Endor (EDR) ICO Analysis: A Blockchain-based Predictive Analytics Platform
Executive Summary
Project Description
When Endor Software Ltd. was established in 2014, the purpose of the company was to make artificial intelligence market predictions based on data analysis. The company, led by Prof. Alex Pentland, one of “The World’s Seven Most Powerful Data Scientists”, according to Forbes, based their tech on MIT’s novel Social Physics. According to the website, Endor has served some notable companies — Walmart, MasterCard, Coca-Cola etc.
Endor have decided to pivot and expand their functionality; they plan to do this by integrating their product with the blockchain, thereby making their market predictions available to everybody.
The project claims to be the “Google for predictive analytics” and their working product will reportedly be designed similarly to the search engine’s. On Endor’s platform, users may be able to ask questions about the future, and to provide answers to these questions, Endor may use publicly available data or data provided by an individual or a company.
For example, a user may ask “Which tokens are likely to have the highest volatility next week?” or “Which tokens are likely to decrease in price by over 20% next week?” This provides crypto traders with the means to make estimations based on the artificial intelligence predictions. In the same vein, a company may ask questions like “Which customers of product A will buy product B if offered a 10% coupon?” or “Who will likely subscribe to a premium service if sent a text message tomorrow?” This, in turn, allows businesses predict the most effective methods of boosting sales and profit margins.
Endor’s token, EDR, is expected to have three different use cases. One, users will allegedly earn EDR when they upload high quality data to the network. This data helps the Endor platform make more accurate predictions, thus, it is important to incentivize those that provide it. Two, users will be expected to pay for services in EDR. Fees on the platform will reportedly vary with complexity of question; individual/unique queries (not commonly asked) will require higher prices, while pre-defined queries (commonly asked) will cost considerably less. Three, as processing data gets more complex with time and usage of the Endor platform, “stakeholders” will be paid in EDR to solve algorithms with computation power.
According to the Endor project, their platform will be usable from the day after their token is officially launched. Interested parties can check out Endor’s Github.
Hard Cap and Valuation
There will be a total of 1,5 billion EDR tokens and the project aims to raise $45 million for 20% of the token total. The remaining 80% will be shared thus: 40% will be in long-term reserve for development, operations, and ecosystem; 20% will be shared among the team and their advisors, and the final 20% will go to the project’s strategic partners.
Price Per Token
For the public sale, the price of 1 EDR token was set at $0.267.
Important Dates
EDR presale is currently ongoing with a minimum contribution amount of 50 ETH. According to the team, there will be no public sale.
Soon after the presale, a beta-testers program will reportedly be released. This will allow Endor’s community members purchase tokens at lower amounts. Around the same time, “EDR token holders will be able to use a growing catalog of refreshed accurate predictions, provided by Endor”.
According to the project, in 2019, token holders will help shape the growing predictive catalog, and in 2020, individuals and businesses should be able to use private data combined with Endor public data to generate personalized predictions.
Marketing Power
As at the time this post was published, Endor had over 14,300 Telegram users, over 2,500 followers on Twitter, 580+ followers on Facebook, over 370 followers on LinkedIn, 370+ Reddit readers, and 94 followers on Medium.
Prominent Advisors
Guy Zyskind
- Founder, and CEO at Enigma.
Ron Gross
- Founder, and Board member at the Israeli Bitcoin Association.
Well-Known Team Members
Prof. Alex Pentland, Co-Founder
- One of the Forbes’ “Seven Most Powerful Data Scientists in the world”.
Team Members’ Areas of Expertise
Business experts
Prof. Alex Pentland, Co-Founder
- Founding member of various advisory boards e.g Google, AT&T, Nissan and the UN Secretary General.
Dr. Yaniv Altshuler, Co-Founder & CEO
- Co-founder and CTO at Mamoraze — an infrastructure in-game events analysis — for 2 years.
Inbal Tirosh, Co-Founder & COO
- Director of Product Management (Cloud Security) at Tufin Technologies — a cybersecurity company — for 2 years.
- Head of Global Product Strategy at Better Place Global — an EV network company — for 3 years.
- Product and Category Manager at Hewlett-Packard for 4 years.
Target market experts
Prof. Alex Pentland, Co-Founder
- Professor at MIT for over 31 years.
Dr. Yaniv Altshuler, Co-Founder & CEO
- Researcher at MIT for 3 years.
- Researcher at IBM for 3 years.
- Researcher at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for 3 years.
Goren Gordon, Deep Learning Research Lead
- Head of the “Curiosity Lab” at the Tel Aviv University.
- Holds a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics, another Ph.D. in Neurobiology and a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
Dr. Mihaela Ulieru, Chief Alchemist
- Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council.
- Research Professor at Carleton University for 6 years.
- Advisor to various other projects in the crypto sphere.
David Shrier, Vice Chairman
- Founder & CEO at Distilled Analytics for a year (ongoing).
- Member of Fintech Advisory Committee for Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
- Creator & Co-convener, Oxford Blockchain Strategy and Oxford Fintech programmes.
Marketing experts
No team members with notable marketing expertise.
Legal experts
Liat Yitshaki, Operations Manager
- Senior Executive Assistant at McKinsey & Company for almost 4 years.
- (Senior) Litigation Lawyer at Treasury Solicitor’s Department for 5 years.
Software engineering experts
Stav Grinshpon, Co-Founder & CPO
- Product Manager at AT&T for almost 3 years.
- Team Leader & Solution Expert at SAP for 4 years.
- Software Consultant/Developer at IDF- IIC for 8 years.
Arie Matsliah, Algorithm Expert
- Research Staff Member & Tech Lead at IBM for 7 years.
- Software Engineer at Google for 3 years.
- Software Engineering Intern at Intel for 3 years.
- World expert on the Theory of Graphs Analysis.
- Chief Architect at TripActions for 2 years.
Shahar Somin, Machine Learning & Algorithms Developer
Lior Regev, Software Engineer
- Software Developer at Israeli Defense Forces for 3 years.
Blockchain development experts
No team member with blockchain development expertise.
Token sale structure experts
Some team members act as advisors to other crypto projects, so it can be assumed that the project isn’t entirely lacking in token sale experience. Additionally, some of their advisors are well connected in the blockchain and cryptocurrency spheres.
Token economics experts
Same as above.
Conclusion
Strong points
- Already existing company and product.
- Partnerships with other projects (Enigma, Bancor).
- Prominent customers (Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Walmart etc.).
- Well-experienced team in the subject of data research.
Potential weaknesses
- One of many AI / Machine Learning projects in the crypto sphere.
- Individuals and businesses will not be able to use the product until 2020.
Disclaimers:
- Nothing written in this article is a legal or an investment advice.
- Information is provided on a best-effort basis and is subject to change without prior notice. Be sure to verify everything you read with a project team.
The analysis was produced by Research Center team members: Alexander Bugaj, Mark Jedd, Eugene Tartakovsky.
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Predictive analytics is a very interesting theme if you ask me, if it works. So far projects in this area remain very fragile and accuracy is usually not that great yet. Maybe this project will change that :-)
Personally I think the hard cap is quite high for only 20% of the tokens so I'll pass ;-)