1. IOTA:
trend is down since early May ’18 with its peak of USD 2.62 on the 4th
of May, which was reached due to:
I stage = from 0.93 (April 7) to 2.21(April 24) = +237%
a) April 2 - IOTA nodes cross 1,000 and team releases JavaScript Lib for testing,
b) April 9 - Fujitsu Central Europe head joins IOTA Foundation,
II stage = from 1.84 (May 1) to 2.62 (May 4) = +42%
c) May 1 - there is an announcement that the IOTA Ecosystem has gone live; its announcement did a
positive correction from 1.34 to 2.20 back at beginning of February
d) May 3 – Qubic project unveiling,
e) May 3 - Ledger support is announced,
f) May 4 - Cobinhood announces that it will offer IOTA trading,
g) May 5 – PorscheLab takes IOTA as a partner within Startup Autobahn Project.
after reaching its top there was a correction which was supported by
a) May 22 - IOTA signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations Office for Project
Services,
b) May 23 - first of the new testnets go live,
c) May 29 – trinity mobile wallet app (beta) launch.
all the list above means IOTA can create push-events and it is important to notice that each info push
includes several events in a row. the fact let us use a strategy to leave the asset and come back as soon as a
new row starts from a new partnership – The Dutch Government, The German Government, The
Government of Taiwan, Microsoft, Orange, VW and Porsche, Samsung and Fujitsu are just some of the names
that are involved with the IOTA project – or a new development stage. the last big stake in terms of product
development is Qubic sub-project.
Qubic includes Qubic protocol itself & Abra language. “Qubic is a protocol that specifies IOTA’s solution for
oracle machines, smart contracts, outsourced computations, and more.” it is about quorum-based
computations. this is a powerful and multi-pieces initiative that is a core one within IOTA. so a new big thing
within IOTA will come from Qubic. but what is the next one – it hard to predict as soon as there is a lack of
information (both activity and dates) about the progress which puts a shadow and uncertainty.
it is really hard to get a full picture of IOTA intentions and plans. there is some initiative (which came from
outside – from IOTA’s fan but not from IOTA itself) to develop roadmap like Cardano did: three groups of
tasks which include (a) done, (b) in progress, (c) plan. anyway, the team has “the goal of reaching a
production ready state by the end of 2018 and begin the international standardization process together
with the industry”.
it is important to mention that there was a conflict within team regarding new board members onboarding. it
was solved and two strong-strong nerds joined the IOTA board – a positive sign for more focus onto
development which is a basis for further commercialization, which will have no issues taking into
consideration a long list of IOTA partners.
conclusion: asset is still a very perspective one but there is no certainty regarding dates and actions as for
developments process. thus it is proposed to close the position and track news feeds keeping in mind
“news wave” attitude of IOTA marketing (like recent Fujitsu partnership and Trinity Wallet launch => +25%).
2. WANCHAIN:
profitable asset with active and productive team. there were several significant events during the period
July-August ‘18: a strategic alliance with 0xcert was announced as well as a partnership with Kronos team,
interoperability with Ethereum blockchain was settled, the Wanchain ERC20 tokens to Wanchain Mainnet
Wancoins swap has been done successfully.
according to an initial version of roadmap the next milestone is “Wanchain 3.0”: integration with Bitcoin and
multi-coin wallet launch. but there gonna be roadmap update by the end of summer ’18 (not yet).
current trend is upward.
taking into consideration
stable and effective development of the project (including successful mainnet launch and native
token swap into its own mainnet),
upward trend since middle of August ’18 (with its minimum of USD 0.60),
ongoing plan to realize cross-chain functionality for at least one or two more ERC20 tokens,
ongoing plan to support BTC cross-chain functionality before the end of this year,
high probability of additional partnerships in terms of developing projects on top of WAN blockchain
(Kyber Network, AllSpark, Portal Network (WNS; Wanchain Name Service), Bluzelle,Icon, Aion,
Freedium, Abacus Protocol, CryptoCurve)
the conclusion is to keep WAN.
VECHAIN:
the project is similar to IOTA – too many partners but not so many results, lots of noise but lack of real
development.
the project was born out of its parent company Bitse, which produced two more projects (and got lost out of
Sunny Lu linkedin profile) – incredible Qtum (almost reached USD 100 from USD 0.30) and less successful but
still profitable Fusion (top price USD 9.4 with ICO price around USD 2). if you wish to create smth good you
would focus on it rather than spread your focus on three different projects at the same time. but if you wish
to collect money from hot market thus you need divide one project into three. this will help to get bigger
capitalization in total. for sure.
the project is interesting in terms of nodes system, which requires to keep a certain amount of VETs to be
able to get additional income (and support the project). node monitoring will resume on September 1.
