Meet “Vertex”: a platform where ICOs are vetted prior to being added.

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This is my entry for the sponsored writing contest organized by @monajam. You can find the contest here.

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ICOs have potential but also a lot of risks

Every industry can eventually be disrupted by blockchain technology, we can see this process already started to take place in the last few months and years as new decentralized solutions and platforms are being created on a non stop basis, with teams aiming at developing the best possible decentralized applications and hoping to provide spectacular results to anyone that gets involved.

However, competition is fierce and it is getting tougher by the day, there are countless different teams working to be the ones with the most successful project and it is understandable for there to be a lot of people planning to get involved in them, but with not enough skills or knowledge to properly identify the ones with the most chances of delivering on their ideas. There is the following worrisome survey from 6 months ago where it is indicated that “46% of last year’s ICOs have already failed” and “59% of last year’s crowdsales are either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making”. Source

A circumstance as complicated as this one can easily act as a deterrent that might result in fewer people participating in future ICOs and good projects not receiving enough support. This is already being reported by Fabric Ventures, they affirm more than half of ICOs weren’t able to receive the funding they were expecting, which is clearly a handicap for their future development. Such an uncertainty could halt the innovative dynamic that is currently present in the blockchain industry, and delay the transition from centralized applications to decentralized ones.

There is also the fact the certain ICOs are completely funded through private means, leaving the general public with no way of getting involved.

These are the problems that Vertex Market is trying to solve.

What is the Vertex and what is their solution?

Vertex is a platform where people will be able to invest in ICOs after they have been properly vetted by a team of experts with extensive experience in related fields. Unlike common exchanges, in this case Vertex will first acquire the tokens during its ICO phase, once this is done and before the tokens are available on any exchange, they will allow every user to buy the tokens at a price lower than the last ICO price, this can be done because Vertex will be an early participant in every project they vet, which means they can afford to offer the tokens at a discount according to the current market prices, and due to its decentralized nature, every user will be able to use any wallet of their choice, leaving them in complete control over their holdings. The pricing will work like this:

• 10% discount for the first 50% tokens sold in the Vertex Market
• 0% discount for the next 25%
• 10% increase for the remaining 25%. Source

For security purposes, users will have to go through a KYC (know your customer) process, and in order for the users to make their purchases in the Vertex Market, they will have to use the token called VTEX and trade it with the one they want to invest in, the VTEX token will be the one powering every single transaction in this platform.

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Vertex’s vision

Vertex is aiming at becoming the first platform that allows users to acquire tokens from thoughtfully analyzed ICOs before they are available on exchanges, making it easier for common investors to avoid getting involved in low quality projects, while having access to ICOs that are considered as the ones with the most potential according to Vertex team of experts. Vertex plans to be the platform where the whole ICO selection process is easier for those who don’t have enough knowledge or contacts that could guide them, therefore, what’s driving the Vertex team to continue with the developing and improving of their platform is helping users to take better decisions regarding their ICO investments, as well as making sure every good projects gets the funds they deserve.

Vertex’s mission

By sharing the valuable skills from the Vertex team of experts, people and ICOs will be both benefited as a result, good projects are going to be showcased to more individuals looking to participate in them, and individuals will enjoy the privileged of knowing which ICOs are the ones with the most potential for the future, in the end, the problem of people losing money due to a bad investment and good ICOs not receiving a well deserved support should be at least partly solved by the Vertex platform.

Vetting process

The most important aspect of this project is the vetting process that will differentiate ICOs with high potential from those that have important weaknesses. However, it is important to notice that Vertex will also reject any project that is “involved in the gambling, tobacco, or alcohol industry”. Source

The vetting process has 6 basic steps that are explained below:

1. The Vertex team will make sure to collect every important piece of information about the project and about how it is managed.

2. After enough data is collected, they start evaluating it, looking for any weak point that could make this project unworthy of being added to the Vertex Market.

