What is Zebi?

I saw unusually intense and persistent FUD about Zebi in the last few weeks. Few said scam coin! Come on, wake up, do some research!! Some talked about promises being broken, not true. We kept the promise of “listing on an exchange in Apr”. Yes, I understand the listing on bigger exchanges is taking longer than usual, it is not a sign of poor performance of Zebi. There are good reasons, see more in the section below on Exchange Listing. Some said “we did not hype enough”, we are not hype, we are not virtual, we are not vaporware, what are we then? You would soon know once you read a bit more. Why did the price of Zebi Coin go down? Probably because some short-term minded participants sold, it’s their loss! Many of them are likely making a small profit, but they are losing out on the opportunity of a lifetime.

Why? Because I really believe the battle for the “most useful Blockchain of the world” is not over, I don’t think the world is sold yet (listen to this amazing song). This is just the beginning of Blockchain era, Bitcoin/Ethereum are like the first inventions which may not persist, just like Netscape of the early internet age. There is no Google of Blockchain yet, Zebi is going to be a huge contender. If you look at the extent of innovation, so far, only Bitcoin was a breakthrough innovation, although, the ego-less creator carefully put together the latest innovations in Distributed Systems, Cryptography, currency creation, decentralized trust, etc. Others, including Ethereum, were only incremental improvements, forks off of Bitcoin. Interesting tidbit: guess the area of my Computer Science masters thesis in 1994–95, it was in distributed systems!

Bit of history of Zebi. Back in late 2015, after seeing lack of persistent mainstream adoption of popular Blockchains like Bitcoin/Ethereum in the day to day use cases, not counting the use case of sending virtual money from one account to another, Zebi started building its own Blockchain to solve problems of Big Data. At the same time, we did not want to become another crypto-popular Blockchain platform, with not much adoption in non-crypto, but real world, as they have huge risk of never being adopted into real world! When I say adoption, I mean day to day usage in a production system of Governments, Enterprises, or Individuals, not just Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) or Proof of Concepts (POCs). Maybe, it is just a coincidence, that I was speaking on the panel of a Blockchain event in Mumbai on Friday, and the panel was titled “Will 2018 be the year blockchain moves from PoC to mainstream?” Zebi is clearly the leader in that emphasis to do things in the mainstream vs. just POCs.

Real World Blockchain

I am excited to report that Zebi continues to make broad impact in the real world. Earlier this year, several Indian and global media articles covered the real world use of Zebi Chain in an Indian state government land registry. As announced on 29 Apr, 2018, hotels in Visakhapatnam Urban area were using Zebi AI Chain, huge achievement already! Within the last few days, Visakhapatnam Rural District Police organized a press meet and officially launched Zebi AI Chain powered software for brand new regions that includes many additional areas like Araku, Anakapalli, Narsipatnam and Chodavaram near Visakhapatnam. This allows us to get to more than 400 hotels on Zebi AI Chain by the end of June 2018, much quicker than our internal projections!

So that summarizes Zebi Chain on Land Registry and Zebi AI Chain for Hospitality Industry, both multi-billion dollar industries each. What else? Two deals are in advanced stages, few in early stages, one is being implemented in pilot. Five more countries Dubai, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka added to the list of Zebi pursuits, all based on new incoming calls. We are not announcing them yet. Although many of our competitors and their followers seem content with POCs or even with high level MOUs and making a big deal out of them. That’s not Zebi, we are the real world Blockchain, we will announce when Zebi Blockchain Platform is being used at another customer or in another industry, which we expect to happen on regular basis, given the growing pipeline!

Long Term Focus

It is still the same vision and same team that is laser focused on building long term sustaining company. We know how to build products, and deliver business value. Do people still remember that we are probably the only ICO that locked up all of founder/team/partner allocations for 18 months and more. Only tokens that are in circulation are those sold during the crowd sale, including token sale costs. All the Zebi Coin participants, large and small, that I directly know are holding for the long run!

Short term price movements are not really in anyone’s control, typically driven by market sentiment, individual emotions. Zebi is committed to constantly increase the utility of the token by growing the customer base and innovating on the Blockchain Platform. Like I said earlier, we intentionally started off as a private blockchain, to ensure real world adoption, and the plan is to become a public blockchain by the end of 2019. After few years, many of the hyped up projects will vanish but the Real World Blockchains like Zebi will remain forever.

However, most individual ICO participants are concerned only about one thing, that their coin(s) price should go up every day. Not going to happen. Remember that money always shifts from the impatient to the balanced people. Only the long term focused ICO participants will survive. If you are focused on the long term, why would you bother about the short term price movements?

Exchange Listing

How many people know that exchanges are going through a rough period in the last several months? Regulators are tightening controls. Hackers continue to create havoc. Because of proliferation of junk coins in 2017–2016, most good exchanges are taking a big pause in 2018 and started spending much more time in evaluating coins. Some exchanges took a few months to first delist bad coins. Some exchanges are going through organizational changes, CEOs or other key executives moving out/in. All of this adds to delays and results in impossible-to-predict timelines. At the same time, we continue to make steady progress with OKEx and other Top 20 exchanges and I expect to list in one by end of June. This is the date I gave way back on 29 May in a Tweet and that projection is still valid because of the continued improvement!

Conclusion

As an ICO participant, you should look at the team, the product and market potential, and most importantly if the project has real world usage, ignoring the hype as much your emotions may allow you to. For example, what is the fair market value of Blockchain Platforms like Zebi’s that have penetration in two industries, each with multi billion dollar market size? We continue to focus on delivering long term value to our customers, partners and token holders. Thank you for being with us on a fantastic journey!

