Elixir is an Ethereum based platform that provides payments, lending and crowd-funding services on the Blockchain.

The company sees decentralization as a much-needed answer to the security and efficiency issues that many of today’s financial services face.

Centralized servers put users’ vital data at risk of being hacked (like in the case of Equifax), and the current centralized lending and payments models cost time and money to process, which users end up paying the price for with high fees.

Based on these problems, the Elixir token is developed to allow users to make payments, create/request loans, and crowd fund projects all in one ecosystem using Ethereum’s smart contract technology.

They aim to first develop a mobile app in order to maximize adoption amongst mainstream and non-crypto users.

Payments Ledger

Elixir offers a simple interface that allows users to send and receive payments initially using Elixir token and Etheruem.

The payments ledger keeps track of all incoming and outgoing transactions on the application, as well as loans and information about the state of each loan.

Users can opt to keep their account linked locally to an address, or directly to the Elixir app.

They can also sync their contacts to the app, allowing them to send money to friends and family more efficiently.

Payment ledgers are linked to a crypto wallet, which is separate from the app and can be accessed even if the app is deleted.

Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform

Under traditional loan structures, the borrower gets the benefit of receiving a loan, while the lender gets the benefit of getting back their loan with interest.

Elixir improves on this in two ways. Firstly, by utilizing Etheruem smart contracts to make the processing of each loan more efficient and less costly. Secondly by creating an incentive based lending model whereby both the lender and receiver get rewarded for engaging in a successful loan agreement where payments are made on time.

By providing a mobile app, Elixir hopes to create a social payments network between friends and family.

The initial lending structure will not feature any collateral or interest, but will rely solely on both the lender and borrower being incentivized by rewards to engage in a successful lending agreement where payments are made on time.

Overtime, the platform will assign users with a risk score that signals which individuals are safer to lend to or borrow from. They will also be able form new kind of credit score based on the amount of token rewards earned from successful lending agreements.

At this point, collateral will be introduced in the lending model, and they hope to also incorporate institutional lenders.

Rewards

According to their White paper, the exact rewards model used by Elixir is as follows:

When creating a loan, lenders and borrowers can choose whether to set up a mining period once the loan is returned. The mining feature enabled by smart contracts allows the lender to lock their ELIX in their wallet for a holding period, after which the lender and borrower both receive rewards.

Currently, 65% of the reward goes to the lender for assuming risk, and 35% to the borrower for paying back the loan on time. If a borrower pays back a loan late, the lender receives 100% of the reward.

Crowdfunding Platform

Using smart contract technology, Elixirs hopes to provide Blockchain and non-Blockchain businesses with a platform to raise funds.

The platform (called “Boost”) will allow users to invest in projects using Elix’s crowd funding token. The access to a community of investors means that users won’t have to venture to multiple different platforms to gather the audience required to meet their fundraising goals.

There will be a minimum threshold that must be reached, and the total funding cannot exceed the maximum amount requested.

Elix will take a percentage of the funds raised as revenue.

History & Team

The platform launched in September 2017. Since then, they have released a beta of their payments ledger, as well as crowd funding and lending services for testing.



Elixir Team Members. Source: elixirtoken.io

Their website states that they planned to publicly release their mobile app in Quarter 2 of 2018, followed by their web app in Quarter 3. The rest of the year will be dedicated to further research and development, and integrating with other application services.

Elixir features of a young and technically focused team:

David Jackson

David is a graduate of Stanford University with experience in entrepreneurship, tech and finance. Prior to ELIX, David worked in the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory (SISL), Stanford Space Rendezvous Lab (SLAB), and a nanoparticle laboratory at Duke University. David holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Stanford University.

Melanie Plaza

Melanie is a full stack developer with experience in consulting & early stage startups. Before ELIX, Melanie was a CTO at To the Tens, Co-founder at Crunch button, full stack developer at Vyu & AE Studio and has done research at Mt. Sinai and Yale. She has a B.S. from Yale.

Devin Smith

Devin is the CTO of AE.studio and has 15 years of technical experience spending work & free time developing dynamic, UI rich websites and apps through every step of web and app publishing. He’s worked on projects for companies such as Walgreens, Toyota, Tokidoki, Luma Pictures, Red Cross and more.

Fernando Camargo

Fernando is a front-end developer with a passion for creating beautiful user experiences with cutting-edge web technologies. He has over 15 years of experience working for large companies and startups all around the world including Samsung, Nokia, Ask.com, VW, Getty Images, Garnier and Havaianas.

Pros

Elixir is indeed quite an interesting fintech project with a number of advantages. The following are the most important that we could isolate.

Solving fundamental problems in the banking/finance space (security, efficiency, etc).

Presents a unique service that offers lending/borrowing, payments, and crowd funding all in one platform.

Technically focused team and active community of developers

Elixir tokens low market cap of $9,696,368 means more potential for returns.

Cons

Altough Elixir does have a great deal of positive features, we felt that the following factors may be a burden on its wide scale adoption.

Team is a bit inexperienced as most are in their 20’s. They may benefit from more senior management in the long term.

They’re going to face a lot of competition from other payments, lending and crowdfunding platforms like SALT, ETHLend, Request Network, OmiseGo and Waves to name a few. Their most unique offering is the ability to provide those 3 features in one platform, but individually, those features are not as unique within the Blockchain space.

Coin Performance & Value

As of May 24th, 2018, Elixir (ELIX) is priced at $0.30 per token. The token launched on September 23rd at a price of $0.021. The company did not launch an Initial Coin Offering, and is currently ranked #493 for market cap ($9,696,368).

ELIX hit its peak price on January 8th at $2.44, which is about 8 times what the current price is. Since the crypto market is experiencing a downturn, this might be a good coin to pay attention to as it can bring significant profits if it returns to its peak price during another crypto market bull run.

Elix can be traded on the following exchange platforms: Kucoin, Coinexchange.io, EtherDelta.

Conclusion

Elixir is utilizing Blockchain technology to provide more secure and efficient ways for users to make payments, lend/borrow money, and crowd fund their projects.

They’ve made significant progress so far, having developed a beta for their payments platform, and the smart contracts architecture for their lending and crowd funding platforms.

They face very stiff competition in the space from platforms that have a singular focus on lending, payments or Crowd funding.

Elixir will have to design their 3 services to be just as robust, and to integrate seamlessly with each other in order to have a competitive edge over other Blockchains.

These are still very early days in the Blockchain lending, payments and crowdfunding space so there is no clear market leader. This means Elixir could emerge as a strong player if they were able to close big partnership deals or recruited more top-tier advisors and developers.

Featured Image via elixirtoken.io