While lurking around Steemit the other day, I happened upon the "Promoted" section and was introduced to an ICO that now has pre-sale tokens available. At the time, it was number one on the promoted section and being the crypto-enthusiast that I am, was intrigued.
I decided to do my own research into Jury.Online as a possible investor. They had a really cool concept and I was legitimately interested into buying in having never participated in an ICO before.
What is Jury.Online?
Jur.Online is a concept which enables parties to conduct business on top of the ethereum blockchain with confidence. They provide a judge and jury for smart contracts so that parties can have a dispute resolution in case a part of a contract is not met.
Anonymous judges are assigned to disputes who are given monetary incentive to rule appropriately. The judges are shielded from one another so that each judges decision aren't corrupted by the voting of other judges.
Research
Being a small time investor and crypto-trader, research is everything. It goes without saying, you just don't throw your money into anything. I read something recently that over half of the ICO's and altcoins are either scams or ventures that cannot succeed.
I started with the homepage.
Looks nice, professional. Nothing of note here.
Next I went to the ICO
So they are selling their coin during the Presale, the JOT, for 1 ETH in exchange for minimum 300 JOT which they claim is at a 30% discount. Having done research for other ICOs and investments I started to wonder. What am I getting for my money and how does this discount work?
Ethereum is at fluctuating around $300 currently. At this "discount" I would be paying $1 a coin with the discount. Once the Presale is over, it actually goes up November 13 with 1 ETH getting you 210 JOT.
I started to wonder, where is the 1:1 evaluation coming from? How are they selling their coin for $1. I'd just researched several other ICOs that were offering their presales at $.50 $60 with no minimum buy in.
I decided to ask this question and the website conveniently allowed be to ask any question with a push of a button which I thought was nice.
I asked "Vladislav" about the $1 presale evaluation. He basically said they had consulted with "experts" who came up with that information. What he said next is what got me doubting. He went on to say that several "exchanges" had already came to them based on their revolutionary idea.
Now, I've never worked for an exchange, been affiliated with an exchange, or really have any knowledge of the inter-workings of one. But what I DO know is that exchanges don't come to the companies. The companies come to the exchanges. I'm not saying that it didn't happen, because I don't know that. But it just struck me as odd. I didn't save the conversation because at the time, didn't think much of it. Over the past 3 days though, it's been eating away at me.
Still not satisfied with the answers "Vladislav" provided me, I went over to the whitepaper which is where I Should have started to begin with.
The whitepaper is 25 pages long and is authored by Alexander Shevtsov. It is well written and outlines how Jury.Online will operate on top of the Ethereum blockchain. It doesn't have a lot of technical information in it basically because it appears they haven't really done much other than conceive of the project. The whitepaper gives an outline of the project with the ICO being the first thing. Their road-map goes on to say they expect to release an Alpha in the Spring of 2018. What I thought was funny was at the end of the Road-map where they associate themselves with Amazon.
Roadmap and Milestones
• Autumn 2017: ICO
Organization of development
• Spring 2018: Web version alpha release
Basic features (deals with random judges from one pool) released
Testing, start of operations, creation of a “general-purpose” pool
• Summer 2018: Mobile application release
• Summer 2018: Implementing the full set of features (various
resolution types, paranoid mode)
• Summer-Autumn 2018: Opening of third-party pools
• Autumn 2018: Development of infrastructure for the integration of
third-party services
• Winter 2018-2019: Start of integration with third-party services (e.g.
Upwork, Amazon)
This is where I have apprehension. Jury.Online, and a lot of other ICOs ask for money with basically nothing other than an idea. They don't have a working prototype, they aren't showing any patents, and we don't know if this thing is going to have any real world application at all. This is probably why the S.E.C in the US and China has banned ICO investment outright.
Lastly, I went to their Github after scrolling through their FAQ. The question in the FAQ is:
Where Can I Find the Code for jury.online’s Smart Contracts?
The code is available at github.com/jury-online
Clicking on the link takes you to a blank github site but they claim their platform is open sourced.
Other Weird Information
I wasn't even going to write anything about this ICO at all. I figured it was like most ICOs in that they want to raise as much money as they can upfront in order to fund their "idea". I'm an investor, albeit a small one, but I get it.
But yesterday afternoon, I get this email from Jury.Online (since I signed up for their site) which basically says they are listed on an exchange.....
What!? Jury.Online is listed on an exchange? But they aren't even in Alpha!
I don't know if it's just bad English or something was lost in translation, but they are definitely NOT listed on any exchange. The link sends you to ethplorer which it is listed there but that is just a blockchain explorer. It's great that it is being seen on the blockchain which at least shows something is being done with the project.
Coinmarketcap is the go-to to see if a coin is listed anywhere and neither JOT or Jury.Online is listed on the site. Maybe they are just confused between a block explorer and an exchange but if so, that raises a lot of other questions.
Conclusion
I'm not against Jury.Online. In fact, I think it is a great idea and I would love to invest in their project. There are just too many concerns with it right now though and this is probably typical of 90% of ICO's. I read an article the other day equating this new crypto boom with the DOT.COM boom in the 90's and I am fairly certain that they are right.
I hope nothing for the best of Jury.Online and I hope they can iron out the details and put together a stellar project. I'll be watching, and who knows, I might invest one day. Maybe before they sign with Amazon, hehehe! Do I think it is a Scam? I don't really know. I am certain however, there are way too many questions right now to entrust hard earned money with them.