After two months of correction, the cryptocurrency market has been bouncing back and more active recently, led by the blockchain gaming trend. After DeFi, blockchain gaming is on its way to be the next big cryptocurrency market trend in the future.
Let’s dive deeper into the blockchain gaming landscape with Kyros in this article.
A signal from the Vietnamese investor community:
According to The Vietnam crypto market report H1.2021 made by Kyros Ventures at the beginning of July 2021, there are three main trends expected by the Vietnamese community:
Blockchain platform
Ethereum and Layer 2
NFT and Blockchain gaming
Many investors expect NFT and Blockchain gaming to be one of the key trends in the second half of 2021. In addition, the most expected NFT tokens to rise are game or game-related such as AXS, ALICE, ENJ, SAND, MANA, CHR, FLOW,…
Undoubtedly, the performance of the above tokens is far from the rest of the NFT market in particular and the cryptocurrency market in general.
Axie Infinity is the leading project ofthe NFT-gaming trend. Let’s take a look at the rising of Axie Infinity in the below video produced by Kyros Ventures:
As NFTs continue to grow, so does gaming within this space.
Besides Axie Infinity, many games havereceived much awareness from the community, such as:
Alien World
Crypto Blade
My DeFi Pet
X World Game
Blockchain gaming ecosystems:
There are many projects on the gaming segment, which are built on various blockchain protocols. However, most of the popular games are built on widespread blockchain such as:
Ethereum
Binance Smart Chain
Polygon
WAX
Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain:
Ethereum is the leading ecosystem from the number of products and capitalization perspective. Some of the most popular blockchain games have been built on Ethereum like:
Axie Infinity
Decentraland
The Sandbox
Nonetheless, Binance Smart Chain also shows that it is a robust gaming ecosystem that has the ability to compete with Ethereum. Games on BSC are mainly brand new projects, but they have acquired more users compared to Ethereum.
Crypto Blades has had approximately 700,000 users in the past 30 days (July 9th – August 9th), nearly three times more than the top game on Ethereum, Axie Infinity (according to the data provided by DappRadar).
Polygon and WAX:
Polygon and WAX also have a diversified gaming ecosystem. On top of that, the two’s advantage is very low on-chain fees:
Fee on WAX: 0$
Fee on Polygon: 0.0001$
At the moment, Polygon hosts as many NFT gaming projects like Ethereum and BSC, yet its user base couldn’t compete with the two juggernauts.
Unlike Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon, WAX is a blockchain protocol focusing on NFT and games with zero blockchain fees. Alien World, built on WAX, owns the most significant number of players in the blockchain gaming space, with nearly 1 million users in the past 30 days.
Enjin:
The ecosystem of Enjin is worth taking a look at because it is a pioneer in the blockchain gaming sector. Completely different from the above ecosystems, Enjin isn’t a blockchain protocol having a smart contract but providing a solution to simplify the NFT application for game products instead.
At present, there are a lot of games powered by Enjin.
In addition to the large ecosystems above, several ecosystems in the process of development are also worth noting, such as:
Solana
Flow
ThunderCore
Chromia
Blockchain gaming studios:
Many gaming studios are focusing on blockchain right now, some familiar names such as:
Animoca Brands
Dapper
Lucid Sight
Sky Mavis
Antler Interactive
Everdream Soft
Horizon
Types of games:
Although it has been developed for a short time, blockchain gaming also has diversified types of games:
Sport
Card
Battle Royale
Building
Tower Defense
Action
Turn-based
If you are a blockchain enthusiastic and interested in games, why not try some games below:
Vietnam has marked itself as one of the most potential lands for crypto development, with achievements from not only international investments but also local entities. With the start of 2021, Kyros Ventures would like to showcase the Vietnamese Crypto Map, presenting the overall crypto ecosystem that Vietnam has built up over the past years. This map will guide you through the Vietnamese Blockchain & Crypto landscape, including the leading faces in fields of exchange, wallet, Dapps & DeFi, Stablecoin, Media, and so on.
Vietnam Blockchain & Crypto Map, presented by Coin68 Media and Kyros Ventures
TomoChain, KardiaChain, Axie Infinity, and Kyber Network are Vietnamese projects that stood out both locally and internationally. Not only did these projects experience growth on their technical side with a full set of new products, but they also attracted a large community of supporters all around the world.
International exchanges have been very active in Vietnam, with famous names such as Binance, Huobi, OKex, and FTX. Wallet and exchange services developed by Vietnamese (Coin98, FMX) have also marked their footprints with unique product features and an easy-to-use interface. English was no longer a language barrier for those who are enthusiastic about crypto as Vietnamese materials are now available.
In terms of legislation, Vietnamese laws have banned cryptocurrency as a form of issuance, provision, and payment. Vietnam is currently under the researching phase of different CBDC models, especially using the one from China’s DCEP. However, Stably and VND are 2 Vietnamese projects with high potentials.
While the government takes careful legal steps, Vietnamese and other users can still learn about blockchain and crypto from formal universities such as RMIT Vietnam, University of Technology, and FuniX, a unit of FPT University.
In addition, specialized media channels are becoming a rising trend after the boom in quantity from the peak of 2017. Coin68 is a great example of a reliable source of information, regardless of the market being uptrend or downtrend. Using our expertise and speed in catching up with the latest trends, Coin68 is confident to be your gateway to wider knowledge in blockchain in general.
More specifically, in the past year, Vietnam is proud to introduce the first generation of crypto investment funds, Kyros Ventures, a venture capital fund developed on the solid foundations of Coin68. The fund has been supported and invested in more than 30 large and small deals, contributing to bringing many quality international projects to Vietnam.
Overall, 2020 has been a very successful year for the blockchain & crypto market in Vietnam. We have a positive look at 2021, the year of the Ox, and look forward to the creation of many more new projects and new aspects to the blockchain industry.
CertiK was founded in December 2017 by acclaimed computer science professors. The company specializes in developing cutting-edge security solutions for blockchains, dApps and software applications. CertiK has serviced more than 100 clients and secured over $18B worth of digital assets with high-quality auditing and consulting services, ranging from stablecoins such as Binance’s BGBP and Paxos Gold to decentralized oracles such as Band Protocol and Tellor and well-established DeFi protocols including Aave and Ampleforth.
The CertiK Foundation is a nonprofit, research-driven organization with the mission to empower people to trust the blockchain technology. The foundation launched CertiK Chain in late 2019.
CertiK Chain is a cross-chain protocol designed to ensure the security and reliability of blockchain infrastructure and decentralized applications built on top of it. CertiK Chain is able to achieve this with native in-chain features including Security Oracle, CertiKShield Reimbursement Pool, a secure programming language – DeepSEA, and a hacker-resistant OS kernel – CertiKOS (Figure 1).
The project launched on October 27 2020 on the Binance Launchpad. According to Binance Research, the project raised 39.4M USD from two rounds of private token sales, where 38.00% of the CTK total token supply has been sold at 0.77 USD/CTK and 1.90 USD/CTK.
For economics and performance, CertiK Chain uses a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus protocol. For accessibility, CertiK Chain is built with the inter-chain friendly Cosmos framework and is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.The CertiK Chain leverages and provides the safest infrastructure for the blockchain ecosystem, including the CertiK Virtual Machine, CertiKOS, and DeepSEA programming language. A blockchain can fulfill its promise of a fairer, safer, and more transparent system only with verified layers.
– CertiK Security Oracle
CertiK Security Oracle aims to enable users to assess the risk of a DeFi protocol/smart contract in real-time before interacting with it. The oracle retrieves a set of security scores from a decentralized network of security operators which assess the reliability and security of the source code, and compete to earn $CTK (Figure 2). Security scores are displayed on a scale of 1 to 100 enabling users to assess smart contract risk at a glance.
The CertiK Security Oracle makes audit reports available on-chain and decentralizes security intelligence from a handful of security auditors to the entire blockchain community to be accessible on-chain upon demand.
Figure 2: CertiKShield status (Source: CertiK Foundation)
– CertiKShield Pool
This is a decentralized pool of CTK that is used to reimburse lost, stolen or inaccessible crypto assets from any blockchain. As a member, if your funds have been stolen, you can submit a detailed request for reimbursement. The rest of the members vote on your request, and if it is deemed to be legitimate and appropriate for reimbursement, you’ll get paid back.
CertiKShield Pools consist of Collateral Providers and Shield Purchasers. Collateral Providers receive staking rewards for staking CTK in the CertiKShield Pool, while also collecting a portion of the fees paid by Shield Purchasers, as depicted in Figure 3. The cost of reserving funds from the CertiKShield Pool for personal reimbursement of lost assets will be directly tied to the CertiK Security Oracle score, with lower scores (which represent more risk) requiring higher fees for protection.
Figure 3: CertiKShield pool mapping (Source: CertiK Foundation)
– CertiK Virtual Machine (CVM) is built to support a security-first blockchain and enable security intelligence to become an on-chain, expressible value. The CVM is unprecedented in its ability to empower users to access, check, and dynamically establish blockchain and smart contract security. It is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
– DeepSEA is a security-first programming language and a compiler toolbox that is fully compatible with CertiK Chain’s virtual machine, along with Ethereum WebAssembly and Ant Financial’s AntChain. The DeepSEA toolchain was developed by the CertiK team with support from the Ethereum Foundation, Columbia-IBM, Yale University and the Qtum Foundation.
