Disclaimer

The following information is not financial investment advice. Please consider doing your own research before making investment decisions.

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Carry Protocol Review

The Carry Protocol plans to be a reward cryptocurrency aiming to give consumer data back to their users. You will be able to contribute your consumer data to public blockchain(s). The parent company is the largest brick-and-mortar rewards platform in Korea, with installations in 10,000 stores and millions of users. The project plans to launch in a seemless way onto the tablets so there is no hiccup in service and implementation.

Specifically, the project is itself not a blockchain, but an infrastructure project for blockchain.

Offline consumer market is approximately 10x larger than online consumer markets currently and this is the market Carry Protocol is targeting. Keep in mind also, that their 3rd party API may allow for online implementation in online stores, as well.

One of the main incentives will be the ability for merchants to market directly to individual consumers. But consumers will be able to turn the ability to be marketed to, on and off and can get paid in crypto for being advertised to.

1. Team

One of the first aspects when analyzing a crypto project is looking at the team. In reviewing the core team, I find that their linkedin profiles do not appear overly impressive. However, each of them have an extensive recent/current history at what you might consider their parent company, Spoqa (https://www.spoqa.com/), which is a real company founded in 2012, with actual progress. The github for their parent company is fairly active, as well. It is clear that their cryptocurrency project is a continuation of their vision for mobile marketing solutions.

The developers on their team appear to do actual programming, with plenty of commits over the past year. This is a good sign that they will follow through on development of their project. I am hopeful Andre Cronje will do a Code Review of the team's github for Carry Protocol, as time goes on.

A key aspect to most cryptocurrency project successes is the advisors. One of their advisors, Simon Kim, is CEO of Hashed, a leading crypto fund of South Korea. He and his fund advise many other well-known crypto projects including: Icon, Kyber Network, and Traceto. Another main advisor is David Park, who works as Product Manager for Facebook.

As the project continues on, I expect to see the team grow and possibly include new, big name advisors.

Team/advisors Score: 7/10

2. Token Metrics

This is a main aspect of my decision-making in terms of investing in a cryptocurrency project, especially at ICO stages. This determines not only potential upside, but also potential for downside, which must be assessed.

Token Metrics have finally been released! 48K ETH Hardcap (about 29 million USD) for 40%.

In terms of what we do know about token distribution:
10 Billion Total Supply
40% Token Generation Event (I assume this includes private and presale amounts and bonuses)
25% Partner Program
15% Market Activation (airdrops for merchants/consumers; possibly market makers?)
10% Team
5% Advisors
5% Reserve

Honestly, 10% to team is pretty good at this point in crypto ICOs. We see ALOT of ICOs with 20% tokens or higher given to the teams. In terms of a vesting or lockup period for team, advisor, and private/presale tokens, this information has yet to be released.

I would advise the team that they should aim for a 2 year lockup for team tokens and at least 1 year for advisors. Not only does this incentivize both the team and advisors to contribute and work on the project, it also alleviates the public investor concerns in regards to confidence and commitment to the project by team/advisors. It will increase confidence in the project and therefore likely to be reflected in price.

Furthermore, private and presale bonuses appear small. Presale bonus is only 15%, so we can assume that private bonus may be around 30%, hopefully. I would hope that the lock-up for the bonus is considerable, at least 2 months, to prevent market dumping.

Overall, I like the distribution and their use of TGE funds makes sense: 25% payment hardware, 30% R&D, 20% operations/business dev, 15% sales/marketing, 10% other.

Token Metrics score: 7/10 (NOTE: Will be updated once full token metrics are released)

3. Idea, Innovation, Product

If a project is very similar to many others and has many competitors, then it is very unlikely that it will fair well in the open cryptocurrency market. However, we can also use similar competitors to assess potential future marketcap gains.

I believe Carry Protocol has some competitors, including Pundi X, a Malaysian point-of-sale cryptocurrency project. This project sat under ICO price for several months before seeing massive price increases. ETH ROIx now sits at over 9x and this does include a monthly airdrop they held, which would inflate supply, but increase value for the holders. They raised 35 million USD, so the hardcap was very high, indeed. They didn't have their hardware built yet. Carry Protocol already has working hardware from their parent company with real adoption, showing that they already know how to make good hardware for the project.

