Welcome to the third segment of this years Coin of the Week.

The coin that will be discussed this week is Ark (ARK).

What is Ark?

Ark is a platform working to develop a product that consumers want and developers will need. Interestingly enough Ark will work almost as a major rival for EOS (that I spoke about in Coin of the Week #1); EOS is basically working to become the one blockchain designed for mass adoption and ideally to be the only required blockchain, whereas Ark are working to create an entire ecosystem in which various blockchains are interconnected.
Ark processes quick transactions and also uses a decentralised voting system that enables their networks investors to vote for its future.
Ark uses 'SmartBridges' technology to connect various blockchains together, while sustainable funding is also ensured through their 'ARKShield' program.

Developers

The Ark development team consists of 17 core staff members:

• Mike Doty: Managing Director/Co-Founder
• FX Thoorens: CTO/Co-Founder
• Lars Rensing: CFO/Co-Founder
• Travis Walker: Board Member/Co-Founder
• Rok Černec: Board Member/Co-Founder
• Scott McPherson, MD: Board Member/Co-Founder
• Matthew Grexx: Board Member/Co-Founder
• Velislav Valkov: Network Architect/Co-Founder
• Chin Song: Support Director/Co-Founder
• Khanh Vuong: Co-Founder
• Stefan Neagu: Project Manager/Co-Founder
• Lúcio Rubens: Full-Stack Developer
• Oleg Shcherbyna: UI/UX Designer
• Juan Martín: Full-Stack Developer
• Alex Barnsley: Full-Stack Developer
• Arnaud Deborne: General Secretary
• Kristjan Košič: Core Developer

Mike Doty (Managing Director/Co-Founder) is also known for his previous work with Bitseed and Lisk (formerly Crypti), both of which he also co-founded.

Roadmap

As can be seen on their website, Ark have listed a range of goals accompanied by a nice visual representation of the percentage each goal has been completed. At the bottom of the page can be seen the completed goals, which currently are as follows:

• Formation of Business Entity. IE, Foundation
• First Iteration of SmartBridge (usecase). (Encoded Listener)
• Website Redesign
• Explorer Redesign/Rebuild
• Mobile Wallets

Currently Ark are 75% through the development of their test net, this will provide a benchmark of what to expect for when they release a fully working product.

Price

Currently Ark is sitting at $6.14 (USD) with a market cap of $601,912,745 USD, a circulating supply of 97,981,284 ARK, and a total supply of 131,264,724 ARK.
Currently most things are sitting at very low prices considering the very large dip the entire market has taken of the past few days, leaving so many coins severely underpriced - however there are certainly many coins that were severely overpriced and have now come crashing back down to reality.
I believe that Ark is one of the coins that is currently extremely underpriced; given the product they're working on, Ark will begin to build a lot of hype in the early stages of this year and no doubt will deliver gains. If Ark manage to deliver a working product, this is something that could completely revolutionise the crypto space, and hence you will begin to see similar amounts of hype around Ark that will be comparable to what was seen with Ethereum over 2017. It is near impossible for me to make an estimation on what price Ark will be at in 6 months to 1 year, but I have no doubt that the gains will be enormous for this coin. It currently sits at 47th by market cap, and it certainly will not stay there.

Thanks for reading!

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