As a multi-faceted crypto dashboard, Dash 2 Trade aims to provide a hub that both novice and experienced traders can use to level up their trading strategies, scout out new investment opportunities, and make more informed trade decisions.

By deploying the first wave of terminal features ahead of schedule, Dash 2 Trade hopes to help traders buffer against the fallout following the recent FTX collapse.

Accelerating Development

As we previously discussed, the cryptocurrency market appears to be approaching its bottom — and scores of investors and traders are now forming their strategies to make the most of this opportunity.

In line with this, Dash 2 Trade has opted to accelerate its development roadmap, bringing its crypto market intelligence solution to market in record time. 

According to the recently updated roadmap, the team behind the platform now expects to deliver the signals dashboard and its first wave of features within the next two weeks.

Powered by the D2T token, Dash 2 Trade allows users to copy winning trading strategies, leverage powerful signals, build and choose from a range of auto-pilot trading bots, and keep up-to-date on the latest pre-sale opportunities all in one place.

By cutting its pre-sale hard cap to just $13.4 million, Dash 2 Trade expects to close out its token sale much earlier than expected and proceed with its initial exchange listings. Two prominent exchanges, LBank and BitMart, have already committed to listing the D2T token, and the Dash 2 Trade team also plans to deploy the token on decentralized exchanges.

Having already raised $7 million, the exchange is now more than halfway through its pre-sale, which is now expected to conclude within weeks. As a result, the price of the D2T token will be capped at a maximum price of $0.0533 in stage 4 of its pre-sale.

To help refine its product and go live in record time, Dash 2 Trade recently onboarded new talent. This includes expanding its talented technical team with new Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Ilyes Kooli — an ex-Technical Team Leader at Ethereum infrastructure provider ConsenSys.

Actionable Insights

As a platform built for the crypto entrepreneurs and traders of tomorrow, Dash 2 Trade aims to help level the playing field by providing everybody with the tools and alpha they need to make the most of what many expect to be a meteoric bull run.

But more than this, it will help users hedge their positions, identify risks, and spot potential problems ahead of time — important considerations for a crypto market on edge.

Dash 2 Trade’s state-of-the-art terminal is set to include more than a dozen tools, indicators, and trackers users can leverage as part of their investment decision-making. This includes social metrics data for popular projects, an array of technical indicators, customizable watchlists, backtester and risk profiler tools, and a powerful news aggregator.

By helping users find popular coins, identify hidden opportunities, and spot trends before they become mainstream, Dash 2 Trade is essentially developing a one-size-fits-all tool for crypto enthusiasts.

The Dash 2 Trade terminal will launch with a restricted free plan, but users will be able to access the full arsenal of tools, indicators, and services by acquiring a premium membership — unlocked using D2T tokens. 

The D2T token sale is currently ongoing and is being hosted directly on the Dash 2 Trade main site.

The post Dash 2 Trade Raises $7M, Accelerates Development to Tackle FTX Fallout appeared first on Cryptonews.

Projects offering utility tokens are becoming less popular, while those offering service or security tokens are growing, according to a new report from rating agency ICORating. However, despite being in decline, utility token offerings together with hybrid token offerings are still the most successful ones, the report showed.

“Compared to Q2, the number of projects offering service tokens increased by 6.55%. The share of projects offering security tokens increased by 1.66%. The number of projects with utility tokens decreased by 10.07%,” according to the agency.

Almost half of all ICOs in Q3 offered service tokens (a token used as the internal currency to pay for project services), while a quarter went for utility tokens (tokens of the protocol itself). The numbers keep halving, with around 12.5% of projects offering hybrid tokens (payment for services + bonuses for work performed), around 6.5% selling security tokens (tokens secured by an obligation, like promises of dividend payment, receipt of company shares, etc.), etc.

However, just because half of all ICOs are offering a certain type of token, doesn’t mean that this is what investors want. Hybrid, reward and utility tokens are the ones raising the most capital in this quarter, while cryptocurrencies, security and service tokens all raised less than a median amount of USD 250,000. Service tokens were also the most likely to fail, with around half of those projects not making it. Only hybrid token projects had more successful projects than failed ones. What this could indicate is that investors are looking for more options offered in the tokens, preferably returns coming from multiple sources (both from services and bonuses, for example), and that project teams are a bit slow to catch on.

Number of unsuccessful ICOs by token type

All in all, ICOs raised around USD 1.8 billion dollars in Q3 – a steep downturn compared to Q2, when USD 8.3 billion was collected. 57 percent of them were unable to raise more than USD 100,000, and only 4% managed to get listed on exchanges (compared with 7% in Q2.)

