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Our Statement to Hacked “ICO Analysis: Opiria” Article
Recently, an article about Opiria has been published on the popular Hacked platform, that got several things wrong, which has led to a misguided rating. Whether data about our company was willfully misrepresented or simply flawed data was used, we can not say, nor will we speculate on the matter.
It is our hope, however, that the guidelines for ethical journalism are upheld by Hacked and we are given our “right of reply” — the practice that allows someone that has been targeted in an article/publication, a fair opportunity to reply on that same platform to the criticism given.
In an effort to preserve the reputation of both ourselves and Hacked, we will now endeavor to correct the mistakes made within the Hacked “ICO Analysis: Opiria” article.
Opiria is one of the very few TGE’s that has done an intense due diligence audit. The 6 weeks audit was performed by the New York-based premier utility token research and blockchain advisory firm — Strategic Coin. The audit consisted of the following:
Background checks of the whole team (university degrees, work experience, publications, patents)
Interviews with advisors
Interviews with customers
Review of the whitepaper and PDATA’s token economics
Analysis of the target market and competitors
Analysis of the future strategy
After completing this due diligence audit, Strategic Coin documented the results and findings in a VISTA (Viability and Strategy Assessment) report which can be found here.
Strategic Coin’s Director of Research, Sam Lee, was personally responsible for our due diligence audit and the subsequent report — should it be required, a call can be scheduled to discuss the findings and details of the report.
The section of the article in question that we refute is mainly divided in two parts — ‘Risks’ and ‘Growth Potential’. We will address each in order.
Risks
Risk 1, as presented in the Hacked article:
“The two Founders of Opiria used to be upper management at Ergoneers. The questions that have yet to be answered involve the fact that the Opiria website and whitepaper only mention Ergoneers in their work history section. They never mention patents or partnerships. It seems like the two founders are using Ergoneers’ credibility and technology ideas to inflate the value of their current idea. -2”
The patents that are used by Opiria right now are Dr. Christian Lange’s patents, that were officially issued in 2010 and 2014. They can be found by following the two links below:
Motion capture
Automated Eye Tracking analysis
Ergoneers GmbH was founded in 2005 by Dr. Christian Lange, while doing his Ph.D. at the Technical University of Munich. He was CEO until 2015, when he exited Ergoneers.
Under his leadership, Ergoneers GmbH developed into an international company with its headquarters in Germany, a subsidiary in the USA and more than 20 sales partners worldwide (covering China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, USA, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey).
Being responsible for worldwide sales activities, Christian managed to gather almost all car manufacturers (i.e. Audi, BMW, VW Group, Opel, Porsche, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Hyundai, PSA Group, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and others), truck OEMs (i.e. Freightliner, MAN, PACCAR, Volvo Trucks) and Tier 1 suppliers (i.e. Siemens, Bosch, Continental, Takata, Fujitsu, Honeywell, Garmin, and others) as customers. Besides this, he managed to sell Ergoneers’ software to major Universities and Research Institutes worldwide (i.e. NASA, military research institutes, Fraunhofer Institute, MIT, Stanford, TUM, University of Cambridge, NHTSA, and many others) as well as many Fortune 500 companies (i.e. Microsoft, Intel, Google, Apple, Nokia, Samsung, P&G, and Nestle).
Over the years, Christian has built strong relationships with these companies, that are still maintained to this day.
Marlene Gagesch joined Ergoneers GmbH in 2008, as its first employee. Before joining, she was requirement manager at Siemens Healthcare. Marlene was head of the software development department until she left the company in 2015. Under her leadership, Ergoneers’ developed the D-Lab software into an industry standard in the automotive industry, which was and still is used by almost all automotive OEMs, suppliers and related Universities and Research Institutes.
In a nutshell: Dr. Christian Lange and Marlene Gagesch were the central figures behind developing Ergoneers into the company it is today; now they are using their experience, knowledge, and network to develop Opiria into an international multi-million dollar company.
