Incent update: May 2017
4 June 2017
G’day Cent’urions!
Without wishing to overstate it, this last month has been a watershed: a month where Incent moved from a project in-build to a commercial entity. And as we emerge from this period of intense operations it is cathartic for me (and hopefully of interest to you…!) to reflect on what has been learned and achieved along the way.
ICO Mania
At the beginning of 2017, when I first mooted our intention to roll Incent out to market on the back of the deposit technology we had built to execute our own crowdfund, some of you expressed concerns that it represented a departure from our core mission — from the project you had backed. My hope is that the last month has assuaged those concerns and provided some measure of proof that we were right to pursue this course of action.
As many of you will know ICOTech enabled two token crowd-sales in May, both of which exceeded expectations, raising a shade under $60 million between them. Consider for a moment this figure (which in volume terms is equal to the monthly revenue of a major global retail operation) and you will appreciate that from a standing start this has presented our infrastructure and technical team with the sternest of tests, particularly noting that both Waves and ERC20 tokens were accommodated for the first time.
So while both projects presented significant and differing technical challenges, I am satisfied with the way these challenges were negotiated, note that both have provided us with the technical feedback to take this product to the next level and — in the meantime—am pleased with the impact these activities have had on market demand for Incent.
As these operations wind down, we are taking care to capture and roll lessons identified into an application development plan which has, as its target, the realisation of our core product. What I mean to say by this is that I want us to get to a point where every time someone invests in a project through ICOTech, they are instantly on-boarded to the Incent mobile application, where they receive their Incent reward and can do something with it.
In the meantime we’ll continue to work with our infrastructure partners to render the platform and its various interfaces as robust as possible, to optimise both User and Client operator experiences. And believe me when I say that this is an investment well worth making because while I do not know how long it will last, the ICO market is booming and every exposure to it spreads awareness of Incent (over 10,000 new holders in May), demand for Incent, the means and imperative to improve our core infrastructure, a vehicle against which to role out our consumer wallet application and the profit potential to invest in our team.
So it’s all good…
We’re Growing
While prototype development during Q1 allowed us to run lean on in-house technical horsepower, this always had a half-life and last month our plans to augment our in-house technical horsepower came to fruition. I am pleased to announce that our Ethereum guru, Bok Khoo, has been joined by a Waves specialist in the form of Sergey Ischenko, direct from the core Waves team in Moscow. Further, we are joined by Nadia Begicheva (UX) and Matthew Geale (full stack), bringing our core technical team to 5.
Last but by no means least, Jins Kadouthodil has joined us in a consultancy role that both of us hope will grow into that of Incent’s Chief of Operations. Jins and I go back a bit professionally, having worked together on another project in 2013.
An IT specialist by education and top-flight management consultant by training and experience, Jins has been immersed in the local start-up scene for the last two years. I think he’s absolutely ideal for Incent. He’s already making a huge impact as we commercialise and I look forward to announcing his permanent tenure in the months to come.
What about Everything Else?
Basically, we continue to march forward on all fronts. With respect to core development:
- ICOTech is already the subject of focussed optimisation aimed at improving reliability, UX and autonomy.
- Blockswap will soon feel the love following the winding down of our recent ICO operations and will either be open-sourced or offered to interested parties under licence thereafter.
- Jade Shyu is into the guts of App UX design work and we’re lining up the specialist development talent locally to integrate her output.
- We’re conceptualising a redesign of our website to pull everything together under ‘one roof’.
With respect to Business Development, we are still pursuing relationships locally and the game changing opportunities that I spoke of last month, States-side. And on the organisational front, Jins is pulling together the various commercial, accountancy and compliance threads.
So what are your priorities?
Personally speaking I have two. Firstly, I want to take what we have learned from the last month and leverage it to develop the best ICO deposit technology on the market, then use that to entice the best projects into the Waves ecosphere. And I want us to continue to build awareness of and demand for Incent on the back of this effort. My rationale for this is straightforward; this is where the market is exploding, this is where we can provide the most support for Incent demand right now and this is the perfect high-tempo technical environment in which our core product will have to operate, and ought therefore to be developed and stress tested.
Secondly, I want us to continue to build a consumer wallet application so capable and intuitive that the benefits of partnering on our core loyalty product are obvious and explicit. The key here is an end-to-end solution that requires zero crypto knowledge to use, while offering mainstream consumers access to this exciting economy — and all its benefits. It’s not the work of a moment but I am confident that with the core infrastructure in place and the right talent engaged, we are lining things up to deliver a game-changing product, and I am excited to see the impact that this is going to have on demand for Incent, once we are in a position to release it into the wild.
On! On!
Rob Wilson
CEO
Incent Loyalty PTY Ltd
Level 5
155 Clarence Street
Sydney 2000
NSW.
+61 450 967 128
