Projects that are currently getting ready for the upcoming ICOs are surprisingly varied, which is quite revealing, since Blockchain technologies will be applied in a wide variety of economic and social areas. In this summary l will review several projects from entirely different economic sectors, which are especially noteworthy.
CryptoTicketsProject (Russia)
CryptoTickets is the project developed by the already existing Blockchain-based Tickets Cloud company. Tickets Cloud is an active open platform designed to distribute tickets on a global scale. Transferring reciprocal payments by Ticket Cloud members to the decentralized Blockchain-based Tickets Chain system will allow to expand and run this business more effectively. All transactions within the system will be made in TCN internal tokens. The CryptoTickets system will also develop a Tickets Wallet to be used in the decentralized storage of crypto tickets and of the system’s internal tokens.
The organizers will be able to issue crypto tickets within the framework of the Blockchain system, which excludes the possibility of a counterfeit and of mass speculative resales and leads to a new level of communication among crypto ticket owners and them.
A TCN is a currency used to purchase tickets, to return them and to get remuneration from companies using the ticket-sale system.
The centralized and decentralized models of the platform will be ready in 3 and 6 to 8 months respectively, so a long-term investment of HardCap at a rate of 23 million US$, which is an average sum for such a market. Aventus, a recent rival project in terms of ticket sales, has successfully closed an ICO, with a profit of 15 million US$. Interestingly, CryptoTickets has an exclusive agreement with the EON platform that CryptoTickets will be the only ticket company on their Blockchain.
Despite some positive aspects of this project, the following points make participation in it questionable: demand for tokens and circulation of tokens on the ticket services market. Is Blockchain that important in this area, will this concept be in demand in the near future and, if yes, to what extent? Can a project exist and develop without using tokens, as it has done before? All this questions make participation in this ICO questionable, aseptically given the presence of other more promising international projects.
2. Request Network Project (Switzerland)
Request Network, a solid technological project in fintech, is a decentralized network that allows any user to make payment requests (that is, to issue invoices), with which the payee can make secure payments. Payment information and other confidential information are stored in the decentralized wallet/register, which results in cheaper, easier and safer payments and ensures a wide range of opportunities for API automation and integration.
Using Request Network
- accounts are subject to decentralized registration, meaning accounts between two parties are not duplicated and there is no risk of losing an account;
- the payee confirms the account in a short period of time;
- the payer is immediately notified of a payment request and decides whether to pay now or to be reminded of this request later (for instance, within the requested deadline).
The Request network protocol is an ideal candidate for developing online payment systems. As an example, a standard purchase on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) will be:
- user-friendly, since you will only have to confirm the payment request on your cell. You won’t have to make a payment and you don’t share your financial information with Amazon;
- cost-effective for the seller, since payment transactions don’t require participation of third parties, such as PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL), which charge considerable service fees for payment transactions;
- secure, because you no longer need a central body to store your data and to carry out transactions.
REQ tokens (ERC 20 standard) participate in a mandatory manner in the Request network system to create and to carry out advanced requests. The REQ are paid as commission to the participants in the Request Network and to the developers of this extension. Moreover, after Ethereum’s shift to Casper, the transaction fee will be paid in the network’s REQ tokens instead of ETH (gas bills).
The following points are the undeniable advantages of the project:
Request Network is a universal payment protocol and payment request gateway or, basically, a decentralized and much cheaper version of PayPal. The project’s developers are aspiring to replicate the success of OmiseGOby creating a supplementary platform instead of rivaling them.
The Request team comprises highly experienced developers and builds its platform by adopting a number of technologies, including 0x, Aragon and Civic. The project has announced its cooperation with iExec, an Ethereum-based distributed cloud computing platform.
My conclusion is that Request Network it is the most promising product among the latest fintech start-ups. This sector is still attracting considerable investments and remains highly popular.
3. Vrcoin Project (Russia)
VRCoin is an ambitious virtual reality project gaining more popularity from year to year. Since 2015, the VRCoin team has been developing a technology that would instantly transfer human movements into virtual reality by means of special Motion Capture cameras and a system of active position markers. VRCoin has so far developed a model based on a unique technology, to be tested in late September 2017 on the 60*120m venue. The team plans to launch VR parks all over the world, the first international location being a venue in Dubai. Preliminary agreements have been reached for construction of a VR park in this region.
The team plans to adopt the Blockchain technology to control the players’ ratings and achievements and to manage the project’s tournaments and ecosystem. One of the problems Blockchain is designed to solve is the fact that franchises underrate the turnround of their companies to make less royalty payments. Blockchain controls the franchises’ financial flows, since it is impossible to activate the gameplay without confirmation of payment.
The VR token will be used as the ecosystem’s interior currency entitling participants to discounts for acquiring franchises, to purchases in the VR store, to payments for participation in cyber sportive competitions, and more.
Examining each project I look at the team behind it, then I evaluate a product model (in case of VRCoin both points are quite strong). The third step is to determine the speed of the project’s growth and, consequently, the prospect of the massive use of tokens. In this case the investments are of long-term nature only, so myself the decision would be not to purchase VRCoin tokens for the time being.