ICODrops Review: DOS Network (Eng)
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https://icodrops.com/
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Dos Network is an agnostic protocol that presents a decentralized oracle service to increase convenience using blockchain with the help of real data and computing power.
Timeframe:
The pre-sale will occur on Bitmax from 10:00 p.m. EST, Mar 10th (5:00 UTC+3 on March, 11), 2019 to 10:00 p.m. EST, Mar 12th, 2019 (5:00 UTC+3 on March, 13).
The Community Token Sale on BitMax will be the final round of sales. There are no additional ICO scheduled. ETH & BTMX are accepted. The personal hard cap is 20 thousand tokens (240 USD).
Metrics:
Ticker: DOS.
Token standard: ERC20 (it's planned to enable conversion to other networks' standards that will support the protocol).
Pre-sale (Bitmax Sale): 1,5% of total supply was sold at 0,012 USD.
Pre-sale hard cap is 15 million tokens (180.000 USD, ETH - 33%, BTMX - 66%).
50% of tokens will be unlocked at the time of listing on Bitmax, and the other 50% will be released in 3 months.
The listing is scheduled for March, 14.
Private round (closed): 14,5% of total supply was sold at 0,01 USD.
The private sale tokens will be vested by 0, 3, 6, 12 months from the date of the listing.
The private sale raised 1,5 million USD.
The team's and advisors' tokens are locked for nine months and will be vested after that for 24 months with a three months window.
The Foundation tokens will be locked for three months and vested after being unlocked.
The initial amount of tokens in circulation will be 4.375%, 525.000 USD.
The total supply of tokens is 1 billion.
Total valuation is 12 million USD.
Social metrics:
The website was created on February 5, 2018.
The official Twitter page was incepted in August 2018. It now has 135 followers. The first post was published on September 5, 2018. There are quite a few posts, but the team has been posting daily since the beginning of March.
The official English Telegram was initiated on September 10, 2018. Currently, there are 5726 users joined. The level of activity is high.
The Chinese Telegram channel was created on August 28, 2018, and now has an audience of 3056 users.
The first post on the official Medium page dates back to October 6, 2018. The total number of posts is 5. There are 17 people following.
There are 31 subscribers to the official Subreddit. At the time of review, there were no comments on 17 posts, 10 of which were published during the recent 11 days.
Key players:
The team:
Siyuan Hua is Cofounder, Engineering & Protocol at DOS Network. He has 500+ connections in LinkedIn. Siyan studied at Nanjing University of Science and Technology (China) from 2007 to 2011, and at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. from 2012 to 2013.
After his graduation in China, Siyan first worked for five months as a back-end Software Engineer at Baidu, and after he graduated in the USA, he spent two years at Amazon Lab 126 working on a low-level platform Kindle Fire for Linux & Android systems. Later on, he acted as Software Engineer at Google for three years, where he was working on display ads infrastructure and quality in Google Display Network (GDN) & DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) cross exchange DSP network. Siyan has been a part of DOS Network team from 2018.
Qi Wang is Co-Founder / Head of Operations / Software Developer at DOS Network. He has 500+ connections in LinkedIn. Qi studied at Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications (China) from 2007 to 2011, and then in the U.S. at Carnegie Mellon University from 2012 to 2013. He started his career path as a Technology Consultant Intern at the Chinese branch of Dell in 2010, where he spent three months. After he finished studies in the USA, Qi worked as a Software Developer & Tech Lead at Oracle (San Francisco, CA) for three years. From 2016 to 2018 he worked at Pure Storage (Mountain View, CA) that specializes in real-time data in the multi-cloud environment. Finally, Qi joined DOS Network in 2008.
Eric Nien is a Staff Software Engineer/Tech Lead at DOS Network. He has 130+ connections in LinkedIn. Eric studied at the National Cheng Kung University from 2005 to 2007 and then worked at Quanta Computer Inc (Taiwan) as a Senior Software Development Engineer from 2008. He then joined Amazon Lab126 in the U.S. as a Senior Software Development Engineer (5 years and 11 months). Eric has been working on DOS Network from 2018.
Vipul Goyal is mentioned as a Chief Cryptographer on the official website. He has 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. However, his profile doesn't indicate any relation to DOS Network. Vipul is an associate professor of cryptography at Carnegie Mellon University. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California in Los Angeles.
Xinrui Wu is a Senior Software Engineer at DOS Network. He has 230+ connections in LinkedIn. Xinrui studied at Zhejiang University (China) from 2007 to 2011, and then at Northwestern University from 2015 to 2016. He doesn't have any experience, except for working in DOS Network from 2018.
Lihui Wang is a Blockchain Engineer (at U Network?). He has 71 contacts in LinkedIn. Lihui worked at U Network from January 2018 to October 2018, and then joined DOS Network. It's odd that he hasn't updated personal data in his LinkedIn profile.
Hongnan Liu is a Blockchain Engineer at DOS Network. He has 78 contacts in LinkedIn. Hongnan is a former blockchain engineer at JD Financial, where he spent five months (China).
