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Artists are free souls. What guides them is their passion. They hate all limits, as limitations hinder their creativity and ultimately, the quality of the art they make. Our world ended up in a situation where artists are completely in the hands of financial behemoths – recording labels and streaming platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music. Ultimately, it is up to these entities whether their compositions get published and whether they gain any recognition. Musicians are chained by the regulations of these companies. Fees can be high, cutting a lot of profit from musicians. For an up and coming artist, this can make the road to stardom very tough. VOXXO is an ICO that wishes to release artists from these restrictions.
The Goals of VOXXO
VOXXO attempts to integrate cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies to the music world. It aims to halt filtering of content, so that every artist can become heard, not just the ones with large label support. The ERC20 token will grant extra bonuses to its users on the VOXXO platform. There will be options to pay with other cryptocurrencies, but without the extras. If you do not want to pay, you will still be able to listen to music freely, but with ads every two songs. Otherwise, there will be no limitations, unlike Spotify, which doesn’t let you play specific songs as a free user when your trial time runs out, only compositions from random playlists, hopefully based around your interests.
Payments would be based on as many hours as you want to listen, without any monthly subscriptions. There will be chances to win free concert tickets and the option to listen to live gigs. For musicians, there are licensing options, which require no complex paperwork. Artists would earn funds when users listen to their songs with VOXXO. Thanks to collaboration with organizations like ASCAP, BMI and PRS, a cryptocurrency revenue collection system will be established. It’s a big deal, because small time artists find it difficult to earn money off copyright.
VOXXO Team
Team of this project is quite small. While we’re at it, I’d like to point out that the whitepaper is littered with spelling errors and bad formatting. Apparently, the list it going to be updated after sale #1 finishes, but I believe that a mere four people is not enough for something as complex as an ICO. It could be justified if it was a squad of 4 prodigies, but it isn’t. Unimpressive resumes with no achievements that stand out. No real experience in managing companies. I wouldn’t trust these people with my money. Not mentioning that the LinkedIn profiles aren’t even in English, and I had to use Google translate to make sense of them.
Social Media, Summary
I don’t need to bother with a lengthy description. VOXXO has less than thousand likes on all social media. I can only see them talked about in forums like bitcointalk.org, with only 8 pages in the thread since November. To pad this section out a bit, I’ll mention that I can’t shake the feeling that VOXXO isn’t really trying to “free the artists”. The project to me seems like simply replacing the current model with a copy, but with cryptocurrency and blockchain functionalities added. Features like users voting for the songs to just get inside the platform, or paying with your tokens to have a higher power vote during live event votes doesn’t seem quite fair to me. The one with the most money wins. Nothing changes. As an artist and a musician, I’m suspicious of this project. I wouldn’t invest a penny in this.
At the advent of cryptocurrencies, they were mined by relatively small entities. Single persons, mining with just their personal computers, without any specialized hardware needed. As the networks grew, more and more processing power was required. Only high end PC’s could mine. And then, you needed a whole farm to make a profit. Therefore, it became unaffordable for everyone but the select few. Or companies specializing in just that. Now you need an ASIC stack to mine Bitcoin. This defeats one of key principles in design of the cryptocurrency – decentralization. The network is still kind of decentralized, but decentralized as in few thousand pools owning the majority of the mining power. Not the most optimal solution. Envion, an ICO company, wants a return to the era of personal mining.
Summary of Envion ICO
An additional issue, which I didn’t mention in the intro, is of course, the ever growing power cost of mining BTC. This has a negative effect on the environment. We should aim to decrease power costs, not increase them. Not only you have to own expensive hardware, you need to pay large electricity bills, further worsening the situation of network democracy, where it’s interests are in the hands of the “elite”, owning the biggest farms.
Envion has developed a system of MMUs, Mobile Mining Units, that can tap electicity directly at the source. Green power like solar, hydro or wind, or fossil fuel power plants would be given intermodal containers equipped with mining hardware, communication and industry 4.0 automation features. Breakthrough cooling system included, costing less than 1% of total system power consumption. Envion is a fusion of the blockchain and renewable energies.
