ICO Research: Polyswarm NCT
Introduction
This report will look at the company, existing business model, application, token information and current community. This report was carried out as of 01/02/2018. We do not endorse any investment and we are not financial advisors. We merely look to research Initial Token Offerings, based on the existing available information.
Company Introduction
Is the company incorporated?
Swarm Technologies Inc. was incorporated in Puerto Rico on 4th September 2017 (FILE # 399970) according to Polyswarm’s medium post.
But note also there seems to be another company of the exact name Swarm Technologies Inc. that is incorporated in Delaware on 2nd March 2017 (FILE # C3989977). Cannot confirm ownership as listed by an agent. But mentioned within the token sales terms is the governing law, being that of State of Delaware.
The token sales terms also refer to a subsidiary of Swarm Technologies Inc, as Swarm Technologies K.K. No further information can be found on this subsidiary.
Former brand was Swarm Market now PolySwarm as of 8th November 2017
Ambiguous company structure
With no clear Inc registration number information on companies documents or site. It is also unclear of the operations base legal jurisdiction i.e token agreement refers to Delaware, Company Blog Post refers to Puerto Rico.
Existing Business
Polyswarm is a decentralized threat intelligence market made possible by Ethereum smart contracts and blockchain technology. Polyswarm aims to incentivize rapid innovation for anti-virus and automate cyber threat intelligence with precise economic incentives concerning the malintent of files, network traffic and, URLs.
The company is too new, to have an annual filing at Puerto Rico. And without a product or existing service, they appear to have no income.
Estimated Company Valuation: Seed Stage
The company is at the seed stage, and we cannot locate any information on Patents. The Public Github is still very young and has limited commits, which indicates they are still in concept stage, therefore, their IP value is currently limited.
Location
Registered Address: 1413 Ave Ponce de Leon, San Juan, PR 00907
This location is a co-worker space run by Piloto. This company allows shared offices, but also virtual offices to allow businesses to take advantage of certification under Act 20, Act 22, and the rest of Puerto Rico’s tax incentives.
Street Map search highlights virtual office
Formal address is 11 hours by plane away from the CEO and team. Cannot locate trade or working office address in California. According to an interview with the CEO, he covers morning chat sessions, which implies a decentralized team.
Trademark
According to Trade Mark Search no registrations have been made by Swarm Technologies, PolySwarm or Steve Bassi CEO. There appears no trademark for the PolySwarm brand.
This brand appears to have no Trademark protection.
Partners / Clients
Partnership
Announce on the 19th January 2018 as a press release, Polyswarm has co-founded a consortium for decentralised cybersecurity with Rivetz. Will be a professional group, that helps developed best practices for blockchain-based cybersecurity. The new group will be called DC2.
Aiming to leaders in industry
The start up of this consortium, will allow Polyswarm to position itself as an industry leader. Though note the consortium has only been agreed and is in very early stages.
Technology Ambition
Second Quarter 2018
They aim to bring out a minimal value product, that can adhere to their bug-bounty workflow. This will be an Alpha stage product and affectively only a test net. According to their GitHub repository that covers this aspect, they seemed to start work on the offering at the beginning of November 2017. With 1 developer currently committing code.
Quarter 3 2018
Still in very early product stages, they intend to deliver the application via a Raiden-style channel, to try maybe to bring network transactions off the ethereum network, to assist in scaling the application.
**Quarter 4 2018 **
This is their expected release for Beta version, or Version 1. Basically further testing, with aim to eliminate bugs. This version will still use test tokens.
Quarter 2 2019
Version 2. This version will be expected to be the market ready product, aiming for a stable product version.
Very Early Stages in Development
The company is more or less at concept stage, aiming to create a very early version and allowing testing to begin. They intend to develop in an agile way, and most of 2018 will be on a test network.
Looking at sidechain solutions
Interesting note: They committed a change on the 4th December 2017, that will allow them to run via Raiden Network.
GitHub
There are 6 public repositories that appear to be managed by 1 developer.
Token Example
Polyswarm
Perigord
Ganache-core
Go-ethereum
Ultimate ICO Calendar
There is not too much to show to the public, and what they do show, ties in with their roadmap. With typical repositories covering the ICO and Tokens. With work already started on the MVP version.
In addition they seem to share in developing a replacement to Node.js as an Ethereum equilifent. From this repository there are 36 developers. Each commiting small amounts of code. Lead by Tim Coulter of Truffle Framework.
