Over the past year, we’ve been hard at work with lenders, developers, data partners and crypto enthusiasts across a number of initiatives culminating in our announcement today:

We are excited to announce the terms and timeline of the Bloom token sale.

The Bloom Token Sale will begin on November 30th at 4pm GMT.

We encourage everyone to check out our 2 minute video, white paper, and website describing our mission. We maintain a blog that includes details about the team, partnerships and our updates over the last few months. Links to further research and discussion threads are included at the end of the post.

Overall Structure

We’ve been amazed with the incredible response to Bloom over the last few months. We greatly appreciate the thoughtful feedback and advice we’ve received from our community.

With over 4,000 Slack users, and over 25,000 emails registered for our newsletter, Bloom’s priority is to ensure a strong and committed community. In the coming days, we will announce a community whitelist structure to ensure a fair token distribution.

Please ensure you’ve joined Slack and entered your email on our homepage to get updates on the whitelist. If you have questions about the whitelist, please email us or message us directly.

Token Distribution

Bloom is targeting a $50m hard cap.

There will be 150M total BLT in the supply, broken down as follows:

75M (50%) of tokens to be distributed in our token sale.

60M (40%) of tokens locked in a multi-sig wallet and held by the Bloom company for long term expenditures and network updates*.

15M (10%) of tokens to be distributed to the community. This includes key advisors, lenders, partners building on Bloom, bounties, and community incentives.

No new BLT tokens will be created after the crowdsale — the total supply will be fixed.

Logistics

Two days prior to the fundraiser we will announce the BLT fundraiser address. The only trusted sources for this information are:

The official Bloom Site: Once the fundraiser contract is deployed, the contract address will be posted on the Bloom website.

Once the fundraiser contract is deployed, the contract address will be posted on the Bloom website. The official Bloom Blog: A post with the final details of the fundraiser, including the address and initial block to accept contributions will be published prior to the sale.

A post with the final details of the fundraiser, including the address and initial block to accept contributions will be published prior to the sale. The official Bloom newsletter: An email will be sent linking to further details of the sale. The email will be sent from an @hellobloom.io. Don’t trust any emails from Slack or any other sender.

An email will be sent linking to further details of the sale. The email will be sent from an @hellobloom.io. Don’t trust any emails from Slack or any other sender. The official Bloom Twitter: We will confirm all announcements on Twitter.

Over the coming week, we are announcing a number of official updates around the whitelist, use of funds, and partnerships.

Security

Slack is not an official source: We will never solicit funds directly from a DM on Slack. All official announcements will always be widely shared on the official channels listed above. Double check official sources: All official announcements will be cross posted on our Blog, on our twitter and on our email newsletter. Follow official sources in advance: To reduce any chances of getting scammed, it’s critical to join our newsletter, follow the blog and follow the Twitter. Message us: The team is always available on Slack, Telegram and via email. If there are any concerns, please message us directly. If you notice a potential scammer, please let one of the team members know immediately.

About the Bloom Protocol

The Bloom protocol is a new standard for global credit.

Built on Ethereum and IPFS, Bloom brings credit to the modern age with an end-to-end protocol for identity attestation, risk assessment and credit scoring.

Bloom is not a lender, but a platform.

Bloom offers solutions to cross-border credit scoring and identity fraud while at the same time expanding credit globally to 3 billion new individuals and improving scoring methodology for all 7 billion people.

How BLT Works

Bloom is a global credit and identity ecosystem.

The token provides an added layer of security to the network by mitigating fraudulent identity creation. Additionally, the token ensures the network remains free of influence from states, banks, and central actors. This is achieved by gradually turning over control elements to BLT token holders. Lastly, the token serves as a payment and settlement mechanism for the network.

To recap, Bloom’s token, also known as BLT, is useful in the following ways:

Security: While the network is in its infancy without a wide array of attesters, it is more susceptible to attack. In order to increase the immediate resilience of the network, users will be required to put up a small amount of BLT as collateral for users who they invite.

This collateral serves as protection against a mass-scale network of malicious accounts. Scoring Proposals: Our token is ultimately the voting mechanism for the BloomScore. Token-based voting allows us to root out bad actors and keep the system stable and provide influence to those who are contributing most to the network. This is also the primary mechanism of defining future changes to the BloomScore. Payment: Our token serves as a network currency for verifying identity and assessing creditworthiness with independent vendors.

Who is Behind Bloom?

Jesse Leimgruber, Alain Meier, John Backus, Ryan Faber and Daniel Maren serve as the founding team of the Bloom protocol.

John, Alain, Jesse and Daniel all studied Computer Science at Stanford. John and Jesse are in the Thiel Fellowship. All of the team members have built and grown companies successful in the past.

John, Alain, and Jesse met while studying at Stanford. John and Alain began working closely together on crypto projects when they both served as founding research scientists for the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

In 2013, John and Alain left Stanford and founded Cognito. Four years later, Cognito now powers compliance and KYC services for the majority of US-based crypto companies.

Jesse Leimgruber bootstrapped two businesses to over a million dollars in revenue while in highschool, and launched an enterprise analytics startup at Stanford, now serving brands like Walmart, Microsoft and Amazon.

Ryan Faber previously launched Flatiron Collective. Flatiron now manages over $100M annually in digital marketing spend. His developments in user acquisition have allowed him to become a 3x Webby Award winner.

Daniel Maren developed Dragonfly Systems, which was acquired by SunPower Corporation in 2014. He has expertise in international infrastructure development, finance, and energy, where he is a recipient of a Forbes 30 under 30 award.

Since Bloom began, the project has been supported by a number of friends and advisors that we’ve met through Stanford, the Thiel Fellowship, and the Ethereum / Blockchain community.

Meg Nakumura, Joseph Urgo, David Raphael, Devon Zuegel, and Shannon Wu serve as advisors to the Bloom protocol.

Our Mission

We are on a mission to decentralize credit scoring and improve security.

You should not have to rebuild your credit from scratch when you move to a new country.

Billions of people around the globe should not be forced to take out dangerous, informal loans.

Governments should not lower your score because of your political affiliation, or require that you register to vote to have a high score.

Borrowers must expose all of their personal information when applying for a loan — the same info an attacker can use to open new lines of credit. This information is stored in insecure central locations which makes the data susceptible to data breaches.

Credit histories are not portable across countries, forcing individuals to re-establish their credit track records from scratch when they relocate.

The Bloom team aims to bring transparency, community, and the crypto community together to create a new credit ecosystem. We’ve been working closely with over 300 partners and lenders to make this mission a reality.

Further Research

Important Information to Review:

Select Posts:

Online Conversation Threads:

Extended Interviews / Podcasts:

Press:

Feedback and Questions?

If you are looking to partner with Bloom or become closely involved with the project, please email daniel@hellobloom.io and jesse@hellobloom.io.

We welcome thoughts from the community through all of our channels:

*Updated 11/24/17