Note: The projects included in Satoshi•Fund ICO Monitor vary significantly in terms of investment risks. Before considering any investment, make sure you read the reports below carefully and take time to do your own due diligence.

Cindicator

UPDATE: There will be no classic open crowdsale on September 12. Instead, Cindicator decided to distribute all the CND tokens through the ongoing White List’s stage. See here for more details.

About

Cindicator is an analytical platform that aims to help people to make market decisions (among others for cryptomarkets), especially in a context of high uncertainty. The platform is implemented using the “hybrid intelligence” technology (see more details below) and the founders underline that Cindicator is different from prediction markets such as Augur and Gnosis where other mechanics and economic incentives apply.

Implementation

• Problem being solved
  The issue of investment decision-making under high uncertainty is a relevant one since the amount of information has been increasing every year and even experienced traders admit that markets do not follow the old rules any more. The founders show statistics for 2015 when the market of predictive analytics was $4 billion. In 2022 the market is forecasted to grow sixfold.
• Platform users will be traders, investors, forecasters, analysts, and data scientists. The platform should allow its users to monetize their intelligence as well as improve their analytical and forecasting skills, and broaden their mind. Token holders will be able to access the following tools: indicators of traditional and cryptomarkets, information on the market sentiment, internal analytical products and products for trading such as Telegram and Slack bots, notifiers, and portfolio monitoring tools.
• How it will work
  Users make forecasts (at no cost in contrast to betting on prediction markets) and get points for the accuracy of their forecasts. These forecasts are then processed using the machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies (e.g. cleaning, clustering methods, linear regressions, Bayesian models, xgboost on decision trees, genetic algorithms, and neural networks).The system calculates the deviations and the accuracy of the forecasts of each analyst, changes their trust coefficients and provides trading strategies and models for the profit maximization.
• The solution is centralized, both from the technical and organizational point of view. Ethereum is used for token issuance only. As to the organizational structure, the founders are planning to move away from centralization to a decentralized ecosystem of data-scientists, traders and analysts who will enrich the hybrid intelligence ecosystem with their intellectual contributions.
• The project is implemented using the following programming languages and frameworks: Python, Scala, R; Django/Flask/Tornado, Postgres, MongoDB, Re-dis, MS Azure, Hadoop, Spark.
• The source code will not be available, except for the code of some products such as a spreader bot for Telegram, which monitors the exchange rate differences for the main cryptocurrencies on various exchanges.

Economics and token

• Platform’s native token is: CND token, ERC20 compliant
• Total supply: unknown
  1. Incentives for analysts: the more accurate analysts’ forecasts are, the higher rewards in CND tokens they get, meaning that their financial compensation will correlate with the overall performance of the ecosystem
  2. CND token holders will be given different levels of access to the platform’s products and tools. The access level and the set of the platform’s products and tools token holders can enjoy, as well as their potential return on investment, will depend on the number of CND tokens they hold
• Performance fee
  Market majors will have to pay regular performance fees as a share of their potential profit. The collected fees will be used to buy back CND tokens on the markets using them to motivate all active participants of the ecosystem (forecasters, traders, data scientists).
• A certain amount of funds raised during ICO will be allocated to an open trading portfolio. A part of its potential profit will be distributed between users (forecasters) in CND tokens depending on users’ rating and the accuracy of their forecasts during a given period of time. Another part will be used to buy CND tokens back from token holders at a market price.

Team

The founders Mike Brusov, Yuri Lobyntsev and Artem Baranov have a strong entrepreneurial background, among other in artificial intelligence and financial markets which are areas relevant to the current project. At the same time, for none of the team members a proof of a successful blockchain experience has been found.

At the moment, the team consists of traders, analysts and mathematicians who develop various approaches to data analysis and test different trading strategies. Most of them are graduates from the top Russian universities.

ICO

• Platform’s token CND is offered for sale
• Pre-ICO: finished in mid-August, $200,000 raised
• ICO is for registered participants only (you can register here, more details available on this page)
• 75% of total supply will be sold during ICO
• ICO starts on September 12, 2017, 13:00:00 GMT and will last until October 12, 2017, or until the max cap is reached, whichever earlier
• Max cap for contributions: $15,000,000
• Accepted currencies: ETH
• Token ICO price: 1 CND = $0.01, no bonuses
• Token distribution
  ∼ 75% - token sale contributors
  20% - Cindicator company, with a vesting
  ∼ 3% - advisors and partners
  1% - bounty campaign
  0.2% - current Cindicator forecasters, proportionally to their current rating

Conclusion

• The token’s utility is quite clear: internally - the access to services, externally - the increase of the token market value by increasing the number of the platform users and buybacks on the market, along with the limited issuance model
• There are no direct competitors; the advantage over Augur is that Cindicator users do not have to put their funds at risk
• Cindicator has a Minimum Viable Product, successful previous funding, a positive track record on the markets (for example, http://www.moex.com/n15142), but this is not an open source project and it does not run on a blockchain; besides, using the blockchain does not give the project any obvious advantage
• In order to ensure a large enough sample and the accuracy of forecasts, much more users are needed than the declared 10,000; incentives for users are not clear, there is no detailed information regarding the rewards amounts and the user involvement strategy; the share of funds raised during ICO that should be spent on user involvement is relatively small
• According to Cindicator`s Disclaimer, the total CND token supply is not limited by this token sale. In case of additional CND token issuance in the future it could dilute the share of the current investors and affect the market price of CND tokens

Useful links: website, whitepaper, blog.

