https://metadium.com/
https://icodrops.com/
https://t.me/IcoDropsReport - ICO reviews channel
https://twitter.com/ICODrops - Twitter
https://t.me/joinchat/FoisO0k4-XXBkPEikfdgow - English chat
Executive summary:
This is blockchain protocol aimed towards digitising real world into online. The main purpose of Metadium is providing a solution for real word identification problem.
Timeframe and metrics:
Total Token Supply: 2,000,000,000
Private sale for early investors: 50% of tokens for 38 000 ETH
Crowdsale: 2,5% of tokens. Early September.
«The team's tokens will be locked for a period of time. There is high chance that there will be no lock up period for all the investors» - direct quote from one of the project's advisors.
Social activity:
Website lifetime: 03.01.2018
Twitter: account was created in February, 2018, 1021 subscribers. Healthy activity is happening only since July.
Telegram: group was created on the 11th of March and made public on the 5th of June. 12000 subscribers, low activity.
Medium: 12 articles, 132 subscribers. Articles are being published since June.
Key players:
The team:
All members are from South Korea. The main distinguishing feature of the team is that everybody besides CEO are former employees of the Coinplug project, which provides brokerage services for buying/selling cryptocurrencies in Korea, custody services, ATM and POS supply. They work since 2013 and have 2k visitors daily, 500 of which are unique, 32 via link. Slider on the web-site is not functional and it does not look professional. On their website Coinplug feature Vitalik Buterin as their technical advisor.
Besides working in Coinplug, the team's members were working in Cisco, Samsung and Hyundai.
CEO has proven skills in mobile games, online games and business strategy. He was working in Smilaget for 4 years, game development company owning CrossFire - top online shooter with 6 millions of players. Last year he was working as senior manager in an investment company.
Justin Park – CEO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-park-3176403a/ - 490 contacts
Employment history: semiconductor, computer games and VC industry. Experience in BD, mobile and online games, business strategies and investments. Professional in business and VC, graduated from SUNY Binghamton (USA).
Ryan Uhr – Co-founder
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-uhr-16a39339/ - 500+ contacts
Ryan has 13 years of experience as chief engineer in Hyundai Electronix. Founder of the Coinplug (Coinplug was founded by engineers from the Silicon Valley and Korea. Coinplug is offering various platforms for Bitcoin exchanging, like Bitcoin exchange market, digital wallet and online POS service. These platforms will become the most perspective for conducting online payments in the mobile environment. These platforms of the Coinplug were first deployed for Korean users in order to allow direct transactions between clients and merchants without complications and fees. Coinplug has applications for different Bitcoin services. Coinplug offers API-interfaces for their Bitcoin services, so anyone can use API for creation of the innovation services and promotion of the Bitcoin Ecosystem. https://www.coinplug.com/) from 2013.
He got bachelor's degree in Korea University in 'Electrotechnics, electronics and communications'.
Richard Yun – Co-founder & COO
Got his bachelor's in Berkeley.
Richard is COO of Сoinplug (please see above).
Richard has expertise in financial modelling, strategic financial planning and venture investing.
4 years and 6 months acted as financial analytic of Сisco (American transnational corporation developing and distributing network equipment designed mainly for large organisations and telecom companies. One of the world's largest high-tech companies. Initially was dealing exclusively with corporate routers.) and worked in Conaxtech (small entity) for almost 5 years.
Jeffrey Song – CTO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-joo-han-song-35a9689a/ - 134 contacts
Worked in Samsung Electronics for 2 years. After that 3 years as CSO in Coinplug and then in Metadium.
Got his PhD in Philosophy (Computer Science) in The University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Aiden Ha – director of business development
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aiden-ha-207984167/ 2 contacts
Graduated from Seoul National University in 2010.
Founded Freindeli (a company in Malaysia with an unclear focus) and worked with СЕО in Smilegate SEA (Malaysia) for 2 years.
Aiden works in Metadium since Julu, 2018.
Jessica Jumin Lee – product manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-jumin-lee-hi/ - 25 contacts
Also comes from Coinplug, development manager from May, 2016.
Graduated from Korea University in 'Las and Administration' in 2016.
Viktoria Shangina – graphic designer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-shangina/ - 122 contacts
Graduated from Baikal State University in 2014 and Seoul National University in 2017. Worked for 2 month in Coinplug and for the same amount of time in Metadium.
Natalie Lim – finance specialist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-nayeon-lim-64001012a/ - 140 contact
Studied in Spain (student exchange) and Korea, got bachelor's degree in 2013.
Natalie worked for 4 years as investment consultant in KDB Daewoo Securities (291 employees), with prior internship. After that she was trader of trading derivatives at Mirae Asset Daewoo and from 2018 switched to Coinplug and Metadium simultaneously.
Young Kim – strategic planning manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/2youngkim/?locale=en_US – 31 contacts
Acts as strategic planning manager in Coinplug since 2017.
Graduated from a Korean University with a degree in 'Political science and international relations' in 2017.
Calvin Park – business development
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sungjun-calvin-park-a8a753b8/ - 35 contacts
Graduated from Yonsei University, Seoul in 2015. Worked in RGP Korea (internet-technologies) for 1 year and 5 months. Performed strategic analysis and sales planning.