– CertiKOS is an operating system kernel originally developed at Yale University, receiving international acclaim as the world’s first “hacker-resistant” OS kernel. It was the subject of five papers published at top computer science conferences from 2015-2020. CertiKOS is the bedrock for the security infrastructure of CertiK Chain, and plays a pivotal role in running CertiK Chain nodes and the CertiK Security Oracle.
– CertiK QuickScan can be used to secure theBinance Smart Chain smart contracts; this is a lightweight, yet powerful scanning system that can complete a smart contract auditing process within 15 minutes. The CertiK QuickScan uses automated scanning technologies to analyze a wide range of known security vulnerabilities at scale. Once finished, the scanned smart contract will receive a score broadcasted through the Security Oracle network via CertiK-maintained oracle operators.
CertiK Foundation Ecosystem
Development partners include Ethereum Foundation, Columbia-IBM and the Qtum Foundation
Leading exchanges including Binance, Huobi, Liquid and Coinone have chosen to partner with CertiK’s expertise to audit blockchain projects before allowing them to list on their exchanges
Research partners include Yale University and Columbia University
A more exhaustive list of CertiK’s notable clients and partners includes Hyundai, Ant Financial, yearn.finance, Ampleforth, AAVE, Band Protocol, Binance Coin, Bitcoin.com, Crypto.com, Kava, Terra, ThorChain, ICON, Matic, Swipe, Reserve, Paxos, TrueUSD, Universal Protocol and hundreds of other projects.
Initial circulating supply (CS): 23,796,787 CTK (23.75% of total supply)
Detailed token distribution as illustrated in Figure 5
CTK is the native utility token of the CertiK platform. The token utility includes:
Gas consumption for smart contract operations
Shield purchases for insurance against hacks, theft and code malfunction
Payments for real-time Security Oracle audit requests
Staking for network consensus and hosting validator nodes
Rewards for participating in the Security Oracle network and providing real-time security analysis
Collateral and reimbursements for providing collateral to the CertiKShield pool
Community voting for decentralized network governance
CTK token has been allocated to two Private Sale rounds. The first Private Sale round sold 29M CTK at 0.77 USD/CTK raising USD $22.33M, while the second Private Sale round sold 9M CTK at 1.90 USD/CTK raising USD $17.1M.
Figure 5: CTK token distribution (Source – Binance Research)
Comparable Projects
Within the blockchain industry’s security sector, CertiK, Quantstamp and OpenZeppelin are considered the three most prominent companies with an excellent track record of auditing top-notch clients worldwide. Among the three projects, OpenZeppelin was founded the earliest (2015 vs 2017), focusing on an open-source library besides security auditing. However, it was left behind in the smart contract security race when CertiK pioneered its automatic auditing tool, and Quantstamp followed shortly. Moreover, only CertiK and Quantstamp have their own token. Thus, in this report, we cover a comparison between CertiK and Quantstamp.
As demonstrated in Figure 6, we observe that CertiK outperforms Quantstamp with better metrics in audited assets despite a smaller client pool. CertiK’s excellent performance also resulted in higher stakeholders’ confidence, vividly depicted by the higher funding and market cap.
Figure 6: Comparison between CertiK and Quantstamp
Upcoming News and Development Progress
CertiK chain mainnet has been launched on Oct 24 2020. The team is working to launch CertiKShield Pools with existing clients as well as integrate with major protocols to provide on-chain security through the Security Oracle mechanism. Furthermore, CertiK team has released CertiKShield yield farming to reward collateral providers with CTK. We expect the team to continue the momentum and add more projects to CertiK’s portfolio. Besides, CertiK will focus on community building in China, South Korea, North America and Europe.
CTK token is fully released for 2 out of 7 allocations i.e. Private Sale 2 and CertiKShield Pool. The rest will be distributed gradually until August 2023. Details for the CTK release schedule are illustrated in Figure 7.
Centre of expertise: CertiK Chain brings some of the world’s brightest minds in computer science to solve a painful issue in DeFi – security of unaudited contracts. In DeFi it has become increasingly popular for unaudited smart contracts to be released pseudo-anonymously and the community to interact with them in the hunt for lucrative financial rewards. These contracts often go unaudited because it has normally been seen as the responsibility of the contract developers to seek audits, but in many cases the developers seek not to. The CertiK Security Oracle decentralizes the responsibility of conducting security analysis and instead gives the power to the people to request security intelligence themselves.
Emerging DeFi security risk: With over $1.4B of crypto stolen in the first 5 months of 2020 alone, a CertiKShield membership is a wise step in the right direction for individuals and projects involved in the DeFi space.
Reputation and a supportive ecosystem: A highly active community with the growth campaign including regular technical updates and education sessions via blog posts, online and face-to-face product education sessions, and social media engagement
Factors to Watch
Competitors: Various types of decentralized applications and networks are emerging at a rapid rate, and the industry is increasingly competitive. It is possible that alternative networks could be established that utilize the same or similar code and protocol underlying CTK and/or the CertiK Platform and attempt to re-create similar facilities. The CertiK Platform may have to compete with these alternative networks, which could negatively impact CTK and/or the CertiK Platform.
Loss of talent: The development of the CertiK Platform greatly depends on the continued co-operation of the existing technical team and expert consultants, who are highly knowledgeable and experienced in their respective sectors. The loss of any member may adversely affect the CertiK Platform or its future development. Further, stability and cohesion within the team is critical to the overall development of the CertiK Platform. There is the possibility that conflict within the team and/or departure of core personnel may occur, thus negatively influencing the project in the future.
Executive Summary
Projection Milestones
Note: This projection evaluation method considers both the CTK token price and the CTK circulating supply as variables. This is an accurate representation since both are subject to change over time.
At the time of writing, the circulating supply (CS) is 23.8M CTK, and the market cap (MC) reaches $27M. The token’s initial price on Binance Launchpool was $0.77/CTK. At the time of writing, the token price had passed the $1.13 mark.
CertiK is expected to carry on its market leader’s advantage by expanding its product suite and industry network. CTK CS will be around 50M CTK in August 2021, and CTK may reach the Top 100 ranking at CoinMarketCap.
At full token release, the CS will be around 100.18 million CTK. CTK token price may potentially reach $5 per token, giving it a circulating market cap exceeding $500M.
Finally, Figure 8 presents the different possible scenarios determining the potential CTK market cap and the associated return on investment (ROI) in the future.
Figure 8: Future CTK market cap projection
Concluding Remarks
The CertiK’s Security Oracle and Shield Pool are necessary in the DeFi space. The Kyros research team expects CertiK to continue to grow as the leader in the smart contract audit niche. Furthermore, we are bullish on this project, and we believe that the crypto enthusiasts and investors alike will also be able to foresee its potential.
Taking into account CertiK’s favorable metrics versus comparable projects i.e. Quantstamp, we would be extremely surprised to see this token stay under $2 within the first half of 2021.
Due to the volatile nature of the crypto markets, short term price estimates are difficult to establish. We, however, expect to see the CTK token price soar to $2.8 – $4 in the mid-to-long term, giving it a circulating market cap in the vicinity of $330M.
Even higher token price milestones are feasible in the long term, our most bullish prediction envisaging CTK potentially reaching $4.5 – $5.5 in the future. Taking into account that CTK has the market leader advantage in the blockchain security industry, it will probably remain a force to be reckoned with.
FinNexus is a next-generation DeFi “supermarket” which enables a global audience to discover and use decentralized finance products in a frictionless and intuitive manner.
The flagship product is the FinNexus Protocol for Options (FPO), which features the world’s first Multi-Asset Single Pool (MASP) in addition to decentralized and permis sionless option writing, trading, and exercising.
FPO is designed to be multi-chain compatible, including with Ethereum, Wanchain, Elrond, XRP Ledger, and KardiaChain.
Uniswap Liquidity Mining program currently ongoing (226.2% APY at time of writing).
Figure 1: FinNexus model
FinNexus Product Suite
FinNexus Protocol for Options (FPO) is a permissionless, censorship-resistant, and non-custodial protocol that enables anyone to write, trade, and exercise options. FPO is the first protocol to feature a Dynamic Margin Mechanism that enables the minimum collateral to back an option to change with price fluctuation. All transactions are on chain, and FinNexus also enables multi-coin collateral, cross-chain transactions, and infinite liquidity for options.
Multi-Asset Single-Pool (MASP) DeFi options model – FPO platform’s liquidity is pooled together into a single monolithic pool, which acts as the sole counterparty writing, trading, and exercising options. The MASP feature ensures that users do not have to worry about the availability of enough liquidity.
FNX Liquidity Mining – Options writers will be incentivized in several ways, including the distribution of FNX tokens as rewards regarding minting and trading volumes on the FinNexus options platform once it goes live. In the future, FinNexus will provide a collective pooled model, using FNX as the major collateralized asset, to mint both call and put options, with multiple underlying assets. The pool will be acting as both the minting collateral pool and liquidity pool for the creation and transaction of options. The holders of the pool will be granted pool share tokens. Risks and rewards will be shared among the pool participants.
Wandora Box – The first decentralized prediction game to launch on Wanchain.
