What happens to projects after ICOs? ChronoBank.io case ($TIME)

What happens after the ICO ends? I am sure that the majority of Crypto market participants currently speculate more than truly invest in cryptocurrencies. Still, there are a lot of investors who genuinely believe in what ICO projects offer and are inclined to hold long-term. They are the true believers and it is especially important for projects that this kind of investors will not get disappointed. I think that contributors know that the projects they invested in could fail, but still they continue to communicate with the founders and stimulate them to reach the promised targets. Do you know why it is important for founders not to lose the true believers in their project? Because the community could really help the project achieve its goals. If it loses its community, it loses its greatest asset.

That’s why I want to talk about the Post ICO period of many blockchain projects. In this presentation I will cover the most vital things that every project should do after the end of the crowdsale. Here I will give you an example of ChronoBank project that collected its funds in the beginning of this year. We will look at what ChronoBank has achieved, how it communicates with its contributors, what are the main problems of ChronoBank from the tokenholders’ point of view. I hope to make this kind of reviews of post-ICO projects more often in the future.

So, you collected a lot of money during crowdsale? Here are multiple things which must be done correctly after doing this.

I have created “a tree of responsibility” which concentrates on the most important aspects of projects’ life. Here you can find the main pieces of advice from the tokenholders’ point of view. I talked with many investors into cryptocurrencies, who pointed out those things, so all of them are very practical.

Work now as hard as you did during the preparation for ICO. And we know how energetic and forward-looking projects are during ICOs. Try to preserve this energy for post ICO period and do not disappoint investors.

Do regular blog posts. Create some kind of weekly updates so that community can clearly see what you are working on in a systematic manner. Also, any big news or update should be separated into a single post.

Never stop communicating with your community. Try to preserve the subscriber base on your main social channels, which usually include Telegram, Slack, Facebook, and Twitter. And we all know that after initial coin offerings, the subscriber base of cryptoprojects sinks significantly. That is the time when the true believers stay.

Some projects disclose their expenditures, some do not. Actually, the majority of projects do not show how and how much they spend. That’s why projects, which disclose such things, are quite remarkable. I think that they should disclose at least how long they will last with the available funds.

It is advised to always check competitors’ achievements. The reason is that there are a lot of projects in the space that occupy the same market niche, which usually leads to oversaturation. In order to be the best, you have to be two steps ahead. And for this, you need the best marketing talent available. You have a lot of money, so hire only the best!

If you have any problems, it is better to disclose them with the available solutions to the community. Hiding any problems leads to the creation of MORE problems. That’s why it is beneficial to be open and always present community with the options to deal with problems.

Another thing is not that generally accepted but I think that you should start to heavily spend money on advertising only after you created and tested your core products for the market. Some tokenholders may be keen on forcing you to spend on ads NOW to increase the price of cryptotokens, but I do not think it is beneficial in the long run.

Finally, any project that is found to be running away with the investors’ money will have serious legal repercussions. Recently, SEC started cracking down on such projects. I am sure that soon we will hear more about such cases. Any US investor can become a real nightmare for initial coin offerings, and American money is almost in every ICO.

Let’s now make a summary of what ChronoBank is and what it is needed for. This project aims at disrupting recruitment business by creating decentralized marketplace for labor force and tokens backed by labor hours.

Chronobank is intended to modernize the short-term labour market with the help of blockchain technology. The founder of Chrono was previously in the business of short-term labor.

One of the main targets of Chronobank is the elimination of intermediaries between workers and employers.

To create a working platform, the project is creating the necessary infrastructure that will be directly connected to Ethereum.

As far as I know, the team doesn’t want to be completely reliant on one blockchain so they are capable of moving their infrastructure to other blockchains like Waves in case something goes wrong.

Main products of ChronoBank:
• LabourX, which is the decentralized marketplace for labor force
• ChronoMin, which is interface and wallet for project’s management system

There are two main currencies that power the ChronoBank platform: TIME and LH. I will show you how they work on the next slide.

During the crowdsale, the project collected more than $5mln, but right now the price for cryptocurrencies is different and ChronoBank has more funds (~$20 mln.)

What about the token economy in ChronoBank?

The project has two tokens: $TIME and $LH. TIME was sold during crowdsale. Currently, there are 710113 TIMEs in existence.

The holders are rewarded by commission from all LH transactions and issuances.

LH token is labor hour. It is still in development and will be used on LaborX platform. Basically, this is the main currency of the ecosystem. LH tokens will be pegged to national currencies where they were issued.

