While crawling the blockchain world in search of innovative ideas we keep on running into industry-specific financial solutions. Most of them represent attempts to create an ultimate crypto exchange. The ICO we are going to take a look at today promises a tad more than that. Meet Nauticus, an ambitious project promising to provide a platform for all kinds of operations with cryptocurrencies.
The Nauticus platform incorporates six interrelated solutions for crypto finance. One of them, the crypto and fiat currency exchange, is almost completed and is scheduled to be launched in August.
Key Features
As we have already mentioned, the Nauticus platform, or ecosystem, comprises six solutions:
1. Crypto and fiat currency exchangeThe Nauticus exchange is designed to be the base for their other five banking and eCommerce features. The first version will enable trading Nauticus coins with 100 other cryptocurrencies and seven fiat currencies such as USD, EUR, JPY, HKD, AUD, ZAR, and CNY. The team’s plan is to expand the numbers to 300 cryptos and 16 fiats. Nauticus promises low-exchange rates and fees (as little as 0.1 percent), a million transactions per second, integration with the Nauticus Wallet and mobile app, solid security system, and two interface options: one for newcomers in crypto investments and another for sophisticated, experienced crypto traders.
2. Blockchain mining centerNauticus is planning to establish its own mining center. This is expected to provide server capacity sufficient for greater numbers of users and to make transactions fast and cheap. The estimated annual revenue to be generated with the mining center is up to $59 million. Also noteworthy is that Nauticus aims to make it socially and environmentally sustainable by using green energy and supporting infrastructure in the developing world.
The Nauticus eCommerce solution is designed for both desktop and mobile. The project team promises to deliver an “ultra-low-fee marketplace” with a wide range of goods and services supporting all major crypto and fiat currencies. As a part of the whole, it will be powered by Nauticus Exchange, wallet and payment systems. According to the Nauticus forecast, the size of the audience will be around one million users by mid-2020, with the estimated annual revenue of up to $13.7 million.
4. Merchant payments platformNauticus promises to equip merchants of all sizes with an easy-to-use low cost payment system. It will be integrated with the Nauticus exchange and mobile app to allow for contactless Point of Sale payments via NFC, QR, ApplePay, and AndroidPay. The payment system is thought to leave the choice of the accounting currency, cryptos or fiats, by merchants.
5. Global KYC verificationThe Nauticus team expects that the verification process they are going to develop will make them a global leader in Know Your Customer (KYC) verification. They aim to introduce a global scoring system to the scheme, and promise to make the process transparent and secure, while keeping users in full control of their data. The plan is to have KYC be free for users with more than 1000 Coins under Nauticus Rewards.
6. ICO GatewayStarting 2023, new blockchain projects are promised to benefit from another solution by Nauticus, ICO Gateway. This implies access to development instruments and resources and human support in key fields of life of an ICO: technology, marketing, recruiting, public relations, legal, and finance. The solution also aims to make the whole ICO process more transparent and secure for investors and community.
Roadmap
There is no information on the website, or in the whitepaper regarding the previous activities within the project. The Nauticus roadmap is a set of the platform implementation milestones scheduled as far as 2023.
2018Nauticus promises to launch their first product, the exchange, in August. Once launched, the platform will immediately enable trading Nauticus Coins with 100 crypto and seven fiat currencies at first, while further currencies are scheduled to be added within the next 12 months.
2019-2023Next year, the Nauticus mining center is expected to be established. They promise to return part of the profits to the local community in the developing world, but they do not yet mention in which country they plan to land the mining center. The eCommerce platform is promised to be presented in 2020. This is scheduled to be followed by the launch of the Nauticus merchant payment platform in 2021. The global KYC verification is expected to be introduced in 2022, and the last solution by Nauticus, the ICO Gateway is scheduled to go live in 2023.
Team
The Nauticus team is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. The key management figures include:
Bryan Ng, CEO and co-founder. He is also a founder and CEO of First Accountants, a Melbourne-based CPA firm. His LinkedIn profile features the career in accounting beginning in 2001. This includes positions like senior consultant at SalmonGiles/Davidsons (2007-2011), managing founder of Australian Education Connections (2005-2007), finance and IT manager at Resolutions RTK (2002-2007), and accountant at Smart Home Finance (2001-2002).
