I wanted to update the Zebi community on the developments in the first quarter of 2018. There will be at least once a quarter update directly from the CEO’s office, and in the future, I hope to do this as soon as the quarter ends.

Notable Events of Q1 2018

The first quarter of 2018 has been phenomenal for Zebi, to say the least! For instance, we started the Zebi Telegram Channel around Feb 1st. We did a few low cost banner ads on prominent India and worldwide crypto websites. The Telegram channel had just a few hundred members during the pre-sale window of Feb 5th–12th which was sold-out several hours prior to the deadline. By the time the crowd sale started on Mar 5th, the size of Zebi Telegram Channel grew rapidly to more than 13,000 members, almost all of it coming from organic viral marketing through positive word of mouth among the crypto-community. Zebi only spent less than 50 ETH for all of ICO marketing, which is probably the lowest in the history of Initial Coin Offerings!

This popularity of Zebi can be broadly attributed to two simple factors. Firstly, it’s the globally innovative Blockchain Platform we created that received recognition in major media such as CNBC, Nasdaq, Forbes and regional media in India/China. Secondly, and probably the most important one is Zebi Community, especially the early supporters who recognized the huge potential of Zebi in early Feb 2018. Our partner, Torque Capital, not only did a tremendous job of supporting us during the ICO process through their direct participation, but also helped broaden the Zebi message across global crypto-community. In the end, there was so much demand, that the ICO crowd sale had to be rationed among gold-listers with a max cap of 0.62 ETH per KYC verified participant. And the uncapped portion of the crowdsale was completed within 2 seconds!

I myself had travelled quite a bit during the first quarter and spoke at many events during this time. Following are the details of events where I spoke or attended in the last quarter. This however does not include a few AMA videos that I did. The AMA videos and more is available on the Zebi Youtube Channel.

Now that the ICO is successfully completed, I plan to shift our focus to more business development this quarter. I started declining majority of requests to speak at events. We are now getting overwhelmed with incoming calls from prospective customers, certainly more than what we can handle with our small team!

Zebi Blockchain Platform

To recap, Zebi comes from Zebibyte (1024⁷, about one Trillion Gigabytes), signifying our intentions of solving Big Data related problems. We created a proprietary Blockchain solution to protect and make use of high value and sensitive data.

Based on the feedback that we received from our community, I feel it is important to compare and contrast how Zebi Blockchain is different and how we are executing our plans in a unique sequence.

It was always clear to me that there is a big difference between having actually accomplished something for the world vs. promising to change the world. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and a few other prominent people repeatedly talk about a lot of ERC20 alt-coins not actually having accomplished much for the world. See one recent article as a reference.

Given that there are many pilots and proofs of concepts (POCs) on Blockchain, but rather very few real world implementations of Blockchain, we wanted to make sure Zebi Blockchain Solution does make an impact in real world applications. The Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (AP CRDA) use of Zebi Chain in their production land records system is a clear indication of our technology differentiation. The private permissioned blockchain focuses on adoption of Zebi Blockchain by some of the real world governments and enterprises who own most of the high value Big Data.

The next phase of Zebi Public Blockchain is in early design stages now, and we expect to open it up some time next year. The consensus models and incentive mechanisms for nodes of the public blockchain will be published in a few months. This deliberate choice of first getting real world adoption by organizations and subsequently opening it up for broader public adoption is really the only way to ensure success when solving problems of Big Data and its integrity.

Why ultra-low $10M Hard Cap for Zebi ICO?

Many people asked me this question publicly and privately. I declined more than $20M in funds’ participation, during our ICO window. I honestly believe that $10M is a lot of money, in any country, even if it is other people’s money! I always had a habit of using resources wisely, both for the company and me. For instance, I prefer to travel by economy class and living within means. I love watching beautiful beaches and sunsets more than drinking alcohol. It is probably not a coincidence, that there are amazing skies, views and beaches both in San Francisco Bay Area, where I worked for almost two decades as well as in Vizag, India, where we have a major Zebi presence.

Given that Zebi already has a fully functional product, multi-year government contract, a live customer using Zebi Chain in their production system, and a deep pipeline of motivated customers across industries, spread around the world, I expect Zebi to be profitable within 3 years. As a matter of fact, Zebi is looking at more than $5 billion Big Data market in India alone, read more from our white paper.

I know crypto enthusiasts do understand the enormous potential of low cap projects and expect them to fully support our exchange listing!

Zebi Coin listing on Qryptos

We are planning to list Zebi Coin on Qryptos at 2:30am UTC on Sunday Apr 29, please watch for latest updates or last minute changes on Zebi Telegram Channel.

Why QRYPTOS? They are building a real institution style exchange. The founders and the team have impeccable reputation with global financial industry background. QRYPTOS is owned by Quoine Corp, one of the first fully compliant and licensed (License No: 00002) cryptocurrency exchange in the world, based on legal measures issued by Japan Financial Services Agency. You may want to read a recent article on their Iron Shield feature. They are clearly the leader when it comes Security and Regulation.

QUOINE is #14 by combined volume, as per Coinhills ranking. They also own QUOINEX and are soon merging both QRYPTOS and QUOINEX to create the LIQUID Platform, a single globally-sourced trading platform (World Book) with an associated suite of services (Prime Brokerage) that brings together the entire global network of cryptocurrency exchanges to enable the highest level of liquidity to all markets.

In parallel, we continue to pursue the Top 5 volume exchanges, one of them likes Zebi Coin very much, but they need some more time to process the application. Some of the top volume exchanges are also getting hit with regulators, see recent article. Few of these exchanges are known to be ridiculously expensive, one of them reportedly charge exchange fees as high as $6M. We obviously have a much better use for the funds raised in Zebi ICO, mostly for R&D to build our Platform and to create more partnerships.

Conclusion

Zebi team and I sincerely appreciate patience of early supporters, we hope to continue partnering with you on this awesome journey. There are multiple deals in very advanced stage of discussions, but I prefer not to talk about them until finalized and signed. The timing for these deals to come to fruition is expected to be in the next few months.

We just announced a great addition to an already impressive group of Zebi advisors.

We will be announcing a major business deal for Hospitality industry on Saturday, barring any surprises.