Number of successful projects and their funding

Close to half of all ICOs originated in Europe. This could arguably stem from the fact that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is cracking down on ICOs, requiring them to follow a legal framework and ramping up their vigorous oversight of the industry. Recently, the SEC settled charges with two such companies, Airfox and Paragon Coin, mandating they register their offerings as securities and reimburse investors due to improperly offering digital tokens.

Other US authorities are stepping up to help regulate the space as well. Maksim Zaslavskiy, a former institutional developer and self-proclaimed businessman, is now facing up to five years in prison for orchestrating two fake ICOs last year. Following the case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that they will “continue to pursue any individual who seeks to profit by exploiting others.” Further, the SEC also filing related civil charges against Zaslavskiy, which are to be settled following the court’s criminal sentencing.

Following these cases, the SEC published a “Statement on Digital Asset Securities Issuance and Trading,” detailing the way ICOs are to be held in order to stay compliant with current regulations, mostly telling future ICOs to register. The community’s reaction to this is mixed: Reddit user u/WantedToGetInvolved writes, “Blockchain companies should move away from these restrictive frameworks and take innovation elsewhere,” while u/elizabethgiovanni writes, “This is good news because funds and organizations and high net individuals won’t touch this space without know what risk they’re exposing themselves to.”

The regulatory difficulties in the US are prompting some investors to skip this market completely. Recently, Antanas Guoga, Member of European Parliament, a serial entrepreneur, investor, and backer of Cryptonews.com, announced the acquisition and upcoming security token offering (STO) of an ice cream chain called Soprano. “Europe is definitely the jurisdiction for STOs, because we don’t have the draconian security laws that America has. America will be off the books, as they’re very difficult and expensive to do,” he said.

The post Shrinking ICO Market Reshuffles Tokens appeared first on Cryptonews.

One of the examples is Hiway, a developer of a marketplace for work focused on the blockchain industry. Even after two years of development, they had to change their prototype launch plans and review their crowdsale process. At the same time, their private sale is currently happening. The softcap is still undetermined, while their hardcap is USD 8 million.

Cryptonews.com talked to Simon Rikmenspoel, the founder and CFO of Hiway, about how they have adapted. In either case, he said that the startup is “almost ready to share a working platform.”

How does the current downturn in the crowdsale market and the rise of venture capital funding affect your plans and how do you respond to this?

It affected our plans completely. Instead of doing a ‘normal’ funding round, we chose to focus more on the development of the platform, because there might be less people who will show their interest in the platform by way of the crowdsale (because of the market). So instead of spending a lot of funds on arranging a crowdsale, we prefer more marketing with obtaining freelancers and just getting the platform up and running as the main goal.

The private sale is currently happening, but your website has no other details about the timeline of your token (WAY) sale.

Currently, we are focusing on launching the prototype. Since we are launching a utility token, the most important thing is that someone buying the token is able to use it on the platform. Otherwise it’s not a utility token. Besides, currently we are in the phase that we are looking for investors willing to invest long term, with belief in our ideas and those who are able to help us scale the platform.

How is the landscape of blockchain-related startups changing and how does it affect Hiway?

I think that we are slowly moving towards a landscape in which the companies that promised to change a lot are almost ready to launch. It will be interesting to see those projects trying to deliver their promises and if not, I could imagine quite a negative energy surrounding the industry. But as always that’s something that is not in our reach to change, so it would be a waste of time to focus on it. Crypto is a very flexible market. All new, so I think it’s needed to keep watching all innovations and adapt when the market needs us to adapt.

According to your roadmap, the Hiway prototype had to be delivered in Q3 2018. Why has it not happened yet?

While we were building the prototype we ended up building already more than we thought we would. So we changed the plan from prototype ‘look and feel’, into a prototype were we could on-board freelancers and clients so that we can start building a user-base. Being who we are, we wanted to do this with the quality standard we ask ourselves and therefore needing a bit more time. Quality over quantity, so to say.

You are working towards removing the need to trust third parties, but you keep data in a central database that you control. How does that fit in with each other?

Although all data is centralized (because of the need for a fast platform), the hashes of the data will be stored on the blockchain. So only the parties working together will be in control for as long as they made the contract.

_____

New concepts

Two of the new concepts Hiway is offering are: quality jury and job value reserve. Quality jury is there to ensure no substandard work is being done, and serve as mediators to resolve any disagreements. Job value reserve, meanwhile, represents an automated system that will increase the amount of WAY tokens paid to a freelancer when the token price declines and will decrease the amount of tokens paid when prices inflate. Instead of a worker losing out due to price movements, they should always receive fair compensation for the work they do. Initially, the platform will accept dollars and euros.

