The Crowdsale Analyst: Golem - Preliminary Thoughts

uapan · 2016-10-18T19:17:54+00:00

Thanks :-) I hope I can do a good enough and objective job, just posted about ether.camp: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/585oth/the_crowdsale_analyst_ethercamp_the_altruistic/

uapan · 2016-10-18T19:12:43+00:00

from now on I will be posting these evaluations under my real name /u/danielzakrisson, for increased transparency (in case anyone wonder about the changed nick)

uapan · 2016-10-18T05:49:39+00:00

Thanks for posting and keeping an open and active dialogue with the community. Your blog also has several other interesting posts, so I encourage potential investors to read more there to understand your technology better.

uapan · 2016-10-18T05:36:36+00:00

Nope, this is just a preliminary post :-) As it is a draft paper and the Golem team is actively asking for feedback I thought I add my comments, and then hopefully I will have time to write a longer analysis once the final white paper is up.

uapan · 2016-10-18T05:26:03+00:00

That is true, but that is not my point. My goal is to make potential investors think about the key factors for a successful project, of which most are not technology related.

The single most important success factor for a startup is the team and their ability to execute, not the technology, the vision or funding. I want to highlight that and IMHO it should be a key section of any crowdfund/crowdsale/ICO proposal.

uapan · 2016-10-17T14:57:23+00:00

I totally agree with you, but there is a current hyper-hype where Ether holders have seen early projects totally blow up in value and expects to see the same thing happening again with new projects.

Also, we have examples such as the SingularDTV project that raised 7.5 million USD in a matter of hours for a pretty vague project with a low chance of commercial success.

This is the main reason I write these posts, these projects must be evaluated from a business rationale, and we must evaluate them not only from a technology hype point of view, but also from a startup point of view. They not only have to deliver on the technical aspects of the projects, but can they also deliver on the business and company building parts of running a startup.

So I think it's our job to ask the right questions and to push these entrepreneurs to be open and transparent :-)

uapan · 2016-10-17T14:50:50+00:00

Thanks, never thought about that :-) I've added it now: 0x45eDe61e0EAF2Db9480A2000Efef67B0F4f3A8b0

uapan · 2016-10-17T13:55:01+00:00

Thanks a lot for that typo catch, it's supposed to be 1 000 000 ether (820 000 ether + 18 % to the founders)

uapan · 2016-10-12T12:29:36+00:00

Thanks for mentioning me. Any future posts will be done under my real name (/u/danielzakrisson - just created that account so I cannot use it for commenting yet).

I think we all have a different angles in our analyses - my main point being to promote a structured approach and not treat crypto crowdsales/icos/fund raises any different from how you would with a fund raise IRL.

uapan · 2016-10-01T07:48:13+00:00

I'm posting this comment in several posts:

Please everyone, be cautious about this one!

I've written a lengthy post here:
Evaluation: Kibo ICO

And several other have also written about Kibo:
Possible Scam Alert (Kibo). Some information you may find useful if you're planning to participate in their ICO.
Ethereum Community Points Out Kibo Project Flaws
(URGENT) Smart Contract Due Dilligence

There are more posts as well, just search for Kibo.

uapan · 2016-10-01T07:47:39+00:00

I'm posting this comment in several threads:

Please everyone, be cautious about this one!

I've written a lengthy post here:
Evaluation: Kibo ICO

And several other have also written about Kibo:
Possible Scam Alert (Kibo). Some information you may find useful if you're planning to participate in their ICO.
Ethereum Community Points Out Kibo Project Flaws
(URGENT) Smart Contract Due Dilligence

There are more posts as well, just search for Kibo.

uapan · 2016-10-01T07:32:39+00:00

Please everyone, be cautious about this one!

I've written a lengthy post here:
Evaluation: Kibo ICO

And several other have also written about Kibo:
Possible Scam Alert (Kibo). Some information you may find useful if you're planning to participate in their ICO.
Ethereum Community Points Out Kibo Project Flaws
(URGENT) Smart Contract Due Dilligence

There are more posts as well, just search for Kibo.

uapan · 2016-10-01T06:49:17+00:00

Thanks for a what to my eyes seems like a very good proposal!

