That's right so my interest is measuring and therefore identifying legitimate projects. I'm looking at this from the perspective of traditional markets, how to filter out the noise and provide a list of projects that wouldn't look out of place on an ESG list.
There's an interesting shift happening on traditional markets where companies as well as being listed by their financial scores are listed by their ESG scores. Funds are increasingly looking at both rankings and choosing investments not only based on financial performance but also on their ESG performance. Why? Well for many reasons including an increasing trend for investors placing money into funds seeking out funds with a social conscience and so its in the interest of large funds to show the ESG rankings of their investments. Also, family offices are also developing a social conscience and seeking out "good" projects.

Bu there's a risk that the crypto space falling far behind the social good of traditional markets which is madness when the heart of Bitcoin originally was to build a better system. When you have banks and equity funds protecting small investors and doing social good while the crypto and defi space just rips people off for quick returns its undermines the good that many hoped for.

So I came into this to look at how we can look beyond lambo's and the Moon and get rich quick schemes that get granny to invest her savings in the latest scam ICO.

If we were to build an ESG index or a set of ESG indexes that ranked quality projects not only by the percentage return but by ESG metrics then what metrics would we use and what projects today would be good contenders?

@hugeblack
I'm not sure it's true that green projects will always get funding, there's plenty of green startups fighting over startup grants, incubator spaces and seed funding.

@Mulann2
I think you're right, health and financial security are very important for everyone. There are subgroups such as disabled people with additional challenges but your two identified areas would apply to everyone.

I’m compiling a funding list for fund managers with an interest in ESG crypto/blockchain projects and I’m interested to learn of the projects/coins you feel deserve the most support and access to funding in the following categories.

Health projects
Green projects
Poverty relief projects
Child welfare projects
Disability projects
Gender equality projects
Shariah compliant projects
Animal welfare projects
Privacy rights projects
Community support projects
AI projects
Cybersecurity projects

Which projects do you feel are the best in any of these categories?

We're released a new wallet MVP today on Android and will be on iOS in a few days and so as an MVP it's good to get some initial feedback.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atlas.mobile.wallet

It's a DeFi wallet built on three pillars.

1. Educate. Get people's knowledge up to a safe level. We're building training materials and short courses to get people educated about DeFi such as the terminology, risks, investment types, different coins and services.

2. Support. Get people to complete a personal policy statement so they think through what returns they want to get, their risk appetite, understand the tax implications etc. Build a plan.

3. Provide tools. The Cent app is to be as easy to use as possible and provide the features to invest and manage investments safely. A curated list of services and coins although users can add their own through settings. Build out the features to open up DeFi to a wider audience.

But this is the first MVP so lowest fees (0.5% in the UK for example), core set of features, pen tested and ready to start collecting early feedback as we continue to work on the other features.

From our research, broader adoption of DeFi needs more than just technology. People don't understand DeFi, have trust issues with DeFi which gets caught up in negative crypto news stories and find it difficult to access a range of reputable coins and services.

So our objective is to tackle these issues. Work with regulators, educate, get people to plan their investments, curate what's available but make it broad enough to allow people to manage their investments in one place.

KYC in minutes, bank transfers in hours, debit card payments instantly so reduce the time to get going once the app is installed.
Deposit fees as low as 0.25%.
User controlled transaction fees.
Curated list of crypto but can add 300+ crypto for debit purchases.
Usability features like using an email address and account recovery.

But it's the MVP so personalised education and investment policy statements are in the process of being added. There's a channel for questions in the Catalyst Discord group. https://[Suspicious link removed]/catalyst-network

I will play devils advocate a bit here since there is another side to this to be cautious of.

I do agree that community is important, it helps to validate ideas and feedback new ideas which should lead to a better overall project.
But today, communities are used as a metric for fund raising and so many communities are just fake accounts created because it's an expected metric. I've seen a few really dull sounding projects with thousands of members and very little actual activity or activity clearly from a small number of people running multiple accounts. I would prefer a smaller community of real people than a larger community of fake accounts but since its now a requirement for a project to have thousands of members then we get mostly fake communities.

