Insights and experiences from a turbulent year

Despite all hurdles, it has been one year ago since we launched the first Austrian ICO ever on Sept 14th at exactly 4pm local time. The moment when the first Ether came in will remain unforgettable. Fighting for every investor, the four weeks of ICO have been tough, resulting in every team member from operations to development participating in marketing activities. Our anniversary is the perfect moment to reflect and remember what the last year brought us, not only what we experienced but also what we achieved. Starting from the very beginning:

The best circumstance for an ICO…. not

Shortly before our ICO started the Ether course crashed and speculations about China banning ICOs were circulating. In September the vice-president of the ECB Vitor Constancio publicly announced that Bitcoin is not a currency but a mere instrument of speculation and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon took it one step further calling Bitcoin a scam. Investors have been careful with good reason, every raised Ether was a hustle. At the end we accomplished to raise over 6000 ETH from thousands of different investors. This spread made us proud: we were a community ICO. Every single investor builds the basis which enables us to launch a product on the Ethereum mainnet only a year after, to build a great team of HEROES and guarantee a healthy business growth.

How the (crypto)market changed

2017 was a crazy and volatile year. Full of ups and downs, VCs forgot how to valuate blockchain companies, and investors handled short-sighted. As soon as the price pumped almost every ICO was happy to welcome tons of investors, as soon as the Bitcoin and Ethereum price started plummeting it was a pain in the ass to reach the soft cap.

Everything we had done was unknown territory: value added tax and corporate tax evaluation of utility tokens, smart contracts in general, technical and legal ICO handling, marketing and communications aiming at a new & global target group (world-wide campaigns, 24/7 support, crypto & ICO ad bans, …). And then the year 2018 came.

Is the hype over?

You could say that many people “woke up”. Projects are finally being critically questioned, goals and KPIs are now being used as investment decisions, so is the realization and the actual blockchain use case. Talks are no longer only about the price, realized crypto profits, or pimped whitepapers. We see real conversations on covering needed solutions that add value, and technical innovations are becoming more relevant than cryptotrading for profits. Meanwhile it is more important for companies to stay focused after an ICO and deliver a product. The tolerance has drastically lowered, scams are harder to pull and investors have cleared their mind. Many ICOs regularly get postponed or the crowdsale gets called off, because investors are way smarter and more careful in relation to 2017. “Private deals” are a common and popular strategy in order reach the hard cap. Unfortunately, this is a development which we don’t support and most important is not compatible with the initial ideology behind crowdfunding, behind an ICO.

Products backed by sustainable blockchain technology instead of leveling off through hype & buzz

The path HERO chose in 2016 and consequently follows since then is bearing fruit now. We did not bring our product to the blockchain because everybody was doing so, but because it was the next logical step for our existing platform. The problem often is the missing answer to the “why blockchain?” question, which remains unanswered with so many projects like Kodak’s case. Why? The best guess is greed and FOMO — in order to increase one’s value are — the biggest motivation behind. On the other side companies like Tezos, who also launched their beta in the beginning of July, recently announced that they are going to show larger engagement in the gaming industry and step by step verify why they have valid arguments for their blockchain integration and also deliver so.

Is the blockchain more than a buzzword for you?

We saw a perfect match in blockchain technology, which enabled us to come closer to our vision: a peer-to-peer igaming product, which is resistant to manipulations, fair and more economical.

But the market in 2017 was difficult for serious businesses. Investors were purely attracted by a hype language, followed promises without backing and blindly invested in the loudest screamer.

Continuously making decisions which do not benefit our investors in the short term, but rather contribute to the project in the long term, are difficult to take. Community management sometimes was a hard task to fulfill, but we knew that at the end of the day everything will pay off. An important learning for us was that we simply cannot handle everything simultaneously. We had to prioritize and slowly but healthy grow. While dealing with legal and taxation questions at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, the next step was making sure to be listed on renowned exchanges. Now the full focus is on development and delivering a fully functioning blockchain product only a year after ICO. Our focus always lies in adding value to our users, as well as building up a strong community from the very beginning.

Our beta testing group at the moment consists of 200 people, who since the beginning of July provide us with valuable feedback while testing our product on the Ropsten testnet and actively contributing to the improvement of herosphere.gg. We have even finished the implementation of a full KYC process, which will allow us to move to the mainnet every second.

What happens next?

For more use cases the industry has to face the challenges of scalability and usability for “non early adopters”, resulting in an easy accessibility to cryptocurrencies. After the successful implementation of HEROcoin on herosphere.gg, we will launch an open beta phase, opening the doors to every user. Consequently, the next step will be the expansion of our offer, introducing new features, as well as expanding and welcoming new users. Of course, herosphere.gg will remain a showcase for the HEROcoin smart contract solution we offer, meaning we will seek new providers who can benefit from implementing them and not to forget new cooperations. We have already made very interesting and promising B2B connections and also had very promising conversations.

It is true that we could have taken the easy path, but we never doubted that we are doing the right thing. We created a best practice for the whole Austrian blockchain industry, following a sustainable strategy, aiming for long term success. Therefor we are very happy and proud to celebrate our anniversary with an official document from the BMF (national ministry of finance), which approves our actions.

The foundations for a successful blockchain company have been made, the team has been found, many hurdles have been eliminated, as well as organizational requirements successfully accomplished in order to be THE player within the blockchain igaming market worldwide. We always put our users first and continuously develop according to their needs, requirements and feedback. This development & know-how will not only benefit herosphere.gg, but also every igaming company looks forward working and benefiting from the HERO infrastructure.