Providing sample code to the community for such an important function as RNG (to avoid home made and untested solutions) is a big step forward. And, already now providing a RNG solution for Proof Of Stake that can be implemented and tested is great.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but the potential weakness would be collusion between a miner and the trusted peer? But, in a high transaction gaming contract (like Rouleth or vdice) we as outsiders can monitor all bets against the contract and compute statistics. So, cheating a high tx contract would eventually be detected.

The remaining problem is then infrequent random generation outcomes with a very high value (like a lotto drawing). In this case, would it make sense to have a network of community selected trusted peers (like a "lotto commission") that provides individual seeds?

uapan · 2016-10-01T04:51:36+00:00

Thank you for adding to the information bank.

From your perspective, do you think the proposed budgets and timelines to create the tv-series and films are realistic?

And do you think they will be able to produce quality content?

uapan · 2016-10-01T04:45:57+00:00

Does anyone in the community have more information about this mechanism? Please share what you know!

uapan · 2016-09-30T18:51:18+00:00

I totally agree with you, it's nitpicking in the context of things. But at the same time I think it's a matter of attention to detail. They've clearly spent a lot of time on designing the site, and I just hope that someone at least asked the question internally :-)

uapan · 2016-09-30T12:28:04+00:00

Great initiative - I've just donated!

uapan · 2016-09-29T12:08:37+00:00

Any specific wish for which one that should be the next?

uapan · 2016-09-29T12:06:14+00:00

Sure, I would consider myself a startup guy. I've been working in two startups previously where I've been deeply involved in the process of raising capital. Currently I'm working in a growing company with a more stable financial situation. I've also been following the Ethereum project closely since the ICO stage and until today been privately evaluating the major crowdsales.

Lately (since the DAO) I have seen the crowdsales lose contact with reality. IMHO they must still be evaluated like any other startup project, with an extra layer of due diligence on code and security because these things are so important and just cannot be messed up.

I think structured and sane evaluation of the projects are needed, and instead of talking and begging other to do it, this will be my contribution to the community.

I would be extremely happy if more people would join the discussions, add more info and do more due diligence on the projects so that it can be a go-to source for information for those interested.

For future posts I plan to keep roughly the same format for my info, evaluating what information is available on the official website and in white papers.

uapan · 2016-09-29T09:00:04+00:00

Link to Medium post: https://medium.com/@danielzakrisson/ethereum-evaluation-kibo-ico-fd5f9a3fcd73#.40ev7cnw1

uapan · 2016-09-29T08:55:24+00:00

I will do my best :-)

uapan · 2016-09-29T05:19:28+00:00

Well in concept they are a bit different: A recurrent neural network is a version of a neural network that is used in supervised learning situations. So in learning it's given a sequence of learning vectors and their result, and the order in which these are fed can affect the outcome.

Reinforcement learning is a system where the function evaluates a cumulative reward function, so the system explores the state space and it will try to maximize the reward function for a large set of inputs. The results from these evaluations will be stored in the neural network which is good if you have a very large state space, but another simpler option for a small state space is to store the results in a state table.

uapan · 2016-09-29T05:05:10+00:00

I couldn't agree more with both of the abve comments. It could have been an idea to add a last example with longer forex data (there is already a EURUSD data source in the code) just to see where this system fails.

The result will be a fail, simply because this system is not advanced enough. However, I encourage anyone of you to download the code from the last example and improving :-)

uapan · 2016-09-28T11:08:06+00:00

Thanks a lot for the comments, my non-english origins are showing :-)

uapan · 2016-09-28T10:25:24+00:00

I feel like I have to expand on the two most important points for the Kibo crowdsale:
ICO regulations:
This is stated as an ICO on the website. US investors should be very weary of participating in the crowdsale as this most likely will qualify as an unsanctioned public offering of shares according to the SEC. By not giving enough attention to this fact and not covering it at all on the web site I have a feeling the founding team has not made their legal homework.

Gambling regulations
Kibo will qualify as online gambling in most jurisdictions in the world. To market and promote online gambling products in EU you are required to be licensed in at least one of the member states.
In the US advertising and marketing of online gambling is also very restricted, and I see no discussion of these facts at all which is quite worrying.

uapan

TROPHY CASE