Today I'm going to tell you about the project that I have actually been following for quite a while already, but I still believe that it deserves more attention than it currently has. I'm taking about Akropolis, a project that seeks to innovate the pension industry with the help of blockchain.
The Idea
The idea of Akropolis is to create infrastructure that will help connect consumers with pension funds and pension managers so that an average person could use Akropolis platform to choose or create a pension scheme they are comfortable with. As I see it, this will particularly be helpful for the nomad generation who travel a lot, work in many countries (often remotely) so it is almost impossible for them to find a solution that requires almost no hassle associated with the traditional pension system.
By helping millennials to enroll in pension schemes, Akropolis will also help pension funds and managers to overcome the problem of the decrease in voluntary pension contributions and possibly reduce the gap between pension structures, liabilities and their existing assets.
The Technology
From the technological perspective, Akropolis is a decentralized protocol which will provide and deliver a series of pension products that will initially be managed by a centralized entity, the Akropolis Foundation.
The key element of the Akropolis platform is the AKT token utility of which is closely linked to the platform use cases by four main types of its users.
There will be individuals who seek access to pension services. Developers will be able to build apps on the platform and get rewarded for that. Pension funds and managers as well as institutional users will use the token for paying fees and staking.
If you want to have a deeper insight into the benefits for each type of Akropolis platform users, I highly recommend checking out page 6 of the Whitepaper (link below). I can just say that they are numerous and stem from the benefits that blockchain can bring into our lives (transparency, easy verification, auditability, etc.).
The Token
There will be two types of tokens on the Akropolis platform: external token (AKT) and internal token (AIT). The former will serve as a utility token for the external users to gain access and use the platform, while the latter represents a stablecoin "to track and record capital flow internally within the system".
The token metrics are the following:
As one can see, the hard cap is in the medium range (25m), 40% of the total token supply will be sold to public and the price per token is $0.07. Team and advisor token are vested for 18 months, which gives enough reasons to believe that the team will have motivation to deliver milestones from its roadmap that currently goes as far as beyond 2019.
The Team and Advisors
The team has a very strong financial and technical background. CEO Anastasia Andrianova, Oxford alumna, is an adviser to the Bee Token, Web3 Foundation, as well as a former investment professional at Lehman Brothers. Co-founder Kate Kurbanova is the Head of Analytics at Cindicator, Product Advisor at Svandis and an advisor to Latium. Head Of Strategy Abhimanyu Dayal has been working with another blockchain project Bitnation. Aylon Morley used to serve as a Senior Analyst for Thomson Reuters. I could go on and on telling about the rest of the team, but I think this already demonstrates that these people have enough expertise to implement such a project.
The advisor team is as impressive as the main one. Ian Grigg is a Partner at Block.one (EOS) and Architecture Consultant at R3. He also has different roles at numerous blockchain projects. Pensions Advisor Ros Altman is a former UK Minister of State for Work and Pensions. There are also big names from investment and crypto investment funds on board.
The Product
According to the roadmap, the product is in the stage of testnet but MVP is expected to be deployed with trial clients joining no later than in the 3rd quarter of 2018. The full version of the platform should be released sometime in 2019.
Conclusion
I believe that Akropolis is a truly innovative product that has potential to disrupt the pension industry. I don't think I've come across any project offering anything similar to this. It is very ambitious but people behind it seem to have everything needed to be able to make Akropolis what it is supposed to be.
Again, this is not a financial advice, so remember to do your own research before any investment decision.
More info about the project:
Akropolis website: https://akropolis.io
Akropolis Telegram: https://t.me/akropolis_official
Akropolis Blog: https://medium.com/akropolis
Akropolis Whitepaper: https://link.akropolis.io/whitepaper
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