Key takeaways from the new Neufund Whitepaper

…and all you need to know about our ICO!

First of all, the big news: the Neufund Whitepaper V2 is now available for reading and download!

Simply go to our Website and click on Whitepaper to read it, or download directly HERE.

The paper itself is 60 pages filled to the brim with very detailed, highly condensed information. It has undergone several rounds of review and revision, incorporating dozens and dozens of questions, comments, and feedback by our awesome advisors. Because we aim to bridge the worlds of venture capital and blockchain, we consider ourselves very fortunate in that we have been able to gather some of the best from both of those worlds.

They are by name:

(You can find more information on our advisors here)

As you can see, our advisors bring a combination of entrepreneurial talent (especially in the Ethereum & crypto space), technical expertise, and venture capital know-how to the table, for which we are very grateful. A big thank you goes out to our fantastic team, for doing an amazing job with the whitepaper and the product, and to our advisors for, well, advising us.

Before we get into the whitepaper, however, an explanation is in order.

What is Neufund, today? 🤔

Earlier this year we published the first version of our whitepaper. It laid out a broad vision, along with an innovative model for a distributed VC fund, as well as a roadmap for how to get there. In the time since then we have continued to develop our model, incorporating specifically the current legal and regulatory landscape. After all, the greatest vision doesn’t do us or anybody else any good if we build something nobody will be able to use safely and securely.

Our updated whitepaper contains a much evolved ambition with a somewhat different model. We are no longer simply building a decentralised VC fund. Instead, what we are building is an entire ecosystem of investment. Or more precisely,

Neufund is a community-owned fundraising platform.

Our platform makes an upgraded version of the popular ICO mechanism available to companies for fundraising and financing purposes: we call it an equity token offering, or ETO for short. With our system, any company — blockchain or not — can “tokenise” regular shares in a way that is legally and technically secure. As such, we believe that

Neufund is the new way to fund ventures.

(There you have it: now you know where the name comes from…😉)

The Key Takeaways 🗝

Neufund uses a familiar type of model for its token economy. Similar to the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, participants are rewarded for useful work in the form of tokens. In our case, however, useful work comes exclusively in the form of investment.

The reward for this work comes in the form of the Neumark token. It entitles its holders to revenues from platform fees for ETOs conducted on the platform, and to participation in a platform pool of a small number of equity tokens from every ETO ever conducted on the platform. You can immediately see that the value of our tokens is clearly defined and gives the ecosystem economic ownership to Neumarks holders.

A particularly powerful innovation is that of linking paper shares with smart contracts, resulting in the previously mentioned equity tokens. We achieve this by way of mutual reference and code correspondence between the two types of contract. After trialing this type of solution with our own Employee Stock Options in our “ESOP: Options On-Chain” tool, we believe we are ready to build tokenized shares in earnest.

The Neufund ICBM 🚀

If you are seriously considering participating in our ICO-but-not-really-ICO, please read carefully: Neufund is not performing a typical ICO.

Instead, we call our “ICO” an Initial Capital Building Mechanism, or ICBM for short (and yes, we’re aware that it also stands for a type of rocket). Since we are building a two-sided investment marketplace, we face the same challenge that every other marketplace faces. How do you get customers without merchants, and merchants without customers?

To solve this, we are incentivizing early-comers on the investor side with a Neumark reward for committing funds to the platform for later use in investments! It is therefore neither a Token Sale, nor an ICO.

The reason you should participate is that Neumarks entitle their holders to revenues from fees taken out of all successful future financing rounds on the platform. What’s more, you retain control over all of your funds — we can’t touch them, nor do we gain any of your funds in the process.

Please make sure to read the whitepaper and our Commit Page (the “ICO page”) for full details and terms.

More Teasers… 😯

The following are some of the more important points from the whitepaper. Of course, for the exact details — legal, technical, or otherwise — and how they interlink with other parts, you will have to consult the whitepaper itself. They are presented here without explanation as simple teasers, organised by chapter, so you can read up on a specific point if it piques your interest.

