Website indicates 13 team members and telegram has 15 in admins. Most of them have technical education in well-known universities. CEO does not have enough experience for leading the company graduated in 2017 and having research experience and internships (but it must be noted that internships are in Amazon and SAP). The other team seems to be more experienced. For example, CTO has 10 years’ experience in Amazon being Tech Lead and working with AWS Cloud service as well. Chief Security Engineer has been working in Palo Alto for 2 years and in General Electric and Electronic Arts. Other engineers and researchers are young but have interesting academic and career achievements. BDO has VC experience from 2013 so he is able to lead processes. The bottom line is that tech expertise is enough for developing the product but we see the lack of marketing and legal specialists.
Financial details are not published yet but Hardcap is about $16M (gossips) that is reasonable in comparison to similar projects from Cloud Computing.
Lack of prototype and whitepaper and early stage of the product Current roadmap version ends in July 2018, but it is to be updated
Team and advisors are really strong. With support from neo global capital the project can reach heights.
30-May. Sergey: We have participated in the pre-sale, we were given small allocation. It is very hard to participate in it, as far as we know.
Andrey: Sonm and Dadi are competitors. Link
Advantages.
1. A cloud computing service project that overcomes the problems of existing services. We use the pouw model to efficiently use wasted computing power. It uses Intel sgx and uses a multi-chain model of plasma to increase scalability and security.
2. The prototype is coming out in July.
3. It is backed by an enormous number of strong institutional investors. And a very high hype
A complementary point
1. There are already strong competitors in the market. Elements to overcome.
2. Their advantage is revealed in the development of Etherium.
Our thoughts on buying the tokens for flipping and investing for the long term are as follows:
For flipping: A
The project has a high market awareness with a low hard cap (for a blockchain project). Most of the hard cap is contributed by funds and no syndicates are allowed. We believe there should be plenty of unmet demand following trading of the tokens.
For long-term holding: B
Ankr is a very ambitious project that is trying to solve many problems at once. Given the early stage of the project in both the technical and business development side, we have a neutral view on the project’s long-term viability. However, if the team successfully pulls it off, the potential can be substantial.
Picolo Research is neutral on this ICO project as we have several concerns with the relatively inexperienced team as well as the uncertainties in launching the PoUW algorithm. There are currently a few established projects in the space with several more slated to launch their ICO in the near future, which may cause overcrowding of such projects in this area. On a brighter note, they have the backing of several strong strategic investors, which have conducted critical due diligence on the project.
While a vast majority of competitors focus on complex technical solutions to improve the distributed cloud computing industry by using blockchain technology as an under frame for the architecture the project proposes, Ankr brings a new blockchain framework which plans to be efficient in resource usage and will bring a user friendly interface for business applications.
Therefore, the team creates a new path for the already beaten path of cloud computing infrastructure, as it goes beyond a niche solution of tweaking it with different settings and adding technologies with blockchain to focus on mass markets requirements. It offers an elegant solution to a fundamental problem, that of how the computational resources can be directed at useful tasks that address both blockchain and clients’ needs, without the need to create separate mechanisms for each.
We feel that Ankr has a big shot at disrupting the cloud computing industry, its biggest asset being the youthfulness, ambition and cohesion of the team as they come from the same development environment, Berkley, which is an incubator for powerful minds. In order to be successful, the Ankr team must build an ecosystem of users, and incorporate marketing strategies to draw in users and foster a significant amount of adoption. Currently, no business development strategies have been provided by the team and if the team get this aspect right, then Ankr may prove to be one of the stronger performers in the sector for years to come.
Use Case: Distributed Cloud Computing
Remarks: Prototype on July
Market Competitive environment:
There are indeed existing cloud solutions, but Ankr is the first one to leverage both blockchain and trusted hardware
There are both large centralized players AZURE, Google Cloud, and projects with blockchain - Golem, SONM, iExec, Hypernet, DeepCloud on the market of cloud computing..
