To be able to initiate the IEO (Initial Exchange offering) Steemhunt needed to check all legal matters, as the HQ is located legally in South Korea.
Let's dive into some facts and background.
0. Repository
https://github.com/Steemhunt/web
1. The way to an IEO
Source: M. B. M.
Steemhunt is a service created and run by a company named BourbonShake Inc., officially registered in Seoul, Korea. Due to the fact that the South Korean government has still banned ICO's in Korea, it is legally not possible to start an ICO as a Korean company. Steemhunt has been very keen on making the right steps to carefully grow the service with the community. The preparation of their token offering has been done the same way. The first step was to increase the holders of HUNT tokens, but not for speculators or dumpers but for real users. Steemhunt started an innovative approach and decided to airdrop 50% of the initial tokens mainly to users and contributors to the project. This had two effects.
- Being able to market directly to your target group.
- Being able to create actual value and needs for your token (as targeted users acted based on hunt tokens airdrop)
The airdrop was designed (and pivoted also) in different ways to engage the user base.
- Delegation Airdrop (Sponsors) - HUNT tokens for delegated Steem Power
- Steem Power Holder one time 1:1 Airdrop
- Social Share Airdrop - A social media referral airdrop system
- Voting Airdrop - Voting Hunts will reward not only Steem/SBD/SP but also HUNT tokens
- Promotion Contributors - Rewarding contributors on different platforms. (Writing, Video, etc.)
- Role Contributors - Rewarding HUNT tokens to community roles
- Boosted HUNT - creating real value for HUNT tokens/ converting STEEM to HUNT
After creating value for HUNT tokens the next step was funding the project to step up to the next pillar. As ICO's were not an option if Steemhunt was keeping the company in Korea the team looked into different kind of options.
IEO relies on running the necessary token funding process via exchange so that the project can save much time and resources dealing with the sales contract, KYC, and heavy marketing.
Source: @steemhunt
The biggest advantage of Steemhunt is, that they are running on a small and agile team. Co-running their project with the community and using HUNT tokens as an accelerator to reward contributors has been a core strategy to keep the project as effective and development concentrated as possible. But on the other hand, as funding is a matter of a lot of preparation and can be very time consuming, an actual full ICO would have been very difficult to run, so an IEO where most of the funding activities are outsourced to the exchange is actually a great strategy to go with.
2. Founding members and community
Source: IT Chosun
- Sebastian Kim 
As one of the co-founders, Sebastian is overseeing the development of
Source: Stateofthedapps
If we check the dev activity on stateofthedapps.com we can see that the project is very active, even with all the preparations for their IEO.
After meeting with Sebastian and working with him the last year I can say that Sebastian is a detail orientated professional with solid experience and deep insight into the Blockchain industry and behavior. As an expert in agile development, it was a pleasure to see the product pivoting from real life problems to solutions. He is able to adapt to situations and move forward with fast code implementations. Sebastian is one of the pillars that Steemhunt was able to develop and implement their own rewarding system and mechanism to avoid abusing (Hunter Score, ABV, Influencer Evaluation Score).
- YoungHwi Cho 
Source: IT Chosun
The other important pillar from
- Community roles
The similarity to other Steem based projects, but a big differentiator compared to ICO's or other startups is that the community is heavily involved in the live product. I can sure say that
would not be there where it is today if it was not for the founders. But it would also not exists if Steemhunt had not a passionate community. Members have taking over important roles and following the path from all over the world. They have been asked for feedback and this kind of communication had been melted into the code and established the typical Steemhunt community. One of the biggest assets and strength Steemhunt has is and will be also in the future this international community power.
3. Timelines and Details
There are in total three rounds planned on three different exchanges. After the last IEO on 29th of March, the HUNT token is going to be listed on DAYBIT exchange. Depending on the trading volume more exchanges are planned. The exact exchanges are not yet announced as the contracts are not yet fully signed, but it looks like that we will get that information in a few days.
- Sales allocation: 50 Million HUNT tokens (10% of total supply)
- IEO Sales price: 0.02 USD per token
- IEO Round : 11-15 March / 18-22 March / 25-29 March (Exchanges to be announced)
- Hard Cap: 1 Million USD.
We will have to look into the actual calculation for HUNT tokens and see how the IEO price compares to that.
The actual conversion rate on Steemhunt is 19.91 HUNT tokens per STU. This means that 1 HUNT tokens equal 0.05 STU $. Based on today's reward calculation I would get 3.757SP and 1.259SBD for 3.95 STU$.
Current Steem price on
is 0.332USD and SBD is 0.95USD
- ((3.757SPx0.332USD)+(1.259SBDx0.95USD))/3.95STU$=0.618576
- 1HUNT (0.05STU$) x 0.618576 = 0.0309USD
This would mean that the current market price for a HUNT token is around 0.031 USD but the offered IEO is at 0.02USD, which is a gain of about 50%. If you are able to activate your special offer for Steemians (10%) your profit would be even bigger.
Special offer for Steemians
Steemhunt has prepared a special 10% Bonus for Steemians. To be able to participate in this event you will have to hurry up, as it is only going to be active until 27th of Feb (KST). Please follow the instruction here and commit your participation in the following document.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdng5R5OlvuySH0GDcPkp0LUfYtz-csTjGgnlgPE9Dc60gu5A/viewform?usp=sf_link
4. Conclusion
It is important to see how this IEO is going to show a new way of funding for Steem and SMT based projects. Not launching funding with a Whitepaper, but starting the product, growing the community and pivoting the product from an MVP to a stable stage and after that starting to think about funding means that you need to have a very long breath to keep your project alive until momentum. I wish the best for this IEO and also sure that we will have other successful SMT projects following this path.