(Sponsored Post)﻿

The Gamb ICO: Providing a decentralized Marketplace e-commerce platform,

directed by the first global alliance of merchants on the blockchain

If you are a regular reader of SmartOptions, you know how much I value the progress of crypto in e-commerce. To me, this is one of the most crucial steps for mass adoption, as it gives cryptocurrency, not blockchain technology alone, the right to exist: it is system-immanent for a currency, that it can be used for everyday spending. Now, this branch is starting to develop, and while there are parts of e-commerce which have been spoiled to a high degree by the big boys like Amazon, Google and the likes, an urging need arose to free merchants from their vice-like grip on the business.

Vehicles like Amazon Marketplace might be a good place for consumers to land a great deal, though they have a devastating effect to a large array of industries – in the long run, they will harm brick & mortars to a level that it might affect local or even whole economies, in general, one day. Their market share became way too big and more and more they control the e-commerce landscape by dictating prices and demanding exorbitant fees – this centralized market environment controlled by such behemoths has become very unbalanced.

This is why I think it is time for the GAMB ICO to shine – a decentralized marketplace, governed by smart contracts – created to build a strong Merchant Alliance (the token holders) who define rules and regulations and hardwire them into the platform, guaranteeing transparency, trust, and sustainability. An ICO with a real-life use case, that could help independent and owner-operated stores to survive this current monopolist game.

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GAMB ICO Facts Sheet

The Gamb ICO is issued by the team of the most used German shop software GAMBIO

Website: https://gamb.io/

https://gamb.io/ Whitepaper: Whitepaper

Whitepaper Social Media: Telegram| Twitter | Medium

Telegram| Twitter | Medium Announcement Channel: https://t.me/gambproject

https://t.me/gambproject KYC: Yes

Yes Excluded Countries: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, USA, Vanuatu, Yemen

Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, USA, Vanuatu, Yemen Whitelist Process: YES, already started

YES, already started Private Sale: Ongoing. Please go through this application if you want to partake – https://gamb.typeform.com/to/er1bqN

Ongoing. Please go through this application if you want to partake – https://gamb.typeform.com/to/er1bqN Pre-Sale: 15 June 2018 – 30th June 2018

15 June 2018 – 30th June 2018 Token Sale: To be announced

To be announced Pre Sale Bonus Structure: 15% Bonus while Pre-Sale

15% Bonus while Pre-Sale ICO Plattform: Ethereum ERC20 Utility Token

Ethereum ERC20 Utility Token Soft Cap: 5,000,000 USD

5,000,000 USD Hard Cap: 30,000,000 USD

30,000,000 USD Maximum Supply: 5,000,000,000 GMB

5,000,000,000 GMB ICO Funds Allocations: 3% Legal / 15% Operational business / 37% Marketplace Development / 45% Marketing & Sales

3% Legal / 15% Operational business / 37% Marketplace Development / 45% Marketing & Sales Minimum Investment: 0.1 ETH

0.1 ETH Token: GMB (ICO price: 1 GMB = 0.0002 ETH)



Note from the Whitepaper: “GAMB allocated a security buffer in the number of tokens allocated for distribution during the token generating event. Thus, they are protected against price changes of Ethereum. They will only sell tokens worth $30,000,000. All tokens that they will not sell will be shared with all contributors, so in the end, everybody will get more tokens than they bought. Also, the 35% on sale include bonuses and affiliate tokens.”



Solved Problem: The problem is a monopolistic marketplace of the big players like the Amazons of the world, with the eat or die – model. They take outrageous fees structures that force merchants into a price war with each other. The only winner is always the house = Amazon. The solution is a decentralized marketplace as a DAO. Controlled by merchants themselves, decisions regarding features and services as well as cost and fee structures will not be forced upon merchants anymore. With a decentralized marketplace, merchants continue to stay independent, they can keep running their e-commerce ventures and gain access to traffic and consumer demand.

The Gamb ICO: Reviving Real Retailment

GAMB makes 100% sense to me – surround of ICOs with useless products, this project stood out and was able to convince me. The reason is that the profession I am coming from is e-commerce and 1. I know about the threats, these marketplaces mean to real e-commerce ventures, 2. I know the urging need of the industry for the product (once this product gets momentum, merchants will leave.

