ICO Review — 5 reasons why Open Collectors Network should be the future protocol for one-of-a-kind tokens

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Crypto ICO Review - US/FR

6 min readJun 4, 2018

Open Collectors Network is a decentralized platform for unique tokens, where everyone can own, create, customize and exchange individual elements seamlessly, in an open market.

1. The market of non-fungible tokens is virtually endless

Currently, all coins, whether real money or cryptocurrencies, are identical and no one can distinguish them from each other. This is called “fungible” type elements.

While in our daily lives, most things are unique and therefore non-fungible. Take the example of a book or a movie or the entire IT industry that relies on non-fungible objects such as products, services, users, etc.

What is a non-fungible element? The simplest way to explain this concept and how Open Collectors Network applies it to its project is to use an example. Imagine printing 1,000 flyers and distributing them on the street. No matter the flyers distributed, they are all identical: same size, same content, same use. This collection of flyers is therefore fungible. If now we take for example the collection of the works of a famous painter. Although all these works are paintings, they are all different and if you want to buy one, you will choose the one you like the most or the one that is the cheapest. These paintings are unique and important; they are non-fungible.

The market of non-fungible tokens is virtually endless. If you look around, almost all the things you see can be categorized: people, cars, streets, stores, products, art and so on …

The computer industry that does not use the Blockchain usually uses collections of objects that are non-fungible, ie they have different characteristics or attributes. This is one of the most basic and commonly used programming models for which there is currently no Blockchain alternative. That’s why the computer industry (which is worth $ 9.27 trillion in the US) is the main target of the Open Collectors Network to enable it to benefit from decentralization as quickly as possible.

This is the challenge Open Collectors Network has set itself by creating its decentralized platform that aims to allow anyone to create their own token without any programming experience.

2. A complete solution (plateform, exchange, api, & incubator)

Open Collectors Network is the first decentralized platform in the world to create non-fungible tokens. The project is based on existing standard specifications (ERC721) and will rely on Blockchain Ethereum to allow anyone to own, create, customize their own token and trade it in a free market.

Unlike fungible tokens, which are created and traded on crypto exchanges, non-fungible tokens are unique and must be exchanged individually. The technology that allows this type of operation is the Ethereum ERC721 standard since it allows the identification of unique token on the network by coupling the identifier of the token with the address of the smart contract. This standard also ensures compatibility with all existing tokens, such as Decentraland, Crypto Kitties and Crypto Punks.

The platform will be based on Ethereum smart contracts, which will bring all the benefits of the Blockchain: transparency, inviolable security, responsibility and absolute ownership. The platform will also rely on specialized algorithms to ensure complete privacy, scalability and flawless speed.

Users will be able to create tokens via two different ways:

A simple and intuitive web interface whose purpose is allowing simple adoptions by anyone
A standard REST / JSON API for the most advanced users; we are thinking in particular of companies wishing to bring the Blockchain into their ecosystem in an industrialized way.

In addition, because tokens can be created by anyone, rules exist to ensure their uniqueness. These rules use specialized algorithms whose purpose is to prevent spam from the market with duplicates for existing and expensive items. Below are the steps before a new token is validated by the platform:

All operations on the Open Collectors Network platform are performed using ECTO tokens (creation of unique tokens, interaction on the platform and exchange of tokens, …).

In addition, having ECTO tokens in your wallet also offers several benefits:

Reductions on all operations carried out on the platform
Voting rights choose the features that the platform must implement first
Free tokens distributed periodically; the number of tokens received will depend on the activity on the platform and the amount of ECTO tokens held.

And finally, Open Collectors Network will offer an ideas incubator that will allow anyone with an idea or need to interact with something unique or rare, share their idea or simply support the ideas of others.

3. Multiple use cases

The main use cases of the Open Collectors Network platform could be intellectual property management and copyrights, auction management or video game improvement.

The Open Collectors Network Whitepaper lists thirteen use cases of non-fungible token (section 5, page 8) that may use the platform. These use cases range from the video game platform to the management of discount through the pool management for ICO or integration into a KYC solution.

Some use cases:

Digital copyright management: Open Collectors Network could be used as a DRM system, creating a unique digital asset that transfers digital media and rights ownership. This could be used to represent a graphic design, an image, music or a book, … Writers, artists and musicians could sell their digital asset to anyone who wants to buy it.

Discount System: Companies could tokenize their products and offer exclusive discounts. Brand addict users could, for example, purchase discount codes as a single token and then use them to access discounts on the brand’s products.

Pool management for ICOs: with the explosion of ICOs, it’s quite common for small investors to regroup them in investor pool in order to aggregate a larger amount and thus participate in the presale. All these pools, except those made with Primablock, are managed with excel files to keep the participation of everyone and distribute tokens of the ICO once received. This pool system could very easily be managed by the Open Collectors Network platform since a pool can be considered as a non-fungible token with the address of the sale and the address of the token smart contract as the attribute.

Integration into a KYC system: An association with a KYC solution could provide better identity verification. Once the identity of a user is verified on the platform, a corresponding unique token will be created. This token could be used in new KYC process through the use of MetaMask and platform APIs.

Blockchain Collection: The platform will provide an opensource library of collections that store objects in the blockchain. These collections will provide a table, list, dictionary, hashmap, or specialized collections like Boost on C ++ or C5 on .Net.

4. An experienced team

The Open Collectors Network team consists of 9 employees and 9 Advisors. This team is strong enough because they have experience in developing software, websites and mobile applications, product management, digital marketing, law and cybersecurity.

Open Collectors Network was created by co-founders Dan Andrei Singeorzan (developer) and Ion-Cosmin Grigore (developer).

Dan Andrei Singeorzan is a Romanian programmer and developer based in Bucharest, who has worked for BitDefender, Stefanini and Ivanti. Ion-Cosmin Grigore is also based in Bucharest, Romania and previously worked as a software developer at RES Software, Fullscreen Digital and Libra Internet Bank. Both also have a solid knowledge of Blockchain technology.

Advisors have backgrounds in technology startups, FinTech, investments, ICO support, development, software architecture, business development, Esports, and Cryptocurrency projects, Blockchain and Smart Contracts .