The competitors’ indicators are as follows:
Golem - capitalization - $480M, from the date of exchange entering the GNT price increased 38 times
SONM – in the course of ICO $42M was raised, capitalization - $69 M, ROI USD - 1,23x
iExec RLC - capitalization - $125M, from the date of exchange entering the RLC price increased 5,6 times
Elastic - capitalization - $22,1M, from the date of exchange entering the XEL price dropped 3,25 times
Hypernet, DeepCloud are at the stage of preparation to ICO
The project advantages:
Resource-efficient mining scheme based on Proof of Useful Work
Scalable Blockchain framework through Plasma sidechains and sharding
TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) provides higher security and isolated executions for the blockchain.
great advisors,
reasonable hard cap
a strong panel of strategic investors
the use of widespread hardware Intel SGX
SOCIAL ACTIVITY
The project popularity in the social networks and discussion forums
The project is detected on the radar of the next influencers: Lendex, DiddyCarter, Mandy, ICO Drops, Ian Balina, MMCrypto, Sergio, ICO Pantera, CrushCrypto, Coin Blog, Picolo Research, InCodeWeTrust, OhHeyMatty, Crypto Calibur, Shin Chan.
Telegram: 54.4k members, admins on the Telegram-channel are responding quickly, user activity is high.
Medium: 19 followers, no posts.
Linkedin: 192 followers.
RISK ASSESSMENT
Pros:
Project is well-known in the crypto community;
Project uses Plasma side-chains to eliminate network congestion;
Stable and energy-effective own consensus mechanizm (Proof-of-Useful Work);
Oracles (ability to transfer information from sites to smart contracts with use of API);
Support of the Neo Global Capital;
Cons:
Many team members doesn’t have large experience in IT area (but project has a strong advisers from blockchain projects PDX, Zilliqa, and Switcheo);
Idea is not uniq - project will operate in the highly competitive environment (Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, etc.) and this will slow down integration to the masses;
Project will use Intel SGX processors to provide stability of the work for end users, but at the same time this will limit distribution of nodes and will affect negatively decentralization of the network.
CONCLUSION: Project has a good technological base with strong team of engineers (although many of them are very young) and advisors, who have years of experience in the blockchain development. During the Pre-Sale project has already raised $14,5M. At the same time project was re-scored because 60% of the token supply doesn’t have a lockup, while project has up to 50% discount (this factor make chances of token price dumps higher in the future).
Ankr has a number of serious features including distributed cloud computing, the PoUW consensus protocol, trusted hardware, multi-chain structure, and seamless interface of oracle service. Since they have a number of serious investors, we can conclude that the project was thoroughly investigated and evaluated high enough for investing. On the other side, the team must provide an easy adoption mechanism to engage a significant number of computational contributors to create an effective cloud network. The roadmap is short and doesn’t show us the team’s plans. The team itself may suffer from lack of business development experience.
An ambitious project with a number of excellent features showing a promising potential in a short-term perspective.
The project has the following strengths:
● Participating in a significant and fast-growing market (the blockchain industry).
● Innovative blockchain solution (resource-efficient mining scheme based on Proof of Useful Work, scalable blockchain framework using the Multi-chain Plasma protocol).
● Unlocked the massive marketing potential of the project (to connect blockchain with applications such as Facebook messenger and WeChat).
However, there are still some risks linked with this ICO:
- Absence of an MVP
- Incomprehensive roadmap
- Commercial risks
Strength and Opportunities:
As of June 2018 the Ankr Network Telegram Group has almost 30,000 participants. That size is remarkable, given the early stage of the project. Sharing idle computation resources via a blockchain network is a tempting idea, that in case of a successful implementation provides for a huge market. Ankr Network promises to provide cloud computing at a lower price than Amazon or Google, since the decentralized cloud will utilize otherwise wasted computing power. Ankr Network lists credible entities, such as Neo Global Capital, DHVC, OK Blockchain Capital, LinkVC, GBIC, BlockVC as strategic investors.
Weaknesses and Threats:
Given the doubts about team members and their engagement based on their Linkedin profile, there remains a big question mark, whether the team will be able to deliver on its promises. The Proof of Useful Work consensus mechanism that is used by Ankr Network’s Main Chain has not yet been proven to be secure in contrast to other consensus mechanisms such as Proof of Work.The Trusted Hardware technology has reserved severe criticism, particularly because of user privacy issues that result from the usage of this technology. It is questionable whether mainstream adoption will occur in the near future.
Verdict:
The fact that various profiles mentioned on the Ankr website could not be verified as team members on Linkedin makes the Ankr Network ICO suspicious. The two verified co-founders have only very limited work experience, which makes it questionable whether they can execute their very ambitious vision. On top, a not yet proved consensus mechanism and questions around the trusted hardware technology make up for a very high degree of risk associated with long term holding of Ankr Tokens. However, a strong social media presence and credible strategic investors imply that the token could be hyped shortly after the public sale.