September 1 is also the date that economic nodes tracking begins for qualified wallets wanting to receive
extra VTHO rewards. which means there gonna be reduced supply on the market which can effect a price
growth.
the growth will be powered by Bitfinex also – it has just added VET into assets to.
to speak about internal factors of growth there should be mentioned that the team has a plan to develop
Crosschain and Sidechain technologies by the end of the year (Q4 2018 according to roadmap).
anyway project acts within a certain blockchains’ ecosystem which includes 5-7 in top 20 cap. to beat
competitors it should create smth outstanding. VET is not the project with revolution inside – it puts dots
together to promote/sell technology and has a good marketing.
conclusion is to keep VET but keep in mind its limits in terms of development (thus growth).
3. STELLAR:
the project has its roots within its competitor – Ripple. both are going to revolutionize financial sector but
each of them has a different task thus attitude in terms of focus and support they are relying on. Ripple –
traditional financial institutions, which are hunting optimization and do not want to miss something their
colleagues don’t. Stellar – mass market thus the customer is the king within alternative financial system
(quite opposite position to Ripple). but both want to beat SWIFT for sure.
there could be comparison done: it’s like revolution in Russia back in 1917 where Ripple is rich liberal
bourgeoisie with a bigger resource (approx. USD 100 M and 200 people team), Stellar is an analog of
Bolsheviks (who are relatively poor with USD 5 M, small with 20 people team and unpopular within
traditional financial world), SWIFT is the king.
Stellar creates payment channels which need payment anchors (start-end points of transaction). group of
payment anchors is growing and Stellar has a very good growth potential in this field as soon as it means
adoption. adoption means growth of turnover thus increasing of XLM demand. and there is no need in
creating info events or smth – the growth is natural.
growth = Stellar has attained 1 million active accounts. it also boasts over 25 million payments, 8 million
trades, and 3,300 crypto assets on the ledger. what will push these digits further?
IBM. tech giant with financial ambitions. that is why its choice is done in favor of XLM vs XRP, which is a
certain bastion for traditional financial system. IBM has social oriented projects on the blockchain – Veridium
and InfiniteEarth of the Envision Corporation (Hong Kong-based incubator for sustainable technologies). it is
more about use case and social responsibility. but financial sector and payments/transactions in particular is
a main focus of big blue. Stronghold USD – stablecoin, which is backed with one-to-one U.S. dollars per coin.
that is a huge step towards mass adoption of Stellar developments. it is about as an alternative to opaque
USDT, it is about as development for future IBM products and services to propose its corporate clients.
plus IBM won a 5-year tender to advise and help research and develop technological advancements in
Australia in the industries of blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and Quantum Computing. this means that the
Stellar blockchain will obviously be involved in these projects. geography of XLM is growing! including
Australia and far East, Asia.
Stellar is the first distributed ledger protocol to receive Sharia compliance certification in the money transfer
and asset tokenization space. it will help grow the Stellar ecosystem in regions where financial services
require compliance with Islamic financing principles. e.g. Islamic financial institutions in the Gulf Cooperation
Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) and parts of Southeast Asia (like Indonesia and
Malaysia) will now be able to integrate Stellar technology in their Sharia-compliant product and service
offerings. this is a big advancement for the Stellar network given that these regions are endpoints of popular
foreign worker remittance corridors. additionally, the Sharia compliance certification extends to applications
and usages of XLM. and Stellar is powerful not only in creating external infrastructure and working with
partners all over the world but it is supercharged internally too.
Lightning Network implementation. LN is going to be implemented by the end of 2018: October 1 –
State channels on Stellar livenet, Lightning Network beta, December 1 – Lightning Network on Stellar livenet.
StellarX (ex-SDEX). StellarX (already beta) is a peer-to-peer marketplace built on top of Stellar blockchain.
Coinbase. Coinbase is willing to list XLM. and those guys are too detail oriented in choosing an asset to trade.
non-profit status makes XLM easy to take on board vs problematic XRP with its security status issues.
conclusion is to keep XLM with no tiny doubt. this is hall of fame project.
