First Decentralized Autonomous ICO by The Abyss.

A great idea is just that without a team that can deliver on it. Destiny games founder, Konstantine Boyko an architect and President Vladimir Kurochkin have a total of almost 29 years’ experience in the gaming industry mostly with Destiny games, which has had some respectable achievements under their belt notably TERA.

The Abyss is built by the creators of TERA
Frankly the entire core team looks like a rebrand of Destiny games or a migration of Destiny games to the blockchain. Although some accredited US investors might get cold feet with what looks like a migration, I would argue that the team has a solid record in the gaming sector and are building on it, although it would be nice to have some variety beyond the predominantly Russian team and I hope that The Abyss considers adding to their core team individuals from the US or Europe and Asia-China region that would give them a huge perception edge over their competition. It may seem an unjustifiable expense but that subtle difference in ideas can make a huge difference in results. I don’t see Google, Facebook and the likes in core Abyss team member linked in profiles but then we should remember that Vitalik Buterin didnt have any of the big US tech shops on his resume when he gave us Ethereum. Its about time we reevaluated our definition of a dream team, every major decision taken by The Abyss leadership to this point has the hallmarks of a dream team project.

The Abyss Advisors
The advisory team looks lean and focused on legal and business matter areas which is a huge plus to me because too often projects have a bloated advisory board that appears to be nothing but a PR stunt. This project looks like the real deal to me, why would Konstatine and company throw away the credibility they have built for so many years with Destiny games for a bunch of hype.
Token Metrics: The Abyss intends to raise an ambitious 40 million USD with a soft cap of 6 million USD. A token supply of over 600 million and an ABYSS token price of 0.24 USD. This is still a massively undervalued project considering the fact that steam games bring in over 3.5 billion dollars a year with fewer features than what The Abyss promises, so naturally The Abyss is poised to gravitate in that direction.
Gaming infrastructure; the most reliable projects are infrastructure projects although some would not consider this an infrastructure project, I classify a gaming platform in the infrastructure sector especially one that is being implemented by a team that has already had success in the gaming industry.
Partnerships; Another uncrowded section of this project is the partners area, I like to ask what is every listed partners role in any project, if they dont add value to the final product and thus the end user than they are nothing but a hype partner. In the Abyss project there are but four partners.
The Dilendorf Khurdayan law firm, is The Abysslegal counsel which is an essential aspect of any project trying to be kosher and play by all US laws because as we all know the FBI has got very long hands and Dilendorf Khurdayans recent focus on the blockchain and ICOs helps give any potential participants in the sale peace of mind that due diligence is being done.
New Alchemy is a smart contracts audit firm that was at the Dallas Bitcoin conference last week, focused on token game theory and strategic ICO advisory, they seem to be trying to fill a gap in the blockchain self-regulation and governance area in which sometimes the advantages of the much-celebrated decentralization have also been its limitations with things feeling a bit like the wild west. One can’t be vigilant enough and for a project to actually partner with a smart contracts audit firm shows that they are serious and value peer review, penetration testing and all that scrutiny that can be very off-putting, yet we all need to help fix our blind spots and build a truly solid and secure product in this sector. One of New Alchemys partners are the much-anticipated Metronome project. So, kudos to the Abyss for this great partnership. V-Partnership, a leading a Hong Kong digital marketing agency is the third partner that the Abyss has lined up to help with their marketing so all in all three partners for three focused roles that add much needed value to the project and free the core team to focus on building a great company. Once again focus and a purpose driven approach with no waste and unnecessary fluff seems to be the method of operation at play in this project. Not to forget the recent Group-IB partnership to help enforce cyber security during the ICO process. Trailblazing DAICO Approach, The Abyss team decided to implement the first Decentralized Autonomous Initial Coin Offering (DAICO) as proposed by Vitalik Buterin in his post on the Ethereum Research Forum. A model that incorporates the DAO concept into ICOs thus reducing risk for the investors, giving the community a voice in the project and more ideas for the team and most importantly controlling the release of project funding over time directly to the original purpose of the smart contract. This gives everybody more peace of mind and I believe the adaptation of DAICO or the lack of it will soon be what sets apart genuine project teams and those that are not willing to be accountable. The Abyss founder Konstantine has decided to be a trail blazer in Vitaliks new vision and that sets up this project for success. He has welcomed and opened up his team to community scrutiny when he doesn’t have to, I hope future ICOs follow this as a model.

7 ways The Abyss stands out in the gaming industry.
Comprehensive features; The Abyss beats all competitors — namely Steam, Galaxy and Kongregate hands down! Simply put, The Abyss has more features than all the other three put together. After an analysis of the social features, game features and motivational setup for both developers and players we have a clear winner. I am a one-page reader but have devoured The Abyss white paper and the facts speak for themselves. The Abyss offers a far more superior collaborative platform that any other gamming platform.

