New Kind of Network (NNC) ICO Analysis: A Blockchain-based Internet Infrastructure

Executive Summary

Project Description

The existing internet is currently being faced with a long list of problems and the list seems to be getting longer — lack of privacy, net neutrality, and an inefficient utilization of resources. Additionally, p2p and blockchain networks are faced with other problems e.g. lack of financial incentive for the network transport layer, and the perpetual battle between scalability and controllability. To tackle these problems, NKN — New Kind of Network — plans to provide a decentralized connectivity and data transmission network.

The project aims to provide an innovative network layer that is highly-scalable, self-evolving, and self-incentivizing; if they accomplish this, they would have succeeded in revolutionizing the third pillar of internet infrastructure. NKN also wants to improve the underlying technology behind the blockchain in a bid to make it more efficient and achieve a fair consensus without giving up node equality. To accomplish their goals, the project will reportedly use the blockchain to gain maximum network resource utilization and to build a community that will be rewarded for driving network creation and participation.

NKN will have its own utility token, the NNC (New Network Coin), and it is going to be the governing currency in their ecosystem. Using the Proof-of-Relay (PoR) consensus mechanism, participants will reportedly be rewarded for contributing connectivity and bandwidth. Miners are also expected to be rewarded, in NNC, for contributing network resources to the ecosystem.

The NKN project is in its early developmental stages, however, the team claims to have a networking layer solution that is similar to how Bitcoin is to computing power, and how Filecoin is to blockchainized storage. It is also important to note that NNC will initially launch as an NEP-5 compliant token, but at a later date, it will be changed to a native token.

Existing Product

No working product yet.

Hard Cap and Valuation

There will be a total of 1 billion NNC tokens and the project aims to raise 24,100 ETH for 10% of the token total. Earlybird — 12,000 ETH at 4500 per ETH, crowdsale — 12,100 ETH at 4150 per ETH.

Token distribution: 35% is made available to purchasers, 18% will be shared among the team and the project’s advisors, 17% will go to the Foundation — to be used to build the NKN community, and the final 30% is earmarked for mining rewards after the mainnet is launched.

The team tokens are subject to a 3-year vesting period with ⅓ of the total released every year.

Price Per Token

1 NNC = 0.00022 ETH (Earlybird)

1 NNC = 0.00024 ETH (Crowdsale)

Important Dates

Yet to fill.

Roadmap

Q1 2018 Release Whitepaper & Economic Model

Q2 2018 Blockchain development

Q1 2019 Test net launch

Q3 2019 Main net launch

Marketing Power

As at the time this post was published, NKN had over 8,000 members on their English Telegram channel, over 3,400 members on their Chinese Telegram channel, and over 1,900 followers on Twitter.

Prominent Advisors

Diffie Whitfield

• Inventor of public key cryptography.

Well-Known Team Members

Yanbo Li, Founder

• Advisor to Trinity.
• Co-founder of Onchain.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

In addition to the team members mentioned below, there are 8 other developers on the NKN team whose profiles are not publicly available.

Business experts

Yanbo Li, Founder & Core Developer.

• Co-Founder and Core Blockchain Developer at Onchain for over a year (ongoing).

Zheng Li, Co-Founder & Strategy and Innovation.

• Technical Program Manager at Google for 4 months and (ongoing).
• Worked at Nokia for over 17 years, his last position was as Software Engineer Manager.

Target market experts

Since most of the members in the NKN team built their careers in blockchain, technology and innovation, along with the academic background in Physics, it can be assumed that the project will not lack target market expertise.

Marketing experts

Yet to fill.

Legal experts

Yet to fill.

Software engineering experts

Yanbo Li, Founder

• Staff Engineer at Qualcomm for over 3 years
• Sr. Software Engineer at Nokia for almost 5 years
• Software Engineer at Motorola for 4 years.

Justin Wang, Co-Founder & Core Researcher.

• Master System Developer at Ericsson for almost 2 years.
• Transaction Risk Manager at Amazon for a year.
• Project Manager at Microsoft for almost 2 years
• Project Manager at Nokia for 5 years.
• Chief Radio Designer at Datang Mobile for a year.
• RFIC Design Engineer at Rda Microelectronics for a year.

Yilun Zhang, Co-Founder & Core Researcher and Developer.

• Co-founder & CTO of Neureka Inc. for 2 months (ongoing).
• Ph.D. in Physics.

Blockchain development experts

Yanbo Li, Founder.

• Core Blockchain Developer at Onchain for over a year (ongoing).

Token economics

Founder, Yanbo Li, seems to have some token economics knowledge. No other member of the team has pertinent experience.

Token sale structure

Same as above.

Conclusion

Strengths

• A well-experienced team with profound backgrounds in telecommunication.
• Whitfield Diffie, a cryptographic guru, is on their advisor board.
• For a new project, they have a considerably big community.

Potential risks for investors

• There are some more established projects with similar use cases e.g. Substratum, Rightmesh, Orchid Protocol etc.
• No working product yet.
• A considerably long developmental timeline (main net launch in Q3 2019).

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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, Eugene Tartakovsky.

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