The founder explained that “it’s quite difficult to find a way to make sure people keep the same amount of fiat reward when a token would fluctuate” while their system of the reserve is “the most interesting solution.”

However, he stressed that before this will be live, there will be a lot of testing and running different scenarios to know how it will all work out, “but we feel that we are on the right track.”

Talking about the jury system, Rikmenspoel said that it “will always be ‘pooled’ from people/users from the same industry, with a specific rating in different aspects of their profile. Helping the system will grant them a bonus, both in rating online as well as a financial reward.”

The post Responding to ICO Market Changes: The Case of Hiway appeared first on Cryptonews.

The research, done as a collaboration between cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX and cryptocurrency analyst group TokenAnalyst, showed a different approach by ICOs towards their Ethereum balance.

Here are top 20 ICOs by total gains from change in value of ETH holdings, USD million

Filecoin, a decentralized storage network, for example, has realized a gain of more than USD 135 million thanks to the change in the price of ETH. However, in unrealized losses, they have around USD 25 million – although the gain more than makes up for it. Joining Filecoin are Golem, “AirBnB for computers”, with an estimate of around USD 20 million in realized gains and unrealized gains of more than USD 70 million, while DigixDAO, a smart assets company, only has unrealized gains – but more than USD 95 million of those.

Here are top 20 ICOs by total loss from change in value of ETH holdings, USD million

Sirin Labs, a developer of blockchain-based smartphones and computers, leads the list with losses, with more than USD 40 million total lost. Status, a mobile Ethereum operating system, and Fusion, a cryptofinance platform, are two more ICOs that have lost more than USD 30 million. Monetha, a blockchain-based platform that aims to provide “universal/transferable trust” for the e-commerce industry, is an interesting example: although it has more than USD 10 million in unrealized losses, it also has more than USD 5 million in realized gains. Interestingly, most of the graphs are in orange – unrealized gains and losses – while the biggest realized loss belongs to Envion, a developer of “smart decentralized blockchain infrastructure.”

Panic sell myth and accountability

According to popular believe, ICOs had threatened the price of Ethereum for quite some time. However, the blog post by BitMEX concludes that, “the ‘panic sell’ thesis is either false or will only occur to a lesser extent than some expect.” Also, an earlier research showed that “smaller ICO projects present a higher risk for panic selling of their ether holdings,” as previously reported.

Moreover, BitMEX stressed that a number of the ICOs will not deliver on these promises in spite of gains: “In our view, the level of accountability in some of these ICOs is low, for instance even obtaining information about the amount raised, which currencies the raise occurred in, which Ethereum addresses are used and if the funds are spent/sold or not, can be challenging. Therefore fruits of these investments may disappoint in our view.”

The researchers also noted that many of these projects are competing over the same scarce resources, developers.

“One could argue that the volume of capital obtained by these ICOs could inflate the cost of these resources (perhaps the less experienced developers). This may not only plague the crypto-currency ecosystem with higher costs, but also to some extent some startups in the wider technology industry, for many years,” they concluded.

The post Top 40 ICOs by Gains / Loss Due to ETH Price Swings appeared first on Cryptonews.

The assembly took the decision to debate the matter after two select committees last month called on the government to put an end to its ban, which was put in place almost exactly a year ago.

The chief financial regulator, the Financial Supervisory Service, has previously rejected National Assembly committee calls for ICO legislative reform, but may be forced to change tack should enough MPs lend their support to the measure during the full-house debate.

Critics have claimed the ICO ban is forcing South Korean companies to set up shop in territories with more lenient ICO legislation, such as Malta and Singapore.

The government may also be forced to act after Won Hee-ryong, the regional governor of special administrative province Jeju Island announced he would pursue legal means to allow ICOs on Jeju.

Earlier this week, Won reinstated his desire to force Seoul to reconsider the ban, telling reporters, “[I am] going to persuade the central government to lift its [ICO] ban, so South Korea can become a leader in blockchain technology. This is a sector in which Korean companies can really thrive.”

Another regional governor, Lee Chul-woo of North Gyeongsang province, has also stated his keenness to build a Zug-style, ICO-friendly “Crypto Valley.”

Leading academics have also voiced their support of ending the ICO ban, with professors Ha Tae-hyung of Suwon University and Yoon Soon-deok of Hansei University calling for the government to legalize ICOs. Per Business Post, the professors told a parliamentary select committee that they believed ICOs should be issued in special, regulated zones within the country, or to follow the American lead on ICO issuance in order to let the blockchain industry “evolve.”

