Important Dates: January – Crowdsale to begin exact date TBD
Number of Tokens: 1 Billion total – 200 Million sold in crowdsale
Cap: $25 million
Token Type: ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain
Ticker: PROPS
Whitepaper: Link
What is Props?
Props is the token that will power a “decentralized ecosystem of video applications” on the Rize platform. It is supposed to be the first platform that will form the Rize Ecosystem
The project is billed as a project of YouNow, which is a company that was founded in 2011.
What is the problem Props wants to solve?
The Props whitepaper offers a good summary of the problem they are trying to solve. It rightly asserts that today’s digital media landscape is highly centralized. A small number of large companies (e.g. Google and Apple among others) effectively control digital media distribution and access. These companies have earned massive profits, yet only a very small fraction of that money flows back to the people that create value for these networks, namely the content creators, curators, publishers and developers building on top of them. Large companies monetize the attention and information of users, while the vast majority of users do not benefit from the financial gains of the network they contribute to.
While some platforms reward large content contributors for their work, contributors enjoy only a fraction of the financial value they collectively create. The large companies end up controlling content distribution and contributor income and often end up cannibalizing their earnings with their own content and product offerings. Meanwhile, developers wishing to create new experiences and digital media distribution channels face an uphill battle against overwhelming network effects and economies of scale.
What is Props’s Business Plan?
YouNow has converted itself into a foundation in order to facilitate the integration of PROPS. The RIZE app will be launched after the token event. During 2018, there are plans to bring in further partners and further expand the number of use cases for the PROPS token. The road map can be seen below:
ICO
Props conducted its ICO pre-sale for non-accredited investers beginning on Dec 12th. The presale sold out after reaching a $1.2 million cap.
The crowd sale will be in Q1 2018 and will be used to fill the rest of the $25 million market cap not already filled in the presale. 20% of tokens will be sold during the token sale.
Token Utility
The PROPS token is used to reward content creators. It serves as a ‘status’ token, and unlocks functionality depending on how many are held by a given user. The whitepaper describes the following five use cases for the token:
- Premium Experiences: PROPS will unlock premium experiences or ‘gameplay advantages. Some features may be exclusive to token holders and require premium access using PROPS.
- Status Signaling: Indicates the elevated status of PROPS holders.
- Influence and Curation: Influence is a function of economic power. PROPS holders may promote use cases and content they like and vote on platform-wide rules and guidelines.
- Compensation: Tokens will be used to compensate platform contributors (e.g. content contributors, curators, developers etc.). PROPS tokens are rewarded to users who are calculated as contributing the most to the platform.
- Content Promotion: Users of all types can use PROPS to promote or elevate their own content.
The Team
The team is drawn from the YouNow parent company, and has good business experience. As they have already been working with YouNow for six years, the team has a lot more credibility than some of the other ICOs that feature teams with no experience and no minimum viable product.
Hype
There are currently about 5800 people in Props’ Telegram channel. This is a good number compared to other ICOs. Anything with 5000+ is a sign of strong buzz.
Younow has some prominent backers, perhaps chiefly Comcast, one of the world’s largest entertainment companies.
Competition
Viuly: This is a decentralized video marketplace that recently did an airdrop to all Ether holder accounts. The project team is not nearly as strong as PROPS and is only focused on video. They aim to have a beta of the project released in Q2 2018. PROPS is a much better value proposition.
Hubii: Hubii Network had its ICO is August and has been working on developing an MVP, which is supposed to launch by Q1, 2018. It has some good partners in Telenor, but is fundamentally focusing on written media to start.
Risks
Competition: Competition in the media platform space is fierce, and not just on the blockchain front (e.g. Hubii and Viuly), but also from established players such as Youtube. Although Youtube has not ‘tokenized’ itself, it may not be that far off, and fundamentally users want good content and don’t really care about the underlying economics. If Rize does not have good content, users will stay away.
Technology: At the moment, the PROPS token is an ERC20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain. While Ethereum is by far the most popular platform for ICOs, it is not able to support more than about 5 transactions per second. For a platform like Rize that demands multiple micro-transactions, the Ethereum platform may not be able to cope.
Follow our official announcements channel on @telegram for some updates in the coming days! https://t.co/9BjVdE4gSS
— Props (@PropsProject) December 20, 2017
Scores
Fundamental Indicators
Concept: 3
The concept of PROPS is good, but there is nothing really unique about it. Many other projects are also decentralizing content and it is really a race to see which one can benefit first from network effects.
Token Utility: 3
While there are no revolutionary use cases for the PROPS token, it is not just used as a payment method. The additional use cases of status and unlocking extra features are welcome, and mean that the token is an integral part of the Rize ecosystem.
Status: 5
The RIZE platform will launch in early 2018 after the conclusion of the token sale. The PROPS project is far more advanced than many ICOs which only have whitepapers and no product.
Team: 4
The team is well-suited to succeed in bringing PROPS to the masses. This is because they already have a working product and extensive experience thanks to their involvement in Younow.
Competition: 2
As mentioned earlier on in this review, competition is fierce in this space and a very real risk to the success to the project.
Strategy: 5
The Whitepaper for this project is exceptionally well-written and thought out. The team has a clear way forward on how they intend to integrate a token into a media platform and how to incentivize users and partners to use it.
Technical Indicators
Market Cap: 3
The props market cap of $25 million is leaning towards the higher side in the current market, but is still ok. However, only 20% of tokens will be sold during the token sale, which is a low number and implies a market cap of $125 million. In the short term, when 80% of the tokens are locked, this is not really a concern, but the 50% of tokens controlled by the PROPS foundation will be gradually released and could dilute investor holdings.
Hype: 4
Hype is good for PROPS with strong partners and good community engagement.
Investment Horizon
Short Term: I like the short-term prospects of this project. The whitepaper is exceptionally well written, the team is experienced and it is being developed out of an existing company. Unlike some ICO ‘money grabs’ where companies that have a failing product look to bolt on an ICO for funding, the PROPS project genuinely adds value to the Rize platform. The product is also close to release in Q1. Good news has significant impact in crypto, and the PROPS project should be no exception.
Long Term: Long-term prospects are a little more murky. Competition is fierce and other projects with similar ideas will come online. I believe it is likely that large incumbents such as Youtube will explore creating their own internal cryptocurrency as well.
Conclusion
PROPS could be a good ICO for investors. It has a strong team, a product that is nearly ready and a strong vision for what it wants to achieve.
Overall Score: 3.6
