Trading is a very old concept which dates back to 150,000 years ago. Prehistoric people bartered goods and services from each other in order to complete the earliest semblances of transaction. Continuing on, more expensive goods like jewelry started being exchanged in 3000 BC. Nowadays, we are trading completely virtually. Our early ancestors paved the way in the act of selling goods to make a profit and live a better life. But, this living style was only reserved for the successful traders. What about having the possibility to trade by mirroring the acts of successful tradesmen?
This article illustrates the vision and ideas behind CoinDash as well as provides a summary of the latest events surrounding it.
Idea
CoinDash consists of three layers and is built on the Ethereum platform. The team behind CoinDash has the vision to create a multi-functional platform with tools for managing your portfolio and trading on the marketplace.
Layer 1: Portfolio Management Tools
How have you been managing your crypto-portfolio? I bet you were spending loads of time on updating an ordinary Excel sheet. Maybe you were a bit more lucky and added functionality to automatically update assets’ prices. CoinDash provides a dynamic platform which helps you to manage your portfolio with less effort.
The platform requires the public keys of the exchanges you use. CoinDash will automatically track all past transactions and will allow you to easily monitor all assets in one dashboard. Beside that, an algorithm is used to calculate the price volatility of each asset you own. A final risk score will be entitled to your portfolio.
Layer 2: Social Trading
Social trading is a term used for a person who copies the transactions of another trader, usually more experienced/successful. Do you already know the feeling of seeing a pump announcement on Twitter 10 minutes after the actual pump? It sucks! CoinDash takes social trading to a next level. Like it’s big brother Etoro (active on forex market), CoinDash allows successful traders to trade with your money via social trading.
Each trader is rated based upon his relative profit, risk score (layer 1) and the assets he trades. This allows inexperienced traders to gain experience and some nice revenue whereas experienced users share their trades and get a small piece of the revenue of each follower.
Layer 3: Marketplace
CoinDash’s ultimate goal is to gather sufficient data and to become a whole marketplace. They want to integrate the execution of trades on secondary markets and make it easier to find and evaluate new projects.
In my opinion, layer three is very ambiguously described. Is it even possible to become a whole marketplace? A monopoly is absolutely out of the question. Besides that, layer one doesn’t exactly bring an innovative idea to the table. Take a look at the mobile application Blockfolio. This app has the same functionality that CoinDash wants to accomplish. The platform would benefit from a combination between Blockfolio portfolio management and the technical analysis tools from coinigy.com. In brief, the offered functionality isn’t new, but the combination can be.
ICO
CoinDash already has a working project, but the project needs funds to accomplish the full roadmap which the team has in mind. The ICO started on the 17th of July and has a goal to raise 12 million dollars. In my opinion, it is a good idea to use a hard cap. It is unnecessary to raise more funds than needed.
Fifty percent of the tokens will be sold in the token sale as CoinDash Tokens (CDT). The tokens can be used to view, follow, or copy experienced traders portfolios and investment strategies. Traders can also earn CDT by sharing their portfolio and knowledge.
Website Hacked
The day before the start of the ICO, CoinDash removed all Slack channels within their community and made only the announcement channel visible (but locked). These actions raised my attention at first. The second alarming event that happened is the Coindash website which got hacked when the intruder(s) changed the Ethereum address to a malicious one. As a result, more than 2,000 investors sent ETH to the malicious address. The stolen ETH amounted to a total of 37,000 ETH ($7 million).
CoinDash launched an internet forensic investigation to determine who was behind the hack. To speed up the process, they are cooperating with law enforcement agencies. Investors who sent money to the fraudulent address, will be credited with the correct amount of CoinDash tokens (CDT). At the moment, CoinDash is doing its best to collect a list of investors who have lost funds.
What’s next? CoinDash will continue its roadmap because the product they are developing is still in high demand. The latest events have raised some questions about their security to say the least. I would be a prudent for the Coindash team on-board a security expert.
A similar event occurred last year where $50 million was stolen from a project called The DAO. These kind of events have drawn the attention to improving the security of ICOs. As ICOs become mainstream, this is a big issue which has to be taken care of. These kind of attacks will occur more often and are proof of the lack of diligence behind some ICO projects. To add a sprinkle of sarcasm to the article, Blockchains can’t be hacked, websites can…
Vision and roadmap
The first item on the roadmap is the functionality to copy ICO investments, not trades. People will be able to imitate the portfolios successful ICO specialists who are able to pick the profitable ICOs among the many bad eggs. This is a huge step forward meaning you will have more time make trades instead of spending all your time on researching new ICOs. It is nearly impossible to do thorough research on each new ICO.
Their key functionality to copy trades will be ready in Q2-Q3 of 2018. It will make use of smart contracts to designate a certain amount of funds to a successful trader. Whenever the trader participates in a trade or ICO, the same percentage of funds will be transferred from the smart contract to copy it.
There is a strong tendency towards volatility in crypto at the time, is this detrimental? “Volatility is something we all have to live with in the sphere and probably one of the main things that attracted us here. Although now it is extreme, the market was always volatile and this is something we know how to live with. Being a project for the long term we do not give this situation extra thoughts”, according to Ram Avissar, CMO at CoinDash.
Future vision? “We are aiming big. We already have a working product and we want it to be the common way of managing your portfolio. Assuming that within 5 years our community will be greater by millions, we see a lot of room to grow.”
Team
Alan and Adam, co-founders of CoinDash, are long-time friends. They always had the dream to create a project within the crypto-sphere. Adam met Alan in an Ethereum meetup where he explained the idea to create an Etoro-like platform for crypto. The project was born! Not to mention, Adam set up the office for CoinDash in Shanghai.
The Bottom Line
It is never easy to attract a big crowd to a new platform. However, CoinDash has the advantage that it makes crypto trading much easier for inexperienced users. They have a strong team, but maybe lack some security knowledge. Like mentioned earlier, a Blockchain can’t be hacked, but the web-interface which gives access to the Blockchain, is very vulnerable. I hope the project recovers from the hack and will be able to continue its roadmap. Personally, I’m a fan of CoinDash and would like to see this being implemented on a volatile crypto-market. The project has the potential to become a success like it’s big brother Etoro, however I would like to see the implementation of technical analysis tools in combination with the portfolio management.
To end this article, do your own research before investing in the project. Some Reddit users mention that CoinDash is a well-planned scam…
@Source Image: Bitcointalk.org Announcement Thread