lockchain technology can claim to be one of the best discoveries over the last decades, near to such important mankind's inventions as creation of the Internet.
I'm not going to describe all the advantages of blockchain, but the decentralization inherent in it holds huge potential for effective interaction between an infinite number of participants-partners-colleagues. Such terms as crowdfunding, or coworking, will change substantively in the near future due to decentralization. 2017 has already demonstrated us a new type of crowdfunding, the so-called ICOs, and the rampant increase in their number. Yes, probably the most part of ICO projects are contemplated frauds or newbies' absurd attempts to create their first large business, having nothing but an idea under their belt. Nevertheless, this principle of crowdinvesting will continue taking root in the global economy.
We are creating a platform to finance scientific discoveries using the advantages of blockchain. Imagine a situation when the developer of a technology does not have to search for financing, a situation when the experts appraising a scientific project are as impartial as possible. As a rule, the main problem of choosing a project for a venture fund to invest in resides in making a correct expert opinion. For this purpose, the expert board includes scientists, economists, lawyers, and marketing specialists. The advantage of decentralization lying behind the idea of cryptocurrency will completely eliminate the factor of commercial bribery, corruption, reduce the number of intermediaries, and the traditions that have formed in the cryptocurrency community allow for using the time, skills and knowledge of millions of people worldwide relatively free of charge.
Many emerging cryptocurrencies attract followers by giving them coins for free (Airdrops, Bounty Campaigns, etc.) in order to create a great number of coin holders, therefore cultivating excitement about the project, technology, or just a speculation tool, which will be joined in by traders, small investors, and speculators.
One thing is clear, the greatest part of the crypto market is occupied by young people aged 18–30. The greatest activity is exhibited by people who don't have capital of their own, whose age is under 25 as a rule. These youngsters are ready to spend their time on publications in social networks, video blogs, and discussion of different cryptocurrency trends in chatrooms, they perceive these actions as something like a computer game. In most cases, the reward for active promotion of an emerging cryptocurrency is like some rare sword in an online RPG, which they can sell to another participant. These millions of people can funnel their energy toward more important things than pointless blockchain goodies, of which 90% will be forgotten in the nearest future. Remember Tezos who collected a record-setting amount of 232 mln. dollars riding on a wave of popularity, for a seemingly good, necessary and interesting idea, but it all ended in a litigation and division of assets among the founders. Or Worldcore, a scam project, which caused quite a stir with the phoney bank licenses, and finally it all ended in jail.
We are not going to doubt the honest intentions of the ICO projects, which failed to become successful, because the root cause of their misfortunes is the incompetence of the founders themselves or the market participants they have to interact with. The cryptocurrency market is still the "Wild West", although moving in leaps and bounds towards creating a code of its own.
The basis of the ScientificCoin project created by us is a mathematically based algorithm that works on the same principle as the already existing project appraisal methods profitably employed by venture funds, insurance companies, and stock exchanges. This algorithm is grounded on more than 70 major characteristics divided into 5 sections. When each project is appraised, the rating is determined in accordance with the correlational regression model based on statistical analysis of the projects over a 9-month period. When filing an application for appraisal of their project, the financing seekers will fill in a form containing precise questions and indicators regarding the project. Then the program will model the appraisal of the project in accordance with correlation of the characteristics. The modeling ends with allocation of grades for each characteristic of the project.
In combination with the opinions of tens of thousands of people, even if they aren't professionally knowledgeable in the question, this algorithm will be maximum effective. The expert will be rewarded for the time they spend on appraising the project, searching for information in the Internet, discovering weak points and fraudulent intentions. Each project that has attracted financing via ScientificCoin will pay 5% of the collected amount (these funds are annually distributed among ScientificCoin holders). The most active and successful experts get greater rewards than passive holders of ScientificCoin.
Imagine a situation when you had to use a taxi, but the taxi at the hotel asked for 30 dollars for the trip to your location. You decided to save and ordered a Uber taxi, but unfortunately you had to wait 20 minutes longer than they had announced when you ordered it. It happened so because of a small mistake by the driver of the Uber taxi who mixed up the address. In the end, you arrived at your destination cheaper than for 30 dollars, but 20 minutes later than you had expected. You didn't miss anything, but you spent the extra 20 minutes. Will you order a Uber taxi again after that, understanding that it wasn't the service's fault but a coincidence of circumstances associated with the human factor, or will you prefer taking a taxi at the hotel? Perhaps you are a high-salaried lawyer, and an hour of your time costs 500 dollars, but you were 20 minutes late and didn't earn 150 dollars, while saving 15 on the taxi ride. How seriously will you take such a loss? Most people do not convert the personal time they spend to money, such as reading books, watching movies, playing poker, and so on, we don't count the time we spend on these things.
