Opportunities:
1) Status has a very ambitious goal – it wants to be the WeChat of the West. Once fully developed, Status does have many features that are unmatched by current messaging apps. I wonder why existing messengers (cough, Facebook, cough) do not try to do what Status is doing already?
2) There is a real need for a decentralized solution. Some users don’t want to use peer-to-peer payments and encrypted communication in a centralized platform due to privacy concerns.
3) Strong team:
The team has been working together for a long time. Status is an ongoing project for a number of years with a clear roadmap.
Many of the advisors are reputable within the blockchain world.
4) As with all the messenger and social media apps, there is a strong network effect in play for Status. The more users Status has, the more powerful the entire network is. Therefore, success of SNT hinges largely on whether Status (and by extension, Ethereum) can achieve widespread adoption.
Concerns:
1) In order to be successful, Status needs to achieve mass adoption which can be difficult.
Without a large user base, developers would not want to create DApps on the platform. Who wants to build an app for the Windows Mobile platform?
2) In the whitepaper, Status outlined a number of problems that they are trying to solve. As you can see from the sample use cases above, users can do a lot of different things on Status.
Status might be trying to tackle too many problems at the same time. If the team cannot execute well enough, they would spread themselves too thin.
I think it is better if they could focus on one problem at a time and fix them one by one.
3) Hidden cap may be larger than investors anticipated, making the ICO undersubscribed. This would hurt the short-term performance of SNT.
4) There are many very popular messaging apps already. Status needs to compete successfully against very strong and established players (Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, iMessage, Line, etc.) in order to survive.
5) On a related note, it looks like the Kin project by Kik (another messaging app) also tries to tackle similar problems. So Status will go against an already functional messaging app.
Conclusion:
Overall, I like this ICO because SNT is used in many facets of the Status ecosystem. If done right, Status can deliver a lot more functionality than current messaging apps.
Mass adoption is the key here, so Status needs to find a way for even the least tech-savvy users to easily use the different functionalities within the app.
However, because their goal is so ambitious, the risk of failure is also high. Status is a high-risk-high-return type of project. Five to ten years from now, I believe Status will either be a massive success or a total failure.
As a supporter of Ethereum, naturally I am rooting for Status’ success because its aim is to drive mass adoption of Ethereum. Therefore, please note that my analysis might be biased here.
Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
Sshort-term rating: Positive
This is because (1) the ICO is highly anticipated and (2) the team is very strong. Unless the hidden cap is significantly larger than investors expected, we think the short term prospects are attractive
Long-term rating: Positive
Status has a very binary outcome: it will either be a massive homerun or a total failure. If it is successful, the long-term return can be astronomical; if it fails, SNT will likely be worthless
