsearch experience for buyers. cess and engage with the marketplace.

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businesses and enables consumers to acquire high quality products from anywhere quickly and cheaply. The wide adoption of the internet has paved the way for significant ecommerce growth to become the fastest growing industry in the world.

The spl.yt ecosystem automates ecommerce middlemen functions

In 2016, global revenue for ecommerce reached nearly $1.95T and is predicted to grow to a staggering $4.5T industry by 2021. The current state of the industry was propelled by significant innovation carried out by industry leaders to deliver products on a global scale. On the surface, the system seems to work just fine, so what improvements can be made given how well the process seems to work? Arguably, the largest problem in ecommerce today is something that consumers don’t often think about: the oligopolistic market demographic. 44% of the US market share is controlled by one company while another 14.2% is controlled by three.

And finally, marketplace participants can benefit from a monetized and decentralized spam, fraud and reputation system - creating a self-regulating ecosystem.

Spl.yt is advancing e-commerce, making it compatible with the Web 3.0. To follow our progress, follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram!

WHY DO WE NEED SPL.YT? “We are building a new ‘internet for shopping’ with Spl.yt, enabling a more efficient and secure evolution of ecommerce.”

The centralization of ecommerce power has resulted in mass dependency on these large and powerful intermediaries. These middlemen can leverage their size to exploit vendors that depend on their customer base. With very few alternatives, ultimately, small vendors pay intermediaries hefty fees for each item sold.

Savvy shoppers looking for unique products often visit smaller peer to peer vendor websites. Grassroots vendors can thrive on these sites and buy-

ers can purchase products at great prices, but P2P marketplaces are still risky places to transact. P2P marketplaces lack user trust, because they are littered with spam and fraudulent listings for which marketplaces provide little to no recourse. A buyer must thoroughly research the history of sellers’ reviews to attempt to gain insight into the legitimacy of the vendor. Even after careful research, there is a chance that the reviews themselves can be fraudulent or that the rating has been altered.

How does one acquire unique products online without having to risk wasting time and money? We offer the solution: the Spl.yt Core Protocol.

Join our crusade to slay the oligarchs of ecommerce, with a burning blade of decentralized fury - you, can join the fight in digital liberation as we lay our tokens on the ground and shed hashing power for the common man. The age of servitude is over, the age of digital freedom has begun. Telegram: Twitter: Medium: Facebook: Today, millions of people around the world benefit from the convenience of global ecommerce. It drives successful

Spl.yt’s purpose is to connect existing marketplaces to the blockchain to facilitate the creation of a global inventory listing across all connected marketplaces.

This system will save buyers time and money, enabling them to view all inventory available on all sites.

Further, scammers often take the username of a prominent seller in one marketplace and use it on another to piggyback off the established player’s reputation. Moreover, large rating aggregators have been known to coerce users to pay more or risk unfair representation on their systems. Spl.yt’s user reputations travel with them across all connected marketplaces alleviating these problems to form the strongest ratings and review system possible.

Spl.yt’s incentives can also benefit the buyer through a small SAT reward every time they leave quality feedback.

Currently, reviews are often left by either extremely happy, or extremely disappointed customers, little in-between.

With Spl.yt’s system, users are incentivized to leave quality, in depth feedback to add value to the ecosystem. In addition, new marketplaces can earn their reputation much faster than the slower legacy model, as customers now want to spread the word about their newest purchase. Finally, as a seller's reputation increases, their listing deposit fee is reduced, turning their quality service into tangible savings.

For example, if Amazon, ebay, and bestbuy.com were built on Spl.yt, sellers of electronics would list their products once on one platform and the Spl.yt

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WHAT IS SPL.YT? Spl.yt is a blockchain powered global inventory platform and ecommerce protocol intent on improving the way people engage in ecommerce. “Ecommerce is the fastest growing industry in the world poised to hit $4.5T by 2021, a 246% increase from 2014”, says Cyrus Taghehchian, CEO of Spl.yt Core Foundation, “Yet, in the US, one online marketplace controls 44% of the total US market share causing systemic bottlenecks that wastes time and money for affiliated vendors. We can improve many aspects of ecommerce by utilizing blockchain technology to facilitate synchronization between marketplaces enabling efficient, fair, and secure transactions. This will save time, money, and improve security for everyone involved”. The centralization of ecommerce power has resulted in mass dependency on these large and powerful intermediaries. These middlemen can leverage their size to exploit vendors that depend on their customer base by charging hefty fees.