Single Developer by access to wider development network
1 developer is currently deploying commits to Polyswarm’s Github, highlighting limited development capacity. As part of Ganache-core development, they seem to have access to a wide range of Ethereum coding specialists.
Token Usage
Is it a BlockChain or a Token?
It is a ethereum solidity contract built on the blockchain. As thus restricted till scaling opportunities exist on the ethereum platform but it appears this ICO, is considering solutions, with a raiden-like off-chain solution. It is a utility token, as such does not provide dividends, so is not a security.
NCT powers all the major PolySwarm interactions:
Bounty placement
Offer channel establishment
Teardown
Exchange
Registration
Truth determination
Bounty Placement being the most used aspect of the network, in terms of purchases of planned services. Such as completing a bounty, once a bug has been found.
High Utility Planned
The token will be used for every bounty, and rewarded to those that complete the bounty. With off-chain solutions envisaged, they plan on focusing on the token economy.
Price
1 ETH = 31,337 NCT
Upon final sale amount being concluded, an additional 30% of tokens will be created.
15% Towards Network Growth
15% Retained by the Incorporated Company
ICO
ICO Phases
| Per 1 ETH | Tokens Created | ETH Raised (*$800) | |
| Phase 1 (Presale) | 54,526 | ||
| Phase 2 | 37,604 | 235,025,000 | $5 Million (6250 ETH) |
| Phase 3 | 34,471 | 432,550,000 | $10 Million (12500 ETH) |
| Phase 4 | 32,904 | 616,950,000 | $15 Million (18750 ETH) |
| Phase 5 | 31,337 | 979,281,250 | $25 Million (31250 ETH) |
Note Ethereum raised and tokens created, is an educated guess only. This does not consider price or exchange fluctuations or aims of the PolySwarm ICO.
Total Estimated Tokens on Phase 2 to 5 - 2,263,806,250
Total Polyswarm controlled tokens - 679,141,875
Total Estimated Supply: 2,942,948,125 (2.94 Billion)
Not clear on amount they wish to raise or tokens that will be distributed
The information provided is not too clear, and conflicting in different sources. The information provided on their website - envisages $50 Million. But according to the token sale agreement, there are 4 tranches and a Pre-Sale. The total of the 4 Tranches - specifies $55 Million. 10% more than, what is listed on their website front page. In addition, it is unclear if the Presale stage includes the first tranche or is a separate additional amount raised. In addition to the fluctuations between ETH / Dollar, it is very difficult to calculate an expected total supply.
Market Date
Sale starts 20th February 2018 till sold out or ends automatically on 22nd March 2018.
Token is liquid
Being an Ethereum token, expect the coin to be listed straight away on decentralized exchanges like EtherDelta or 0x based protocol platforms.
Distribution
Token Distribution
There does not appear to be any founder tokens, but 30% of the total supply of tokens released to the Swarm Technologies Inc, will be issued to other companies, individuals at the sole discretion of the company.
Proceeds of funds raised
54.51% - Developer Salaries
3.00% - Office Expenses
4.06% - Operational Overhead (travel, hosting, etc)
14.49% - Legal
13.62% - Marketing
10.32% - Tax
The budget for the funds raised, seems realistic and split according good business practice.
30% Supply of Tokens can be issued at the sole discretion of the Swarm Technologies Inc
Expected Earnings
As a business, the company currently appears to have no income, and is expected that they will have a market ready version by 2019.
Clarification on Budget Required
No sources of information could be found regarding existing income. It appears there is no formal income, and the company will be solely reliant of ICO Funds.
Those seeking to invest, it is recommended that the companies burn-rate per month is requested.
Team
Core Team
The core team profiles that was available:
| Name | Job Type | Category | Experience | Endorsements | Network | Strength |
| Steve Bassi | CEO | Technology | 10 Years | 23 | 130 | Low |
| Paul Makowski | CTO | Technology | 6 Years | 13 | 360 | Low |
| Ben Schmidt | Director | Technology | 6 Years | 8 | 123 | Low |
| Nick Davies | COO | Security | 17 Years | 172 | 394 | Medium |
| Maxwell Koo | Developer | Technology | 6 Years | N/A | 10 | Low |
| Adrian Escude | CMO | Operations | 10 Years | 70 | 1244 | Medium |
| Bill Fehr | VP | Operations | 24 Years | 71 | 1084 | Medium |
| Evelyn Hytopoulos | Chief Economist | Finance | 4 Years | 30 | 500 | Low |
| Jessica Thiefels | Content Marketing | Marketing | 10 Years | 81 | 849 | Medium |
Team have minimum experience but in the right places
The team seem to have minimum experience, but their expertise lies correctly with the product. Note the majority of the team have worked together on another company called - Narf Industries, another company that also deals with security.