Meanwhile, in an editorial for the Electronic Times, journalist Jang Ji-young called on the South Korean government to follow Israel’s lead in blockchain policy-related matters. Jang said that the ICO ban has forced South Korean blockchain startups to relocate abroad, and accused the government’s policy of allowing over USD 27 billion to “leak” to overseas exchanges as a result of its blockchain-and cryptocurrency-related regulations.

The post It Started! South Korea Parliament Debates Ending the ICO Ban appeared first on Cryptonews.

Song is the former managing director of KT, one of the country’s biggest telecommunications companies, and is now a member of parliament for the largest opposition party, the Liberty Korea Party. She is also a member of a number of influential parliamentary committees.

She called for the government to create zones within the country where ICOs could be issued freely. Per media outlet News1, Song stated, “Special laws need to be put in place and special blockchain and ICO zones should be designated, where all forms of ICO issuance should be permitted.”

Song’s opinions were echoed by Ahn Jung-joo, a lawyer in the South Korean Justice Department, who News1 quotes as saying, “South Korea’s ICO ban has stopped over 100 startups from doing business in this country, leading to a South Korean exodus to countries with more [progressive] ICO [legislation], such as Malta and Singapore.”

The calls came just days after a separate meeting of MPs urged ICO reform – and asked Seoul to provide support for the pro-crypto governor of Jeju Island, a semi-autonomous South Korean province that is hoping to use its special legal status to begin allowing ICO issuance.

The South Korean government is preparing to respond to renewed calls from opposition MPs urging the executive to make ICO reforms, as reported. Minister of Science and ICT You Young Min stated that he intended to consult with the regulatory Financial Supervisory Commission before making an official response.

Meanwhile, Singapore is the favored choice for South Korean businesses, with many of them launching their ICOs in the city state so far this year. Singaporean companies are garnering rich benefits from South Korea’s ICO ban.

“It costs up to USD 270,000 in consultancy and legal fees for a South Korean company to launch an ICO here. And on top of that, we need to pay our taxes to the Singaporean government – not to Seoul,” according the owner of a South Korean company that has recently launched an ICO in Singapore.

The post The Fight For ICOs Intensifies in South Korea appeared first on Cryptonews.

Today we are looking at COTI.

What problem(s) does it target?
COTI stand for Currency Of The Internet. It is advertised on the website as “Digital currency built for payments,” fast and scalable like Visa payments (thousands of transactions per second), secure and decentralized like Bitcoin. On top of this, it promises a “Trust Scoring Engine, Mediation System, currency exchange and decentralized governance.”
The COTI network will be powered by a distributed ledger called The Cluster, based on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) data structure – the same technology that powers IOTA. In DAG-based networks, a transaction must validate the previous two transactions to be confirmed. The ecosystem is made out of four participants: node operators, end users, mediators, and merchants.

Who the team members are?
COTI was founded in early 2017 and operates out of Gibraltar. The CEO, Shahaf Bar-Geffen, is also the co-founder/former CEO of WEB3, a multinational digital marketing firm. Dr. Nir Haloani, CTO, has 19+ years of experience leading R&D teams at multiple tech companies, and co-founder Infima Technologies, which was later acquired by IBM. David Assaraf, COO, previously worked as the chief internal auditor at HSBC Israel. Their CFO is Yair Lavi, a financial specialist who was previously CEO and finance director at Plus500UK, an online trading platform.

At what stage the project is?
The community presale was completed, and according to data from ICOdrops, the token sale itself starts September 15th. According to a blog post by the startup, the team also pushed forward a new version of their whitepaper recently.

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
Their minimum viable product (MVP) release is set for September 2018, and in December this year is when the testnet should be launched. The mainnet launch is set for July 2019. The roadmap also expects mass adoption by December 2019.

Fundraising status:
Presale ended, raising USD 3 million in 27 hours, according to their website. Token sale is set to begin on September 15th, and their end goal is USD 30 million.

Most important partnerships?
Processing.com, a multicurrency processing company;
Bancor, a standard for a new generation of cryptocurrencies called Smart Tokens;
The WINGS Foundation, a provider of prediction and analysis services.

How large their community is?
A dedicated subreddit has 635 subscribers, while their Twitter account has more than 17,000 followers. Their Telegram channel, meanwhile, boasts more than 32,000 members.

What other similar projects are?
Varanida, Trilliant, UniFox

The post COTI Builds Another Digital Currency for Payments appeared first on Cryptonews.