Amazon with the blink of an eye as most of the merchants selling their, feel ripped off) 3. I know parts of the team, talked already with them, when I visited the dmexco '16 in Cologne, Germany – a fair for digital marketing and worked with their products in the past. In a few words: German expertise, and quality above industry standard.

Most of you will be more on the consumer side, with enjoying the comfort Amazon offers. This is likely, as “83% of all product searches start with either Amazon or Google” and “every second book in the United States is sold via Amazon”, as the whitepaper states.

The Big Players GAMB

This kind of monopolist power enables those to take WILD fees for a marketplace listing in conjunction with a platform that is designed to force a price war between the merchants. Nice for customers to make a good deal, true – but let's take this from a broader, more responsible perspective, please. Many smaller e-commerce sites you visit, have a local brick and mortar shop behind them – they have to sell online, but to make a dime, nowadays they must use the Amazon marketplace.

There they compete with tons of other retailers – all selling the same product, and there is just one button they can press: the price. And here the downward spiral begins to many. And whilst small shop A is fighting small shop B for the best price, Amazon smiles all the way to the bank, leaving retailers left and right, which are left with near to nothing to earn.

Having worked in e-retailment for 10 years now, I've seen the complaints, I've seen stores closing down and I most definitely see the need for this product. Amazon marketplace retailers sell a great number of items – but ask them how much work is involved for them vs how much they receive from their hard work. What the e-commerce industry needs is a decentralized platform, which is empowered by the retailers themselves, not by a global player that dictates everything to increase its profit.

About Gambio

With Gamb.io we have a German quality ICO with a team that has delivered already one of the most used e-commerce online shop scripts in their market. Personally, from my talk with the team, I know they breathe e-commerce and definitely know what they are doing – decades of experience (combined over the team) has shown over and over again, that they know this markets in and out, and for me, I can say they have my trust with this project as well.

The Features of GAMB.IO

Gamb.io is an advanced project and the team behind, will create a product that could save hundreds of thousands of businesses out there in my opinion, with a feature-set like what I will show you here, this is one of the few game changers in the ICO markets nowadays.

Governance Organization



Gamb.io acts as a merchant service provider which takes care of the development of the Marketplace software, partner selection, qualification and onboarding in accordance with alliance statutes; and finance and controlling.

Completely decentralized Marketplace application for merchants all over the world.

No decision making unit other than the owners of the marketplace themselves. The Merchant Alliance members (token holders) will define rules into smart contracts so that transparency, trust, and sustainability are guaranteed.

Traffic Generation for the retailers

The concept is very well-thought and covers a complete marketplace concept in a decentralized manner on the blockchain. Holding GMB tokens will enable you to become a Merchant Alliance member, so you can actively design the rules and the processes of the marketplace in a democratic manner. If we take a look at the token allocation, you will see the lion's share for marketing efforts.

To people outside of e-commerce, you might find that a bit suspicious, but this is actually a crucial part of the project. It will start as David in the fight against Goliath and the crowdfunding alike ICO concept might enable Gamb.io to gather enough funds to skyrocket upward and become a threat to the current common Marketplace practices of the giants.

With the right funds on marketing, they can help to bring the merchants, which they shelter under their roof, a solid backing to compete. Huge funds for marketing are the only way if one wants to win this fight.

ICO Check – Is the GAMB ICO worth an investment?

How is the whitepaper/website?

Gamb.io Whitepaper

Gamb.io might not have a fancy schmanzy whitepaper which reads like the yellow press, but tidy, professional work instead. Actually, it took me two hours to get into their universe and understand it fully. This is not a bad thing, as it shows what their preferences are: tidy work, planned on a scientific level, instead of attention-grabbing marketing fuzz for the masses. I can imagine that it might convince e-commerce professionals, VCs, and institutional investors, so I would not wonder if the seed sale sells out a big chunk of the tokens.

The GAMB whitepaper is one of the most professional ones, I came across – it is a fully outlined game plan and leaves no questions open – homework has been done here: great structure, complete information, a concept that makes sense, product-related questions, as well as ICO investor questions are answered in a very complete level.

