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Intro

In another edition of our project reviews, we decided to have a look at Membrana, a decentralised trading platform.

So what is the deal with Membrana? In this review, we will dig deep into this project and give you all the answers. We took an in-depth look by examining the project, its team, tokenomics, community and technical analysis, among other metrics.

If you wish to skip to the summary to see the SWOT analysis, matrix score and rating, click here.

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Overview

Membrana is a decentralised platform for trading and asset management on the cryptocurrencies market. The platform utilises smart contracts on the Ethereum network and allows investors and traders to facilitate a mutually beneficial, secure and reliable contract for assets under management.

The project’s mission is to create safe, transparent trading and investment experience for its users while also looking at new business opportunities.

Membrana was launched to the public with a working platform in May 2019, and they completed their IEO on ABCC exchange in the same month.

Use case

The core aim of the Membrana project intends to bring investors and traders together for concluding mutually beneficial blockchain-protected contracts for the trust management of cryptocurrency assets. Membrana provides investors and traders with a transparent, decentralised and secure system, which controls the process of concluding and executing a contract up to the point of revenue gained by both parties.

Utilising the power of smart contracts while also introducing a level of transparency for all parties involved, the platform aims to change the way trust management funds operate in the cryptocurrency industry.

To avoid risks for both the investor and trader, and to make trust management transactions more profitable and safe, Membrana has developed a unique algorithm to solve the following problems with its unique contract-type trust management solutions.

One of the main issues faced by users in the cryptocurrency space is around the trading of assets on multiple platforms. Users often have several exchange accounts and all the associated management that comes along with this, such as entering different user names and passwords, 2FA code when logging in, different interfaces on each exchange, and the result is often a tedious experience for the average cryptocurrency users.

Membrana aims to solve this by providing a decentralised trading platform which allows users to enter the API key for an exchange onto the platform and giving them access to trading at several exchanges on one platform. The current exchanges supported on the platform are Binance, Bittrex and Huobi giving users the option to trade over 1200 pairs and the team plans to add more exchanges over time, eventually aiming to facilitate trading on every significant exchange from its platform.

Membrana provides with advanced tools on the platform for efficient trading which include Advanced UI/UX, conditional orders, Analyzer, Algo-trading and Algo builder, crowd predictions, messenger notifications and other features planned.

The platform aims to allow any user who trades cryptocurrencies on any exchange in the space to use their platform for trading or investing.

Adoption

The scope for adoption for Membrana is a significant one as they are targeting all potential traders and investors in the cryptocurrency industry with the potential of gaining new users as more traders/investors get interested in this asset class. By integrating exchanges for trading on one platform, the project has the potential to attract users from the exchanges that Membrana facilitates. Currently, the platform integrates trading on Bittrex, Binance and Huobi, with plans to add more exchanges as the project develops. There are now over 200 cryptocurrency exchanges in the industry, so there is room to add many more exchanges over time.

We feel that the projects main scope for adoption lies in its asset management feature, which has the potential for attracting the most number of users and lead to mass adoption of the platform. Asset management in cryptocurrency is currently done in several ways, including paid trading groups, signal services and investment funds.

Membrana’s current focus is on growing their user base and brand awareness of their platform, while also developing the platform and the utility for the MBN token. By utilising the MBN token in the platform ecosystem in the form such as staking rewards and zero % trading fees, the project has the potential to increase its user base both in terms of traders and investors to the platform.

The current user numbers for the platform include over 3300 user registrations and with 560 of these users registering for KYC. The number of registered users who have KYC on the platform is probably a more indicative reflection of the active user base on the Membrana platform. As mentioned above these users could either be using the platform to trade themselves via the exchange API or copy trading from other traders.

There are currently over 211 active traders registered on the platform, indicating that the registered traders recognise the potential benefits for them. Traders are rated by ranking, with detailed statistics around their returns and trades listed on a leaderboard.

While this number may seem relatively slow, it can also be reflective of a lack of brand awareness around Membrana and their platform and also the general state of the cryptocurrency markets.

Many traders have looked to margin trading platforms such as Bitmex, trading legacy markets or trading altcoins on exchanges not currently supported by Membrana. The recent restrictions for US residents on Binance could also have had an impact on adoption.

Competition

The identified competitors are in the socialised trading and tokenised funds markets, and the main competitors in these sectors are Iconomi ($21M Market Cap), Genesis Vision ($6M Marketcap), Melonport ($4.6M Market Cap), Caspian ($4.3M Market Cap), Covesting ($1.7M Marketcap) and Blockport ($814,000). The other two platforms that facilitate asset management for cryptocurrencies include Etoro and Shrimpy.

Etoro is a platform for trading legacy markets, has a user base of over 10 million users and introduced its cryptocurrency trading element in 2017. Shrimpy is an exchange trading platform which allows users to trade on their favourite exchanges via one interface and API keys, while also allowing users to replicate the trading and portfolios of listed traders. Etoro and Shrimpy both don’t have any market cap listed.

Based on the combined market cap of the projects listed the market size for asset management platforms is around $39M. This figure represents 0.00014% of the total market cap of the whole cryptocurrency asset class.

There is no public data available as to the current combined size of the assets managed by these trust management and socialised trading funds; however, research in the summer of 2018 indicates a market size of USD 94M with an annual expected growth rate of 17.1%, meaning that by 2023 we could see USD 207M of cryptocurrencies under the management of trust funds.

The team at Membrana have a more positive outlook on the size of the cryptocurrency asset, stating that they believe the size of the asset management market in crypto could be up to $50 billion in the upcoming years.

The team say that they have looked at the competition in the market, identified the differences in their approach and how they feel the project offer more value than the current projects in the same sector as outlined in their Whitepaper

Membrana state that they are the only platform that provides a contract system which allows for secure and transparent trust management of assets. They differ from their competition in several ways as a result.

Currently, their competitors have no risk management option or portfolio management option for the investor. Membrana addresses this by allowing the investor to set an identified stop loss for their portfolio, as a value percentage of the initial amount the investor placed in the smart contract. Traders also indicate the maximum loss per trade, adding another level of risk management.

The platform also allows for the investor to choose which trader they require to manage their portfolio based on the transparent trader rating system which utilises smart contracts to track and display a traders history, with the transparency of the information confirmed by the hash sum (sha 256) stored in the Ethereum block. By allowing the investor to track traders performance, it will enable freedom of choice and flexibility for the investor to choose their portfolio manager, while also allowing for traders to transparently display their terms, returns and gain recognition based on performance.

By utilising this smart contract method, Membrana offers a transparent, secure and flexible trust management service for both investors and traders on its platform, giving it an edge over its current competitors.

More information around the competitors can be found in the projects business plan.

Products/Features

The flagship product for the project is its Trading/Asset Management platform which is currently in Beta and can be accessed from the project website.

Overall the project utilises a wide range of technologies to support the platform and its features. There are several features implemented into the Membrana platform, which include:

Safe transfer of funds in trust management

A contract between Investors and traders

Confirmation of past trader’s profitability using blockchain

Distribution of investor’s assets among several independent traders

Some of the technologies used by Membrana to achieve the above are:

Smart Contracts

Oracles

Exchange API

Protection of investor’s API Keys

About Summary