Will Momentum Token revolutionize Customer Loyalty ?
There isn’t really an easy way to say this, so I will come straight to the point:
I’m German, very very German.
Even though everyone around me is talking about the blockchain revolution, i still hoard half a pound of cash in my giant purse.
It’s not only me, though! The whole of Germany is occupied by cash. The whole of Germany ? …no! There is one exception:
The Payback Card.
“Sammeln Sie Payback Punkte?” Do you collect PayBack points?
A phrase you will often hear when shopping in Germany. Payback is a customer loyalty system where you get rewarded with points for every purchase you make within Payback’s partner network. The Payback points serve as token of value that you can exchange for awards or discounts on your purchases in participating stores.
Whether you are at a gas station, supermarket or flying with Lufthansa. Payback is everywhere. Programs like these are called customer loyalty systems and Germans love them. The idea behind those point systems is to increase customer retention and to gain better insights into customer behavior.
As an avid cryptonaut you may ask yourself now whether this field can be disrupted with blockchain & tokenization ?
So today we answer the question: Will Momentum Token be the next big thing in marketing ?
🤼 1. Team
1.1 Track Record
Momentum Token is a project by a dutch company called MobileBridge. The company is located in Amsterdam and was established in 2013. MobileBridge scores with 3.8 on Glassdoor.com, so it seems like a decent place to work.
According to the company, MobileBridge is:
[…] driving the next generation of mobile solutions for organizations worldwide. Our leading mobile engagement platform improves your mobile channels so you know and engage your customers better by bridging their online and offline worlds. With solutions in proximity marketing, customer engagement, mobile commerce, and customer insights, we help businesses increase customer loyalty, retention, and revenue.
Momentum is a sub project from MobileBridge, so the team has already worked together on relevant projects before Momentum. Their senior staff also has relevant experience in the marketing industry.
Kees de Vos — CEO, FORMER SVP PRODUCT HYBRIS
Kees has 15 years’ global leadership experience in digital solutions and products, specialising in retail and digital commerce globally. He has worked with leading retailers and brands like WalMart, Argos and Tesco, to help define and implement their digital commerce strategy.
Eyal Oster — PRESIDENT, FOUNDER
Eyal is one of MobileBridge’s co-founders and as President continues to drive the company’s overall vision and strategy. He has more than 20 years of experience in leadership roles in both software and hardware companies and startups. Expert in mobile, digital marketing automation and loyalty.
Ariel Luedi — CHAIRMAN, FORMER CEO HYBRIS
One of Europe’s most successful technology leaders and investor in around 20 of the world’s most innovative technology start-ups, incl. MobileBridge. Ariel is the former CEO of hybris, the world leader in e-commerce software and previously held senior roles at Salesforce, Oracle and Broadvision.
Jack Sinclair — VP TECHNOLOGY, BLOCKCHAIN EXPERT
Jack brings over 25 years of technology experience to the MobileBridge team. Jack has worked with blockchain for over six years and applies his experience in both centralized and decentralized cloud architectures as a senior consultant with Fortune 50 companies.
Shlomo Cohen — BOARD MEMBER, MD INTEL
Shlomo is a MD and General Manager at the world’s largest chip manufacturer Intel. He is the General Manager of Intel Netherlands, directs all logistics and supply chain activities for Europe, Middle East and Africa and is a Director of Intel International B.V.
Lior Lavon: CTO, CO-FOUNDER
Lior is a highly-skilled and respected technologist and one of MobileBridge’s co-founders. Starting at Palm Inc, he was early to mobile technology and has since held a number of senior roles in different mobile and location based technology companies.
Momentum states their tech team consisting of 18 people, who have a history of working together at Mobile Bridge. We verified these claims by checking the founders LinkedIn profiles, and also looked for mentions from external sources.
1.2 Advisors
Board of Advisors includes:
- Carsten Thoma — Investor & Entrepreneur, former SAP
- Brian Walker: Omnichannel Marketing at Accenture Technology
- Youngsook Park: Global ICO Association
- Piero Crivellaro: Vice President Public Policy at Mastercard
Multiple advisors are mentioning Momentum on their LinkedIn profile. The lineup is very solid and there is a good mixture of marketing, retail and crypto know-how. There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the advisors.
1.3 Investors
ICO Partners include:
AmaZix Official: ICO Community Management Company
These are the guys you will encounter in the Telegram group, answering your questions.
Renowned & CO: Blockchain PR Consultancy
Blonde 2.0: Blockchain PR
Agavon: Blockchain Consultancy
“We aim to give our clients an honest answer on whether they should use DLT, and which one or ones should be used, or if other solutions would be more appropriate for their needs.”
This is actually what more projects should do!
✅ This is an already existing company with a line of products in the marketing industry.
✅ Large dev team, who already worked together.
✅ Relevant advisors with good track records.
✅ I like the fact that someone consults them about whether or not this is a viable blockchain use case.
