I've just written this in a thread titled "How To Know Good ICO", or something like that.
Let me know what you think. Any pointers or questions would be appreciated.
TL;DR
How do you pick a good ICO?
By picking this one:
https://hadron.cloud/; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2142232.0; https://t.me/joinchat/GahFuELlfJoWE1vsFQf3VQ.
Sign up for the airdrop, apply for the Alpha testing and follow their progress.
You're welcome.
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I see a lot of people here telling others to check websites that rate ICOs, but let me put something to you guys: how do you think those websites decide what ICOs to rate appropriately?
Well, some of the websites will list an ICO in a particular place or in a particular way in the same manner a media outlet will publish a paid release. Yes, you can pay the owners/moderators of those websites to list your ICO in the most marketable way.
Besides that though, when a website decides to list an ICO as promising without being paid, they'll first take a look at a few things to see if it passes the sniff test. What do you guys think those things are? I'll list below what I think they are. They're not in order of what I think is most important as such, but the higher they're up the list the, the more importance I'd give to them (I've run the risk of sounding like I'm contradicting myself there, but just read it again in a different tone and it might be clearer). How all these factors come together, their functionality within their context, is what's really important:
1. The team. This one can sometimes be difficult, as if the team is new and young it might be a little harsh to assume that they can't complete the project. Similarly, if the team decided to remain anonymous (partially or wholly) this can be a huge red flag for people, but there are project that have done well with an anonymous developer/developers. However, if the team has accomplished in areas in the past that are similar/the same as the areas that are going to be engaged in the project, that's great. Token about real estate? Someone who knows real estate is great. Token about solar energy? An environmental engineer is wonderful. And so on. Apart from their past work experience, you should also look at the success of the past projects that certain staff members were involved in, what college they went to and what they studied and how the team engages with the community as a whole. Which brings me to my second point...
2. The community. Again, this is a little tricky because it's a latent signal. That is, you're only going to get a good idea of the project's community when the project has been going for a few months, but you should never underestimate the power of the community. Just try and appreciate how beneficial it is to any project that has hundred or thousands of intelligent, well-mannered and engaging people constantly spreading the word of a project they love across many different mediums and outlets across the internet. This is more true in cryptocurrencies than anywhere else, as we are all very community-driven people and we thrive, even sustain, ourselves off the information, ideas and support we provide one another. Anyone who was involved in the Power Ledger or the Quantstamp ICO process will understand exactly what I mean. There was positive communication throughout. Bad times (I mean, relatively) and good times and inbetween.
3. Communication. From the team to the community. From the community to the team. From the team and the community to the rest of the cryptospace and beyond. Communication is key. (Marketing is part of my definition of communication.) Communications in all cases should be transparent, honest, accessible and nurturing. Communication should never be censored, over-hyped, dense or patronizing. Projects that behave in the latter manners should be questioned, and they're most likely to damage No.2 (Community). Projects that behave in the former manners nearly always have a promising idea that the team are passionate to see out through thick and thin.
4. The idea. This is where the analysis of a project gets a little more interesting (for me anyway). Consider whether or not the idea has many applicable use cases and if it is pertinent to the current cryptoclimate. Both of these are important. I'll use Quantstamp as my example. Quantstamps idea is to provide cost-effective code auditing to smart contracts. Smart contracts are pertinent to the cryptospace and they have many use cases. Business can function almost automatically with them. The project is also marketed as scalable and secure. Scalability and security are two huge issues in cryptocurrency. So this is a solid idea. Projects like Quantstamp make it easy, but some ideas will need a bit more thinking over to really see if they have a place in the current cryptosphere. I'm sure you all understand what I mean though.
5. The product. Mmmmmm yes, the elusive product. Clearly, for those of you who have been in crypto long, the product actually hasn't been of the utmost important within the cryptosphere. Many ICOs have launched successfully and are still going strong without their product being released. Many projects are, to be frank, total vaporware. But don't be fooled into thinking this is okay or that this is going to go on. Over the course of this year I'm almost positive that the standard of ICOs is going to increase drastically and that having a working product come the launch of the token will almost be a necessity. So for those projects that do now have a working product come their first exchange listing, it's not implausible to assume that they're committed and in it for the long run.
6. ICO details. How are the tokens distributed? Tokens should be distributed in a fair and transparent manner. Too many tokens kept for the team can be a bit daunting and raises red flags for a lot of people. Tokens that are distributed solely through sale make the project look like a bit of a money grab. Mining and staking allow for more people to get involved. What is the hard cap for the sale? A very high hard cap (100-200 millino $ +) can worry me at times, but it has to applied in context of what the product will be or what the project intends to do. If the project requires vast amounts of sophisticated hardware then it's reasonable to see a somewhat high hard cap. If the ICO passes every other aspect of the test and it has a low hard cap... well aren't you a lucky boy/girl. (sidenote: apparently over 96% of people in crypto are male, so for those of you who really care for this space, encourage your female counterparts to get involved) (in case you're interested, I'm male) There are other details such as bounty campaigns, KYC/AML policies and the time between the crowdsale finishing and the token being available on exchanges. How you choose to interpret these is just that... how you choose to interpret these. The details are a little more subjective, but any opinions would be appreciated.