Spl.yt tackles these problems through its revolutionary smart contract protocol, enabling Web 3.0 capability for the ecommerce industry. At its core, Spl. yt’s purpose is to connect existing marketplaces to the blockchain to facilitate the creation of a global inventory listing across all connected marketplaces.

This system will save buyers time and money, enabling them to view all inventory available on the original and affiliate sites. No longer will shoppers have to compare products from different websites to find the best product at the best price. Spl.yt eliminates this unnecessary repetitive process by connecting marketplace to bring the buyer the best available product at the best possible price. Spl.yt provides substantial savings for vendors of all sizes selling any product.

protocol would automatically populate their inventory on any other connected website. A seller can now can maximize reach of their product while minimizing time spent doing so. The buyer, too, only now needs to browse one website to compare products and prices. Once a buyer purchases an item listed within the decentralized global inventory, it will automatically de-list from every marketplace, avoiding risk of double-purchasing the same item. Leveraging the Blockchain, Spl.yt’s protocols can improve current affiliate marketing payments, promptly tracking the chain of affiliates involved in a sale and allowing for swift and precise payments.

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Spl.yt’s lead feature is its Global Inventory Blockchain, which will allow connected marketplaces to easily upload their inventory to the blockchain and benefit from the increase in product exposure. On the other side, buyers will be able to easily view all available products from all affiliated marketplaces by visiting one site. The SAT tokens are used for access to this system, which leverages blockchain for increased asset liquidity and better affiliate marketing tracking. In addition to this, Spl.yt’s protocol enables an evolution of the digital reputation system and creates opportunities for fractional ownership not before possible.

“We are building a new ‘internet for shopping’ with Spl.yt, enabling a more efficient and secure evolution of ecommerce.”

An individual vendor can connect their marketplace to Spl.yt and take advantage of increased exposure of their products. Secondly, a given vendor can also be rewarded for sales of third party products on their marketplace through Spl.yt’s automated affiliate marketing rewards. While all will benefit from increased liquidity in the industry, Spl. yt recognizes that the benefits must be delivered in a secure manner. Thus, the core team has developed token economics revolving around the Spl.yt Access Token, that will provide incentives for honest participation, and provide a mechanism through which dispute can take place in a streamlined and fair way.

SPL.YT FEATURES Spl.yt’s decentralized smart contract protocol is powered by SAT tokens

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(SATs). SATs are intended to secure the integrity of the Spl.yt ecosystem by serving three primary functions: (1) Access to buy and sell inventory on the "global inventory" blockchain while (2) Disincentivizing harmful behaviour, including (but not limited to) spamming the network, defrauding other ecosystem members, or failing to engage in real-world behaviour that mirrors on-chain agreements; and (3) Compensating individuals, (such as arbitrators and listing validators,) who help ensure the integrity of the Spl.yt ecosystem.

Trust: Reputation & Fraud Detection The SAT token also allows for two key trust features - a global reputational system and fraud arbitration process. The current reputational system is maintained internally on each individual site requiring that vendors redundantly build and manage their reputations across multiple marketplaces. Spl. yt’s reputational system is not bound by one ecommerce website. Instead, it will be a global reputation system that ensures accountability for users on all connected marketplaces.

decentralized global inventory. These deposited SATs will be returned to the seller, distributed to other marketplaces, or sent to other users depending on the success and behaviours exhibited throughout the transaction (such as to a buyer who left a detailed review following a successful fulfilment). This allows the spl.yt ecosystem to self-regulate participants in the ecosystem.

In some legacy models, competing users are incentivized to report competing vendors’ products as fraud, and with no proper validation or screen, often succeed at forcing those products to be taken down from the listing base.

Spl.yt’s marketplace participants regulate the system by flagging potential spam. The difference is that these participants or “validators” must deposit SATs to justify their claim. If the validator is successful in identifying a spam post, the validator is rewarded from the deposit the seller left to initially list the item. The double-staking model disincentivizes sellers from posting spam and fraud and further incentivizes the validators to act carefully on their selection.

