First reviewed on 23 Feb 2018
1. The web alpha version is available here: https://app.signals.network
I've test drive the web alpha version and found that it seems to be more of a mock-up version, rather than a functional alpha version.
There are currently 6 strategies within: Bollinger Bands, Candlestick Pattern, Donchian Channels, Moving Averagem Momentum and Cryptofox News Bot.
All the strategies seem to be mockup versions as I can't adjust the parameters, eg. I was hoping to adjust the no. of deviation for the upper band and lower band, as well as no. of days... all not available (yet).
All the other sections such as Portfolio, Visual Editor, Indicators, Data, Traders Talk, Competitions, 'New Strategy' are not ready.
2. Signals.network telegram group is https://t.me/signals_network and it has over 11,000 members. Many of the members seems to be purchased (see its chat history for evidence). It also doesn't help that there are Spambots like 'Pop Cake' that is promoting it's great "‘Base Crack’ tool and method" every few minutes - very annoying. Not sure why the Admin is allowing the spambot there.
3. I've posted several questions to the Signals.network team via their Telegram group and is waiting for responses from the core team:
Q1. I've test drive the web alpha version and found that it seems to be more of a mock-up version, rather than a functional alpha version. There are no parameters for tweaking, eg. was expecting to change the no. of deviation for the upper band and lower band, as well as no. of days, etc. Is your web alpha version the same as a mock-up, ie. it's not functional - not reading live data and performing actual online analysis.
Q2. For Strategy Stats, other than Avg profit, Avg loss, Avg trade, Win rate, Loss rate, Max downdown, are you planning to add in other performance metrics? If yes, which ones?
Q3. Would like to see screen mockups or at least designs specs relating to Visual Editor.
Q4. In page 7 of your whitepaper, it states "Blockchain monitoring indicators - The transparency of a blockchain allows for analysis to be conducted on the movement of every token, especially those held by major holders, “whales.” When the distribution is not uniform and the majority of tokens are held by few holders, tools which monitor “whale” movements can show when major
holders are buying or selling their holdings"
I have a hard time understanding the link to the use of Blockchain, pls explain again the link between signals.network product and the Blockchain technology?
Q5. Would like to inspect your smart contract
Q6. I would really love to test code an indicator and strategy in your platform and hope that you will contact me once the Visual Editor & Indicators features are ready. When would the Visual Editor be ready for hands-on?
Q7: I can see potential inventions relating to your platform to be patentable, any plans for patent creation, protection and commercialisation?
Q8. I would like to request for a copy of your company registration, showing its shareholders and holdings.
Q9. The 'ICO Check' team reviewed your ICO earlier but there are some gaps in the responses, need to know when the answers to their questions will be ready, specifically:
o ICQ1. Was your smart contract audited by an independent cybersecurity company?
o ICQ2. Could i have a link to your github repo?
o ICQ3. Are you using a reputable 3rd party for KYC verification?
o ICQ4. How safe is it to upload my Identity Document on your site?
I may revise my ratings after receiving the answers to my above 13 questions.
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Update: 8 March 2018
The team took pains to address my many questions and I appreciate that.
Specifically, from Jakub & "Miguel Angel 7 Mar 2018
Hello Dr. Rex Yeap, thank you for your questions, You can find here the answers:
A0: We didn’t purchase any member. However, we increased our marketing efforts during the previous weeks and released a Telegram Bounty program that allowed members to invite friends. Moreover, we have already added a tool to help us auto delete and remove those Spambots.
A1: One of the main reasons we are doing an ICO is to gather funds so we can continue a development of such complex platform like Signals. We already have a modular framework where we are able to easily assemble various combinations of indicators, although you still have to be a developer to do that, but it’s the base for the visual editor which is coming. In the Alpha of strategy Marketplace, which is one of the pillar of the whole platform, we demonstrate several strategies assembled on our backend with the know-how of our trading experts. Also we wanted to demonstrate clean and intuitive design which is crucial for platform which aims to simplify access to complex algorithms in an user friendly way. In strategy marketplace you can also find 3rd party strategy from our partners Cryptofox, to demonstrate that we will support this kind of integration. There are a lot of small teams of developers and data scientists who are creating their own trading algorithms, bud don’t have marketing skills to offer them to others or ability to develop accompanying services, like mobile app with proper analytics about your strategies in your pocket. We already receiving requests from them, that they want to connect their strategies to our marketplace. We want to support them and enable them to reach our audience with their signals and of course measure proper metrics to give Signals users necessary information before they decide to copytrade them. The goal of Strategy Marketplace is to become IMDB for trading algorithms. We have received really good feedback about the Alpha, which confirmed our vision of design and functionality. More features will be added already in Q2, when Alpha of the platform receives a big update.
A2: I’m copypasting answer from our Alghoritmic trading expert Jan Budík, who is in charge of this performance metrics: “We are working on advanced strategy report, which contains a lot of other metrics than in alpha, e.g. Net Profit, Gross Profit, Gross loss, Account Size Required, Return on Initial Capital, Sharpe Ratio, Risk Reward Ratio, Time in the Market, Longest flat Period, Largest Winnig Trade, Volatility, Consecutive Profit, Profit Factor”
A3: Here you can see a screenshot: https://d2mxuefqeaa7sj.cloudfront.net/s_07CCCCFFDEC9B7FFDECCB2AE17F7B72D57E840F7AA9B5ADF025C8713D53570A1_1520325714806_builder_mockup.png
A4: Signals will provide in the Indicators marketplace special indicators base on blockchain inspections. Those insights into the blockchains can be used as valuable decision points used by your strategy.
