SEED - Powering the bot economy on blockchain

SEED is a decentralized marketplace that democratizes A.I. and lets bot developers license their chat bot code to other

https://www.seedtoken.io/

Brief Description

SEED is a decentralized marketplace aimed at developers of CUIs or Conversational User Interfaces. A good example of a CUI is a telegram bot that is able to add any service to a channel, i.e. online store, booking, information platform, where interactions are held not via graphical means (GUI) but through a ‘conversation’ or ‘dialogue’ with a bot. SEED is creating a developer-friendly environment where they could buy, sell, exchange and rent components to compile their own bots.

Goal: to democratize AI development and create an alternative to current monopolies that tend to slow down the growth and potential of CUI.

SEED Foundation'AI bot platform leverages Botanic Technologies' AI bot platform to nurture a fairer and safer environment for the development of bot-friendly industries, where a large amount of tasks related to communication could be done to bots themselves.

Solution: Seed eliminates a problem of inefficient cooperation of companies using CUIs by creating a decentralized marketplace where everyone is able to exchange templates, building blocks and innovations for the bots. In addition, developers are rewarded with the SEED token that serves as a catalyst for the SEED network: a part of one of the most exciting niches in the AI industry which is predicted to have grown up to $20,000,000,000 by 2021.

How SEED Works

Seed will be doing PoA, not PoW nor PoS, since this project are a public permissioned blockchain. Seed don't need mining to encourage network participation, and don't want to get into the hardware arms race. Because PoW is too easily dominated by countries (like China) and PoS is complex, and somewhat (still) theoretical.

****User interface (currently in beta)****

1. Register on seedtoken.ioseedtoken.io;
2. Create a new project and indicate an industrial application, i.e. finance, management, health care, etc;
3. Choose a type of a bot, ex. chat-bot, building blocks and a platform where the bot will be hosted, ex. Skype, Slack, etc.;
4. Fill out a simple form to create a personal identification that directs unique characteristics of a bot.
5. Depending on needs and requests of your clientele, a variety of possible interaction scenarios are generated in a Lego-like manner.

Seed architecture:

Mockups of the SEED Greenhouse App and Wallet

In order to evaluate and test a newly-purchased piece of code, a separate virtual machine (!!!!) will be included as an added bonus. There will also be ratings based on sellers’ reputation as well as a blacklist.

Is blockchain needed?

Simply put, yes: mainly for secure interactions within the SEED network and to keep users’ information safe and confidential. Smart-contracts will regulate terms and conditions of intellectual property transfers as well as distribution of income. Currently, Etherium is a blockchain of choice, but in case of any ‘force majeure’ SEED will be able to effortlessly transfer to another blockchain, such as NEO.
There is, however, a small misinterpretation of ‘decentralization’ in the whitepaper. It says that in the initial stage of development, SEED will provide a server to store and process data. Later on, as the development furthers, they are planning to distribute the information across the network of partners that will be responsible for publishing, safekeeping and processing the aforementioned data. It doesn’t sound like ‘true decentralization’, does it?

Whitepaper

Materials for reference:

1. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5a97a16464c1cb0001c2ead4/5ab41a429d5f387c449ddd92_SEEDWhitePaper3-22.pdf
2. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5a97a16464c1cb0001c2ead4/5ab41a418d0f676978a2170e_SEEDCryptoeconomicsWhitePaper3-22.pdf
3. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5a97a16464c1cb0001c2ead4/5ab41a410fde2a044c7a9019_SEEDExecutiveSummary3-22.pdf
4. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5a97a16464c1cb0001c2ead4/5ab41a459b11632590bd5426_SEED%20Slide%20Deck3-22.pdf

Conclusions on the Whitepaper: for every taste and color, choose a file with lots of letters or pictures and minimum of text (for me, of course). It is necessary to read through, because not everything that it would be necessary to show to the investor (in terms of technology, partnerships) lies on the surface. Sometimes you need to dig up ..

Token sale and tokenomics

50% tokens are allocated to the community that falls into the ‘acceptable’ range;
10% for the team seems to be fine nowadays;
25% for the strategic partners seems to be a bit excessive though. There is no official statement on vesting and lock schedule. There is a rumor that there might be a minimal lock on the tokens which will inevitably lead to a big dump as soon as SEED hits exchanges. There is another rumor that Ocean Protocol is one of the strategic partners.

