Important Varanida Update — Refund
Unfortunately the Varanida DAICO was not a success. As a result, we will be refunding all participants from Rounds 0, 1, and 2.
However, the Varan is more alive then ever!
We founded Varanida with a very ambitious vision: Disrupt an industry that completely lacks transparency, trust, and honesty.
With Varanida, we want to offer a better model, one that is fair to all stakeholders:
- Internet users can own their personal data and control their ad exposure
- Media and content producers can live from the work they create
- Brands can spend advertising budget without it being captured by fraud
Varanida is a collective project. It involves a skilled and experienced team of experts and advisors from the advertising and media industries, along with the support of several leading players.
Funding Varanida Through an ICO?
While we self-funded the early development of Varanida, we quickly realized that we would need more resources for such an ambitious plan. Within this heavily centralized industry, we believed that the best way to fulfill our vision was through an ICO, where all of Varanida’s believers could support us and get involved in the project. This ICO was not a “money-grab” opportunity, and required an important amount of work and investment, at several levels:
- Tech & Development: Varanida had to prove itself. As a team, we decided to present a clear example of what Varanida is about: An ad-controller in the form of a browser extension. Our prototype was launched with an associated AirDrop to incentivize users, and to demonstrate Varanida’s good faith. Learn more about Varanida’s technology here.
- Regulations: The legal aspect of the project had to be thoroughly considered and designed. Therefore, we decided to work with the best lawyers and most trustworthy collaborators available. We understand laws and regulations are an extremely important factor in our industry, and they have an even larger impact on the success of a blockchain startup. We did everything in our power to secure every aspect of the project.
- Evangelization: The Blockchain industry is digital, with a huge international reach. Therefore, we made it a focus of ours to travel around the world and present our vision. You can read more about our communication strategy on our blog.
- Marketing & PR: Just like with evangelization, we created and executed an international communication and marketing strategy to reach new users. Along with our partner LGO Launch, we marketed in 10 different languages, and managed global conversations, adapting to each individual language and culture.
First Proposition: Traditional ICO
We launched our ICO in a traditional format earlier this year. As strong believers in the blockchain industry, we followed the traditional fundraising path for startups in this field. As a matter of fact, we announced the first version of our token sale on the 27th of June.
Second Propositoin: DAICO
Towards the end of our traditional ICO, we took a step back to review our initial strategy and see if we were meeting those goals. As a result, we paused our traditional ICO and decided to transition over to a DAICO, in order to increase participation incentives and reassure our investors about our legitimacy. We announced our DAICO on the 11th of September.
Round 2: Soft Cap Not Reached, Initiating A Refund
After several weeks of intense communication, including features in over 50 articles in 8 different languages, dozens of videos, and hundreds of social media posts, Varanida drove some great traction! Over 25,000 people visited our website in the past 30 days, and 4,000 of them registered to be contributors.
However, the amount raised (in current ETH/BTC value) was far from our soft-cap goal of 8M€. The definitive number cannot be disclosed for two reasons: First, no estimation can be drawn without a proper KYC phase, as a few contributions would likely be canceled. Also, several hard commitments would not be converted to actual transfer if the soft was not reached.
As a result of not meeting our soft-cap goal, we will proceed to refund all participants from Round 0, Round 1, and Round 2 for the original value of ETH / BTC (and in Euros for Round 0 only) that they contributed.
We would like to thank all of you for your support, messages, and most importantly, for sending your contributions! Your incredible support is a testimony to our vision, and the importance of our mission.
Where Are We heading?
We are still highly motivated and focused on accomplishing Varanida’s vision! Work on Varanida will continue, we will just change the way that we fund the project.
Overall, we are very satisfied with the traction that our first application (the Varanida Extension) received. It had over 150,000 downloads from all over the world, and, together, users blocked over 1 Billion intrusive ads and malicious tracking scripts.
We are also working closely with several large agencies, brands, and publishers to release Proof-of-Concepts in the coming months. This will help us demonstrate clearly how the Varanida Network would work, and what benefits it will bring to the whole advertising ecosystem.
In addition, we have received several propositions for alternative funding opportunities. We are in the process of carefully reviewing each of those options, and we will select the ones that align best with the project’s vision and the community’s interests. We will share more details on this very soon.
What About VAD Tokens?
Not reaching the minimum ICO funding has a direct impact on our roadmap, especially with regards to how we handle VAD Tokens.
Considering the need to satisfy all security, legal, and regulatory audits, as well as any costs associated with post-ICO steps (such as listings and animation) we believe it would be a bad decision to release our tokens at this moment. As a result, we won’t proceed with creating VAD Tokens on the Ethereum Network, for now.
If you participated in the Airdrop and are using the Varanida Extension on a daily basis, you can still continue to do so. You will still be rewarded, as the AirDrop will be resumed. For now, about 16,000,000 “virtual” VAD Tokens have been distributed through the Varanida Extension, and 4,000,000 are still available. You can claim them by using the extension, and by referring your friends to download the extension as well.
It’s up to you: The more people that use Varanida, the more powerful the network will become, and this will increase the value of VAD Tokens as a whole.
Thank you all for your participation and support! We are working every day to provide you with the best service that supports our bigger purpose; one that involves us all. We will continue to update our community with regular updates, so make sure to follow us on our various social media channels to learn the latest.
About Varanida
Varanida is a project working on a decentralized advertising and content solution that establishes an ecosystem where all parties are fairly compensated for the value that they bring to the network.
If you would like to find out more about Varanida mission and vision, please make sure to download our White Paper and follow our journey:
