Astronaut invests in Havven ICO

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Astronaut Capital

6 min readFeb 13, 2018

Astronaut Capital takes exposure in the Havven token sale.

On the 13th of February, Astronaut Capital (ASTRO) released a report stating that they have become an investor in Havven (Havven). You can view the full report here.

Summary

Havven is a Singaporean based firm seeking to implement a new ‘price-stabilized’ token against a distributed collateral pool. The value of the token is said to be taken from the utility of the system and the relationship between HAV tokens and ‘nomins’ to set the currency price equal to USD$1.00.

The core team commenced research on the project in late 2016, evaluating models of different asset-backed stablecoins.

In August 2017, Havven finalized the mechanism for the token and began incorporation for the crowd sale.

The company is seeking to raise a maximum of US$30million to complete development and deploy a stability network that utilizes a dual token system to reduce price volatility in the crypto markets.

Commercial & Technical Strategy

Havven seeks to introduce a new stablecoin in the market that will act as an alternative to such competitors as Tether (USDT).

Unlike other ventures that are either using USD, Gold or other assets to create ‘stability’, Havven uses cryptocurrency as its method of collateralization.

There are two main components to the Havven ecosystem:

Havvens — The tokens known as ‘Havvens’ are used as the collateralization for the entire process. These tokens will derive their value from the crowd sale and listed market price in the open market.
Nomins — Nomins are used for transactions and are issued by Havven holders as the collateralized token. Fees are generated on the network every time that Nomins are moved between wallets. It is estimated that the fees in the network will be an average of ~20 basis points.

In the first instance, Havven will seek to seed the entire ecosystem using Ether, therefore creating ETH/Nomins for redemption.

Roadmap

A roadmap has not been illustrated in detail on any of the Havven public material.

After speaking with the management team, Astronaut confirms the following dates (estimated by Havven team):

V1.0 (March 2018): ETH/Nomin implementation

V2.0 (April 2018): HAVVEN/Nomin implementation [foundation]

V2.5 (July 2018): HAVVEN/Nomin implementation [public]

V3.0 (Q4 2018): Multi-currency support

In addition to the above, it is expected that integration with several DApps will occur in Q4 2018.

Token Sale

Under the code HAVVEN, Havven will be issuing 100,000,000 tokens in total.

Crowd — Exactly 60% of tokens are offered through the crowd sale between three stages: Private, Presale and Public. Various bonus amounts are offered at these stages.

Havven Team — A total of 20% of tokens are allocated to the founding team. The whitepaper and documentation indicate that these tokens are vested for two years.

Foundation/Partnerships — The remaining tokens will be issued to the foundation and used for upcoming partnerships to expand trading liquidity and distribution.

Token Use

HAVVEN tokens bought during the ICO will be issued via an ERC20 contract. Token holders can then choose to either hold the HAVVEN and earn fees via the issuance of Nomins, or alternatively, speculate on the actual price of the HAVVENS once open for trade.

As mentioned in the section labeled ‘commercial & technical strategy’, the dual issuance of HAVVEN vs Nomins are integral to providing consistent stability to the entire ecosystem.

It is expected that exchange listing of the tokens will occur in Q2 2018.

Use of Proceeds

While a ‘Use of Proceeds’ has not yet been provided, discussions with the team indicate the following areas to deploy the raised capital:

Development costs
OPEX
Legal and incorporation
Marketing and partnerships
General expenses

Team

The website and marketing material indicate that there are 16 team members split across operations, legal and R&D.

Kain Warwick: Kain is the CEO of Havven and has an impressive track record of also commercializing Blueshyft, a cryptocurrency digital wallet based in Australia.

Justin Moses: Justin is the CTO of Havven and also the director of engineering at MongoDB. Justin comes from an extensive background of technical development of complex systems.

Jordan Momtazi: Jordan is the VP of Partnerships and is focused on the business development aspect of Havven. He has prior experience in enterprise sales and account management.

Advisors

There are 13 advisors listed on the Havven website. A full list can be found here.

Walter De Brouwer: CEO of Doc.ai

Christian Jaag: Director at Cryptecon

Antony Nantes: CEO of Direct Money

Strengths

Havven comes at a time when the entire cryptocurrency market is questioning the legitimacy of some existing ‘stablecoins’ due to a lack of transparency. This ‘nervousness’ builds a compelling case for Havven and will play to its advantage with regards to mass-market adoption.
Demand for stablecoins is significant. USDT was averaging approximately $150,000 volume per day at the beginning of 2017. In light of the recent volatility, this number has grown to billions of dollars changing hands per day. Despite a justified concern regarding the Tether situation, investors and institutions are still utilizing the token more than ever to hedge out downside risk.

The deal structure is favorable for token sale participants given that approximately 60% of the sale is offered to the crowd.
The team and advisory board seem to have adequate experience to successfully commercialize the product from a technical perspective. The CTO has vast experience having been involved with MongoDB.
We believe that Havven will have strong community support for the token sale and is backed by several respectable institutional investors.

Weaknesses

As a matter of transparency, a Use of Proceeds/Budget should have been included in the material.
A defined roadmap with regards to expected milestones for each version/release should have been illustrated on the company website.

Opportunities

Havven has the opportunity to be one of the leading utility tokens should it be swift in its execution. As volatility continues to become more apparent to investors globally, a solution such as HAVVEN would be a welcomed addition to the crypto ecosystem.
Havven could potentially create several exchange and institutional partnerships to increase liquidity and distribution of the tokens. As concerns mount around USDT, other alternatives are being explored by service providers to hedge risk on behalf of their clients.

Threats

Outside of Tether (USDT), Havven does face competition from the following stablecoins:
Maker DAI (DAI)
Basecoin
TrueCoin
Digix DAO

The most advanced project in the ecosystem is currently Maker (MKR) which has recently signed a partnership deal with Singapore-based gold currency Digix.

Conclusion

Astronaut is attracted to Havven and believes that it is an extremely well-timed ICO given recent market volatility and the growing concerns regarding USDT.

For the reasons listed below, Astronaut has taken a medium level of exposure to the Havven ICO:

Significant market demand for stablecoins (see MKR chart)
A competent team with extensive technical development experience
A fair deal structure that has significant community support

Astronaut acknowledges the presence of competitors in the market seeking to create similar solutions. To take an objective and comparable approach, however, we wish to note the price action of a rival token (with dual coins), Maker, which has appreciated over 500% in the past four months (chart here).

While certain competitors may be more advanced in terms of implementation, our view is that the ‘race’ to the ultimate stablecoin is likely just beginning. It is of the Investment Committees view that Havven is a viable contender for mass adoption should the team be able to execute on their roadmap in a timely fashion.

With an experienced team, a viable commercial/technical model and a favorable deal structure, the Astronaut Investment Committee (IC) anticipate significant price appreciation and has chosen to invest in Havven based on a medium/long-term outlook.