Advisory Team
The advisory team, most likely being reimbursed via tokens, may be just endorsers of the project. But the team backgrounds are within ideal companies and security governmental departments, they should be able to convey the best advice for this industry.
| Name | Title | Category | Experience | Endorsement Rating | Network | Strength |
| Carl Hoffman | Advisor | Technology | 31 Years | 100 | 2199 | High |
| Mark Tonnesen | Advisor | Technology | 17 Years | 298 | 500 | Excellent |
| Dan Guido | Advisor | Security | 12 Years | 155 | 1343 | High |
| Chris Eagle | Advisor | Technology | Unknown | Unknown | 133 | Medium |
| Dr Sergey Bratus | Advisor | Technology | Unknown | Unknown | 25 | Medium |
Note there are very experienced names that are advisories, which is well in line of best practice with good use of panels skill sets.
Also advisory team seem to be of the right background experience to advise on this project.
Community
They have pretty much the established places to have a web presence, but most are limited in network affect. It is still early and we expect that they have a small dedicated PR team to focus and increase the online following post ICO.
| Followers | Strength | |
| 64 | Low | |
| Bitcoin Talk | 6 | Very Low |
| Medium | 89 | Low |
| Steemit | Not Listed | Not Found |
| 61 | Low | |
| 1231 | Medium | |
| Not Listed | Not Found | |
| Telegram | 4611 | High |
| 594 | Low | |
| Youtube | Not Listed | Low |
Small Current Marketing Impact
From their site, they appear to have only 1 person conducting content marketing, and do not cover such roles as community manager.
Position Vs Competition
The comparison looks at the nearest competitor in the crypto-scene. Guardtime was picked due to closely managing the way they monitor and resolve security threats.
Guardtime seem to be a large company, with at least 100+ employees. In addition to access to 150 cryptographers, developers and security architects, seem to be in an established position to compare to.
| Swarm Technologies | GuardTime | ||
| Team Strength | Medium | Excellent | GuardTime’s team are more established and have a much larger tech team. |
| Technology | Low | Excellent | PolySwarm, have yet to finish the MVP, where as GuardTime, have many platforms in existence. |
| White Paper | Low | N/A | PolySwarm’s whitepaper was not clear enough to easily work out the end solution and its token amount was ambiguous. |
| Token Value | Average Rate Avg Value: $0.016 | Private Early VC $8 Million Raised in 2010 | Compared with similar token distributions across industry as whole. As offering is quite unique. |
| Community | Low | Excellent | PolySwarm’s community is of low size, and the marketing team seems inadequate for the task in hand. |
Conclusion
Their marketing team seem to be very small, tie that into low amount of followers across their social media platforms. Seems to be an area they need to improve upon. The marketing is not even strong enough for the crypto-community.
The team of Advisors is one of the strongest part of this ICO. The advisory team are well established in themselves with strong lengthy backgrounds and applicable experience.
The core team, has an average experience of 10.33 years each. In addition the experience closely ties into the product offering, and the team seem to have the capability to carry through this project.
The company has poor fundamentals, with the Team being the only obvious strength. **A negative factor **is the lack of development or offering to the market. This product is in very early stages.
The tokens may appreciate in value due to speculation, but will not be utilised until mid 2019. Meaning they will have no use case for about 1.5 years.
Though we expect, if the company can get a working product released, the economic usage of each token or utility will be high, as they will be required in every transaction. It also appears that they plan on creating a buyer and seller market, that would work well on an open platform across the globe. Allowing the buyer (Company placing bounty) to get the most efficient price for security bugs.
On conclusion they have no existing business, apart from the team already have worked together on Narf Industries. The team have the expertise to follow their roadmap, and appears realistic in its timescales. From this based on minimal comparables we give this ICO/business offering a 55% out of 100% rating and would expect a fair dollar value investment return.