Minister of Science and ICT You Young Min stated that he intended to consult with the regulatory Financial Supervisory Commission before making an official response.

Per media outlet Financial News, the government may be willing to consider the idea of creating a task force comprising at least in part of private sector experts who could be tasked with allowing ICOs – with a proviso that should be some means of protecting investors from bogus or fraudulent investments.

Politicians from a number of parties have called for new ICO laws on a number of occasions since the government issued its ban in September last year.

Last week, Song Hee-kyung, MP for Busan and a member of the Liberty Korea Party (the National Assembly’s largest opposition party), called on the Ministry of Science and ICT to review the ICO ban. Song’s views were echoed by MP Kim Kyung-jin of the Democracy and Peace Party, a prominent member of the National Assembly’s Science and IT committee.

MPs also want legal clarification over the island province of Jeju’s bid to allow ICOs on its territory. As previously reported on Cryptonews.com, Jeju’s pro-crypto governor is hoping to use the territory’s special legal status to legalize ICOs, and create a regional hub for blockchain startups.

Also, the National Assembly’s Legislation Bureau has called on the ministry to clarify the legal nature of the ICO ban – possibly in response to lawyers who have been looking for ways around the ban.

MP Jung Byung-guk of the Assembly’s third biggest party, Bareunmirae, is set to call a special committee debate on “ICO Guidelines.” Jung hopes the debate will be tabled with the Industry 4.0 committee before the month’s end.

Per Sisa Magazine, a special National Assembly committee will convene to discuss blockchain technology-related matters on August 30 – with ICO regulations likely to be on the agenda again.

The post S Korea: Politicians in Fresh Bid for ICO Reform appeared first on Cryptonews.

Today we are looking at Moonlight.

What problem(s) does it target?
Moonlight is a decentralized workforce platform on the NEO blockchain with the goal of changing how organizations recruit and scale their workforce. The project is trying to solve the issue of organizations allocating too many resources when optimizing project teams, and individuals’ skill sets not being properly utilized.
Moonlight will use the NEO blockchain to deploy a network of trustless resumes that will anchor the platform’s tools. The task matching-making service will have issuers, or organizations creating tasks, and resolvers, the organizations that bid on and fulfill tasks. Every task completed by an organization is published to the blockchain along with the skills required for it, building up the trustless resume of the organization.

Who the team members are?
The Moonlight team is comprised of core members of the City of Zion, a global group of open-source developers that support the NEO smart economy ecosystem. Advisors include Nathaniel Walpole, product designer at Neon Exchange, Christopher Dienes, senior statistician at Wiland, and Ethan Fast, co-founder of City of Zion and Neon Exchange.

At what stage the project is?
Token sale ongoing, and the token is already listed on Switcheo. According to roadmap, private beta release is still pending, although it was set for Q2 2018.

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
Q3 2018 should see the Marketplace Public Beta Release, while Q2 2019 is when the Project Management Public Beta Release is set to happen.

Fundraising status:
According to data from ICOdrops, token sale is happening from August 11th until August 31st and the project has already raised almost half its goal of USD 8.3 million.

Most important partnerships?
Neo Global Capital: an investment fund for the NEO blockchain-related projects;
City of Zion: a global, independent group of open source developers, designers and translators which support the NEO core and ecosystem;
Thor Token: a project set to “fix the gig economy for freelancers and on-demand companies.”

How large their community is?
Their subreddit has 607 subscribers, the Twitter account is followed by more than 3,800 people, while their Telegram channel has around 18,000 members. None of those is very active.

What other similar projects are?
Cognida.

The post Moonlight Builds a Decentralized Workforce Platform appeared first on Cryptonews.

Today we are looking at the FOAM Protocol.

What problem(s) does it target?
The team behind the FOAM Protocol is looking at the mapping services available today, and the deficiencies they have. It describes itself as a “consensus-driven map and open protocol for decentralized geospatial data markets.”
In other words, it’s a map, with a few extra kinks provided by the underlying Ethereum blockchain.
The main problems the protocol targets, include the censorship and centralization of location service providers; problems with accuracy and privacy, as well as location encoding standards. It aims to solve these problems with its own solutions, which include Crypto-Spatial Coordinates, the Spatial Index and Visualizer, and Proof of Location.

Who the team members are?
The core team counts a dozen people, with another six being collaborators. The core team includes professionals from architecture and urban planning, developers and engineers from BlockApps, a platform for enterprise-grade blockchain applications. Worth specific mention is Jens Krause, functional programmer and ex Cardano SL developer, and Matt Liston, co-founder of Augur (special advisor at FOAM).

