General description:
The main point of interest is Blocko — the mother company of Aergo. It started in 2014 and has been deploying blockchain infrastructure for Korean enterprises (is being used by 23 of them). “AERGO intends to leverage and build upon Blocko’s existing COINSTACK platform, which is a fully supported enterprise product that has been adopted by many of its existing clients.”
In other words, the next step for Blocko’s private blockchains is interoperability.
Aergo will provide exactly this.
We can think about private blockchains as of local networks. But as local networks provide significantly more value being interconnected (the Internet), so will do and private blockchains (through public blockchains).
Interestingly, that as ICON also works in the Korean market, they, probably, can work together and become interoperable with each other, forming one Korean piece of Web 3.0.
Just an assumption
However, Aergo seems to lack the possibilities to form the truly global web of interconnected blockchains. The competition is dire, the current market leaders are unlikely to slow down.
AERGO CHAIN: A public network of enterprise blockchains.
Will be EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible. The team has been working with EVM for years and knows it really well.
AERGO HUB: the public interface into the underlying AERGO Chain.
AERGO Hub aims to work with and connects secure dApps with AERGO Chain.
AERGO MARKETPLACE: a proposed one stop shop for software applications, computing resources and other services optimized for AERGO Chain.
Team:
33 employees listed on LinkedIn — an outstanding result for typical ICO.
The team has been working with blockchains since 2014. They should be among the few with the competency in that field.
The fact that their solutions are used by more than 20 companies in Korea proves both their technical and business viability.
Here is the interview with COO if you are interested:
Tokenomics (the most important part of any long-term project):
The only good for investors token use case comes from DPoS consensus mechanism and future onchain governance. The tokens will be used for staking = guaranteeing the honest behavior of block producers+granting voting power (“DAO governance for platform evolution is our long-term objective”). Staked tokens will out of the supply, so it should positively affect the price.
“We can use around 20+ Block Producers (“BP”) and 50 BP candidates. There can be many non-BP nodes in the network. In the sub-chain (or private chain) you can change the number of BP and BP candidates. In the case of Public Network, they can potentially be changed by a DAO process. We will analyze other DAO cases, and consider adopting good and proven protocols in the best interests of the platform.”
“The AERGO Token is broadly speaking intended to be the medium of exchange within the AERGO ecosystem.
More specifically, it is intended that the tokens are used for:
● running the smart contract (AERGOSQL);
● DPOS consensus algorithm
● payment method for Blocko’s technical support on Coinstack 4.0;
● payment method for AERGO Hub services;
● payment method for services and assets on AERGO Marketplace;
● payment method for the AERGO domain.”
Fast main net in Q1 2019 should ease listings on good exchanges if the team is willing to pay the fees.
Andre Cronje AERGO Code Review Conclusion:
“They are keeping close to their roadmap, everything they promised is there. The code is fine, nothing wow, just another blockchain 0.5 for now. Guess September and December will be key.
A lot of code for a pre-ICO company, a lot more substance than I’m used to for where they are in their life cycle. Nothing wow yet, but good so far. I’ll check in on them again in September and December.”
Vite Code Review Timestamp: August 3rd 2018 (we should wait for the updates).
The investors:
Blocko — the parent company has Samsung Ventures as one of the investors. Also, overall, there were 4 rounds of funding, which shows the consistency of deliverance from the team and trust (with a willingness to put in more money) from investors.
Blocko funding rounds:
Sep 4, 2015
Seed Round — Blocko — $25K
Jul 14, 2016
Series A — Blocko — $1.4M
Apr 3, 2017
Series A — Blocko — $3.3M
Jun 11, 2018
Series B — Blocko $8.9M
Overall: $13.4M
Don’t see any particular funds that I personally consider as good ones here. Just an average result for an ICO. After 2017 there are many “crypto hedge funds”, spawned by the easy money of the bubble.
Metrics:
The picture is taken from https://t.me/KryptoSherlock, don’t know the original source
Wrap-up
Don’t see anything revolutionary (blockchain 4.0🙄) in AERGO. It is just another DPoS blockchain. The project’s main advantage is the experience of the team and the actual usage of their private blockchains infrastructure by some large Korean companies. AERGO is the next step for these existing private blockchains. Through it, they will interconnect and form their piece of Web 3.0.
The experience of the parent company - Blocko will help the company to bootstrap their network in Korea. According to the team, they have "25million endpoints" or "AERGO's core technology is already being used by over 25 million users" on 23 private blockchains managed by Blocko team and used by such companies as KIA, Hyundai, Lotte Card, Hyundai Card, Samsung and Gyeonggi-do province - the most populous province in South Korea (around Seoul). That is impressive.
Blocko is developing 10 Dapps for AERGO, which they will announce soon. Some (maybe the main ones) will be games and somehow utilize non-fungible tokens. They want to release a game that will help to form a fanbase around the project and prove the scalability of it “so it won’t break like Ethereum under Cryptokitties”.
On the international arena:
They will have two international departments — a business team and R&D. The latter already has developers from UK, Germany and Brasil. And they “will hire anywhere in the world”.
They deploying business teams focusing on the following markets: Korea, China, UK, Germany and North America. AERGO will have offices in these countries.
The VCs of AERGO are rather nondistinguishable to my taste.
Is it enough to compete with giants like Ethereum, EOS, Dfinity, Hashgraph, Cardano, Ontology — projects with hundreds of millions of budgets and support from international investors and institutions? My bet is no.
$39 million (ICO+the latest round of Blocko) doesn’t seem impressive in this context.
I also think that to the date the main beneficiaries of AERGO ICO are the Blocko investors. They get easy ICO ($30m) money for the company, in which they invested just $13.4m. Plus they will be able to sell more tokens on exchanges.
Tokenomics:
It is OK, but nothing special. DPoS with maybe onchain governance about the future platform development path somewhere in the future. (A rather vague and non binding statement).
Conclusion:
I think that AERGO can deliver you some profits. Nothing disruptive speaking of technology. However, it is a good one. They have already accomplished more than many (so many) other projects in crypto. I think that $30m is a conservative valuation for them, and they can enjoy some upside.
In 2017 it would be the killer ICO.
Let's see how they manage their community, what partnerships bring in, ddaps they develop and, of course, on the progress of their competitors. We missed the ICO, so no need to hurry.
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