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So does Hadron pass my own smell test? Let's see:
1. The team. "... artificial intelligence and crypto visionaries and run by successful serial entrepreneurs..." Paraphrasing their website just wouldn't do it justice, so here's the management team. Check their website to see their mouth-watering advisory board. The teams experience does match the demands of the project though. Without a doubt. This is a copy and paste taken directly from their website:
-Cliff Szu, CEO
Cliff is CEO of decentralized peer-to-peer lending pioneer LoanBack, Inc. LoanBack is one of the first companies in the world to automate peer-to-peer decentralized lending, with hundreds of thousands of registered users and nearly two billion dollars in loans.
Cliff is co-founder of Fanpop, a community-powered network of sites with over fifty million pieces of user-contributed content, millions of users and billions of pages served. Built to last and run autonomously, and going strong over a decade after founding, it features a meritocracy-based self-governance system, a comprehensive virtual currency and democratic elections.
Born and raised on the East Coast, Cliff studied computer science and economics at Stanford. Cliff then joined Good Technology, later acquired by Google, where he was promoted to be the youngest engineering team lead in the company, building secure mobile apps with encrypted enterprise-class wireless messaging.
To date, 100% of his backers have received a positive return on their money, and he is thankful for the opportunity to build great things with them.
-Michael Chu
Michael is a key player in the Fanpop founding team and LoanBack executive team where he has been instrumental in building out the technology and decentralized strategies that have been embraced by millions of users and customers.
A California native, Michael was the youngest ever Novell Certified Netware Engineer: at age 15, he was already designing networks for global giants like Samsung. He won Grand Prize at the prestigious Rockwell International computer science competition, as well as the First Prize in US Department of Energy’s National Science Bowl.
Michael then completed his degree in computer science at Berkeley where he was mentored by the legendary David Patterson. Afterwards, he joined Intel, where he was awarded six patents in Computer Vision as a Microcomputer Graphics engineer and co-authored a paper inventing the revolutionary technique Light Field Mapping. Michael was instrumental in the development and launch of the Intel Centrino platforms, playing an important role in the mobile computing revolution.
-CJ Jones
As a mathematics prodigy, CJ finished most of her college-level coursework in her early teens and attended Santa Clara University, graduating in two years with a degree in mathematics from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.
Her interests lie in cryptography and mobile software development, and her advisor is an authority in cryptography and advisor to RSA. Raised in the heart of Silicon Valley, she brings her invaluable experience and perspectives in cryptography and software development to the Hadron team.
-Dr. Evan Szu
Evan received dual degrees in computer science and chemistry from Brown University where he collaborated with the renowned professor Jim Doll on computer simulation techniques for modeling atomic and molecular motion.
He then completed his Ph.D. from Stanford where he was awarded the highly prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship, an honor bestowed on less than 3% of all graduate students across the entire university. Evan has managed technology product development for over a decade at numerous companies in Silicon Valley.
2. The community. Incredible. People are jumping up in the Telegram group trying to be the first to answer questions. Everyone is curious, engaged and intelligent. There's no FUD, no hype. Just cool, clear thinking from everyone. Considering this hasn't even reached the pre-ICO stage and the team have done minimal marketing so far, the exponential growth of their bitcointalk thread over the past week has been incredible. New people are joining their Telegram by the minute. This is but a fraction of the power of a strong community, and as the project gains momentum we're likely to see thousands of people flocking like seagulls to the Telegram. If you don't believe me then just join the Telegram and say hello and ask a few questions.
3. Communication. Just insultingly good. Like, I mean, it's hard to get across just how active they are with communicating. Cliff, their CEO, actually rang me a few weeks ago just to chat for an hour about the project. I'm just a fucking moon kid. I'm not an accredited investor. But it doesn't matter to them. They are insatiable when it comes to engaging with the community, I've never seen anything like it. They're in no way patronizing or secretive. They never hype their project. They only release information that is absolutely true. Their marketing has up until now been quiet, but as I said, they don't release news they don't have. I'd tell you to keep an eye on them, but you won't have a choice but to know them come the end of this year. Just as a whole communication around the project is wonderful.
4. The idea. Their idea is to utilize the power of everyone's mobile phones, tablets, computers, laptops, consoles, android toasters (courtesy of another hadron member) and more. You run their miner (which is actually a neural network to power advanced AI) and your compensated for your computational contribution. You run the miner through a browser. So you can run multiple instances through multiple browsers. I think each instance needs one core. With the advent of 5G capabilities and with over 3 billion people holding mobile phones, the untapped potential is huge. The idea is definitely pertinent. The advanced AI can be used by different businesses and institutions for things like finding cures for diseases and many broads applications that my tiny head finds difficult to fully understand. Again, join the community and see what you think.
5. The product. The product is not elusive here with the hadron team. The alpha release is due on January 15th for their miner and there will be multiple alpha rounds which you can all apply for. There's absolutely no vaporware here and the team, as far as I understand, intend to have a working product around the time of the tokens release. I may be a little off on that, but you can ask the team and they'll be out-straight with you about it. Hadron's ICO, I'm sure, will be amongst the most successful and talked about ICOs of the year. They're going to raise the bar.
6. The whitepaper is due for release this weekend and all of these details I'm sure will be elucidated.
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The list of past ICOs I've invested in are UTrust, Red Pulse, Solaris and Power Ledger. (You would have thought the way I went on that I invested in Quantstamp. Well I was very late to the party ie when it hit the exchanges.) Those ICOs have been great investments for me, but the potential of their projects, in my opinion, in relatively pale compared to that of Hadron's. This will most likely be the only ICO I invest in for the first half of the year. I want to learn as much about the project as I can and that's going to involve committing a lot of time to it, but I believe it's worth it. Let me know what you think anyways if you bothered to read it.
Don't blame you if you didn't.
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