BlockBits

team need more top advisors who successfully conduct many ICOs and lead them to the path of success

Awesome team with a huge application in the cryptospace.

1. Love the project vision
2. Nice escrow-like feature designed into the Platform
3. A relatively small group of Telegram followers at this moment and the team may wish to identify suitable external marketing team to help out and subsequently rope in channel managers to cover different countries (eg. Korean, Japan, China, EU & US)
4. BlockBits Telegram channel: https://t.me/blockbits
5. Very ambitious project and I'm not sure at this moment if the team can deliver.
6. Best wishes for your ICO

I've posted some questions for the team in the Telegram group and may adjust the ratings depending on the answers.

My list of questions were:
Q1: Hope to have a preview of the some Blockbits related smart contracts
Q2: Under WP '3.1 Description', for "Platform testable risk indicators", what are the these indicators?
Q3: Under WP '3.2.4 Direct Funding Payments', who is the 'vault's owner'
Q4: Can the ICO participants view the content of the vault?
Q5: Under WP '3.2.14 Fully open source', for the github repository, to confirm if it will be privately shared our public
Q6: Under WP '4.1 Phase 1 - Proof of Concept', it's dated 'June 2017 - January 2018' with many deliverables. Woud like to have a glimpse of those deliverables (except the last 3 items)
Q7: When do you plan to hold the AMA session?
Q8: Would be visually helpful if you could indicate the estimated YYYYMM for 'Development Milestone 1' to 'Development Milestone 7': Doable?
Q9: There seems to be no one within the core team that have experience in the evaluation of companies for equity investments (eg. angel investment background)?
Q10: Who within the team will be coding the smart contracts, or is it external at this moment.

Responses (within 20mins of posting their Telegram channel) from Micky Socaci:
A1 - https://github.com/blockbitsio/smart-contracts
A2 - detailed in our documentation at https://docs.blockbits.io/project_risk/
A3 - The investor is always the vault owner, each investor gets one, no matter which funding method do they choose ( direct or milestone )
A4 - Yes all vaults are public, and a contributor can choose to validate their own vault on etherscan using ( https://github.com/blockbitsio/smart-contracts/blob/master/build-merger/FundingVault.sol ), since all of them are created by the FundingManager ( which is the contract factory, all must be the same )
A5 - https://github.com/blockbitsio/ project contains the 2 repos ( source code and documentation ) where everything we have is in source format, which includes diagrams / code / tests / forks of support projects like truffle and solc-binary, coverage tests and results, just about anything we could see as useful to anyone wanting to contribute to our project.
A6 - everything in this list is available ( except the mobile application which we are currently redesigning for better usability )( https://docs.blockbits.io/ page has urls pointing to these )
A7 - We are available for interviews any time, and for AMA sessions we are currently waiting for the community to grow larger for it to even make sense ( anyone can come and ask anything they need information about here )
A8 - the milestones are specifically estimated in days and not dates, because any can be postponed if issues arise ( postponing can only be accomplished through a proposal accepted by investors ), a more detailed roadmap for our project you can find it here https://docs.blockbits.io/bbt_roadmap/
A9 - The team is composed of co founders that have been in the software scene for 15-20 years, helping other companies achieve their goals. Some of us own small businesses and have come together to create a product that will help this space evolve into a safer market for both investors and projects.
A10 - part A of the smart contracts is already written ( upgradeable architecture, funding, milestones, voting, independent organization, code upgrades ), they're used for the actual funding of this project, and have been written mostly by me ( Micky Socaci ) with help from @Lynceus and Mihai ( @DoomBike ), as well as audited by the community.

My original score for Blockbits here was T3 V5 P3 and after receiving the prompt responses, it is now T4 V5 P5.

PS: Micky is clearly devoted to this project and with sufficient funding via this ICO campaign, I believe that he will be able to expand his team further to deliver this outstanding product.

Idea is good and the milestone and ability to accept progress is very good concept, but I think can have mixed response. Contributors may like it, founders will not so may hinder projects coming to the platform. Woudl be good if all founders accepted this , but of course unlkely. Like the full roadmap , but think that the timeline is quite long if significant funding recieved and may be beat to the market by others at this pace. I woudl look to accelerate this. Overall , I like it

Innovative idea of giving control to investors in ICO investment and releasing fund on reaching milestone. Need to add few more advisors from Finance and VC background.

