TRADOVE REVIEW
Following popular demand, here is my take on Tradove ICO.
As a former eCommerce business start-up employee and being in the sourcing industry and hearing from a lot of people being scammed either with low quality products or not receiving their orders from china, Taiwan etc. I believe this blockchain implementation has a huge potential.
At this moment, the only way of protecting yourself from fraudulent sellers and buyers is escrow/ PayPal or letter of credit from your bank. All these are coming with some hefty transaction fees that you must account for if you want to minimize the risk.
On the other hand, bank transfer is the most common type of clearing payments because attracts lower fees. This is used if a business trust has been formed over the years between two or more companies.
This is where Tradove can really shine. You can basically put in an order of 1000 yoga mats to a factory in china, with clear defined specifications such as delivery date, thickness, colour, logo, packaging etc. Once these criteria are met the contract is executed and everyone is happy.
Now lets look at the facts.
THE TEAM
I’m happy to see that most of the team has their LinkedIn Profiles easy to find and their background looks good. I’m not going to do much research here as everything seems to look ok.
Most of the team works on this project on a part-time basis as they are also working for other companies.
I did however look up Mr. Kent J Yan a bit more in detail but couldn’t find much about his professional life. His former business Braincess has no reviews at all, the website is not working anymore. This is rather odd as a company with 10+ years in the industry tends to have a bit more substance and online presence.
WHITEPAPER
The document starts with listing B2B problems such as lack of trust, identify business partners and transparency.
Tradove value proposition:
Shorten the search time and identifies potential partners in a credible way
Make B2B more transparent and reduce due diligence time
Precision B2B advertising
Enhances trust in B2B dealings and payments
Operational status
Many companies currently promoting or offering tokens are in the concept stage. TraDove is not.
TraDove Business Social Network has been in operation for five years and rests on a mature web platform (
https://www.tradove.com) and iOS mobile app.
TraDove has developed a proprietary process to vet potential new members efficiently. (Wishful thinking, explanation below)
The website is a search directory, similar to ALibaba but lacking its features.
I’ve had a look at the 5 years old website, as a guest with no account, and these are my initial impression:
Browsing Companies - Companies are listed alphabetically, there is not a way of sort by country/region/sector/trade
Browse Products/Services - All the products/services are listed alphabetically. There is no structure. For example: aircraft warning lights are on the same page with airbag padlock and alloy metal jewellery plated.
Leads: - Again no structure. Cavendish bananas growers are listed together with red bull energy drinks distributors and stationery manufacturers.
There is some work to be done to revamp the website to make it more intuitive.
Then we are being told that: unlike LinkedIn, which is not suitable for business, Tradove takes pride in its proprietary process to authenticate its users in its general network. It is much harder to fake a profile.
It is a social network tailored for corporate buying and selling people. It seamlessly connects business people, products/services and companies together to share knowledge, experience and opportunity in a much more relevant way.”
Naturally I went on to create a random profile to check what their vetting process is and what their means of authenticating and vetting new members are.
1. I filled in my details and I’m prompted with following message:
Congratulations! You have been approved to join TraDove. An activation link has been sent to your email address. Please click the URL to activate you account. If the email does not appear, please check your junk mailbox.
Upon checking my email, I am told that I’ve been allocated to TraDove Small Biz Private Network because I didn’t use a valid company email.
In the Small Biz Network, you can experience all the functions provided by TraDove and communicate with our worldwide community of small business buyers and sellers.
2. I created my user as a seller and was sent to a page where you can complete your personal profile. They can link you to your LinkedIn address or you can manually insert the details.
I skipped this and was sent to Company profile. Here you are required to fill in your company name, Country, Industry, Annual sales, number of employees and website.
After giving your details you can upload your LinkedIn connection files (if you chose to have LinkedIn attached to your LinkedIn profile) or send a Business Circle invitation by email.
What, is that it? No more questions, maybe some proof that I’m selling what I said I am? Business certificate? Maybe some reviews from happy customers?
Unfortunately it is harder to get a Facebook profile or register on coinbase than having a basic seller profile on Tradove.
There are 4 accounts level right now: Basic, Gold, Platinum and Unlimited. I had a look at the profiles registered on the website, all the ones I’ve seen have 0 endorsements.
I then checked their groups’ suggestions and I found a total of 4 threads with no activity at all.
Tradove Differentiation“Our emphasis on traffic quality and not just quantity keeps our operational costs low and increases both business users value and our profit margins. “On their blog area, there are regular posts however there is no interaction at all, 0 comments across the board.
Also all their posts look a bit like copy/paste from other sources. I don’t see the emphasis on traffic quality reflecting in their content and users value right now is inexistent.
Next Step: Blockchain TechnologyTo solve the fundamental B2B trust problem, in international trade in particular, TraDove will use BBCoins and blockchain technology - smart contracts and smart wallets, for example. We will assure that, after successful delivery of products or services, companies get paid.
Tradove coin offeringTradove will create an ERC20 standard token on the Ethereum platform and will issue tokens to Ethereum wallets.
The BBCoins(tokens) are used to let buyers and sellers find one another and maintain a relationship in return for membership and opportunity fees (e.g., opportunity to advertise and pitch to buyers) in BBCoins.
TraDove cap = 1,000,000,000 BBCoins
**TERMS AND CONDITIONS**
**If there is a Dissolution Event (as defined below), the Company will make commercially reasonable efforts to reimburse Investments received from Investors, but the Company cannot guarantee that sufficient funds will be available for any such reimbursement.
**There are substantial restrictions on the transferability of the SAFT, and there will be no public market for the SAFT. A SAFT may not be offered, sold or transferred in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. In particular, a SAFT may not be transferred unless in compliance with applicable federal securities laws. Any transfer of a SAFT made in violation of securities law restrictions will be treated by the Company as void.
The Tokens will be used for certain services and to reward Network participants for the healthy functioning of the Network, including, among others, the uses listed below.
It is also possible that third-party exchange services may accept the Tokens and exchange them for sovereign fiat currency or other crypto assets. There is no guarantee, however, that any third party uses of Tokens or the Network will develop.
Note : SAFT=Simple Agreement for Future Tokens
CONCLUSION
There isn’t much happening on their website which has 250K+ users.
Over 5 years you would have expected for a community to have been formed, but there is not one there yet.
For anyone who has done any product sourcing of any kind, most of the time you spend on due diligence and trying to create some trust with the seller.
Right now I can tell you 1000% that no serious buyer will touch this with a bargepole. It’s a shame really as the opportunity is huge.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to check their IOS App as I’m on android, but if anyone has time to load that up, check how it performs, features and leave a feedback below, that would be interesting.
Actually, if anyone here is good at code and has an idea on how to get a site directory up (something similar to dhgate or alibaba) and can implement blockchain to create the smart contracts, give me a shout as I believe we can get ahead of Tradove.
