Huobi is going to publish a new report about the state of the global blockchain industry. The report, entitled “Global Blockchain Industry Overview and Prospects (2018 H1)”, has been produced by Huobi Academy of Blockchain Application (the R&D branch of Huobi). Such report has yet to be made public, it will be presented for the first time at the event called “Blockchain Festival Vietnam” in Ho Chi Min City on 24-25/05/2018. In this article we are allowed to give a sneak preview of the report which covers everything from the crypto-asset market and the blockchain industry to the technology itself and the market regulation. We are going to present the first part of the report, “Crypto assets market overview and prospects” (Part 1), which covers the main trends driving the market in 2018, providing useful data and analysis on the first quarter of 2018. It also contains an analysis of the history of the cryptocurrency market and its users.
About the Report.
Other than the common data and analysis of which most crypto- market reports are made by, Huobi’s report is particularly focused on altcoins, ICOs and in making comparisons between 2017 and 2018.
For example, they argue that an important factor behind the growth of some important projects in the short run (e.g. EOS, CMT and TRX) has been the launch of super nodes elections, these are projects that use Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) consensus mechanisms.
Also, they provide data on the best crypto-asset performances in 2018, with Spectrecoin (XSPEC) as top performer, it appreciated 741.42 times in value since the crowd funding date (8,288 times considering the peak price).
Another important topic of the report is crypto-asset crowdfunding. 2017 saw many huge ICOs competing with traditional PE/VC funding options. The global nature of ICOs and blockchain-based assets allowed projects such as “Filecoin”, “Tezos” and “Polkadot” to raise hundreds of millions of $USD (respectively $0.257bln, $0.232bln and $0.145bln).
Huobi Academy of Blockchain Application consistently tracks token sales on the market. The report shows that after entering 2018, the amount of capital raised in token sales started to decline on a month-to-month basis. February saw a 2.569 billion dollars peak followed by a 55% decline in April, when the capital raised was only 1.145. Data for January and March are respectively 2.389bln and 1.978bln.
In another paragraph, Huobi’s researchers argue that the end of the rally and the bear market of 2018 have been caused by new impending regulations on token securities and ICOs in USA and Europe (USA SEC, Switzerland FINMA) but also by Tax season in US and Japan. The lack actual of use cases for blockchain applications is also weighing in. They also talk about “DAICO”, the son of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and Initial Coin Offering (ICO), this idea has been proposed by Vitalik Buterin in order to balance the power of token issuer and investors. Under this model, the startup doesn’t have access to all the funds raised in token sales. The right of using the funds comes with the achievement of goals set in the roadmap by the management and if the investors become unhappy with the project and the progresses made, they have the right to vote and terminate the smart contract that regulate the DAICO. “The Abyss”, a Decentralized game distributor, is the first project to use a DAICO, they raised more than $14mln in ETH and BNB.
Lastly, they propose 6 rationales to monitor when looking at the market evolution and the new drivers of the future:
- Penetration: Crypto finance penetrates traditional finance (Can Blockchain Technology and DLT be used in clearing and financial back office oerations to reduce costs and improve efficiency?).
- Application: Only “Use cases + Blockchain” could set the market on fire (when are we going to see meaningful blockchain applications?).
- M&A: Blockchain acquiring internet (Mergers and Acquisitions are key for ambitious projects that require a wide spectrum of skills and infrastructure).
- Users: blockchain user base will keep growing, pushing up market activity
- Generation: from younger generation to the masses (the data show that the percentage of users over 35 is increasing).
- Gender: From male to female (currently, about 17% of the bitcoin community users are females, a 7% of increase from 10% in 2015).
The full report will be made available for free (and exclusively) to the attendees of the Blockchain Festival Vietnam.
Event details.
Blockchain Festival Vietnam is organized by Huobi.pro and Kyber Network, the festival will host more than 30 speakers and 1600 participants (and more than $100,000 worth of airdrops!)
Date: 24 & 25 May 2018, 9am to 6pm
Venue address: Gem Centre, 08 Nguyen Binh Khiem St, 1 District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Blockchain Festival ticketing page: http://bit.ly/2HqPpwA
Blockchain Festival info: https://www.blockchainfestival.com/
Sign up for the tickets using the code “WRITE50” for a 50% discount.