There are several digital advertising decentralized platforms that are in some way similar to Merculet: Basic Attention Token - BAT (195M USD), AdToken (17M USD), Adbank (4.3M USD). The market of digital advertising has moderate growth rates at around 7% per year. The stage of product development for now is not clear. Beta version only planned for Q2 2018. MVP is not ready yet. Despite the fact that the team describes and aims to develop several technical layers on the platform, there is no technical description of the tools.
The model description is very sketchy and the value added is not clear. It is not clear how the project will earn. Post-money valuation of Merculet (if ETH is 430USD) will be around 52M USD, which is a huge number for a project without MVP. There is no information about vesting scheme for the 20% tokens reserved for the team.
The core team of the project consists of 10 people with technical background and previous experience at HP, Philips, Dell, and others. Most of the key competencies are covered by the team members. Most of the team members previously worked at MagicWindow. The project has good partnerships such as Elex, Solo Ads. The project also has connections with Krypital Group, which previous projects include ArcBlock ($49M USD) and CyberMiles ($46M USD). Most of the project advisors are from funds - DanHua Capital , BitShares & Fenbushi Capital, Roots Capital, Super Hash Capital. According to the company's LinkedIn page, there are 13 members in the team. Most of the team members located in Shanghai, China.
Roger Lim is part of it, any project that has Roger Lim (as an advisor) that`s where I am in.
25-Mar: Cap is 16,4 M. They published white paper yesterday. There is issue with vesting period for private sale, they will release 20% tokens per month. So the same team (Krypital) is involved in this project.
7-Apr: Sergei: Merculet, NKN, Sentinel Protocol – I am planning to participate
9-Apr: Alexey: We participated on pre-sale. We liked that they are supported by ArkBlock.
9-Apr: Key: Personally, I skipped Merculet. I didn’t understand how this will work. Egretia, as for me is more interesting. It is a blockchain.
27-Apr. Merculet, we have already discussed many times. Most of our team members are planning to participate. The idea of the project is not very interesting for me personally. But the project is backed by influential people.
Bruce: The conditions for crowd sale is better because pre-sale tokens will be vested for 5 months.
3-May. Sergey: Everyone is going to participate in it as I see. Merculet is a strong Medium. It is not High because of the sphere.
23-May. Sergey: I hope everything will be good. Merculet looks great, a lot of hype, funds have already invested in it.
Ivan: I think 3x or at least 2.5x.
Alex: I think 2-3x is too less for such projects like Merculet and Egretia.
Overall, we are neutral about both the flipping and long-term potential of this ICO. Our thoughts on buying the tokens for flipping and investing for the long term are as follows:
For flipping
Neutral. In the current market environment, we believe the hard cap of 37,000 ETH is rather high for this type of project, especially considering that the project is at a very early stage.
For long-term holding
Neutral. The go-to-market strategy of the project is unclear to us. We are unsure how Merculet will attract users and gain adoption of its tokens. Therefore, it is hard to gauge how likely the project will be successful long-term. The fully diluted market cap is also fairly high amid the current market environment.
6-Apr. Look very good. solid invetors as well just as FBG and NGC
17-Apr. No MVP yet
An experienced and solid Chinese team with important partnerships and attention from capital funds. Its market potential is huge because Merculet introduces a unique complex solution to the main problems of the industry. The relationship between Merculet and Krypital Group is a great advantage for the project. But still there is a lack of information related to ICO dates and pre sale; they will not show MVP before an ICO because Merculet is not an open source project, but they promise to launch their platform in Q2.
P.S. They have a great marketing team! They have answered all my questions, and they have a very friendly attitude and completely understand the project, even when answering difficult technical questions.
2 May. Content management platform/blockchain rewarding users for contribution. Chinese team, with good advisors. No MVP, will be able in q2 2018. Cap low. Beta release in q3 of 2018 poor token structure. Passing it dont see a real use case.
While the issue of capturing consumer attention is an increasingly pertinent issue for enterprises, we are not sure a decentralized platform based on tokenized incentivization represents the solution.
At this stage in the development and adoption of blockchain technology, the Merculet ICO is treading into highly speculative territory. Without a product demo to get an idea of what the end user experience will feel like and little information on adoption strategies, we are not confident enough to place a bet on this project.
The project is based on a platform for content distribution and the monetization of user's attention.
Strengths of the project:
Weaknesses of the project:
the project team has not disclosed the scaling strategy or methods for attracting users, which may negatively affect the number of users on the platform
Project strong sides: the interesting idea of a loyalty program.
Project weak sides: business plan, market research, and strategy not presented; team if not full.
So our position is negative, probably scam.