Joined Metadium in April, 2018.
Jun Byeon – business development
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jun-byeon/ - 157 contacts
Jun was intern in Google Korea and studied at University of Texas.
He worked in police department of Cheongju International Airport (prevention and surpression of various criminal activities for protection of public order and security. Maintenance of security through counter-terrorist routines.)
Joined Coinplug and Metadium in April 2017.
Songy Lee – communications guru
https://www.linkedin.com/in/songyilee/ 500+ contacts
Worked as a marketer. Co-founded 37coins (company in California, providing money transferring services for customers without access to the internet) in 2013, founded Zenterpreneus (raising awareness for entrepreneurs and enterprises to increase productivity and quality of life through teaching people about modern consciousness) in 2015. Acts as a councelor in Metadium since March, 2018.
Studied in Korea and 1 year in Germany. Learned English in The University of Texas for 1 year.
Genie Bang – blockchain developer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigenie/ - 4 contacts, profile is created recently. It states that he is a smart-contract developer and Solidity Hyperledger, Fabric Hyperledger, Fabric composer, Dapp developer with knowledge of c++, node.js, go, python, iOS-objectc&swift.
Joined Coinplug in January 2017.
There is no more information available.
Additionally, there are 4 more developers in the team with recently created profiles holding very few information and no contacts:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mansud/ Mansud Jwon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yongwook-shin/ Eric Shin
https://github.com/hexoul Seunggon Kim
https://github.com/ariathink Benjamin Han
Advisors:
Bo Shen – founder and managing partner of Fenbushi (famous and quite successful investment crypto fund)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/boshen1011/ 500+ contacts
Roger Ver – CEO of Bitcoin.com. One of the first of Bitcoin investors.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerver/ 500+ contacts
Jack C.Liu – strategic director of crypto exchanges Kraken, OkCoin, OKEx (acted as co-founder).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcliu/ 500+ contacts
Vincent Zhou – partner – founder of FBG Capital since 2017
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuojizhou/ 500+ contacts
Renqi Shen - director of IT at BlockAsset http://blockasset.ventures/ (investment crypto fund, partner of Fenbushi, Bo Shen is head of BlockAsset), a member of Fenbushi Capital investment team.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/renqishen/ 500+ contacts
Kyungmo Kim – has experience in venture investments in high-tech startups in China and Korea since 2011 (Mirae Asset Venture Investment)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyungmo-kim-0b23626/ 171 contacts
Yiseul Cho – venture partner at FBG Capital. Was advisor at ICON, Nucleus Vision, Waves, Mediblock and PolicyPal
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yiseulcho/ 500+ contacts
Brian Lio – CEO at Smith + Crown since 2015 (20 employees, 346 followers), company providing crypto financing services, which is exploring potential possibilities of cryptocurrencies, crypto financing technologies and technologies, based on blockchain, using instruments, data, analysis and research. Mentioned 4 times in Forbes (though all of them in 2017).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlio/ - 500+ contacts
Matt Chwierut - director of research at Smith + Crown since 2016 (20 employees, 346 followers), company providing crypto financing services, which is exploring potential possibilities of cryptocurrencies, crypto financing technologies and technologies, based on blockchain, using instruments, data, analysis and research. Mentioned 4 times in Forbes (though all of them in 2017).
Got his bachelor's degree at Stanford and master's degree at Berkeley.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattchwierut/ - 500+ contacts
Darius Rugevicius – founder and managing partner at Connect Capital (crypto fund http://connect.capital ), former partner at Prime Block Capital
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariusrugevicius/ 1237 people following
The project has top tier advisors, representing famous investment companies along with former advisors of pretty successful investment projects.
Partners:
Mentioning them as 'partners' and not 'investors' is suspicious. However, there is non-confirmed information that investments were made.
There are a lot of investors and they all are connected to crypto.
3 angel/VC firms:
- 500 startups
-JD Capital (also invested in Ankr network)
-Preangel Fund (Chines, invested in Origin protocol and Lendchain).
There are some well-known funds with a number of projects in their portfolio:
-FBG Capital
-Kenetic
-Hashed
-Block asset ventures (Dfinity, Polkadot, Kyber network, Gifto, Quanstamp, Enigma, Nucleus, Vechain, etc.)
-Blocktower capital (New York, invested in Trust token, Libra credit, Origin protocol)
-Connect Capital (Amsterdam, invested in Aergo, Perlin, NEX, Blockcollider, Arweave, Mainframe, Iotex, Icon, etc.)
-Arrington XRP Capital (Aergo, Reserve, Perlin, CarryCertik, Origo NKN, Mainframe, etc.)
-GBIC (New York, invested in Aergo, Perlin, Origo, Libra credit, Eximchain, Iotex, Nebulas, Icon, Airswap, etc.)
And some with private or small portfolio:
-Blue Block (Airblock, Sentinel, Loom, HybridBlock, Deepbrain chain, etc.)
-Chain Rock
-BlockCrafters (DAV, Fantom, Cosmochain, etc.)
