Research summary:

This research report is focused on Audius which is an established project operating in the music streaming industry. We will focus on how the project works, what problems it solves, and review its pros and cons.

The CMP is $1.06 as of 4th June 2021.

What is Audius?

Audius is a decentralized music streaming platform which unlike the traditional music streaming platform connects Fans directly with artists and exclusive new music.

It is operating in the Music streaming industry which is a multi-billion dollar ever-growing industry. With over 4,846,791 unique users on their platform over the past month (Data as of 3rd June 2021) and over 200,000 streams every day (Data as of 3rd June 2021), it is safe to say that they are well established.

It is currently ranked at #184 (based on Mcap) in the cryptocurrency market. The total supply 1.03 Billion tokens out of which 0.209 Billion tokens are in circulation. It is currently listed on Binance, Gate.io, and AAX.

It is available on Windows, The App store, and the play store.

What Problems does it aim to solve?

The music industry has undergone massive changes in 2 aspects i.e., music creation & music distribution. Gone are those days when there was a need for audio engineers and producers to create music and the need for producing CDs and cassettes for distribution.

Artists can create music with inexpensive software. But music’s distribution still has an unreasonably high number of middlemen.

Due to this problem, the revenue that the artists receive is extremely low. To give a clear picture, In 2017, the music industry generated $43 billion in revenue but only 12% of that made its way to artists. As points of comparison, NFL players capture at least 47% of the revenue generated by the entire NFL, and NBA players capture between 49 and 51%

Based on its whitepaper, here are the problems the industry faces:

• There are layers of middlemen and significant time delay involved in payments to artists

• Incomplete rights ownership data often prevents content artists from getting paid; instead, earnings accumulate in digital service providers (DSPs) and rights societies

• Publishing rights are complicated and opaque, with no incentives for the industry to make rights data public and accurate

• Remixes, covers, and other derivative content are largely censored due to rights management issues

• Licensing issues prevent DSPs (Digital service providers) and content from being accessible worldwide

What does Audius do?

Audius aims to give the artists back control over distribution, monetization, and streaming rights for their content. They try achieving this with the help of 4 components,

• Audius token: The native token $Audio is used as an incentive.
• Content nodes: These user-operated nodes host the content
• Content ledger: The content ledger holds important information such as music that an artist has published and more.
• Discovery nodes: These user-operated nodes index the content and makes the content discoverable.

The above diagram indicates the life cycle of Audius content.

What is the utility of the coin?

The native token for Audius is “$Audio”. Its functionality is triggered when $Audio is staked. These functionalities include Access to exclusive features, additional $Audio tokens, and governance.

Audius tokens are staked by node operators to run the Audius protocol, and by artists and curators to unlock exclusive features and services.

Audius tokens will serve as collateral for artist-based tooling as well. Early examples incubated by the community include artist’s tokens, badges, and earnings multipliers. In the future, Fans may delegate tokens to specific artists and curators to share in their growth on the platform and the issuance of future tokens.

The token currently has a very small percentage of supply circulating in the market but the supply keeps increasing every 3 Months till July 2026.

Competitor analysis.

Spotify is the top player in the music streaming industry. Audius is an extremely close peer in terms of offerings but also solves the legacy issues of the music industry (Which Spotify hasn’t solved).

Companies	Mcap (USD in Billions)
Spotify	45
Audius (Fully diluted)	1.1

Audius is the most established decentralized music streaming service. There are two other small players in the decentralized music streaming space.

Team, Media, and community strength.

Audius has an extremely strong team of entrepreneurs, engineers, audiophiles, and blockchain experts. Their advisory team has well-known names like deadmau5, RAC, 3LAU. This team also has the co-founder of EA games and Twitch.

The investors also include Binance, Coinbase Ventures, and 7 more investors. Their media presence and community strength have tremendous scope for growth, with over 50,000 Twitter followers and 12,500 discords members.

Conclusion

Pros:

1) Audius is the only established decentralized music streaming platform with no strong competitors. It has an extremely strong team of advisors and has big names such as Binance and Coinbase ventures as its investors.

