Etherparty Analysis Part 3: Team & Funding

For the analysis of Etherparty, I will be posting several smaller parts where I focus on one thing, such as: project, team, funding, road map, et cetera. By doing this, I can get the information to you faster so that we can have discussion sooner. In addition, I think the posts will be easier to read. After releasing all the parts, I will also post the entire analysis and a summary.

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Previous parts:

• Etherparty Analysis Part 1: The Basics
• Etherparty Analysis Part 2: Road Map

In the previous parts of this series I went over the basics (the project, token and where to buy it) as well as the road map. In this part I will look into the team and how the project is funded.

The Etherparty Team

On their website, Etherparty lists 24 people (and 1 dog) under 'Team'. However, 5 of those 24 people are 'Advisors'. This is important to note because they are not actually team members - they do not actually work for Etherparty. You can take a look at the LinkedIn pages of the people listed as Advisors and you'll see that they haven't even listed Etherparty on their LinkedIn pages. I think it's slightly misleading that Etherparty lists these people under the heading Team, although this seems to be common practice in crypto.

I was going to mention that the team is actually quite big and that with six developers, they have a lot more people working on the project compared to other crypto's. Then, while researching the team's LinkedIn pages, I found a company called Vanbex Group. Take a look at their About / Team page, doesn't it look familiar?

I then found this article on the Vanbex Website:

The Vanbex Group is pleased to announce the closing of its seed round of financing for the development of blockchain-based products, including Etherparty, the company’s easy-to-use smart contract creator. Vanbex raised CAD 500,000 (USD 365,474), in line with the company’s target for its initial seed round.

In short: Etherparty is one of the blockchain projects started by Vanbex Group. Vanbex Group seems to be the employer as opposed to Etherparty itself and people working at Vanbex Group get assigned to the Etherparty project and presumably other projects as well. A similar concern came up while analysing Request Network. The team seems to be quite big, but we can be sure that they're not all working full-time on the Etherparty project.

How is Etherparty funded?

As mentioned earlier, Etherparty had received 500.000 CAD in seed funding from Vanbex Group in June. Then there was a pre-crowdsale of FUEL tokens in September and a crowdsale in October. A billion FUEL tokens were created and allocated as follows:

• 80% was sold in pre-crowdsale and crowdsale
• 10% reserved by the company for beta testers, strategic partners and community incentives
• 5% sold directly on the platform
• 5% distributed to the Etherparty team

Compared to other projects, the percentage allocated to 'community' is quite small. Where Request Network is trying to build an ecosystem and get others to develop extensions on their platform, Etherparty is trying to build it all themselves. In a way, this makes sense because the way the FUEL token is structured, there's no incentive for Etherparty to get others involved (since FUEL tokens don't get burned or used, so the circulating supply will always be 1 billion).

Looking at the funding, I strongly get the feeling that Etherparty chose to create the FUEL token not because it was necessary for users to use their application, but because it would make raising funds much easier. Raising funds traditionally from a crowdfunding or a series A would likely results in much less funding than by creating a token and selling it in a crowdsale.

What do you think of the team?
Do you think Etherparty's 'Team' page is misleaing?
How about the funding allocation and the FUEL token?
Let me know in the comments!

Part four, the final part of this series, will be coming soon! Stay tuned.

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Thanks!
-longcat