Humancoin

Charity perfectly fits blockchain technology which in necessary for transparency and traceability.
Synergy with e-commerce can pump the project’s value hundreds of times. The team and advisors present all needed spheres and locations to make this project successful. The product is really unique.

The E-commerce industry is struggling to maintain loyalty from their customers. And they need something more than just a discount for loyal customers. The charity industry needs transparency/traceability (blockchain perfectly fits!), less mediators and transactional costs. This project unites this with its unique “proof-of-charity” mining protocol and p2p platform. The benefactors are rewarded with tokens for donations and thus the tokens are being mined. The company makes the usual agreements with e-commerce players, and the tokens will gain value which can then be easily converted to miles, bonuses etc.

The team & advisors looks good and numerous (all areas covered). The WP is comprehensive and has business plan numbers included. $6 mln softcap seems reasonable as they have 3 scenarios in the WP depending on the fundraising.

UPDATE The project raised softcap+ but decided not to go in for tokenization and offer a refund to its contributors. As written "they have been strongly advised (by the largest contributors and partners) to stop the project's tokenization and restructure to better fit venture capital demands". While the reasons are clear and understandable on a such bearish market nonetheless i have to worsen my rating based on all this.

Good team and white-paper.

[Update] Thanks for the explanation on how proof of charity making HUMA the cryptocurrency of kindness. Liked the fact that social appearance is fantastic. Liked MVP too!

[Update] Saw some very unprofessional behavior from their Advisors and team!

[Update] Corrected rating back to what it was before. Had a discussion with team and advisor. It was a mistake and things cleared. Thanks Team.

"The blockchain platform fuelled by the “mined” Humancoin token will breathe new life into the charity industry, proving an engine of growth."

How many charities are currently working with you?

This is a project with rooting for. And the thing is there is careful thought with how blockchain could be used in a creative manner for philanthropy.

The project bring transparency, continence and efficiency to empower charity and high impact to econmer industry. I saw strong team and global big influencer in the advisory board. Wish the project very success.

Very good and strong team.
Good and right idea and vision.
This a new approach to make loyalty rewards in retail e-commerce more effective. Direct association with charity should give humancoins an advantage over all other programs. The overall market is huge. And the project on the other hand will boost charity industry by solving the problems of traceability introducing blockchain there
KYC passed.
MVP avaliable.
I wish good luck to the team!

Although I love the idea but there are several things that need to be taken into consideration in terms of ROI as we are now attracting investors rather than philanthropists or donators.

Team: Great to have a solid and strong team as listed.

Vision: It is not the only idea in this industry and surely there will be more to come but at least your pitch is good though.

Product: Although it is hard to have a working alpha or beta working product but it is bad for investor to make an informed decision with nothing even a website or MVP.

----------------
Update: As the website is available, so I had a chance to have a look at it and happy to update my rating to reflect the reality.

In My Opinion:

Team 4
Although the team seems solid and with good advisors

Vision 4:
Its A revolutionary project? for sure is a great project,

Product 2:
Honestly, you can't link a photograph (photoshopped) is not a MVP, btw i know they work hard to do a working alpha, let see.

I'll update my rating if I see any news.

A very simple and sophisticated project. I think that the success of such a project is socially desirable.
The roadmap has been maintained.
Team members are also very well maintained.
Blockchain expert is also available. Although he is experienced, he is uneasy about not having Solidity skills.
Is there a partner company secured?
The logo is clearly stated, but there is no statement that it is a partner company. According to the roadmap, the contract with the partner is 2018 Q3. This indicates the possibility of being after the token sale. Considering this point, I am a little anxious about the success of the project's ICO.

I will update the rating of "product" when MVP is released.

I really like that you're changing the charity market. Creating a whole community that will control the collection and distribution. Also pleasantly surprised by the percentage of fee for management. The token economy looks interesting for investors and on the other side is quite doable. I hope you will be able to implement it. I will advise your project to other investors.

Its a small, but solid team which I appreciate. I would love to see more relevant and real positions as they grow.