But I do agree with the value of community and that a good, active community of real contributors is really great to see and brings a lot of value to a project.

I might be unpopular for saying this but I think the crypto winter has been a good thing for the industry because it's raised the bar for projects to succeed which helps to weed out weaker projects.
The trouble is some terrible projects still make it through, never underestimate a big name associated to a project to draw a fan base to part with its money.

But I see signs that we are emerging from the crypto winter and good projects have made it through and we are starting to see some new ideas and applications.
A project I'm working on is Catalyst which I believe is strong although that's a personal opinion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5167119.msg52403528#msg52403528).
I do see other interesting projects though, it's just finding them in a field of ill thought out ideas but the winter has helped a bit to thin out the worst ideas.

It's not easy to find the right opportunities, I think you have to conduct your own due diligence on projects.
You need to consider the technology, the team, go to market strategy, clients, pretty much everything you would do if you were looking to buy shares in a startup.

Then join their community which might be a small local community or an international community but a word of caution around community. Big communities can be fake communities and should be a warning sign. I've seen the most dull projects boasting of 5,000 Facebook and Telegram members and when I've jumped in to see who might be involved in such a niche community I've found a large community with no activity. I personally would prefer a smaller community of real people than a larger community of fake accounts.

I will list one project as a project to watch and for full transparency I am affiliated with it and so as with all things in this space, do your own due diligence.

Catalyst protocol has been pretty much silent about its plans for a token generation event. There are high quality papers published, the code base is highly advanced in development and will be fully open sourcing over the next several months. But there are already third parties working on the core code base including teams working on core code bases for projects such as Ethereum and IPFS through an early birds program. The public Catalyst network will be run by an independent foundation but the core code base has been developed by the London based technology firm Atlas City Global. Atlas City is focused more on the corporate client market with some very big brands everyone will know well working with Atlas City on environmental and sustainability projects.

So pluses for the project include the following:

- A highly skilled team of engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs. The chairman is highly regarded in the city having formed 3 FTSE 100 companies along with senior management from some of the biggest tech companies in the world such as Facebook and some highly regarded asset managers.
- A professionally engineered original code base, highly modular by design, a high level of code coverage and unit tests
- Some impressive PoC's already in the pipeline for the network
- Around $5 million raised privately to date to fund the project over the past 18 months so this isn't just a couple of people pushing an idea and white paper.

Now the reason I mention this project is the community is small but growing since the last 18 months has been all engineering and partner building but there are now quickly advancing plans to launch the public network with an IEO or other token event. That means there will be opportunities over the coming weeks to pick up tokens for activities such as contributing to engineering or the community as well as the purchasing of tokens early.

Catalyst project
https://catalystnet.org/

Atlas City which will be working on the
http://atlascity.io/

A couple of the social media links for the upcoming network.
https://t.me/CatalystNetOrg
https://twitter.com/catalystNetOrg?lang=en

But do your own due diligence, decide what kind of project you want to be a part of, perhaps it's dApps or wallets or environmental projects or payment rails projects. Then see who's in that space, decide which has the best team, technology and plan, pick two or three out and go with them. There's so many projects out there that you can't evaluate them all so I think it's better to narrow into one sector, dive deeper into that sector and then back two or three good horses.

Just to add to this, I've found several good, ethical exchanges so there are some out there and hopefully they will drag up the more questionable exchanges. So do your due diligence on the exchange. I've heard there's a project running to list all the exchanges running IEO's along with a rating and look at their practices to call out the bad exchanges and highlight the good.

Libra is good for the industry but boring as a project.

There's nothing in the Libra project that I find particularly exciting or new. But it is showing use cases in business and is adding a level of commercial validation, that there are real businesses and uses for crypto outside of a small crypto community. It's in the newspapers, on TV, people are discussing it. That's all great for the industry I feel. I don't see Libra dominating though, hopefully it will help other more interesting projects to flourish.

