One of the most exciting Crypto Projects of 2018 is the OneLedger Protocol.
Why: Interoperability and Scalability
There are two major focuses in cryptocurrency projects right now that are seen by many as essential in moving the Cryptospace forward. These areas are scalability and interoperability. Without vast improvement and progress in these areas, true adoption of blockchain technology is very limited.
With regards to the importance of interoperability, if blockchains are siloed and cannot communicate with each other, the growth of the space is massively restricted. Think of it as if we were back in the formative days of the internet. The 'internet' was much less of the web it is today and was more like independent silos.
With regards to importance of scalability, Ethereum (the most actively used blockchain we currently have), has a current limitation of 10-20 transactions per second (TPS). This is extremely low, when you consider something like VISA has 25,000 TPS max. And Ethereum isn't the only one with scalability issues. Many blockchains are facing this difficulty, including but not limited to Lisk, Neo, and of course Bitcoin (single digit TPS).
This is where the OneLedger Protocol comes in. They are seeking to provide an off-chain solution to ANY main blockchain, which takes the consensus work off the respective blockchain and loads it onto the corresponding OneLedger sidechain. These scalable sidechains have all of the same properties as the OneLedger Protocol and will increase scalability of respective blockchains. Their universal consensus can also allow different apps to have a standardized communication between one another.
Ok, so we've established that their idea is massive.
Communication and Presentation
In my overview of the telegram, the admins and team are quite active and responsive. This actually goes a long way in establishing trust and communication with the community as people in crypto can be quite impatient for answers and responsiveness.
Furthermore, their telegram announcement channel is quite active, meaning they are quick to communicate to investors and community members about any relevant updates. Other projects lack this and sometimes community members can be left wondering for weeks about any sort of updates.
Their subreddit is definitely in its early stages as it's only been in existence for two months. I would like to see more engagement from the community here. However, Reddit is an important communication medium for crypto projects. The biggest crypto subreddit /r/cryptocurrency has nearly 700K subscribers and is consistently growing. I would like to see this project spread around 'CryptoReddit', in a non-spammy way, in the coming months, so that OneLedger is shared with others, but not in a way that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
When reviewing crypto projects, plenty of people underestimate presentation. However, I find it very important. Does the website have broken links, glitches, or looks very basic or overly extravagant? Does it look like it is well polished? First impressions are important.
With that being said, I really like OneLedger's website layout. The information is all on one page that you can continually scroll down on and there are also buttons at the top to allow for quick access to different aspects of the project. The infographics are well done and simple. The website background for landing page looks very nice and the chosen color scheme invokes positive subconscious feelings, as opposed to sharper, harsher colors or contrasts.
Furthermore, all of their links work and there doesn't appear to be any glitches on the site. I also heavily appreciate that all of the team members and advisors have linkedin links directly under their names.
Progress/Roadmap
- Q1-Q2 2018 - Ethereum sidechain testnet (MVP)
Their MVP proving interoperability is set to be out any day, close to their crowdsale date. I am hopeful that they will release it before the crowdsale commences. They currently state it will be out in mid-June. This may be critical to see for some crowdsalers before contributing, whereas others with strong faith in the team will invest regardless.
They do have an open githubwhere you can see their current coding progress. I'm not a coder, but believe it would be beneficial, especially after MVP is out, to have the well-respected community code reviewer, Andre Cronjereview the project's code. I would suggest that the team and community reach out to Andre for a 3rd party neutral code review after MVP is out, to improve transparency and trust.
- Q3-Q4 2018 - Launch alpha version of OneLedger protocol (some would consider this a mainnet, on some level)
This will be an important milestone for the OneLedger team to achieve. In terms of capability of the team to achieve this, I will address this later in the article.
- 2019 - Mainnet Launch
Now, this can be a bit worrying as it's not even slated for a specific quarter, currently. However, many projects promise certain milestones based on a roadmap, such as their mainnets and testnets, and then fail to deliver by that date. The OneLedger team is currently deciding to delay giving out a deadline, because it is simply better to underpromise and overdeliver, than the opposite. I will say this can affect hype and therefore price performance, but a serious project will not overly concern themselves with this, especially if they continue to keep the channel of communication open with their investors and community.
Community Support and Buzz
The telegram has over 25,000 members as of writing this. The discussion seems quite active compared to other telegram groups of similar sizes, demonstrating a genuine interest in the project and the existence of an actual community.
The twitter account has 5,600 followers (plenty of likes and retweets, activity) and their Medium account has nearly 1000 followers.
Youtube is covered in OneLedger reviews and the TOP7ICO content aggregator lists them many times, meaning they have been covered by many ICO influencers, including prominent and respected figures like OhheyMatty. The exposure for this ICO is massive. Everyone knows about it.
Team/Advisors
When I looked at the team, I was quite impressed. Here's a quick breakdown of the ones that stood out to me.
- David Cao, CEO (all-star) - 3 years blockchain experience and active in Hyperledger, 10 years of enterprise architect experience; IBM Toronto Lab work
- Alex Todd, CFO (all-star) - fintech trailblazer, this guy looks like a heavy-hitting space disrupter. Makes sense why he is part of OneLedger
- Stephen Li, Lead Engineer (all-star) - 3.5 years IBM, 1 year Microsoft, other publicly traded tech companies; 15 years dev experience
- Jie Lan - 1 year Amazon
- Paul Homer - CIBC, IBM
- Edwin Zhang - Autodesk (big company)
- Lester Li (all star) - 5 years Nokia as development engineer
Advisors overall are solid, including Trevor Koverko (CEO of Polymath, which everyone recognizes, I'd hope; all-star), MW Partners, Gavin Knight (part of Factom project; strong advisor). There are many other advisors as well, to compliment the roster.
They also have a series of other institutional investors that you can check out on their website.
Overall, this is a heavy-hitter team with strong support.
Valuation
Firstly, their hardcap is only $15 million. For a project with such a massive idea, that is extremely low. Most projects with similarly large ideas try to raise 25-30 million, or even more.
Many projects nowadays are limiting their crowdsale amount to a VERY small portion, as they have sold out the majority of their tokens to private investors (institutional funds, private VCs, etc) who can offer them strategic value in addition to their capital. While this can be positive for a project, it really leaves the community behind and feeling pretty bitter, sometimes.
However, OneLedger didn't sell out. In fact, their bonuses for presale are 20-25%. Often times, ICO private/presale investors get much larger discounts/bonuses. This shows that not only is the team not focused on making money, but that they want to protect their community/average holders. Furthermore, of the $15 million being raised, OneLedger team has reserved 1/3rd of that for the crowdsale, which is quite respectable and I'm sure the community appreciates that.
This lower hardcap for crowdsale contributors means lower risk and higher upside. This is great for those interested in contributing to the crowdsale.
Their idea is honestly massive and I would advise that you calculate this into deciding on whether to get involved or not. The potential value of the project is fantastic.
Summary
Overall, I'm bullish on this project both in the short term and long term. The team, the idea, the impact on crypto, the valuation, the social outreach potential, and the community all appear very strong to me. There are key milestones coming up on the OneLedger roadmap that I'm looking forward to, as I strongly believe in the team's capability.
Important Links
Project website: https://oneledger.io
Telegram Announcement Channel: https://t.me/oneledger_official
Telegram group chat: https://t.me/oneledger
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OneLedgerTech
Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/OneLedger/
Github: https://github.com/Oneledger/