Absolutely great idea. Get some proper transparency into the current ICO scene.
Vision deserves a big 5.

Team is relatively unknown but I dont see that as a major hurdle. The idea that every project needs top business adviser or people that have successfully conducted an ICO is silly, the whole point of ICOs is that you dont need to follow the same 'rules' as for VC investing.

Some more detailed descriptions of how the product will work exactly could be useful though, hence the 3 for product.

I have a controversial feeling.
The team is trying to solve the huge problem, but from my point of view they are doing it wrong.

Basically, they are doing community-driven crypto escrow that is great, but I see a lot of problems on the road:
1) we don't need another crowdfunding platfrom, there are many and the biggest and the best projects will not use their platform
2) community will get tired really fast and they'll get stuck with a small number of core enthusiast with a risk of them becoming the decision-makers instead of supporters
3) no solution for fiat proceeds (10-90% by the way from my experience)
etc

Anyway, good luck!

It's an interesting idea - the challenge will be to gain traction. Re the team it would be good to know a bit more about them.

I like the idea of funds being released on meeting milestones. I think this is hugely important.

Truly innovative idea that will allow for much-needed transparency in the ICO world. If accepted, this project could become the new benchmark platform for ICO's to be ran through. Investor enthusiasm for this project could be massive as well. Team just needs a few more advisors to help compliment it.

Agree with Richard about Milestones, but Yagub is right about the product, need to see more

Good idea. I think you should describe more opportunities

Average team, needs more credible advisers.
Good vision and very much needed solution.
Lots of challenges ahead.

Investment with moderating, very good idea.
Put more information on you ICObench profile. Your overall score will be better. Advisors from previews successful ICOs needed.
Good luck!

I like the idea of holding funds until milestones met. Anything to help clean up the FUD of ICOs

Idea is really good. Its almost like the same idea that Vitalik also suggested for DAICO.
Team needs to present their profile in detail on LinkedIn

I like the concept of contracts that brings transparency into the investing process. The vision is quite good.

The team has good technologists, however, there are no investment/financial specialists. This makes the team composition a bit weak for a product that attempts to bring transparency in the investment process.

I agree with the other people who mentioned that there should be more advisors added to this project.

I think this seems like an amazing project. I like the ability to stop funding a project, and funding in milestones.

Love the idea! Please make it work ASAP!

This project addresses a big trust problem we see in the current ICOs, particularly more speculative projects, without any credentials or product.

So the vision is for sure ambitious and I can see that a solution like this will be required in the future.

The tech team is experienced and the technical documentation well prepared, I think these guys can deliver what they promised.

The product definition is quite weak and although probably a brilliant solution, it's badly explained and could add unnecessary complexity, e.g. "To achieve this, Blockbits relies on a set of smart contracts onto which we’ve built a complex ecosystem of rules and business logic." This makes me concerned if this will actually work.

Good luck to the team and Greetings from Zurich!

The idea is good and indeed a much needed requirement in the market to mitigate speculative investments and fraudulent ICOs. This could potentially contribute to the market's value proposition and confidence in ICOs. Beneficiaries would not only be investors but equally the projects themselves due to the potential reduction of heavy dumps for quick money once the trading of the coin starts.

Yet, specifically for a platform which is meant to "supervise" the funding process, I see some potential in rounding the team's expertise in regards to finance and economics either via advisors, core team members or partners.

Channeling payments and investments back and forth certainly requires partnering with well established payment gateways.

Overall good idea and quite well thought through at first sight in regards to setting the right incentives for investors as well as project owners.

This ICO promises to reduce the risk for investors but is not clear on how they would do that. There's more to risk reduction than just keeping track of progress and accomplishing milestones. What are the criteria?

They are also coming up against a very competitive field. I did not see anything that will help them stand out from an already crowded marketplace.

I would caution anyone thinking of joining this ICO.

Pros:
+ Fully open source
+ Relatively easy to read website/whitepaper
+ Tokens aren't released until milestones are met

Cons:
- Average team; investments platform but lacks people with financial background; no partners
- No online demo; since the code is open-source, extensive technical documentation is expected and should be easily accessible
- Financials distribution is a bit vague; highly competitive market