Jack’s Pot – A no-loss lottery game built on Wanchain.
UM1S – a real asset-backed token with a fixed rate of return.
Figure 2: FinNexus features
FinNexus Founding Team
Boris Yang, Founder & CEO. Boris is a former Vice President at Wanglu Tech, co founder of Wanchain, and the leading designer of Wanchain’s technology stack. Boris has many years of experience in internet startups and is a serial entrepreneur. Boris holds degrees in finance and law from Beijing’s University of International Business and Economics.
Bob Chen, Co-founder & CTO. Bob has worked as a technical expert for internet giants such as Alibaba and Qihoo 360. He has developed an asset management wallet within the blockchain industry, specializing in blockchain asset security management, high concurrency applications, and high-frequency quantitative trading. Bob graduated from the Harbin Institute of Technology.
Ryan Tian, Financial Specialist. Ryan has worked as an investment banker at a well known securities company and led IPO, SEO, and M&A projects. Having worked in the financial industry for more than ten years, he specializes in securities products and financial and risk control. Ryan has a Masters in Finance from the University of York.
Jack Tung, Regulatory Compliance Specialist. Jack is a senior FinTech consultant with more than ten years of experience in asset management services for high net worth individuals. He specializes in framework design for asset management compliance and architecture design for financial enterprise compliance.
Veerender Singh, Community Manager. Veerender is an experienced community mana ger in the blockchain space, currently serving as a Community Manager for MANTRA DAO, and is the Editor and Business Development Manager for blog.goodaudience.com
FinNexus Ecosystem
Integral parts of FinNexus’ ecosystem are presented in Figure 3, namely the founding partner Wanchain, enterprises, DeFi partnerships, and crypto exchanges/liquidity providers for the FNX token. Each of these plays a significant role in the overall success of the FinNexus platform.
Figure 3: FinNexus ecosystem
Strategic Partners:
Wanchain is an innovative public blockchain project which has made advancements in privacy protection, cross-chain integrations, multi-asset transactions, and proof of stake consensus mechanisms. Wanchain’s team will provide comprehensive technical support for FinNexus.
SuperAtom is a Southeast Asian-based FinTech company aiming to make financial services more accessible for the masses. SuperAtom is incubated by New York-listed Cheetah Mobile and will work together with FinNexus to tokenize financial products, which will provide stable investment returns.
A more exhaustive list of FinNexus’ cryptocurrency industry partnerships include:
Band Protocol – Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that provides reliable and real-time price data and is a backbone for the truly secure and decentralized financial products that FinNexus provides.
Chainlink – FinNexus has integrated Chainlink’s price feeds to power the FinNexus Protocol for Options platform.
Elrond – FinNexus is planning to build a version of its unique multi-asset single-pool (MASP) DeFi options model on Elrond, an open source blockchain platform with high output and execution speeds.
XRP Ledger – FinNexus has announced plans to bring real-world assets to the XRP Ledger and connect the passionate XRP fanbase with the exciting world of DeFi.
KardiaChain – KardiaChain will operate the first fully decentralized and interoperable blockchain ecosystem in Vietnam. FinNexus is exploring the potential to develop DeFi services on the KardiaChain mainnet.
FNX token’s liquidity:
FNX token is currently listed on five exchanges: BitMax, BKEK, Bitrue, Uniswap, and Hoo.com. The corresponding volume proportions are depicted in Figure 4.
Figure 4: FNX volume proportion on top 5 exchanges (Source: Coingecko)
Enterprise partners and investors include:
Consensus Lab: an APAC VC aims to empower inspiring projects in the blockchain space. Since 2018, the firm has 21 investments in prominent blockchain and crypto companies, a few of which are the FTX exchange, CertiK, QuarkChain and BlockCloud.
Genesis Group: A Hong Kong-based veteran crypto venture capital having 20 invest ments in the field over the past few years. Some projects under their portfolio include Quarkchain, Pchain, and Edenchain.
TRG Capital: An Amsterdam-based seed-stage venture capital firm. The firm’s focus area is startups fundamentally disrupting digital assets’ global transfer, mainly Layer2 solutions and startups decentralizing finance (DeFi). Notable projects in its portfolio include Polkadot, Kava, Frontier, Avalanche, Zilliqa, and Solana.
FNX Tokenomics
APY token specifications are as following:
– Current market cap (MC): 1.3M USD
– Circulating supply (CS): 13.7M FNX
– Total supply (TS): 500M FNX
– Token distribution as depicted in Figure 5
At the time of writing, FinNexus’ fully diluted market cap is US$64.7 million. Note that 28,036,823.22 FNX tokens have been converted 1-for-1 to UM1S, a real asset-backed token with a fixed return rate. More data on FNX distribution can be found at the FinNexus site.
Figure 5: FNX tokenomics
Token Utilities
Collateral for writing options and liquidity for exercising options within the Multi-Asset Single Pool (MASP) for the FinNexus Options Protocol (FOP)
The medium of exchange to buy and sell options on the FOP
Uniswap Liquidity Mining currently ongoing
Right to higher rates of return on tokenized products
Rights to invest in tokenized products with lower cost
Discount on transaction commissions
Derivative rights, like early settlement, resale, or interest swap
Benefit from FinNexus’s development
Figure 6: Application of FNX in FinNexus’ ecosystem
Comparable Projects
FinNexus ultimately aims to be a multi-blockchain DeFi ecosystem and protocol and is commencing with the ‘unsolved’ use-case of a decentralized options and derivatives trading platform. FinNexus Protocol for Options (FPO) has a strong case for becoming the dominant decentralized options and derivatives platform:
Multi-chain compatibility including but not limited to – Ethereum, Elrond, XRP Ledger, KardiaChain and Wanchain.
Infinite liquidity via the Multi-Asset Single-Pool (MASP) mechanism.
The dynamic margin model enables the same collateral to write multiple options when options prices move further out-of-the-money.
An intuitive and visually appealing user interface supports the above features, leveraging user experience to the next level.
Figure 7: FinNexus’s competitors
Upcoming News and Development Progress
The team is currently working to create synthetic assets, including stocks, bond, and exchange-traded funds.
FinNexus Protocol for Options is aiming to provide universal support for any underlying asset and develop further protocol layers to empower users to hedge, speculate and insure their digital assets, including Blockchain Interaction Protocols (BIP), Protocol Cluster for Assets Payments (PCAP), and an Assets Distribution Protocol (ADP).
Staking mechanism in development to provide staking users with higher returns and lower transactions costs, and provide further security to the FinNexus network.
The FinNexus is focused on developing further partnerships with public blockchains and more real-asset-backed tokens.
FNX Token Release Schedule
Figure 8 depicts a detailed schedule of how the FNX tokens are released into circulation over three years. The team estimates that around 90 million FNX tokens will be injected as the vesting periods are completed.
Figure 8: FNX token release schedule over three years
Reasons to be Bullish
Despite the recent correction of the decentralized finance (DeFi) bubble, total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols continues to steadily grow from USD$700 million at the start of 2020 to USD$12 billion as of 24 Oct 2020 (as reported by Defipulse). The next frontier for DeFi is decentralized options and derivatives, a multi-trillion-dollar market that remains untapped, and FinNexus is firmly positioned to be a market leader in this segment.
A strong and ardently passionate team with combined decades of experience in technology, finance, FinTech, and blockchain industries.
Factors to Watch
More popular exchanges branching out into DEX options is one of the greatest threats to FinNexus. Examples of such events would be Binance DEX launching its options trading or, most likely, Synthetix announcing its trading platform for options.
One of the rising DeFi segment concerns is smart contract security. Over 62 million USDworth of assets were lost in several DeFi attacks by hackers in 2020, with the most recent and significant case being Harvest Finance. Such hacks are an emerging alarm for the industry in general and options trading operators like FinNexus.
Executive Summary
Projection Milestones
Note: This projection evaluation method considers both the FNX token price and the FNX circulating supply (CS) as variables. The method is an accurate representation since both are subject to change over time.
Figure 9 presents the timeline for different scenarios determining the potential FNX market cap in the future:
From May 2021, projected CS would be around 30M FNX (6% of total supply); FNX price can potentially x2-3 with the full launch of crypto options products ∙ From the second half of 2022, projected CS would be around 67M FNX (13.4% of total supply); FNX price can x5-7 and surpass Hegic’s current market cap (MC).
In Q3 2022, the FinNexus team predicts their token’s circulating supply will reach around 87M FNX (17.4% of total supply); We expect the project to provide universal support toward its options protocol and add more underlying assets (commodity, stocks). FNX price can x10-12 and reach the top 100 largest cryptocurrencies by MC.
At full token release, CS will be around 460M FNX (note that 6.12% of total supply was burned); FNX price may potentially reach the x15-20 range ($1.5 – $2 token price) assu ming adherence to the development roadmap.
Figure 9: FNX market cap projection
Concluding Remarks
The FinNexus platform has caught the attention of the Kyros Research team. We are bullish on this project and believe that the investors will also be able to see its potential. Considering FinNexus’s favorable metrics versus comparable projects with a higher market cap (e.g. Hegic), we would be astonished to see this token stay under $0.3 during the next 6-month period.