Cons:

1) Blockchain is used to solve existing problems but it brings a new set of problems of its own. In Audius’ case, artists may upload copyrighted music without much intervention by Audius on copyright and infringement. Platforms such Bandcamp and Patreon solve this issue without the use of blockchain.

2) The native token’s ($Audio) current supply is very low and the supply is designed to keep increasing every 3 months till July 2026.

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Travala.com Research Summary

Research summary:

This research report is focused on Travala.com which is an upcoming project operating in the travel industry. We will focus on how the project works, how it adds value, and review its pros and cons.
The CMP is $2.67 as of 28th May 2021.

What is Travala.com?

Travala.com is a project that operates in the travel industry (An industry that is slowly getting exposure to blockchain technology).

It allows a user to book flights, hotels, and Fun activities with Fiat and cryptocurrency. It claims to provide the best prices for over 2,200,000 hotels (All over the globe), 410,000 activities and also provides access to flights from 600+ airlines. They justify the previous statement with the “Best Price Guarantee”, where they either match or beat the competitor’s prices.

Travala.com is attempting to increase cryptocurrency adoption.

It is currently ranked #243 (based on mcap) in the cryptocurrency market. The total starting supply 61.57 million tokens out of which 52.17 million tokens are in circulation. It is currently listed on Binance, Gate.io, and HitBTC.

What problems does it aim to solve?

Based on its whitepaper, Travala.com solves the following problems.

• Consumers paying high prices and falling for artificial discounts: Travala.com solves this problem with the help of blockchain technologies. By employing an immutable and shared blockchain ledger, it provides complete transparency regarding the true cost.

• Lack of credible reviews: Reviews are scrutinized and can only be provided by confirmed bookings. They have also mentioned the following in their whitepaper as a solution to the “Lack of credible reviews” issue, “A decentralized review platform governed by a cartel of booking platforms can incentivize trustworthy review writing.”

• Complicated user experience and reward redemption: With the help of their native token and better website design, they fixed the rest of the issues.

• Cryptocurrency not being listed as a payment option: Travala.com’s noticeable difference from other travel service aggregators is that it accepts a wide range of cryptocurrencies along with fiat currency.

How does it work?

Travala.com operates in the same way most travel service aggregators operate with the only noticeable difference, which is that you can pay with fiat as well as a variety of cryptocurrency. The user experience is also quite smooth and intuitive. Let me illustrate this by booking an activity within three steps.

Step 1 – Use the search bar located on the home page to book an activity.

You can use AVA as a method of payment and earn another 3% discount.

Industry analysis.

Travala.com is operating in the travel industry, which is the most heavily impacted industry post Covid-19. It has 1 close competitor in the cryptocurrency industry.

Project	Mcap (USD)
Travala.com	$ 14,63,24,400
LockTrip	$ 11,33,81,434

Expedia is the largest player in this industry and indicates the potential for travala.com

Project	Mcap in Dollars
Travala.com	0.146
Expedia	25.5

They also have numerous partners with the list growing every day. Some of these partnerships include

• Expedia
• Tezos
• Coingecko
• Haven
• Zilliqa
• Vchain
• Decentraland
• And lots more.

Media and community strength.

Travala.com has a strong media presence as they keep partnering up with most of the popular names in the cryptocurrency industry.

They also have a healthy community of Twitter followers of 79,000, telegram members of 10,000, and Facebook followers of 44,000.

Conclusion:

Pros:

1) Travala.com is an innovative project with great potential (When the Pandemic will die down). They are currently addressing one of the biggest issues with cryptocurrency, which is the ability to use it as a currency.
2) Unlike the majority of cryptocurrency projects, Travala.com is operational and has backing from Binance, the biggest exchange in the world
3) Their token is deflationary & is designed in such a way, that the more you stake, the more benefits you receive. Currently, 9.24 Million AVA is staked. It also has one of the most simple and pleasant user experiences.

Cons:

1) The threat of new entrants in this space is high, as they don’t employ any patented technology. Any existing player in the travel industry can just add a cryptocurrency payment gateway and travala.com losses some its’ edge.