Bounty program: N/A
Total token supply: 10,000,000,000
Token type: utility
Token price: $0.01 in ETH
Ticker: SEED
Hardcap: is revised, will become known before the IKO somewhere in the middle of summer.
Profit distribution: creation of the network, development of the SEED Foundation, improvement programming protocols, incentives for developers and rewards within the platform.

Important Dates:

• Pre-sale has been concluded(SAFT only); the bonus was, accordingly to our insider, 20% possibly without a lock;
• Main sale will be held in 2 stages: Q2 2018 and Q2 2019;
• Private sale will be organized a month before the first main sale;
• There is no official statement regarding bonuses, token prices and lockup periods for any of the sales.

MVP:
Q1 2018 - product launch;
Q2 - Q4 2018 - updates and to the SEED ecosystem with new templates by industries and UI improvements.

Botanic Technologies Inc.

The company has been operational since 2011 with the website https://botanic.io registered in 2015 by Mark Stephens Meadows. Botanic Technologies created the SEED Foundation and seem to actively support it. According to our research, Botanic technologies is an active and profitable company with patented technologies in their portfolio. (ssylki na patenty!!!!) The SEED development team practically mirrors the Botanic one, including engineers Eduardo Polidor and John McKnight. The team receives good marks from us for reliability, as they seem to be able to work together on a product for a prolonged period of time.

Partnerships of Botanic:

• Logitech: a well-known provider of personal computer and mobile accessories;
• Monash University, Melbourne: Botanic is currently working on creating a chat-bot for a young audience who struggle to find help when it comes to solving teenage-related problems. The project is undergoing a beta-test;
• Sensely: a virtual nurse app that helps physicians stay in touch with patients;
• Rumors about partnering with Microsoft were circulating in late 2017 but there is no official statement at the time of writing.

Legal aspects of Botanic Technologies, Inc.

• Botanic Technologies, Inc. is registered in San Francisco, CA at 44 Montgomery St, #1308 on May, 30th 2017.

• The company is registered in the name of Michelle Katz who is in charge of legal aspects at Botanic. Entity number: C4029078, according to https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov
  

• Google Street View shows us a real building that looks like an active office center

• However, under the same entity another adress has been listed under the Street Address of Principal Executive Office: 3300 Powell St #101, Emeryville, CA 94608, USA.

• Coincidentally, the same address belongs to the “Emery Cove Yacht Harbor” We would like the team to clarify this as the address is listed under “Contact Us” on the website.
  And this is how the team responded: This is, indeed, in a marina (though "yachts" are definitely overstated. When Mark is in town here, he lives on a boat inthe Marina and the office space there is very convenient (not to mention more beautiful). Plus, none of us like cubicles.
  
  

Product aspects and MVP.

Having an MVP without a doubt adds points to the credibility of the project. Botanic Technologies only use scalable instruments and templates in the development process. Botanic offers tools for creation of multi-modal and “harmless” bots. Here are some examples:

1 One of the bots is a Siri-like product with a pleasant female but computerized voice. Tasks are deployed through oral commands, analyzed and a user receives feedback upon completion: just like having a real-life secretary. It says that this is a “4th gen chat bot” that is capable of reading and interpreting basic human emotions, like anger, fear, happiness, through a combination of a web-cam and voice recognition.

2 Andi, the Interview Coach is another multi-modal bot. Users are able to interact with the bot by writing, speaking or through the UI. The prototype was developed in 2017.

3 Your own pocket Guru that estimates your stress levels, helps you relax and become “zen” :-) A mobile app analyzes your mood via webcam and offers a chat that one might have with a retired neighbor who is trying to turn every conversation into a life lesson:-)

Clients

There was a rumor about Toyota being one of the clients but SEED admins mentioned that some clients and partnerships are under NDA and cannot be disclosed at the moment.

Team

Members of the board, council. Trustees.

1) Nathan Shedroff - Executive Director & Whip Cracker

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanshedroff/. 2k +
https://twitter.com/nathanshedroff 32k +

popular person.

Site with personal articles, interviews, etc.: http://nathan.com. (you can also buy a T-shirt " Nathan League " on the website ... that was exactly what I needed)

Education: 2006 - Master of Business Administration in the Presidio Graduate School.
MBA Specialization - business. 1989 - Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design (with emphasis on car design), the Art Center Design College in Pasadena.

MBA in the design sphere.