At what stage the project is?
The project itself is in beta, which is already available for curious eyes over on this link. FOAM token sale is active at the time of writing.

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
The roadmap is yet to be published. The whitepaper is mostly technical, without detailing on the exact steps needed to reach a complete product.

Fundraising status:
Token sale just launched, at the time of writing. The fundraising goal is 24 million USD, with 30% tokens available on sale. Soft cap is 15 million. Another quarter of the token supply is left for advisors, partners, employees, founders and a reserve for grants and a foundation. Another quarter will be left for compensatory purposes, and 10% will be allocated for future developer grants. Another 35% will be set aside for mining rewards.

Most important partnerships?
The project is backed by Consensys and Navel, to name a few. Partners include Trusted Aliance, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, uPort and Dether.

How large their community is?
Their Telegram channel counts 12,000 members, Twitter 8,000 and Reddit 538 subscribers.

What other similar projects are?
XYO Project.

The post FOAM Thinks Our Maps Could Use an Upgrade appeared first on Cryptonews.

Today we are looking at Vite.

What problem(s) does it target?
Vite aims to become a universal dapp (decentralized app) platform that can support a set of smart contracts.
As a platform for industrial applications, it targets four major problems existing platforms are currently facing: throughput, latency, scalability and security.

Who the team members are?
Vite’s core team and advisors comprises of seven people, with “strong connections” to Microsoft, Google, Goldman Sachs, Huobi and JD.com. The team is made of mostly entrepreneurs, businessmen and investors. No developers mentioned in the core team.

At what stage the project is?
In June this year, the team started working on Vite Core’s research and development, a phase in the project that is planned for the next two months. The whitepaper was published in April, while the official website was released a month later, in May.

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
Vite Core alpha is planned for October 2018, blockchain browser for December 2018, and the desktop client for January 2019. Other notable milestones include the launch of the Vite Testnet in November 2019, and the release of Vite 1.0 in January 2020.

Fundraising status:
The team has raised a total of 28 million USD at the time of writing, with the token sale ending in mid-August.

Most important partnerships?
There is a long list of partners and investors on the Vite website. A few notable names include Bitmain, Node Capital, Genesis, Byzantine Partners and BN Capital.

How large their community is?
Its Twitter following counts 8,300 people. Also, it has a total of seven Telegram channels, including the announcement channel, English channel, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Thai. In total, these channels count more than 160,000 people. Its Chinese channel is the single largest one, with 98,000 people.

What other similar projects are?
ChainZilla, Kirik

The post Vite Aims To Become a Universal Dapp Platform appeared first on Cryptonews.

Today we are looking at Jura.

What problem(s) does it target?
Jura’s founders claim that every blockchain comes with a tradeoff. You can’t have increased security and decentralization, without lowering transaction speeds. If the project is successful, Jura, a ‘paradigm-shifting suite of four technologies’, could eliminate that tradeoff. The project is comprised of its own data structure (called Fusus), Proof of Utility (PoU) system, Dynamically monitored and distributed sharding, and an AI (Artificial Intelligence) security layer.

Proof of utility is a new framework designed to validate transactions, and the new sharding technique enables parallel processing of requests. It also should ensure that if a node gets dropped, it will be rerouted to another active shard.

Who the team members are?
The team is seven people strong, comprising of names with strong ties to cryptography. Core team includes Iris Yang (B.S. in Applied Math, Columbia University), Donglin Wu Dafflon (Named one of Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30 in 2016), Cameron Wang (Ph.D. in math at Princeton), and Alex Dang, Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the Columbia University.

At what stage the project is?
The project is still in its infancy, while its whitepaper was published only recently. The team is also currently working on the design prototype of key components. Those were the two things planned for Q2 2018. Q3 has ERC-20 token generation in store, as well as PoU-based consensus framework and FUSUS (data structure, the core of the project).

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
Sharding architecture integration and testnet launch are planned for the end of 2018. Smart contract implementation should see the light of day in Q1 2019, while the mainnet should be launched in Q2 2019.

Fundraising status:
No information on any funds raised so far. An initial coin offering (ICO) is on the cards, as the ICO Drops site expects the token sale to happen ‘soon’. Goals are yet to be determined. While it’s being speculated that a hard cap of 20 million USD, and between 20% and 25% tokens on sale.

Most important partnerships?
No announced partnerships yet.

How large their community is?
Despite being in relative infancy, the community is pretty big. Jura Network’s Telegram channel is 25,000 strong, and quite lively, with new people coming in droves. The company’s can’t gloat with similar results on Twitter, where it currently has just above 2,000 followers.