The cryptocurrency itself will begin as an ERC20 token and appears to plan to move to another blockchain in the future. I originally thought the project intended to develop it's own blockchain, but they are fully intending to run on an efficient blockchain.

Quote from whitepaper:
"Carry Protocol comprises of two major parts, each with two components : First is the blockchain
itself that houses 1) Carry transaction database, and 2) Carry smart contracts, and second is a set of
APIs that connect the blockchain to third party software, including 3) Carry wallet API and 4) Carry
device API."

I do think they need to clearly clarify in all of their documents whether or not they are doing a blockchain or implementing on a public blockchain.

I do really like that the implementation will allow consumer personal data to remain anonymous due to their specific use of blockchain, which also is an argument for need of blockchain and a token.

Combine this with a public population that loves crypto projects, and you have a very good product. Implementation depends on which kind of stores/businesses and consumers the Carry Protocol is targeting. I could see a very strong and smooth implementation in coffee shops and gaming cafes, for example. Keep in mind that these kinds of stores are VERY popular in Korea, where their internet network costs are extremely low and their speeds are extremely high. In terms of their existing product, Dodo Point, saw 29% of it's use from coffee/desert sector, 36% from restaurant sector, and 12% from retail.

I don't know that this crypto is incredibly innovative as rewards platforms have been done before, but the exact style and implementation is unique. The project does allow for payments in cash, credit, or any major crypto (reminding me of Pundi X). The CRE (Carry Protocol) you've earned will contribute to paying a portion of your transaction cost. Creatively, another portion of the CRE tokens that were spent in this way is converted into specific tokens for that merchant (e.g. if I buy coffee at a store and I have CRE tokens, part of the cost is paid by CRE and a portion of those CRE tokens are converted into tokens for that merchant).

If any country could see true adoption of a rewards crypto, it's South Korea. From there, it could branch out to many other countries.

Idea/innovation/product score: 7.5/10

4. Demand and Excitment

Carry Protocol is a Korean project. While you might wonder what the relevance is, consider this. South Korea is a leader in crypto adoption. Cryptocurrency is MASSIVE in South Korea. There is a stronger adoption and public positive opinion of crypto in South Korea than potentially anywhere else, worldwide. Furthermore, South Korean ICOs and cryptocurrency projects have performed remarkably well in the open market and have had plenty of buzz/excitement (e.g. Icon).

To get an idea of how big crypto is in South Korea, check out CNBC crypto trader's video on the market. The host talks with Carry Protocol founder, Grant Sohn at 7:50 ().

Their English Telegram itself is already at 26, 000 members, while their Korean one has only 300 members. However, consider that Icon has only 1800 members in their Korean telegram and only 21,000 in their English telegram. Suffice to say that telegram numbers do not necessarily indicate interest, especially in Korea. In Korea, interest in crypto is spread by word of mouth (one of the densest populations on earth), so it is a bit harder to determine the exact interest level of any crypto project from using a platform like telegram.

Their Twitter has nearly 14,000 followers already, which is quite impressive.

If the actual crowdsale ends up being difficult to gain access to and there is unmet demand for this, this will likely lead to short term price performance.

Demand/excitement score: 8.5/10

5. Roadmap

Directly from their whitepaper:

"Based on the current timeline, we expect to complete TGE by the third quarter of 2018 and to develop
basic components to launch Testnet by fourth quarter of 2018. The goal is to have the system up and
running in the market sometime in the second half of 2019, with the launch of Mainnet and basic API
for 3rd Party participation available in the first half of 2019."

With this in mind, it is clear that this project is in relatively early phase. However, a Mainnet and API launch in half a year from crowdsale is OK. It's not great, but if they stick to their roadmap, I have no concerns. Consider that other projects might have great looking roadmaps, but then often fail to follow through as they weren't being realistic. Consider that Carry Protocol team may simply be realistic and that this could lead to positive trust building in the community.

Roadmap Score: 6/10

TL;DR (not advisable)

Overall, I am bullish on this project and plan to participate in their crowdsale.

* Total Score: 7.5/10; B+

Telegram group: https://t.me/joinchat/HiEyJk2OcnXvNj7cZMHhMA
Telegram Announcement channel: https://t.me/Elysium_ICO
ICO spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRwgtIkIgoScjEeyxQQZNeX6oSX_l3Iue9J1Zkwnq49s3GRRD_n6SXobogf5A2Y7UMuhBhi8nNHVc2S/pubhtml