Blue Whale Network (BWX) ICO Analysis: A Decentralized Self-Employment Platform

Executive Summary

Project Description

Freelancers face quite a number of challenges e.g. a lack of job security, the endless uncertainty that comes with self-employment among many others. Despite these, the global freelance market has been growing steadily over the past years, and it is expected to keep growing in the future. Peer-to-peer booking platforms like Airbnb and Uber are at the forefront of this growth, and millions of people all over the world depend on these platforms and others like it. In addition to the problems mentioned above, however, service providers add to the problems freelancers face by (1) charging exorbitant commission fees (2) charging high marketing and advertising costs and (3) not providing adequate job security that, at least, gives the freelancer a semblance of successful self-employment.

To tackle these problems, Blue Whale team proposes a decentralized platform that gives freelancers and small business owners the opportunity to grow their businesses at low cost using peer-driven referrals. The project also plans to create a smart contract interface that allows network users earn rewards for resolving disputes and validating service delivery. In addition to these, Blue Whale also aims to provide freelancers on their platform with benefits, such as paid sick leave, that are normally available only to salaried employees. Furthermore, Blue Whale plans to create a Contribution Activity Manager and a Reward Bank. A combination of the 2 components will enable freelancers to receive money from the company’s reserves.

From the start, Blue Whale team plans to send 20% of its total tokens to the Reward Bank. 60% of the platform’s net profit and 5% of each freelancer’s referral rewards are also expected to be sent to the Reward Bank. As a result, when a freelancer gets indisposed, they still get paid an amount proportional to their network contribution. The Blue Whale project wants to implement a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governance structure. This structure is expected to adapt to the needs of different participants, allowing them to vote on how they want the platform to be. As a result, policies, rates, and other such parameters can be customized to suit the community.

The platform’s token, BWX, will be used to pay service providers, as well as reward participants for network activities. BWX tokens also give its holders a say in the decision-making process, and the more tokens a participant holds, the more their voting power.

Existing Product

No MVP yet. However, Blue Whale team is partnered with Verlocal, an existing company that provide services similar to those that Blue Whale is proposing, albeit in a centralized environment.

Roadmap

Q2 2018 Public token sale + Blue Whale Network on Testnet.

Q3 2018 Verlocal Integration on Blue Whale Network.

Q4 2018 DAN protocol on Blue Whale Network, alpha live in US, Canada, Singapore & Japan.

Q1 2019 2–3 DApps on Blue Whale Network.

Q2 2019 CAM protocol on Blue Whale Network to 2–3 countries in Europe.

Q3 2019 Reward Bank Basic protocol on Blue Whale Network.

Q4 2019 Blue Whale Network on Mainnet.

Hard Cap and Valuation

Note: Blue Whale uses Singapore dollar (SGD) as its main currency.

The project plans to generate 105.6 billion BWX tokens and it aims to raise 30 million SGD (22.7 million USD). The circulating supply will be 32,160,000,000 BWX.

The project already raised 25 million SGD (~19 million USD) during their presale.

Team tokens are to be vested for 3 years, and team members should receive ⅙ of their allocation 6 months after the crowdsale. Every month after that, they will receive 1/36 of their allocation until the 3 years elapse.

Unsold tokens are to be burnt.

Price Per Token

For the crowdsale, 1 BWX = 0.00125 SGD ($0.0010 USD) (pre-bonus).

There is a 10% bonus available to investors who purchase tokens before 10M SGD is raised, and the accepted currencies are ETH or ICX (ERC20). Blue Whale does not accept the native ICX token because the smart contract is presently based on Ethereum.

Important Dates

BWX public sale will hold on the 24th of May, 2018.

Marketing Power

As of the time this post was published, Blue Whale had over 2,000 members on Telegram, 1,900+ followers on Facebook, 1,100+ Twitter followers, over 90 followers on Medium, 59 Reddit readers, and 35 subscribers on YouTube.

Prominent Advisors

Injong Rhee

• Former CTO at Samsung Electronics.

Kyungjoon Lee & Jonghyup Kim

• Members of ICON Foundation Council.

Simon Yu

• CEO of Storm.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

In addition to the team members listed below, employees from Verlocal will also be working on this project to some extent.

Business experts

Will Lee, Co-founder & CEO.

• Founder & CEO of Verlocal (Blue Whale’s parent company) for almost 5 years (ongoing).
• Founder of InstQuest, an intelligent CRM tool, for 8 months.
• Machine Learning Engineer at NeuStar, an IT service provide, for 2 years.
• Master’s Degree in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from Stanford University.

Hawon Chung, Co-founder & COO.