What other similar projects are?
Creatanium, KIRIK, ChainZilla, MultiVAC.

The post Jura Wants You to Rethink Blockchain appeared first on Cryptonews.

Today we are looking at MultiVAC.

What problem(s) does it target?
MultiVac tackles one of the fundamental problems of blockchain as a technology. It says that blockchain is stuck in a triangle between decentralization, security and scalability, and that startups have to sacrifice one to have the other two. It argues that both Bitcoin and Ethereum are ‘completely unscalable’. MultiVAC looks to solve the fundamental problems of how to create shards from network nodes for transaction and smart contract processing in a trustworthy manner, allowing the network to scale; how to process transactions and update records using trusted shards in the use case of transaction processing; and how to verify the correct and honest execution of smart contract code by network nodes in the use case of smart contract processing.

Who the team members are?
The team comprises of people with Ph.D.s in computer science, as well as senior engineers at powerhouses like Google, Facebook or Pinterest.

At what stage the project is?
For Q2 2018, the team planned the release of the technical whitepaper (already released), design and development of the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) sharding transaction, design and development of the Sharding Ledger & Storage, as well as the design and development of the interactive transaction verification.

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
By the end of the year, the team plans to release the testnet, as well as to refine and release new features. For the start of 2019, the team plans to launch the mainnet, as well as full-function union debugging and update. Finally, they’re planning to do some stress testing and security scanning.

Fundraising status:
Token sale dates, as well as the goals, are yet to be determined.

Most important partnerships?
TGL Capital, an investment firm dedicated to empowering frontier market entrepreneurs, with a focus on opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Neo Global Capital, the strategic investment vehicle of the NEO foundation.
JRR Crypto, a distributed investment banking group with focus on the blockchain industry and cryptocurrency.

How large their community is?
MultiVAC has two Telegram channels, the MultiVAC Channel, with 5,000 subscribers, and the MultiVAC Community, with 19,000 subscribers. They have 3,346 Twitter followers, and they post regularly on Twitter.

What are other similar projects?
Dfinity, Ontology.

The post MultiVAC Targets Triangle of Blockchain Issues appeared first on Cryptonews.

So what can you do to fix the issue? You set up another token project, of course! There are at least two projects that are currently tackling the abovementioned problems. The problem of fake and crooked ICOs is being tackled, among others, by TruStory, a startup that is “trying to design a world where the token only has value if it is necessary, and because it’s necessary it has value.”

Right off the bat, it had to explain that it in fact is not an ICO and there is no token sale of any kind (but the project will have its own token). The community was quick to question the usefulness of such a project, with some saying it was a “useless project to spot useless tokens has its own useless token,” while others were disputing the founder’s (Preethi Kasireddy) expertise, saying “Founder was working in Mercury Protocol which is complete vaporware.” Previously, Kasireddy was a banking analyst with the investment bank Goldman Sachs, worked at Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley investment powerhouse, and Coinbase, the US-based crypto exchange and wallet service, according to TechCrunch.

Still, the problem that this startup is trying to solve is real and it did already raise USD 3 million (Pantera Capital, Kindred Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and others were among investors) to identify ICO scams more successfully.

The company is currently looking to test its solutions in the real world. Luckily for them (and unluckily for most of the crypto world), they’ll have plenty of examples to choose from.

But that’s just half of the problem. What about unsuccessful, dead ICOs? Dead coins have no value, right?

Well, according to the folks at CoinJanitor, false. Dead coins and failed ICOs do have value locked inside them, and they believe they can ‘unlock’ that value. Besides unlocking the value, CoinJanitor also looks to bring in all the communities of different dead coins under one roof, bringing experience, expertise and partnerships together.

And finally, it says that the crypto market will benefit from such a project, as ‘unlocked’ value from dead coins can be returned to the ecosystem for a significant boost.

“The network effect created through the amalgamation of dead coin communities is the cornerstone of our value proposition. As we integrate more dead or failed coin communities under the CoinJanitor umbrella, that network effect should grow, compounding the value of our token,” the startup explained.

Some in the community looks at this project favorably, saying things like “we need a garbage bin for all the scam/dead crypto projects”, or that it’s simply a “great idea”. While others wonder “How should this work at all?”

ICOs are a new and exciting way of starting up a business, which comes with its own set of advantages and challenges. The abovementioned problems currently perceived as the biggest among the challenges, so let’s see how they get tackled.

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Today we are looking at Metadium.

