(I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. Please DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!)
Website
Twitter
YouTube - AMA with OhHeyMattyTelegram
Whitepaper
Decentralised reputation and payments for peer-to-peer marketplaces.
The Project
Link Protocol state in their whitepaper that people in the US have over $3,100 worth of unused goods in their homes. The Listia marketplace was launched in 2009 as a peer-to-peer marketplace with the point of difference to other marketplaces (such as eBay and Craigslist) being that items are bought and sold using a centralised virtually currency called ‘Listia Credits’. Credits can be earned by not only buying and selling goods but also interacting with other listings, inviting friends, completing special offers and goals or purchasing the credits direct from Listia.
Ink will be integrated into the Listia marketplace and replace Listia Credits. This means that Ink will be immediately adopted by existing users immediately upon launch (Listia Credits will be replaced by Ink already held by existing Listia users).
Problem
Current P2P marketplaces have the following problems associated with them.
• Goods are hard to value.
• High transaction fees (a large portion towards the platform’s profit however a large fee due to monetary transactions).
• Lack of trust between sellers and buyers; a buyer is always taking a gamble that the seller is honest.
Solution
Ink will natively solve some of the most common and difficult issues with transacting on a pure P2P marketplace. With these features, Ink has a big advantage over not only Listia Credits, but also traditional forms of payment:
• Decentralized Reputation and Feedback
• Decentralized Escrow
• Third Party Dispute Resolution
• Very Low Transaction Costs
Current State of Product
Listia credits have been used on the Listia marketplace for over 8 years and in 2014 allowed Bitcoin to be bought and sold in the marketplace. They currently have over 10 million registered users who have sold over 100 million items online.
Milestones
June 2009 – Listia Inc. is founded and receives funding from Y Combinator
August 2009 – The Listia marketplace launches
October 2009 – Listia announces $400K angel round
April 2011 – Listia launches iOS app, announces $1.75MM seed round led by A16Z
January 2012 – Listia reaches 1M registered users, launches Android app
January 2013 – Listia partners with Best Buy to power the Listia Rewards Store
October 2013 – Listia announces $9MM series A led by General Catalyst
February 2014 – Listia allows Bitcoin to be bought and sold in the marketplace
November 2014 – Listia first experiments with creating a cryptocurrency
December 2015 – Listia launches the Credit Exchange, allowing sellers to earn USD
April 2016 – Listia launches Credits + Cash feature
June 2016 – Listia launches Listia Plus
September 2016 – Listia integrates shipping labels and tracking
May 2017 – Listia hits 10M registered users
June 2017 – Listia begins work on Ink Protocol design and whitepaper
September 2017 – Listia publishes website and Ink Protocol whitepaper
November 2017 – Listia introduces the Ink Protocol project publicly
January 2018 – Ink Protocol public launch and token distribution event
February 2018 – Ink Protocol network goes live and ready for everyone to use!
February 2018 – Listia.com XNK integration goes live!
Q1 2018 – Ink Pay App and Developer Portal launch
Q2 2018 – Launch Reputation Aggregators and work on Marketplace Partnerships
2018 – Ink Protocol services, integration into existing marketplaces, developer community
Team
Co-founder / CEO – Gee-Hwan Chuang
Gee-Hwan co-founded Listia in June 2009 and has raised over $11M in funding. Prior to this he founded several companies including GEE! Technologies which create, acquire and market niche websites targeting online shoppers.
Co-founder / President – James Fong
James also co-founded Listia with Gee-Hwan and has previously worked at Micron Technology as a Design Engineer and Sun Microsystems as a Verification Engineer.
Head of Product - Gee-Hsien Chuang
Gee-Hsien doesn’t have much information on Linked except position titles at Listia / Ink Protocol, Cerego (cloud based learning applications), SlideShare (software engineer), Cisco (software engineer) and Tropian (software engineer).
CTO – Ngan Pham
Ngan’s only other relevant experience is as a Senior Software Engineer at StreamSend; offering email marketing automation and behavioural targeting.
I’m not able to see any previous blockchain experience for the Ink Protocol team. This isn’t necessarily a massive issue if they get good hires and have advisors on board with blockchain experience though. Unfortunately only one of the two advisors have blockchain experience with the second founding a mattress company. Quantstamp are also listed as advisors and may take up some of this slack.
Community
Twitter - 2,800 followers
Medium - 556 followers
Telegram - 18,500 members
Token Metrics
ERC20 token
500M XNK tokens
$15M USED
1ETH = 7,500 XNK
All unsold tokens are burnt
3 year vesting period for Listia and Distribution allocations
Token Distribution
Distribution / Network Incentives – 32%
Retained by Listia – 32%
Token sale – 30%
Existing Listia Credits – 6%
Funds distribution is not disclosed.
Things I Like
• Established business with current users
• All Lisitia Credits will be replaced by XNK tokens
• A reasonably legitimate reason for using blockchain
• All Listia members are working in Ink Protocol
• 3 year vesting period on XNK tokens
Things I Don’t Like
• Team does not appear to have any blockchain experience
• ICO funds distribution isn’t disclosed
Will I Be Investing?
I’m going to pass on Ink Protocol. I think the concept has merit and I’m impressed with the progress of Listia however without a strong team, blockchain experience and lacking strong blockchain advisors (barring Quantstamp) I’m going to let this one go through to the keeper.