Today I take a closer look at the Australian ICO Horizon State ($HST), which "has built a token-based blockchain voting and decision-making platform that delivers unprecedented trust through the integrity and post-unforgeable attributes of distributed ledger technology".
As a concept it's a straightforward and dare I say obvious use of blockchain: to ensure that voting is transparent, unfalsifiable, immutable and private. The whitepaper is professionally written and presents a well argued case for the platform, including the global need.
The key issues addressed by Horizon State features are:
- Trust, confidence and security
- Anonymised voting
- Unencumbered access
- Transparency
- Cost of voting
The token itself is used to purchase services within the ecosystem, including casting a vote. How this would scale to average voters, who would likely not care to purchase the ability to vote, would be left to the specific implementation; however even if the voting agency had to purchase tokens for each voter, the cost may still compare very favourably to traditional ballots.
As with all ICOs the idea, while essential, is only a part of the value.
Implementation
As an ERC20 token on the Ethereum chain, the obvious initial concern relates to volume and scaling. Cryptokitties crippled the Ethereum network for days, and it's not hard to imagine a voting system in widespread use testing the network in similar ways.
The whitepaper addresses this directly, and expects technological innovations such as Raiden, sharding, PoS and Plasma to facilitate scaling while ensuring security and inviolability. There is no mention of evaluating other chains or implementing a bespoke token - the approach seems to be "Ethereum ain't broke, no need to fix it" which is largely defensible.
The token sale source is written in Javascript and shows no recent activity - not surprising (and in fact reassuring) as ERC20 token implementation is simple and well understood. Reddit user _nimo (almost certainly Nimo Naamani, co-founder) stated:
"The rest of the code is currently being restructured, pieces of it are not on the blockchain and proprietary (think trade secrets), parts of it use 3rd party libraries that are not open source, and all of it is really on BitBucket"
thus putting to rest concerns about lack of recent publicly visible development. The real complexity will no doubt appear in the implementations, many or most of which will be proprietary.
The Team
There are six executives and seven advisors listed. The resumes are impressive, and I recommend you review them yourself. It's one of the strongest and most diverse international teams I've seen assembled for an ICO.
Most list Horizon State as their primary role on LinkedIn - a reassuring sign of commitment. Horizon State has all the hallmarks of a genuine attempt to effect technology-driven social change; a pleasant contrast to the recent rash of pump and dump ventures.
Partners
The key partner seems to be the Australian venture MiVote, operating since Feb 2017 as a proof of concept implementation. While clearly still a "minimum viable product", the platform is sound and appears to function as intended.
Following the ICO, an additional partnership has been announced with the United Nations-linked Be Earth Intergovernmental Organization, and Horizon State has been featured widely in traditional and digital press.
Marketing
The marketing team seem to have their finger on the pulse of the community, and the HorizonState subreddit is largely civilised. The subreddit is, however, seemingly controlled by Horizon State executives which, while not alarming in and of itself, does limit its independence and value as a location for debate on any weaknesses in the platform.
The executives have done several well received AMAs on YouTube: 30 Nov and 11 Dec.
The Twitter account is fairly active, averaging over 2 tweets/day, and the team runs Telegram channels/groups for announcements and general platform chat. Telegram is almost ubiquitous in the crypto industry with its ability to form read-only announcement channels - if you're not using it already, do consider installing and participating.
Investment
Horizon State appears to have seized a niche with a great deal of potential. As a long term investment it's as promising as any other serious project and far more so than the various hypecoins flooding the market.
Short term is more difficult to predict. With a market capitalisation of USD $42.8M on a 31.2M circulating supply (max 48.2M) Horizon State hasn't seen the extreme pumps that many tokens have had. This is possibly due to its lack of availability on primary exchanges, being limited to the boutique KuCoin, Cryptopia, Livecoin and the decentralised EtherDelta exchanges. It certainly doesn't seem due to any negative press or inherent or revealed weakness in the platform or business model, and there is genuine value in the platform.
Ethereum itself is stable and despite $ETH's tussle for the #2 market cap spot with $XRP, Ethereum tokens should be well insulated from any fundamental platform risk.
Certainly should a primary listing occur, I would expect a surge in $HST market cap. There are some signs that this might be in the works with Binance and that would be an immediate buy signal for me.
With no reason to expect a devaluation, absence of over-buying, solid long term prospects and the potential of a major exchange listing, I consider $HST one of the more attractive buy and hold opportunities available at the time of writing.
James
Thanks for reading! If you think this content is valuable, please upvote, follow and comment. I aim to release a cryptocurrency-related post like this every few days, and I'm happy to engage in adult discussion in the comments.
I use and endorse Binance, KuCoin and Cryptopia for cryptocurrency trading.
The author is not a financial advisor and nothing in this post constitutes or is intended as advice. You are responsible for your own investment decisions. Header image courtesy of Simon Matzinger. The author holds the following cryptos mentioned in this article: $HST $ETH