FRACTIONAL OWNERSHIP & USE CASES A second innovative trust feature Spl.yt’s infrastructure protocol layer works to disincentivize spam and fraud. provides many use cases as the evolvSellers on Spl.yt must deposit a small ing landscape of ecommerce progressnumber of SATs to post an item to the es. Using Spl.yt’s smart contracts, mar-

The decentralized global inventory that Spl. yt powers eliminate this unnecessary repetitive process allowing a one-click upload for sellers and an easier product search experience for buyers.

ketplaces can innovate new sharing services - in essence, enabling buyers to “timeshare anything” that a seller has listed in the decentralized global inventory. Items that may once have been too expensive or impractical for a single person to buy, can now be collectively purchased, owned, and used.

“Time-sharing” luxury goods, however, is just the tip of the iceberg as there are many industrial applications as well. Construction companies for example, which require large industrial machinery on a contractual basis, can minimize overhead expenses by fractionally owning and using these depreciating assets. This commercial application can be brought to both large and small scale uses.

Spl.yt’s protocol is laying the foundation for ecommerce capability on Web 3.0, creating real world applications of smart contracts. Spl.yt will ultimately lower fees for vendors, save users money, and bring confidence to shoppers across all marketplaces.

Join our progress as we continue to improve our working App, which you can already test here (http://demo.spl. yt). Stay up to date with updates from the team on our Twitter (https://twitter.com/splytcore) and ask any questions to our team directly on Telegram (https://t.me/splyt).

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The Bullies On The Block Looking past all these challenges, mass crypto adoption faces the small matter of unseating the incumbents who, not surprisingly, are not very anxious to be shown to the exit. The existing financial system is in the crosshairs of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, and you can be sure they are prepared to use every weapon in their very well-funded, politically entrenched arsenals to fight for the status quo. It would be naïve to expect the banking and finance industry to peacefully cede power over its territory to the cryptocurrency upstarts.

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by PAUL KIRKITELOS President

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has emerged as the public face of institutional opposition to cryptocurrency, with his repeated, almost bombastic comments about cryptocurrency being a scam. It’s easy to conclude that he must be an idiot not to see what is really going on. However, Dimon is nothing if not a shrewd operator. He knows a threat when he sees one, and it’s his job as head of the largest bank in the United States to hang onto his company’s current “most favored nation status” while his organization figures out how to benefit from, rather than be destroyed by, the breakthroughs in blockchain technology.

Blanket denouncements of cryptocurrency by the most powerful man on Wall Street are a good way to get the average man on Main Street to think twice about diving into cryptocurrency. As a result, the pace of change is slowed, and the incumbents keep their desperate grasp on power a little longer. By maintaining the status quo for yet another quarter, JP Morgan was able to earn $8.7 billion in profit in the first quarter of 2018.

Clearly, when you’re in Jamie Dimon’s

shoes, every day counts – to the tune of nearly $100 million on your bottom line. Hardly an idiot in his approach to cryptocurrency, Mr. Dimon is upholding his fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders quite nicely. At least for the time being.

INFRASTRUCTURE IS CRUCIAL To realize the vision for the future of cryptocurrency, an entirely new infrastructure must be created and installed, making crypto payments as seamless as cash and cards are today.

Complete changeovers in an installed base of operation can be costly, slow, and unpopular. As it stands now, accepting crypto for payments is simply too difficult for most merchants to even consider.

My company, Koinon.io, is focused on lowering the barriers to entry to the point where the average retailer, large or small, has no resistance to getting onboard.

Koinon’s mission is to enable merchants to accept all methods of payment via a single “OmniChannel” sys-

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tem that requires only a single piece of hardware. Our OmniChannel platform will allow crypto payments to be handled in the same way as fiat payments, managed by an easyto-use software platform. Via a single relationship with Koinon, merchants of all sizes will be able to accept card, mobile, and crypto payments with a simple QR Code scan.

The merchant can choose whether to receive the ultimate payment in fiat or cryptocurrency.

Until accepting crypto payments is as simple as competing for payment methods, adoption will not reach critical mass, and especially not in the offline world. Koinon’s omnichannel system is the bridge between “here” and “there.” Recalling the Implicit Assumption from above, we at Koinon do not have a crystal ball to predict when crypto will emerge as a dominant payment method, but we firmly believe that day will come, whether it is three, five, or even ten years in the future. We intend to help merchants get ahead of the curve and be ready for it.