While short term price estimates are difficult to establish due to the volatility of the crypto markets, we expect to see the FNX token price soar to an ATH of $0.7 – $1 in the mid-to-long term, giving it a circulating market cap in the vicinity of $90M. Even higher token price milestones are feasible in the long term, with our most bullish prediction approaching $2 at full token release.
APY.Finance automates yield farming to get users the best, risk-adjusted returns in DeFi. APY.Finance smart contracts continuously route user’s funds to the latest-and-greatest yield farming strategies. The project aims to democratize yield farming by making it accessible to the average user and not just the DeFi experts.
The project uses the technology previously developed by DALP, which won the second place at the HackMoney 2020 hackathon hosted by ETHGlobal.
Main Features of APY.Finance
APY.Finance is a liquidity aggregator with 3 main features:
Pooled liquidity: save gas fee by economies of scale
Funds are deposited to APY.Finance thus adding to the liquidity pool. APT tokens then represent an individual’s share of the pool. APY.Finance can achieve economies of scale by collectively routing funds together in a single transaction
Massive gas savings in excess of 99% are expected as the system’s TVL increases. This innovation alone could revolutionize the accessibility of yield farming. Added to user experience, token redemption can be applied anytime, allowing one to withdraw yield farming profits from the liquidity pool easily
Smart routing
After the initial deposit, APY.Finance will then automatically route funds to the most optimal yield farming strategies, optimized not only for profit but also risk level
In particular, capital is spread across multiple strategies, depending on each strategy’s risk score. Taking a risk-averse case as an example, a small proportion of capital is allocated into high-risk high-return pools, whereas the remaining capital is to be assigned to low risk pools
Community-owned
Security is APY.Finance’s primary concern so strategies will be rolled out carefully and slowly. At first, the platform will be run by DeFi experts that codify yield farming strategies and monitor for time-sensitive incidents
Concurrently, a liquidity mining rewards program will run in order to get the APY token into the hands of real users. APY governance token holders will be able to propose and vote on easily verifiable changes to the DeFi landscape, such as strategy risk score changes or even yield allocation
APY token holders will be able to vote and change system-wide parameters such as fees, risk score, and rebalance thresholds. However, this is just the first of three distinct phases of the project’s roadmap and APY token functionality.
In the second stage, APY holders can propose changes to existing strategies simply by drag-and-drop, without the need for Solidity engineering knowledge.
In the final stage, APY token holders will be able to propose entirely new strategies and influence the deployment of billions of dollars into various DeFi protocols.
Figure 1. APY token distribution
APY.Finance Team
The founding members of APY.Finance are:
Will Shahda, CEO & Solidity engineer
Partner at Wired Capital which develops algorithmic cryptocurrency trading bots that use arbitrage strategies and machine learning techniques
After founding WP-Science, a small business developing, marketing, and distributing WordPress plugins, Will wrote and audited Solidity smart contracts for companies such as Jarvis Network and Squarelink
He organized and lead teams competing in blockchain hackathons, frequently placing and winning sponsorship prizes. Furthermore, Will handled Solidity development, project management, and pitch presentations for hackathon projects
Prior to focusing on blockchain technology, Will led development and delivered flagship products for international brands including Kraft, Mondelēz International, Green Mountain Coffee and Spin Galactic international franchise when working for Blue World Inc and Arana Interactive
Chan-Ho Suh, Smart contract developer at APY.Finance
Backend developer with 6+ years of experience spanning across structured and unstructured environments, small and large teams, and rigorously tested production code and ad-hoc rapid application development.
Currently working as a smart contract developer at APY.Finance and Tech Lead for Capital One
Prior to that, the Cornell alumnus was a senior software engineer for a loan syndication platform (LoanStreet Inc.), a quant developer leading development of the trading desk for volatility derivatives at MIO Partners, an application developer at JPMorgan Chase & Co and an electronic trading developer at Nomura
Jonathan Viray, Full stack engineer at APY.Finance
Jonathan is a self-taught freelance software developer and a licensed contract attorney
Jonathan served as an associate attorney for Zhang & Associates and Special Counsel, and as a contract attorney for Epiq and TransPerfect Legal Solutions.
He used to work at the Earl Carl Institute for Legal and Social Policy and U.S. Attorney’s Office early in his career
APY.Finance advisors include:
Sunil Srivatsa, DeFi strategy advisor and co-founder of Urza DAO
8 years of experience in Uber, Square, Cultivation Capital as a software engineer and analyst
Pascal Tallarida, advisor, founder of Jarvis
prop trader with 12 years of experience, founder and trainer at Diabolo Menthe Trading SAS
APY.Finance Ecosystem
Integral parts of the APY.Finance ecosystem are presented in Figure 2, namely the key investors and DeFi partners and networks. Each of these plays a significant role in the overall success of the APY.Finance platform.
Figure 2. APY.Finance ecosystem
APY.Finance’s DeFi industry network encompasses well-established brands such as Uniswap, Sushiswap, Balancer, Compound, Synthetix, Jarvis, PieDAO, 1inch, Yearn.finance, dY/dX, Aave, and Curve.
APY.Finance’s investors enable its long term vision to become reality. The key investors include Alameda Research, Arrington XRP Capital, Cluster Capital, CoinGecko, Genblock Capital, TRG Capital, The LAO, 12 Capital, and Vendetta Capital.
Comparable Projects
APY.Finance is one of the three most popular liquidity aggregators, including yearn.finance and Delphi from Akropolis. All three of them have already attracted funding into their pools prior to their IDO launches. Here APY stands out with the highest TVL prior to IDO/token issuance as compared to the other two, with around $34 million locked into the smart contract thus far. Meanwhile the APY range is similar across platforms as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. APY.Finance versus Yearn.finance and Delphi
Upcoming News and Development Progress
APY.Finance Token Generation Event
Around 2.6M APY tokens will be available for sale on Balancer’s liquidity bootstrapping pool (LBP) on November 5, 2020 at 14:00 UTC.
The LBP will run for 48 hours on a fair Dutch auction format, ending on an exact block number to be announced.
The token will be released on a declining price mechanism, which effectively wipes out all front-running bot attempts. For instance, if a bot snips all APY tokens in the very first seconds, the changing pool weights will cause the APY token price to drop below the initial acquisition price as confirmed by the project’s CEO.
Such a mechanism and commitment will truly provide fair chances for those with real needs and interests in the token governance, rather than allow speculation and whale manipulation.
Token Release Schedule
APY.Finance has a fixed cap of 100M APY on total supply. The token release schedule has lengthy lock up terms, indicating long-term commitment from both the team and its investors:
Around 7.5M APY tokens in circulation at the IDO event
The team has adopted a 4-year vesting schedule (1-year cliff, 3-year linearly vested)
All seed and strategic investors are also aligned on a 1-year vesting schedule with 9c and 13.5c cost basis, respectively
Development Roadmap
Completed milestones and the plan for the rest of 2020:
Launch of the liquidity mining program with more than 1,500 unique addresses participating, locking a round of $40 million in liquidity mining smart contracts
Updates to the liquidity mining user interface to make it more intuitive
Preparation for IDO strategy
Alpha product development
Reasons to be Bullish
Impressive growth in the DeFi industry boosts project confidence:
DEX volume skyrocketed 80x from the beginning of this year until October
TVL in smart contracts for DeFi projects exceeds $12B at the time of writing, reaching the 20x YTD growth rate milestone
However, liquidity aggregator TVL market share is still only 8%, relatively small compared to DEX and lending protocols (Figure 4)
Green field in the liquidity aggregator niche – there is a small number of projects participating. Thus, APY.Finance has a higher chance to capture market share at this early stage
Figure 4. Yield farming market components and structure by TVL
Factors to Watch
Potential emergence of new liquidity aggregator projects with more competitive advantages, especially ones developed and supported by popular DEXs or pools like Uniswap, Curve.fi, etc. The development from Yearn.finance is also a factor to watch since they are currently the market leader in the liquidity aggregator niche market.
Annual percentage yield (APY) is the key reason that attracts individual investors (based on the CoinGecko survey), who tend not to be loyal to any platform unless it provides most benefits to them. The SushiSwap $800M liquidity “steal” from Uniswap always remains a practical case study for the DeFi industry.
Executive Summary
Projection Milestones
Note: This projection evaluation method considers both the APY token price and the APY circulating supply as variables. This is an accurate representation since both are subject to change over time.
At the time of writing, the circulating supply (CS) is 8M APY, and the market cap (MC) reaches $2M
Right after the IDO, we expect 25M APY tokens will be in circulation. Considering the price may rise modestly due to the current hype (x2-4), MC could be in the range of $12.5M to $25M
One year after the launch, when strategic and seed round investors’ tokens are fully released, APY CS will be around 68M APY. APY then has a chance to surpass FARM’s MC
At full token release, the CS will be 100M APY. APY token price may potentially reach $5 per token, giving it a circulating market cap in line with YFI’s MC and in the vicinity of $500M
Figure 5 presents the different possible scenarios determining the potential APY market cap and the associated return on investment (ROI) in the future.
Figure 5. Future APY market cap projection
Concluding Remarks
The APY.Finance’s advanced solution seems like a necessity if the yield farming industry is to grow and lead the DeFi adoption trend. The Kyros Research team is bullish on this project, and we believe that the crypto enthusiasts and investors alike will also be able to understand its potential.
