After reviewing 31 announcements, we’re choosing Blue Whale as our ICO of the Day. Blue Whale is a better Gig Economy Platform and it’s being built on the ICON blockchain.
Premise
4/5 Very good
Today’s freelancer and gig economy markets are bigger than ever. From AirBnB to Uber to Upwork, more and more people are taking leave from large corporations and striking it out on their own.
But there remains a problem – benefits. Whether it’s a sick leave or unemployment pay, existing platforms don’t even have them under consideration.
Blue Whale aims to create a better freelancer and gig economy platform. Using cryptocurrencies and smart contracts, they aim to build an ecosystem where a large variety of freelancers can advertise gigs, and also build their reputations, just like traditional platforms, but in a more decentralized fashion, and with lower commissions.
Besides being more efficient, Blue Whale also aims to provide for a benefit fund. A portion of transaction fees will be set aside into a reward fund which will provide paid time off, sick leave, and even retirement benefits. These will distributed in proportion to how much a freelancer has contributed to the ecosystem.
We found the premise to seem quite good, but we would like it to be explained more clearly. The main website doesn’t do a good job of explaining what the platform is or does, and the whitepaper tries to but does so rather poorly.
Team
4.5/5
The team is quite strong. The CEO went to Stanford and has started a successful business which Bluewhale is being based off of. The rest of the team have either worked at blue-chip tech companies and/or studied at Ivy league schools.
Token
2.5/5
The token is the defacto currency of the platform, used to pay for gigs, benefits, and verification – which is where the work done by a freelancer is “verified” by a third party.
There is a three year vesting period for the team, with each year subdivided into smaller periods where funds are released. This is quite nice to see.
50% of the tokens will be sold for $55 million SGD. This is a relatively high hard cap which makes it harder for the project to achieve stellar returns.
Risks
3.5/5
Rather than building something completely new, the project is taking an existing business called Verlocal Pro, and pivoting it to blockchain. On the plus side this means there is low execution risk. On the downside, the use of blockchain in these types of projects is usually more forced than with a pure decentralized app, and usually more centralized than ideal. We did find that the blockchainization of this platform made sense though.
One risk with this project is hype. There is some decent amounts of hype around the project currently and it will probably get a boost since it is the first ICON ICO. However the premise is not explained very clearly on either the whitepaper or the website, which is worrying as it means most people will have trouble understanding what the project is about.
Summary
Taking on the gig and freelancer economy, Blue Whale aims to provide a decentralized blockchain alternative with better fees, and benefits – something no other platform offers right now. Tokens are cleverly used to incentivize the system, and we can see this working quite well if it takes off.
There are some risks with this project as it is going up against stiff existing competition, and their marketing needs some improvement. However, the good premise and stellar team makes this a strong contender and our ICO of the Day.
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