Vision is good, but I see many similar charity based projects coming out everywhere. And almost in similar manner. So I would not be excited by the vision.

MVP is to be released in future, so this cannot be a 5 yet, and I am happy to edit it in the future.

Team is well experienced but it looks like team have more advisors than Team members ... in long run team members works more than advisors so better to take core team members more...

Vision is quite nice eCommerce and charity together which is unique and nice.

Best of luck team.

Update: After talk with team member I change my rating.. Thanks Team..

So glad to see someone using the blockchain for philanthropy. By providing extra incentives via rewards more people will get interested in crypto currencies and blockchain technology as time goes on.

Human coin is a very interesting and unique concept I believe. The team seems capable to execute it successfully. I like the idea of combining charity with e-commerce. Waiting to test MVP.

Humanacoin is not a recipient or a distributor of monetary donations. They would like to build a platform that connects givers and the people in need. The team appears capable. I am impressed that they provided a scalable breakdown in the whitepaper of what they plan to do with the funds based on reaching the soft cap on up through the hard cap.

The tokenomics are favorable and the proof of charity work looks like a good idea.

This project can be successful if the team is able to effectively execute on their goals and timelines.

They have quite a few competitors in this space, so differentiation and reach will be key.

(Update: Thanks for making the suggested updates)

This is not financial advice or a recommendation to invest in this or any other ICO. Investors must perform their own due diligence and not rely on external ratings to make their final investment decisions. ICOs are risky and 100% loss of capital is possible.

I like the synergy between charity and e-commerce. The Blockchain technology and transparency works well here.The team has a great background from the right places.

From my point of view this is a HomeRun project! Bringing transparency into charity and e-commerce is needed. The team, vision, and product all look great. I look forward to watching the growth of Humancoin!

Humancoin shows a lot of potential and value. Project transparency allows users to properly track the fruits of their efforts.

The combination of charity and e-commerce seems promising. The team has a strong background which will eventually help the platform reach phenomenal success.

The proof of charity mining concept will help get more users interested in the project. The idea of connection givers with people in need will provide aid to the people who need it the most.

Though the competition is stiff. I believe the platform has a good chance at success.

I love this project. Great team and advisory board. The vision of this ICO isn't only good economically but I believe it makes a greater service as social good. I hope Humancoin succeeds, good luck team!

Team ★★★★★
Vision ★★★★★
Product ★★★★★

It is a fantastic project dealing with loyalty rewards e-commerce and charity industry problems. They are starting to make partnership agreements already with major players. The token has a huge potential for growth

Love the idea, project and everything about it. Community needs more projects like this, we really do. My full support goes out to you guys, please don't let us all down!

Its a revolutionary project uniting charity and e-commerce. Blockchain tech is necessary to increase transparency of charitable donations. The team is strong with a proper expertise and presents all main countries. It has a MVP already

I rarely find a project to be the true epitome of the ethos of Blockchain, where team, vision and product meet in a seamless way. This project is just about right, and that's why I'm giving it the top rating.

As an African, resident in South Africa but really well travelled across the continent, I have seen the perilous impact of donor funding on the continent where well-meaning donors have sent billions of dollars into Government coffers only to to disappear into a bottomless abyss. I have given substantial thought to projects that will give donors of all sizes the kind of traceability of their funds and long-ago knew that Blockchain is the solution. I often quote this as the number one use-case for Blockchain.

Well done to this team, especially for integrating a couple of other industries into a no-brainer for the Blockchain.

Humancoin is the new massive cryptocurrency fuelled by the Proof of Charity mining protocol. This invention allows the project to scale thousands of times. It is backed by retail e-commerce and charity industry which together have a combined value of $3,5 trillion.

Modified post discussions and further research into the project and the team. Good luck, all! I hope to see a lot of good come from this.