Our platform will make it easy for a merchant to continue accepting cash, cards, and mobile (fiat) eWallets like WeChatPay and AliPay. But when that merchant decides the time is right to begin accepting crypto payments, Koinon’s platform will already have the functionality built in, and it is as simple as flipping a switch and turning it on. We put the power in the hands of the merchant in a way that the traditional system has never done – and has no great incentive ever to

do. This is one of the reasons we at Koinon, as well as virtually all crypto believers, see such a bright future.

REGIONAL STRATEGY Koinon sees the greatest initial opportunity for crypto payments in the Asia Pacific region, as well as in other emerging markets with large swaths of the population still existing outside the traditional banking system. The large base of unbanked consumers

Koinon.io, is focused on lowering the barriers to entry to the point where the average retailer, large or small, has no resistance to getting onboard.

can skip entirely the step of opening bank accounts and acquiring credit/debit cards.

Instead, they can move straight to mobile and cryptocurrency based financial services and gain entrance to the global economy.

China provides the model for this growth, owing largely to ubiquitous mobile internet infrastructure and a strong push by powerful mobile payments players like WeChatPay and AliPay. For many Chinese consumers, the mobile phone has replaced the wallet, with most merchants now accepting these two mobile payment methods.

Within a few years, we envision a similar evolution for crypto payments throughout other parts of Asia and the developing world. Koinon’s OmniChannel platform will open the door to allow merchants and consumers to connect however they choose – via card, mobile, or crypto – with no unnecessary barriers to commerce. This is the future that cryptocurrency has been promising since it emerged nearly a decade ago. Koinon makes it possible for this future to become a reality.

Koinon is launching its own KNN cryptocurrency tokens via an ICO in the coming months. The KNN tokens can be used for merchant transactions, person-to-person transfers such as cross-border remittances from overseas workers, and for fees incurred within the Koinon ecosystem.

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How the Crypto-Community and Blockchain Technology Is Helping Us Take The High Road on Our Voyage to a Unified Transportation Network

by SIMON HO Founder & CEO of Iconic Blockchain

THE CHALLENGE – UNIFYING TRANSPORTATION - You want to change your air ticket without getting stung with an extortionate transfer fee.

- You don’t want to spend your day understanding the nuances of rail ticket pricing and booking.

- You have just arrived in a new country, forced to emigrate from your conflict-ridden home, and need access to employment opportunities.

- You want to get to school but keep getting mugged on the way to the bus stop for the cash you are carrying for the fare.

- You live and work in a city over-run with traffic congestion and pollution.

Whether you experience “1st world” problems, “3rd world” or “growing world” problems, transport is one of those commodities that we can sometimes take for granted and other times feel very passionate about “solving”.

This is because we live in a world where transport of people and goods is fragmented. The economic and environmental costs of providing today’s logistics and transport services are high and inefficient. They are characterized by time delays, pollution and under-utilized deployment of significant physical resources.

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For the past three years, we have been defining a globally acceptable and unified transport solution. We are guided by principles of how we can seamlessly interface and connect with our transport needs, while at the same time developing the right commercial drivers for solution adoption.

For example, shipping goods with containers that have been given TSio Protocol mobility accounts, from South Africa to the UK, will remove friction from up to 200 separate processes and provide global and interoperable access to container journeys, leading to better vessel and port planning, faster customs clearance, reduced fraud and reduced CO2 emissions.

negative externalities and to failed or dysfunctional marketplaces.

In contrast, blockchain technology is founded on open source principles. This encourages incredibly rapid innovation cycles and an unstoppable shift towards solutions that are adopted at scale by collaborative communities and distributed networks.

The openness, transparency, and trustworthiness of blockchain solutions effectively and efficiently deliver the following key benefits to the global transport ecosystem:

1. Unified and seamless services; 2. Higher performing cities; 3. Optimal utilization of assets; and By preparing the ground and building a 4. Reduced fuel costs, air pollution, global reputation, the Iconic Blockchain and CO2 emissions. team has been able to permeate bluechip corporations who have validated However, within the transport industhe ideas and contributed to the ecosys- try, the drive to engage with Blockchain tem construction from an expert’s per- technologies and the crypto-communispective, guiding and providing insight ty to achieve these global benefits is as into how to gain critical acceptance in fragmented as the underlying transport their commercial space. ecosystem that exists today.