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Research summary:

This research report is focused on Polkastarter which is considered as one of the upcoming projects with great potential. We will focus on how the project works, how it adds value, and review its pros and cons.

The CMP is $2.44 as of 21st May 2021.

What is Polkastarter?

Polkastarter is a platform where projects are crowdfunded. So, the projects/startups get access to the capital while normal people get the chance to become a VC and get the chance to invest at the early stages of the crypto startup. Another way of looking at Polkastarter is as a Decentralized exchange, where projects/start-ups list a limited number of coins for the 1st time with a lockup period for those tokens.

Based on its whitepaper, Polkastarter also allows OTC deals with password protection.

It is based on the Polkadot network and is also referred to as the Kickstarter of cryptocurrency.

There is a maximum supply limit of 100 million Polkastarter tokens or POLS out of which 67.29 million is currently circulating. It is currently ranked #246 in the cryptocurrency industry. It got listed on Binance on the 20th of May (1 day prior to publishing the report) and is also available on Uniswap, Gate.io, and Huobi Global.

How does it work?

Presently, Fundamentally strong coins listed on any of the major Decentralized exchanges go through a pump and dump price action. Bots and investors take up most of the liquidity and dump it all on unsuspecting investors. Some of the examples are given below.

The above image is the price chart of Polkamarkets/USDT – 1D on the day of listing.

The above image is the price chart of Polkamon/Wrapped Ether– 1D on the day of listing.

This issue is resolved with the help of a method referred to as the Fixed swap approach. With the Fixed swap approach, the price volatility is eliminated and brings transparency to the amounts raised during the fundraiser. Polkastarter sets a fixed price when swapping the tokens and can add several parameters such as the maximum amount of tokens that can be bought by a user.

The above image represents several projects who are raising capital in Eth. It has determined the price (In terms of eth), number of participants along with the maximum contribution they can make. All of them have raised their target capital.

Polkastarter tends to list high-quality projects. This is made possible because of the Polkastarter Council.

The Council reviews and votes on projects/start-ups application for launch on Polkastarter. Each application is submitted to a thorough and rigorous review during the due diligence process and then evaluated based on objective merits. Each of the Council members then cast their vote, and projects having greater than 60% of the Council’s vote are approved for launch. The council members currently include several VC firms.

Due to the high quality of projects listing on Polkastarter, there is always higher demand to purchase the projects/start-ups token at an early stage. So, most of the projects run a lottery system. To participate in them, you need do to share their social media posts, follow them, and do several more tasks (The tasks depend on the project/start-up).

If you win the lottery, you can participate in the listing by completing your KYC and then getting the chance to buy a limited amount of tokens.

Most of the projects that list on Polkastarter also list themselves on Uniswap at a much higher price, hours after the listing on Polkastarter. Giving the non-lottery winners the option of purchasing. But given that Uniswap does not follow a fixed swap approach, they often go through a pump and dump. The prior mentioned charts belong to two Polkastarter listings. However, they are often 10x the listing price on Polkastarter.

What is the Coin used for?

There are 3 main uses for POLS.

Access to listings: To get yourself in the lottery system to participate in any listing, you need to hold at least 250 POLS.

For every 250 POLS you have in your wallet, you will receive a “ticket”, which equals one entry into the whitelist process. So, if you own 750 POLS, you will have 3 tickets to your name when you submit your address to be whitelisted. Because projects choose whitelisted addresses at random, the more tickets you have, the greater your chance of being selected.

This utility is quite extraordinary as it quite literally allows you to make 10x gains on your investment amount within an extremely short time.

Staking: The token can be staked to earn staking rewards on various fronts. For example, it can be staked to receive access to the project listings or receive plain POLS tokens.

Governance: The token is also used for governance purposes. POLS holders will be able to vote for ecosystem initiatives, new features development, liquidity rewards distribution specs, and other applications. They will need to stake POLS to participate.

Competitor analysis.

There are several fundraising platforms available in the cryptocurrency market.

Project	Mcap (USD)
Dao Maker	1,21,97,95,404
Polkastarter	24,89,51,574
Trustswap	18,25,73,411
Duckstarter	3,02,50,380

Based on the fully diluted Mcap comparison, Polkastarter has the 2nd largest Mcap among its peers.