3. Then, Vertex experts will analyze how realistic is the ICO’s plan to have success, and if their members are people capable of actually delivering on their promises. In this step, they will reject 75% of the ICOs being analyzed.

4. A new intensified assessment takes place, and a second 75% cut is done to reduce even further the numbers of ICO that are being taken into consideration.

5. This next step consists in having a personal meeting with the people behind the ICO, and having a more deeper look at how this team works. After this process is finished, Vertex will reject 50% of the remaining ICOs, which is the final filter.

6. The final step consists in explaining the team behind the ICO how the investment will be done, and reach an agreement with them regarding the use of the VTEX token. All of these steps can be further explained in the whitepaper.

Benefits

It is clear that a platform planning to reduce the overall loses in ICO investments as well as promoting only the best projects available, will have a lot of benefits for a lot of people.

Benefits for the users

Anyone who decides to use the Vertex platform will have an easier time deciding which projects to get involved with. This is possible, because every token available to purchase in the Vertex Market has already been analyzed by the team of experts, and only projects that can prove their idea is indeed valuable, and even more important, that they are capable of making their vision come true, are the ones that end up being accepted into the platform. This means there is an added layer of security that should prevent any user from bought into a fraudulent ICO.

Besides, having access to the criteria and ICO evaluations from the team of experts, users will also have access to private ICOs that were completely sold out without having a public offering, thanks to Vertex, some of these tokens will be available to purchase, always with the discounted price previously explained.

Finally, having several vetted ICOs in just one place will surely save a lot of time to users, especially for people who tend to invest in a lot of different ICOs, which means going through a registration process every single time they decide to participate in a new project, with Vertex they will only need to do this just one time.

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Benefits for the ICOs

It is clear that being vetted and approved by a team of experts will bring unparalleled levels of recognition, validating them as a viable and ambitious project worthy of receiving the support they need. There will also be the increased exposure by being added to the Vertex Market, which will likely result in having more people willing to invest in their ideas, and even more importantly, the Vertex experts can also offer guidance to any ICO that passes the vetting process, in order to help them take the best possible steps to find a sustainable success.

Benefits for entire crypto community

The entire community can also be benefited by the Vertex platform, because it will help with avoiding fraudulent ICOs from receiving support they don’t deserve, hence reducing the amount of money being lost in this type of investments, and it will help those projects that can prove their honesty and their competence in getting the funds and consultation they need, getting them closer to their goals.

In other words, Vertex could be a platform that could change the negative image a lot of people have about ICOs, and turn it into a positive one when most people instead of losing their money, can actually receive a positive return.

Of course, this will only be possible if the team of experts takes the right decisions when analyzing which projects are added to the platform.

Summary

The high numbers of ICOs ending up in failure, and people losing money because of it, can cause damage to an industry that has always been capable of developing new applications and platforms with the potential to disrupt the traditional centralized ways of doing things. There is a growing number of people who are reluctant to participate in any of these projects because of all of the bad news that are constantly coming out.

However, not every ICO is a failure, there are some of them who actually manage to find success, and the difficult thing is identifying those who can actually do what they promise to do, the problem is, not every individual is capable of differentiating between projects with real potential, from those who are lacking it.

Vertex is developing a platform where a team of experts will do intensive evaluations of each project in order to accept them into the platform, this is done with the goal of protecting the users from any bad project and providing them with a hand picked selection of what they consider are the best projects with the highest potential. The key here, is clearly in how effective can that vetting process be, if the tokens that are allowed into the platform end up giving a good performance, then Vertex will certainly be a successful platform and might even increase the amount of capital that is invested into the industry, because with the security provided by the experts and the vetting process, losing money in a bad project should be less likely.

In the end, having more people achieving good results with their investments, and having good projects successfully developing their applications and platforms, would certainly be something extremely healthy for the entire community.

Token distribution

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Roadmap

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Team

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Investors

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Advisers

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Here is a video I made sharing my thoughts about this platform.