Layer Protocol ICO Review | Decentralized Reputation for Sharing Economy

Name: Layer Protocol ICO Review
Item: Layer Protocol ICO Review | Decentralized Reputation for Sharing Economy
Rating: 8.2
Author: Coindrift Team

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Coindrift Team

May 17, 2018

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Key Information

Total Supply: 1,000,000,000
Available in Sale: 40%
Hard Cap: $15,000,000
Market Cap: $37.5 million
Token Type: ERC-20
Ticker: LRX
Pre-Sale: No
Whitelist: TBA
Public Sale Live: TBA, expected Q3-Q4 2018
Weekly Bonuses: TBA
Volume Bonuses: TBA
Token Distribution Date: TBA
Website: https://layerprotocol.com/

Please Note: Pin Protocol has been rebranded to Layer Protocol.

8.2 Total Score

Layer Protocol ICO Review

Layer Protocol is a decentralized, universal reputation system that can be integrated with any sharing economy platform or application. Built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, it utilizes LRX tokens to incentivize users through rewards for good behavior when renting assets. LRX can also be used to pay for rentals. The project has a great team, with some impressive partnerships and business plans. The only major downside right now is the lack of product development.

Market Size

7.5

Team

8.5

Token Utility

Product Development

Social Signals

PROS

Developed by e-bike & e-scooter sharing platform Spin, who currently operate in 18 cities in the U.S. with 30k vehicles that have serviced over 1 million rides! Therefore, Layer Protocol already has an active user base to help aid adoption.
They are also partnered with Origin Protocol - a platform to enable developers to build any sharing economy marketplace with one user pool. Since BeeToken (decentralized Airbnb), Propy (home buying/selling App) and many others are building on Origin, this is a huge partner for Layer Protocol. Other partners include Insights Network and QuantStamp.
Great team with history working with Lyft, Pivotal, Y Combinator, Rakuten, IDEO, Disqus. Other notable advisors and investors include Dmitry Grishin - co founder of Russia's leading internet company Mail.ru, Origin Protocol co-founders, Chandler Guo - early investor in ETH, NEO, Qtum & Binance.
Implementing Layer Protocol could save startups money as they do not have to develop their own reputation systems.
The sharing economy is already a massive market with robust growth forecast. However, one of the limitations is the lack of much incentive other than a bad review for looking after borrowed assets. Layer Protocol aims to solve this through introducing monetary incentives for users and a self governance system to identify bad actors.

CONS

The project has been in stealth mode for a long time which, combined with the rebrand from Pin Protocol, has resulted in limited market awareness or social presence. A big community is important both for adoption and bug testing. Though it is growing and should pick up even more once the private sale ends and funding for marketing becomes available.
Layer Protocol is still very much in its infancy, with development of the testnet only scheduled for Q3 2018. As with any project, investing becomes riskier when there is no demo or MVP.
Users might not want a universal reputation system, as if you have a series of bad experiences with malicious actors on one platform, it could affect you using other platforms e.g. imagine a series of uptight Airbnb hosts leaving unfair, bad reviews prevents you accessing Uber. However, the self governance system should help to alleviate these problems.
Appreciation of LRX tokens depends on adoption. Whilst there are a lot of good reasons why a DApp would use Layer Protocol, they might also prefer to use their own native token rather than LRX e.g. users of the BeeToken platform use BEE to pay for rentals. This could hinder adoption and token appreciation. That said, as Layer Protocol is designed to be integrated into existing platforms, a big market could be non-blockchain sharing economy businesses.

User Rating: 5 (1 votes)