Given that Polkastarter views itself as a decentralized exchange (or DEX), a comparison with the top DEX (Uniswap) is also valid.

Project	Mcap (USD)
Uniswap	25,97,80,44,411
Polkastarter	24,89,51,574

Based on peer comparison Polkastarter has the potential to achieve a Billion-dollar Mcap status.

Team analysis.

The team size is quite small, with only 10 people working behind the project (Based on their LinkedIn page). The Leadership and advisors all seem to have a strong marketing background but there is no one with expertise in blockchain technology (This information is troubling).

They however have an extremely strong investor backing.

Media and community strength.

Polkastarter has an extremely strong community strength. They have 363.3k Twitter followers and 60k telegram members. This is likely because people who want to get the chance to participate in the listing of new projects (or get whitelisted) have to complete certain tasks. Following Polkastarter on Twitter is one such task.

They are constantly in the spotlight, as a lot of high-quality projects get listed on Polkastarter.

Conclusion:

Pros:

1) Polkastarter is a Defi application (An already booming sector) that gives a normal individual the chance to purchase tokens of high-quality projects at an early stage, just like a VC gets.
2) The native token POLS is designed in such a way that, the more you hold the more chance to make incredible gains within a short duration.
3) It has a strong media presence, community strength, and investor backing.

Cons:

1) The chances of getting whitelisted (winning the chance to buy tokens from the listing) are quite small, so people who don’t get whitelisted will often find no value in holding the token.
2) The team size is quite small and lacks blockchain technology expertise

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Research summary:

This research report is focused on Shopping.io which is considered as one of the upcoming projects with great potential. We will focus on how the project works, how it adds value, and review its pros and cons.

The CMP is $111 as of 14th May 2021.

What is Shopping.io?

Shopping.io is a convenience-based project which allows crypto users to interact with the top major e-commerce platforms in one place and pay with the popular cryptocurrencies. Their objective is to increase the adoption of cryptocurrency.

The project is essentially a dropshipping operation that is focused on the American market. A dropshipping operation is explained below.

To better understand the image above, the online store is shopping.io & Dropshipping suppliers are the top e-commerce platforms.

They have a supply limit of 1 million tokens out of which 95% of the tokens are in circulation. It is ranked #353 in the cryptocurrency market and is on listed Uniswap, Kucoin, and Bilaxy.

What problem is it solving?

Lack of crypto adoption: Currently there aren’t many options to use cryptocurrency to purchase products from any of the major e-commerce platforms. You have to convert them to fiat before making a purchase. Shopping.io solves this issue, by bringing together all the major e-commerce platforms at its platform & by accepting over 100 digital assets.

It achieves this by integrating not 1 but 3 crypto payment processors at their payment gateway. They are Utrust, Crypto.com PAY, and CoinPayments.

A user can also pay with their native token (SPI) as well as other partnership tokens to avail an additional 2% discount on your order.

This project also adds value by providing discounts (more on this coming up).

How does Shopping.io work now?

Unlike many projects which are still in the idea phase, shopping.io is live, operating, and extremely easy to use.

To use the service, you need to sign up with 1 of the following plans.

Each plan comes with discounts (On all orders) and order limits. The native token is integrated with their service in such a way that, the more SPI you hold the more perks you get.

So let’s say you sign up with the free version.

You will get access to all the major marketplace at the same spot (Image below).

Once you choose the products you want to purchase, you can pay via any of the following crypto payment processors.

What are the growth prospects for the project?

The widespread adoption of the internet along with smartphones across the globe has resulted in a huge boost to e-commerce sales that is likely to continue. As of 2018, the annual e-commerce sales were $25.6 trillion and there is no sign of stopping. (Source – United nations conference on trade and development).

Given that this project focuses on processing sales from the e-commerce platforms, it has excellent prospect because Shopping.io has a market capitalization of $113 million and is trying to process a fraction of the $25.6 trillion e-commerce sales with the added incentive of 5% – 10% discount on all orders.

