icorating giftcoin basic review ( · grief encounter - a fund to support people who have lost a...
TRANSCRIPT
ICOrating
GIFTCOIN Basic Review (https://www.giftcoin.org/)
ICO dates (20.03.2018 - 19.04.2018)
Web: icorating.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @IcoRating
Project details
Name: GIFTCOIN
Ticker symbol: GIFT
Project type: Charity
Extended company description: Giftcoin is a token for charity donations.
Company: Gift Coin Ltd.
Website
Whitepaper
ICO details
Public ICO start: 20.03.2018
Public ICO end: 19.04.2018
Token sale duration (weeks): 4
Token type: ERC20
Token emission: 1,000,000,000
Tokens available (Pre-Sale + Public ICO): 100,000,000
Investment goal:
GIFT price: 1 ETH = 10,000 GIFT
Accepted payment: BTC, ETH
Bounty: The program is active from January 27, 2018 until the end of the token sale
Token role: functional
Team
Team (number of people): 5
Advisors and partners (number of people): 16
GitHub: N/A
Project information
Giftcoin is a platform for creating greater trust and transparency in charitable giving.
The long-term vision of Giftcoin is end-to-end giving that allows donors to see exactly
how their money is being spent. As a stepping stone towards this, smart-contracts
will be used to create milestones for projects, with funds only being released when
those milestones have been achieved.
In the future it is also planned to expand Giftcoin to an ecosystem that will include:
the possibility of crediting
provision of financial software
payment systems
etc.
Advisors:
Marc Avedissian (LinkedIn) - Technical advisor. Founder and CEO of
ALTALIX LTD, previously co-founder of Tramonex, employee of Deutsche
Bank, executive director of Goldman Sachs.
Eitan Jankelewitz (LinkedIn) - legal advisor. Partner in Sheridans, previously
employee of Marriott Harrison.
Calum McWhir (LinkedIn) - Consultant on the implementation of FinTech
legislation at Thistle. Freetrade Compliance Officer, previously manager at
Thistle Initiatives Group, Senior Associate at Thistle Initiatives Group.
Lee Davy-Martin (LinkedIn) - Financial Consultant. Co-founder and CFO at
Polymateria, founding partner at Mulberry Bow LLP, partner of Wilson Wright
LLP.
Marketing & PR consultants:
Tom Fry (LinkedIn) - Director and co-founder of Bright Bee PR, previously
consultant at Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS.
John Ndege (LinkedIn) - Co-founder and CEO of Renowned & Co, previously
CEO and founder of Pocket Risk, expert at Seedcamp.
Jonas Karlberg (LinkedIn) - Partner in Sostrene Grene, previously founding
partner of Driveoff ApS, business consultant for 7-Eleven.
Bridget Greenwood (LinkedIn) - Head of marketing at BitcoinBro, Director of
Financial Social Media UK, Partner of Scredible PLC, Director of Auto
Enrolment Advisory Group.
Charity advisors:
Jon Duschinsky (LinkedIn) - Director at Bethechange, co-founder of Oreka
Solutions, previously: co-founder and CEO of AgriProtein North America, The
Conversation Farm.
Lady Astor of Hever (N/A) - charity activist
Shirley Conran OBE (Wikipedia) - British writer.
Partners:
English Heritage - an organization for the protection of historically significant
buildings, monuments and sites.
Optimum health clinic - a fund for research and treatment.
Ourmala - an organization that works with refugees, helping with their physical
and psychological state.
Enhance the UK - organization dedicated to raising the awareness of people
with disabilities.
Grief Encounter - a fund to support people who have lost a loved one.
Best Beginnings - UK child support fund.
Scotty’s Little Soldiers - charity fund for orphanised children left without the
care of the British armed forces.
LST - a fund that supports families with Lowe’s syndrome.
Attracted investment:
Investors:
Mark Hirschfield (LinkedIn) - Investor and advisor at Conscious 2, Auction
Club S.a.r.l, FACE IT Ltd., tutor at TechStars.
Kristopher B. Jones (LinkedIn) - Founder and Co-CEO of Special Guest App,
Founder, President and CEO of KBJ Capital, co-founder of French Girls,
LSEO.com;
Simon Squibb (LinkedIn) - Founder of the Democracy Project, chairman of
Nest.vc, Mettā, founder of Investable.vc.
Jonathan Oakley (LinkedIn) - Founder and director of Moment Music
Publishing, previously: founder and director of JHO Management, Echo
Location Agency;
PSG Capital - investment fund.
Summary
The project is based on the Giftcoin token, created for making charitable
contributions. The project has well-known advisors and a large number of potential
investors.
