The startup scene is so rife with projects doing ICOs that it can become quite difficult to filter out the noise and spot a genuine, well-thought out venture with realistic ambitions. ICOs are popular owing to the returns they promise and thus a healthy dose of skepticism becomes pertinent in the scouting process. As such, finding a good project is always a source of immense delight for me and writing about it helps me share this joy with fellow crypto enthusiasts. One of the upcoming projects that has caught my eye is idap.io and researching into it did not disappoint me at all!

Going by their White Paper, “The International Digital Assets Platform (IDAP) is the first self-contained ecosystem for the cryptocurrencies derivatives trading market. Contained within this ecosystem are the IDAP Exchange, the IDAP Desktop App with advanced trading tools and most importantly, crypto derivatives instruments by IDAP for trading and investment. By bringing together individuals and institutions in need of risk management or with an eye at profit via risk acceptance, our goal is to become the most diverse crypto derivatives marketplace for buyers and sellers.”

Let’s begin with the White Paper; it was refreshing to see a simplified design without unnecessary fluff to distract from the core ideas. Albeit a little long and turning tedious in some of the more technical sections, I found the White Paper to be thorough about the project and overall convincing in its narrative.

The idea of a crypto derivatives marketplace is quite appealing, and first mover advantage will clearly help in attracting participants and commanding high trade volumes. There is a demo in the works so that will lend further credibility to the project. The exchange is not live yet and trying to deliver a consolidated ecosystem with varied products and features will not be an easy

task to implement. There’s a positive to this situation though; the ICO is trying to raise not some insane amount of dollars but instead is capped at $16.5 million which seems justified on basis of all the agendas the project is trying to meet.

The different variety of trade instruments being offered is another plus for idap.io: low risk trading products like spreads and butterfly will bring good liquidity to the platform and traders will have the advantage of hedging options through crypto indices derivatives. ICO contributors who hold 20000 coins will have to incur no trading fees, leading to around 30–40% of free

floating supply to be blocked. More so, a permanent 50% discount on trade fees by using native tokens will keep their demand intact. Coupled with this is the fact that 20% of all the IDAP tokens received as trading commissions and other platform fees will be removed from circulation and will be burnt at regular intervals until the total supply reaches 500 million, further bolstering

token demand.

The team is impressive and their being from a trading background adds a lot of weight to the seriousness with which they are approaching the creation of the exchange. This is reflected further in the incorporation of a Desktop Trading Application and Simulation Tool into their ecosystem; old-school traders will find it to their liking. Advisors are relevant experts in respective fields although a crypto influencer would be a good addition to this roster.

Derivatives marketplace for crypto assets is a lucrative idea and trying to serve as the one-stop-solution for trading and investment is a lofty goal, which I sincerely hope idap.io is able to pull-off. The reason being, if they do pull this off successfully, volumes of $1–2 Billion are quite achievable in 3–6 months after the launch of the platform. The IDAP token will sell for a modest

$0.03 apiece during the ICO and if all that is detailed in the White Paper is delivered, without doubt its value can climb upto 50X or even more.

The target of idap.io is bring in more traders into the landscape and though no easy task, is still doable. I can say it with confidence that this project has merits and investing in it should yield good returns.