Taking a step away from the big market cap coins for this next summary. Obsidian (ODN) is a fresh new coin, having come available in early October following its ICO in August.
The Obsidian platform is a blockchain which forked from Stratis. They have plans for the development of various applications based on the ODN platform in future. Currently, their first and only creation is focused on offering unrivaled private communication through the use of a decentralised encrypted, anonymous messenger called the Obsidian Secure Messenger (OSM).
Essentially, with this app they are trying to compete with Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp and Status messengers. Does it have a chance? Well, there seems to be a bit of buzz regarding the OSM, and I've attached a photo to this post which gives the relative benefits of the OSM over its competitors.
It's still early days yet though. The OSM is currently in public alpha testing phase and the team seem to be on track, with rumours that it will be released in late Q4 2017. The devs have said that their plan is to focus on the messenger service before anything else. dApps will come later on. They have also said the goal wasn't to be a privacy platform - just the messenger service will be privacy focused. At this time they've also got a usable wallet which is also in ongoing development.
Regarding the ODN coin, at this stage it seems as though it will be used for paying for messages on OSM - I've heard reports of 1 ODN per 50,000 messages. The currency will continue to power other dApps down the line.
I always find it useful to check out a coin's developer team. It gives an idea of the coin's prospects and scam potential. Thankfully, the dev team seem professional, their profiles are completely public and they are active on their Slack feed. I've heard good things about the lead dev Claus Ehrenberg, and see that he has been involved with the creation of VisualCrypt, an app designed for the encryption of messages, notes and passwords (funnily enough). Of note, one of their technical advisors is Ricardo Spaggni, a core developer from Monero. The team are also actively recruiting new devs, which is a good sign that they are keen to meet their roadmap targets.
As mentioned, Obsidian is really in its infancy. But if all goes well, it could well pay off. OSM sounds solid and I like that there is the potential for future dApp projects. The low market cap (US$10.8 million) is also a sign that there is plenty of room for a price increase. To provide some perspective, last year telegram got a purchase offer of US$1 billion from Instagram. Although ODN is not purely privacy focused, it is worth some comparison to Monero which has a market cap over $1 billion.
ODN is currently trading at US$0.44c. In the lead up to the BTG fork its price dropped by half, so it could represent a good buying opportunity right now.
It's a fresh coin though, so it is a gamble. I would slot it in the high risk high reward drawer.
https://obsidianplatform.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/obsidian/