Taking into account APY.Finance’s favorable metrics versus comparable projects with a higher market cap (e.g. Yearn.finance), we would be extremely surprised to see this token stay under $0.5 at the IDO in the tail end of 2020.
Due to the volatile nature of the crypto markets, short term price estimates are difficult to establish. We, however, expect to see the APY token price soar to $2 – $2.5 in the mid-to-long term, giving it a circulating market cap in the vicinity of $170M.
Even higher token price milestones are feasible in the long term, our most bullish prediction envisaging APY potentially reaching the Yearn.finance’s market cap in the future. Taking into account that the total market capitalization of the liquidity aggregator segment of the crypto market is relatively small compared to that of the DEX and lending segments, APY.Finance definitely has a promising future ahead.
Utrust is a seamless integration that gives e-commerce businesses the power to accept digital currencies – for cheaper yet faster transactions
The cryptocurrency startup raised 21 million USD via an initial coin offering (ICO) in November 2017, peaked in terms of its market cap during the January 2018 bull season, but started gaining real world traction from the second half of 2018 with product launch
Integrated with the world’s most prominent ecommerce platforms, connecting to millions of websites and over 300,000 merchants across the globe
At the time of writing, UTK token specifications are as follows:
Current market cap (MC): $59.2M
Circulating supply (CS): 450M UTK
Total supply (TS): 500M UTK
Token distribution as illustrated (Figure 2)
Figure 2. UTK token distribution
Utrust Team
The founding members of Utrust are:
Nuno Correia, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board. Nuno also serves as the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Utrust. The serial entrepreneur is a partner of the UK-based crypto portfolio management company Obvious Capital which caters to high net worth individuals and institutions. The MIT alumnus is also a former owner of 7camicie, a high-end Italian men’s designer brand, and co-founder of borNauthentiC, a creative fashion platform.
Filipe Castro is the second co-founder and Board member of Utrust. The MIT alumnus also takes leadership roles as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and is responsible for compliance & regulatory strategy. Filipe represents Utrust within the 500 Startups and Alchemist Accelerator programs. As a well-known blockchain speaker, Filipe has promoted blockchain technology and digital assets at several international conferences and events, while providing executive training programs about blockchain, regulatory framework, crypto assets, CBDCs and ICOs.
Sanja Kon, CEO of Utrust. Sanja was Head of Marketplaces and Large Enterprise Partnerships for PayPal in the United Kingdom. Before PayPal, Sanja worked as eBay Head of European Partnerships and Vodafone Salesforce Project Manager.
Artur Ferreira, Co-founder and CTO. Prior to Utrust, Artur grew and led several tech companies, namely Privus (a secure communications and privacy software) and Easypay (a single, secure, simple, standard open API to move money from any system to any system). Artur holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering.
Utrust Ecosystem
Integral parts of the Utrust’s ecosystem are presented in Figure 3, namely the key investors, partnerships, networks, crypto wallets, and exchanges/liquidity providers for the UTK token. Each of these plays a significant role in the overall success of the Utrust platform.
Figure 3. Utrust Ecosystem
A more exhaustive list of Utrust’s commercial partnerships includes:
Arms&McGregor: a Dubai luxury real estate service provider with over 44500 transactions completed between November 2018 and November 2019. Furthermore, November 2019 included $2.5bn worth of deals registered, in a year that had already registered $20.9bn in transactions. The partnership opens up the real estate industry worth a whopping $712 trillion globally
Uphold: is one of the premiere crypto-to-fiat processors, currently servicing 30 cryptocurrencies and 4 metals, in addition to 27 fiat currencies with bank connectivity in 35+ countries
Travala: Travel booking giant with 2,000,000+ properties within their service. Travala covers exactly 90,124 destinations in 230 countries and territories
Alternative Airlines: An IATA-accredited agency, Alternative Airlines was featured in the 2019 Sunday Times Fast Track Tech 100, which highlights the top 100 fastest growing technology companies, and was awarded Best Selling Travel Agent 2017. Thanks to the partnership, customers can now search and book flights on over 600 airlines and choose to pay in cryptocurrencies via Utrust
S.L.Benfica: The famous sporting club has a 115-year history and is recognized as one of the world’s most widely supported football clubs with over 230 thousand active members and 14 million supporters worldwide. With its strong global brand and loyal supporters, it is the perfect merchant for UTRUST’s journey towards mass adoption of crypto payments
Utrust’s industry network encompasses the following well-established brands:
Alliance for Prosperity: Includes FinTech companies, and non-profit and humanitarian aid organizations, with prominent industry giants such as Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase. Utrust’s role within the alliance is to ensure adoption and to make its technology available to everyone
WooCommerce: WordPress and its WooCommerce plugin serve 3.876.748 webstores. Over 30% of all online stores run on WordPress. 35% of the Internet is powered by WordPress. WooCommerce powers 22% of the world’s top 1 million ecommerce sites
Magento: Magento is the largest and the most important ecommerce platform in the world, and they are a part of the Adobe family. Boasting over 250.000 merchants worldwide, Magento represents about 12% of the marketplace and has handled $155 billion of gross merchandise volume in 2018
Utrust’s investors enable its long term vision to become reality. The key investors include:
Alchemist Accelerator, a San Francisco based venture-backed accelerator focused on the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (B2B). Alchemist Accelerator has invested in 508 deals and made 31 exits. Some of its notable portfolio companies include MightyHive, Byte Foods, and Stories. According to Crunchbase, CB Insights rated Alchemist as the top accelerator in 2016 with the total funding of its graduate startups close to $800 million
500 Startups: a world renowned flagship accelerator present in over 75 countries with investments in more than 2,400 startups. Pitchbook recognizes it as the most active VC globally in exits and the most active global investor by VC deal count in 2019
Utrust raised a total of $21 million during their ICO in November 2017 with a public sale token price of $0.065. While the token reached its ATH in January 2018 and depreciated with the bear market thereafter, UTK token price is still at +100% vs the ICO price (x2)
UTK Token Ownership
Figure 4 shows changes in the proportion of UTK token holders, cruisers and traders. Hereby, holders are considered as the wallets that did not trigger any UTK token movements for more than 1 year, whereas cruisers and traders represent the wallets that hold the UTK token for 1-12 months and less than 1 month, respectively.
For the last 12 months, we can observe the shift in UTK token distribution from long-term accounts to short-term accounts. In particular, around 1200 new cruiser accounts and 1500 new trader accounts have reduced the proportion of holders to nearly 76%, down from almost 89% one year ago.
The shift indicates a higher activity level of the Utrust community compared to the same period last year.
Figure 4: UTK ownership by time hold (Data source: Intotheblock)
Comparable Projects
Crypto-to-fiat processing is no longer a green field since more and more payment processors are joining the market, a few of the prominent ones including Bitpay, Crypto.com and Swipe.
Compared to Paypal, the world leading payment processor with a market cap of over $195 billion, Utrust provides cheaper transaction fees and higher efficiency. Furthermore, Utrust has been continuously expanding its merchant network, with integrations to major e-commerce platforms like Woocommerce, Jumpseller, Opencart and Magento paving a pathway to mass adoption.
When compared to Swipe, Utrust provides slightly better fee rates for both its consumers and merchants while both companies provide support for 30+ cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, Utrust fosters a superior user experience with full customer protection including a dispute resolution mechanism akin to Paypal’s and performance-based rating of merchants which allows the consumers to opt for reputable brands.
Figure 5 summarizes the abovementioned differences and similarities between Utrust, Paypal and Swipe, highlighting the Utrust’s competitive edge in this niche. Thus, in the long term, one could expect a much higher market capitalization for Utrust considering the size of the market and the fact that both Paypal and Swipe have higher valuations at present.
Figure 5. Utrust versus Paypal and Swipe * Update (21/10/2020): PayPal will accept crypto payment from early next year 2021, starting with BTC, ETH, LTC and BCH.
Upcoming News and Development Progress
Token Release Schedule
Utrust has a fixed cap of 500,000,000 UTK on total supply. Currently 90% of all UTK tokens have been distributed. The rest, 50 million UTK tokens, have been locked for 5 years at ICO (November 2017). Thus, as stated in the whitepaper, full distribution will take place in 2022.
Thus, as the crypto market and overall adoption grows, we may expect to reach a new market cap milestone in 2022 when the project unlocks all of its tokens. It is important to note that, unlike a lot of the low quality projects in the crypto space, Utrust is designed to thrive with the overall cryptocurrency adoption rather than as a single entity.
