Loki (LOK) ICO Analysis: A Decentralised Privacy-Based Payment and Communications Network

Executive Summary

Project Description

Loki’s network is to be built on the Monero codebase. It has a proposition similar to Monero’s with additional features. They plan to launch a network that will facilitate completely anonymous transactions. In addition to this, Loki also plans to provide a platform for cryptographic applications to be operated on their network. These will be called Service Node Applications (or SNApps), and according to Loki, they will run on incentivized and fully-decentralized nodes. Once a SNApp is launched, it is supposed to be unstoppable, uncensorable, and totally immune from external attacks.

In order to ensure that SNApps are continuously functional, Loki plans to construct an incentivizing node system. However, unlike on DASH, where an expensive and fixed collateral (1000 DASH ~ $800,000 USD) is needed, the Loki platform intend to offer a dynamically adjusting node collateral. They believe this will allow the collateral amount on their platform reduce over time, ensuring that there will be no financial restriction as far as running a service node is concerned.

Loki’s token, also named LOK, should serve as the medium of exchange on the network. Loki’s plan is that the token will also be used to power SNApps, in a manner similar to how Ether powers the Ethereum network. More details can be found on Lokis’ Whitepaper.

Hard Cap and Valuation

There will be a total of 150 million LOK tokens in the beginning. Once the total supply is reached, there will be a continuous release of LOK at about the rate of 0.5% per annum.

At this time, Loki team doesn’t have plans for an ICO, as a result, they did not release token sales and distribution information to the public. However, their pre-sale is currently ongoing.

Price Per Token

Token metrics were not made available to the public.

Important Dates

As mentioned above, LOK pre-sale is ongoing currently, and it is due to close soon, according to the team. Their main-net is scheduled to go live in March 2018, and they plan to have an airdrop sometime between March and April 2018. By the end of the year 2018, they aim to have completely rewritten Monero’s codebase (scheduled for July), and implemented service nodes (scheduled for November).

Marketing Power

As at the time this post was published, Loki had over 5,000 members on Telegram, 149 followers on Twitter, and 54 Reddit readers.

Prominent Advisors

Ismail Malik

• Founder and CEO of Blockchain Lab.
• Editor in Chief at ICO Crowd.
• Advisor to various projects.

Dorjee Sun

• COO at Santiment.
• Advisor to various projects.

Taiyang Zhang

• CEO at Republic Protocol.

Lasse Clausen

• Partner at 1kx.
• Advisor to various projects.

Thomas Graham

• Co-founder at Codec.ai and founder of MapD.
• Advisor to various projects.

Well-Known Team Members

Tom Winget, Lead Developer.

• Third largest Monero contributor. He wrote over 120,000 lines of code for Monero.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

Business experts

Simon Harman, CEO

• Project management background.

Chris McCabe, COO

• Freelance crypto educator and consultant for 8 months.
• Digital technology & electrical systems background.

JP Thor, Strategic Advisor

• CEO at CanYa, a Blockchain powered services marketplace, for over 2 years (ongoing).
• Director at Fly Kooka, an autonomous urban air transport company, for 2 years.

Target market experts

Many team members are established in the crypto world, which is Loki’s major target market. Additionally, Kee Jefferys (CTO) and Tom Winget (Lead Developer) did some work on Monero in the past (Monero was used as a development base for Loki).

Marketing experts

Josh Jessop-Smith, CMO

• Co-Founder & Creative Director at Greedy Fish Video Production for almost 2 years.
• Filmmaker at Coordinate for 3 years.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Media Arts and Production.

John Ross, Community Manager

• Technical Consultant at Blockchain Centre for 4 months (ongoing)
• Co-Founder of CoinWisdom for 6 months (ongoing).
• Managing Director at Coinstop, Australia’s leading crypto hardware wallet provider, for over a year.

Legal experts

Michael Bacina

• Partner at PiperAlderman for one and a half years
• Advisor to various projects
• Crypto Lawyer

Software engineering experts

Simon Harman, CEO

• Web development background.
• Github.

Paul McLean, Performance Engineer

• IT Performance Consultant & Owner of RPM Solutions, a load testing and system performance company, for almost 29 years (ongoing).
• Control systems & software development background.

Blockchain development experts

Simon Harman, CEO

• Blockchain development contributor.
• Github.

Kee Jefferys, CTO

• Monero & information security background.
• Github.

Tom Winget, Lead Developer

• Third largest Monero contributor. He wrote over 120,000 lines of code for Monero.
• Computer science & cryptography background.
• Github.

Token sale structure experts

No team member with significant token sale structure expertise. However, the advisor team is well-established in the crypto sphere and hence one can assume that the project will profit from this.

Token economics experts

No team member with significant token economics expertise. However, JP Thor as well as Taiyang Zhang, two of their advisors, has already been through a token sale with CanYa and Republic Protocol.

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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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