This is my second article on a series where I analyze undervalued coins with high potential for growth. This time I will be looking at The Divi Project. During my research I have had been communicating with the Co-Founder Nick Saponaro and will be including some unpublished information from our conversations. As usual, I would like to remind you to do your own research, and that this is not investment advice.

Overview

If you are already into crypto, you know that it has a massive initial learning curve. You had to wrap your head around things like cryptographic keys, Google Authenticator, how to buy with fiat, how to use exchanges, transaction fees, security etc… Well it turns out that this is often too great of a barrier for most of the general public to get into crypto. You are probably aware of this from the time you undoubtedly had to teach your friends how to buy crypto. This means that all the growth we see in the crypto markets lately, which has been huge, is still only a tiny fraction of what it could be. There is a huge amount of capital waiting to be tapped into that is locked within the general public. The Divi Project aims to make cryptocurrency as easy to use as possible in order to tap into this most lucrative market.

They aim to do this by creating a user-friendly app that provides all of the functionality required for crypto to be used as a real currency, while seamlessly taking care of all of the complicated things in the background so that the user doesn’t have to. Basically, putting the power of cryptocurrency into the hands of the general masses. The app will include features such as:

• Send money to someone by typing in their name instead of a complicated wallet address.
• A contact list that contains names and pictures of your contacts, who you can tap to send money to.
• A way to convert from fiat to crypto currency within the app. This will completely remove the need for fiat gateways such as Coinbase.
• Allow atomic swaps between other crypto currencies, also from within the app. This removes the need for exchanges.
• A marketplace to allow buying and selling of goods.
• Easy payments/transactions at a vendor/store using a barcode and scanner, similar to how the Starbucks app works.

Challenges, Solutions, and Advantages

Of course, one of the biggest challenges will be to attract users from the general public to use DIVI as an actual currency. (When I say use as an actual currency I mean use it in the same way people use fiat to buy and sell things in a market). To accomplish this, they have decided to use a significant portion of their resources for a planned an extensive marketing campaign to target the general public which includes:

• On-boarding of advisors who are experts in underrepresented market segments (such as women).
• Daily YouTube videos that teach the basics of the crypto world. Things the general public wouldn’t already know. These videos also show transparency in the company, and personifies the team, which results in increased confidence.
• Daily and weekly lotteries which award DIVI coins to randomly selected users.
• Collaborating with celebrities, authority figures, and experts in various industries.
• Early adopters fund to reward merchants who start accepting DIVI as payment.

Another challenge is to not get beat to market by competitors. Divi is currently testing their blockchain and will be releasing the app in early Q2 2018, followed by incremental feature updates throughout 2018. In my opinion, Ethos and Bread seem to be the main competitors. Currently, Ethos doesn’t even have a published roadmap, making it difficult to know when they will release their platform. However, according to Reddit they appear to also be releasing features incrementally throughout 2018, but haven’t released anything yet. Bread has already released their wallet, however, as far as I can tell, their wallet will only support bitcoin and ERC-20 tokens for what looks like the first half of 2018. Since bitcoin and etherium have not yet solved the scaling problem, they have high transaction fees, and are not suitable for small every day payments. So, this somewhat removes bread from being a legitimate competitor until sometime around Q2 or Q3 2018. The result is that the two competitors should be ramping up around Q2 or Q3 2018. Thus, if Divi can stick to their roadmap, they shouldn’t be beat to market by either of these competitors.

One huge advantage that sets Divi apart from the 2 competitors, is that they are creating their own blockchain. Both Ethos and Bread are simply ERC-20 tokens. The Divi blockchain will have the following features to set itself apart from the tokens:

• PoS mining, which essentially gives interest for holding tokens.
• 5 different tiers of masternodes.
• Low transaction fees.
• Instant send.
• Private send .
• Next generation democratic voting mechanism.

Their blockchain looks extremely solid. It takes some of the best features from Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, and PIVX and combines them into a single blockchain. The importance of each of these features cannot be emphasized enough when considering the application of a marketplace. When buying and selling low value items, the fees have to be tiny or else they will be a significant fraction of the cost. The instant send is essential because nobody wants to wait around the store for 40 minutes waiting for confirmations. The private send is essential because people don’t want their entire purchase history on the public record. Let me point out that ERC-20 tokens, without the Raiden network, have none of these features, making them almost useless for a marketplace of low-value items.

