I must admit that I have been looking forward to the ICO of etherdelta. Finally, the whitepaper for its upcoming ICO has been published - and to call the ICO just disappointing is highly exaggerated - indeed, the tokens offered in their ICO are completely worthless my view.
Clearly, etherdelta is a cash machine, and this also what its whitepaper reveals. More than a 1m USD in net profit was generated in the last 90 days of operations. But what do it's etherdelta token (EDT) offer for investors?
Firstly, the whitepaper does not provide any answers to the most critical questions:
What happened to the original development team around Zack Coburn? He is named as the original developer but is not part of the team.While there seems to be a connection as he has is named also the co-founder of 1st Blood, which is also the company which is behind the "Chief project adviser" Joe Zhou. But what is the role of the chief project advisor?
Secondly, the recent hacking attacked and the millions of dollar losses are not mentioned in the white paper, which is in my view a scandal given that they talk about the high security of the plattform. Will they be liable for the losses? They give no answer to this question investors might have. This is especially bad as they name other hacks in the documents as examples why a decentralized exchanges offers higher security than a centralized exchange such as Mt. Gox.
Thirdly, what do you buy? There is a total of 1.5bn EDT being generated and sold at 1 ETH for 8500 EDT. This values the whole number of coins at more than 110m USD.
Do you get a share of the profits of etherdelta for your tokens? No. Can you use them for trading on the platform? No, this will continue to cost ETH. So what is it good for?
They will use a "certain percentage of net profit" to buy back some tokens. Ok, but once that has happened, what will the remaining tokens be good for? And what percentage of the net profit will be used to buy tokens? No answer to this question.
What will the funds be used for?
35% are used for "development and system operation" and also includes "bonus for team members...". How do investors benefit from this? No at all...
50% are used for brand building and promotion. How do investors benefit form this? Not at all as they are not getting any share of the profits fro the platform.
The remaining 15% are used for an emergency fund. Do investors benefit from this? No...
Fourthly and finally: who are investors buying the tokens from. Which is the company behind it? Well, the white paper does not tell us.
Overall, one can only come to the conclusion that the ICO of etherdelta is offering a worthless token. While it cannot be excluded that the tokens wise after the ICO, it is always a very risky strategy to bet on somebody else will be dumber than oneself. Stay away from this token.