One of the important questions to ask when considering the potential for future growth of an ICO is whether or not the value of the offering is tied to real world problems and solutions. Any successful technology endeavor, whether tied to an ICO or not, needs to provide solutions in order to be successful. But the problems being solved should not be invented problems, contrived for the purpose of offering the solution.
Unless we truly decide to believe in magic-crypto-fairy-dust this is a vital question, if not the pivotal question, driving real world success for a token. Is it useful for real-world problems? Does it offer a better way to accomplish something, where the results can be measured meaningfully? If the answer is yes, you have a token that is likely to grow in value over time, as the platform gains adoption and use.
An even further indicator of potential success can be seen when these problems and solutions are associated with an existing, and lucrative, marketplace. Creating new markets is hard, especially for a small startup company or project. And achieving real success while targeting unprofitable segments is nearly as difficult. These are often among the reasons why so many tech startups, including ICO startups, ultimately fail to achieve their goals.
All of this is part of what makes Knowledge.io an interesting ICO that stands out from the crowd. Their target is one of the sacred cows of the digital marketplace – online advertising. It also happens to be an extremely lucrative industry. And the team at Knowledge.io has a clear vision for doing it better. Better not only for the advertiser – better for everyone. To understand how, we must first understand why.
The current model is very problematic from the consumer perspective. The “dumb” tracking used by the majority of advertising brokers is invasive of many users’ privacy and substandard in the results produced. Anyone that has been served countless ads for something they just bought recognizes the force of both aspects of this problem.
But the situation is little better for the entity using advertising to try and reach an audience. Trying to sell things to people you know nothing about by invading their privacy and still falling short is a losing formula. Getting to know your customers, who they are, and what their level of knowledge and awareness is regarding your product, is extremely difficult, especially after the years of abuse heaped on users by advertising brokers.
In fact, it seems as if the only true beneficiaries to the status quo are the actual brokers selling the advertising, like Google. The money keeps rolling in while consumers and advertisers get short shrift. The industry heavyweights have no incentive to do better.
Knowledge.io is a project started to address some of these obstacles using blockchain technology and a platform to catalog, quantify and valuate individual knowledge on a voluntary basis. They realize that audience knowledge dictates how much an advertiser should tell them, how best to communicate it to them, and how they will receive what is said.
The Knowledge.io token is only one component of a much larger application platform. This platform is designed to expose application interfaces that collect and process information, determining what, if any, subject matter knowledge is present. This is how mining occurs within the ecosystem, with individuals and technology partners being rewarded not only for inputting new knowledge, but also for providing indicators for lack of knowledge on a particular subject.
Why is this important? Consider a scenario involving a company looking to advertise a product. Under the current paradigm, they could use demographic research, coupled with outright privacy invasions, to try and calculate who their audience is. But they have no way, even with invasive data collection, to calculate what their audience knows. Yet when it comes to successful engagement, this is the more relevant question.
The Knowledge.io platform makes this possible. Not only possible, but implemented in such a way that the privacy rights of platform users can be respected and protected without hindering the accuracy of the results. Many people do not care for advertising. But right now it is with us, and it is backed by an enormous industry that has proven their disregard for the user. Improving privacy for individuals while also improving results for advertisers, is a win-win proposition that inspires confidence in the future of the Knowledge.io project and token.
Knowledge.io is available in presale through February 12, with public sales open through April. You can learn more about the ICO on the project homepage and from reading the ICO whitepaper. The project, whitepaper and team have been vetted by Team McAfee and audited by CryptoConnection.