Xiaohu Sun is Operations & Business Development Manager at DOS Network. He has 23 contacts in LinkedIn. Along with Lihui Wang, he is also a former member of U Network team, and there is nothing notable about his work experience.
Yijie Weng is a Business Analyst at DOS Network. She has 474 contacts in LinkedIn. Yijie hasn't any exceptional experience, and she worked in various companies for periods of 3-5 months.
Amber Wu is an Operations & Digital Media Manager. She has 3 contacts in LinkedIn. Amber worked in some of Asia-based companies as an intern for periods of 3-5 months.
Yijing Lin is a Blockchain Engineer Intern. She has no LinkedIn profile.
Advisors:
Yi Tang is a blockchain entrepreneur and investor. He has 500+ connections in LinkedIn. Yi has an MBA from Columbia University, a Masters in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech University, and a Bachelor degree from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. He worked at PwC (USA), providing cyber security advisory services for one year. Later on, he acted as a manager at EY (USA) of cybersecurity advisory services for three years.
He was working at Qiming Venture Partners on cybersecurity, blockchain and information technology from 2015 to 2016. Qiming Venture Partners is a leading China venture capital firm managing five US Dollar funds and three RMB funds with $2.7 billion assets under management.
Yi acted as China Lead at ConsenSys (a venture production studio building decentralized applications and various developer and end-user tools for blockchain ecosystems, primarily focused on Ethereum).
He has been CoFounder of Lab C, a venture studio that incubates and serves top-notch blockchain projects, from 2018.
Nathan Li is a founder of Chi Capital, a Singapore-based crypto fund. He has 500+ contacts in LinkedIn. He is also mentioned as a Director & Partner at FBG Capital from January 2017 until now.
Partners:
There are no partners mentioned on the website. However, Bitmax exchange can be considered as one for token sales.
Additionally, ThunderCore (a blockchain developed by academics from Cornell University) worth noting as a partner (oracle development).
Технологии и идея:
Whitepaper:
One of the obstacles for smart-contracts functioning in many use cases is the absence of means for trustless delivery of reliable and complete data to them (e.g., current asset's price). The current solutions present potential vulnerabilities, which can prevent smart-contract functionality following the real data.
The protocol will be blockchain agnostic, meaning that it will be compatible with various networks. The Whitepaper mentions Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Zilliqa, and ThunderCore as examples.
The protocol is comprised of two parts:
1. On-chain.
2. Off-chain.
Let's take a look at the on-chain domain. It's a smart-contract that requests external data, verification of received data, the protocol's status in real-time (random source, number of validators, etc.), a system for validator registration (random), a payment system and a protocol governance system.
All of the components mentioned are modular, meaning that updates to the smart-contract are possible via protocol governance.
Unlike ChainLink (where oracles reach consensus via multi-round voting on the Ethereum blockchain), all the main calculations happen off-chain. A random VDF function is used to determine the groups, and a threshold signature is utilized to reach the consensus (reaching the minimum limit of equal values in a determined group).
In addition to that, off-chain calculations with the availability of checking results with zkp are planned to be added in the future.
Tokenomics:
The project has a typical PoS economy. The token acts as a crucial element for ensuring the network's security, as it ought to be used for staking by validators.
An implementation of a governance protocol is planned. Users that stake tokens will be able to influence module parts of the onchain environment. For instance, the default use case for DOS token will be means of payment to data providers, but because initially high volatility is expected, optional use of a stablecoin (like DAI) or ETH will be possible to hedge the validators' risks.
It's worth noting that 10% of all the fees will be collected in a reserve fund for payments to network participants in case of a sudden surge in network fees (this mechanism is not 100% clear, and there are several questions about distribution and conversion).
Roadmap:
MVP:
At the event of this review, the alpha-version of the testnet is launched in Ethereum Rinkeby network. It allows users to try the essential functions of the product.
There are eight repos in the project's Github. Three of them are forks. The significant activity happens in a single repo (480 commits, 7 contributors). The development is ongoing from May 2018.
The primary repo (the protocol's client) activity:
Activity in the smart-contract of the Ethereum blockchain:
Competition:
Chainlink (valued at 465 million USD);
Augur (valued at 142 million USD);
Gnosis (valued at 128 million USD).
Summary:
The project has been out there since autumn 2018. The problem that the developers are trying to solve is fundamental to the development of the entire industry of smart-contracts. Additionally, the protocol strives to address the issue of off-chain calculations.
Strengths:
- Unlike ChainLink, the protocol is blockchain-agnostic.
- A small number of tokens in the initial circulations and high upside potential, compared to the competition.
- The project will be pilot on Bitmax 'Launchpad'. We can expect a higher price at the launch, as the exchange will want to attract new users and improve its reputation.
Weaknesses:
- The project has been somewhat idle for five months and only since the recent month there has been active engagement with the community.
- The proposed token allocation creates a high risk of centralization, which may result in security vulnerability for the protocol.
- The project's realization raises additional questions, as several well-experienced teams are working on solving similar issues, and Ethereum's community highly supports them.