❌ Judging from employees LinkedIn profiles, they have little experience working on decentralized applications. Only their blockchain architect Jack Sinclair claims experience in solidity.
🏆 Team Score: 32/40
Question for Kees de Vos:
Has everyone on your team worked at Mobile Bridge before? What kind of “blockchain” training has been provided?
🚀 2. Product
2.1 Value Proposition and USP
MobileBridge already has a customer loyalty solution on the market. The software enables companies to target their customers with “smart” coupons.
E.g.: The customer is within walking distance of an Awesome Burger store. Momentum knows his preferences from a survey he previously filled out within the Awesome Burger App. If he now comes into the store, he will receive a discount on a preferred product.
The goal is to target each consumer based on their individual behaviour/preference, to ultimately drive retention rates and customer lifetime value.
Momentum’s product lineup consists of two parts:
MobileBridge Customer Backend
Momentum will utilize the existing MobileBridge solution and extend it with smart contract functionality. The idea is that companies can easily set up their reward mechanisms and run their own branded tokens. Essentially the customers will be rewarded with branded tokens (Awesome Burger token) based on certain actions they fulfill.
Brand Applications
The MobileBridge software already serves as a backend for various brand applications like the Burger King App. What will change with Momentum is, that Burger King can turn its In-App Rewards (coupons) into tokens that the customer holds in his wallet. So beyond the traditional “buy 1 burger get one free”, we now have a universal Burger King token that is much more flexible, and can be traded with other reward tokens or even be exchanged into crypto.
User Wallet & Token
There will be a wallet where users get an overview of all Momentum Tokens they have. Momentum Tokens will serve as a universal currency that can be exchanged into other branded reward tokens (e.g. Awesome Burger Tokens). The Momentum App will also showcase opportunities to earn tokens (Install App xyz, leave a review etc.).
The challenge will be to make the rewards valuable enough, so people are incentivised. This is a problem for many customer rewards programs and whether or not Momentum can change that remains to be seen.
2.2 Competition and Market
Customer Loyalty is a huge part of a company’s strategy to drive customer lifetime value and retention rates. Therefore, a lot of money is invested into these programs. Currently the industry is fragmented with various disconnected initiatives, which leaves a huge opportunity for disruption. Momentum wants to grab this opportunity, but faces strong competition not only from existing loyalty programs like Payback, but also blockchain based initiatives like these ones:
2.3 Traction & Community
I didn’t find much media coverage about Momentum and the company behind, MobileBridge. Most content that I spotted (e.g.on Medium or Steemit) is incentivised by the bounty campaign offered, meaning paid for.
Regarding the community, Momentum is active on LinkedIn (176 Follower), Twitter (1230 Follower), Telegram (2100 members), Reddit (34 readers) and Bitcointalk.
Keep in mind that all these participants are partly joining due to Momentum`s bounty campaign. I had a look at their participation spreadsheet and saw that 1050 user signed up for the Twitter campaign — meaning 1050 from 1230 are paid Twitter-Followers.
2.4 Bullshit Bingo
The way Momentum is addressing its audience, potential users and investors is very solid. They are not throwing too many buzzwords and superlatives around and also don’t make promises they can’t keep
✅ Momentum is based on an already existing technological foundation.
✅ Momentum is active on all important communication channels.
✅ Momentum applies a solid, reasonable communication strategy
❌ Many supporters in Momentum`s communication channels are mainly participating to get token rewards (bounty campaign).
❌ Highly competitive market, lots of existing programs.
🏆 Product Score: 12/20
Question for Kees de Vos:
How are customers incentivized to spend their earned branded-tokens within the brands locations/products vs. just exchanging them for crypto/money ?
⚙️ 3. Technology
3.1 Technical Solution
Momentum outlined their existing technology stack and how it will be extended with smart contract functionality pretty well.
Looking at the stack, the interesting question is how they will integrate with Ethereum and how they plan to handle its limitations?
To counter the problem of transaction limits and potentially high transaction fees, Momentum`s solution is a hybrid approach:
Offchain: User Data & Reward related Operations
This means probably 90% of computational workload is still done in a traditional centralized way. User data is stored on central databases including all reward operations. Reward operations are every action that a customer takes to get rewards (enter the store, post a review, rate a product).
On-Chain: Access Control & Token Balance
The users privacy settings, as well as the encryption keys are stored on the Blockchain.
That means the user controls who can read his data, what kind of data, in which time frame, etc.
This approach ensures full data-privacy and control without the need to store and process everything on-chain. However, one problem could be that maintaining privacy settings could become a tedious and micro manage heavy task for the user.
3.2 Blockchain Use Case
We could realize the whole Momentum project without using a blockchain.In fact there are many existing customer loyalty programs who do fine without it. So what does blockchain enables us to do here?
The use case lies within the fact that loyalty points are more valuable for the consumer when they become universally exchangeable into other tokens. Also the user owns its data and only selectively shares it with brands he trusts.