Token name EVN, it uses the ERC-20 standard. The token holder is privileged to receive 100% of earnings of the proprietary Envion mining operation, 35% from third-party operations, voting and veto in important company strategy decisions. Sale started on 15th December, 2017, and will end January 14th, 2018.
Envion Team and Impressions
Reading the whitepaper, you can see there is no flashy presentation. It’s showcased in a way as if you were reading a scientific document, not a sales pitch. That’s a bonus to me. A lot of ICOs seem like downright scammy pyramid schemes or MLM. This one earned my respect with its honest approach. Moving onto the team itself, it’s full of seasoned experts. Matthias Woestmann, CEO, is an enterpreneur, investor and media professional. He co-financed a $300M solar company. Having two decades of experience, he surely knows what he’s doing. The rest of the team isn’t divided into specific positions, but their general roles. Felix Krusenbaum handles finance, Johnatan Koch the technology. Both of them are experienced IT professionals with over 10 years of experience. This team as a whole is a huge hit. I’ve reviewed profiles of everyone on board, and I can say I’m impressed. Envion spells success.
Socia Media and Press
Envion has a HUGE following for an ICO, which I’ve seen at 5k likes max. Their Facebook page has ten times that. Apparently, they managed to raise $34 million dollars in first few days of the ICO. Impressive! People are drawn to the idea of connecting blockchain and renewable energy technologies. The cryptocurrency community sure loves Envion.
Risks and Opportunities of Envion ICO
I can see this ICO being highly successful. The project has made such an impression on me that I am going to invest a few dollars into it, personally. However, as with every investment, please research what you’re investing in and make your own judgement. We are not responsible for any losses you could have by investing in this or another ICO. Still, I highly believe this ICO can net some serious profit for it’s investors and make waves in the technology world.
Our world has a population of over 7.6 billion people. This figure is expected to grow as years go by. As there’s more of us, there are more mouths to be fed, needs to be fulfilled. Even at this point we have a problem with supplying food to everyone. We can expect it to get worse in the future. There is a solution, however. ATFS, an agricultural ICO, has some ideas on how we could fix this problem.
ATFS ICO Description
Three main points are made by this company. To create a Smart Farm 2.0, a Disruptive Decentralized Platform, and Plant-Based Meat. These are the components required to create the solution to the worldwide food shortage problem. ATFS plans to start in Asia, later moving on to the rest of the world. The Smart Farm would make use of IoT and Big Data to automatically control temperature, humidity, sunlight, carbon dioxide and water levels in the farm, greatly increasing farming output and ease of crop production.
Tokens (ATFS) will be distributed at the price of 5000 ATFS per ETH during the crowdsale. Aim is between 12500 ETH (soft cap) to 50000 ETH (hard cap). The sale will end once the hard cap is reached, or after the period of 30 days. Unsold tokens will be destroyed. You can purchase the ATFS token using BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies.
Team of ATFS
Mostly of Asian heritage, we can see a lot of talented faces here. What got my attention before looking at the resumes is the empty space with “Your Name Here” written underside it. It’s a nice touch that will certainly make investors feel like they’re a part of the project, not just some nameless shareholders. Onto the team itself, David Kim, CEO, is a businessman, first and foremost. He has over a decade of experience as a business strategist at Samsung. Working for so long at a giant company like this is certainly a sign of an experienced, seasoned worker. In addition to that, David is the CEO of his game development company, focusing on mobile RPG games, which enjoy quite a bit of popularity in China. COO Jay Choi worked at IBM as Senior Management Consultant. Austin Chung, CFO and co-founder, has 16 years of experience in the financial sector, being employed in various managerial positions before. Certainly, this is a well-built team. I have no doubts about competence of these people.