Abyss feature comparison with competitors
Players Portion; So, you invite your buddies over for a gaming party, you show off and kick their butts at your Abyss games and tell them where to buy it, as you bring them to the platform you get paid for it, and you were just hanging out. Gamers earn from in-game and social activities besides any purchase that their fellow invited gamers make, its on going and viral.
6 of my favorite Abyss highlights for the player;
#1 Off line mode which enables you to continue accessing some aspects of the game in case of a network outage thus less frustration from your internet provider especially with the repeal of net neutrality.
#2 Hibernate other background tasks on your computer when playing games to get better performance and speed, so you don’t need to invest in unnecessary hardware.
#3 Become friends with other remote players by sharing data about each other during gaming sessions.
#4 Enable game play access to friends in remote areas -other cities or countries for whom the local game servers are inaccessible by setting up a virtual local network.
#5 Search for and add your friends using their email address, phone number, player ID or nickname.
#6 Bi- lingual customer service support based on the current Destiny games system working round the clock, twenty- four seven with the ability to add other languages.
Developers` Stake; A developer brings their existing user to the Abyss platform, their user buys any game, including those by other developers and the referring developer gets paid every time the user buys any game. The developers as well don’t have to spend half their development budget on marketing anymore because they will still get paid for referrals made in other games. Until now, this has been unheard of in the gaming industry. Usually, the developer spends on developing and marketing, the player pays for the game and the platform makes money from both, but the Abyss has earmarked 1/3rd of their revenue for the referral program. Dedicating one out of every three dollars to share with players and developers is another new aspect that The Abyss brings to the industry. There is an exchange of relevant player traffic between developers and this to me is the biggest point that sets this project apart, a collaborative economy where everybody gets a piece of an ever-increasing pie. Essentially everybody gets paid. After reading the white paper I believe any sane developer will want to migrate to the Abyss.
6 of my favorite Abyss highlights for the developer;
#1 Publish a game and get a minimum of 70% of the payment share.
#2 Instant Abyss token payments, you don’t have to wait for payday or document submissions.
#3 Fiat payment, if you chose to, regardless of what currency the player paid you in, basically a ready exchange.
#4 Traffic system, Targeted audience and Specialized player statistics from the get go.
#5 Customer support access around the clock, Twenty-Four Seven!
#6 Test-net access, you can launch an Alfa or beta version and test all aspects live with full user interaction and input.
And in the future The Abyss might even connect to crowd funding platforms to help fledgling developers. New developers also benefit from the transparent reporting system to help them with compilation and interpretation of game metrics as all the fundamental, compilation, interpretation and analysis is done for them.

Gaming Platform Ecosystem
Variety and Collaboration; The Abyss platform enables development and delivery of Triple-A games of all types Multiplayer, Free2Play and Cryptogames. The only difference being that your AAA title will cost you less to buy because it cost the developer less money to promote due to the referral system that everybody participates in.
This redefines community collaboration by also continually rewarding everybody at all levels of the community. In other games all community does is carry water and bring an offering of money for the platform owners but get nothing in return.
Currency options; Users can purchase with both Fiat and The Abyss Token although because of its blockchain development and smart contracts, The Abyss Token transactions would be more easily enforced and thus rewarded with discounted rates because there is no middle man in the payment process and can be done either manually or autonomously. On the other hand, making available the Fiat payment option gives access to and brings on board the clear majority of gamers who at present don’t want to experiment with digital currencies. Security; The Abyss is the first project that I have seen take such a proactive security role regarding their potential developer, player and investor communities by partnering with Group-IB to put in place continuous, round the clock monitoring of resources due to the high rate of cyber insecurity and rampant lowlife scammers. As for the platform the unified security protocol that uses social network validation and 2-factor authentication besides the IP blocking option helps give users and developers alike extra security. However, in the end it is you and I that are the real gate keepers, we can’t let our guard down. We must all constantly be vigilant about all aspects of cyber security including fake adds, phishing sites and even Telegram and Slack channels. Market place — Forum; another aspect that is unheard of in the gaming world is The Abyss plan to develop a market forum where players and developers can interact and actually collaborate, players can complete tasks for developers for a reward and gaming projects can recruit new Abyss- verified contractors, marketers, developers or any other remote support workers. Fundamentally remote localization if there is such a thing.
Ladies and gents in my opinion, we have a winner. Watch this space and prepare to be amazed at the disruption.
Please do your own research on The Abyss at:
https://www.theabyss.com
Twitter:@theabyss
Telegram: t.me/theabyss

This is just my opinion. This in not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. This is not a buy or sell advisement. Please consult your legal and financial advisor. I may be compensated in Abyss Tokens for this publication.