In light of the recent privacy scandals surrounding facebook, this presents an opportunity to shift the power back into the hands of the consumers and ultimately improve relationships between brands and their customers.
- A trustless blockchain environment could be beneficial for consumer/brand relationships.
- Instead of separate reward programs for, say hotels and flight miles, there can be one universal system that reduces friction. The hotel doesn’t need to trust the airline, and still both can participate in a system which makes it ultimately more attractive to the consumer.
- Less friction / management means more value can go directly into the rewards.
✅ The team has put some good thoughts into why they choose Ethereum and potential pitfalls.
✅ There is a case for a crypto based marketing rewards program, as problems of current programs can be addressed with a blockchain (privacy, faster payouts, trustless point exchange between different programs).
✅ Good separation of concerns between on and off-chain functionality.
❌ The explantation how the database is connected with Ethereum lacks detail.
❌ No token sale, GitHub source or demo is provided.
🏆 Technology Score: 12/20
Question for Kees de Vos
When are you planning to open your smart contracts on GitHub for audits?
Will we be able to see any kind of demo? (Maybe you can showcase your existing solution and talk about how it will be expanded with ethereum)
💰️ 4. Investor Information
4.1 Token Sale Information
Momentum states in the Whitepaper, that “The Momentum Token is just a utility token which can be used only on the MobileBridge platform and is not intended to be used as an investment.”
Furthermore, they clarify that “ The Momentum Token does not have the legal qualification of a security, since it does not give any rights to dividends or interests.”
All basic information needed in order to participate in the Public Sale are provided. However, information about bonuses and the presale confused me.
It is not clear, how much bonus you will get, since it depends on the amount you are willing to spend which again is not clearly defined.
I didn’t find any information about the presale on the website https://momentumtoken.io/. If you want to participate it just seems to be possible by writing a private message to admins of the Telegram group https://t.me/MomentumToken
However, this practice I don’t find very transparent and professional since it opens the doors for scammers.
4.2 Usage of Funds
Momentum shows how they will use their raised funds and provides details in the Whitepaper. However, the usage of funds is not linked to their roadmap and a the allocation of funds is not illustrated proportionally.
4.3 Distribution
A table presenting the token distribution is provided including further explanations to most relevant aspects in the Whitepaper. However, some points remain unclear (e.g. it is not explained, what the “3rd party launch costs” are). Furthermore, Momentum does not state if they return all the raised capital back to the investors if the soft cap is not reached.
4.4 Vesting
Momentum has different vesting schemes for their team in place and vests all bonus tokens.
- 3% of the tokens that go to the Momentum team will vest 12 months from the start day of the sale period
- “an additional 5% of tokens has been set aside as an additional long-term retention incentive program for existing and new team members. None of these tokens have been allocated yet and will not be allocated before 1 January 2019, at which point they will also be subject to a vesting schedule.”
- “All bonus tokens are vested for a period of 12 months and will be transferred to the user’s wallet after the vesting period” (However, this information lately was removed from the Whitepaper, so it is not clear if this still applies)
Standard vesting clauses typically last four years and have a one year “cliff”, meaning if one of the founders leaves the company before the 12th month, then he or she walks away with nothing.
4.5 Escrow
There’s no escrow. Tokens will be issued ‘immediately’, within 7 days of payment.
✅ The Momentum team is vested
✅ Relevant facts about the Token Sale and Token Distribution are provided
❌ Momentum does not state if they return all the raised capital back to the investors if the soft cap is not reached.
❌ The usage of funds is not linked to their roadmap and a the allocation of funds is not illustrated proportionally.
❌ Information about the presale and the amount of bonuses during the Public Sale is not transparent and comprehensible enough.
🏆 Investor Information Score : 8 / 20
Conclusion
Momentum has a solid team with relevant experience in the marketing industry, the fact that Kees des Vos advises a startup incubator is a nice bonus. Even though the tech team is quite big (18 people) and has worked together before, the solidity experience leaves something to be desired. The advisory board contains a good lineup of people relevant to Momentum, including advisors from Accenture, MasterCard and SAP.
The fact that MobileBridge is already running established customer loyalty programs is a big plus on the product side. Nevertheless, they enter a highly competitive market with lots of other existing reward programs in place and some blockchain solutions in development. Whether or not Momentum can convince customers to adopt their token based system remains to be seen. A good amount of thought has been put into the tech stack, I like the idea of only storing encryption keys and access rights on the user wallet to reduce computational workload on Ethereum. However, a product demo is missing and the GitHub repo is empty. Regarding the Investor Information, most relevant facts about the Token Sale & Distribution and Allocation of Funds are provided. The information about Momentum’s presale and the size of bonus during their ICO are not very transparent and easy to understand though. The team is vested but compared to standard vesting clauses the vesting period is too short.
We conducted this review according to our guideline defined in our Ultimate Guide to review ICOs
Thanks to Denis Ehlicke for suggesting this project for review.
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