• CEO at ChainTOB, a blockchain biz platform, for 7 months (ongoing).
• Senior Sales Director at Elastic, a data analysis software provider, for almost 2 years.
• Sales Manager at Splunk, a software platform for machine data, for 3 years.
• Sales Representative at Oracle for over a year.
• JAPAC System Programs & Strategic at Oracle for a year.
• IT Consultant / Project Manager / SE Leader / Product Sales Specialist / Program & Strategic Manager at Sun Microsystems, an Oracle Corporation, for a total of 10 years.
• CTO at Bixelmedia for 1 year.
• Engineer at PENTA SYSTEM Technology for almost 4 years.

Jay Park, Co-Founder.

• Executive Vice President at SK Telecom for 2 years
• Vice President at Samsung Electronics for almost 8 years.
• CTO at Thinkfree, a productivity suite, for 3 years.
• CEO & Founder of Wisefree for 5 years.
• CEO & Founder of Agentech for 2 years.
• Senior Software Developer at Hyundai Electronics for over 4 years.

Yujung Chung, Global Operations & Office Manager.

• No information available at the moment.

Target market experts

Blue Whale’s partner company, Verlocal, should bring enough target market expertise to the table. However, there are no team members with expertise on blockchain development, which is the the major way Blue Whale differs from Verlocal.

Marketing experts

Travis Black, Brand Manager.

• Olympic Games Commercial Manager at International Olympic Committee for 4 years.
• Account Manager and Activation Coordinator at International Olympic Committee for almost 3 years.
• Brand Manager at Eastern Empire Distributing for 3 years.

Ludovic Gilbert, Communication Manager.

• Co-Founder of Yeadz, a mobile app, for 9 months (ongoing).
• Sales Manager APAC / Sr Product Manager at PocketMath, a mobile marketing company, for almost 2 years.
• Global Account Manager at PocketMath for a year.
• Founder & Director at Adzium for almost 2 years.
• Head of APAC / Performance Marketing at Mediastay, a marketing company, for a year.
• Digital Key Account Manager at Mediastay for 2 years.
• Digital Account Manager at Mediastay for a year.
• Email Marketing Manager at Mediastay for almost 2 years.

Sophie Ahn, Global PR & Communication Manager.

• CEO at WAYDN, a recruiting company, for 6 months (ongoing).
• Consultant at Spring Professional, a recruiting company, for a year.
• Finance & HR Associate at Samsung C&T for 3 years.
• Customer Service Representative at Inditex for a year.

Ivan Hong, Content Manager.

• Freelance Researcher for 16 different universities in various topics for 5 years.
• Product Manager at Allan Defense Technologies for over 3 years.

Legal experts

No team member with legal expertise.

Software engineering experts

Hyunjin Choi, CTO.

• Principal Engineer (and lower positions) at Samsung Electronics for 13 years.
• Research Staff at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology for 2 years.
• Technical Staff at NASA for almost 2 years.
• Research at Pohang University of Science and Technology for almost 2 years.
• Engineer at Samsung SDS for 2 years.

Chang Sup Keum, CIO.

• Founder & CEO at bigpicturelabs inc. for 4 months.
• Director, Software Architect and Principle Researcher at ETRI for 23 years.
• Board member of Korean Software Engineering Society.

Jay Choi, Co-Founder & Head of Product.

• Project Coordinator / QA & Service Engineer / Project Management Officer / Product Manager / Head of Product and Service, all at DomoSafety, a healthcare company, for a total of almost 4 years.
• Sales Consultant at Oracle for almost 3 years.
• Systems Engineer at Sun Microsystems for almost 4 years.

Jaehun Jee, Blockchain Engineer.

• Freelancer at Tevalue Wise, a venture company, for 7 months.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering.
• Software Developer at Republic of Korea Army for 2 years.

Minsu Jeong, Smart Contract Engineer.

• Software Developer at Nautilus Hyosung for almost 8 years.
• Software Developer at TmaxSoft for almost 3 years.

Blockchain development experts

Chang Sup Keum, Blue Whale’s CIO is the founder of bigpicturelabs, a company that designs the architecture of blockchain services. As a result, the project should benefit from his knowledge.

Token economics

No team member with token economics expertise. However, they have members of the ICON council on their advisory board. Simon Yu, CEO of Storm, has token economics and token sale structure experience as well. Nick Yang, a venture capitalist, is also an advisor. As a result, the project should have access to some expertise as far as token economics is concerned.

Token sale structure

Same as above.

Conclusion

Strengths

• The freelancing market segment is growing.
• Strong team with laudable career histories (Samsung, Oracle…).
• Strong advisor team with ties to Samsung and the ICON Council.
• The company behind Blue Whale (Verlocal) has been in existence for 4 years and they already have a product online.

Potential risks for investors

• Modest social following.
• Mainnet launch is not till Q4 2019.
• No Blockchain-based MVP yet.

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Disclaimers:

• Nothing written in this article is a legal or an investment advice.
• Information is provided on a best-effort basis and is subject to change without prior notice. Be sure to verify everything you read with a project team.

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The analysis was produced by Research Center team members: Alexander Bugaj, Mark Jedd, Anna Muratova.

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