Back from being away. I figured I had wrote enough on Pareto, one of my favorite projects, so I started to look for other legit projects that show great potential. The question here is; what are the main arguments to decide for or against a project? Like I said before, crypto is an area of bells and whistles where every new startup is trying to get your attention and convince you they’re the next big thing. So we try to see the forest for the trees and try to focus on what’s really important. And what’s really important are the fundamentals and the token metrics. Combine insight on those two and the answer will follow. While the more experienced investors and cryptocurrency enthusiast may be able to analyze these variables in a due diligent manner and arrive at an informed decision, it’s not hard to see that a lot of people follow the influencers that herd the crowd. By doing a quick search on YouTube, you will find hundreds of “so called” cryptocurrency experts hyping one coin or the other. The bottom line is that — it is becoming increasingly hard to select the quality project from the bad projects. After all, you can’t invest in every cryptocurrency project. One thing is certain whilst overlooking the crypto market, in the coming years and maybe even months, cryptocurrency projects with real value will knockout those without value (similar to the dotcom era where over-valued projects ended up crashing). For this reason, it is expedient and necessary to know which projects to invest in as a crypto enthusiast.

Having reviewed a plethora of ICO’s, of which some are just plain ridiculous and others are okay. One ICO that is currently still in presale and will be launced on the NEO platform as a NEP-5 token, really stood out. The Safeguard Protocol. This article is a complete and in depth review of the Safeguard Protocol from an investor’s point of view. I’ll be guiding you through how I select valuable projects to invest in with strong potential to “go to the moon” (yeah I know I hate that saying too but let’s stay in the spirit of crypto).

Problems Safeguard is solving

For the past few months I have been doing extensive research about the solutions blockchain technology is bringing to the world as a whole; from news of being used to reduce loan processing time and cost, to conducting elections on the blockchain, implementation in the supply chain, and general adoption news. These are only a few of the great innovative technical developments that blockchain technology is all about. And then there are the projects that do the most stupid ridiculous things but I will save you from who these are (and I don’t want to make it extra difficult for them, since they are probably already struggling to reach their soft caps).

One of the first things I take in consideration when grading a project, is the problem they are trying to solve. Irrespective of how novel a blockchain project or idea may be, the truth is that most blockchain initiatives become useless unless there is a real use case operability and they are solving real life problems. More than often there are no real-life applications, or the niche they are serving doesn’t really need a change. For example, I think a re-design for an umbrella is not viable, either by changing its shape or adding features such as USB or power bank.

Enter Safeguard Protocol. A project that tackles a less discussed but highly important problem, and thus is much more likely to become successful than the thousands of projects trying to be interesting but their fundamentals are just not relevant. Indeed, Safeguard already has a large list of partners.

When considering real life situations…

Have you ever been involved in a work-related accident? What systems would determine to be the cause? Probably carelessness, an error from a co-worker or a failure in the system. These cases are not isolated. Do you know that there are over 370 million non-fatal work-related accidents, injuries, and illnesses all over the world every year? To put this in perspective, that is about 10 fatal accidents every single day in the US. In the Netherlands the numbers are between 1 to 15 injuries at each workspace every year. In terms of numbers, these injuries do not only affect the livelihood and wellbeing of those affected and their families but also involve high costs for the companies to recon with. The EU for instance, spends about €500 billion every year on work related incidents and their consequences. Therefor safety issues are a widespread problem that asks for clear and easy solution to be brought onto the market. So yeah, its easy to see how Safeguard has so many partners already; these are all companies who see the potential in reducing not only the number of accidents but also the costs associated with those accidents.

Traditional Safety Management Systems

Reactive Response

There are a countless safety protocols and devices that are distributed across industries worldwide. A well know example is smoke detectors in kitchens, homes, and offices. Fire extinguishers and sprinklers are amongst others installed for controlling fire incidents. In a car, there are airbags in case of an accident. The critical question to ask is that despite all these measures, have we been able to mitigate and totally stop accidents? The answer is that there is still a great deal of work to be done in order to make work and living environments more safe for people and their companies. The most important reason for this is because traditional safety management solutions are reactive by design. Put differently, these measures such as your smoke detector or fire extinguisher are developed with a primary focus on responding to accidents that have already occurred, thereby supporting the notion of damage control and crisis management. Accidents can occur despite all the measures we put in place and damage control is an important component of safety management. However, the main focus should be on preventing accidents, rather than responding to them.

High Costs

Setting up safety mechanism can be complex, challenging, and time-consuming. For example, in the oil and gas industry, and apart from the cost of equipment, it usually takes several weeks to get a pressure-test bay up and running. Companies often have to worry about the price of elements or devices, the degree of support, training, and retraining needed, as well as uptime, amongst other important procedures.

In addition to the reactive response and high costs of traditional management systems, companies often have to deal with issues concerning privacy and centralization. Questions about security accessibility and what happens if data gets compromised or lost are often left unanswered until incidents have already occurred.

Considering the current shortcomings of traditional safety systems as well as the statistics of accident and work-related injuries that happen every day and the associated costs, I believe the Safeguard project will be a novel project with a broad market.

The Solution/Product

According to the whitepaper, “we aim to radically mitigate workplace accidents and injuries by designing tomorrow’s safety systems, today. Specifically, we are building a decentralized platform that will be able to predict accidents and injuries preemptively and in real time. By means of this system, we aim to reduce workplace accidents for our users by 20% before 2022.”

In simple terms, Safeguard is an open source protocol network for safety around the world. One of the highlights of this project is that it is a first-of-its-kind. It is a decentralized, not-for-profit blockchain platform that aims at facilitating the joint development of a universal safety application for both organizations and individuals.