IEO's are still evolving but they shouldn't be looked at presently as fund raising mechanisms but more as a mechanism to distribute tokens in a very visible way and with a level of KYC and AML.

This isn't me being down on IEO's, I've had exchanges say the same thing to me.
Some exchanges take a high up-front fee and in exchange they bring together a large number of vetted participants, a high level of marketing and a very visible way to launch a coin on the market. There is a steep up-front fee but you get a level of quality for it.
Some exchanges take little or no up-front fee but they require you to have a fund at least twice the size of the target raise already in place. This fund is for buying back coins sold in the IEO to support the price and put it up to at least 2X which is sufficient for the IEO participants to exit. Less up front fee but more ongoing cost. The reason is that this expenditure is to support the fee and raise awareness of a new coin through an exchange.

Regardless of route there's a high cost element at the start, whether you're paying fees or creating a fund to support a coin sale price. So an IEO is more of a marketing tool and way to launch a new coin to market rather than a way to raise money for a project.

But the IEO market is changing and I hope that more projects tackle IEO's in an ethical way, being more transparent. I do see potential for IEO's and there have been some interesting IEO projects, I'd like to see a report on how many IEO's there have been, how many made a project for investors, how much was raised for projects taking into account buy backs of coins, how many projects went on to financial success. We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, we should as an industry be working to make all token events including IEO's as clean as possible.

I'd also add to that list, ask the question what the ICO is for?

Most ICO's are pure fund raising and the resulting product could run just as well without its own token. Many do make sense beyond fund raising such as a protocol needing an economy or tokenisation of assets but ask yourself what's behind the ICO and whether the token itself is necessary.

- Look at the website. If it's full of typo's or broken features then it doesn't bode well.
- Look at the team. Too many ICO's are run by students with an idea. Look for an experienced team with some history and solid credentials
- Look at their ICO advisors. Many ICO advisory firms have sketchy roots themselves but some have solid histories and backgrounds like Swisscom or C Block Capital. The point is these reputable firms conduct due diligence on the teams, their white papers and their offering and only take on the small minority of solid offerings.
- * Look at their white paper. I've put a star here because actually I don't think this is the best approach for many people. It's like telling someone to read a medical report and decide on the best treatment or engine diagnostics to choose the best car to invest in. It's still worth doing but unless you're a blockchain expert then you may find the white paper only of limited help. I've read 100 page white papers that look slick but have no meaningful content and I've read 20 page white papers that contain the seeds of something great. I think it's better to follow the direction of a solid ICO advisory firm who have the experts to do the deep dives.
- Look at their wider business offering. Do they have clients already or partnerships? Do they have technology developed or is it just an idea and white paper? Leonardo da Vinci designed a flying machine, it doesn't mean he could build it.

Approach it like an IPO, look at the business, the team, the idea and ask all the normal due dilligence questions like who are these people? What have they achieved before? What have they actually built? What does the ICO advisory firm who did the technology deep dive think of the overall offering?

If you do that you'll find that 99% of ICO's go into the waste bin while 1% are good buys.

For full disclosure, I have no association with those ICO advisory firms although I have delt with them and many others and have found them to be highly professional, selective and protective of their own reputations and brands. I do however work for the London based Atlas City which will be running an ICO in early 2019, supported by the leading ICO advisory firms in Switzerland and Hong Kong. The ICO isn't listed yet although if you're interested in the project then it's worth connecting with them to learn about the private ICO period. As a business we've spent months asking that very question, what makes a good ICO for the business and for token buyers and as part of that we've been engaged with different ICO advisory firms, law firms, banks and anyone else we felt could help to test our approach.

https://atlascity.io/
For a bit of background, Atlas City formed from R&D work that started in 2012 under the European Commission in partnership with European water utilities, universities and businesses and which ultimately led to the ground up design and development of a very different kind of blockchain inspired DLT, designed to scale and work securely even when managing critical utility infrastructure.

