Objective thoughts on Airbloc Protocol
About Airbloc
Airbloc Protocol is a decentralized advertisement data marketplace where individuals would be able to monetize their data, and enterprises would be able to buy these data to conduct business intelligence, risk mitigation, and targeted marketing campaigns for higher ROIs.
Discussing Data Acquisition Strategy
(a) Via integration of SDK in apps:-
They have developed an SDK( DAuth) which is can be easily plugged to any app. Now imagine, there is an app that 100,000 active customers. They install the plugin on their app and boom! You have given power to 100,000k users to sell their private data at their own terms. Whether these users decide to sell their data or not, it is their decison.
(b) Through Data Campaighns:-
Many times, enterprises are need of specialized data. They tend to collect such data via running data campaighns. Through Data Campaighns advertisers can ask for required type of information by questioning and can offer rewards when users respond by giving an answer. Once Data Campaigns are executed, then these questions from the advertisers are distributed to particular User group. When Users provide data by responding, that data is delivered to the advertisers that initiated the data campaign, and advertisers proceed with completing an escrow transaction that pays users a reward.
Why APP’s would like to plug in the SDK…
There are many applications that have tremendous amount of user data but find it extremely hard to monetize data in a transparent manner and in a legally correct way. With Airbloc, they will be able to monetize their data and gain additional revenue for the data that comes through their gateway. This additional revenue will depend on the quality and quantity of data provided by them.
About Airbbloc’s parent company “ab180”
Airbloc’s parent company — Airbridge / ab180 is a digital advertisement and data analytics company which currently tracks 2/3 of the total mobile devices in Korea (equivalent to 40 million devices) and has over 300 enterprises as clients including Ebay Korea, Auction, Baemin, GS Shop — one of South Korea’s largest conglomerate and online shopping site (1 billion revenues in 2017).
The Team
The team is perhaps the strongest suit of this ICO. Their developers form an impressive lineup of talents coming from Google, LINE, Naver, Software Maestro, and WeMakePrice. Also, CEO Roi Nam and the development team lead Wonkyung Lyu were selected as the National TOP 8 software developers of Software Maestro by the Ministry of Science and ICT in Korea.
Infact here is what JH KIM — CEO of theloop and ICON Foundation Council had to say about this team and project
“While building the ICON Project, I’ve waited for a team like what Airbloc Protocol has. The team behind Airbloc Protocol has strong execution power because of their vast technical expertise with regards to the data industry. Airbloc Protocol, based on blockchain technology, has the execution and technical prowess to build a decentralized data protocol for the world market. I certainly believe that Airbloc Protocol will usher in a new era to the data market.”
This should speak volumes about the team’s capability to execute what they are promising to in their whitepaper.
Strategic Investors
Most of you might be aware of ICON, SIGNUM & DEBLOCK. But let me bring to to your attention CoinPlug.
Founded in 2013 by Ryan Uhr and the finest engineers from both Silicon Valley and Korea, Coinplug is the world’s 2nd, and Korea’s 1st Blockchain Patent Holder — with a cumulative of 115 blockchain related patents in Korea and 46 international patents. Vitalik Buterin (Co-Founder of Ethereum) is also a technical advisor at Coinplug.
Most of the investors these days just bring money to the table. They might help with whitepaper, and make promises of partnerhships, and marketing. But the reality speaks otherwise. Their parnterships have no substance or are of minuscule value. The marketing is mostly done by paying youtubers/redditors to generate an artificial hype for the project; what follows from token sale to end of exchange listing is a well-organized classic DUMP!
Coinplug is a serious investor. They are bringing lots of technical expertise to the table. I had a talk with Lee-on (Chief Strategy Officer at Airbloc) regarding the pros of investment from CoinPlug. His exact words were “For coinplug, as you can see, they are very strong in blockchain technical developments. We will be in close consultation with coinplug to develop our technical features, so that our products will be technically sound.”
Reading this, I saw that the AIRBLOC is selective in its approach to getting quality investors. I felt reassured that they are doing their best to ensure that they are technically able to deliver the BEST on this project.
Advisors
Amongst many honorable advisors, the most prominent advisors include Jh KIM from the ICON foundation, Jason Han- CEO of Kakao Blockchain Subsidiary. The connections of these advisors will surely bring more value to the project.
Ecosystem Partners
I want you all to take a minute and read about these ecosystem partners.
It is always wise to invest in a project that has active partnerships and can get adopted with ease. Having a decent tranche of ecosystem partners halves the problem of adoption puzzle.
Roadmap
One of the things I like in the project is its roadmap. As you can see the events are not too far away for each other. Post July, they have major milestones due on their roadmap.Their Data Marketplace beta will launch in September 2018 & I am looking forward to it.
Raise
They are raising 20k ETH(~12mn USD) which in my view is modest, and displays that they aren’t implementing a cashgrab. Most of the ICO’s these days have become increasingly greedy. They raise 20–50 million of dollars when in reality they don’t need that much. A good ICO raises bare minimum to start their business, works hard in accordance to their roadmap, and sells their tokens after a year or two to fund their expansion plans. I find Airbloc following similar ideology.
Final Verdict
An ICO led by strong parent company. Team members are industry veterans. Has an ecosystem of partnerships ready to be utilized. Legitimized further by advisors from ICON, and Kakao.
This project will be a sure winner if it manages to successfully incentivize users into selling their data on the Airbloc marketplace.
NOTES:
- Please make your own investment decision. My article here is to only provide facts and figures to the best of my knowledge.
- I will do a follow up on this project three months from now. I will be particularly interested in knowing how allocation of 6.7k ETH from public sale to private capital has strengthened the project.
- I often do writeups for upcoming ICO’s like. I f you’d like to be up to date with my writings follow me at on Twitter @CryptoAssassin4
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