Chapter 1: What is Neufund?

A primary market for real world, technologically enhanced equivalents to shares — “equity tokens” — that aim to be as liquid as cryptocurrency

Founders can finally raise funds easily from everybody: investors, friends, cryptocurrency holders

Chapter 2: Vision

Our vision is to open innovation for good

We have a couple concrete goals, one of which is to make real world private equity fully liquid by tokenizing it, and another to onboard off-chain companies to the crypto economy

Chapter 3: Ecosystem Impact

We make it easier for regular people to participate in the crypto space

We bring transparency and accountability to the ICO world

Chapter 4: Definitions

This chapter introduces very specific definitions for the terms used throughout the whitepaper, so as to avoid any confusion. Our ICBM is a good example:

Chapter 5: Neufund Token Economy

Core principle: whoever works for the network owns the network (and investment is our fundamental unit of work that is rewarded)

The Neumark Token is a novel model and reflects the value of the ecosystem, and aligns every participant’s incentives (read more on the problems this solves in “Economics of Entangled Tokens”)

Chapter 6: Neufund Initial Capital Building Mechanism

Our “ICO” is neither an ICO nor a token sale, but an “ICBM”: an Initial Capital Building Mechanism

Funds stay in your control: we do not have access to them

Neumarks are issued as a reward for committing funds to the platform for later investment

There are two phases: one for ETH (cryptocurrency holders), another for EUR (fiat holders)

The first 1.5 bln € of funds committed to the platform receive a Neumark reward. After that Neumarks are not issued anymore, and can only be acquired on secondary markets.

Chapter 7: Investment Platform Description

This chapter goes into the details of the platform, e.g. questions about governance, the role of investor agreements, and the investment process as seen from both sides, as well as the developer features for making use of our API.

Chapter 8: Neufund’s Organisational Structure & Legal Considerations

Neufund is not only a technological platform, but also a legal one. The legal dimension means, among others, that Neufund allows equity of real-world companies to be represented as tokens living on the blockchain

We operate from Germany, which offers a sound legal ground for ambitious projects

Our legal strategy is multi-pronged: build and spearhead the Blockchain Policy Initiative for future regulation, proactively cooperate with authorities, and employ our own legal team to fit our products and services into existing regulation

Our legal strategy and organisational structure ensures compliance with regulations, economic and technological effectiveness and, last but not least, protection of rights of both Neumark holders and equity token holders.

Chapter 9: Roadmap

This chapter goes into the details of what the vision entails, and how we intend to get there.

There are two separate tracks:

Build a primary market for equity tokens

Make the Platform Operator Fifth Force GmbH a distributed organization

Chapter 10: Reporting & Communication

The following are the official URLs for keeping up to date on, and participating in, our ICBM. Be careful to ONLY use these, and never to click on links in Slack communities, including our own.

Website : https://neufund.org

: https://neufund.org Commitment page : https://commit.neufund.org

: https://commit.neufund.org Neufund Slack channel : https://neufundorg.signup.team/

: https://neufundorg.signup.team/ Neufund Subreddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/neufund/

: https://www.reddit.com/r/neufund/ Neufund Blog : https://blog.neufund.org

: https://blog.neufund.org Neufund Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/neufundorg

: https://www.facebook.com/neufundorg Neufund Twitter account: https://twitter.com/neufundorg

🚨 Please read the following blog post for a primer on how to stay safe: How to lose 8k worth of Bitcoin in 15 minutes with Verizon and Coinbase.com 🚨

Chapter 11: Team & Advisors

Here you’ll find more information about the founders of Neufund and our wonderful advisors.

Questions?

We’d love to answer them! Check our Frequently Asked Questions section on our website or send us a message through our contact form.

Next up: the ICBM date! 👀

So now that you know all about Neufund, keep your eyes open for an announcement of the start date. We’ll publish that soon, along with detailed instructions on how to participate!