2018 has seen this work advance including the first MVP deployed as a test network used by partners in industries from supply chain to financial and legal services. Personally I think Atlas City will be one of the biggest ICO's of 2019 since its being planned so methodically and comes with technology already at an advanced stage of development, partnership agreements, corporate client relationships and an active program of workshops, hackathons and meetups. 2019 sees this work expanding as well as media engagement starting with the documentary series Great British Business in partnership with a leading British newspaper and TV networks.

I'm not going to list out the details here since that'll all come with the ICO launch in January and this isn't the place for an ICO presentation but I mention the above to give disclosure of where my views are formed and what I consider to be the right approach to running an ICO. If you are interested in the project then there's a link on the home page of the Atlas City website for anyone who wants to find details for the private ICO period or you can throw me a message and I can forward details to someone to get decks sent out.

If you're based in London then be sure to subscribe to the Twitter account https://twitter.com/AtlasCity_io  which lists out various announcements including the monthly meetup details in Paddington. Also Atlas City engages with local universities and business schools and so if you're looking for an internship or to run some research then it's worth getting in touch as well.

Happy and safe ICOing.

Sounds like it would be a useful app, maybe something that also generates events to alert other apps, email/sms notifications and exports reports in formats such as Excel.

NIST is working on a timeline of around 5 to 10 years before publishing recommendations of the best quantum resistant algorithms to apply.
There's a lot of great work already going on and already a range of algorithms to choose from, the question which are the most efficient and reliable and ultimately which get NIST backing and make it into standards.

With regards to timelines, I often hear two opinions, neither of which I have any reason to accept over the other.

The first is that practical quantum computing is still a decade away and so there's time to get this right through NIST. That could very well be true.
The second is that quantum computing is more advanced that is publicly understood and is in part why a certain agency is accelerating the replacement of their Suite B cryptography suite with a new quantum resistant suite.

Whatever the truth, we need to follow standards bodies like NIST and work methodically to get things right.

I think it's fair to say it wasn't engineered code.
Great insights that got the codebase started but it wasn't written by a professional software engineer. It doesn't take anything away from the accomplishment though.

Any growth would be nice right now.

But if I had the choice of growth type I'd go for steady since any stable currency or economy needs smooth and steady movements.

It needs to be open source, audited even if it's by a few people in the community or academics.

A great idea but there's no way I'd link anything to my Coinbase or any crypto account without being 100% sure that I could trust it.

It's always good to see new initiatives.
Sure it's not Facebook but on the plus side, it's not Facebook.

I'd suggest a lot of A B testing and trying different ideas out. Find what works and hopefully you will find that winning formula.

Good luck

It sounds like fun, perhaps introduce new currencies which can be mined for activities in game.
Kill a mob, make some armour, complete a task etc. These events trigger the creation of new currency which can be exchanged in-game or through an onchain exchange for other currencies.

I like the idea of marrying up digital currencies with games although creating a fun game seems like the most challenging bit.

We're looking for senior C++ blockchain developers to work in a senior or lead position as part of a new team at Atlas City. You would need solid experience working as a senior software engineer on at least one other blockchain protocol project and be able to work from our offices in London. Good rates of pay, pension, share options etc. We're always recruiting for different teams but this is our most immediate focus.

https://atlascity.io
jobs@atlascity.io

They're pointless IMHO.

The concept is great, a site where you go and find all the upcoming opportunities, perhaps ranked in some meaningful way and with expert opinion thrown in.
The reality is that anyone can list their ill thought out idea then pay to get a boost to the sexy section on the front page. All you're seeing is a ranking of who paid the most to get their idea pumped to the top of the list which could be the inverse of how good the project is since the people with the best ideas and convictions are less likely to pay for such a pump and find themselves listed somewhere out of sight.

If you want to find what to invest in then you have to do the homework, talk to people involved in or following projects and do the usual due dilligence.

Just my opinion based on what I've seen in the past.