Currently TIME enjoys listing on the big exchanges. BITTREX, Lykke, Liqui, Livecoin, HITBTC, Yobit. From the time of listing the capitalization has grown from about $6mln to current $12mln. It is really strange, because it seems the project currently has bigger amount of funds than its valuation.

What are the main features of LH tokens, the main cryptocurrency of ChronoBank?

• To make it easier for users of the ecosystem to use the tokens, project will create Debit card for instant withdrawals of fiat from their LH accounts

• It is stable coin because it is pegged to one hour of work denominated in national currency

• Founders promise that it will be easy to use

• All the transactions appear on the blockchain and everything is transparent

• There will be support of multiple blockchains

Finally. What has ChronoBank achieved since the crowdsale? I created the timeline which will cover it.

October 2016. Launch of the website. Pre-ICO marketing campaign, whitepaper, collaborations, interviews, you name it.

February 2017. ICO collected a lot of ethers, bitcoins, and other cryptocurrencies. At that time, it was equal to $5.5mln.

March 2017. The token is listed on the digital exchanges. The best ones are BITTREX, Liqui, and Lykke.

April 2017. The ChronoBank releases the beta version of ChronoWallet, which is a part of ChronoMint product.

May 2017. First LH tokens were issued. They issued test tokens tied to Australian dollar to be used by Edway Labor Hire (the founder’s company). There is not much information about it but I guess it was a test run before launching LaborX platform.
June 2017. They partnered with 0x protocol which they are going to integrate in their platform. Also, they released test version of ChronoMint on Android.

September 2017. ChronoMint, the interface and wallet for ChronoBank management system is released on mainnet. It has quite an interesting functionality, because it seems to resemble MyEtherWallet but with better looking design. In wallet section of ChronoMint you can see all your tokens and ethers. Here you can create multisignature wallet if you want more security for your coins. You can transfer tokens or ethers to any address. Finally, you can deposit you TIME tokens to receive rewards from LH commissions and to be able to vote on the important decisions of the company. Also, your latest transactions are shown at the bottom. There is also exchange section in ChronoMint, but it is still under construction, voting section (if you deposited your TIME tokens), and rewards (also, for TIME tokenholders). I like how it looks but it seems that the interface icons are a little bit too big.

October-December 2017. This is the time of heavy LaborX platform development. They are going to ship the testnet version of decentralized marketplace in December. ChronoBank team promises to finalize their most important product in the first quarter of 2018. I am sure that they will be able to upgrade ChronoMint functionality during that period by activating exchange protocol and adding other needed features.

In order to reach mass adoption, founders are in talks with local governments in SE Asia. They do not disclose the details but they plan to announce some kind of cooperation in one of the countries. Let’s wait for the news.
I watched the video interview with the CEO of ChronoBank and it seems like they plan to spend heavily on advertising when LaborX will be ready.

I counted more than 100k lines of code with GLOC extension on their GITHUB repositories. As of July 2017, they mentioned that they had 41k lines of code. If I counted the lines correctly, it means that the project is quite dynamic. Also, the last changes were made hours ago when I checked, so it looks like they work on regular basis. It doesn’t prove that code is good but it shows that they actually work.

The most important slide of my presentation, the community of ChronoBank.

Mainly, team communicates with the tokenholders through Slack, Telegram, and emails. My personal experience is that when I asked questions in their social networks, they were quick to respond. Also, they constantly update their medium blog with the project news, which is also nice. The only interesting thing I noticed is that Slack community feels more active than the Telegram chat.

From my observations, ChronoBank continues to actively communicate with the tokenholders of $TIME after ICO. I cannot say this is the best team in terms of communication with the contributors but they are good. Only bad thing I noticed is that the founder is not always present, but the marketing staff always responds.

As far as I could see, generally, the community has positive attitude towards the ChronoBank’s team efforts. Still, there are some problems and we are going to discuss it.

Any investor will tell you that the best thing for him is to see his investment rise in value. Here lies the main community claim. The capitalization of the TIME cryptocurrency performed worse than the tokenholders wanted. That’s why in their slack channel there is a lot of demand to somehow positively influence the price.

Second, community wants founders to work harder in the sphere of cooperation with organizations and local governments to adopt the technology. To be honest, I do not see point in this until the LaborX platform comes out, but if community wants it, I guess the project should do something about it.

Then there is demand for more external advertising. It is also connected to price of TIME cryptocurrency. Community wants to go to the moon, while team wants to finish their main product. From one point of view, I understand investors, they are interested in constant growth of their tokens. From the other side, I see the point of founders who are more interested in advertising FINISHED product.