Jonathan Chang, COO and co-founder. Jonathan is also a founder of Nautica Consulting established in 2017, where he acts as a principal consultant in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital technology. According to his LinkedIn profile, the beginning of his career dates back to 2012 when he joined Playfair & Co as a marketing and sales manager for nine months. From February 2012 until November 2013, Jonathan worked for MTSA as a sponsorship director. The next record in his career on LinkedIn is “Banker” at ANZ, one of the biggest Australian banks, where he worked from January 2014 until March 2017, specializing in KYC, AML and CTF regulations as well as retail banking, merchant and eCommerce systems.
Hong Huynh, CTO and Quality Assurance Officer. He established his own fintech company, Advance Vision Technology, in 1992 and has been managing it since then. Before founding the firm he worked for Westinghouse Signals Australia as a network engineer from 1987 until 1992.
Barry Cheng, Chief Security Officer. According to his LinkedIn profile, Barry began his career as a trainee programmer at Kung + Lee Architects Designers Limited Hong Kong in 1988. He worked as a developer until 1998 when he entered the CEO position at Cybus Computers. Since 2009, he has been managing iDigi Computers as the company’s CEO.
The leadership team of Nauticus includes 10 more specialists managing fields like specific technology, legal, sales, business development, and marketing. The Team section of the website features 12 more team members as “Other support team & Contributors”.
Advisory Board
The advisory board of Nauticus is divided into three sections:
The Exchange and Banking board features eight scientists, company managers, and entrepreneurs in the field of blockchain and fintech.
The Technology, Software, and Policy board includes fifteen experts in patenting, law, blockchain, AI, KYC, cyber security, and investing.
The Ambassador section features three top blockchain experts, Ian Scarffe, Oliver Isaacs, and Warren Whitlock.
Token Sale Summary
Project name: Nauticus
Token ticker: NTS
Type: ERC20
Website: https://nauticus.io
Whitepaper: https://cdn.nauticus.io/NauticusWhitepaperOfficial.pdf
ICO start date: March 18th
ICO end date: July
Soft cap: 8,000,000 USD
Hard cap: 68,000,000 USD
Total token supply: 2,500,000,000 NTS
Conversion rate: 1 NTS = 0.00001 BTC
NTS Token Allocation
Use of Proceeds
Following and Media Coverage
The Media section on the Nauticus website features a number of publications. These include two posts on Medium written by the Nauticus team, articles on Smart Company, Business Insider, Forbes, Reuters, International Business Times, and Fox 5, a paid publication on Bitcoin.com, and multiple publications on crypto-focused media platforms such as Coinspeaker, CryposRUs, Cointelegraph, and others.
The Nauticus Twitter account has 8,987 followers, their Telegram group has 10,395 members, and their Facebook page is followed by 29,107 users.
Competition
Even though Nauticus promises to be more than just a crypto exchange, they place a great emphasis on this feature as a core to the other five. They also demonstrate awareness of the competition by providing a comparative analysis of the competitive environment. Their whitepaper features a comparison chart including three existing exchanges, Binance, Kucoin, and Huobi. This is accompanied by the forecast for Nauticus based on their study of the competitors.
Whitepaper and other documents
The Nauticus whitepaper is 56 pages of text, diagrams, and pictures. It gives the impression of a detailed explanation of the team’s vision, technology, market analysis, and business planning. You will also find details of the ICO and learn more about the team.
Conclusion
Nauticus is a very ambitious project promising to be a one-stop shop for operations with crypto. Based on the ICO projects we have reviewed previously, we are surprised with how approximate and non-specific their token allocation and use of proceeds are. Also, we find their bonus structure to be on the verge between amazingly flexible and over-complicated which makes you have to do a great deal of calculations if you want specific numbers. We would also love to see what Nauticus was up to before today to have a chance to estimate their pace in implementing the project. The last thing worth to be mentioned is the size of their advisory board which is untypically big and yet will only keep 1.5% of all NTC tokens.
What we definitely like about them is that they took their time to inquire into the existing crypto exchanges and are basing their forecasts and plans on that research. Also, their social following looks good, as well as publications on authoritative media platforms which are focused on startups and business at large rather than blockchain or crypto.
Looking at the results they have achieved so far, as stated on their website, we can see that the ICO has already reached its soft cap with $14.9 million collected and is moving towards what they call the third milestone, $30 million. As long as they do not specify the end date of the ICO, we cannot say exactly how much time is left to make forecasts.
Website: https://nauticus.io/
Whitepaper: https://cdn.nauticus.io/NauticusWhitepaperOfficial.pdf
Telegram: https://t.me/nauticusblockchain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nauticusen
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NauticusBlockchain/
Medium: https://medium.com/@nauticus
ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3095196.0
Author: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=980049
Disclaimer:
This review by Bonanza Kreep is all opinion and analysis, not investment advice.