Merculet — Report by ICODrops Community

This is a translation of the report by ICODrops community from March 23.
For Russian version, click here (metrics were not updated there).

1. ERC-20.
2. Hardcap: 31.000 ETH. Market capitalization: 103.300 ETH
3. Presale: 16.000 ETH, 1 ETH = 105000 MVP (20% bonus). Min 150 ETH, max 1000 ETH. 5 months vesting (20% monthly distribution). Token allocation:

4. Telegram: 5262, Twitter 1426 (due to bounty programme)

5. Investors: NGC, FENBUSHI, DHVC, Dfund, Krypital, Diamond Capital. Partners: Elex, Solo Ads, Toop, MagicWindow.

6. Product: no. Roadmap: product concept in Q2 + a prototype for partners, Q3 — beta release.

Technology

Merculet is building a protocol which will make the connection between companies and users possible through decentralized Attention Value Network.

Attention Value Network

Merculet will incorporate the following key components:

1. The UAV (User Attention Value) — attention of users, which is used as a grading system and is intertwined with the reward system of the protocol.

User Attention Value (UAV)

2. UATs (User Attention Tokens) — each creator/company will have their own token. Each token will have specific value and rank, and users will be able to swap them.

UATs (User Attention Tokens)

3. Open Content Platform — using the tokens users will be able to rate and reward each creator/company, helping them progress.

Open Content Platform

Merculet aims to create a platform which will not only help companies/entrepreneurs succeed, but will also reward users and customers with real financial value. This connection is believed to be the driving force which would help projects get valuable feedback quicker and really be able to make a product that users want.

Whitepaper describes the system and the roadmap in detail, but for now without technical details. The team indicated that this is just a preliminary whitepaper to spread awareness of Merculet.

GitHub

GitHub of MagicWindow (the company which the team came from) is quite packed, there are projects running from 2015, however they have not been updated for over a year. Projects on GitHub seem to be like a toolbox for further development. Another advantage is that GitHub is being updated from a long time ago, meaning the company has some history.

Merculet GitHub is quite empty though.

Website domain registration: 2014–06–05 up until 2018–06–05.
Alexa website rank: 4.010.819

Team

Ivan Jiang (China): 500+ connections on Linkedin. Worked in HP for 6.5 years as an engineer-developer. Then was a lead engineer in a big subsidiary company of SAP. After that acted as the Vice President of an engineering company with 200+ employees for 1 year. At the end of 2013 Ivan founded a small company focusing on apps (a Chinese company, not world-wide known, so it is difficult to get information about it). Ivan finished one of the most prestigious MBA schools in China (ranked 13th among best MBA schools in the world). In Merculet whitepaper it was said that he was called Reid Hoffman of China, but I could not find any evidence of this.

ShenJun Zhang (China): 290 Linkedin connections, Worked in HP as an engineer-developer for 2.5 years, then for 3.5 years occupied the position of the senior engineer-developer in a big Canadian company in the field of tech and design. Also worked in Dell as the senior engineer for 1.5 years. Since May 2015 has been working with Ivan in the same small startup.

There are 10 team members in Merculet, almost all of them work in MagicWindow. In whitepaper their accomplishments are described quite flashy, but there is no proof of them neither on Linkedin nor in media. However, Linkedin in Asian countries is not as popular, so it does mean it’s not true.

Advisors

Roger Lim: a very famous advisor, senior partner of NGC (Neo Global Capital) which invested in 0-chain, Tomochain, Qlink, Bluzelle, CoinFI, Fortuna, TheKey, Selfkey, Jet8.

Yuefeng Qiu: 6200 Linkedin connections. Worked in Nokia for 2 years as an engineer, then 6 years in HP as a manager. After that climbed the career ladder up to the Senior Vice president of a big consulting firm Pactera. Since March 2017 — partner at Roots Capital, which invested only in 2 projects so far.

Shoucheng Zhang (China) — professor at Stanford with 25 years of experience. There is even a Wikipedia article about him. He is a physicist, working with some topological insulators. Founder of Danhua Capital. The fund invested in tons of projects, but none of them are from ICO world and are not even related to blockchain. Despite that, there is a Medium article which says that the fund was Theta Token’s strategic partner and also invested in Orchid. Danhua Capital website only has non-blockchain projects listed though.

Bo Shen (China) — founder of FenBushi Capital (2015), the first venture fund that started investing only in crypto projects. Worked at Raymond James for 5 years (a financial company with 300K followers on Linkedin), after that worked in many firms associated with assets, investments and etc. Has a twitter account with 1930 followers but doesn’t write much. Fenbushi’s twitter account has 1800 followers.

There are 2 more advisors. One of them is from EXEC, and the whitepaper claims he is part of a company which is in TOP-3 of game developers in the world — but I could not find any evidence of that. Another advisor is from a not very well-known fund.

Overall, there are at least 2 people who worked in giant companies for at least two years, which is good. But for some reason I have a weird feeling about this. Whitepaper describes them as Gods of tech industries and business, but it is impossible to find info on them in the Internet or on Linkedin. Whitepaper does not specify their role in the project. Almost all of them are from MagicWindow. ALL advisors are from venture funds, meaning they are not really big names in the blockchain world from a tech perspective, but they do have big partners and connections (both from crypto and traditional VC’s).

Team grade: 4+ or 5- for Roger Lim

Final Verdict

Metrics, team, funds — everything the way one would want it, but no technical details/code + not enough hype and media awareness yet.

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Author: competentgirl
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