W12.io | Blockchain protocol - Report

W12 is an open protocol for creating and executing smart contracts. The protocol consists of templates for smart contracts (no programming skills required), DAO management and a decentralized network of oracles, which control the execution of project roadmap milestones.

● Team
The project team consists of 13 core members and 4 advisors.

CEO & Founder - Andrey Granovskiy
Education - IT & Business
Work experience - Entrepreneurship since 2010. 3 Startups.

COO & co-Founder - Oleg Sharpatiy
Education - Law & Entrepreneurship
Work experience - Career started in 2006 in BDO. In 2008 became Head of Legal in “VEB Capital”. 2011 founded SHINE a startup in the market of sustainable tourism.

CTO - Michael Korneev
Education - IT
Over 18 years of career development 2359 followers on Michael’s articles publishing page Both large & medium business and startup experience

The team has fulfilled all main business and main technical roles. However, it seems the technical jobs will be outsourced and managed by Michael Korneev. All 3 advisors previously held managing positions on Ericsson and Goldman Sachs.

● Concept
The technology developed by W12 reduces risks, protects against scams, reduces costs, removes the need for third parties, increases transparency in the Сharity, ICO, STO and Сrowdfunding markets. The decentralized autonomous organizations created on the basis of smart contracts will change the approach to financing the varaity of projects, such as creation of music and films, conducting events, monetizing the channels of bloggers, etc. Presence of such service in the market will ease the many difficulties for new investors who want to participate in crowd sales by providing fiat payment. The W12 Roadmap extends up to the end of 2019. The roadmap is detailed and appears to be realistic.

A Template-based smart contract escrow platform will be in demand in the outlined charity and crowd investment markets. Such a platform also gives access to the community pool for the early idea review and market hypothesis testing. However, community-based decision making of funds release has its downsides that can be mitigated by the close interaction between the project and community.

W12 assumes that fund contributors will be qualified enough to decide whether the startup has met a milestone or not with the help of Oracles (Professionals in the sphere of the project idea). Moreover, it is common knowledge that a startup can not produce accurate enough financial and operational planning to a level, where it’s funding will be dependant on the plans. As a result of fund blockage, potentially successful and trustworthy projects will face additional drawbacks in the face of the search for new funding.

W12 states, that an ICO can be partly held on their platform. What this means is: an ICO will divide its tokens over the services like W12, Juries online and others, and will hold their own individual ICO. Does this revolutionize the ICO market? Probably not. W12 will fit in the market, however, will not disrupt it.

As of industries part from ICO, W12 states that its project will be applicable to the Charity and Crowdfunding (ICO, Kickstarter alike, securities and utility tokens) markets

The total capitalization of these markets is currently estimated at more than $800 billion USD. According to forecasts, W12 or solutions similar to W12, can claim 5 to 10% of the overall target market in 5 to 6 years. Such estimates look very alluring, and W12 would become extremely successful when it penetrates these markets.

The market acquisition model provided by W12 seems realistic and taking into account that all modelling made by startups is uncertain, the W12 approach shows that the team is deeply immersed into the project development and is working to bringing the product to the market.

W12 prospects, that its services will be used due to:

1. Low transaction costs. Although this is true, every other crypto decreases the transaction costs, and yet, the market has not expanded to the non-crypto industries.
2. Smart contracts and oracle confirmation. Smart contracts serve their purpose of trustless exchange. W12 introduces oracles that check if the criteria are met.

● Competition Automation of adding projects to the escrow platform and variety of rules of how escrow works set W12 apart from its competitors. Also, by building a community around the platform brings additional value for all stakeholders bringing such services to the next level. Competitors such as (IBSG, Jury online) execute schemes that lack transparency and not managed by the community that is more interested in project success.
W12 key competencies:

1. Decentralized Escrow

2. Fund protection

3. Scam filtering

4. ICO platform (marketing as a service)

5. Decentralised exchange

6. Charity campaign fund accumulation and governance In each of these specialisations, W12 will face tough competition, as the market is saturated with various solutions for token exchange and investor protections.

7. Decentralised Escrow & Scam Filtering
   a. Juries Online
   b. Descrow
   c. ICOVO
   d. XRIBA
   e. Kick
   f. Serenity-Financial
   g. Incriment.io

8. Charity
   a. Littlephil
   b. giftcoin
   c. Alice.si
   d. Aidchain
   e. Vantage Network
   f. Philanthor

At the moment, W12 is better than any of the existing solutions, although iby a tight margin. The biggest advantage of W12 is that it combines most of the competitors' features on its platform.

● Economics
W12 offers fund services for the projects even that it is a core mechanic of W12, such service creates exposure to currency and exchange rate risks for projects after crowd sale. In the case of a market downtrend, ICOs will lose money generated after crowd sale instead of fixing their earnings in fiat. If investors make an investment via the W12 platform they receive special W tokens that represent the startup token. Founders are able to get refunded at any time or receive original ICO tokens.

The W12 token is a utility token that will be used as a payment method for the project services such as additional highlight within the marketplace.

● Token
The W12 token is a “utility” token with the core functionality:

1. The W12 token is used for funding projects via W12 smart contracts (as any other ERC20) W12 specifies, that if the project receives funding in non erc20, than the tokens will be converted to W12 token through the DEX. And stores as W12 tokens before all the milestones are not fulfilled. Such action will greatly fluctuate the W12 token price. Users that have invested in ICO 1 will be reliant on the ICO 2 performance, as they will be buying and selling W12 tokens as well.

2. The W12 token is used as fuel in the W12 oracles ecosystem

3. The W12 token is used as payment for services on the platform All in all, the W12 token can be described as a utility token.

● Funding and Distribution of Tokens
Token sale allocates budget between 5 and 20 million dollars. Budget divided by 4 stages, each stage designates funding to the different areas of development, such as dEX or PAMM accounts.

During token sale, 65% of tokens are sold to investors. The white paper does not explain why 15% of all issued tokens will be locked in the reserve fund. And another 15% is reserved for team and advisors with 2 years lock-up period.

● Presence
The project website is clear and mobile friendly. The White Paper does provide a full description and lacks technical in-depth overview but it is well written and provides a general overview of the project and use cases. W12 won 2 respected competitions and was selected from a large pool of projects. Among ICO trackers W12 has highly rated reviews and expected to bring many forms of value to the market. W12 has an active community in 2 telegram chats (EN & CN) and developed forum tree on bitcoin talk.

Project MVP is alive and provides its service to a number of startups. MVP allows to list project details and get reviews from the community.

● Overall
You choose the project, transfer funds and the contract is automatically executed without the need to trust the counterparty or any other external institutions. The W12 project definitely fits in with the industry trend. The white paper is professionally written and balances around technical details and general project information.
The roadmap covers some topics not described in the white paper, but that is not critical. The project does not offer to disrupt services, however, it will definitely be used by Charity and ICOs. The Go to market strategy is outlined and looks realistic. The team is composed of strong and experienced professionals, it is not clear, how the current team will develop the software needed to all industries, that they have outlined.
All in all W12 is a great example of an ideologically strong project, that through development and evolution may become the industry leader.