It might not be understandable to everyone with the first read, but hey, you are investing your money here, and DYOR/DD is not just a buzzword but means this is your part of the work to be done, to be on the right train. Read it with time, read it in a calm minute and you will get it.

About the GAMB tokens

With each ICO you want to look at one point with special attention: Does it make sense to run this project on a blockchain and do the tokens have a real use case? You might have read that quite a few times, and there is a reason why experts stress this factor so much. A real use case of the tokens keep them in fluctuation and in use and creates volume.

A token that stimulates to hold it (for example with a masternode concept) is likely to decrease the available supply and, in conjunction with a working product on the blockchain, the demand will rise – this results in an increasing price. The GAMB tokens fulfill both of this factors, let's magnify the big bunch of use-cases here a bit:

Membership

Merchants that want to be part of the Merchant Alliance need to hold GMB tokens.

Merchants that want to be part of the Merchant Alliance need to hold GMB tokens. Proposals & Voting

The amount of owned GMB reflects the number of votes you have in the governance process.

The amount of owned GMB reflects the number of votes you have in the governance process. Affiliate Programm

Affiliates will be paid in GMB.

Affiliates will be paid in GMB. Access to merchant services

A round setup of services for merchants are planned and can be purchased by the retailers with GMB.

A round setup of services for merchants are planned and can be purchased by the retailers with GMB. Certified GAMB Vendor Supplier Program

A network of certified suppliers of HQ products, which offer their products wholesale at a discount to retailers.

A network of certified suppliers of HQ products, which offer their products wholesale at a discount to retailers. Advertisements

Merchants can pay for advertisements in tokens.

Merchants can pay for advertisements in tokens. Loyalty and reward/rating system

Motivating customers to stay loyal to the platform and to rate products and retailers – rewarded in GMB which they can use for…

Motivating customers to stay loyal to the platform and to rate products and retailers – rewarded in GMB which they can use for… Payments

The payments in the marketplace can be handled in GMB.

The payments in the marketplace can be handled in GMB. Partner Integration

Partners can be awarded from the treasury pool.

Partners can be awarded from the treasury pool. Rewards to the developer community

For contributing code to the marketplace applications, devs can be rewarded in tokens.

As you can see, there is a whole ecosystem to be built around GMB tokens and you might have an extra look for the token flow section in the whitepaper. This tokens will have a real use on multiple levels in the GAMB universe.

Why do we think the price of GAMB tokens will rise?

Even if the total supply looks high at the first view, I think the amount of GMB in circulation will be much lower, as the kept treasury pool must be filled well. But this ICO is less about the abstracted token metrics and more about the token economy. To bring it up again: it is an urgently needed product for the e-commerce landscape, with a very well-thought process of the use-case with the eco-system they are going to be built.

I suspect many tokens to be held by merchants for the governance engine – imagine an Amazon marketplace, where you can purchase stakes as a retailer, to influence the future of the platform and vote for decisions to be made. Tokens that are held decrease the available supply and with an active company behind this project, the demand will rise along with the success of the project. That sounds like a strong incentive to me, and there will be many merchants that will make use of this.

Price Model Token Price Exchange Against Service Costs Marketplace

Worth a thought is also the price reaction on new releases for a crypto project. We've seen it countless times that the price get's upped, if not even hyped before a new release/element is released. Imagine this now with an e-commerce tech-venture, cool new features are a must on a regular base, and the investing community can see/estimate them directly, as we are all online shop users to a degree. In my opinion, this offers a great opportunity to push the price on several occasions, depending on how they market these releases.

Besides, I believe that many merchants are going to have faith in the vision of GAMB, as they will build their stacks in the ICO phase to get these “vote-tokens” as cheap as possible.

But OK – I know this total supply numbers can be scary, so let's take a look at the distribution of the tokens to chill a bit. What do you see? How many tokens of the total supply are available to purchase? Right – not very much. Lots of their token stock will be used directly on the platform like for marketing activities or marketplace development. This is a timely staggered spread off, so a big dump post-ICO is not likely – they need the tokens to run the system successfully. And, honestly – the team just 10%? Common, this tells a lot of good things about Gamb.io!

