Team
Project team consists of 13 core members and 3 advisors.
CEO & Founder - Andrey Granovskiy
Education - IT & Business
Work experience - Entrepreneurship since 2010. 3 Startups.
COO; co-Founder - Oleg Sharpatiy
Education - IT
Work experience - Career started in 2006 in BDO. In 2008 became Head of Legal in “VEB Capital”. 2011 founded SHINE a startup in the market of sustainable tourism.
CTO - Michael Korneev
Education - IT & Business
Over 18 years of career development 2359 followers on Michael’s articles publish page Both large & medium business and startup experience
The team has fulfilled all main business and main technical roles. However it seems the technical jobs will be outsourced and managed by Michael Corneev. All 3 advisors previously held managing positions on Ericsson and Goldman Sachs.
Concept
W12 tries to archive transparency and security for any ICO investor by
providing easy to use escrow service for projects that should align with their
road map/project goals. Theoretically such service should decrease amount
of risks investors exposed to than they make an ICO investment.
Consequently, W12 product cuts costs of technical implementation and
marketing for startups by introducing them to the sophisticated community of
crypto enthusiasts as well as providing them with internal rating and
visually-based platform for launching a crowdfunding campaign. Presence of
such service in market will ease the many difficulties for the new investors who
want to participate in crowdsales by providing fiat payment, but it is not
cleared how such payment will be integrated. Road map extends up to the
end of 2019. Road map indicates majority of functions that will be integrated
that are not described in White Paper.
Template-based escrow platform based on smart contracts will be in
demand of small projects that seek seed (pre-seed) fund raising. Such
platform also gives access to the community pool for the early idea review
and market hypothesis testing. However, community based decision making
of funds release has its downsides that can be mitigated by the close
interaction between project and community W12 needs to develop
information channels for developing startups that meet a lot of difficulties.
W12 offer further service of integrated dEX and community based project
reviews. However those functions are only mentions in WP and does not
provide full description. Creating service philosophy of “first build and they will
come”. Underdeveloped marketing plan compensated by the unique
platform features that may attract many projects and investors.
All said, one should understand that W12 describes a utopia in the crypto
market. W12 assumes, that “investors” (a very wrong word to describe people
who buy utility tokens) will be qualified enough to decide whether the startup
has met a milestone or not. Moreover, it is common knowledge that a startup
can not produce accurate enough financial and operational planning to a
level, where it’s funding will be dependant on the plans. As a result of fund
blockage, potentially successful and trustworthy projects will face additional
drawbacks in the face of search for new funding.
At the moment W12 works with Ethereum and plans to build their own
blockchain (that supports smart contracts) based on proof-of-authority
consensus. Before
W12 states, that an ICO can be partly held on their platform. What this means
is: an ICO will divide it’s tokens over the services like W12, Juries online and
others, and will hold their own individual ICO. Does this revolutionise the ICO
market? Probably not. W12 is will fit in the market, however will not disrupt it
with the current way of their idea realisation.
As of industries part from ICO, W12 states that it’s project will be applicable to
the following markets:
- The GIG (Freelance) Market
- P2P E-commerce
- Charity Market
- Crowdfunding
- Construction
The total capitalisation of these markets is currently estimated at more than
$15 trillion USD. Such estimates look very alluring, and W12 would become
extremely successful if it could enter such markets.
On the downside:
W12 prospects, that it’s services will be used due to
- Low transaction costs.
Although this is true, every other crypto decreases the transaction costs, and
yet, the market has not expanded to the non-crypto industries.
- Smart contracts and oracle confirmation.
Smart contracts serve their purpose of trustless exchange. W12
introduces oracles that check if the criteria are met. Freelance and P2P
E-commerce are markets with high frequency trades and not standard
contract requirements, especially freelance. W12 will have to first make
every contract - machine readable, so that verification can be an
automated process - not run by the oracles in person.
