This week CCN has a look at another three ICOs that have caught our eye in the travel, online payment, and online marketplace industries.
Winding Tree – removing the middleman for travel
Winding Tree, by the project’s own description, is a blockchain-based platform for the travel industry. It seeks to act as a B2B decentralized marketplace for travel. The token up for sale is the Lif token and the main sale will take place from February 1st to February 15th. The main gripe that Winding Tree has with the travel industry is that 90% of the revenue generated goes to a very small number of companies who control a large quantity of the market. Huge transaction fees are the result of this kind of monopoly that companies such as Expedia and Priceline impose on customers. The answer to this, and many of the issues that Maksim Izmaylov, CEO of Winding Tree, has with the travel industry, is to build a decentralized blockchain solution that would allow a larger independent community to be given more control. This move would eliminate many of the costs associated with booking costs and would lessen the overall expenditure that frequent fliers face.
Winding Tree has already been doing the rounds within the blockchain conference and startup world and has built up a solid social media buzz. They were lucky enough to accomplish a very respectable pre-ICO round and ended up discounting their tokens by only 10%. They are taking this project seriously and there is definite energy in their project build-up. Winding Tree even postponed their project momentarily to ensure that they were able to nail all the nuances of a well-run Token Generation Event, and made absolutely sure that they were operating within the relevant laws surrounding these kinds of events. The structure of their crowdsale was something they put a lot of time and thought into. Their market validation mechanism is a crucial part of their ICO, so they are adopting a more communist approach to their project where everyone has the chance to buy in, not just a few large whales. Winding Tree; it’s an interesting project for sure and one to keep your eye on.
Pundi X – making buying crypto easy
Pundi X is an interesting concept that seeks to link the world of cryptocurrency into our everyday lives. The main idea behind Pundi X is to allow blockchain developers and token holders to sell cryptocurrencies and services at a physical store in the world. The token is PDX, they have a hard cap of $35 Million and the start date of the crowdsale is the 21st of January 2018. The original price of the tokens were $2.30, but it has been refactored by 1000 down to $0.0023.
What Pundi X want to do is, as their website states: make buying cryptocurrency as easy as buying bottled water. Not only do they want to commercialize the act of buying cryptos, they also want to make it so that using cryptocurrency to buy goods becomes a lot easier than it is today. Due to the low market penetration of mobile digital payment and low percentage of bank account ownership in South East Asia, Pundi X is positioned well to serve the needs of many who lack the means of access to a bank account. The technology behind the Pundi X project includes Point of Sale machines, mobile apps, and Pundi X cards. The adoption of the ICO may be an absolute no-brainer for a larger selection of the South East Asian population, and beyond.
The social media buzz surrounding the Pundi X project is significant: they have approximately 10,000 participants on their Telegram channel and they have a standout team from Asia, who hold their own in the talent department. They intend to start their operations in Jakarta and then, following the success of their project, expand out to Asia where they hope to distribute 100-150,000 Point of Service machines.
Overall this ICO looks promising indeed: we think the idea is solid and it does seem as though they are fulfilling a need in the South East Asian market. The only thing to look at would be their slow-moving start, which would hinder any short-term flipping. As well as this, they may get hit hard by current or future legislation. Provided they can avoid any major hiccups we think it’s clear that this project is going to be big, it’s only a matter of time.
Ink Protocol – P2P reputation and payment
Last up today is the Ink Protocol with the XNK token. They have a presale starting on the 22nd January and their main sale starts on the 1st February 2018. The hard cap sits at $15 million with 1 ETH being equal to 7500 XNK. What’s actually being pitched here is not a vague idea on a white paper but a pre-existing platform called Listia. Listia has been up and running for years and has already had millions of dollars pumped into it. They have experience with cryptocurrencies, and tried launching one previously, but had problems with nuances and inflation.
The platform itself is all about trading and bartering with things that you already own. You offer up what you want to sell, get credit for it, then have the ability to buy other sellers’ items with that credit. The next step for this platform, now that they’re entering the ICO stage, is the introduction of their new crypto token called the Ink Protocol. With this introduction they can move into a more mature business space and build in reputation scoring, escrow, and dispute settlements. Once established, they can offer this new ‘Protocol’ to other marketplaces in an act similar to forking.
As for the team, they’re a legitimate group and have good support from a panel of advisors as well. They already have a pre-established userbase and it is clear they the product they are supplying has a relevant business need. This could be one to look out for if you’re interested in a short-term flip. As for the long term, that’s where things get a little bit more complicated; we’ll just have to see how they progress. The fact that they have had millions pumped into them and have not been able to build a sustainable business is a bit worrying and is definitely something to consider. As always, we’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