Development Roadmap
Automation: Launched successfully
A stable coin and new merchants: Onboarded USDT
Staking, Cashback and Merchants Referral Program: Launched Utrust Wallet
“Building 2021”: the final quarter of 2020 will be focused on reflecting on the previous quarter, growing the platform, building the ecosystem and adding more features to existing products
Beyond 2020: Utrust prides itself in being a company with a clear vision for the future, and all the tools to ensure it happens. As we enter a decade where digital currencies will become mainstream, Utrust has every intention of being a leader in this revolution
Reasons to be Bullish
There exists a huge amount of potential for a blockchain-based payment processor to grow and compete with traditional giants like Paypal and Stripe, whose market capitalization exceeds $230 billion in total. Meanwhile, the total valuation of the top crypto-fiat payment processors including Crypto.com, Swipe and Utrust is just over $3 billion at the time of writing
The inevitable development and adoption of central bank digital currencies may foster cryptocurrency adoption as a whole. Until then, the abovementioned crypto-fiat payment processors will have a competitive advantage and traction associated with being the pioneers in the industry
During the first three quarters of 2020, Utrust has established more partnerships (18) than in any other period, since inception
Strong growth of the Utrust ecosystem and its global network of merchants will drive a higher total payment transaction value whereby the higher the transaction fee Utrust collects, the more UTK token will be bought back and burned permanently thus removing it from the total supply. This will only boost the UTK token price due to the supply and demand dynamics
Novel UTK token utilities such as cashback, loyalty reward, and coupon redemption, in addition to the current transaction fee payment utility, will help nurture a healthy ecosystem growth over the long term
Factors to Watch
Paypal’s potential adoption of cryptocurrency transactions is the top concern for Utrust
Possible exchange hacks such as the recent KuCoin incident may slow Utrust’s rise. Fortunately, Utrust team acted promptly and fully protected the token holders within two days by issuing a new UTK token equivalent while rendering the previous UTK token useless. Nonetheless, other crypto-to-fiat platforms got compromised in the past, for instance Eterbase – a European bank-grade digital asset exchange that allows SEPA payments in their users’ personal IBAN accounts.
Executive Summary
Projection Milestones
Note: This projection evaluation method considers both the UTK token price and the UTK circulating supply as variables. This is an accurate representation since both are subject to change over time.
Figure 6 presents the timeline for two possible scenarios determining the potential UTK market cap in the future:
Until 2021, projected circulating supply will stay around 450M UTK (90% of the total supply); UTK price can, at least, gain 50% (x1.5) and surpass Swipe’s current market cap
At full token release, the circulating supply will be 500M UTK; UTK token price may potentially reach new ATHs in range of $1.5, assuming adherence to the development roadmap
Figure 6. UTK market cap projection for 2021-2022
Concluding Remarks
The Utrust’s innovative e-commerce solution seems like a necessity if the cryptocurrency mass adoption is to occur. The Kyros Research team is bullish on this project, and we believe that the crypto enthusiasts and investors alike will also be able to understand its potential. Taking into account Utrust’s favorable metrics versus comparable projects with a higher market cap (e.g. Swipe), we would be extremely surprised to see this token stay under $0.16 during the tail end of 2020.While short term price estimates are difficult to establish due to the volatility of the crypto markets, we expect to see the UTK token price soar to $0.3 – $0.4 in the mid-to-long term, giving it a circulating market cap in the vicinity of $180M.
Even higher token price milestones are feasible in the long term, our most bullish prediction exceeding the previous ATH at full token release, with Utrust potentially becoming a $1B+ company thereafter. Taking into account the total market capitalization of Paypal and Stripe ($230B+), Utrust undoubtedly has plenty of room for growth.
FinNexus is the next-generation open finance hub, connecting assets, users, blockchains and service providers together. To realize this goal, the team behind the project is building a decentralized protocol for options trading and offering DeFi options liquidity mining to earn its native FNX token.
Through the following series of illustrative infographics, Kyros Ventures will introduce you to everything you need to know on the FinNexus project, from its fundamentals and the many use cases of the FNX token to FinNexus’s applications in DeFi and a quick comparison with other rising crypto options protocol to further demonstrate the innovations and growth potential that FinNexus possesses. Without further ado, let’s dive right in!
Infographic #1: Overview of FinNexus
Infographic #2: The FNX token and its DeFi use cases
Infographic #3: How to mine FNX and FinNexus’s Options competitors
TomoChain is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchain with Proof-of-Stake voting (PoSV) incentivizing TOMO holders to play an active role in staking while voting for validators; key performance metrics include 2000 transactions per second (TPS) and a 2-second block time
TOMO token is the native asset of TomoChain utilized for network gas fees covering asset transfers, on-chain actions, and the deployment of smart contracts
Different inbuilt protocols, namely TomoX, TomoP and TomoZ. TomoX represents the decentralized exchange protocol, TomoP the dedicated privacy protocol, whereas TomoZ is a unique token standard (TRC-21) used for transaction fees
Products such as:
TomoWallet – a convenient and secure wallet for TOMO holders
TomoMaster – TOMO staking platform with 150 masternodes
TomoScan – BlockExplorer for the TomoChain blockchain
TomoDEX – the fastest decentralized exchange for trading directly from the wallet
TomoBridge – a cross-chain swapping bridge for connecting TomoChain with other blockchains
TomoRelayer – a dashboard to register and launch a DEX
TomoIssuer – a dashboard on the TomoZ protocol for issuing TRC21 tokens
TomoStats – a dashboard for the TomoChain network status
TomoStatus – TomoChain system monitoring dashboard
Above mentioned features are summarized in Figure 1 below, whereby the whole TomoChain “planet” can be visualized.
Figure 1. TomoChain planet visualization including the core blockchain metrics, different inbuilt protocols and products
At the time of writing, TOMO token specifications are as follows:
Long Vuong– Co-founder & CEO of TomoChain and TomoChain project lead, co-founder and the former project lead of the prominent NEM (New Economy Movement) blockchain. Long holds a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts.
Le Ho – Co-founder & CFO, a CFA charter holder and a licensed fund manager in Vietnam with 10+ years of experience in investment and finance. Le is a Former Senior Investment Manager at BVIM and the Director of the Investment Banking Division at HSC securities company.
Son Nguyen – Co-founder & CTO, an experienced and accomplished engineer working in the IT field, former ToMoApp Director of Engineering, and the founder of the Blockchain Developer group with more than 800 active members. Son holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from the Hanoi University of Technology.
TomoChain Ecosystem
Integral parts of the TomoChain’s ecosystem are presented in Figure 3, namely the key partnerships, crypto wallets, and exchanges/liquidity providers for the TOMO token. Each of these plays a significant role in the overall success of the TomoChain platform.
Figure 3. TomoChain ecosystem
A more exhaustive list of TomoChain’s commercial partnerships and dApps includes:
Lition: a public-private blockchain infrastructure that is legally compliant with the GDPR. The solution is co-innovated with SAP, the world’s leading business software company
Triip: a decentralized travel application (dApp) with Triip Protocol issued on the TomoChain blockchain
Mantra DAO: a DeFi Platform serving as a masternode operator for TomoChain
Coin98: a universal crypto mobile app powered by the TomoChain token “C98” which has accrued over 100K users. C98 is used to purchase products, play games, and can be redeemed in exchange for services
BitOrb: a crypto derivatives exchange issuing its exchange token on TomoChain
TomoMaster: a staking governance dApp of TomoChain, which facilitates voting/staking by using Ledger, TomoWallet, Metamask, and TrustWallet
TomoSwap: a decentralized exchange platform on TomoChain with the mission of increasing liquidity and usability for TomoChain based projects (powered by the Kyber Network Protocol)
TomoPool: a service for users wishing to maximize their staking yield by mutualizing tokens to create a staking pool for TomoChain
TomoStats: a dashboard showing on-chain metrics for the TomoChain network
TomoWallet: the TomoChain’s official mobile wallet
Further partners and investors include:
International partners – ChainLink, Morpheus Labs, Terra, Shift.network, Axel Infinity, Contentos, Movie Bloc, and Mantra DAO
Vietnamese partners – CMC, Savvycom, Vnext, Senpoint, FuniX, and the Hanoi University
Private sale investors – 1kx, Hashed, Signum Capital/HyperChain, One Block Capital, Coefficient Ventures, GBIC, Connect Capital, NGC Ventures
Comparable Projects
When evaluating TomoChain, similar blockchain projects should be considered in order to establish a comparative evaluation. Among these, Algorand seems to be the most closely related to TomoChain due to the similarities between the two projects in terms of their tokenomics/distribution and the stage of development.
Figure 4 summarizes and compares main metrics of Ethereum, Algorand and TomoChain blockchains with the emphasis on transactions per second, transaction fees, number of validators and the fully diluted market cap.
Figure 4. Ethereum versus Algorand versus TomoChain with the emphasis on transactions per second, transaction fees, number of validators, and the fully diluted market cap
In terms of the consensus algorithm, Algorand employs a pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) protocol built on the Byzantine consensus whereby each user’s influence on the choice of a new block is proportional to his/her stake in the system. On the other hand, TomoChain uses an innovative consensus method called Proof-of-Stake Voting (PoSV) which provides an incentive to all TOMO holders to play an active part in staking across a network consisting of 150 masternodes.
TomoChain demonstrates superior performance with 2000 TPS vs 1000 TPS of Algorand, block time of 2s vs 4.3s and comparable transaction fees in the range of $0.001. Both projects have an active community and dedicated developers, with TomoChain eclipsing Algorand when it comes to GitHub activity over the last 12 months. Nonetheless, Algorand has a considerably larger fully diluted market cap (38.96x) which demonstrates the potential for TOMO token’s price appreciation.
Upcoming News and Development Progress
Token Release Schedule
TomoChain has a fixed cap of 100,000,000 TOMO on total supply. The tokens belonging to the team and the treasury tokens will be fully released in June 2022, while the full token supply will be unlocked in 2026 upon the completion of the release process for the mining rewards. Any potential surges in supply are scheduled appropriately as depicted in Figure 5, which is important considering the circumstances under which the team’s tokens and the treasury tokens will be unlocked at the same time.