Nathan was on the board of directors of Teague and AIGA.
Teague 2010-2017. The company works with design, marketing and social promotion of giant corporations such as: Boeing, Land Rover, Intel, Hyundai, Microsoft, Nike and many other notorious ones. A team of industrial designers, researchers, strategists, engineers.

AIGA 2011-2014. A century-old design office, which has been marketing since 1914, nurturing IBM in its infancy. Advertising giant.

Advisor. Botanic Technologies, Inc.
He is a pioneer in the field of design in many areas of business.
Academic degree: since 2013 assistant professor in California College of the Arts.
Guru of design, business strategy, wrote 5 books on the field of marketing and design. Teaches a lot of young Padawans.
IMHO: a very serious man. Guru in the field of design and advertising business. Experience, qualification over 9000. For the promotion of the project - the Messiah.

2) Mark Stephen Meadows - Trustee & Technical Supervisor

Chief Executive Officer of Botanic Technologies.
20 years of experience in VR, 15 in NLP is an expert in NLP as in Natural Language Processing (important for programming voice bots like Siri etc.) and he is already 5 years in the blockchain.
In 2011 he developed applications for AI in research laboratories (Xerox-PARC, SRI, Waag, etc.). He worked as a consultant at the government level, has 6 patents and 4 books with technologies and their social consequences description.
He was the creative director and co-founder of VR and an Internet company, which he co-founded: Construct.
In 2011 he founded Botanic, formerly Geppetto Labs, both companies are specializing in artificial intelligence.
Since 2013He was a partner of Ethos VO, that was engaged in many interesting projects of various purposes. Current projects: GEOmii and the Irene project, which addresses smart solutions in the field of renewable energy.
IMHO: a super-skilled and qualified professional in the field of robotics, VR and various innovations. Actively develops Botanic and SEED, a prominent personality. Meadows actively works in the field of robotics and interaction of people with bots.

3) Michelle Katz - Trustee

Associate Professor of the California College of Art (the same place as our Nathan Shedroff works in), from 2009 to the present.
Has a private legal practice that includes licensing, promotions, intellectual property rights. 1999-present time.
Doctor of Law. Legal and business adviser on the initial development of companies.
Co-founder, chief legal officer of Botanic Technologies, Inc. 2012 - present time.
IMHO: Mom, give me a brother ... and let him be a good lawyer.

In fact, her experience is very solid. Since there is no detailed information about the previous works, we put a plus for the years of experience in jurisprudence.

4) Jamie Burke - Trustee

In 2012, dug into the crypt and the blockchain. An early, successful crypto-investor.

Being an early investor in Bitcoin and Etherium, founded Outlier Ventures, the first venture fund and platform in Europe dedicated to blockchain and Web 3.0., the fund invests in the crypt on early stage, for example:
Such as IOTA, Evernym (Sovrin), Botanic (Seed), Ocean Protocol and Fetch.ai.
And here's the Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2017/06/15/iotas-bitfinex-listing-surges-to-1-5b-record-breaking-crypto-capitalization-on-market-debut/#21243c3e75a5

Quotation: "Outlier Ventures, a British venture company, took a" seven-figure stake "in IOTA, which became the first" Blockless Blockchain "in the world, aimed at the things in Internet that were originally grounded under this token. The details of the investments made by Outlier Ventures have not been disclosed, it is known that they are in the "several million" range. Retro prospect about IOTA: Their listing broke the record, exceeding $ 1.5 billion in market capitalization on the first day of trading on the Bitfinex exchange. "

IMHO: this venture fund will serve as an excellent investor for the project, and given the previous sympathies of Outlier Ventures: they are not looking at anything. Jamie will strengthen the financial position of the project.

Whether his fund “flips” after listing, it's still a question.

Other SEED team members:

Technical director of Seed Vault Ltd.

https://www.linkedin.com/in
Tremendous experience in software engineering since 1990, my dad in those years just squeezed out the first parking lot and covered a couple of stalls.

Experience in Apple, Google, Twitter, Coinbase.

10 out of 10 in software engineers.

Matt Powell - Finance

The fund manager of the SEED Foundation and the financial director of Botanic Technologies.

From 2005 to 2017, he was President in SFBay Financial, a financial services company in San Francisco and the Great Gulf area.

Since 2016 works in Botanica.

