My TL;DR: A platform allowing management of all cryptos in one wallet, which connects to DEXs and other exchanges and provides advanced trading functions.

What it is

Using the Midas Protocol will be done through their wallet, which the team boasts will be able to hold all kinds of cryptos. The Midas Protocol connects this wallet to a number of decentralized and centralized exchanges, and allows access to advanced trading features. Think about placing a trailing stop-loss order on IDEX, realize that you can’t and now you understand why this is a pretty neat idea. Also, funds are always in your wallet. They don’t get deposited in some smart contract (like IDEX, EtherDelta), nor do you have to give it your private key (Switcheo). The interface is a rich desktop client or neat mobile app.

How it works

It allows multiple kinds of orders, such as ‘conditional trailing stop-loss order’ or ‘scaled take-profit or stop-loss orders’. I have no clue what that means, so I am reviewing ICOs instead. However, my favorite feature is being able to place multiple orders exceeding your current balance, in hopes that one good trade, out of the five you can think of, gets executed.

For example, if you want to take some of your ETH from successful trading and invest it some HODL coins like ICX, ELA, WAN, etc, but only at a certain price point, you can place multiple orders, which combined can exceed your current balance. Let’s say you have 10 ETH in total, and are cool buying whatever of those coins, at a certain price point.

So you place a 10 ETH order for ICX at -25% of its current price, another 10ETH order for ELA at -30% of its current price and yet another 10ETH order for WAN at -40% of its current price. Whichever reaches the conditions first, will be executed, and your 10ETH will be successfully turned into some HODL altcoin.

Currently, if you place your 10ETH (max available, in this example) on a centralized exchange, your 10ETH is locked in the order, so you can’t place another. The alternative would be setting a price alert in Delta or something, and quickly jumping on that trade once you get the alert. Midas is literally offering a pretty neat tool to “buy the dip”.

Another super strong feature is Domain-Specific Language for Programmable Ordering. It allows for creation of very complex orders, mirroring your respective token strategy. An example from the whitepaper:

If crypto X or Y or Z drop 20 percent: buy 1 ETH value of each. If BOUGHT and

(crypto X or Y or Z drop 8 percent: sell 50 percent of holding) or (crypto X or Y or Z

rise 30 percent: sell 20 percent of holding)

Other features

Further down the line, “Deep learning-assisted for portfolio re-balancing” should assist you to automatically adjust your holdings to make the most of volatility without doing any manual trades. An (unlikely, tbh) example from the whitepaper:

The mobile app has a crypto newsfeed, so you can have a curated flow of relevant articles for crypto overall and for your specific coins in particulars. I would avoid staying locked into that one stream, and rather always diversify the source of opinions. But I will concede it’s a comfortable feature.

3rd party integrations for automatic trading and significant volume or price movements notifications will be possible. That means that, beyond the team’s own improvements of the protocol, the ecosystem of developers around it can enrich it with features and functionalities of their own design.

Crypto PvP

Traders can chose to be followed by other traders, thus gaining an audience. The audience can chose to follow a specific trader and even emulate their trades. Let’s say SuperTrader puts 5% of his balance on an ETH/OMG buy at a certain price. NoobTrader sees this and does the same. SuperTrader earns a fee when NoobTrader subscribes to him, and NoobTrader all of a sudden does pro traders. Good traders will be shown on leader-boards, which brings a whole new dynamic to trading. If you’re a gamer, then you understand that trading is PvP. In order for your trade to be successful, some other dudes take a loss. Might as well keep track of who’s fragging most. This can be an incentive for Twitter traders to prove they put their money where their mouth is, as they do get extra rewards from successfully trading with a following.

The negative aspect of this feature is that it’s scary-good for pumps & dumps, and also the legal aspect of it is interesting, to say the least. You always hear people say “I am not a financial advisor” because only registered financial advisors, with proper training, can offer financial advice. This is only in some countries, but those countries are for example The US, so not to be trifled with. My point is that traders being “followed” can be seen as financial advisors, in a certain context.

Midas as DAO

The Midas Protocol will be managed as a DAO, with new features implemented as the community prioritizes them. A Midas Foundation will also be created, with 10% of the Midas Protocol profits going to fund it. It will be managed as a DAO, where participants will chose interesting ICOs to boost with the available budget. Gives me “The DAO” goosebumps, but that was a good idea with a buggy the implementation, no reason why it shouldn’t be attempted again, with a multi million dollars lesson learnt.

Tokenomics & roadmap

The Midas token will be used to pay for subscription to the platform and to subscribe to traders, and will be rewarded to top 10 traders on the leaderboards, and for referral activities. The project sells 25% of the tokens for 18.000 ETH, 25% are kept for the team, 25% for operations, marketing, advisors and 25% will be awarded to pioneers for adoption. This means they raise ~$13mn for a ~$50mn valuation.

The roadmap starts in Q1 2018 and will have a beta launched in Q4 2018, with atomic cross-chain trading in Q2 2019. There is no product at the moment.

Team & advisors

The team members are all experienced and with ties to interesting organizations, such as the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. Much more interesting in the crypto space is their link to TomoChain – one of the co-founders of TOMO is also a co-founder of Midas. Further more, the CEO of TomoChain is an advisor, together with a co-founder of the Kyber network. Potential technical partnerships with Tomo and Kyber make sense for Midas to achieve its goals, so having some of the heads of those projects onboard can only help in this regard.

Midas Protocol also employs a number of Ambassadors, which makes for some interesting marketing. I personally know some of them to be well respected members of the crypto-community.

Conclusion

Overall, I like the Midas Protocol ICO. The idea and the team’s affiliation to TomoChain and Kyber are my main reasons.

But there are some things I dislike:

no product at the moment

long roadmap

weak token metrics

aggressive discounts

underhyped when considering team and advisors

However, I will take a leap of faith here, for a personal reason. I’ve been investing in ICOs since mid of last year, with my strategy being flip 80%, HODL 20%. I thought that was a good idea at the time, and I honestly don’t regret it. However, this has led to me holding +70 coins atm, with more to come from ICOs I am currently invested in. This is far more than I know what to do with or how to properly manage. I pray for a product that is Blockfolio + wallet for my cryptos + exchange for all of them + ability to implement my token strategy once, let it execute.

The Midas Protocol idea hits very close to home, has a very good team, advisors and also ambassadors I trust. I am also banking on a potential TomoChain and Kyber partnerships, because of the affiliation. Saw some news about Huobi visiting Midas office, which means really nothing, but in the irrational crypto space, it means a lot. With all of us hoping for a bull run soon, an influx of newbies will join crypto, and the Midas Protocol might be the go-to tool for them. I like the Midas Protocol ICO.

https://midasprotocol.io/