Figure 5. TOMO token release schedule representing the number and the breakdown of all TOMO tokens that are to be released into circulation on a monthly basis
Development Roadmap
As per the TomoChain’s official development roadmap, several updates have been completed during 2020, while further updates are expected toward the tail end of the year.
In particular, TomoScan – v1.6.0 has been released on January 5, 2020, while TomoMaster – v2.0.0 came out a day later, on January 6, introducing several API updates. Further completed updates include TomoIssuer – v1.0.0, Relayer Management – v1.2.0, TomoX-SDK – v1.2.0, and TomoChain – v2.2.0.
Further milestones are expected to be achieved on TomoDEX with the upcoming listing of new Defi tokens. The growth in the daily trading volume on TomoDEX has been excellent YTD with “hot” DeFi tokens (i.e., SRM, FTT, YFI) resulting in a tripled daily trading volume in under 3 months (approximately $150k -> $500k).
The latest update is from TomoBridge, a cross-chain swapping bridge that realizes TomoChain’s vision to expand its utility to other blockchains such as Ethereum and Binance Chain. TOMOE, the 1:1 equivalent TOMO token on Ethereum, will be listed on Uniswap, the most prominent DEX.
Reasons to be Bullish
The main reason to be bullish is the recent announcement of the LuaSwap yield farming protocol. Hereby, the “farming” of the TomoChain’s ERC-20 token (TOMOE) will commence on Monday (September 28, 2020) with the LUA tokens being “harvested”. Thereby, TomoChain joins force with Binance and NEO to realize the potential of the lucrative DeFi yield farming (Figure 6).
Notably, LuaSwap will kickstart with an 8-week hyperinflation period, block rewards with a x128 multiplier in the first two weeks (halved every week afterward), yet keep a fair launch with no seed investment, founder’s fees, or pre-mine
Enterprise partnerships such as Chainlink, Terra, AIS, and BitOrb accelerate the adoption of TomoChain products and, ultimately, TOMO token
Novel DeFi apps built on top of the TomoChain blockchain or development of yield farming on TomoChain can drive the TOMO token price “to the moon”
Figure 6: LuaSwap highlighted against Uniswap, BurgerSwap and Flamingo
Factors to Watch
There is always a possibility of the sudden rise of higher-performing blockchain infrastructures with a faster transaction speed and lower transaction fees, thereby fiercer competition.
Changes in key personnel may slow down the development
Upcoming updates scheduled for late 2020 are running at a risk of being delayed (refer to the “Development roadmap” subsection)
Executive Summary
Projection Milestones
Note: This projection evaluation method considers both the TOMO token price and the TOMO circulating supply as variables. This is an accurate representation since both are subject to change over time.
Figure 7 presents the timeline for three possible scenarios determining the potential TOMO market cap in the future:
By Q1 2021, projected CS will be around 80.5M TOMO (80.5% of total supply); TOMO price can potentially x1.5-3 (+50-200%) with the advent of yield farming
By Q1 2022, projected CS will be around 89.5M TOMO (89.5% of total supply); TOMO price can x5-10 and surpass Algorand’s current market cap
At full token release, CS will be 100M TOMO (100% of total supply); TOMO price may potentially reach new ATHs in the x20-30 range ($15-25 token price) assuming adherence to the development roadmap.
Figure 7. TOMO market cap projection for 2021-2026
Concluding Remarks
The TomoChain platform has caught the eye of the Kyros Research team. We are bullish on this project and believe that the investors will also be able to see its potential. Taking into account the TomoChain’s favorable metrics versus comparable projects with a higher market cap (e.g. Algorand), we would be extremely surprised to see this token stay under $1 during the tail end of 2020.
While short term price estimates are difficult to establish due to the volatility of the crypto markets, we expect to see the TOMO token price soar to an ATH of $3-4 in the mid-to-long term, giving it a circulating market cap in the vicinity of $300M. Even higher token price milestones are feasible in the long term, with our most bullish prediction approaching $25 at full token release.
Accrue value from a claim on fees, staking rewards, and better AKRO liquidity on DEXes, gaining a pro-rata share of ADEL to align incentives.
Governance
Ability to control the economics and all critical parameters of the entire protocol like lending fee, spread on future yield products.
Investors
Messari reported that two early-stage VCs, NueValue Capital and Kenetic, funded Akropolis on the pre-sale stage.
In July 2019, Huobi hosted a Prime Offering – IEO for AKRO public sale.
Before that, a private ICO is reported to take place in late 2017.
Partners
Akropolis has a close relationship with Web3 Foundation (W3F) and its flagship blockchain – Polkadot, and one of Web3 Foundation’s advisor is Ana, Akropolis’s CEO. Akropolis won a grant from W3F while contributing towards Polkadot’s development on several open-source projects (PolkaHub). We can expect AKRO products will launch on Polkadot in the future.
Akropolis also builds a solid foundation with notable projects, i.e., Polkadot, Maker DAO, Chainlink, and POA. On the application layer, there are Delphi, Sparta, Wyre, and Zerion. Such a strong network of industry partners can support Akropolis’s initial launch and grow hacking effectively.
Akropolis also pays extensive attention to platform security, compliance, and transparency. The project established partnerships with Certik, MixBytes for smart contract audit, Aurum for legal consulting, and Messari and Xangle for transparent project report.
A Coinbase Ventures-backed platform, FalconX, became the exclusive market maker and liquidity provider to support the Delphi launch and Akropolis growth in general.
Figure 2: Akropolis Ecosystem
Team & Advisors
Ana Andrianova is CEO & Founder of Akropolis, also a Web3 Foundation advisor, a regulated investment manager, a board member of a regulated private equity fund, and an ex-Lehman Brothers. Her intensive experience in financial investment includes USD3.5B in transactions and advice on $300M+ of private equity and credit transactions.
Kate Kurbanova – Co-Founder, Operations & People, was the second hire of the $15M-ICO project – Cindicator, also co-authored the project’s whitepaper and tokenomics, and later contributed as a Head of Analytics. At Akropolis, she is leading the operations and customer development. Kate holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science.
Alex Maz – Technology Lead with a strong foundation in Blockchain Architecture, Product Strategy, Polkadot/Substrate, Solidity, and WASM. Alex is a Blockchain Developer since 2012, an open Source contributor, and author of 16 scientific publications and 10 commercial implementations, and also a Ph.D. candidate in Machine Learning.
Development team leads have intensive experience in Solidity, Audit, and Frontend with several commercial implementations.
Five advisors of Akropolis are experts in their areas, including Smart Contract development and security auditor, Actuary and Quantitative software development, asset management, and pension scheme, from fundraising, venture capital to communication, and operation.
Comparable Projects
Maker DAO (MRK)
Similarities: Ethereum-based projects that focus on DeFi with Lending & Saving products. Both projects follow the good practice of smart contract security.
Differences:
To support DeFi, Maker DAO issues stablecoin, while Akropolis targets building a modular and scalable framework for DeFi dApps to operate (Figure 3)
Maker DAO – Oasis requires over collateral (150%) vs. under collateral (50%) in Akropolis – Sparta. Thus, the same amount of collateral on Sparta generates triple the capital as of Oasis. In other words, Akropolis’s users will have much more accessibility to their needed money.
Akropolis introduced a long-term investment portfolio feature in Delphi, serving diversified risk flavor of the user.
Maker’s fully diluted market cap is roughly $512M. If Akropolis reaches that market cap at full distribution, the price of AKRO will reach $0.128 mark – x5.1.
Figure 3: Akropolis Architecture
Aave (LEND)
Similarities: Ethereum-based projects that focus on DeFi lending and borrowing. Both projects follow the excellent practice of smart contract security.
Differences:
Aave is an open-source money market protocol that has many innovations such as Flash Loans, stable rates, and recently, Credit Delegation. On the other hand, Akropolis has been building not only its signature modular OS for dApps developer but also introducing very first applications. Its goal is to become a decentralized bank, a pension fund for its users.
Aave can compete with Akropolis on under collateralized loan segment with the innovative Flash Loan product (0 collateral). However, the product targets for arbitrage and rebalance activities, instead of serving a sustainable need for under-collateralized loans.
Aave’s fully diluted market cap is around $971M. If Akropolis reaches that market cap at full distribution, the price of AKRO will be about $0.243 – 9.6x.
Comparison Table
At the moment, Akropolis is under the product development phase yet shown a positive sign of adoption even with its Beta launch, as compared to the two older projects, i.e., Maker (since 2015) & Aave (since 2017). There are high potentials for the project to grow when considering key on-chain specifications, as depicted in Figure 4.
Figure 4: On-chain Comparison Table Between Maker DAO, Aave, and Akropolis
Upcoming News
Development Process
As mentioned above, Delphi and Sparta are crucial for Akropolis since they are the very first use cases of the protocol, showcasing more complete components in Akropolis architecture.
Sparta v2.0 mainnet / Delphi v1.0 launch – Aug 2020. The latest updates on more stablecoin support, including USDT, USDC, and RSV, and Sparta Pool UI/UX enhancement.
