The transformation of IoP into a cooperative is ongoing: Currently, the organization comprises the IoP Ventures developer company, the IoP Divisions, the IoP Chapters (full IoP members) and the IoP Community (currently defined as every member of the Discord chat, later defined as staking wallet holders) all cooperating as independent entities working collaboratively towards the same goals.
Of these, IoP Ventures is the only entity that is legally operating in the “old world”, acting as a business development corporation to bring crypto to life. The others are true virtual cooperatives.
We expect this to continue until Libertaria releases a working concept of a digital cooperative as part of Project Themis. We hope this could become reality as soon as 2019, after which we can transform IoP Ventures into a true digital cooperative on top of Libertaria technology.
For 2018 though, my plan is to establish the foundations for external businesses on top of the IOP ecosystem utilizing Libertaria’s protocols and transform IoP Ventures into one of the best blockchain companies in the world.
Achievements in 2017
– Mercury prototype completed and working as expected
– LOC-NET component of Mercury completed and already a strong product in its own right
– Titania prototype completed and working as expected
– Bespoke exchange built to trade IOP and HYD
– Exchange chat interface added in Discord
Plans for 2018
– Titania will develop into a full-fledged operating system for crypto lovers running on embedded devices, tv boxes and on servers
– Titania dApp store
– Mercury advances to production state, with first real-world use cases built on top
– Hydra prototype ready and connected to Mercury protocol
– IoP added to a crypto payment gateway (or we’ll just build our own)
– Voting based on wallets
– IoP changed to a better Bitcoin system, with coffee-on-chain payments
– Special features added to IOP, making it usable as a currency even for nano-payments
– Mercury Proximity Network built (the final missing component of the Mercury project)
– Mercury re-factored in Rust
– Smart contracts implemented
– P2P chat with wallet payment based in Mercury and IoP / Hydra
– Profile Server extended to allow real digital cooperative
– Establish IoP Fund to secure development if IoP Ventures is taken down
– Establish first headquarters in Hungary and Germany
– Build our own exchange
– Build our own ICO platform
Costs / Burn Rate
Wages started at ~30k in May 2017 and peaked at ~60k in October 2017.
The company burn rate is currently roughly 100k. We expect costs to double in 2018 as we are going to hire many more developers and plan to establish our first permanent headquarters in Budapest, Hungary and Karlsruhe, Germany.
Securing ongoing development
I am personally backing up all extraordinary costs (for example, if the mining licences allotted to IoP Ventures become insufficient, the price of IOP drops below profitability rate or unforeseen circumstances occur). To make this project almost immune to any external threat or something happening to me personally, we are planning to establish a security fund which can automatically financing and run the whole structure for at least 2 years even without my support.
Personal Opinion / Outview
IoP is going to become in 2018 a leading Blockchain Company and we are doing great overall.
Fundamentally, IoP is one of the most underrated projects with a huge potential in 2018, especially once Mercury leaves prototype stage. Don’t forget – IoP is not just a coin, we are going to change the world, the society and how we interact.
01/14/2018 – Markus