Partnerships

1. Outlier Ventures: https://outlierventures.io/ - venture capital firm that invest in “tokenised communities”. The company is a member of UK Business Angels Association: https://www.ukbaa.org.uk/member/outlierventures/ with the investment range of less than £150k with the initial fee of £500. The company is also a member of WSBA as indicated in the press release: https://www.wsba.co/uploads/3/7/9/4/3794101/outlier_ventures_joins_wsba_final.pdf Outlier Ventures is registered in the UK in 2017 by Jamie Burke at 3 Churchgates, The Wilderness, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, HP4 2UB. Entity number 09102615.

2. DLT Labs: https://dltlabs.io/ - a Canadian company that provides solutions and blockchain integration since 2011. Became a partner of Linux Foundation in 2017. Work with well-know companies and foundations like IBM, Ethereum, Hyperledger, Fabric, Corda and Holochain. DTL Labs offer a unique DNC infrastructure that solves scalability and bandwidth issues.

3. Token Market: https://tokenmarket.net/ - a simple portal of upcoming ICOs and recommendations on what coins are currently trending.

4. Bottish: http://www.bottish.co/ - bot and AI-inclined alternative of meetup.com

Even though, in comparison with major projects, SEED is lacking in the partnership department, the presence of Outlier Ventures is a definite plus. Also, the fact the SEED is a foundation on itself with a real and profitable company, makes it clear that SEED has strong fundamentals and support necessary for further development. Needless to say that the niche they are in is set to become more widespread and an overall market capitalization is due to increase in the near future. Finally, there is an insider info about possible partnerships with Ocean Protocol, Big Datachain and, possibly, Singularity.

Conclusion on partnerships:
Undoubtedly, SEED still has a few of them. BUT the presence of a massive venture fund Outlier Ventures and the fact that SEED is a fund itself from a full-fledged company with already ready products - Botanic Technologies ™ - makes it clear that SEED has a solid base and support for further development.
This sphere is very, very promising and is already actively spreading, its capitalization promises to show rapid growth in a short time.
We have insider information that SEED plans to partner with Ocean Protocol, BigDatachain and probably Singuliarity.

SEED Law aspects:

It is registered in Singapore as non-profit company under the name SEED VAULT LTD.
UEN: 201731433H - the number is the same as the one specified in the whitepaper.
Address: 9 BATTERY ROAD # 15-01 MYP CENTER SINGAPORE 049910.
If we look at the building, we’ll see huge office center.
The site was registered in 2017 with Mark Stephen Meadows as an owner.
This organization is Botanic Technologies ™.

IMHO: why Singapore? Because there is more difficult regulation in the US and even if all the documentation is clean, and the SEC and all 12 apostles are pleased, then still many can be scared of registration in America as a potential danger to their investments.

Competitors

Effect.ai, indirectly - Singuliarity.
Not so long ago, Singuliarity died down, having opened the gates to the development of AI.
AI in the world of block chain. As we can see, the area begins to fill up. Of course, the team, popularity and partnerships may be give way to the Singuliarity, but not the Effects. We’ll see the truth after ICO.
From insider information, we can notice the warm relations between CEO of SEED, Nathan Shedroff and Ben Goertzel from Singuliarity.

Marketing & HYPE

https://www.seedtoken.io - the site has recently been updated, now it’s cute and comfortable, with lots of new content.

https://twitter.com/seed_token - 200 readers.

https://t.me/seedtoken - 45 subscribers 01.02.18, 140 - -6.04.18. The group of team members and the CEO himself administer the channel. They respond quickly. Thank you, that it’s not Amazix.

[email protected] - mail for communication, answers to questions.

The don’t have HYPE! Not at all, but maybe it's for the better currently. They don’t overtake the crowd of freeloaders with bounty, the content is still being transformed, updated. Apparently, they don’t want to rush things and do it qualitatively.
p.s. Well, presale somehow happened, so there are interested people.

The result

SEED, as the fund of Botanic Technologies Inc. has quite promising prospects for growth and the creation of a scalable network, for the interaction of bot-developers, the development of AI.
The Botanic team is time-tested and looks decent.
Partnerships and customers of Botanists also deserve attention, although not all partnerships were confirmed. There is no specific evidence of ongoing cooperation with eminent companies. But, if you trust the rumors from the insider about the partnerships (see above), then we’ll see a great collaboration soon.
Tokenometrica leaves much to be desired and still there is no info about the sale.
In general, the project is good and there is a place for it on the market, the nerds have chosen a promising industry, I think they’ll shoot!

Interesting facts

The team have some great announcements coming up, including Trent McConaghy as an advisor (Founder OceanProtocol).
The team will have some MVP before ICO.