The Credits ICO pre sale has recently started and has so far already raised over $250,000.
https://credits.com/en/home/ico

What is Credits?

The new platform promises to offer many advantages over the current cryptocurrencies available. They're planning on creating a new cryptocurrency with a network behind it that's capable of processing up to 1 million transactions per second with just a 3 second processing time per transaction!
The new platform states in their whitepaper that they hope to bring a huge new market to cryptocurrency with the advantages of their solution.

Current problems with cryptocurrency

Bitcoin was the first cryptocureency to appear, developed by anonymus developer/developers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin became popular due to the decentralized nature of the currency, however 1 of the drawbacks is that it only makes one transaction.
Ethereum was recently designed and became the first platform to transfer complex interaction processes to smart contracts, ETH is also decentralized.
Most of the recent crypto projects that have been released are very similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum, with many even using ETHs blockchain.
One of the major problems has become the slow transaction speeds and high fees, exactly the opposite of what crypto should be as a currency.
As crypto has gained popularity in 2017 these problems have quickly become more profound, the current transaction time is often around 10 minutes, recently many Bitcoin transactions have even remained unconfirmed for days.
The fees are now also too high to make spending Bitcoin practical for any small transactions, if you want to buy a drink or a meal with Bitcoin then you better think again, the fees are likely to be more than your purchase.
Ethereum has also had a problem with the amount of data saved which is currently increased by 10s of GBs every week on the network.
Credits is aiming to solve this by creating a new technological platform that's based on a new blockchain scheme.

Advantages of Credits

• A completely new platform unlike the slight changes made to the Bitcoin network or projects that run on the Ethereum network.
• Targeted at the financial industry.
• Prototype already ready, unlike many projects who launch their ICO with no proof of concept available.
• The potential to process up to 1 million transactions per second.
• An average transaction speed of just 3 seconds.
• Cheap operations costs of just 0.01%
• Makes it possible for users to make micro payments again due to the speed of the network and low fees.

What can the new network be used for?

The new platform will have many different possible future uses, just a few of these are:

• Micro payments: It's become impossible to use most cryptocurrencies for small payments with the fees being too high to make it practical.
• International payments: International transfers are generally very expensive with fiat options, the platform will offer a low cost and fast solution.
• Smart contracts: The advantages of smart contracts are already starting to be shown, they offer a completely trustless environment as the information is stored and can't be changed.
• Trading: Blockchain allows different parties to transact on a single registry.

Target market

Ofcourse the new network will hope to attract many users who wish to make P2P transactions. However there's also a huge target market across many different industries who can make use of the platform, companies will be able to transfer some of their operations to the new blockchain.
Credits list some of the target market as: Banks, financial companies, financial services, other blockchain based projects and for loans and deposits.

Project history

The project started at the beginning of 2016, after going through several stages of work the team now have a minimum viable product that can be verified on their website. The features currently are:

• Node: The network node that stores data.
• Member ID: a public and private key.
• Transfers: Possible to make transfers across the network.
• Consensus: The algorithm for selecting the node to store data on the blockchain.
• Saving transactions: Saving the data of transactions on to the blockchain.
• Wallet: A visual representation of the operation with the minimum features.

The team states in their roadmap that they plan to have a Pre-Alpha version available for testing as early as February 2018, with the full release planned for June 2018.

Founders of the project

The development team behind the project is primarily based in Singapore which has become a hotspot for cryptocurrency startups.
The project was founded by:

• Igor Chugunov: He has more than 12 years experience with internet based projects, advertising and affiliate marketing for banks and payment processors.
• Evgeny Butyaev: A programmer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams. He already has over 3 years experience with blockchain, having previously developed in Ethereum and Hyperledger.

Credits ICO Details

• Pre sale running until 15th December.
• ICO dates: 15th of January- 15th February 2018.
• Hardcap: $20 million.
• Price: 1 ETH= 2000 CS.
• Total issued tokens: 1 billion.

Conclusion

If the project manages to create a blockchain that's capable of processing 1 million transactions per second then it's sure to be successful.
Many people prefer to invest in projects that are based on some type of platform with tokens, however due to the problems and rising fees of Bitcoin there's still obviously a very high need for a crypto based payment processor that's capable of processing many transactions for a low fee.
The main problem with projects like this is that the development is bound to take a long time so it may not suit short term investors, however if they manage to stick to their roadmap then the price should rise when they release the Alpha version.
I also like that the hardcap is set to an absolute maximum of $20 million, similar types of projects have tried to raise 100s of millions which just isn't necessary for any token sale.

Website: https://credits.com/en/home/ico
Whitepaper: https://credits.com/Content/Docs/CREDITSdeckENG.pdf