“Catalyst is a platform for Cryptocurrency traders, data curators, developers, and investors. Traders develop powerful quantitative strategies by using community-curated data sets, and investors put capital towards the best traders and strategies. In essence, Catalyst allows anyone to build their own crypto hedge fund.”
Little about the Company
Established by a group of MIT graduates, Enigma Project Company is an American based start-up which is successful in secured data sharing market and now they have recently announced their ‘Catalyst’ project. Stimulated by the speedy development and explosion of crypto-assets, the catalyst project can be well-defined as first investment podium, which allows investors to shape, test and implement micro crypto-funds. As a point of fact, with the assistance of catalyst, developers will not only be able to access Enigma’s decentralized data marketplace but can also take the assistance of the same in making and implementing new strategies. In fact, it won’t be wrong to mention that Catalyst is the first application to be positioned on the top of the enigma protocol.
Project Introduction
While most might believe the opposite, algorithmic trading and machine learning are definitely proving to be trouble making leaning in investment management. To state facts straight, traditional asset management industry was all about staying secretive and opaque, however, things are changing now. In fact, it would be reasonable to state that traditional asset management means are no more ruling the world, rather have been challenged by more free access to financial data, which has prospered in allowing the expansion of crowd-sourced venture methods.
As a matter of fact, to add more in the list, even the blockades are speedily being pulled to pieces which were there while entering the algorithmic trading and new investments opportunities are offered to growing open source community of developers, quants, traders and investors.
Following this ever rising demand for crypto currencies, Enigma Catalyst team believes that there is raise in interesting opportunities as well. And to make sure those opportunities are seized in the best manner, Catalyst serves with a chance to connect with crypto currency exchanges into an amalgamated, decentralized system, which has been designed to be a purposeful and straightforward way to accomplish and control funds.
In words of team “The main goal of our platform is to serve as a one-stop shop for developers (or quantitative traders) who are interested in developing trading strategies that operate in the expanding domain of crypto- markets.”
Unlike most automated trading system, Catalyst doesn’t just stop here, as the founders of the same have decided to serve with the investment funds services as well. Moreover, while this project can be compared with the previous projects like Malenport, Catalyst promises to serve with the better processing time and transaction quality. All in all, it won’t be wrong to state that, with new trade strategies Catalyst is enjoying a competition unrestricted field to work on.
Market and Industry Review
We all know algorithmic trading has been used for a long time, then be it for mature financial market or amateur crypto- assets market. And just like it’s not that easy to select strategies, developing algorithms for the same is challenging as well. However, time and again industry has always tried to serve with recommended solutions, which assist software developer even with the basic knowledge with the creation the algorithms. Well, Catalyst is here to serve with such solutions itself. As a matter of fact, this project is primarily based on Quantopian, which means the same might work as a bridge in between crypto trader and Quantopian approaches.
Technical characteristics of the platform — this project is a decentralized exchange protocol supporting cross-chain atomic swaps.
TEAM
GUY ZYSKIND — Creator of the Enigma and a Blockchain/Multi-party Computation researcher. Previously, Guy spent 10+ years in the software industry, including a CTO role at Endor, an MIT spin-off. Guy holds a MAS from the MIT Media Lab.
CONNER FROMKNECHT — Cryptography and distributed systems expert, Conner was a researcher at the MIT CSAIL for 3 years and spent time at Box and eBay. He obtained both of his M.Eng and B.S. from the MIT EECS.
CAN KISAGUN — Former consultant turned entrepreneur in the blockchain space. Can spend 3 years working at McKinsey & Company, focusing on banking and finance and holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Business.
TOR BAIR — Head of Growth and Marketing MIT Sloan MBA | Former options trader and data @ Snapchat, TOR manages growth and marketing of the project.
VICTOR GRAU SERRAT — Senior Software Engineer — MIT D-Lab | 15+ years of software development
Breakdown Of What The Funds Will Go Towards And How They Are Budgeted:
Funds raised through the token sale will be collected in the smart contract and will be used as follows:
60% for product and technology development
15% for blockchain research
10% for operations
10% for marketing purposes
5% for legal and administrative costs
Is The Idea Worth Investing?
Enigma vision is to create a decentralized data marketplace and to revolutionize the way data is shared, aggregated and monetized. In the 21st century, data is the most valuable currency. At present, however, it is monopolized in the hands of few. Facebook and Google have built $1T in market capitalization on collecting and monetizing user data, Then there are companies like Bloomberg and Reuters, both with +$10bn revenue, that have been built primarily on financial data aggregation. Catalyst team is building the infrastructure of a decentralized, secure, open data marketplace and introducing Catalyst as the first application built on top of this infrastructure. The Catalyst platform enables anyone to start his / her crypto investment fund, using our data, back testing, and research tools. This will provide the initial demand for their data marketplace, and data curators will provide the supply by creating and licensing premium data sets for community use.
Tokens
Based on Ethereum and distributed by smart contract, tokens are used to access data sources in the marketplace. Tokens flow from data consumers to data providers. Data consumers are quant traders, who wish to access data sources to create an edge either in Catalyst competitions or in real trading against the competition. Their earning potential is directly correlated to how many tokens they consume. This creates the incentive structure to consume ECAT tokens
Function and utility of token
Primary: ECAT is used to access data sources on the de-centralized Enigma Catalyst Data Marketplace. Payment is on subscription level.
Secondary: ECAT tokens are used for incentives to grow and ensure the stability of the network.
ECAT tokens are used to create demand in the data marketplace: Reward tokens are provided to quants with winning strategies. This incentivizes more quants to come on the platform and consume data to refine their strategies and gain an edge.
Security — while Catalyst team is relying on smart contract and independent audits for security, when asked for apparent, perceived or real regulatory risk we were told that “Our token is a utility token based on our legal counsel (Cooley — Patrick Murck, Marco Santoni)’s opinion. Cooley is one of the most reputable firms in the space. We intend to comply with all regulatory guidance”.
External and internal audits — as per our conversation with the team members, they are planning to get 1 or 2 independent audits on their smart contracts.
Community building — with regular blogs and direct communication with investors and information seekers through slack and telegram, we are quite sure that the team has quite successfully built a community around their project. In words of team “We currently have a strong community and user base for our product — our Slack is active and growing (currently at 900+ users) and we have a live alpha available at www.enigma.co/catalyst with more than 1,500 sign ups and downloads”.
Our take on project
Undoubtedly, Catalyst can be mentioned as a project which has been introduced at the right time. The same does provide a solution for the current obligation and principles of the blockchain industry which make this project in demand. Also while experienced team members, high-tech solutions and project implementation can be stated as plus points of the same, absence of financial plan does provide something to be considered in the section of negative as well.
For more queries contact:
MCAP Labs editorial team- info@mcaplabs.com