What problem(s) does it target?
Metadium claims it believes a person’s identity is at a ‘status quo’ nowadays, with different characteristics scattered around the world, both offline and in the digital realm. It wants to tackle the problem individuals currently have with managing, protecting and using their identity whenever, wherever and however they need to.
It aims to support a secure decentralized digital identity, where personal data can only be shared with explicit consent from the data owner. The infrastructure is based on blockchain, with users being able to use both Metadium and the company’s Meta ID on other platforms and services.
But it’s not just individuals that are faced with problems – businesses are faced with data integration challenges, too. In order to expand globally, businesses sometimes need to use the help of attestation agencies, adding extra layers of unnecessary complexity. Metadium says this is particularly true among startups.

Who the team members are?
The team is comprised of more than a dozen people, mostly blockchain and MetaID App and Server developers. One of the co-founders is Ryan Uhr, also a co-founder of Coinplug (Korean bitcoin exchange, wallet and payment processor). Among the advisors is Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com.

At what stage the project is?
It is currently at the ‘Metadium Initiative’, which includes building up the Metadium team, wrapping up the Metadium prototype and releasing the application programming interface (API).

What the main future milestones in their roadmap are?
Future milestones include Open Beta Service Demo, expected in Q4 2018, as well as the launch of the mainnet in Q1 2019. In the same quarter, the Metadium team should scale up and the Blockchain 1.0 should be released.

Fundraising status:
Token sale set from July to August according to data from ICOdrops, with no further details currently available.

Most important partnerships?
FBG Capital, a digital asset management firm.
Kenetic, a blockchain firm.
BlockTower, a cryptocurrency investment firm.
Connect Capital, a blockchain and digital assets investments fund.

How large their community is?
A total of 951 Twitter followers, and just above 10,000 Telegram channel members, which seem pretty lively.

What are other similar projects?
IAME Identity, Sovrin.

The post Mediatum Looks to Challenge the Identity Status Quo appeared first on Cryptonews.

The new legal paper, titled “Coin-Operated Capitalism” and released by a team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law shows how the world of ICOs has grown in the past year and a half. Claiming to be “the legal literature’s first detailed analysis of the inner workings of Initial Coin Offerings,” the study collected 50 top-grossing ICOs of 2017, and analyzed how the software code controlling the projects’ ICOs reflected their contractual promises: “Many ICOs failed even to promise that they would protect investors against insider self-dealing.”

“One take-home is that no one reads smart contracts, making them a rickety wheel on the ICO investment vehicle,” says the paper. It continues that, “minted crypto asset is created through an act of founder fiat [a formal authorization or proposition; a decree].”

According to the study, “if ICO investors were scrutinizing smart contract code before buying into an ICO, we would expect to see (all else equal) higher capital raises by teams that faithfully coded supply and vesting protections, and also disclosed their modification powers.”

“We find no evidence of that effect in our sample,” the team concluded.

They continue that “Surprisingly, in a community known for espousing a technolibertarian belief in the power of “trustless trust” built with carefully designed code, a significant fraction of issuers retained centralized control through previously undisclosed code permitting modification of the entities’ governing structures.”

Dave Hoffman, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, who also contributed to the research, tweeted:

Another problem is founder desertion – where teams launch an ICO and then quickly dump all of their tokens onto the market as soon as possible. This is why vesting periods exist, which means people holding the tokens cannot sell them until a certain date or amount of time has passed. However, most ICOs that promise vesting periods do not include a code for that either, the study found.

“The fact that 37 of the leading ICOs—each of which raised over USD 20 million—fail to write their own vesting promises into code is inconsistent with a story about code replacing law. It also raises serious questions about whether investors are adequately protected from founder desertion,” the study warns.

The authors have created something called the paper-code distance: the difference between the whitepaper promises and the smart contract reality, rated between 0 and 4. 0 means the code reflects the promises of the paper completely, whereas 4 means there are significant differences between what was promised, and what was coded.

“Of the 50 ICOs, 10 (20%) have no distance, 30 (60%) have one, 8 (16%) have two, 1 (2%) had three, and 1 (2%) has four,” it reads, going on to remind readers that there are very few legal protections available for ICO investors in the event that promises made by the team are not kept.

It concludes that lawyers and other legal representatives will need more knowledge about the matter going forward. “Traditional, paperbound lawyers are not going extinct, but we may be witnessing the emergence of a new form of transactional technology that will drastically alter how they do their jobs,” it says, explaining that the rise of ICOs will need to be accompanied by enforceable regulations.

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Below is the summary of code/contract audit, published in the study:

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