Going back to roots

When you look back at the history of crypto currencies you will see that the first people discovering blockchain and bitcoin were programmers and all kind of hardcore IT people, many of whom we would call hackers. They were avant-garde, early adopters, they were carrying the light, writing first wallets, implementing upgrades to the blockchain, hosting nodes, setting up a first home-based cryptocurrency mining facilities etc. When I think of Hacken and the community they are building I'm going back to those times in my memory. When the market was still young and these people were contributing to it even though they were not sure if the hustle will be ever rewarded. And this is how I see what Hacken Ecosystem is as a project and community they are gathering around it. The only difference is that Hacken, in fact is a solution for how to reward people committing to the development of cyber security.

The idea itself

Cyber security is very important for the crypto space. We all remember The DAO hack ($50M), recent Parity vulnerability which led to enormous Ethereum theft of $32M or Coin Dash ICO hack where hackers stole over 7 million dollars. Let's even go to a prehistoric history of cryptocurrencies and remind ourself about $65M stolen from Mt. Gox. In fact, crypto space became one of the main targets for black hat hackers.

Hacken is going to be first of all a decentralized HackenProof bug bounty marketplace(Q4 2017), then they will add Unreported Zero-Day Remuneration Platform(Q3 2018), Hacken Cybersecurity Startups Incubator(Q4 2017), Cybersecurity Analytics Center(Q1 2018) and also hold HackIT Conference in Ukraine every year (Q3 2018).

The idea behind creating a decentralized marketplace for buying and selling white hat hacking solutions is simple. Because it's coherent and using cryptocurrency in this project makes sense. Blockchain gives anonymity and if you are a white hat hacker working on some zero-day vulnerability you don't want to be exposed and you have to get your payment anonymously. If you are a company looking for improving the security of your systems you want to keep it confidential and look for a solution in one market full of potential contractors with the skillset you are looking for and a traceable proof of experience.

Hacken Analytics Center and Hacken Accelerator are a project aimed to show gratitude to the community and help to fix cyber security problems and develop new undertakings for cyber security entrepreneurs. The former is aimed to draw people interested in developing their scientific career and not necessarily interested in creating their own enterprises while the latter is aimed at people with the business mind who want to make their impact In the industry.

Watch the video about Hacken:

The team

Hacken team is what some ICO reviewers like to call ALL STAR. Let me just quickly summarize some of their characteristics.

Dmytro Budorin - CFO and the Lead Manager of Hacken - linkedin profile:

• worked for Deloitte for 8 years in various accounting
• one of the top executives within Ukraine’s military defence

Mykyta Knysh - Community Director at Hacken - linkedin profile:

• CEO of ProtectMaster, one of Ukraine’s oldest and reputable cybersecurity companies
• cybersecurity advisor to the Administration of the President of Ukraine and co- founder of HackIT Conference.

Andrii Matiukhin - CTO of Hacken - linkedin profile:

• 13 years of successful career in cybersecurity
• successfully drove complex technical solutions for a dozen projects in several countries for corporations, government agencies, banks and even the International Olympic Games Committee
• He is a certi ed expert in a number of technologies, including such vendors as CheckPoint, Cisco and Juniper Networks

Dr. Yegor Aushev - COO of Hacken - linkedin profile:

• Ph.D. in High Energy Physics from DESY, Hamburg He is the author of 22 scienti c papers in this field
• Since 2015, Yegor is the CEO of Information Security Group — a boutique cybersecurity rm providing penetration testing, data protection services and information security audit

When you read through their white paper this will strike you. Their advisor, Oleksi, 'discovered a critical vulnerability in the code of the Parity Ethereum wallet.' Thanks to him $1,402,996.09 worth of Ethers from the compromised wallets were transferred to the ones he controlled and then redistributed back to the rightful owners by a group of a white hat hackers. Obviously, he is remaining anonymous but that is the whole point of Hacken, to let those people remain in shadow and do their work.

https://www.ethnews.com/meet-the-unknown-maverick-white-hat-who-rescued-accounts-missed-by-the-whg-during-this-weeks-attack

Hacken ICO and token metrics

This is crucial for a cryptocurrency token. Many projects forgot about that vital part and created too many tokens which are then a big problem when it comes to trading. Somehow setting the initial price of a token at $1 seems to be optimal. It might be something in the human psychology that if they see a token worth just a few cents they think of it less than about the token worth a dollar. But on the other hand, if the token is too expensive right after the ICO then they are not keen on investing because they look mostly at the each token price, not the market cap. So if they see a token worth $1 it's cool because hey it can go to $10 easily right? But if the token is already priced at $10 then they might be thinking, ,,OmiseGo is around $10, why is it that expensive too".

