Origin Protocol ICO Analysis | Decentralized Sharing Economy Marketplace Platform

Name: Origin Protocol ICO Review
Item: Origin Protocol ICO Analysis | Decentralized Sharing Economy Marketplace Platform
Rating: 9
Author: Coindrift Team

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Coindrift Team

March 6, 2018

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Key Information

Total Supply: TBA
Available in Sale: 35% of total supply
Hard Cap: $35 million
Market Cap: $100 million
Token Type: ERC20
Ticker: ORIGIN
Pre-Sale: Yes, sign up here
Whitelist: Yes
Public Sale Live: TBA
Weekly Bonuses: TBA
Volume Bonuses: TBA
Token Distribution Date: Q3 2018, exact date TBA
Website: https://www.originprotocol.com/

9 Total Score

Origin Protocol ICO Review

Origin Protocol are aiming to build a decentralized marketplace platform for sharing economy business to operate on. In the traditional model, large intermediaries like Airbnb and Uber facilitate utilization of existing assets to earn income. In return, these companies make money from fees. In the decentralized alternative, transactions happen in a peer-to-peer fashion, eliminating the need for third parties and fees. Origin Protocol allows existing businesses and/or developers to build specific interfaces on the platform for any business model, with all interfaces having access to one massive customer pool.

Team

Market Size

Token Utility

Product Development

PROS

Huge potential market E.g. Airbnb currently valued around $30 bn and Uber $48bn. Additionally, around 22% of U.S. adults have become suppliers in the sharing economy, which is set to grow in the future. They stand to benefit massively from using Origin.
Incentives for user adoption include: savings on fees e.g. Airbnb & Uber charge 3-25%, use of one token on the platform streamlines usage and allows cross-border transactions without costly currency exchange fees, users in control of private data rather than corporate entities, immutable & transparent blockchain increases trust and safety.
Existing sharing economy businesses can migrate to the platform providing more opportunity for growth.
Strong team with history starting or working in successful start-ups. Cofounder Josh Fraser founded 3 venture-backed companies - one acquired by Walmart Labs, whilst Matthew Liu was one of YouTube's first employees.
Token has high utility in the platform so should appreciate in value if the project is successful.
Many partners including decentralized insurance from WeTrust, as well as others already building applications on Origin including BeeToken, Propy and Canya.
Development progress is good, with working Demo already live.

CONS

Whilst there are clear benefits to using Origin Protocol over existing solutions, adoption will likely be the greatest challenge for the project. Getting large volumes of users to switch from platforms they are familiar with could be difficult, even with the incentives. That said, as there is one customer base for all the interfaces, new interfaces will not be starting from square one and will have access to an existing user base. So adoption could snowball once it reaches critical mass.
Another big challenge of the platform is how it will scale. As it is currently an ERC20 token built on the Ethereum network, it's ability to scale is tied to Ethereum. Whilst Ethereum has several solutions lined up, such as DPoS, Sharding and off-chain solutions like Raiden, it currently could not manage anywhere near the traffic of companies like Uber and Airbnb. It's likely that in the future Ethereum will come up with solutions to solve the scaling issue, but for now it creates a degree of uncertainty.
Decentralized marketplaces are a great concept, but management without a centralized authority may be difficult e.g. how will disputes be resolved? how can spam or illegal listings be prevented? There are solutions, but they need refining and have yet to be executed.

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