To follow on from my overview of the UChain project this issue of Badman Reviews looks into the strengths and potential weaknesses of the UChain project. UChain isn't running a public ICO but it's definitely a project I'm looking to get involved with once the tokens are generated and the platform is up and running.
Uchain in a nutshell
UChain aims to build a baseline infrastructure to allow sharing economy businesses to streamline their service by utilizing blockchain tech. It will function something along the lines of how NEO or Ethereum provide a platform for blockchain start-ups although the platform will be designed with the sharing economy in mind. Specific features that companies like Uber or Airbnb might need will be already developed and accessible when building on UChain instead of building from scratch on a more general purpose infrastructure. Badman ICOs #8 covers the project in detail and explains more about how the platform intends to function.
Hype
The project ran a successful private sale and pre-sale back in June raising a large percentage of it's hard cap and until 21st June, was also planning to run a public crowdsale. Due to the adverse market conditions that the whole market is under right now and a desire to organically grow a large community, UChain decided to cancel the public crowdsale and use the remaining tokens to provide an airdrop to every investor (locked for 3 months) and run a large scale bounty campaign for retail investors to get involved.
This has turned out to be a smart move as the 35000 ETH hard cap is now very close to being filled, there have been numerous additions to what was already a huge community and many new followers will now get a share of UChain's tokens who might have otherwise not been involved. This also comes with the added bonus of rewarding previous investors and generating a great amount of exposure for the UChain project.
As of today (3rd August) UChain has about 60.8k telegram members, 21.5k Twitter followers and 16.2k subscribers to r/UChain making the UChain community one of the largest communities of all the projects I have covered. One of the standout points that is instantly recognisable from the UChain website is the immense financial backing that the project has received from hedge funds including FBG Capital, Ledger Capital and many others. These groups have a strong history in backing promising projects and it really shows how the smart money positively views UChain.
Competition
As UChain plan to build an entire token infrastructure, there aren't any direct competitors that are building precisely the same thing. The closest competitors would be other general purpose infrastructures like ETH or NEO as well as other sharing economy blockchains such as Origin or Sharering. UChain differentiates from these other platforms due to its dual token structure and the ability to launch a project using the URC-1 token standard.
In my opinion, UChain stands out from the other projects by placing itself in a more specialized area than ETH or NEO and a more general purpose place than the other sharing economy based projects.
Tokenomics
UChain's UCN token has a 35,000 ETH hard cap with a max supply that will be determined after the tokens are generated. The majority of funding came from private investors who enjoyed a 50% bonus (locked for 6 months) but due to the public sale being cancelled and the general public essentially getting their tokens for free, this isn't much of a problem. The initial token price for the scheduled ICO was 5,000 UCN per 1 ETH but it isn't clear how accurate this is now that the ICO has been cancelled.
The most interesting part of the UChain token system is the secondary token UCP. By staking UCN, the holder receives UCP in exchange, this can then be held to generate a passive income of UCN. It will be interesting to see how this influences token holders as generating a passive income is a great incentive to hold.
The tokens should be listed within the next few weeks and it is probably better to do an examination of token metrics after the total supply is known.
Team
Developing an entire blockchain infrastructure is a complicated and time-consuming task and this is one of the reasons that so many projects launch DApps through ICOs rather than developing their own chain. The UChain team looks well up to the task though and features 8 core management members and 12 top tier advisors.
Most of the management team come from the parent company U-Bicycle, giving them a wealth of experience at managing a business that is firmly embedded into the sharing economy. U-bicycle is already scheduled to launch their DApp on the platform and this industrial experience will be invaluable when designing the features of the platform.
The advisory board is impressive to say the least. Jonathan Ha from Red Pulse, Jimmy Hu from Apex Network and Ray Valdes from ConseSys lend their blockchain expertise to the team and there are a number of advisors from investment firms such as Badwater Capital and Ledger Capital. It should not be understated how much knowledge these companies have about the entire blockchain industry and you can be sure that they will be ensuring that UChain develops a serious product that is up there with the top infrastructures on the market.
Summary
This product is a bit different to the ones I usually cover as it has already received the majority of its funding and isn't holding a public sale. That being said, this project looks very likely to establish itself as the go-to choice for sharing economy companies expanding into the blockchain universe and for this reason I'd recommend keeping a close eye on things over the next couple of months.
The team looks great and although the idea of the project is very ambitious, the funding, expertise and community are there to make UChain a great success. The community bounty program ends on August 6th so the only way to get any UChain tokens after then will be when it launches on exchanges.
Official Links
UChain Website
Whitepaper
Telegram
Ann Thread
Bounty
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Badman Crypto (Phil Stephenson)
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