The competitive advantage over similar IoT blockchains is unclear The current low level of blockchain scalability poses significant limits to the growth of blockchain in IoT. ioeX employs the Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Network to fix the existing problems of IoT security and high costs. The Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Network used by ioeX was built on Elastos. ioeX is an application extension of Elastos and is part of its ecosystem. There is no link to GitHub to track the product development. Product development started around February 2018. Beta is not ready yet and expected in November 2018, as well as Beta wallet version. Mainnet release is scheduled for January 2019. The roadmap is vague and does not give a deep understanding of the product development.
In order to enable P2P network service users to pay for services in cryptocurrency and not be affected by the floating price change of ioeX coin, tokens called “GAS” will be issued instead of the ioeX currency. GAS is based on a fixed price and is set at US$1 for each GAS token. There is no limit to the number of GAS tokens issued, and P2P network service users can pay for network services using GAS. ioeX already received investment from EOS VC and Softbank. The size of investment is unclear. ioeX will sell 55% of the tokens during ICO. The Soft and Hard Caps have not been disclosed yet. The similar projects, except IOTA, did not gain high ROI since ICO: Streamr current ROI USD is 1.08x, Nucleus Vision has ROI of 1.41x. IOTA with its growth over 62000% is rather an outlier than a usual case. Streamr initially attracted $27M, Nucleus Vision - $40M. The use of proceeds will be as follows: 30% for Marketing, 15% for Risk Management, 40% for P2P Networking Development, 15% for strategic partner investment.
According to LinkedIn, 14 people are working at ioeX. The team is located in Taiwan. Many team members previously worked at HengHung - small Taiwan IT company. Most of the tech team members have previous mobile software development experience. The CEO previously worked as a mobile phone ODM Project Manager at Foxconn Group and founded a startup - HengHung. He also previously worked as Senior Manager at Elastos. The R&D team consists of 9 developers with various experience. One of the developers came from Elastos core development team. The project made a partnership with Elastos on the 4th of June. The blockchain experience of the team members cannot be verified. What is more, the experience of most of the team members cannot be verified on LinkedIn.
Market Competitive environment:
OTT equipment market is already a huge market. By the end of 2017, cumulative shipments of OTT equipment in China approached 200 million units. Additional 55 million new units are expected by the end of 2018.
In the blockchain space project is a competitor of the
ITC (raised $ 23,5 mln in the ICO, capitalization - $ 24,7 mln, ROI USD - 0,5x)
IoTeX (raised $ 14 mln during the ICO, capitalization - $28,7 mln, ROI USD - 3,58x),
IOTA – in the course of ICO 1,337 BTC was raised, capitalization - $2,7 billion, ROI USD - 2263x.
Beyond Protocol – raised $ 325 mln in Seed investing, capitalization is not available.
In the aspect of the file storage there are both large centralized players (DropBox, Google Drive, iCloud, Intel, Cisco, Amazon) and projects with blockchain:
Filecoin - $257 M is raised, capitalization is n/d, ROI USD - 1.36x
Holo - during ICO $20.4 M is raised, capitalization is $49.9 M, ROI USD - 2.45x
Dadi - $29 M is raised, capitalization is $9.4 M, ROI USD - 0.25x
Storj - $30 M is raised, capitalization is $57.7 M, ROI USD - 0.85x
The project advantages:
Orientation on the OTA market;
Well developed infrastructure;
Partnership with Elastos;
Good team and Advisers;
SOCIAL ACTIVITY
The project popularity in the social networks and discussion forums
The project is detected on the radar of the influencer ICO Drops.
Facebook: 9,2k (decreased from 13k) followers, the average number of likes per post is 30, the average number of comments per post is 0, user activity is low.
Twitter: 6,1k (decreased from 28k) followers, average number of likes per post is 8, average number of retweets per post is 3, average number of comments under the post is 1, user activity is low.
Youtube: 55 subscribers, average number of views per video is 300, average number of comments under each video is 0, user activity is low.
Medium: 119 followers, the average number of likes per post is 25 without any discussion in the comment section, user activity is low.
Telegram (chat): 11,4k members, admins on the Telegram-channel are responding quickly, user activity is low.
Strength and Opportunities:
The support of an already established blockchain project like Elastos, that has a market capitalization of more than 80 million USD as of July 2018, is an advantage of the ioeX project. IoeX claims that manufacturers can save 70% of costs associated with updates, which represents an enormous saving potential if it can be really achieved.
Weaknesses and Threats:
The concept behind ioeX is difficult to understand for the average ICO participant, making it better suited for venture capital investors than for a crowd sale. In order to scale its technology ioeX requires the collaboration of original equipment manufacturers. It may be difficult to convince enough smart devices manufacturers to implement ioeX into their devices so that the ioeX ecosystem can take off. Eventually, the number of projects combining the Internet of Things with blockchain technology is very high. Many of these projects have a different focus than ioeX. Nevertheless, some projects are already established very well in the market, such as IOTA. It will be difficult for ioeX to distinguish their platform from competitors.
Verdict:
The fact that ioeX already raised substantial private funds points towards a successful ICO performance. Since ioeX is an application extension of Elastos, the long term success of ioeX will be linked to the performance of Elastos. It may be riskier to build technology that is based on Elastos compared to Ethereum, a platform that is already more established in the cryptocurrency space with a multi-billion market capitalization. Furthermore, ioeX is targeting a crowded market segment and it remains to be seen which blockchain platform will end up dominating this market.