Another important thing to point out is that if a cryptocurrency is to volatile, which is usually the case, it will make people hesitant to use it as an actual currency because they will always have to worry about its value changing in time. Imagine if you had to worry about all of the dollars in your bank account randomly loosing 50% of their value. Having PoS and masternodes will reduce the volatility because it incentivizes people to hold DIVI in their wallet and earn interest instead of day trading. Thus, this is another significant advantage over the competitors.

Team

The CEO has a masters degree in physics. Being that I am currently doing my PhD in physics, I can attest to the value of such an education. He also has experience in many startups including some with thousands of employees and over 12 million dollars in revenue. In late 2017 they also hired many more developers bringing the total to 8 developers, and a total of 13 team members. Furthermore 3 of the newly hired developers are blockchain experts with significant blockchain experience which is obviously ideal for this project. They also have Heidi Krupp as the PR director who has ample experience with companies such as Visa and American Express.

The team is also very active and responsive on Telegram and Discord. Even at crazy hours late at night when I randomly ask them questions. They are also open to criticism and ideas from the community members. I consider these very important aspects because it shows team is actively developing at almost all hours, and increases the confidence of the community leading to less FUD and more HODLers. Less FUD and more HODLers builds strong price supports in the market.

The Divi Project also had no VC funding, and began as a completely self-funded project. This shows that they are willing to risk their own money for the project and increases my confidence. Furthermore, the crowd sale only raised about $3.5 million USD and they have been efficient enough to pull off small miracles with such a small amount of money which is rare in the ICO space these days.

This team definitely looks like they can pull it off.

Here is a link to one of their recent interviews at the New York Stock Exchange: https://cheddar.com/videos/new-cryptocurrency-looking-to-appeal-to-the-masses

Why DIVI is undervalued

The main reason why I think DIVI is undervalued is because it has a market cap much lower than the two competitors. It currently has a market cap 3x less than BRD, and 10x less than ETHOS. So even if you think it is about the same as the competitors, it should increase in value at least 3x. However, as we have pointed out above, it has many desirable features that, in my opinion, make it better than the competitors. So this indicates to me that it has the potential to grow 10x or more.

The second reason why I think DIVI is undervalued is this: Their goal is to have mass adoption of their platform by the general public. This means, by definition, at least initially upon the launch of the app, there will be a massive number of users buying divi to put into their wallet and to use in the market place, which will cause strong upwards pressure in the price. Another way to think about it is there is an abundance of buyers, and less sellers. This causes the price to increase.

Summary/TLDR

Go up and look at all the bullet points. Here are a few more important points:

• Creating their own blockchain which provides many huge advantages over their competitors.
• They have a strong team including 8 devs, 3 of which are expert blockchain devs.
• 3x to 10x undervalued when compared to competitors.
• Will be releasing the platform around the same time as the competitors.
• Until the Raiden network launches, the high fees and slow transactions of the competitors means Divi can pull ahead.
• Initially self-funded. Willing to risk their own money.
• They understand the importance of marketing, and appear to be effectively targeting the general public with things like daily youtube videos.

Conclusion

It is clear that DIVI is undervalued compared to the competitors. DIVI also has potential to see massive asymmetric buying pressure once they release their platform which will drive the price higher. They are the only one out of the competitors who has their own blockchain that solves some essential problems specific to the currency and marketplace application. The team looks like they can pull it off.

Therefore, I will be buying some DIVI and HODLing.

Sources

https://www.diviproject.org/
https://www.diviproject.org/assets/files/wp-en.pdf
https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Exchange/?market=DIVX_BTC
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/divi/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCihooU0crqQkBOvV0_lsRnw
https://discord.gg/KQdVYsF
https://t.me/joinchat/EAdiTQ3yZk_GkqU0IdG-Gg
https://cheddar.com/videos/new-cryptocurrency-looking-to-appeal-to-the-masses
http://www.ethos.io/Ethos_Whitepaper.pdf
https://d2n2g5n187q8lu.cloudfront.net/static/docs/BRD-whitepaper-EN.pdf