Strengths of the project:
the project is led by an experienced team of advisors and partners.
the project has a large number of potential investors that have provided the
initial capital.
Weaknesses of the project:
the project states that it will not take commissions for charitable transfers,
while not revealing the channels for its financing.
the market the company will operate in is in a mature stage of development,
characterized by a low level of involvement from new users.
since the project has a large pool of potential investors, we think that the
development of the platform could be organized without an ICO.
Market and Industry
According to Giving USA, donations generated about $390.05 billion in 2017, which
is 2.7% higher than last year. At the same time, individuals donated $281.86 billion
or 72% of the total. This shows an increase of 3.9% compared to 2015.
[https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2017-total-charitable-donations-rise-to-new-high-of-
390-05-billion/],
[https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=42],
[https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/caf-uk-giving-
web.pdf]
The project team states its target as being the general market for charities and non-
governmental organizations (NGOs):
Charity: Market analysis shows that the total volume of charitable donations
worldwide in 2016 amounted to more than $500 billion per year.
NGO: total income of non-governmental (charitable, socially-oriented)
organizations in the US exceeded $2000 billion.
The team’s research shows that donors would give 49% more money to charity if
they could see how that money is used.
Comments: The donation market has a well-formed structure. The project team
considers its market niche as the unifying the charity market and the non-
governmental organization market (charitable and/or socially oriented).
Competitors
In the course of our research, we have identified the following competitors:
Donationcoin - a platform for charitable donations
Missioncoin - a platform for charitable contributions
Givey - a platform for donations
Summary: There are quite a few charitable platforms offering various options
including a wide range of charitable organizations and funds and therefore not all the
advantages of the project listed on its website can be unique. However, the platform
is adapted for networks with a low bandwidth and provides for the integration of other
blockchain applications that could distinguish the project from competitors.
Engineering features of the project
The platform is built on the basis of blockchain technology with smart contracts. It
uses the ERC20 standard for issuing tokens, with most transactions processed
outside the Ethereum network using a separate account. Transactions in Giftcoin are
hashed and the hash is sent back to the Ethereum network.
Any user can see a hash block on the Etheruem blockchain and use this hash to
request the Giftcoin APIs.
Technical description
Donation of funds to charitable purposes will be possible through the purchase of
Giftcoin and its subsequent donation, or via using a wallet which will function as
follows:
a user installs the wallet and associates it with a bank account.
every time a user makes a purchase, his Giftcoin wallet is rounded up to the
nearest dollar and converts the difference to Giftcoin which is stored in the
wallet.
users have three options for using the funds accumulated:
automate the wallet for donations at a selected level every month.
they may donate manually.
accumulate Giftcoin for future use.
Comments: A final decision regarding the technical side of the platform has not yet
been made; the architecture of the platform has not yet been approved and could be
changed. According to the white paper, the project will deal with this issue after the
ICO.
Technical roadmap
In the future, with the development of technology and data amount, it is planned to
implement the following:
July 2018: release of MVP.
September 2018: release of a beta version.
October 2018: final release of the product.
Comments: The team has presented a plan for the implementation of the project but
has not fully revealed its concept for creating an ecosystem or the integration of new
services.
Currently, it is impossible to see a smart contract on open repository.
Documentation
We have analyzed the website and the documentation for sufficiency and
consistency for making an investment decision.
Information about the project is contained in the White Paper. The documentation is
presented in English, Japanese, German, Chinese, Korean and Russian. The project
is described in sufficient detail in the White Paper; the main emphasis is made on the
description of the platform’s operation process.
The website also provides information about the project, the roadmap, the ICO, an
FAQ, competitors, the partners, the team and advisors. The website is presented in
English. The website includes a detailed description of the project as well as
frequently asked questions with answers.
Summary: The documentation enables a comprehensive view of the project. The
working process of the platform is described in sufficient detail.
ICO
Tokens issued for sale: 10%
Public ICO start: March 20, 2018
Token type: ERC20
Accepted payment: BTC, ETH
1 GIFT price: 1 ETH = 10,000 GIFT
Crowdsale duration: 4 weeks, until April 19, 2018
Gifcoin token will serve as a means of donation and operations on the platform.
Tokens sold at the first ICO will be temporary tokens to be exchanged for Giftcoin.
The exchange will need to be made before tokens can be sold on the exchange; it is
expected to be possible after the second ICO in October 2018.
Token limitation: 1,000,000,000
Dividends: none
Additional token emission: no
The token sale is implemented in several stages:
ICO 1: Launch - March 20, 2018;
ICO 2: October 2018.
