ICO Review — Indorse

Summary

• Symbol: IND
• Crowdsale opening date: 8 Aug 2017
• Crowdsale closing date: 8 Sep 2017
• Pre-sale commitments & registration: 15 July — 24 July.
• Pre-sale contribution: 25th July — 3rd Aug
• Country of origin: Singapore
• Blockchain Platform: Ethereum

Introduction

‘Indorse’ is Skill Based Professional Network platform using new models of tokenization and decentralized to change the shape of professional social networking that lets the users own and earn from their data.

Analysis

My View

Attores is a known name in Blockchain industry and their product Attores Certificate Issuance (CI) Platform allows University or an institution to issue their degrees or diplomas directly on the blockchain in the form of a Smart Contract. I have been following Attores for over a year and their contribution to Blockchain development and Cryptocurrency community has been phenomenal. That is why I have a positive bias that their platform would grow and will become a key Ethereum based Social networking platform even though they face an already crowded segment where Steemit and Akasha have an early advantage.

Who should Buy

Given their profile and a strong team behind Indorse, I would recommend that this token should be a great addition to any ICO investor’s portfolio which will give good returns in the short term and will add value once the platform goes live. Though there is a risk of dilution of the value as more IND tokens are minted.

Problem

Many Social networks have turned to advertising as a revenue stream which though free but have made user data as its product. And by their terms & policies they sell user generated content and information to providers, advertisers and recruiters. This leads to loss of privacy and the social network company gaining revenue from the information produced by its members without any revenue-sharing model.

Solution

The solution is a new model of social networks — a decentralized one that places ownership of information back in the hands of the members. They have a control of their own profile with themselves and they get to choose how their data is used by the Social network. It allowing members an easy way to earn rewards for the activities that benefit them. With participation in the network, members can earn Indorse Rewards for sharing more about themselves and for endorsing the claims of others.

Vision

Their platform can be likened to a combination of a decentralized LinkedIn and Instagram, but with “verified” claims and endorsements.
They envision Indorse to be decentralized and transparent, with its’ own ecosystem of DApps that feed into and rely on the platform for information.

Tokensale

Pre-Sale

Indorse is accepting non-binding commitments for its Token Pre-Sale.

• Pre-sale commitments & registration: 15 July — 24 July.
• Pre-sale contribution: 25th July — 3rd Aug

Post the Pre-Sale Indorse will be conducting a sale of its token: IND, beginning 8 August 2017 and for a maximum period of 30 days.

Token Structure

To create a reward mechanism for fairly distributes ownership and incentives of all parties, the platform has 1 tradeable token and 1 internal accounting token (based on the ERC20 interface):
(a) Indorse Token (IND) [tradeable]
(b) Indorse Score (SCR) [accounting of reputation]

The IND token is the token that will be issued during the Token Sale. Through the purchase of IND tokens, the token holders acquire the right to seek ‘Indorse Services’. Token Sale IND purchasers will receive Indorse Score (SCR) tokens in addition to their IND tokens. ND token will be the defacto payment method for seeking services from the Indorse platform.

In addition, there is Indorse Rewards. With participation in the network, members are able to earn Indorse Rewards for sharing more about themselves and for endorsing the claims of others. Indorse Rewards have vesting period before they are converted to IND tokens.

The members have to do some work and contribute to the platform to earn both a higher Indorse Score and Indorse Rewards.

Token Benefits

Utility of token:

• IND tokens will be tradable in exchanges.
• SCR token is required to post updates to the user profile, or endorse and flag claims.
• Using SRC tokens users will be able to endorse the profile postings of members on the platform.
• After an initial 3 month vesting period, Indorse Rewards will be accumulated and automatically converted into IND tokens based on the amount of IND in the pool from incoming advertising and the inflation mechanism.
• The IND earned by the Indorse platform will go into the IND pool, 50% of which will be put into an administrator fund to be used to pay for the operations of the platform and the remaining 50% will be rewarded to the members based IND pool containing contributions for services usage.