- W12 is not a specialised project, it allows users to use it to a variety of
needs, such strategy requires either a medium quality service in every
industry or a large team, that can specialise in all industries. At the
moment we do not see such competencies in the W12 team.
Competition
Automation of adding projects to the escrow platform and variety of rules of
how escrow works set W12 apart from its competitors. Also, by building
community around the platform brings additional value for all stakeholders
bringing such services to the next level. Competitors such as (IBSG, Jury
online) execute schemes that lack transparency and not managed by
community that is more interested in project success.
W12 key competencies:
- Decentralised Escrow
- Fund protection
- Scam filtering
- ICO platform (marketing as a service)
- Decentralised exchange
In each of these specialisations W12 will face tough competition, as the
market is saturated with various solutions for token exchange and investor
protections.
-
Decentralised Escrow & Scam Filtering
- Juries Online
- Descrow
- ICO Bench
-
ICO platform
- Waves
- Aragon a smart contract builder on the Ethereum blockchain
-
DEX
- Komodo
- Blocknet
- Waves
- Ethfinex
At the moment, W12 is not better than any of the existing solutions, although it
combines the functionality of all.
Economics
W12 offers fund services for the projects even that it is a core mechanic of
W12, such service creates exposure to currency and exchange rate risks for
projects after crowd sale. In case of market downtrend ICOs will lose money
generated after crowd sale instead of fixing their earnings in fiat. If investors
make an investment via W12 platform they receive special W tokens that
represent the startup token. Founders are able to get refunded at any time or
receive original ICO tokens.
W12 token is a utility token that will be use as a payment method for the
project services such as additional highlight within the marketplace. Not clear
how project forecasted demand and it's annual turnover.
Token
The W12 token is a “utility” token with the core functionality:
- The W12 token is used for funding projects via W12 smart contracts (as any other ERC20). W12 specifies, that if the project receives funding in non erc20, than the
tokens will be converted to W12 token through the DEX. And stores as W12
tokens before all the milestones are not fulfilled. Such action will greatly
fluctuate the W12 token price. Users that have invested in ICO 1 will be reliant
on the ICO 2 performance, as they will be buying and selling W12 tokens as
well.
- W12 token is used as fuel in the W12 oracles ecosystem
- W12 token is used as payment for services on the platform
All in all, the W12 token can be described as a utility token. However the
functionality of it should be stress tested. E.g modelled for spikes in demand
and supply of the W12 token the the exchanges and what happens with the
ICO funds at that moment.
Funding and Distribution of Tokens
Token sale allocates budget between 5 and 20 million dollars. Budget divided
by 4 stages, each stage designates funding to the different areas of
development, such as dEX or PAMM accounts.
During token sale 65% of tokens are sold to investors. White paper does not
explain why 15% of all issued tokens will be locked in the reserve fund. And
another 15% is reserved for team and advisors with 2 years lock up period.
Presence
Project website is clear and mobile friendly. White Paper does not provide full
description and lacks of technical in-depth overview but it is well written and
provides general overview of the project and use cases. W12 won 2
respected competitions and was selected from a large pool of projects.
Among ICO trackers W12 has highly rated reviews and expected to bring
many forms of value to the market. W12 has active community in 2 telegram
chats (EN & CN) and developed forum tree on bitcoin talk.
Project MVP is alive and provides its service to a number of startups. MVP
allows to list a project details and get reviews from the community.
Overall
The W12 project definitely fits in with the industry trend. The white paper is
professionally written and balances around technical details and general
project information.
The roadmap covers some topics not described in the white paper, but that
is not critical.
The project does not offer disrupting services, however it will definitely be
used by the community and ICOs.
We do not know if the non-crypto industries will adopt the service and use it,
however we see theoretical potential.
The team is composed of strong and experienced professionals, it is not clear,
how the current team will develop the software needed to all industries, that
they have outlined.
All in all W12 is a great example of an ideologically strong project, that
through development and evolution may become the industry leader.