A5: We will publish smart contract before the main token sale. You can also inspect the one from presale here: https://github.com/signalsnetwork/token-sale-contract
A6: Full development plan is published in this blogpost: https://blog.signals.network/how-far-is-signals-network-and-what-is-still-ahead-of-us-1f0443b50940. Signals Strategy Builder Alpha should be ready in Q3-Q4 of 2018.
A7: I can see it might be an option, but unfortunately I am unable to answer this question at this moment, I will ask the team for you.
A8: Signals Network is a Cayman Islands exempted company limited by shares, with its registered office at 2nd Floor, Willow House, Cricket Square, Box 709, Grand Cayman KY1-1107, Cayman Islands
ICQA1: Yes, by Extropy.io
ICQA2: Here it is: https://github.com/signalsnetwork
ICQA3: The verification is made by special team in-house.
ICQA4: In order to securely process your data, we store the scans in a secured storage and delete the emails right after we receive and verify them. Our process is very strict and safe, you shouldn’t be worried.
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My follow-on questions on 8 March 2018
QB1: For "performance metrics", do consider these other metrics: standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, Jensen's alpha, beta, Sortino ratio, Omega, CPTCE, maximum drawdown, Information ratio, Treynor ratio, M2, T2, Stutzer index, Upside potential ratio, Calmar ratio, Clare ratio; see http://www.performance-measurement.org (by Dr. Martin Sewell)
QB2: You said "Signals will provide in the Indicators marketplace special indicators base on blockchain inspections", I do not understand what you mean by 'Blockchain inspections", would appreciate if you can provide a reference or link to what's 'blockchain inspections'
QB3: When you have answers to this, do let us know "I can see potential inventions relating to your platform to be patentable, any plans for patent creation, protection and commercialisation?"
I've revised your ICBench score from 2,4,2 to 3,4,3 & will continue may revise your scores further as I get more inputs. Best wishes.
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Further reply from Jakub & "Miguel Angel on 9 Mar 2018
QB1.Ans: Yes, I've talked to our alghoritmic trading expert Jan Budík and he confirmed most of those will be at Signals platform as well. The original we mentioned before was just a smaller fraction of dozens metrics planned - and the most common ones. More advanced metrics will also be available.
QB2.Ans: Imagine a trade trigger based on Bitcoin moving out of certain addresses. Like if any bitcoins are moved from satoshis address, you will sell before they hit an exchange, or hash rate drops significantly meaning there might have been a technical glitch. This is a trade based on protocol behavior.
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My conclusion remarks on 9 Mar 2018:
C1. I am satisfied with the responses and over the period of these Q&A, I've gotten to know a lot more about the product.
C2. I am familiar with TradingView, Thinkorswim, Metatrader and similar systems and while there are similarities between those products and Signals.Network, the differences are significant and when the team managed to deliver the product as per the bulk of their specification, it would be a great tool for traders, investors and coders.
C3. As for for patent questions, ie. Q7, the key was to see how your team responded to me and while I did not get a conclusive answer, the engagement is sufficient for me to tell that you are serious and also understand IP strategy. I don't need further answers on this because, if you do eventually pursue a patenting path, your patent specification will be published by the patent offices in 18 months anyway, and if you chose the trade secret option, then it will not be published - I respect your IP strategy.
I want to further share with you team on what might be non-obvious, ie. what you have (trading algo + biz model + blockchain) can be novel and inventive, ie. patentable. I know these 1st hand because I have patents that covers separately the algo portion and blockchain portion in another domain, specifically:
o Yeap, T., Ling, K.T., 2018, "IP Blockchain Method And System", Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, Granted Patent, App. No. 10201604032U
o Yeap, T., 2012, "Long-Short Hedge Fund Method and System", United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Application Number 13/635,376
One of my professional work is the review of Blockchain patents, and there were 328 global blockchain patents as at July 2017 and has ballooned to over 1000 by Jan 2018. A visualisation of the 328 patents can be found here: http://invcapital.com/gallery.htm#Patent_Landscape_of_328_Blockchain_patents_(as_at_July_2017)
C4. Every ICO serious reviewer faced the very real risk of reviewing a vapourware ICO and yet give a high scores to the ICO (at least in ICOBench) and I too faced such risk because one can be 99% correct, but that 1% of mistake would hurt the reviewer's reputation.
I've originally (on 23 March 2018) gave you a score of Team=2 Vision=4 Product=2, and I am now revising it to Team=4 Vision=5 Product=4.
I wish the team the very best in your product development and commercialisation journey and I really look forward to using your product in time to come. Best wishes.
PS: In ICOBench, everyone a reviewer (a) change the score, or (b) modified our Comments section, your reply to our comment is automatically removed (I am not sure why ICOBench design the system this way but I would suggest to ICOBench to retain all replies)
PPS: As part of full disclosure, neither ICOBench nor Signals ICO paid me for this review and I do NOT expect/accept any payment from them for this review as well.
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