WHY BLOCKCHAIN? Within transport, companies and cities have been mostly using proprietary data and technology to protect their commercial positions, often leading to

At the same time, global technology giants, are resisting the transformative potential of blockchain to create a more distributed and equitable future economy.

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To date, Venture Capital has focussed upon proprietary transport applications on mobile devices, promoted to deliver an enhanced or new service to customers. While some have achieved measured success, typically they are one-dimensional and unable to interoperate with other services.

By using blockchain to create system interoperability and customer data portability, these applications can start to provide much greater impacts.

This is of special relevance to cities, in China and emerging markets, such as Cape Town in South Africa, that are rapidly expanding, with transportation becoming a key constraint to further economic growth.

OUR SOLUTION – DECENTRALISED MOBILITY ACCOUNT INFRASTRUCTURE In December 2017, we provided ICO Crowd readers early insight into our industrial usecase led project, TSio Protocol. Described as a B2B “decentralised blockchain-based mobility account infrastructure for people and cars”, our solution remains “as simple or as complex” as this.

The simple part is how, through the architecture of blockchain protocols, we can create a secure, distributed and interoperable mobility account at either a people or an asset level.

Through further engagement with the transport industry we have identified an impressive range of working transport assets where the mobility account will be put to good use:

- Connected and Autonomous Vehicles; - Car Parking Spaces; - Drive-thrus & Petrol Station Forecourts; - Rail Rolling Stock; - Parcels; and - Shipping Containers The complex part is how to achieve global adoption within a fragmented marketplace and resistance by existing players to changes in the real-world delivery of transportation.

To address this issue, we have built a team of world-leading transport experts at the heart of our business, who together have the credibility with both corporations and governments to deliver transformational change.

The team knows that the world needs integrated solutions and understands the potential for blockchain to improve the transparency, interoperability, and trustworthiness of transactions across the whole of transportation.

Of critical importance to our business model, is how the TSio Protocol solution is commercially agnostic. It removes proprietary and

To date, Venture Capital has focussed upon proprietary transport applications on mobile devices, promoted to deliver an enhanced or new service to customers.

commercial barriers to global implementation and motivates widespread adoption of TSio Protocol, which in turn promotes and develops a highly interoperable transport ecosystem.

Our preferred operators of full nodes will be operators of existing transport systems infrastructure, where close integration between the Iconic Blockchain decentralised network and centralised data systems/applications would be desirable – for example, port terminal operating systems, internal systems of freight forwarders, passenger ticketing systems etc.

OUR APPROACH TO GLOBAL ADOPTION – REAL WORLD TEST BED ENVIRONMENTS To achieve early network adoption, Iconic’s expert team is now working hard, behind the scenes, with several prospective commercial and city partners to deliver real-world testbed environments.

The first of these test-beds, we can announce, exclusively to ICO Crowd readers, is Cape Town in South Africa, through a new strategic partnership with the Greater Tygerberg Partnership (GTP).

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GTP is a not-for-profit organization that represents the interests of the public sector, businesses and cluster of Universities in Cape Town’s fastest growing Voortrekker Road suburban real-estate corridor. This includes the International Airport and strategic freight and commuter links with the Central Business District and the V&A Waterfront – the busiest square mile, by footfall, in the whole of the African continent.

Cape Town is growing fast from a population of half a million in 1950 to over 3.8 million today. The city is pro-actively addressing the apartheid legacy of population distribution and segregation, to bring social cohesion and inclusive development to this vibrant cultural and economic and hub.

Cape Town is also the birthplace of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and now home to over 400 Amazon Web Services (AW) support engineers.

laws which come into force later this month– the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

This activity will help create a progressive test-bed of forward-thinking transport users, where we can test out concepts of improved customer data portability and interoperability between transportation providers and transport apps – as also supported by our Cape Town test bed environment.

utility token, the TSio, will serve the TSio Protocol project and Iconic Blockchain network in the following ways: - Act as the required “stake” for activating a mobility account for a person or working transport asset.

- Act as the required “stake” for participating as a full node of the Iconic Blockchain network – including the basis of redistribution of transaction fees raised by the network.

- Create an engaged ecosystem of surrounding commercial products and services, including the incentivization to uphold TSio Protocol values of system interoperability and customer data portability.

THE BENEFITS OF ICONIC TOKENOMICS Our capability to provide a solution to the shipping container supply chain, similar in scope to the one being developed by IBM/Maersk, is gaining a lot of traction and support.

