A large portion of my crypto portfolio is dedicated to ICOs. After Bitcoin’s meteoric rise, perhaps the only way to make those astronomical returns is by backing good projects. However, the ICO market is very crowded and finding a good project to back is very difficult. But every now and then, there comes a project that compels you to look again.
In recent times, Nucleus.Vision is that project for me. They’re an IoT data management on company that gives consumers the power to for the very first time, fully own, control, and monetize their own data using the power of blockchain. That is an extremely powerful use-case of decentralization, and I’m super excited about how they’re going about acheiving this. They’re going after 3 key markets - 1) Brick and Mortar Retail, 2) Physical Security, and 3) Connected Devices
There are 3 main reasons which make Nucleus.Vision stand out for me and I think it will resonate with most crypto investors.
The Market: Very Large (10/10)
Brick and mortar retail is perhaps one of the biggest markets in the world. If you think about it, shopping is an activity that each and every one of us perform on a daily basis. As expected, the market cap is enormous - a whopping 26 trillion dollars!
What’s even more interesting about this number is that 80-90% is accounted for by offline retail. Obviously, there’s a growing majority of people who shop online, but most of the world still doesn’t have the infrastructure to support mass e-commerce. Furthermore, touch and feel is still required with many products and I think those products will still be sold offline for a very long time to come.
Nucleus.Vision wants to solve quite an interesting problem within this market. Most retailers don’t have any data about who walks into their stores today. Nucleus’s IoT identification sensors identify walk-in’s ubiquitously and their AI platform provides rewards customers each time they walk-in with their crypto-currency tokens, as a token of appreciation.
Blockchain plays are really important role in customer data privacy. No customer data is shared without user consent, which is a lot more that what you can say for current e-commerce player.
All industry stats point to the fact that Nucleus is solving a serious problem in brick and mortar retail. Forbes cites research papers where 70% of the interviewed retail business decision makers want to make investments in IoT, AI and automation. 79% of American retailers want to adopt IoT technologies to customise shopping experiences and by 2021, almost all major retailers will use IoT sensors to track customer movement within stores.
Nucleus.Vision seems to be poised to rise this uptake in adoption and the blockchain application is truly the icing on the cake.
The Product: Live Functional Product (9/10)
From what I can gather from their white paper, there are four main components to their product -
The IoT sensor - they call this the Ion Sensor, which can uniquely identify and
sense temperature, pressure, motion, acceleration and sound within the vicinity of the sensor. From what I understand, the customer identity is linked to the user’s mobile phone’s IMEI number.The AI platform - They’ve called this Neuron. It helps retailers to take advantage of time and opportunity when customers are most receptive. Essentially, it notifies retailers as to which offer to send to which customer.
The blockchain - This one’s named Orbit, which governs all data flow and authentication protocols within the nucleus system.
The cryptocurrency - Nucleus.Vision’s cryptocurrency, called the nCash token, is the currency within their ecosystem. It is used as rewards for every customer data authorisation and while in the hands of the customer, it can be used as rewards or loyalty points. I think is particularly interesting, as this would truly bring cryptocurrency to the mainstream.
Now, while this product breakdown looks great on paper, what makes Nucleus.Vision truly stand out is that this system is already been put to use. They claim that this product is already live across 10 stores and offers sent via Nucleus.Vision are seeing over 75% redemption rates. I don’t know the exact industry standard for offer redemption rates, but I don’t think the average is anywhere close to this number.
The Team: Highly Experienced (10/10)
The Nucleus.Vision team stands out the most for me. Their leadership team has some interesting and competent people whom I think are best suited to solve this problem. While the Harvard drop out tag on the founder can be blinding, but when you look at their experience and skills, it looks like the right blend of intent, skill and motivations to solve this problem.
The CEO is complimented by a CTO (his own brother) who has spent over a decade as a technologist and has worked on blockchain applications for SAP. There’s a retail expert, who has been the sales and marketing head at Levis Strauss and has invested and co-founded multiple startups in the FinTech space over a 30 year professional career. And then there’s a design head who has been in the industry for over a decade running firms and even hosting television series on design.
You don’t have to take my word for their competence. The company has been invested in by people like Tim Draper and some big institutional funds like Reliance Capital. They even have people like Jaron Lukasiewicz from Coinsetter (later acquired by Kraken) on board.
I think Nucleus.Vision is a great team, with an already in market product for one of the biggest problem in the biggest market in the world. How many ICOs have you come across that you can say the same about?