Delphi v2.0 launch – Oct 2020. For Delphi, the team is working on adding its contracts to the Nexus Mutual platform for insurance staking. Meanwhile, the Certik audit completed on Delphi smart contract recently, and two more auditors will review the codes before its mainnet launch.
AKRO Token Release Schedule
By Q3 2022, Akropolis will have a full token released to the market at a max cap of 4 billion AKRO, from nearly 2 billion AKRO at the time of writing (Figure 5). The project token release plan is well-structured with a steady curve, preventing any possible supply shocks that can drive the market sentiment negatively.
The 2-year token release plan also allows Akropolis’s team to develop their technology and expand the ecosystem as their roadmap. The long-term lock shows that the team, advisors, and partners are all committed to their end goals, not short-term profit.
Figure 5: AKRO Token Release Schedule
Optimistic Reasoning
DeFi market has reached $16B in market cap, showing upside potential for all players, veteran teams, or just a-few-week-launched projects like Sushi. AKRO targets the unserved market with under-collateralized loans that are 3x more accessible than existing products. In other words, Akropolis will serve the mass audience who need the loan rather than speculators.
As DeFi grows to the mainstream and has enormous potential to transform traditional finance, Akropolis’s total serviceable market now worth $32 trillion of global pension funds.
The ability to operate on both Ethereum and Polkadot is the most important advantage for Akropolis to stand out and boost its adoption faster than any other project. The Ethereum-based protocol makes this possible by creating PolkaHub – a Web3Foundation-granted project. Polkadot just hit the top 5 recently with over $4 billion in market cap.
In partnership with top-notch smart contract auditors like Certik (Figure 6) and MixBytes, Akropolis builds up community confidence through excellent security practice. Its Sparta project is in the top 4 highest scores of an Audit list by DeFi Safety. Such a high confidence level can attract more teams to build on top of Akropolis. Ultimately, it will boost the utility of AKRO and ADEL tokens.
Figure 6: Certik verification on Akropolis project
Pessimistic Reasoning
Fierce competition from other DeFi projects, especially newly-born yield farming projects that can draw huge attention. If Akropolis cannot catch up with that speed, the chances are that they will miss the trend and become a follower.
Akropolis’s competitor launch of under-collateralize loans and long-term investment portfolio can hit its market share hard. Thus the company must watch closely to its competitor move and any newly launch DeFi initiatives.
Executive Summary – Pricing Estimates
Comparable Milestones
Maker’s fully diluted market cap is roughly $512M. If Akropolis reaches that market cap at full distribution, the price of AKRO will reach $0.128 mark – x5.1.
Aave’s fully diluted market cap is around $971M. If Akropolis reaches that market cap at full distribution, the price of AKRO will be about $0.243 – x9.6.
Condition: full distribution of 4B AKRO to the circulating supply, excluding the amount of burnt tokens.
Projection Milestones
Both AKRO token price and AKRO token circulating supply are subject to change over time. Figure 7 visualizes how the AKRO market cap could be, having three scenarios below:
AKRO is at $0.0252, total circulating supply (CS) of 1.996 billion AKRO, $50.3M market cap
By Q3 2021, Akropolis total circulating supply (CS) reaches 3 billion AKRO
By Q3 2022, Akropolis total circulating supply (CS) reaches a max cap of 4 billion AKRO.
UpBots is an all-in-one platform that allows users to apply algorithmic bots, copy trade influential traders, earn badges and rewards, and many more. The UpBots platform, in partnership with Dex.ag will also seek to be an aggregator for both Decentralized and Centralized Exchanges. UpBot’s mission is to take over retail trading from exchanges, acting as a layer 2 on top of the backend infrastructure built by existing exchanges.
The team at UpBots is well familiar with the retail trading landscape. Having formed 4C trading, one of the largest bot trading platforms, Benjamin Duval and Julien Quertain have embarked on a more ambitious mission – to create the ultimate destination for retail trading.
The native token of the UpBots platform – UBXT – is a utility token and will have a myriad of use cases such as:
Buy and Burn of up to 15% net revenue
Purchases of Bots and Algorithms
Subscriptions to KOL Copy trading
Purchases of Educational Content
Staking
UpBots Token Distribution
UpBots has a total fixed supply of 500M UBXT. UBXT allocated to FTX IEO includes in 23% of its token supply as Token Sale. Figure 1 below illustrates UBXT token distribution.
Figure 1: UBXT Token Distribution
Partners & Investors
UpBots established a strategic partnership with Alameda Research, alongside other investment funds such as CMS, Taureon, and several angel investors. Those investors funded $1.1M in the latest round, altogether with $500,000 from previous private round this March, to sum up $1.6M investment capital for the Swiss startup. Investors from both rounds have accumulated UBXT at $0.01, which is expected to be the token’s price floor.
Prior to the launch, UpBots has connected to some crucial joints that allow the project to scale up quickly and capture market share. Having a partnership with DEX.ag, Reserve, and HXRO, UpBots targets to go DeFi and to provide derivatives products right from the start. The project also established its footprint on several most popular exchanges like FTX, BitFinex, OKEX, KRAKEN, IDEX, and Binance (Figure 2). Also, UpBots is a part of the Solfin ecosystem alongside 4C-trading, high-performing bots signal channels and an active online community of 600+ customers, 10 000+ members, and 10+ strategic partners.
With existing connections, we expect a high readiness level of the UpBots product at its foundation, which allows the team to focus on adoption to lead a new retail trading trend.
Figure 2: UpBots Ecosystem
Comparable Projects
UpBots token versus Exchange Tokens (BNB/FTT/HT/OKB)
UpBots token works in ways similar to exchange tokens with the Buy and Burn and Utility models.
Theoretically, UpBots will earn a referral fee of 30-40% per exchange. The advantage of UBXT over exchange tokens, in this case, is that it can combine exchanges and be operating on many exchanges.
Consider the case where UpBots manages to be the provider for 5% of exchange volume for each exchange. Combining this across 10-20 exchanges, the UBXT token becomes nearly as valuable as other exchange tokens on just the Buy and Burn model alone. These exchange tokens have fully diluted valuations that are in excess of 1 Billion. Given the fully diluted market cap of UBXT will be between $5 – 10M at launch, this leaves an upside of close to 100x, not even factoring in the other avenues of utility.
Comparison Table
Among bot trading service provider and social trading platform, UpBots stands out for a more innovative and functional product. UpBots product is superior in many aspects, even when comparing with a 20M+ monthly traffic exchange, Etoro. Figure 3 demonstrates the vital advantages of UpBots in comparison with its competitors.
UpBots’ advantages over these competitors are:
DEX trading and staking right from UpBots
Blockchain transparency for fee and transaction payments
Exchange token incentive for trading and staking.
Figure 3: UpBots in comparison with Competitors
Upcoming News
Development progress
Some of the notable milestones for UpBots in 2020 are the Public Sale, version 1.0 launch, FINMA license application, and integration to critical partners like DEX.ag, BrainFeed. Crucial plan for the first half of 2021 includes DeFi integration and mobile app launch, while UpBots focus to add Forex and commodities and cross-market trades in the second half. Figure 4 lists out crucial milestones UpBots need to achieve for 2020 and 2021 in order to realize market leader target.
Figure 4: UpBots Roadmap
UBXT Token Burning Schedule
The burning activity for UBXT token will start as soon as Q1 2021, with 15% of the platform’s net income to be used to burn an equivalent amount of UBXT token. The ratio for the next phase is 10% for Q1 2022, 5% for Q1 2023, and 2% for 2024 (Figure 5). Burning token events will boost UBXT demand for the next four years.
We highly appreciate tokenomics with a burning schedule that stick to future revenue/income. Such a burning model shows the creator’s long-term commitment toward future adoption and success of the project, not for short-term profit.
Figure 5: Adoption/Income relationship on UBXT
Reasons to be Optimistic
FTX has chosen UpBots to be one of its first IEOs. FTX and Alameda Research are well known for backing great projects and have a good history with investments and IEOs.
The UpBots mission is a highly optimistic one. If they are to succeed, this could revolutionize the way retail trades. If this leads to a new wave of retail trading platforms, the UBXT token should be one of the strongest, given its market leader status
The UpBots market cap is minuscule compared to comparable projects – a success for UpBots would lead to huge token appreciation. This is drastically different from other tokens that already have larger valuations where the upside is quite small.
Factors to Watch
The UpBots platform is yet to have any real users. Whilst the idea is one of prominence, the success of the platform, and hence the success of the token relies on users using the platform.
The date of launch is expected in December; markets can be volatile with investors not wanting to hold tokens for too long. Having a late launch could have investors not wanting to purchase the token until the launch date with others potentially selling at that time.
Executive Summary
The UpBots platform and UBXT token have definitely captured the imagination of the Kyros team. We are extremely bullish on the product and think that investors will be able to see the potential in this as well. The IEO on FTX and future FTX listing make us even more excited for the future.
With extremely favorable tokenomics, we’d be very surprised to see this token at under $0.05 within the first week of listing. A realistic short term price target would be $0.1 to $0.15, giving it a circulating market cap of $10M – $15M. The Kyros team will be hoping to accumulate cheaply on UBXT before the big listing on FTX. The success of the UpBots platform in December could see this token rise to the vicinity of $0.5 – our most bullish estimation.