Weekly Q&A

Q1 Zebi won the award for Deep Tech startup at the StartAP Awards, what is the significance of these awards and this award in particular for Zebi?

We got this although we declined sponsorship which I always do, to avoid conflict of interest. It reaffirms the fact that we are #1 Blockchain Platform of India. By the way, do folks still remember that Zebi was Top 5 performing ICO of 2018 as per ICO_Analytics tweet

Q2 How are the executions of Zebi AI chain in the Hotel industry and Zebi chain for land registry coming along?

We are talking to multiple state governments in India for more Zebi Chain deployments across various industry verticals, one is in the final stage that will be announced soon. At the same time, we are seeing faster than expected growth on Zebi AI Chain, targeting 400+ hotels by the end of June!

Q3 Are there any new upcoming customers/partnerships to be expected for Zebi?

Yes of course, several in the growing pipeline, read above, we will only announce when we close the deal and they become our real customers.

Q4 How are Zebi’s roadmap developments coming along?

Excellent so far! We will improve and revise the roadmap by the end of September. e.g. The Zebi Public Blockchain by the end of 2019 is not yet part of the roadmap, it will be incorporated into published roadmap by Sep 2018.

Q5 How have the budgets from the 10 million raised in ICO been allocated, is there any specific budget for listings reserved?

$1 million has been allocated for top 20 volume exchange listing. Yes, we are willing to spend money for worthy exchanges with no/less fake volumes, while the focus is obviously on biz growth and platform innovation.

Q6 Given the small ICO cap, does Zebi have new ways of financing available if the project would require so?

Remember we already have a working Blockchain Platform and paying customers, and healthy pipeline. We don’t need any additional money, as we expect to be profitable by end of 2020. Ask, how many Crypto Projects can say this? If not, will they survive in few years?

Q7 Is listing ZCO on big/medium exchanges still a priority for Zebi, and if so, could you explain to us the incentive for Zebi to see ZCO listed?

We do care for the community and token holders. We want to continue to open up Zebi to new regions. The focus is to list on Top 20 exchanges by volume, expect to list by the end of June.

Q8 Could you explain to us the operational details and the most likely time frame for the ZCO airdrop promised to the 3000 participating community members?

The 0.2–0.4 ETH worth of ZCO reward airdrops will be deposited within 4 weeks after listing on a big exchange. Remember this is a large airdrop, so we plan to stagger it.

When we first requested the community to follow Zebi referral link and deposit 1 ETH into their own OKEx account, we did not explicitly mention any reward for the first few days! Even then, several hundreds of deposits happened, so I expect most of 0.4 ETH worth ZCO receivers to hold long term and not sell soon.

Q9 What is the strategic response to rebuild the crypto market confidence in Zebi after its recent price fall?

I made the mistake of not communicating often. From now on, Zebi will send updates at least once in 2 weeks.

Q10 How do you plan to attract and retain investors in ZCO in the future?

By focusing on increased utility for Zebi Coin, by increasing business, innovating on the Blockchain Platform, and by opening up Zebi potential to new geographies across the world.

Q11 Can you explain us a bit more about the technological framework behind Zebi Chain? — Will there be an active Github in the future?

Not yet. Some time in 2019, if not sooner, we will open source certain modules for transparency reasons. For now, protecting against plagiarism is more critical as we are growing rapidly.

Q12 How is Zebi’s development team organised? — Are all team members in house or does Zebi also work with non-hired external developers?

As of now, all are in house full time developers, located in Vizag and Hyderabad. Only mentors, advisors and some architects are part time.

Q13 How will ZCO’s token economy lead to an increase in value and demand for the ZCO token in the future? — How will holders be rewarded in the future (e.g. staking, buyback)?

Se response to Q10 above.

Also, the Zebi Public Blockchain will totally transform the global Blockchain space.

In addition, see excerpt from end of page 23 of white paper : “From time to time, Zebi may use some of its profits to buy back limited quantities of ZCO’s from holders”

Q14 How will Zebipay play a role for Zebi in the future? — Will INCX be able to play a role in this?

Early stage R&D. INCX will surely play a key role.

Q15 What do you feel is the Indian government’s stance on blockchain and crypto technology?

Indian government loves Blockchain technology. They banned certain interactions of Banks with crypto-currencies, but that ban is being contested in India courts. Zebi Coin is a pure utility token, acceptable only on the Zebi Platform, it wouldn’t really come under such ban.

Also, Indian finance ministry announced the intent to charge 18% GST on all Crypto trades.

Q16 Is there any marketing plan for Asia, especially China, South Korea and Japan? — Have you considered the language barrier (low English proficiency) for Asian investors?

We have White paper translated in multiple languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian and German. I am speaking at an event in Korea in July. We are evaluating smart and reasonable cost options to increase our presence globally. You will see more details in the coming weeks.

Q17 What are Vinod Raghavan’s upcoming Marketing targets for Zebi?

We will publish a global event calendar on our website that Zebi is going to attend. We will also broadcast these event details on all our social channels.

Q18 How is Zebi planning to manage its social media presence in the future? -what platforms will be actively managed and who will be responsible?

The in house team manages Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Youtube.

I realize that we are a bit lacking on Reddit and Bitcointalk. We are internally evaluating how to boost our presence on these channels, as these are tech intensive and we will likely not make any code open source this year. It may not make sense to open up these two channels until we start open sourcing relevant modules.