Forget charts, Part 1/3 — May watching top holders’ portfolios be useful?

May watching top holders’ portfolios be useful?

In the series of 3 articles, I’ll show you how Trivial.co’s website can help in searching tokens and meaningful information on its related projects. In the first part I’ll focus on our startup’s short history with a few pivots, where did we come so far and why I think it adds value. I’ll also describe token profile as displayed in our service. And last but not least — how you can see top holders of tokens you’re interested in (or own).

Tokenizing art? Why not?

The first idea of our Warsaw-based startup was tokenizing the works of art. We started off in July 2017 and a few months later we tokenized the first real item ever. As a proof of concept, our token was backed by a rat mascot (What did I learn from tokenizing a rat mascot). Soon our idea developed to collectables, such as a Magic the Gathering card or an Arcade machine. The entire time our focus was on tokens because they give amazing opportunities to develop projects that have not been possible before and because it seems they are a new type of asset. They can also, unfortunately, bring a lot of risks when used by people attracting other people with scam projects just to collect money.

How can newcomers discover scam?

We moved our forces to users and tokens, believing that providing full information about token in one place will add value for the users and for the community as a whole. If I considered participating in an ICO I would do a thorough analysis, as I’d do with my non-crypto investments. I go to the startup’s website, read their whitepaper (if they have one), read other technical documentation (if they have it), research their team (if they are transparent about it) by checking LinkedIn and their activity in social media, their Medium or other blog activity, their tweets. I consider contacting the team via email (if I can find one), telegram or slack (if they show one). Last but not least — I check what the community has to say about it (with Reddit being a great source of information), and much more.

I consider the above to be signals one should research before making an investment decision (read 13 fundamentals in crypto investing by our CEO). And I hope that a service aggregating all the information about startup and its ICO in one place will help other investors to make smart/er decisions. That’s how we get to the idea of creating tokens catalogue at Trivial.co. We’ve started with a simple encyclopedia with basic information, and move towards a catalogue with categories and a lot of other features.

What you’ll find at Trivial.co

We started with a simple version — Ethereum blockchain interface, where you can:

Check your tokens and transactions

See top holders of tokens you own and check what else they possess

Find tokens owned by your friends

Discover new tokens

At the moment you’ll find all ERC-20 tokens as present on Ethereum blockchain. Tokens listed on EtherDelta are shortly described, including contact information, white paper, links to social media, blog posts and more.

Screenshot 1. Search field https://trivial.co

How about all basic information on a project in one place?

As an investor, I can go to EtherDelta and see over 600 tokens. I can choose a symbol and get a link to project’s website. Now I need to dig for a white paper, and sometimes you’ll find it right away, sometimes you need to dig deeper. In case of almost half of the projects, you won’t find it at all. Do you want to ask a question about the project? Good luck with finding an email address. Want to read their post on the Medium or another blog — many projects don’t have it and many of those who do, don’t share this info on their website. So you search the Internet and waste time on finding basic information instead of analysing it.

How about having all this information in one place? We put it all in General Information, and we included project’s short description, links to its website, email, communicators, white paper, blogs, communication channels and other social media. If the project has a profile at Medium, we will display their articles in the Blog Posts panel. Similarly, we’ll show project’s submission to their subreddit on the Discussion panel.

Screenshot 2. Token profile with all basic information in one place https://trivial.co/t/0xa823e6722006afe99e91c30ff5295052fe6b8e32

What else on the token profile?

If you have your MetaMask unlocked you will see the number of tokens that you have. You can also see your recent activity related to the displayed token (e.g. your recent buys, sells, transfers, deposits, etc.).

Screenshot 3. Token profile with MetaMask unlocked (tokens position and users activity)

Are you curious who else owns the token that you have?

When I buy a token I’m curious who else owns the same token (on the tokens profile you can see top holders list). And even more — what else they have (you can select holder’s address which will redirect you to this holder’s profile where you can see what else s/he has — more below).

Why do I think it matters? It may give me information about other interesting tokens. I also wonder what’s the tokens ownership structure — is there one player who owns 99% or it’s distributed equally among 10,000 users. And you can browse further. From top holder of one token to her other tokens, top holders of these tokens and so on and so on.

You can see this kind of information in the Top Holders section on the token profile. Just like in the screenshot below.

Screenshot 4. Token profile — Top Holders https://trivial.co/t/0xa823e6722006afe99e91c30ff5295052fe6b8e32

What’s next?

In the next parts, I’ll show you how else you can use Trivial.co, how you can browse through your friend’s Address and see what s/he has and how you can see your own profile and more…

What do you think?

We would like Trivial to be a useful tool for investors interested in projects related to the blockchain. To help you make good decisions and to protect less experienced users by providing comprehensive information.

We’re very interested in your comments on our service. Share with us what do you think about the existing features as well as what else you would like to see at Trivial. Do you find it useful? What you like or dislike about it?

We’ll appreciate your comments: support@trivial.co or Slack.