Interesting, but maybe not completely unique. In terms of the team, I don't see a lot of relevance, in the sense that the direction the platform takes will be more a subjective decision than an objective one. Which may or may not be a good thing in the long run. There's also no CFO or CTO on a project that hinges on these two major aspects.
The vision, of course, i solid. It's nice to see it linking back to something, creating value in the act of charity is always a great way to push the concept. An element of gamification could work as well, maybe, in some future versions.
The product itself, I would have liked a more secure token, for starters. Maybe even a better use of blockchain technology. But that's being nitpicky. The token structure and the bonuses do leave some room for improvement, if time permits. I feel it's hurting the project itself in current form. At least in terms of any kind of foreseeable value.
Additionally, I don't immediately see the need for the funds at this point. But there's probably some calculation behind that figure so I'm not basing any kind of rating on that fact.
Personally, in this case, I also don't see value in a KYC and Whitelist. The KYC is a touchy subject, but I really don't care for it in this instance. The whitelist I would do away with completely unless there's some brilliant reason why people would need to sign up for something prior to launch.
Otherwise, though, based on the fact that it's aimed at doing something good, bringing transparency to undoubtedly one of the more shady businesses of the world, I wish you all the best! There's a ways to go before it can be perfected, but this definitely a strong start.

Interesting project with unique idea about combining charity and blockchain technology. For that reason my score is 5 for a vision. Good team with good advisors - another 5 score from me. As about product - I will give score 4. In general good project to pay close attention

In my opinion this is a very interesting project, a bit of a twist with charity and a loyalty program, I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of a charity doing this before and this may be a niche that people like. It appears there is a decent amount of money for marketing purposes, I can appreciate the breakdown for each phase that is raised.

*Please see my profile for disclosures

Strong team and good advisors. I like the approach of forming partnerships with other charity projects.

This statement gives me confidence that my money will arrive where it should.

The distributed ledger technology, which is designed to put an end to the
middleman, gets rid of the long charity chain composed of banks, NGOs, state
bodies and law firms. Blockchain provides a digital mechanism for recording
and viewing any transaction. It is important that the record cannot be hacked or
modified. Blockchain solves the trust issue by providing transparency, traceability
and security.

Blockchain for charity is just ordinary thing. But these guys push out very interesting economic idea: they closed the token circulation cycle via e-commerce and made strong backing (of course, these strong backing works perfect because people trust in charity)

Nice charity project with a strong advisor board.

Making the project a success will be a big challenge because the loyalty programs market is very crowded. There are some typos in the "about" section.

What is not to like? We need more philanthropical projects to bring legitimacy to the industry and Humancoin will help do just this. Sounds like there are still a few directions the project can go (potential global loyalty programs aggregator, etc.), so just recommend keeping a tight product-market fit.

Project is based in UK: +1
Savvy team: +1
Proof of Charity concept looks very attractive as it allows to mine tokens by making donations.

Generally the most valuable projects for the larger society the ones, which are related to education, healthcare and charity, I hope Humancoin will succeed and do a lot of good in the world!

the mix of charity and e-commerce is interesting. The team seems to be ok,but not an allstar team, I'd rather see more core members than advisors, as they are the ones in it for the Long term. I will update my product score once the MVP is there in Oktober.

Team has a great diverse background. Advisor team is strong as well. Wish there was more blockchain experience or devs involved though

The vision is great but many parts of the strategy in the WP rely too heavily on partnerships, like the loyalty program. The coin is only worth anything redeemable like miles, if a partnership is secured, so there is a lot of hypotheticals at this stage.

I love the charitable transparency, but this could be a double edged sword. It would be great to see how the money/tokens raised by charities is spent to ensure it is spent appropriately, but at the same time, many donors may not want transparency regarding their donations, which is why in the real world many donations are still anonymous. Something to consider.

WP is very well done and carefully though out. I really like that you have described the strategic planning and budgeting differences between reaching just the soft cap vs hard cap. Very few projects do, which ususally raises red flags, but i love that you have described the reasoning and budget plans here. Excellent!

One thing i do not agree with is the open token supply. Without a fixed token supply, it makes valuation difficult. in the WP you mention that you may give back 50% in tokens to donors and issue new tokens in the billions. This is not good strategy and I don't think there is need to consistently create new tokens.