Platform

Platform Model

The current logic used in Indorse platform is as follows:

• A user joins Indorse
• The user creates account
• SCR token are assigned to the user.
• User makes first claim for his/her profile to be indorsed.
• Based on the claim user transfers SCR token previously assigned to him/her.
• System randomly another user to Indorse
• Using Indorse Dapp Other Indorses send in their decisions Data collated and threshold for consensus reached Claim is True/ False?
• Based on the maximum consensus reaching a threshold, the Endorsers get rewarded with Indorse Rewards. And the one who gave a biased or malicious Endorsement loose their SCR tokens which also impacts their credibility score on their platform.

At regular intervals, more IND tokens will be generated. though their generation will be regulated. This will help people not part of pre-sale or service providers and advertisers buy IND tokens to advertise or solicit services from Indorse platform.

Anonymous Indorsement Protocol (AIP)

There are two options for endorsements:

• Choose random endorsements: The Indorse platform will choose random endorsers based on the degrees of separation from the member.
• Get your claim verified from an influencer on the plat-form: The member will have to pay using either his SCR tokens or Indorse Rewards.

The aim of AIP protocol is for choosing the random endorsers from the platform and keeping the endorsements anonymous.

Technological Stack

Technical Vision of Indorse platform to have a serverless, decentralized architecture, with the content and code on IPFS, and the Ethereum blockchain as the computational engine.

Core Components

Indorse aims to create a completely serverless, decentralized architecture, the actual development needs the application to be divided into several tiers nonetheless — namely, the service layer, the API layer and the app layer.
Any 3rd party apps can always directly interface with the Service Layer Smart Contracts to take advantage of the distributed nature of the blockchain.

Application Layer

• 3rd party Apps
• Mobile App
• Web App (ReactJS)

Indorse API Layer (NodeJS)

Indorse Service Layer (Filesystem Indexing + Smart Contracts)

• IPFS
• Ethereum

Challenges

• Integration with uPort
• Integration with Status
• Uncertainty of data storage on IPFS
• Current Scalability issues of Ethereum
• Customer Acquisition & Engagement
• Revenue generation beyond Advertisement & Service Offering
• Stability of IND token in the volatility of token prices resulted from speculative trading
• Increased competition from platforms like LinkedIn, steemit.com, Akasha etc
• Challenges in platform adoption given that DApps application have usability issues and are experimental in the current stage

Roadmap

Fund Allocation

Team

• David Moskowitz — Project Head
• Gaurang Torvekar — Technical Lead
• Dipesh Sukhani — Operations Manager
• Avadhoot Kulkarni — Marketing Manager
• Dave Appleton — Smart Contracts Developer
• Harsh Nene — Senior Developer
• Kedar Vaidya — Senior Developer
• Gauri Gadgil — Designer

Attores, a blockchain company based in Singapore. Much of the core team is part of Attores. The team has previous experience with Ethereum. Starting January 2016, they formally began working on Ethereum applications and released open source code for swaps and forward contracts for exchanging digital assets.

Attores currently has a pilot with a Poly- Technic college in Singapore for their digital certificate issuance platform along with installation of an Ethereum blockchain on campus.

Conclusion

Their product will need further refinement in terms of architecture and concept. Right now Endorsements and rewards are the key value proposition and advertisements/service discovery their key revenue streams. But for me their key value is in the added integrations that they propose for 3rd party Apps and the integration to their Digital Certification platform which if done correctly and if smart contract can prove as a viable way of exposing key business APIs for external integration, will open new opportunities as to how future DApps leverage each other’s features to create a interlinked usable ecosystem for users that is currently present in form of micro-services and integration APIs on traditional cloud and Saas platforms.

Reference

Website
Blog
Whitepaper
Facebook
Twitter
Slack chat
Telegram

Disclaimer: This is not investment or trading advice, always do your own independent research.

If you like the Blog then please help support the publication via https://www.patreon.com/cryptbytestech. Also you can send some eth contributions to 0x670A8721C343Ce16D619630283Ea70F3235e3247