The sale is available only to pre-registered participants.
To participate in the ICO 1 participants are required to self-certify as an experienced
investor and undergo KYC (Know Your Customer) and Anti-Money Laundering
(AML) testing.
Max goal: $10,000,000
Min goal: $2,500,000
Bonuses:
Bounty
Link to the bounty program: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2830701.0]
The project is allocating $250,000 in GIFT tokens for the bounty. The program is
open in the following areas:
Summary: The project has an extensive bounty program. All conditions for the
program are indicated at the link above. Rewards will be distributed within 30 days of
the end of the token sale.
Token and capital distribution
Tokens and capital are distributed according to the following scheme:
Summary: Tokens do not affect the distribution of shares in the company. The
incentive system is built in such way that it is more profitable to buy tokens earlier.
Founders' tokens will be frozen for one year and will be invested during the following
five years; the founders will be permitted to sell not more than 20% of their allocation
each year.
Development plans
The Roadmap
In October 2018, the second crowdsale, ICO 2, is planned. According to the website,
the project team is currently focused on attracting partners.
According to the project, all raised funds from philanthropists will be donated to
causes directly. However, it is unclear where resources to support the system, its
development, advertising and marketing will come from. We think that the lack of an
inflow of funds into the project will lead to its closure.
Summary: Funds raised at the first crowdsale will be directed to creating the
platform and issuing tokens. We think that the team should test its business model
for charity work.
Team
The team consists of 5 people and 16 advisors. Information about the main team
members based on LinkedIn is given below:
Alex Howard (LinkedIn) - Co-founder. Founder and CEO of Conscious Life,
The Optimum Health Clinic;
Tim Bichara (LinkedIn) - Co-founder. Consultant CPO at Various, founder and
CPO of Conscious 2, managing partner of Nimble Mobile Ltd;
Jon Beddoes (LinkedIn) - Co-founder. Director of Engineering at Avast
Software, co-founder and director of Techtopia Ltd, investor of FACE IT Ltd,
Conscious 2 Ltd.
The team has 2 co-founders.
Summary: All members of the team indicated their affiliation with Giftcoin. The team
is mostly from the UK. Roles in the team are not yet distributed. In addition, it is
necessary to recruit more technical and marketing specialists for a successful
implementation.
Marketing
Information about the project is available on Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, Medium,
LinkedIn, Facebook, Bitcointalk and YouTube and others. The project has a bounty
program.
The team is conducting an advertising campaign on social media. Twitter and
Facebook feature regular news updates.
The format of articles about the project shows that they are written mostly by team
members as a review or information portals as announcements of the next project
staging the ICO.
Comments: Interest in the project is gradually growing. The marketing campaign is
developed mainly on Twitter and Facebook.
Traffic analysis of the Giftcoin website based on Similarweb.com data showed the
following:
Traffic sources: [Similarweb]
Comments: direct link: 13.59, referrals: 46.51, search: 16.31, social media: 14.32,
mail: 9.28
Traffic through searches: 16.31%, 55.20% of which is "organic traffic".
Referral links: 0.4651
Social activity analysis of the Giftcoin website based on BE1.ru data showed the
following:
Traffic sources: [https://be1.ru/stat/giftcoin.org]
Comments: Top 5 countries-visitors: Great Britain -13.16%, Turkey - 10.29%, the
USA - 9.46%, Poland - 7.17%, Russia - 5.69%
Referral links: sociali.io: 14.10%; coingecko.com: 9.03%; ru.investing.com: 8.54%;
tr.investing.com: 8.20%; investing.com: 7.28%
Social activity: Reddit: 55.80%; YouTube: 28.61%; Facebook: 13.50%;
DailyMotion: 1.16%; Twitter: 0.66%
Summary: Based on available data it can be concluded that users are interested in
the project. The team is conducting an active advertising campaign on Twitter and
Facebook, communicates with users via Telegram and has appeared on television.
There are media articles published. Over the past month, the number of website
visits has increased by 28,000 people. However, we note that traffic growth is mainly
due to ad clicks.
Contacts
The developers may be contacted using the links below:
Website
Telegram
Medium
Bitcointalk
Youtube
The information contained in the document is for informational purposes only. The views
expressed in this document are solely personal stance of the ICOrating Team, based on
data from open access and information that developers provided to the team through Skype,
email or other means of communication.
Our goal is to increase the transparency and reliability of the young ICO market and to
minimize the risk of fraud.
We appreciate feedback with constructive comments, suggestions and ideas on how to
make the analysis more comprehensive and informative.