What is the coin used for?

Shopping.io’s native token is SPI and has multiple utilities, but most of its utilities kick in once you own a certain quantity of SPI.

Discounts: If you hold at least 3000 USD worth of SPI, you will be eligible for a 5% discount on transactions. And if you hold at least 1000 SPI, you will be eligible for a 10% discount on all orders. Along with free shipping within the USA.

Order limits: There is a limit to the number of orders that can be placed from Shopping.io. If you hold 3000 USD worth of SPI, then you can order 40 products per month (If you hold no tokens, your order limit is 20 per month) and if you hold 1000 SPI, you order 100 products per month.

Staking: You can stake your SPI for additional returns. However, the staking isn’t in favour of users with a short-term investment horizon. Also prepare to spend 10% entry and 10% exit fees.

Media and community strength:

Shopping.io has a budding community, with 46.3k Twitter followers, 13k telegram members. They however don’t have a strong media presence, with only a few articles written regarding them. On YouTube, there is a mix of positive videos along with videos that question the legitimacy of the project.

Team analysis:

Given the nature of shopping.io’s operations (Dropshipping), It is great to see they have a team made of dropshipping veterans. Mr. Arbel Arif (the owner) owns 8 stores on eBay with 100K live products and is known to be quite well connected in the e-commerce industry.

Conclusion

Pros:

1. Shopping.io is an innovative project which is operational and has a sky-high potential due to the ever-booming e-commerce sales. They are currently addressing one of the biggest issues with cryptocurrency, which is the ability to use it as a currency. It also has one of the most simple and pleasant user experiences.
   

Cons:

1 If Amazon, eBay, or any other cryptocurrency starts accepting cryptocurrency as a mode of payment from a list of operational crypto payment processors, then shopping.io loses some of its edge.

2 Currently, Shopping.io offers a 5% and a 10% discount (If you hold a certain amount of SPI) on all orders. A 10% discount is limited to only 500 users, which is a very small number of users. So if 500 people do sign up for the pro plan (Which gives you the 10% discount perk). The project can no longer advertise it.

3 The reason why they can keep giving a 5% discount on all orders is also not comforting. After interacting with the project’s representative, I was told the following.

“Arbel, owner of this project is a veteran in dropshipping since 2007. He also has a few businesses besides shopping.io including domain names, SEO, dropshipping, crypto, etc. Arbel also owns 8 stores on eBay with 100K live products. He is the owner of an amazon private label called Amazing Shower Curtains as well. So, getting discounts for items is not a big deal for us”

4 The utility of the token does not kick in if you have less than 3000 USD worth of SPI and the media presence isn’t strong.

Please keep in mind that the conclusion points are simply our current observations, and are likely to be easily fixed.

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Research summary:

Frontier is a convenience-based project (which is live and operating) that aims to bring together all the DeFi applications in one place, making the already booming DeFi space (75.67 Billion) more accessible and convenient to use.

The CMP is $2.41, as of 07th May 2021

What is Frontier?

Frontier is a chain-agnostic DeFi aggregation layer. In laymen’s terms, Frontier aims to bring together all the DeFi applications (More on DeFi below) from all the major eco-system (Such as Ethereum, Binance chain, and more), so people get to access them at one convenient place.

Frontier is a convenience-based project that has a maximum supply of 100 million tokens out of which 37.48% is in circulation. It will be fully diluted by the end of November 2023. The vesting period for the final 25% token from the private sale will be ending in June 2021.

It is ranked #419 in the cryptocurrency market and is listed on Binance, OKEx, and 18 more exchanges.

What is DeFi?

All of the traditional financial services are centralized (controlled by a single authority or managed in one place) in nature. The Risks and problems that come with centralized financial services are Fraud, Mismanagement of funds, Theft, and restrictions to use your own money. DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance (DeFi is a category of Dapps. Dapps are decentralized applications that are launched on networks such as Ethereum). It is a financial service with no central authority. It eliminates these problems by allowing people to have complete custody and control of their money and to get more returns, by eliminating the 3rd party.