Risk 2, as presented in the Hacked article:
“They say their platform is being used by all those car companies. But the only evidence of this is Ergoneers’ prior innovations. Opiria’s “working product” that they are hyping up so much, is lackluster. It’s simply a survey that supposedly users get paid to take. There is no way companies are paying for this app. See for yourself -2”
Opiria’s platform is, in fact, used by the customers presented on the website. This can be confirmed by the due diligence audit (see VISTA report), as well as the following:
Mercedes Benz Research in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley), provided a case study explaining how they use Opiria to better understand the needs and requirements of their customers.
Our platform is not only used as a tool by our clients — they also strongly support our product and project. Dr. Wolfram Remlinger from Audi AG in Germany, even decided to enter Opiria’s advisory board, as can be seen on our website. Dr. Remlinger’s LinkedIn profile can be found here.
Opiria is also supported by the European Parliament, since it is fully compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines. Daciana Sarbu — an elected member of the European Parliament — has also decided to enter Opiria’s advisory board, as can be seen on our website. Daciana Sarbu’s official statement of support towards Opiria can be found here.
The Opiria app can be downloaded for free from the Apple and Android App Store. However, companies pay an annual license fee for using the Opiria platform — a browser-based application that allows its users to understand their customers’ needs and requirements in real-time. Opiria’s product website can be found here.
In addition, Opiria’s development is ahead of the planned roadmap, already able to compensate consumers with PDATA tokens. The world premiere of this functionality took place at Bitgosu’s meetup in Seoul, where more than 600 attendees participated live in the survey.
Risk 3, as presented in the Hacked article:
“The 21,000 Telegram members are either fake or paid. They are advertising very hard and must have some kind of bounty program. The team hired Amazix to run their ICO promotions and social media. All my questions were answered promptly by either copy pasting me a whitepaper page, or saying “we will ask the team about that and get back to you”. They still haven’t got back to me 48 hours later.-3”
Every single one of our over 22,000 Telegram members are real people, that have joined our community because they wanted to do so. We used various promotion techniques for all our social media channels, including Telegram, so they can reach a larger audience, potentially interested in our project.
This is a standard approach to increasing follower count and spreading awareness about the project — there is nothing fake about it. Furthermore, our Telegram channel is bustling with activity, as many of our followers are very active. Fake accounts are not active and don’t engage in conversations. As you can check any time you want, the conversations are always flowing on our channel.
AmaZix is managing the now over 22,000 Telegram members with a team of 12 people, who ensure questions are answered promptly, 24/7. AmaZix is a leader in community management and delivers high-quality services — this is why we’re working with them.
Of course, there is an FAQ in place with standard answers to recurring questions, that only need to be copy & pasted. Reinventing the wheel every single time isn’t very effective.
Risk 4, as presented in the Hacked article:
“These guys are running some sort of bounty program cause the advertising is insane. However, their whitepaper does not mention allocating tokens for bounties. In fact, their token allocation is the vaguest thing ever. 60% for the people 20% for the team and 5% for advisers. This is unacceptable. -3”
The Bounty program is published in the whitepaper on page 67, together with the percentage of PDATA tokens allocated to it.
As a matter of fact, the original Hacked analysis also has the bounty percentage visible, right above the text “In terms of fund allocation, they don’t break down percentages, […]”. We are rather perplexed as to how the author in question missed information he himself put in his article.
Furthermore, while the author of the Hacked article accuses us that we did not break down our fund allocation, right above his statement is this:
60% Crowdsale
13% Development
20% Company/Team
5% Advisors
2% Bounty
This clearly is a summary of our fund allocation breakdown (p.67 of our whitepaper), the very thing the author said we did not have. Within this same segment, the article also levels the following accusation at us:
“In terms of fund allocation, they don’t break down percentages, The following is word for word how they explain where the funds will go:
Opiria platform development: technical development of the platform
Opiria platform global expansion: Enter new markets, found local subsidiaries, acquire existing local companies
Grow consumer database: Acquisition of panel companies, initial compensation for signing up, marketing activities”
The bullet points above have been taken from page 67 of our whitepaper. We would simply like to mention that the percentage breakdown is shown via a pie chart — situated at the top of the very next page (p.68).
Risk 5, as presented in the Hacked article:
“There will no doubt be numerous competitors to Opiria in the future. -1”
There is and will, of course, be competition, since data brokerage is an existing 250 billion USD/year market, which has an average annual growth rate of 13,5%.
