Important Dates: ICO starts February 13th
Number of Tokens: 1 Billion
Cap: $20 million
Token Type: ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain
Token Price: 1 REM = $0.04
Token Ticker: REM
What is Remme?
Remme is a protocol that aims to improve website security. Instead of using passwords to secure access to data, Remme deploys a Public Key Encryption (PKE) scheme to secure data (much like the public / private keys of Bitcoin or Ethereum). Remme is building PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) services on the blockchain to help secure data.
What is the problem Remme wants to solve?
Everyone has multiple accounts on the internet that are secured with passwords. Most people will use a few passwords to secure all their accounts, but this puts multiple accounts at risk in the event of passwords becoming compromised. Password managers and two-factor authentication help to mitigate these risks, but there are still vulnerabilities in both approaches. Remme aims to solve these issues through its encryption system that uses public and private keys in place of passwords.
What is Remme’s Business Plan?
There is a detailed road-map in the white paper. Remme is releasing an alpha of its product in Q1 2018 and hopes to complete public testing in Q3 2018 to allow for a Q4 release. In 2019, the team plans to expand to Asia by opening local sales offices.
ICO
The ICO will begin on February 15th with a cap of 15 ETH per user. 50% of tokens will be sold during the crowd sale, 20% will go to the team and will vest for two years. Another 20% will go to partners and advisers.
Token Utility
While Remme’s token will initially be released on the Ethereum blockchain, they are developing their own native platform to overcome scalability issues. As such, the REM token will function as a fee to perform actions in the Remme ecosystem.
The Team
The team appears to be based in Ukraine. The CEO is Alex Momot who is a serial entrepreneur and has started other companies in the Ukraine. Oddly, Remme does not appear to have any advisors listed on the website even though there are tokens allocated to advisors.
Hype
Remme has 25,000 people in its Telegram channel. This is excellent buzz, but not quite as good as some recent ICOs which had over 50,000 users in Telegram (e.g. Gems). After this, there is not much other hype beyond the usual paid articles on crypto websites.
Competition
There are no clear competitors to Remme in the blockchain space. Projects such as Civic, SelfKey and The Key focus more on identity verification services rather than replacing passwords. The most direct competitors will be existing password managers such as LastPass or Dashlane
Risks
Regulatory: The white paper notes that there are no nationality restrictions on who can participate in the ICO. This is surprising given that most ICOs are excluding US and Chinese citizens. Letting everyone participate in the ICO could cause problems listing on exchanges in the future. With more regulatory oversight on the way, it is critical projects do it right, and I’m not convinced that Remme is.
Professionalism: The white paper is littered with grammatical errors. A good example is the following phrase: “Blockchain Intensive Hackathon by Microsoft Winne”. I assume they mean to say “Winner of Microsoft Blockchain Intensive Hackathon”. Awkward English is pervasive in the white paper, which may seem small in the grand scheme of things, but a team that cannot adequately copy edit a document seen by investors may not be detail-oriented in other areas.
Investment Horizon
Short Term: The short-term potential of Remme is very good. There is a good community buzz and the market cap is low. As long as it is listed on exchanges, it should do well
Long Term: I am cautiously optimistic about the long-term potential too. However, there are technical issues to sort out (setting up a new blockchain) and there are existing competitors (albeit not decentralized).
Conclusion:
Remme is a nice little project that stands out in the sea of ICOs. It has a good idea, a decent team, and a buzz, which should be enough to ensure it does well in the future. There are a few risks with the project, but these are outweighed by the positives.