I only wish you had at least an MVP or alpha at this stage as it may be too early to conduct an ICO without a product or MVP. Especially when raising millions. For that i neeed to give you a low rating on product. I am willing to revise the rating once you have an MVP that has been tested.

Good luck on the project and I hope you succeed!

Very innovative idea and I can see there is a strong team behind the project.

The tokenomics is well thought of and will ensure value in the tokens.

I think Humancoin will add value to the philanthropy space

Absolutely love what you guys are doing. It looks fantastic. The team looks solid, the vision is good, and the overall product direction looks great. Good luck!

Pros:
KYC for team members was successfully passed
MVP ready
Vision is humanistic

Proof of charity making HUMA the cryptocurrency of kindness.

Will be hard to improve ideas to real business

This is not financial advice or a recommendation to invest in this or any other ICO. Investors must perform their own due diligence and not rely on external ratings to make their final investment decisions. ICOs are risky and 100% loss of capital is possible.

I think the charity segment will be one of the first real use cases for crypto beyond simple money transfers.
Team looks solid and I believe in the idea.
Minor: Suggest improve the description to get the message across quicker.

Blockchain and charity - what could be better? If people are confident that their money is being spent to help those in need, I think that charity will become more popular! Good luck to the project in everything!
I want to see MVP - so far it looks very promising!
Good and strong team.

Solid looking project, great vision. It is great to give and we all should do so. At the same time I think genuine value creation should be rewarded and not just given away and this project helps to follow that philosophy.
Best of luck with the project.

Humancoin unites philanthropists and recipients of funds on a single P2P platform in the most convenient and transparent way possible. which is a great vision indeed. Projects teams and Advisory board looks very experienced. I am sure that this project will be a successful one.
About MVP
i dont find any MVP just find a png picture in MVP department
https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5b0af754be77e0768538d28e/5b0c00bd502061936e149d1f_laptop.png
best of luck team.

The vision is more than appropriate, linking charity and e-commerce as a way to empower both markets. What a great approach to bring transparency to charity. Looking forward to see next steps. Balanced team and KYC passed.

The vision is good especially if a strong team and well-known advisors stand by it. There remains the question of course of the platform being misused for personal purposes. That's the beauty of the blockchain principle - the risks are there but security measures are in place.

The team is very strong and has completed the KYC process as necessary. The MVP will need to be fully released to be evaluated throughly. The Whitepaper covers all major the basis. The coupon program for points miles and bonuses should help incentivize users to use the platform. The charity industry is also lacking a level of transparency that Humancoin looks to be able to help fill.

This project is a very interesting and useful. Charity is always associated with scams and through human coin, this notion can be changed and more money can be channeled into charity correctly.

Nowadays it isn't enough to make a beautiful website and promise something in the future.
Now, to become a successful project and receive necessary investments it is important to:

- Platform token sale available ✅
- Innovation level - incremental - ✅
- Strong Competitor analysis ✅
- Core Team ✅and not multi-position team
- marketing ICO budget ✅
- Events calendar ✅
- have max. transparency ✅
- have legally protected product ✅
- work actively with the community ✅
- have a powerful team and advisors ✅✅

project seems feasible to me, Charity market is the place where partiality is needed and i think Humancoin will do this with their objective.

Project is full house for me seeing their team and product.

Team 2
Team seems ok, nothing stellar

Vision 3:
Again, ok, seems like there a quite a few projects iwth this goal

Product 2:
As luca says, a photo is not an MVP

Bringing transparency to undoubtedly one of the more unknown and shady businesses of the world, this project can definitely do good to the society.

Some more experienced faces in the leadership team would be good to steer the project though the Advisors on board are really good. The real test of MVP will be the actual mass adoption, which will rope in users. The project holds good potential if it clicks the right strings right from the beginning. Team has successfully passed the KYC is another positive.

Lot of hype in ICO World about this project. combination of charity and eCommerce makes this project something different. I think they would need to have more developers in this project. I see potential in this project for showing more potential. Can't wait to see its performance in real world.

A really interesting project, the technology of blockchain is appropriate here. Sophisticated economy, strong team, KYC passed.
Let's see what will come out of it.

