ICO Review of Indorse ($IND tokens)

I mentioned numerous times my opinion about the shortcomings of social media centralization. The fact that there is a small amount of people that control your data (which includes your private messages with friends and loved ones), control the information you consume, control the political agenda (for example, some political and historical articles are simply banned from Facebook, you are simply to share a link), control your emotions (the infamous Facebook experiment), and control the search results (for example, Google simply bans some autocomplete phrases and gives biased search results on political search requests).

Also, there is discrimination in Apple store and Google play for some applications. Basically, you are fed from the spoon the kind of information they want you to consume by Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter. The absolute control they have over the internet harms free speech and suppresses freedom of expression. Blockchain technology is not going to solve all the problems of social and mass media centralization, but, at least, blockchain is going to give you the ownership of your own data and the give you opportunity to consume the information you subscribed to.

Indorse is one of the most crucial blockchain projects on the scene currently. The reason? They want you to be the sole owner of your professional data. You are going to decide on the direction Indorse will be going. You are finally going to be beneficiary of the platform success. And that’s what matters. Decentralization is always about putting the responsibility on the shoulders of the users, and not on the shoulders of the small closed community. I really hope that such projects as Indorse, Akasha, other social and media DAPPs will be successful in their quest to overcome tech-giants, which dominate all parts of our internet life.

What can be said about the team? They have been on the blockchain scene since early 2016. Attores, a blockchain company, is a smart contracts services provider. A large part of Indorse consists of Attores employees. This project presented open source code for swaps and forward contracts for exchanging digital assets in 2016, so the team is certainly experienced in the sphere of smart contracts creation. Currently, Attores has a pilot program of issuing digital certificates on blockchain with Poly-Technic college in Singapore.

The advisory board is impressive. The name of Matthew Tan, founder of Etherscan, on the board speaks for itself. BTW, I had small experience in collaboration with Matthew Tan in late 2016. Sergey, the creator of CryptoPortfolio Bot, which gives you the latest market info about cryptocurrencies, had some difficulties with Etherscan API. So I asked Matthew Tan through Twitter to help us and he did. I have only good things to say about this man. Another great personality on the board is Kai C. Chng, who is cofounder of Digix, one of the first platforms where tokens will be collateralized with real world assets.

This is not a comple te list of all team members and advisory board, so be sure to check out the team information on Indorse.io.

What is the main idea of Indorse?

Indorse wants to create decentralized professional social network, where users will be the owners and beneficiaries of their data.

Indorse project aims at solving the problems of data privacy, economic inefficiencies, and centralized governance.

Project is tapping into the market of professional social networks. I do not see any big players here except for LinkedIn.

The users of Indorse platform will be the owners and beneficiaries of their own data.

Contributors to the Indorse platform will receive rewards for participation in the network. Basically, your non-malicious actions inside the network are rewarded with SCR tokens which are later converted into tradable IND tokens.

IND tokens are native currency of ecosystem. They will be used in different ways.

In order for ecosystem to generate revenue, Indorse will give advertisers opportunity to exchange IND tokens (Advertisers will buy them on secondary market, for example, Bittrex) for putting advertisements on the platform.

Companies, that hire people through Indorse, will use IND tokens for that.

50% of all revenue, which is generated either through advertising or talent acquisition, will go to administration fund, which will support the continuous development of the platform.

Other 50% will be used to reward the SCR token holders. I repeat that SCR tokens are earned through the active involvement on the platform.

Indorse will use decentralized blockchain technologies to build serverless infrastructure. IPFS, SWARM, uPort, Status, Attores Certificate Issuance platform, Indorse DE are some of the core components of the Indorse platform.

One of the advantages of Indorse if that the qualifications of users are validated via other members of the platform. You have to apply for the validation of your diploma, for example. You can simply give a link to the university site, where you are listed as the holder, and the randomly selected users will validate your degree.

Indorse wants to tap into the market of professional social networks.

Right now the main market leader is LinkedIn, which has grown since 2012 from $1bln to 2015 $3bln. Revenue.

Main competitors of Indorse are: LinkedIn and Steemit.

Currently, there is no close competitor of Indorse.io. But, Ethlance seems to be almost in that sphere. Even though, Ethlance is more about freelance blockchain jobs. And Steemit looks to be more of a close competitor here.

By attracting blockchain professionals to the platform, Indorse could cover the blockchain niche quite quickly. As a starting point, blockchain developers could become the main audience of the platform.

The profit generation comes from the appreciation of the IND tokens due to the demand on the secondary market.

IND investors/tokenholders need to hold tokens until the Indorse platform goes live to reap all the benefits. Of course, popularity will be very important for the project to get traction, so maybe there will be needed a little bit more time before Indorse becomes truly valuable.

Actual usage and success of the platform will create strong demand of IND tokens. It will ensure the growth of IND capitalization.

IND is pure usability token, so there is not going to be any dividends or profit sharing mechanism.

Social media accounts of Indorse

1. Slack 3336 members
2. Twitter 3392 followers
3. Medium 205 readers
4. Facebook 5317 subscribers

Crowdsale already raised more than 30k ETH and is still ongoing. Relatively low amount of tokens will be distributed to investors.
• ICO goes until 7th of September 2017
• Project will distribute 35% of its tokens to investors, it is ERC-20 token
• ICO is hard capped at 50k ETH
• IND ecosystem has small inflation
• Minimum contribution into crowdsale is 0.05ETH
• 65% proceeds will be used in development, 20% sales and marketing, 10% Operations, 5% Legal

What are the advantages?

• Team and advisory board is well-known to the blockchain community. I was really pleasantly surprised to see the founder of Etherscan and the cofounder of Digix on the board of advisors.
• There is working prototype, but you need to register and wait for your account to be approved.
• Indorse is backed by accelerator Coinsilium. Also, it is partnered with Smith and Crown plus Wings DAO project.

Disadvantages

• LinkedIn seems to be monopolist. Can Indorse really compete with that kind of giant? That’s the question for the investors.
• Crowdsale terms. To be honest, I really do not like that only 35% of tokens are distributed to the investors. But I hope that the other part of tokens will be used for the fast growth of the platform efficiently.