Hot or Cold: PowerAgent ICO

My previous blog post marked the launch of my new blog series “Hot or Cold — An ICO Review” which featured Wemark — a blockchain-based marketplace for digital content, which you can find here. As a follow-up, I will be discussing the PowerAgent ICO which will be launching on the 1st of June.

Hot or Cold?

Value Proposition

PowerAgent is a digital contract platform for creating, managing, tracking and protecting professional athlete contracts. The platform allows users with zero knowledge of smart contract programming to create an enforceable digital agreement.

It links all parties involved in the athlete contract negotiation and agreement, between the sporting club to the athletes, and registers the entire contract process, from deployment to payment, displaying it in an at-a-glance, user-friendly interface, and guaranteeing autonomous payments when all contractual agreements have been met.

PowerAgent is a blockchain powered platform geared towards sports clubs, athletes and managers. It will offer a variety of smart contract templates, as well as, enable users of the platform to create their own templates, which they can sell on the marketplace. Examples of such templates could be professional services contracts, endorsement contracts, appearance contracts and many more. In essence, PowerAgent will empower all parties to create, manage, track and complete an agreement which will have a “legally binding contractual effect” (more on this later).

PowerAgent will be built on a “private permissioned Hyperledger blockchain”, however, details on why they decided to take this route are unknown_._

Users of the platform will receive a digital profile upon registration. These profiles will have to be Know Your Customer (KYC) verified by a PowerAgent partner. According to PowerAgent “a verified digital platform will be evidence that clubs are able to do business in the real world” (more on this later).

Unfortunately, I can’t get a deeper understanding of the project as their whitepaper is not available yet; less than a month away from their ICO. As it stands, there are a few issues at hand:

• Although their website states that smart contracts are legally binding, this is a grey area in which research is still on-going. Although this might be the case in the future, Clifford Chance (one of the ten largest law firms in the world) argues that “no smart contract solutions have yet significantly displaced traditional ways of contracting, but that is bound to change. The technological and legal hurdles to implementing a fully-fledged, mature smart chain solution remain daunting”. You can find more information about the matter, here.
• Introducing a PowerAgent partner that will carry out the KYC checks, makes the platform centralized. There is no guarantee that the PowerAgent partner carrying out these checks is impartial or fully transparent which could lead to athletes or sport clubs being incorrectly barred from the platform.
• Their website talks only about the financial aspects of the smart contract; there is no mention on how the finer details of the smart contract will be held.

It’s unfortunate that there are a few question marks lingering, as this is an industry that could certainly do with a face-lift using the blockchain and cryptocurrencies —a gap PowerAgent has identified.

PowerAgent Token & ICO Overview

Below you can find a graphic providing details about the ICO and some information about the PowerAgent Token. Terminologies on what an ICO is, what the total supply is, etc. can be found in my previous blog post, which you can find here.

The token breakdown looks fairly standard, however, there is a big lingering question which I haven’t found an answer for… Why do they have/need a hard cap of $39,000,000?

Token Use

Any participant who would want to use digital verification, smart contracts, cryptocurrency enterprise services and the arbitrage system, they would need to acquire POWA tokens and use them on the platform. The POWA token will also be a means for payment exchange within the network and will be favoured due to it not having any transaction fees, when used within the platform.

In essence, the PowerAgent Token (POWA) provides access to the platform’s services, including, digital verification, creation of smart contracts, enterprise services, etc. In addition, it will be used as a currency for participants to transact with “and will be favored due to it not having any transaction fees”.

Team & Advisors

Unfortunately, there are no details about the team and/or advisors on their website. The only thing I could find, is that PowerAgent seems to be based in London according to their LinkedIn profile.

In my opinion, this is a huge red flag. It would be understandable if the team and/or advisors remained anonymous if they were building a privacy coin but, in this case, PowerAgent is not building a privacy coin and therefore there is no excuse not to disclose their team and advisors.

Partnerships & Investors

I would firstly like to point out that having partnerships or existing investors does not necessarily make or break an ICO. There have been numerous ICOs that have not had any partnerships and/or investors that have produced exceptional results. Being backed by Venture Capitalists (VC) indicates potential for rapid and profitable growth.

Having that in mind, PowerAgent doesn’t seem to have any partnerships or existing investors.

Verdict — Hot or Cold?

PowerAgent has identified a gap in the market which could definitely be revolutionized by the introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. However, taking into consideration all points above, in my opinion, PowerAgent has a significant number of red flags to make this a worthy (and safe) investment.

I would classify PowerAgent:

Cold

PowerAgent’s ICO goes live on the 1st of June— For more information and participation details, follow the link here.

Drop me a comment or message with ICOs you want to see in “Hot or Cold” next!

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