The idea of humancoin sounds promising. If this concept is implemented properly, it can become greatly beneficial to target audience falling under this vertical. The team looks great, capable of creating a value. Most importantly, loyalty scheme within the e-commerce industry can be revolutionised using this concept. 5/5 for vision.

However, 20mil softcap is reasonable although it will be a bit difficult to achieve such targets in this incredibly bearish market.

After considering Giles response and some further communication with a personal friend of his, Igor Karavaev, I decided to update my review. They brought some interesting things to my attention.

I will leave my original review unaltered at the bottom. Original rating: 3/4/1

Considerations I've made:

I misjudged Giles. After reviewing his information again, he has little experience as a CEO and is definitely not seasoned. I included his experience as a manager and director in the previous 15+ years in his experience to lead a company. Which I should not have. This is his first time leading a company. -1 Team

The team is seeking out partnerships which they have announced through their media channels which I did not consider before. I recommend you display some of this information on your website and whitepaper as well. +1 Team

It is true, the Humancoin team is actually further in their product development that many other icos are at this stage. The project is still in its presale and will announce their beta soon. I also agree with Giles that competition is a good thing in any given space * if you can diverantiate yourself enough and prove your superiority. +2 for the product.

Updated rating: 3/4/3

------------------------
Original review

The Humancoin team itself only includes one experienced crypto developer, T Aravinda. The other team members are a collection of professionals and freelancers from other industries which still need to complete their profiles on ICOBench, they all have complete LinkedIn profiles that show their respective experiences. The team is being advised by an encompassing collection of experts from different fields and is lead by a seasoned CEO. 3 out of 5 for the team due to the lack of Blockchain developers and crypto experience in the team.

The vision for Humancoin is grand and admirable. Cheers to that. 4 out of 5 due to the philanthropic nature of the project.

However, a $3.5 Trillion combined value of the targeted industries is not in any relation to what this platform would actually provide.
Direct quote form white paper:
"While the annual volume of donations is estimated to be in the region of $750 billion worldwide, the capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is valued at $300 to $900 billion, and the volume of the B2C e-commerce sector has reached $2.3 trillion. By bringing about the synergy of these three markets, the project is set to herald a new era for charity."

I strongly disagree with the promotion of a $3.5 Trillion targeted market. The overall value of B2C e-commerce is not the value of loyalty programs across e-commerce markets. Which is in fact far less. Including the entire crypto market in this equation is also inadequate and makes little sense.

The whitepaper shows an image of partners on page 18 which include Amazon, Alibaba, AirBnB, and Bookin.com. I find it hard to believe that these partnerships are established or palpable. In fact, I find it disturbing to include those companies in your white paper without any proof or information to back them up. Personally, I would assume that the Humancoin team has not yet reached out to these companies.
The coin is only worth anything redeemable like miles, if these partnership are secured, so there is a lot of hypotheticals at this stage.


The current soft cap of the ICO is 6 million and justified by the following numbers:
Product development - $2 500 000
Charity platform PR and marketing - $2 100 000
Development of partnership agreements - $500 000
Overheads - $900 000

The team must have not done any research regarding these numbers. $2.5 million to develop this platform? $2.1 million for the marketing of it?

And things like "IT integration with e-commerce partners" and an "Optimized dashboard" are not possible until the hard cap off $26 million is reached?

Blockchain platforms are driven by one factor only which is adoption. Maximum adoption is achieved by human centered design. An optimized dashboard and similar things should be the first on the list, definitely before the marketing and PR.

This should all be possible with the amount of money that the team has allocated to their overhead. $900,000.

The "Proof of Charity" is in fact not a consensus mechanism at all and does not deserve to be grouped together with PoS or PoW. It is a strange way to inflate the market with HUMA coins especially since there is no max supply. I believe that the team needs to rethink their token economics and underlying protocols.

The product is still in its infancy and even if the development is successful and timely, it will only add minor benefits to the existing spaces.
The charity world is in dire need of more transparent and traceable platforms, but Humancoin will not be the first or only company to supply said platform. A simple google search will yield plenty of results in the crypto - charity space like MissionCoin, Donationcoin, and Aidcoin.
It also won't be the first or only crypto - loyalty coin. 1 of 5 for the product.