Currently, the two biggest competitors in the blockchain data brokerage space are Datum and DataWallet. However, Opiria has several strong advantages over our competitors, namely:
Working product — on the market since December 2016;
2. Existing customers such as Mercedes, Audi, VW, BMW, Nissan, GM, Procter & Gamble, and Intel, to name just a few;
3. The company has already shown profits in 2018;
4. Experienced team (management and developers) that knows how to develop and implement a product that works worldwide, 24/7, as has been shown by the Opiria-Platform, that is currently being used worldwide, by major corporations;
5. Successful due diligence audit with an independent New York-based firm — Strategic Coin. The audit lasted 6 weeks and looked at our financials, reviewed the product, interviewed customers and advisors, did a background check of our whole team, analyzed the market, reviewed the Whitepaper, the token economics and, our strategy. The resulting report can be found here.
6. 13 years of experience in the data space, thanks to our CEO’s long history in the field;
7. A perfect combination of profile, subjective data, and objective data:
Competitors neglect the importance of consumer profiles, while Opiria places a strong emphasis on this aspect, as personal data without a related consumer profile has little value.
More objective and subjective data points than the competition (they mostly focus on either tracking web browsing behavior or social media activity):
More objective data points that result in a much wider approach:
Web browsing
Web eye tracking (when using laptop, tablet)
Emotion analysis (when using laptop, tablet, smartphone)
Online purchases
Social media
Location
Smart devices (IoT enabled devices)
Wearables
Usage of smartphone/tablet (mobile devices)
Subjective data — unlike our competitors, we allow companies to also gather subjective data (e.g. feedback about how a product or service is used; opinion about different topics) via different methods, such as surveys, mobile diaries or focus groups
9. Compliant with the requirements of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
10. Support from the European Parliament
11. Supported and used by major Fortune 500 companies: Audi AG’s Dr. Wolfram Remlinger, for example, is on our advisory board
12. Two strong patents that protect our core technologies: eye tracking and motion capture (allows the recording and analysis of valuable data that no other competitor is capable of providing)
Growth Potential
Growth Potential 1 & 2, as presented in the Hacked article:
“As you can see, the team has plans to earn $250 million in revenue by 2023. Nothing wrong with dreaming big. There is something like 2 billion people using smartphones. +2”
&
“The Cambridge Analytica/Facebook investigation brought a lot of data privacy concerns to light. It seems like the world is ready for a project similar to this.+3”
It is important to know that Opiria has the complete opposite approach than Facebook. With Opiria, the user is in full control of his data and can decide what data he/she wants to sell and to whom they want to sell it to. Opiria has already been called the “anti-Facebook” and journalists have also published articles supporting this. An interesting one can be found here.
Growth Potential 3, as presented in the Hacked article:
“We were skeptical, and can’t find evidence of partnerships or patents to such state of the art technology as Eye Tracking modules, and wearable exercise trackers. But it looks like they could possibly be getting it from their previous company https://www.ergoneers.com/en/data-capture-software-and-analysis-software/d-lab/eye-tracking/ . +3”
As explained in the very first ‘Risk’ section, Dr. Christian Lange is the owner of two patents: Automated Eye Tracking analysis and Motion capture (automatically measures the movement of a person’s head, which then allows one to understand facial expressions and related emotions).
On the subject of gathering data from “exercise trackers” (i.e. smart-watches, fitness trackers, etc), it is easy enough to do, by interfacing with the Apple Health app and the Google Fit app. No patent is necessary to do this.
Growth Potential 4, as presented in the Hacked article:
“Their major competitor in blockchain is DATUM, whos current market cap is $40 million. Datum on paper is less attractive than Opiria, as they only focus on a few objective channels (mostly social media) and neglect subjective opinions and consumer profiling. They also don’t have a customer base or working product. +3”
Correct! In addition to the information stated, they will likely run into major issues with achieving compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We believe this to be the case, based on how they describe the way they intend to handle the personal data of their future users.
We hope this article has cleared up any misconceptions about Opiria & PDATA and we thank you for your time.