Does the team have the needed experience?

I can't stress enough how important it is for a project like this, to have savvy e-commercers aboard. This is crucial. And GAMB has not just a few hired experts with them, no it is a whole team that developed GAMBIO, the most used shop software in Germany with a rocking market share of 12%. They are on the market since 2005 and they have a well-reputed name.

CEO Luis Krug is a big name in the e-commerce world and chances are, you placed already an order with one of his ventures, e.g. Redcoon, which invoiced an annual turnover of 500.000.000 €. Andre Münnich as CFO is a fine pick as well: his co-founded company Fayteq AG was sold to Facebook Inc. by the way and he comes with tons of IPO experience. On the tech side, we have Emrah Hizarci as CTO who has quite a name in the European e-commerce tech dev domain.

There is very much staff in the crew from the GAMBIO team – over 50 engineers and devs, so you can be sure the e-commerce side of things is very well covered. And while I am fully trusting these folks with everything e-commerce, there is the single crack in the perfection of this ICO: I can't find a solidity/blockchain dev on the board.

Maybe this is in the works, maybe some of their staff brings these competencies already, but this the only valid point of critique I have to bring up right now. My personal guess is, that they will hire this specific staff post ico.

The advisory looks like a ranking board of Moneyhouse – From Switzerland bankers like Erik G. Sarasin over Goldman Sachs investment bankers like Katalin Tischhauser to Dr. Luka Mueller, who is a hot pick for financing acquisitions. There are many more big guys on the advisory board – it is well worth and pretty interesting and convincing to research them all.

This team will not be running anywhere with your money, they have a big German company behind, so you can be sure that GAMB is exit-scam-wise a safe shot.

Is there a clear roadmap and are the goals achievable?

If a company is providing the biggest shopping cart script and cloud service in Germany, do you think this team is able to create a realistic roadmap? Exactly, yes – they are. Germans like plans in business, and they like to keep up. I think it drives them crazy if they can't, but this is just a personal observation.

Besides derivational assumptions, I can pinpoint objectively 1. They have experience in this field and can estimate the work involved 2. They know how to work along with a roadmap and 3. They already proofed to deliver in the past with GAMBIO. Yes, there is much ahead for them to do, the roadmap looks pretty engaged and optimistic, but a feeling tells us, they will hit each milestone in time. According to the GAMB roadmap, the actual product can be expected in '19. This well-planned roadmap until 2021 can be found here on their website.

Part of the GAMB Roadmap

How is their social following? Hype?

This conclusion about Telegram groups and the ICO success is still a relevant indicator, recent ICOs have shown. Now let's look at their telegram channel ~90k people?! WTF! That is a hell of following for an ICO, whose Pre-ICO did not even roll out. 10k followers on Twitter? Not bad! What I like very much is the vibe in their TG channel – this is a professionally organized one and an excellent example of protecting prospects of copycat scams.

The folks inside are in cheering mode and can't wait to start, what a relief to find a chat, which is not affected by the grumble grumble* bear market mood, you see everywhere nowadays. They don't do much advertising (which became pretty difficult with all that bans) but I came across them quite recently.

Conclusion

GAMB is an ICO gem for me. How many ICOs do you find with a rock-solid established company behind them, that can show off proven work which already achieved a market share of 12% in a highly competitive niche? This is super rare in ICO Land. You know the team has the knowledge, you know the product is needed, you know it must run on a blockchain to work out, you know the tokens make sense and you know they can deliver what they are talking about – these all are success factors one can't deny.

The timeframe is large, but just about thinking of holding this token till '21 makes me smile. If I would be hesitant here, I would go at least with the minimum investment of 0.1ETH and then just forget about it for some years. The surprise could be a nice one. Seriously, where do you get that kind of security in an investment form like ICOs, where the most are just garbage at least, more likely a scam?

Sure, the ultimate best case would have been if they had an MVP already, but a project from this size takes time if you want to show off something impressive. Besides all the ICO talk now, I just want to see the product up and running for good. Amazon's dictatorship can't move on like this and if the solution against it is blockchain-based, even better. Good luck with your venture, GAMB ICO!