Decentralized experts will perform project appraisal quite responsibly, no worse than full-time experts at a venture fund, but they will not multiply their time by dollars, it will be some kind of a hobby for them, a game, a socially beneficial action, like helping clean the territory of their neighborhood. But the mathematically based algorithm we have created will not allow them to take project appraisal frivolously, the influence of an expert's vote on appraisal of a particular project will depend on a lot of factors, including the statistics of the expert's actions, their personal details, the level of uniqueness of the project.
Compare working day of a grinding machine operator, and the days of a freelancer whose activity involves writing articles, commenting on the net, and so on.
The big differences between the conditions of their work will help us understand the advantages carried by the contemporary technologies. They are expressed in comfort, in the possibility to choose our working place and to organize our time. The growth of information processing technologies is able to provide the combination of comfortable conditions and financial advantages even for computer commenters who are lazy to do physical work.
Have you ever seen your idea or project discussed on a public forum? Have you observed comments, flood, trolling from people you'd call idlers? And what if their vibrant energy is focused on something good? Such skills can be very useful for detecting dubious projects and for many other things. People who actively participate in discussions are able to discover weak points like some kind of detectives, they are eager to dig out the truth, blow the lid off, find all the hidden pitfalls, and deliver a public verdict. Involvement of decentralized experts will let us have a lively and unbiased discussion of the projects.
The goals pursued by active commenters, trolls and flooders are material as a rule, their nicknames become recognizable due to such activity, they get followers, obtain the reputation of an expert (a quazi-expert), and hence they get a whole range of opportunities to derive financial benefits by using their recognizability. In our case, the financial benefit from their actions will be formulated.
The uniqueness of our platform resides in the use of a hybrid system for project appraisal. This way, we count on a revolution in the field of venture capital investments and crowdfunding. Most of the existing crowdfunding platforms place projects on their venues after pre-moderation by their own employees. If they used a reliable algorithm, the number of projects placed on those sites would have been hugely smaller. For example, the Kickstarter portal cannot keep a staff of professional experts because this is financially impractical. The users determine the level of a project's reliability on their own, and they have to collect the information themselves, unlike the ScientificCoin where the algorithm will not let the investor see unworthy projects, and topical questions associated with the appraisal of the project's prospectivity will be raised in the process of an open expert discussion.
Being located in the largest scientific center of Russia, we have collected more than 100 attractive projects from different fields of applied and fundamental science. By July 2018 we are going to launch the beta version of the platform, which will model all the necessary work processes in test mode. Everybody will be able to register and to use virtual (test) tools on the platform, to perform mining and appraisal of projects, which will be presented in the beta version as samples.
Considering that we have already put together a team consisting mostly of scientists from Akademgorodok, 8 of whom hold a PhD, we'll be able to complete the development of the platform by February 2019. At the same time, our own blockchain will be created according to the proof-of-research principle, the emission of ScientificCoin will amount to 100 million coins, which will be exchanged into ScientificCoin tokens emitted previously.
We have intentionally refused to organize an ICO, because we do not believe it possible to attract small investors' interest in the present situation. In my opinion, most of such investors have already invested the available funds in other projects and cannot withdraw from them due to sharp falls in the value of the tokens after entering the exchanges (unfortunately they will have to wait very long or endlessly). In our case, collection of 50–100 large investments is a more realistic opportunity than spending time and money on advertising like the numerous ICO projects.
We have been cooperating for a long time with the Novosibirsk Biotechnopark ( http://www.btp-nso.ru ) and Technopark (https://academpark.com), getting support from them. The development of ScientificCoin is already underway.
Based on the previous experience (http://healthmonitor.io), where we collected 12% more funds than it was necessary, with only six large investors participating, we have come to realize that when there is a completed product and transparency, interest for the project from the professional community will be guaranteed.
Our team is going to present the ScientificCoin project at the BlockshowAmericas conference (https://old.blockshow.com/americas),which will be held in LAS VEGAS on AUGUST 20-21.