And Hacken (HKN) token is priced at $1 and their market cap is also set really reasonably in this market, at $20m. There will be 20M Hackens, 1.3M sold in a presale with 30% bonus and 18.7M sold in the main token sale. Token supply is fixed and there will be no more tokens minted ever. Minimum investment that you can send into Hacken contract is 1 ETH. You can invest using BTC, ETH, DASH, LTC, USD, EUR, TaaS. The sale will begin on 31th of October and will last for one month. 80% funds raised in the ICO will be held in escrow provided by a Ukrainian law firm focused on crypto dealings. There will be also a bonus program for the main token sale, starting at 25% for first 4 hours, then 20% 1-2 days, 15% 3-7 days and 10% 1-2 weeks. Although I don't think anything will remain after the first 4 hours so be ready and don't miss out.

HKN token will be the only way to pay for services on decentralized marketplace for white hat hackers.

Token metrics summarized:

total number of tokens: 20M
ICO: 80%
price per token: $1
currencies accepted: BTC, ETH, DASH, LTC, USD, EUR, TaaS
presale bonus: 30%
ico bonus: 25,20,15,10%

Pros:

• reasonable cap
• number and price of tokens
• fair bonuses
• escrow
• burning mechanism

Cons:

• lack of whitelist for the main sale
• lack of KYC process

ICO start date: October 31

Token burning - ,,moon" mechanism

I just called it a moon mechanism because it will drive the token price up. But what is it?

Well simply 50% of fees which will be taken by the Hacken marketplace (on average 30%) will be burned, therefore reducing the total supply of tokens and driving it's value up. They will be completely taken out of the circulation. the other half will be stacked by Hacken until it reaches 1% of the total Hacken in the circulation and then sold in the market with a 24 hours announcement before the event. Whitepaper says: The sale will take place at 14:00 EET on the day following the day of the announcement.

The burning mechanism will also include fees collected from other elements of the Hacken system which are listed in this table:

The reason behind the existence of this mechanism is to pass the Howey test and therefore to prove that Hacken is not a security and can be traded on any exchange, including the American ones like Poloniex or Bittrex. Moreover, the launch of the Hacken marketplace is going to happen Q4 this year and this is another factor which is required by those exchanges to list a token.

Hecken CEO explaining the token burning mechanism for themerkle:

As soon as we burn 15% of the overall amount of the tokens, an effect may double the value of the crypto currency.

In the course of time, people who joined the community and purchased the tokens earlier will be able to purchase an increasing amount of services within the Hacken Ecosystem. Therefore, it's a prepaid Cyber Security service which token holders who bought HKN during the presale or main sale will be able to resell to other members of community or newcomers”.

Source:
https://themerkle.com/hacken-burning-principle-and-how-stakeholders-can-make-profit-from-it/

To Hacken or not

I don't know if you are already convinced to invest by my words but he seems to be listening to the Hacken team with a due attention ;)

I'm sold since I discovered this project a few weeks ago and it's one of my top 3 ICOs for October. I signed up for their presale but unfortunately it's already finished. I'll buy Hacken tokens in the main sale. Bonus difference between the presale and the first 4 hours of the main sale is fundamentally meaningless in the crypto world, it's just 5%.

Pros:

• idea
• business model (token usability)
• token metrics
• token distribution
• escrow
• burning mechanism (moon)
• team
• roadmap
• bursting social media hype (telegram, bitcointalk, twitter)
• legitimacy (linkedin profiles, extensive media coverage (themerkle)

cons:

• lack of whitelist for the main sale
• lack of KYC

Hacken score: 8/10 (strong buy)

Details:

Acquire for long term value.

Acquire for immediate appreciation upon launch.

Hold for long term value growth.

I am not Hacken representative or team member.

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Important links:

Website: https://hacken.io
White paper: https://hacken.io/common/files/HackenWP.pdf

Social:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hacken_io

Telegram: https://t.me/hackenio

Check their bitcointalk Ann thread to discuss anything you want to know about this project: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2135278.0