OPEN Platform (OPEN) ICO Analysis: A Payment Infrastructure for Centralized and Decentralized Apps

Executive Summary

Project Description

One of the reasons blockchain platforms haven’t been adopted on a larger scale is inflexibility. It is very difficult for developers to integrate their present centralized infrastructure with decentralized ones. To provide a way out, some projects attempted to provide payment gateways and use niche applications to solve certain problems. In most cases, however, these solutions are hardcoded for specific blockchains and applications, reverting once more to the inflexibility problem mentioned above.

The OPEN Platform project aims to provide a solution to this problem by developing a decentralized payment scheme for various applications and software services. OPEN Platform is planned to be designed in such a way that the payment gateway of decentralized applications on different blockchains can be integrated with the backends of existing applications. To break it down: the OPEN Platform is expected to be the first decentralized API for centralized applications. Through the platform, developers will reportedly be able to integrate their current technology infrastructure conveniently with decentralized networks. Once this is possible, the general belief is that the mainstream adoption of decentralized networks will be fast-tracked.

OPEN Platform’s token, OPEN, will be ERC20 compliant and it is expected to serve the following purposes on the platform. One, before the individualized Scaffold (smart contract template), can be activated, a certain amount of OPEN tokens have to be staked; note that the staked tokens will eventually be returned to the user after the Scaffold has been closed. In order to prevent the continuous activation and deactivation of Scaffolds, staked tokens are locked up for a period of time. Two, OPEN tokens will be used to pay for services on the platform. Three, a certain amount of every transaction (3%) will serve as network gas fee, and the amount will be sent to the Developer Growth Pool where it will be used to incentivize developers. This will function as an “automatic feedback loop”, boosting the platform’s growth by rewarding the developers.

Existing Product

OPEN Platform team has a Testnet MVP Video on the homepage for interested parties. Furthermore, they have released the OPEN API.

Hard Cap and Valuation

There will be a total of 1 billion OPEN tokens and the project aims to raise $30 million for 50% of the token total. The remaining 50% is shared thus: 20% goes to the team, 20% is sent to the Developer Growth Pool, and the final 10% is kept in reserve.

The OPEN Platform team has not released a lock-up schedule yet, but according to reports, the lock-up period will be a minimum of 1 year.

Price Per Token

1 OPEN = $0.08

Important Dates

OPEN presale is going on currently and interested parties can request for an allocation here There is also a whitelist with added benefits, but it is only opened to developers. The rest of OPEN Platform’s schedule can be found below:

Token Sale: March 2018

Airdrop: March 2018

MVP 2.0 (on-chain): March 2018

OPEN API Draft: April 2018

OPENWallet Security Design: April 2018

OPEN SDK 1.0: June 2018

OPEN 1.0 goes live: July 2018

Marketing Power

As of the time this post was published, OPEN Platform had over 43,600 subscribers on Telegram, 24,300+ followers on Twitter, over 13,500 followers on Facebook, over 5,400 Reddit readers, and over 4,000 followers on Medium.

Prominent Advisors

Chandler Guo

• Notable and influential Bitcoin miner.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

Business experts

Ken Sangha, CEO

• Founder & CEO of DoublePlay Entertainment for 4 years
• Startup Advisor to over 20 tech related accelerators over 6 years.
• COO of AdX for 2 years.

Roger Jin, Director of Strategy

• Founder & CEO of Treats, a subscription box for international snacks, for almost 3 years (ongoing).
• Founder & Operator of Growth Labs for almost 2 years.
• Product Owner at Flint Mobile, a mobile payments company, for almost 2 years.
• Founder & CEO of Bridge for almost 2 years.
• Project Manager at Illinois Business Consulting.

Alvin Lau, Managing Director

• Project Controls Manager at PGH Wong Engineering for over a year (ongoing).
• Project Manager at Read Jones Christoffersen for almost 7 years.
• Structural Engineer at Read Jones Christoffersen for over 3 years.

Target market experts

Apart from the 2 blockchain developers (listed below), no other team member seems to have significant target market experience.

Marketing experts

Dennis Lewis, Director of Marketing

• CMO of Suchapp, a blockchain-based real-time messaging app, for 5 months (ongoing).
• Founder of icosuccess.com for a year (ongoing).
• CEO of Green Light Digital for 3 years (ongoing).
• Global Sales & Marketing Director at myserviceteam.com for over a year.
• Founder of CreativePersuasion.com for almost 5 years.

Legal experts

No team member with legal expertise.

Software engineering experts

Andrew Leung, CTO

• Director of Engineering at TribalScale, a mobile software development company, for 7 months (ongoing).
• Staff Software Engineer at Pivotal Labs for over 4 years.
• Software Developer at BlackBerry for over 4 years.

Dustin Sinkey, Lead Smart Contract Engineer

• Full Stack Software Developer at UPFIZZ Media Network for 2 years.
• Loan Officer at C2 Financial Corporation for a year.
• Loan Officer at Allstate Bancorp for a year.
• Agent for Peter Lorimer Group Estates for less than a year.

Blockchain development experts

Abhishek Punia, Blockchain Lead

• Crypto-analyst at Draper Associates, a seed venture capital firm, for 5 months (ongoing).
• Advisor to Helix3 for 2 months (ongoing).
• Member at Blockchain Research Institute for 6 months (ongoing).
• Developer at Blockchain at Berkeley for 7 months (ongoing).
• Core Contributor at Engima MPC for 4 months.

Chase Smith, Lead Architect

• Blockchain Developer at Blockchain at Berkeley for 8 months (ongoing).
• Technical Due Diligence Officer at Veritas Due Diligence for 3 months.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.

Token sale structure

No team member with token sale structure expertise.

Token economics

Same as above.

Conclusion

Strengths

• An ambitious use-case that seeks to address a pressing concern — mainstream adoption.
• Blockchain agnostic.
• Partnership with ZenSoft.

Potential risks for investors

• Dependency on other crypto projects that are still in development (OmiseGO, IPFS, Microraiden and more).
• According to their Linkedin pages, over half of the team members are employed at other projects.

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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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