- ICO Platform: NEO
- Industry: Exchange
- Price: $1
- Bonus: N/A
- Soft Cap: N/A
- Hard Cap: $25 million
- Total Number of Tokens (Available for sale): 50 million NEX (25 million NEX)
- Website: Neon Exchange
- White paper: Neon Whitepaper
- Telegram: N/A
The Problem
Before the advent of decentralized exchanges, there were centralized exchanges and while they were fast and could process complex transactions, they had their fair share of weaknesses. For one, they were prone to hack attacks, and millions of dollars in cryptos were stolen off these exchanges by hackers. Secondly, there have been numerous instances where fund managers made away with customers’ funds.
The solutions to these problems were found in decentralized exchanges. Users on these platforms had full control of their funds, however, the trade-off made to have this security is network speed and the ability to execute complex trades. Simply put, centralized exchanges offer speed and high trading performance but with some security flaws WHILE decentralized exchanges are secure but not entirely fast and efficient. There is pressing need for a platform that offers the best of both worlds.
NEX found a way to combine the advantages of both types of exchanges and they plan to launch a decentralized exchange platform that offers security as well as very high trading performance.
Proposed Solution (The Product)
Order matching is very complex and it is the operation that consumes the most computing power on an exchange. Smart contracts are not nearly fast enough to process this complex operation and it is the reason why decentralized exchanges are so slow and inefficient.
According to NEX, they have developed an off-chain matching engine that can carry out considerable trading volume and facilitate complex orders. Since order matching is happening off-chain, there is no loss in speed. Furthermore, as soon as the orders are matched, they are committed on-chain; as a result, there is no compromise on security on the NEX platform.
In addition to high trading performance and security, NEX also offers its users a payment service and fund management layer that facilitates third-party smart contracts on NEO, thereby allowing them to send and receive assets (NEO, GAS, and eventually ETH) globally.
The Team
NEX was founded by five well-trained and considerably-experienced developers.
Fabio Canesin holds a Master’s degree in Computational Science and is currently a Research Engineer at Schlumberger.
Fabian Whale is a Doctoral candidate at ETH Zurich; he also holds a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence.
Ethan Fast worked as a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft for 3 months; he is a Doctoral candidate at Stanford.
Luciano Engel is a practising mechanical engineer with almost 8 years’ experience.
Thomas Saunders is a developer with 8+ years of experience under his belt.
All five men are also the co-founders of City of Zion, a community of developers and design experts that support the NEO ecosystem, and they are joined on the NEX team by other software engineering and business professionals.
The Market
There are well over 100 cryptocurrency exchanges and according to CoinMarketCap, as at February 2018, these exchanges run daily trading volumes that exceed $2o billion i.e. every day, cryptocurrency exchanges all over the world see trading activities in excess of $20 billion.
If NEX deliver on their promises, they shouldn’t face many difficulties as regards challenging the leaders in this market, they will have a superior platform after all. As a result, it shouldn’t take them long to reach the top of this multibillion dollar market segment.
Roadmap
NEX released the alpha version of their decentralized exchange and payment service towards the end of 2017; they plan to conduct their token sale as well as launch their open-source platform in the 1st quarter of 2018. The release of their payment service is scheduled for Q2 2018, and the NEX trading MVP should be released in Q3 2018.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
- A revolutionary tech that addresses a pressing problem.
- Their founding members are well-educated and have been working on the NEO platform for some time, strengthening their technical know-how.
- Some of their advisors hold notable positions at NEO, signalling that they have significant backing from a major player in the cryptocurrency scene.
- Their roadmap shows a certain serious-mindedness; they plan to have a functional platform by the end of the year 2018.
Weaknesses
- No member of the management team—apart from their advisors—have significant management experience.
- By valuing their token at $1 from the get-go, they are hoping to maximise the considerable hype surrounding the project. In case of any mishap, however, there isn’t significant wiggle room and the token’s price may crash.
Opportunities
- They plan to build a platform that will allegedly be superior to most in the market. In a multi-billion-dollar sector, opportunities will abound.
- They already released an alpha, proving that they mean business. This contributed to the hype mentioned above and will serve the company well in the future.
Threats
- The NEO platform has not attained critical mass. This, combined with the threat posed by the Chinese regulatory authorities could pose some danger to NEX.
In conclusion, NEX is drawing lots of attention at the moment and for all the good reasons. They have a superior tech with a highly relevant use case; their roadmap leaves little room for shoddiness—they may have a fully-functional exchange platform by the end of the year, and they are targeting a segment with significant market share. The project definitely ticks all the right boxes, but as always, where cryptocurrency companies are concerned, it is imperative that investors keep their eyes opened and their ears peeled.
For more information about this project and other ICOs please go to the following:
- DigitalAssetDB Telegram Group Chat: https://t.me/digitalassetdb_chat
- DigitalAssetDB Blog: https://blog.digitalassetdb.com
- DigitalAssetDB ICO Analysis Workbook: https://goo.gl/Uc5svG
Disclaimer: The information contained herein is not intended to be a source of advice and the information and/or documents contained in this website do not constitute investment advice.