GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands — Jan. 2, 2019: A letter from CEO Theodor Forselius to our community.

As 2018 has drawn to a close, we are looking back at what has been Everipedia’s busiest, most challenging and most successful year since our inception 4 years ago. Below are a few of my favorite highlights from the past year and some exciting plans and predictions for 2019.

Announcing our Airdrop in South Korea

Our President Sam Kazemian started off 2018 in South Korea in front of a huge crowd of blockchain enthusiasts where he presented Everipedia’s plan to distribute our IQ tokens through an airdrop to EOS holders. The news quickly went viral in the blockchain community and no doubt helped set a new precedent for the industry on token distribution methods.

Everipedia President Sam Kazemian (third from the left) announcing our airdrop in South Korea, January 2018

Closing our Series A Financing Round

In February, we made headlines in major media outlets when we announced the closing of a $30 million Series A financing round. The round was lead by Galaxy Digital’s EOS Ecosystem Fund, managed by legendary Wall Street investor Michael Novogratz who said the following at the time:

We’re delighted to support Everipedia and look forward to the growth of a more modern and inclusive encyclopedia that puts the world’s knowledge on the blockchain.

Launch of the IQ Network & IQ Token

6 months later, we announced perhaps our most significant accomplishment in 2018, which was the launch of our long-anticipated IQ Network and IQ Token. This turned Everipedia from a traditional encyclopedia into the world’s first peer-to-peer knowledge base with its content stored on the blockchain. This meant anyone who edits Everipedia could now start earning back the value they create through the tokens, which also allowed them to participate in the governance of the network itself. Building and launching the network on such a tight deadline could not have happened without our incredibly talented developer team led by our CTO Travis Moore, Director of Software Kedar Iyer and our President Sam Kazemian.

(From left to right) Everipedia CTO Travis Moore, President Sam Kazemian and Director of Software Kedar Iyer

Community and Adoption

During the year our community grew more than we could have ever imagined. The airdrop turned about 150,000 people into stakeholders in the IQ network. Many of whom have now begun to stake tokens in order to create, edit and vote on articles, in total there is now over 90 million IQ tokens staked in the network. While our CCO Mahbod Moghadam has worked on growing our English community we’ve also seen significant growth (both content and traffic-wise) in countries like Korea and China, but also a lot of interest from people in countries around Europe. One thing is for sure, we are going into 2019 stronger than ever before and there is no doubt this year will be a big one for our community.

Making Headlines Around the World

2018 was a massive year for Everipedia in terms of interest from the press. Throughout the year, we received extensive coverage in many major media outlets and even made it to the front-page of outlets such as Fortune, Reuters, WIRED Magazine and Business Insider (among many others). We were interviewed by CNN on live TV and mentioned in a lot of traditional financial media such as Wall Street Journal, CNBC, NASDAQ and more.

Everipedia CIO Larry Sanger being interviewed live on CNN Worldwide.

Global Opportunities Around the World

Over the past year our team has traveled to over 20 countries around the world where we have made invaluable connections and new friends. Some of the places we’ve visited includes Dubai, San Juan, London, Prague, Malta, Hong Kong, Seoul, Busan, Minsk, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Miami, Cleveland, Boston, George Town and many more. Along the way we’ve found new employees, investors, partners, exchanges and community members. We’ve been invited to give speeches and keynotes by events, conferences, companies and even governments, that have helped spread the word about Everipedia around the globe. Below are some photos of my favorite moments from our travels.

Everipedia CTO Travis Moore and myself giving a talk in Hong Kong, June 2018.

Giving live demos of the Everipedia platform to visitors of Blockchain Live (September 2018). We were very excited and fortunate to have our UK community manager Paul Bedson (on the right) to assist us at the event.

Everipedia CIO Larry Sanger giving a keynote in Dubai in front of 3000 people (May 2018)

Our President Sam Kazemian posing in new Everipedia swag with Kevin Gates and Juicy J in Los Angeles (December 2018)

Our CIO Larry Sanger, myself and Chief Operating Officer Suchet Dhindsa at the Everipedia Bloxpo after-party in Stockholm (May 2018)

International Expansion and Growing Team

Maybe the most exciting part of 2018 was just how much our organization has grown. We have opened up a new European headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, expanded our development team with several new skilled developers and designers, we’ve hired community managers and business developers in China and Korea; our COO Suchet Dhindsa has tied close bonds with partners across Asia and Europe. In total our team at Everipedia now consists of 24 talented individuals. We have added extensive new language support and have imported all Chinese, Korean, Russian and Spanish articles from Wikipedia in preparation for officially launching the platform in each of those countries and languages.

Everipedia’s executive team at our newly opened Stockholm office, October 2018.

Looking Ahead

With everything we’ve accomplished in 2018 it might be difficult to see 2019 being even better. But make no mistake, 2018 was just the warm-up. In 2019 you will see things such as:

Brand new user interface and many new features on everipedia.org

Everipedia.org supporting more languages and importing more content in new languages.

Our community launching in many new countries around Europe and Asia.

An ecosystem of dapps being built on the IQ blockchain. Leading to more use cases and adoption for the IQ token. (The first of these dapps, Prediqt.network (prediction market built on EOS) is set to launch its MVP in just 4–6 weeks.)

(prediction market built on EOS) is set to launch its MVP in just 4–6 weeks.) Some very exciting partnerships in the pipeline.

In other words, we will continue to build out our vision of creating both the world’s largest knowledge base and an ecosystem around the IQ network. Helping lead the industry forward and set new precedents for dapps with real mass market adoption.

With that said, I would like to give a special thank you to our amazing team members who continue to crush it at work every day, our community members who make this all possible, our investors for supporting our vision since day one and our partners for your trust in us.

I wish you all a happy new year!