-Fission capital (EOT, EON Protocol, Lend chain)
Also two nonames:
-Blockchain investment club
-LD capital
Metadium is cooperating on technical development with Coinplug Inc (https://www.coinplug.com) - provides brokerage services for buying/selling cryptocurrencies in Korea, custody services, ATM and POS supply. These platforms were first deployed for Korean users in order to allow direct transactions between clients and merchants without complications and fees.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/coinplug-inc-/?originalSubdomain=ru
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coinplug
The company was funded in 2013. Headquarters are located in Silicon Valley and South Korea. They have 34 staff members and 144 followers in LinkedIn.
Please note that Vitalik Buterin is company's technical advisor!
The company is managed by former workers of Hyundai Electronics R&D, Samsung Electronics R&D, who got their education at such prestigious universities as Korea University and Berkeley.
Technologies and idea:
Metadium is in tight cooperation with Coinplug Inc and is using their patents:
Whitepaper:
Online sphere is fast-paced and ID will be always required. There's no way to arrange constant face-to-face interaction in online environment and identity cannot be verified just by a pasport's scan. Metadium is striving to solve this issue.
There are 3 complications, connected to ID, which support data about leakage of identification information in large companies:
1 – Theft of documents and their malicious use;
2 – Requirement for creation of new user accounts/passwords for new registrations;
3 – Need for storing password data.
What is Metadium:
Metadium – is a blockchain protocol for acquiring authentic and regulatory compliant identification records. Metadium is designed in a way to support off-chain and cross-chain ID verification. It also supports oracles.
Metadium is scalable, efficient and expandable. Scalability is achieved by separated process of generation and transaction of blocks with use of Proof of Authority consensus. Efficiency is achieved by immediate creation of blocks, creation of bigger blocks and larger transactions. Expandability is a revolutionary feature of Metadium. DApps on Metadium and other blockchains can be used in Metadium ecosystem, including off-chain services. In addition to that Metadium is customisable for creation of the individual smart contracts. It's necessary to point out that ID is mentioned in the context of not only people, but also devices, content and organisations.
Architecture:
Metadium is using modified consensus algorithm RAFT with POA. Lower level of Metadium architecture is based on 2 pillars: community pillar with votes of community's representatives; block producers' pillar, which were provided with such rights. Higher level of the architecture is represented with Metadium tokens, which act as fuel for the whole ecosystem.
Main features:
- Modified consensus algorithm RAFT with Proof of Authority;
- Oracles and cross-chain are planned;
- Protocol is based on 'trustless trust' system - free and effortless identity management using Public Key Infrastrucure;
- Public Key Infrastrucure - enables people safely provide their virtual identifications and maintain ownership for them along with deciding how, where and with whom to share them via Metadium, corporations and private persons;
- Data ownership and self-sovereign identity - users will be able to claim rights for ownership and usage of their personal data whenever they decide to use them. This will ensure that no third party or supplier will have access to such data without permission. Self-sovereign identity ecosystem of Metadium enables to keep their pseudonymity while checking ownership and permissions. Every person or user will be able to transfer their preferences or corelations between multiple digital identificators;
- Regulations – Metadium allows blockchains to be regulated, while not compromising their spirit of pseudonymity and trusted relations;
- Identity of things;
- Attestation and verification – Metadium supports processes of attestation and verification for creation of holistic identity.
Economics:
ERC-20 with transferring to own network in future. Main purpose - means of identity transfer, players within Metadium blockchain can spend META tokens for use of identification services, specifically when they want to create or updated data in their profiles. In their turn, other players, attestation agencies, will be validating this data and earn tokens for this. One more set of players - suppliers, who will be requiring identification, rewarding users for using identity data.
Attestation agencies will be validating participants' data and earn tokens for this. Attestation agency is a bridge to the network. Services providers are network players, who request IDs of users. Providers will be paying tokens to network participants for using their data. Payment's size depends on type of data. Attestation agencies can also use tokens for partnerships and marketing, e.g. for buying ads in dApps.
Whitepaper was created for unsophisticated investors: similar theses appear in various sections, generalized examples without concrete examples, etc. Similar paper of The Key was a lot more detailed.
MVP: Q3 2018 – blockchain prototype, launching 1.0.
Github: https://github.com/METADIUM/go-metadium
Fork go-ethereum
Similar projects:
There are no projects with similar concept of blockchain+identity currently available on the market. Currently Sovrin, which is also about blockchain+identity is undergoing the ICO.
There are several projects focused on identity, but without own blockchain, such as SelfKey, TheKey and Civic.
Summary:
In a sense this project looks like Ontology: solves similar problem, builds its own blockchain, strong support from funds, the experienced team and top tier advisors.
The project's focus is not fresh, but Metadium is one of the first to present such level of approach. They have significant support from famous venture funds. Besides, Metadium is developed by specialists from Coinplug Inc – quite respected company in blockchain field that has various patents. High level of project's investors can be also pointed out. Tight roadmap and soon testnet launch are also worth mentioning.
Drawbacks: weak Whitepaper, which was surprising.
Rating: the project looks strong and has a positive interest level potential.