Ink Protocol

Summary

Ink Protocol has a vast growing potential even though it already has 10 million registered users using it with Listia. Sellers will find it easier to integrate into other marketplaces due to its feedback and reputation system once other peer to peer markets such as Craigslist, Facebook marketplace and Gumtree catch on to the platform, Ink can turn from millions to billions of users within the years to come.

Positives
Decentralised feedback/reputation with third party dispute resolution
Already used by Listia and easily integrated into other p2p markets
Payments can be made using XNK and easily converted into fiat currencies
No/low transaction fees
Negatives
Ink app is still yet to be established with many p2p markets which don’t usually handle direct payments

While the Ink Protocol ICO certainly faces some real challenges ahead, the team behind the project already have one successful project behind them. The biggest uncertainty revolves around the question of mass adoption. At the same time, however, an already existing product assures at least a minimum user base from the start. After taking all factors into consideration, we’ll be making a small bet on the Ink Protocol ICO.

Opportunities:
Listia is an established platform with 10 million registered user and is backed by reputable VCs. This shows the experience and capability of the team.
The token model makes sense. We believe the switch from Listia credit to XNK token would be smooth and not impact the user experience at all.
Since Listia will implement the use of XNK tokens soon after the end of ICO, there will be immediately traction with the usage of tokens. This is different from most other ICOs that will not be able to launch their platform until 3-12 months after ICO.

Concerns:
From the public information that we gather (app ranking history, website traffic, the co-founder admitting that Listia’s growth is not as fast as everyone wanted), and last fund raising round being four years ago), we believe Listia is not a growing business. Since the switch to XNK token does not dramatically change the business model of Listia, we are not sure if the ICO will help Listia’s growth.
It is less than 2 weeks before presale begins and the future roadmap of the project is not released yet. We cannot analyze the soundness of the roadmap and level of planning of the team in executing its vision.

Conclusion:
Overall, we like the short-term potential but are neutral about the long-term potential for this ICO. Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
For ​short-term holding:
Good. With a hard cap of $15 million ($3.5 million already sold), solid team and high market awareness, we believe the project can be sold out with unmet demand.
Seeing (1) the high market demand for participating in ICOs, (2) a few high profile ICOs canceling due to raising enough funding from presale, and (3) there is a disconnect between the hard cap of ICOs and market cap of existing competing projects, we believe that the days of sub-$20 million solid ICOs are limited until the next correction arrives.
For long-term holding:
Neutral. We are not sure how successful and profitable Listia is given the various information we gathered. The utilization of cryptocurrency does not dramatically change and improve the business model of Listia, so we are neutral about the benefits that the adoption of blockchain has on Listia.