CEO Report _En
By: Akihiro Yamase
Tags: English, Fundraising, Icovo, Blockchain, Exchange

I’m CEO Aki. A Happy New Year!

＜Short Review 2018＞

We had launched ICO platform implementing DAICO in January 2018. We went on a road show at more than 10 places around Europe and Asia from spring to summer last year. Additionally, we have also done our own Initial Coin Offering (ICO) from September to November,2018.Thanks to all your support, we have achieved Soft Cap with 7,099 ETH worth OVO purchases as a result. We had Whitelist registrations from 35 countries around the world. OVO token holders grew up to more than 20,000 people. Moreover, icovo.co was ranked within 180,000th at Alexa global ranking.

Fundraising did not reach 33,000 ETH which was our target. We analyzed the cause of this shortfall was largely influenced by the drops in cryptocurrency market as a whole. We regard the outcome as positive in the current situation when most of the ICO project ended up failing.

Regarding the product, we have completed DAICOVO, a smartcontract implementing DAICO, as planned in our roadmap. We had also released it on GitHub. ICOVO App had been launched in both iOS/Android.

Last year, we held ten ‘’Ethereum Hack Tokyo” events to support engineers. More than 350 subscribers and more than 250 participants as a grand total had connection with us.

<Environmental Analysis Regarding Crypto Fundraising Business Domain>

ICO Rating’s data indicated that 597 ICOs were staged in Q3 2018 and raised over $203 billion, a notably lower value than the over $935 billion reportedly raised in the previous quarter. The market situation overall appears to be desperate. On the other hand, ‘’A Theory of ICOs’’ reported in American Economic Association (AEA)’s session held on January 4th, 2019, referred to a possibility of ICO dominating traditional venture capital (VC). If several conditions are met, such as ‘’when VC investors are under-diversiﬁed’’ and ‘’when the degree of information asymmetry between the entrepreneur and ICO investors is not too large’’, ICO carries a possibility to succeed as being a viable ﬁnancing alternative.

Meanwhile, regarding crypto fundraising business domain, fund raising by ICO dropped significantly due to crypto market downturn. A possibility of Security Token Offering(STO) is also gaining attention mainly in the United States.

And at the same time, a new fundraising method, Non-Fungible Token(NFT)’s presale is also starting to attract people’s attention.

We predict the future environmental outlook as below,

‘’Despite the decelerating growth rate in the ICO market, expansion of DAICO will make the degree of information asymmetry between the entrepreneur and ICO investors small which will lead to the recovery of crypt market condition. In that case, ICO market will probably recover with a little change from current trends and conditions. Though, it will take a while to make this situation happen.’’

‘’Regulations was a great hindrance to STO which could not utilize its original characteristics. It will probably be utilized after 2020 and onward.’’

‘’NFT is gaining greater prominence now and will surely make a movement in 2019 since it is not legally labeled as cryptocurrency but is simply categories as a transaction of digital content.’’

＜Extension Of Project Concept>

Generally speaking, almost none of the projects nor companies had succeeded according to the initial plan they had stated in the beginning. Only the project which could pivot dynamically to the change of an environment could make a leap forward. Incidentally, SoftBank, a company which made a rapid progress, also had a vision with respect to package software wholesale business at the beginning. Not a single word related to Mobile carrier which now is the main service was in its vision.

Our project is not an exception either. We consider, we had better swiftly and flexibly respond to the environmental change.

Straightforward to the point, though there is no change in ICOVO’s mission ‘’To support innovative blockchain-related start-ups’’, ICOVO’s concept for 2019 will expand from the former ‘’ICO support service implementing DAICO’’ to ‘’Token economy platform including ICO, STO and NFT sale’’. Along with the expansion, we will put a high priority on releasing NFT fundraising platform which is currently expected to become the most booming and growing business. We plan to release this platform before ICO platform. Additionally speaking, we are still seeking for the right timing of market recovery and waiting for the chance to release ICO platform as we planned in the beginning.

Specifically, we are releasing NFT token platform as the first token economy platform utilizing knowledge of developing DAICOVO which is a smart contract added on GitHub and ICOVO App which implements a wallet available for ETH and ERC20/ERC223.We will also take advantage of some more things, such as KYC users traffic from 35 countries around the world obtained by its own ICO, 20,000 and more OVO token holders traffic and 180,000 and below Alexa ranking traffic information.

＜Revision Of The Roadmap>

Due to the turnabout in business direction, we are also revising our roadmap. We will first work on NFT platform development while taking a pause in ICO platform.

Regarding the roadmap of NFT platform, our schedule is as follows, Start working on the design in January, platform development in February to March, list and launch the first project in April.

<OVO Token>

ICO investors are still able to purchase OVO tokens which carries Utility function at 25% off from Ether.

We will constantly be listing attractive tokens which stimulates people’s interest. Moreover, we aim to grow OVO as an essential token in the token economy platform.

As the very first proposition for NFT project in 2019 spring, we are planning to launch a large project with the collaboration of AI（Artificial intelligence）and blockchain. If the project is to be listed, we are expecting a rising demand in OVO.

<Listing>

Finally, we will be explaining the schedule regarding OVO listing. OVO is planned to be listed on five exchanges. Currently, after the beginning of 2019, market condition seems to be recovering but it is still not enough. We will try to list during the mid-January to February at the right timing.

For your additional information, February will be our deadline for listing, no matter how much the market recovery proceeded by end of February. There will not be further overdue. We are having discussions on the schedule with each exchange in order to arrange the sales at the exchange markets.