ATFS Social Media Presence
Not only the team is done right in this project. You could say their “social media game” is on point. Tons of likes and high engagement on Facebook, often retweets on Twitter. The usual ICO bitcointalk.com thread is only one page long, but it was just started on 19th December. CoinTelegraph also mentioned ATFS, in addition to other mid-sized cryptocurrency outlets. This ICO is certainly doing good.
Opportunities and Summary
ATFS wishes to solve a very important problem on a worldwide scale. At the same time, they don’t try to bite off more than they can chew; they want to start small and develop as they go, unlike some ICOs that want a multi million dollar budget from the get go, but don’t have the team to pull off such a project. I can see myself trusting and investing in the ATFS token.
If you want to get something manufactured, you’ll quickly run into problems. Unless, of course, you’re a large company, a giant in the field, with a ton of money and connections. The rest of the market doesn’t look as good. A significant number of buyers has trouble with finding the right manufacturing suppliers. Businesses lack intellectual property protection; the issue of IP is a large concern. SyncFab, an ICO for the manufacturing industry, wishes to resolve these problems.
Use Cases of SyncFab, Description of the Project
The company is attempting to create a decentralized market connecting buyers and manufacturers without any intermediaries. Payments would be guaranteed through smart contracts, and manufacturing supply chains would make use of a blockchain powered by the MFG token.
With MFG, you can create unique bids to stimulate manufacturers to offer better prices. Loyalty rewards can be offered for reordering. Discounts can be made available. The token will be ERC20, as usual, and on the Ethereum blockchain. It will be required to pay transaction fees on the platform.
Financial Details of SyncFab
At time of writing, the token sale is live. SyncFab is not a huge project in terms of money poured inside. It has a soft cap of 30k ETH, and a hard cap of 60k ETH, with the minimum goal being 10k ETH. One ETH will equal in price to 1250 MFG. 300,000,000 MFG tokens will be available for sale.
The SyncFab Team
CEO of SyncFab, Jeremy Goodwin, is an eloquent man. Fluent in Chinese and French, passionate about AI, blockchain and Bitcoin. From his LinkedIn profile, we learn that SyncFab is a partner to the D.O.E & D.O.C Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Initiative (CESMII), appointed by the White House and US Departments of Energy and Commerce plus the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, worth $140MM. Quite an achievement!
Andy Le Tong, CSO, is a serial entrepreneur, recognized for his achievements in the video game industry. The massively multiplayer online game portal MMOABC, of which he was a CEO, received attention of millions of North American gamers. He didn’t spend a penny on advertisement, and that was before the age of social media!
The team consists of 9 members and 10 advisers. Each one has an impressive resume. Advisers have worked at companies like PayPal, eBay, Apple and JPMorgan. One word can sum up this team: solid. I can see the project becoming successful, if only by the merit of it’s members.
SyncFab Press Coverage
Social media and press coverage of this project is no less impressive. SyncFab is partnered by many big names, including Berkeley University and Stanford University. As mentioned earlier, the White House itself has ties with this project, too. It earned a 97% score in the Aingel blog ICO scoring series. The scoring is based on a Monte Carlo wrapped machine learning algorithm developed at New Your University, where more than 6,000 startup founders were analyzed.
On Facebook, they have high engagement, as the post about token launch was given reactions by 3,5 thousand people. The page has almost 5k likes, quite good for an ICO, which usually averages at 1-2k. Their Twitter enjoys a good number of retweets and likes, in the 50-100 range on average per post, with the follower count at almost 5 thousand, like the Facebook page. The community seems to be in high spirits about SyncFab.
The Final Verdict on SyncFab
Personally, I’m not knowledgeable about the manufacturing industry. This project, to fully comprehend, would need some real-life experience and understanding of the problems presented, beyond what’s included in the whitepaper. Perhaps this is why the hard cap is a mere 60k ETH; other projects estimate to have much greater interest. Definitely, it’s not for the layman. From a purely financial standpoint though, as a potential investor, I can see this project worth investing in, especially with these recommendations from the White House and University of Berkeley. It touches upon an issue that many want to become resolved.