By Nikita Kosmin

The emergence of cryptocurrencies and colossal funds associated with the possibilities blockchain presented gave birth to a plethora of blockchain-related problems.

In the same way that before a plane takes off, there is turbulence, the stages before blockchain and crypto are implemented in our everyday lives are riddled with all manner of sin.

We at Revain like to see solutions where there are problems, but the fact is that if you’re not realistic and you haven’t searched heaven and hell for information on the project, you’re risking running into serious problems by trusting the wrong people and/or choosing the wrong places.

How We Can Help

Our recent improvements have been made specifically to make your experience as safe as possible.

“This a significant new pack of features on which we worked hard during this month. Today we also celebrate first 1000 reviews posted in the platform which gives as confidence in Revain’s market potential and future scale.” Revain CEO Rinat Arslanov.

Still, the three killer whales of the current world of ICO scammers are: choosing the wrong exchange, trusting the wrong person, and putting your funds into a scam ICO.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a legal framework (take a look at the freshly proposed Blockchain Act). Yet for now, we’ll take a look at what happens when you choose an ICO that has been specifically designed to make your spring strolls in the park easier and more enjoyable by making your wallet much lighter.

Whose Fault Is It?

You’ll be unpleasantly surprised to find out that according to the latest studies only 19% of ICOs are real.

No-one is naïve enough, of course, to fall for the likes of PonziCoin, but the users have been falling prey to many meticulously designed businesses whose sole purpose was to confuse and take advantage of the fact that a lot of buyers are badly educated and tend to jump to conclusions fast.

Satis Group are “dedicated to providing the best advice to founding teams, corporates, and funds on how to optimize ICO execution while navigating the increasingly complex legal and tax hurdles involved”.

You can find their fascinating site above, which is one of the few prime examples of how flawlessly you can build a company if you really know what you’re doing. Here is what their investigation found:

“ICOs have been the rage of the cryptocurrency world because they allow companies to raise money for various ventures by issuing cryptocurrency tokens that users could buy and later trade on cryptocurrency exchanges. The concept is similar to an IPO, but instead of shares, companies issue tokens, and some companies promised to buy tokens back from users after a product became successful and the token’s value increases.

The study’s results don’t bode well for people who’ve invested in one or more and are expecting profits sometime soon. The Satis study organized ICOs in six categories, based on their current status.

Only ICOs with a market cap of $50 million or higher have been included in the results, and the percentage of scammy ICOs would have probably been higher if researchers looked at the smaller ICOs. According to researchers, 81% of ICO’s were Scams, 6% were classified as Failed, 5% had Gone Dead, and 8% went on to trade on an exchange.”

What to Do?

So, what does this mean for users? For one we expect you to be more sophisticated than PonziCoin’s clients who forced the coin issuer to produce the following statement:

“We hope everyone had a good laugh :) But we have to shut down. This was a parody art performance/joke. I did not “run off” with the money, I never sold any of my PonziCoins, and the contract was drained from other users withdrawing. Please be careful when investing in shady cryptocurrencies, especially ones that look like pyramid schemes — it’s a zero-sum game and money doesn’t appear out of thin air.”

Additionally, when you’re looking at an ICO, you’re making one of the most important decisions in your life. Make sure you familiarize yourself with our research into signs of fake ICOs, read all the books you can find in the library (ok, maybe not The Library of Congress but your local library) on blockchain, and, most importantly, use our design which has been created to make sure you stay as safe as possible.

The latest features, like project and exchange rating, digital signature verification, and so on, are described in our latest release on Medium. Make sure you assess ICOs with extreme caution using intelligent means and mechanisms (the more the better, ideally all of them).

What It Looks Like in Practice

Let’s go through a few examples of using our platform for potential scam/non-scam content.

Track record:

NEO’s monthly chart looks like this:

Ouch! Looks like a tendency for depreciation, although in view of the recent Bitcoin-related events it stands to reason and actually tells you the firm is resilient and firm.

Still, if you can calculate a medium trajectory and it looks like there is a downward trend, there probably is. Look for long-term projections rather than weekly and daily graphs. A company’s track record is everything. Scam projects may have large start-off capitals initially, but they inevitably fail over time.

Funds:

Sorting projects by volume will also give you a fair idea of their sustainability. You can pretty much bet Google and Facebook will be on the rise just for the sheer amount of money they spend on staying on top and their stellar teams (more on that below).

The same goes for the biggest projects out there that really can take a lot of damage if anything happens. If you click on volume, you’ll see that Bitcoin, Tether, and Ethereum are the top 3 with Bitcoin rising in price 1,083,341,960% since Oct 05, 2009. Basically, everyone loves big companies, so choosing them is usually a good idea. And you’re probably very safe with that choice.

The Team:

We know we have said this a few times: take a look at the website and make sure the team is a good one. And the photos and dossiers must be on there. Are they all reputable people? The more developers, the better. Is the advisor the CEO’s nephew who flunked college? Not a good sign. Take a look at the team’s reputation by following the link to the company’s website. Ethereum has probably the best leadership around. How about it?

The Reviews

As you choose a project, the first thing to look at is the rating. It’s kind of a survival of the fittest thing: the better reviews a project has, the higher it goes. When you read the reviews, you will find out a lot of information you may not have even found if you tried. That’s one of the things that makes the thinking behind Revain so valuable: team effort moves mountains.

You’ll see good reviews like this one for Dent, which is definitely a good sign:

Pros:

DENT is one of the first projects that is focusing directly on the issue of mobile data, which I believe can be very profitable. The telecommunications market is very large and moves a lot of money worldwide and if they manage to keep a slice, they will have significant profits.

Cons:

Still the project has not taken off and we do not know for sure if they will be able to break into this market. As I said in the pro, the telecommunications market is very big. As well as they can obtain gains of this market, it is also possible that the market passes them over.

Summary:

DENT is a company that is growing and we expect some results. DENT’s goal seems bright to me, information and mobile data have given a lot of money to big companies, allowing people to have some money with that information seem very transparent to me. If the team works hard and does a good job, it will be a very successful project.

Reviews like “I love this company because it’s really good” obviously aren’t great. If an ICO has something to show for itself, it should be no problem writing a review about it.

The more good feedback from the community, the better the chances that your ICO is a good one. This is how it is all calculated, using the example of Stellar:

A combination of factors

Also, as you can see, the 20 reviews have given Stellar a reasonable overall rating. Stellar is number 5 on the list, and it has the same rating as NEO, which is higher up. Why? Because it has other characteristics like volume, price, and whether it’s on the rise or not.

Notice that there are projects whose overall score is higher, but they are not at the top like projects whose score is lower — because some parameters they have will outweigh their good rep. Sounds odd, but when you’re scam-filtering, what matters is a holistic approach. Great market cap taken out of a context is great, but it can’t be the only thing influencing your decision. Look at a combination of factors. And, of course, we have gathered the most significant ones for you on our website.

Other good news

As our platform is becoming more and more popular (you may have noticed we have crossed the 1000 review milestone), and our area of influence is spreading, we are noticing many users are giving their input on a non-commercial basis. This is great news!

Not only is the system working, the concept has been implemented and is having effect with no stimulation for our members other than their internal motivation. Stay tuned for more great news, and we will be sure to keep you updated. We’re always happy to see you back!