This initially surprised us, given the scale of resources that IBM/ Maersk have behind them – but given the swell of support, it is a $7 trillion opportunity we canWe have built a not ignore!

team of world-leading transport exThe reason for the interest in perts at the heart Iconic Blockchain’s approach is that there is a key difference in of our business, commercial proposition between who together have the TSio Protocol and IBM/ the credibility with Maersk solutions. both corporations The TSio Protocol will ultimately provide the common infrastructure to sit behind the The IBM/Maersk JV uses Hyper- and governments to entire transportation eco-system, includLedger Fabric as its “with block- deliver transformaing the enablement of a new “Mobility as chain inside” technology, othtional change. a Service” model for integrated transport erwise offering a traditional Through our existing strategic partnership with the not-for-profit organization, TravelSpirit Foundation, we are engaging other cities to join the initiative too, including cities like Helsinki, Toronto, Oxford, Singapore and Hong Kong.

see our previous ICO Crowd article and how TSio Protocol enables aggregation direct to the consumer.

Initially, to grow the network and achieve this “2030 vision”, Iconic’s focus is on three key commercial applications of the TSio Protocol:

“open platform” solution. Meanwhile, Iconic have developed and plan to adopt a new token-driven economy and business model innovation for transaction fees and revenue distribution.

For ICO, which we plan to execute via the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange, we will mint 100 billion TSio tokens; setting the standard “stake” for activating a mobility account at 1 TSio. Our cash raise will be used to not only fund development of the core TSio Protocol but will be shared amongst consortium partners to undertake a collaborative test-bed activity, such as our proposed test-bed in Cape Town.

With the world population reaching 8 billion by 2025, with deliveries of parcels heading towards over 65 billion per annum by this time, and the globally connected car market producing over 100 million vehicles per annum by 2020, we have assessed that our total population of 10 billion tokens will be sufficient to satisfy the ultimate demand for our network – with success for Iconic Blockchain being defined by its ability to become ultimately a minority holder of TSio Tokens in a future world where adoption of our blockchain is global, cross-modal and distributed amongst the many people and businesses who will represent the unified transport ecosystem.

The reason for the interest in Icon1. Optimising the utilization of shipping conic Blockchain’s aptainers – increasing visibility, reducing paproach is that perwork and faster customs clearance; there is a key dif2. Enabling government and charity-backed ference in commeruser-based subsidies and tackling the nega- - Is open, permission-based, tive consequences of unregulated transport distributed ledger with new cial proposition beactivity (e.g. bike sharing in China); and Proof of Stake commercial tween the TSio 3. Frictionless payment solution for petrol model and utility token econProtocol and IBM/ A treasury governance model is forecourts and drive-thrus; leading towards omy. an integrated services solution for privately - Provides shipping companies Maersk solutions. being developed, likely to be enIn doing so, we can provide the whole shipping industry a new, commercially agnostic, common infrastructure which:

owned and fleets of vehicles, and ultimately a way of enabling autonomous vehicles to have their own legal and financial existence.

Our ICO will also campaign for the early adoption of our mobility accounts for the growing number of people concerned about the invasive nature of location-based services available through Apple, Google and Facebook platforms, to name a few.

Through the creation of a personal mobility account on the Iconic Blockchain, European transport users will be able to state their undeniable and irrefutable “right to be forgotten” – as supported by new data protection 108

full visibility of their container fleet and a commercially agnostic common infrastructure – the mobility account.

- Supports an ecosystem of solution providers for shippers, customs/authority, freight forwarders and carriers.

- Operates on a network of “trusted nodes” (e.g. port and terminal operating systems), providing close integration opportunities with existing infrastructure.

- Has revenues shared by token holders who run operational nodes of the shared blockchain via Proof of Stake.

Using a novel combination of Proof of Stake and Proof of Location, we anticipate that our

forced by smart-contract. It will link further releases of TSio Tokens, by Iconic Blockchain, onto the regulated token exchanges, that are linked to the levels of participation on the Iconic Blockchain network. This can be measured by the levels of tokens held “at stake” for activation of mobility accounts and participation in full node operation.

WEBSITE LINKS - Author https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonho/ company https://iconic-blockchain.com – - Project https://tsioprotocol.com - Supporting not-for-profits http://travelspirit.foundation http://gtp.org.za