BitClave

About

BitClave is creating a decentralized search platform where consumers search for products and services and can interact directly with the sellers of products and services viewing their offers. Consumers remain in control of which data they share with others. The project development started in 2016. The work on the Alpha version is currently ongoing.

Implementation

• Problem being solved
  • BitClave tries to optimize the traditional seller-advertiser-consumer value chain where sellers pay lots of money to companies such as Google to advertise their products while they can never be sure their advertising will reach the right audience and advertising costs are included into the price of products and services
  • Instead, BitClave aims at eliminating the advertising intermediaries, tailoring search results better to consumers’ needs and letting businesses make their offers to consumers directly (if consumers allow it); finally, consumers will be rewarded for the data they share and offers they agree to view
• Platform usage:
  1. Customers will use the BitClave search engine to search for a product or service of their interest, and they will be able to define which personal data they share and with which groups of users; they will use a mobile app to initiate a search request for a particular service or product; consumers should benefit from more personalized and relevant services and from financial rewards for contributing data to the network
  2. Sellers (retail businesses and service providers) will make targeted offers to customers which consumers may accept (and get rewarded for viewing the offer) or not; sellers are supposed to benefit from a more direct access to customers and a more measurable link between their promotional costs, customers’ activities and sellers’ return on investment
  3. Analytics providers and other users will be able to analyze data shared by customers on the platform and use them for better marketing; customers’ data available on the platform will remain anonymous
  4. External developers will be able to build their apps on top of the platform using a collection of APIs, libraries and Software Development Kits (SDKs)
• The source code is not yet available, but must be published later on https://github.com/bitclave
• Will be implemented using the Ethereum blockchain (for data storage, data encryption and controlled data sharing), Ethereum smart contracts (to manage deals between users) and the platform’s native token CAT (as the foundation for the platform’s internal economics)
• Active Search Ecosystem (BASE), BitClave’s own technology, should allow to store and manage vast amounts of records of customer activities from an unlimited number of so called attestation points (cameras, web sites, mobile devices, apps, cloud servers, WiFi routers, Bluetooth hubs, etc.)

Economics and token

• Platform’s native token is Consumer Activity Token (CAT), ERC20 compliant, but a transition to another blockchain is possible in the future
• Total supply: 2,000,000,000 CATs
• Token utility: CAT is required to access the platform and make use of the platform’s key functionality
  1. Rewards to users for viewing sellers’ offers and for contributing data to the network;
  2. A means of payment for any service on the platform via a smart contract
• Rewards system
  • All data contributed to the network will be rewarded with CATs; CATs will be awarded to the owner/operator of the attestation point that contributed the data; particular reward amounts, as well as the measurement of data’s value, are not yet determined
  • The more offers customers choose to view, the more CATs they earn and the more personalized offers they will get in the future

Team

The team is 10 people plus an advisory board. The team’s professional experience varies. CEO Alex Bessonov has a solid professional track record, mainly in software security. Among other he was a Chief Security Officer at LG Electronics. Another co-founder is concurrently a Chief Business Officer at EchoLink.tech - another blockchain startup which is soon launching its ICO. BitClave’s CTO and Chief Architect have conducted research at Carnegie Mellon University. Only few developers are listed and the level of their competence is not clear from the information openly available.

ICO

• 1 billion CAT tokens are offered for sale during pre-ICO and ICO
• Pre-ICO:
  • Finished with 74 882 589 CATs sold, and 228 BTC plus 6141 ETH raised (around $3.4M based on the exchange rates of August, 30)
  • Token price was 1 CAT = 0.05 USD plus discounts of 50% or 35%
• ICO starts on September 15, 2017, and ends on October 15, 2017
• Hard cap for contributions: 925,117,411 CATs
• Accepted currencies: BTC and ETH
• Token price and bonuses during ICO: to be announced; current token price after the end of pre-ICO is $0.07 for 1 CAT
• Token distribution
  10% - community grants for bounty campaign
  10% - team
  30% - long term budget (no details available)
  50% - pre-ICO and ICO

Conclusion

• The team plans to reform the traditional seller-advertiser-consumer chain; BitClave is not competing with Google, Amazon and Facebook but aiming at offering an alternative for sellers and consumers only excluding giants like Google from the value chain
• BitClave offers a different concept from that of the blockchain-based Basic Attention Token; there will be no advertisements on BitClave, sellers and consumers will interact directly, and rewards will not be based on the measured user’s attention
• In order to become a success BitClave will have to work hard to onboard businesses to the platform; relying on the built-in incentives for sellers might not be enough
• The project is announced as an open source one, but at present no proof of concept code or technical specification is available; investors will have more confidence after the Alpha version is released which is to happen soon
• Incentives for users are clear, but the overall design of the internal economics needs further specification
• Investors should wait until more ICO details are announced such as the token price; judging by the current CAT price, BitClave can get overfunded for a project that has no proof of concept yet and whose team’s competence to deliver a product is not yet clear

Useful links: website, draft whitepaper, Slack, blog, preliminary CAT Token Terms of Sale.

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