There are various categories of DeFi

• Money Market: Such applications enable users to borrow assets against collateral and earn interest. Maker, Aave, and Compound are the top DeFi applications in this category.

• Decentralized exchange: These kinds of applications give users the ability to swap one crypto for another. Uniswap and Sushiswap are the top DeFi applications in this category.

• Derivatives: A derivative contract derives its value from an underlying asset. With the help of smart contracts, DeFi projects like Synthetix allow people to get exposure to non-blockchain-based assets.

The DeFi space has seen explosive growth over the past year. The graph below indicates that 75.67 Billion dollars are currently involved in the DeFi space.

• User Experience: To reap the benefits of DeFi, there are too many hoops to jump through, due to poor user interface. This makes DeFi a stressful experience and this is compounded when the DeFi concept is slightly complicated. The DeFi applications are scattered all over the place, which further drastically lowers the interest a person has to participate in DeFi. Frontier solves this problem by bringing them all to its simple-to-use application.

• Wallet restrictions: Non-custodial wallets are great for holding crypto assets, but strict app guidelines make them unusable when participating in DeFi. Many wallets also wilfully attempt to create lock-in—this results in users downloading multiple wallets and creating many addresses to participate in one ecosystem.

Frontier eliminates this issue via “Wallet composability”. A “Wallet composability” allows a user to select a pre-existing desired wallet to participate in DeFi activities in Frontier’s app, instead of transferring funds to frontier and participating (Creating yet another wallet to manage). It also allows creating wallets compatible with all the major eco-system, so you can have them in one place.

What does Frontier offer now?

Frontier currently offers its services on the app store and the play store. There are 3 ways you can use the app.

Watch and manage: You can just watch and manage your assets by simply entering your Ethereum network’s public address. In the image below, we can see the tokens owned, DeFi positions, and NFTs on a random eth network address.

Currently, in the app, Ethereum enjoys multiple DeFi applications while other ecosystems like Kava, Binance Chain, and more can stake and/or create CDPs (Collateralized debt position or laymen terms, taking a loan). This is however likely to change as they have a lot more integrations yet to come.

Competition analysis.

Frontier is a unique project with an extremely limited number of peers. The closest peer in terms of project similarity is ‘Yearn Finance’. Yearn finance has a market capital of 1.95 Billion USD while Frontier has a market capital of 0.096 Billion dollars.

What is the utility of the Front token?

The Front token is Frontier’s native token and has a lot of utility.

• Staking on Frontier chain: Users can secure the network by staking their front tokens. They can either run a validator node or delegate to a validator.

• Gasless transactions: If you lock in a certain number of Front tokens, you can get access to free or near-free gas fees on any transactions within the app. This is one of the most exciting utility of the front token because Ethereum gas fees are quite high.

• An Incentive to use the app: To encourage people to engage with the DeFi space within the app, the front token would be used as a reward. The more you engage, the higher the chance of eligibility to receive the reward.

• Integration: Frontier will require that a portion of proceeds from grant and fee-based B2B integrations be collected via Front. The more integrations that they release, the stronger the value accrual for Front.

• NFT acquisition & creations: Frontier would allow the acquisitions and issuance of NFTs. For which Front token would be the preferred method of payment.

• More: Front would also be used for liquidity provision, referral benefits, governance, and much more.

Who is behind the project?

Frontier has a strong team with rich technical knowledge and business management skills. They are also backed by industry leaders

Price action.

The price history hasn’t been long enough to determine the RSI for the monthly time horizon.

Conclusion:

Pros: Frontier aims to make the DeFi experience smooth, making the already booming DeFi space more accessible. It plans to do so by bringing all the defi applications to one convenient location. They already have integrated with some of the top DeFi applications and there are more to come.

The Front token has many interesting utilities including the option of having gasless transactions within the app. Unlike a lot of projects in the cryptocurrency space, it is more than just an idea, they are live and operating on google play and apple’s app store and have positive reviews. The project is unique and has no close competitors

Cons: Media presence isn’t strong. They do not have a telegram community and are only accessible on Twitter. The project isn’t fully diluted and the circulating supply increases every month till the end of 2023.

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