I have been in the crypto space for quite some time, and I have seen projects living on hype, with no technical foundation or roadmap vanish out of the market or perform below expectations. Safeguard will be leveraging on some ground-breaking techs such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT).

The vision of the team is to create and facilitate the development of systems that can predict potentially dangerous situations before they happen, by analyzing data from the physical environment. A combination of adequate data through IoT and the use of a model predictive system would mean that potentially dangerous events can be flagged in order to prevent safety threats.

An example of a viable use case could be at a construction site. AI sources for data from several components of industrial equipment such as motion sensors, hydraulic pressure, or tensile strength on a crane. This would then be compared with other data such as the location, weather, and even time of the day. When all of these information streams are put together, the system would be able to flag the working conditions in real time and thereby determining potentially hazardous or critical dangers. With such information readily available in virtually every sector on a global level, managers and stakeholders can evaluate situations and make data-driven decisions to continue or halt operations. Other use cases for this innovation includes fires, broken or jammed elevators, security breaches, chemical accidents, and water leakages, among many others.

Novelty of the Solution

One thing that stands out in the solution Safeguard is proposing is the use of IoT and AI. Most companies have succeeded in the areas of data gathering. While this is the first step towards a safer world, what is done with this data and the speed with which this data is processed and used can mean the difference between a successful operation and a fatal incident. And this is where Artificial Intelligence comes in because it allows for faster and efficient interpretation and implementation of massive data. Some of the advantages AI will provide to current safety management systems include:

Precise and faster interpretations/decisions: Computers can handle more data input in a short time frame.

Objective and consistent interpretations of data: Humans are prone to errors and fatigue.

Real-time data driven decisions: Manual decision-making processes are cumbersome and time-wasting.

Relatively cheaper than traditional techniques: Certain safety systems require specific skilled personnel, which involves salary.

Removal of noise/bias: Every heard older people say things like “this is how it has been done?” AI removes this.

The Company and Team Profile

After researching the problems and solutions of a project, the next thing to look at is the company and team behind a project. From experience, I know that ‘talk is cheap’. Anybody can wake up one morning, put a team together, and claim to be close to curing cancer but requires funding. The crypto space is currently a wild west environment and loosely regulated. Therefore, it is pertinent to always research the people that are behind a project, how long they’ve been in the market, prior experience, etc.

Unlike many cryptocurrency projects, Safeguard already has an existing working product, a revenue stream, and sales cycle. This is a huge plus to the project. Virtually every industry has to deal with safety issues, and this means the application of this project will stretch across healthcare, industrial, governmental and educational sectors.

In 2015, the company proved their concept with The Amphia Hospital in Netherlands through a real-time tracking of safety personnel and an emergency-response app. The pilot project was a success and saved the hospital vital hours, which is needed in healthcare.

Other clients on their list include telecom giant KPN, property and construction company, BAM Group, and government organizations like RDW. As a mark of their proficiency, Safeguard has received government-backing in the form of endorsements and subsidies.

Safeguard’s team comprises of 10 core members with experience spanning across several industries such as mobile and web design, blockchain development, UI and UX, sales and PR. The team is being led by the powerful duo of Ingmar Vroege and Gertjan Leemans. In 2016, they successfully launched Pokeradar which garnered 1 million downloads in just three weeks. Although they both have engineering backgrounds, Ingmar has developed sufficient skills as a competent CEO, while Gertjan works as the CTO and chief strategist.

With a team like this, it is safe to say that Safeguard is well equipped and experienced to pull through the task at hand.

Market

It’s already been said that there are numerous possible applications for intelligent and decentralized safety protocols. According to the European Occupation Health and Safety body (OSHA), about 10% of all employees in the US and EU work as emergency responders. This gives an idea of how vast the market is. With this in mind, there’s no arguing the fact that Safeguard has massive market potential to attend to.

Road Map

As earlier stated, Safeguard already has a working product (an App & Dashboard crises communication platform) which have been deployed for a number of organizations. They have successfully scaled through important milestones like proof of concept, alpha and beta versions of the Safeguard platform, and a public release of the platform.

The next steps on their roadmap is to smoothly transition from a centralized safety management platform to a decentralized open source system, which is expected to happen in Q3 of 2018.

Other important items on the roadmap include alpha and beta releases of Oracles framework in Q3 and Q4 of 2018. Between Q4 2018 and Q2 2019, Safeguard is expected to have released alpha and beta version of Safeguard AI Oracle, decentralized Safeguard, and Oracles connection. As part of their expansion plan, they will be spreading to Europe, Asia, and North America.

Conclusion

Safeguard is providing a high tech and already proven solution for safety measures that can cover a large diversity of industries worldwide . The number of industries that require automated and error-free safety mechanisms are vast, but at the moment it is hard to define the market size and value of what Safeguard will have in the short time. Nevertheless given the expert team in the field of safety, technology and corporate partnerships already proven successful, their approach and project management will certainly continue its success. In the short term this means fast growth and attracting new partnerships. But for the future we can see a widespread adoption of safety measures that Safeguard has to offer. In the long term the protocol will be able to expand to residential areas. This gives people a new sense of safety and security for their livelihood and makes safety and prevention a less stressful factor for everyone to enjoy.

In conclusion, Safeguard has a great already working use case solution to offer which involves utilizing AI and IoT technologies, while decentralizing safety and prevention as an open source protocol for companies. More important will be that Safeguard is providing an easy to use platform for the world to use. By making use of the groundbreaking potential blockchain has to offer to the world they incentivize the general adoption of blockchain for the business world and the general public to profit from. The quite elaborate roadmap shows that they have a clear view of where they are going, this creates trust needed to advance in this new technological approach. I see this project as one of the few that will stand the test of time and with the current partners can grow to be the leading safety monitoring systems in the industry worldwide.