Overall I think the vision for Humancoin is a grand but currently does not seem like a good investment or project to support in my opinion. I would've suggested the team to demo their platform and product before the launch of the PreICO and have some partnerships secured. Will naturally update this rating according to future developments.

A really good team.

Good tokenomics.

I really like the "Strategic planning and budgeting" depending on the amount raised, that's what every project should show.

Also the problem you are trying to solve, is an important one, charity and its transparency is really necessary and blockchain can easily fix it. So vision is 5* for me.

Regarding the product, I gave a 4* because I would prefer to see something more regarding the MVP than a screenshot, but I understand the fact that you don't want to post the code so it won't get copied.

My initial review is below, but I have updated my ratings from 2 to 4 for Team, from 3 to 5 for Vision and from 2 to 3 for product.

The upgrade was down to the fact that the CEO Giles took the time to get in touch with me to go over some of my concerns - a human touch so to speak!

It's clearer to me now how tech gets a voice at C level/board level. I also think there's enough general past blockchain experience in the team to be able to identify decent hires, assuming the skills are available. Of course, while the tech team is important to this project's success, it's as much going to depend on the team's biz-dev credentials to out the various partnerships in place. I'd not fully given the expertise that exists here the credit it deserves in my first rating.

I think the product roadmap is prioritised sensibly against the various levels of investment the ICO might raise. But it's still am ambitious product plan. I'm still not fully sure about 'proof of charity 'mining''. I think fluctuating exchange rate variance might make pinning down the value of one HumanCoin versus a load of AirMiles, for example a challenge; a challenge that will add time maybe to doing deals in the first instance.

The vision is clearly an honourable one. It deals with a key trust issue as well when it comes to blockers to donations, so the fact a giver can track their money is key. I also think it has some significant unique opportunities for business giving.
---------------------------
The fact that there seems to be no one at C-Level with product, security or technical credentials / responsibility is a serious and significant weakness. There's an advisor, an expert, and a senior engineer (who's just seems to have a general web dev background) - and that seems to be it. A *lot* of marketing people though!

I'm also highly sceptical of any ICO which plasters brand logos on the homepage of the website without any clear evidence of an agreed association. In my opinion this runs a risk of misrepresentation - especially when those logos are accompanied by a line such as 'While at the same time becoming a premier global loyalty program for an increasing number of partners in e-commerce' (And, if this gets a reply, please don't try to claim that the alt text 'This is an example of global loyalty program with Humancoin' doesn't make this misleading.)

So, now to evaluate the vision and product. Well the vision (if far from a unique idea) is well meaning enough - but I feel misled enough by the use of logos to take anything else I might read with a massive pinch of salt - and there are enough marketeers on this project to add those pinches of salt.

The product being built on Ethereum is reassuring. But given what I pointed out about the team, I don't know where the buck would stop with any technical or product issues.

Amazing project, love the idea! Very well worded documentation and a solid team. We a successful charity project such as this to show the world the true potential of blockchain and wash away the negative stigmas. Good luck guys!

It is a project that will join e-commerce and charity by employing the blockchain technology to let donators track whether their donation to charity reached its recipient and how it’s being spent. I think it’s an interesting project that will have real-life use cases. Team might be more experienced in related sphere...

Humancoin aims at bringing transparency to the charity industry a sector that can always benefit by additional clarity on how funds are spent, as quite often there are reports of misuse. Leveraging blockchain here is a no-brainer and the mix between charity and e-commerce is admirable. Hope all on the roadmap is achieved!

Amazing project that combines e-commerce and charity! The project is already successful in doing partnerships with big e-commerce players. Savvy team! Very detailed whitepaper! Proof-of-charity mining protocol is a great platform for growth

It is good to see such project that has a purpose for the society. Hopefully through the ICO , I hope this can make an impact for better society. I also see a lot of marketing done and this will surely make its project well known and have more chance to be successful.