Viaz

Is there a reason why the CEO's LinkedIn profile is not listed on ICObench?

Does this link belong to the CEO?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-meronek-416462175/

Something is very strange... CEO has just 3 connections?

Willing to revise rating if the team responds.

All the best!
~~~~~~~~~~

Viaz
ICO team member replied on 9 Feb 2019
Hello Clemen,

We contacted you since 24th January 2019 and still to this date haven't heard back from you.

You also mentioned your willing to revise the rating but haven't even after sending you all the information.

The other experts have modified the rating after seeing the progress would appreciate if you can do the same and respond back
~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Viaz

Apologies for this late response we are celebrating the Lunar New Year.

1. CEO's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-meronek-416462175/ → I've made a connection request to connect with Peter Meronek.

2. I did not receive any LinkedIn messages from anyone at Viaz. So please state clearly what is the approach that you took to contact me since 24th January?

3. Please address my questions regarding the CEO's LinkedIn connections that have just 3 relationships?

All the best!
~~~~~
Viaz
ICO team member replied on 13 Feb 2019
Happy lunar new year

1.) Our CEO has already accepted your connection request.

2.) I cannot post screenshots in this chat you can go to your LinkedIn messages and the last message I sent you was on January 20th. Profile name is Nauman Iqbal. You can double check on ICOBench under CMO.

3.) He has 80 connections as of today and it continues to grow as time goes by.

We are the first major dapp on tezos. It is the most financially secure blockchain. We have a working MVP and in the near future will have a fiat banking partner.
~~~~~

Thank you for your reply.

Now I can find the message from Nauman Iqbal as the subject did not mention Viaz.

All the best!

1. While review each member linkedin, I found lot of team member actually not Viaz core team or employee. This is a big issue.

2. No reliable ICO advisor in the team. Advisor no successor score. Hard to check the reliability.

3. White paper improved, MVP provided!

4. Where can I find "why 30M hardcap?", can we have a valuation report?

5. How can Viaz promise decentralized P2P on a the centralized business service?

[Later Edit] This project has been greatly improved since I last rated it and somebody from their team has reached out to me on linked in and provided me more insight into their progress.

I have received a link towards their prototype and I have tested it. It looks good. The most impressive fact is that such a small team has managed to put together such a good prototype.

I heard that their team will be enhanced as they will gather funds to bring this project to its full potential. The existing people in the project seem really committed to this project, however I am a bit skeptical about this at the moment. They passed the KYC though.

It is also important to keep in mind that aside from good developers, a project needs more team members to aid to its success. I highly recommend you guys to at least outsource a few tasks to an external party if you are not able to recruit all the team in-house.

Team is good. MVP is good. No good advisors in the team. Whitepaper is good. need to put some more financial and marketing information. For Viaz to become successful they need to spend a lot money in marketing the project. Best of luck team.

I think this project has potential, whilst it's nothing totally ground breaking in terms of service offering. I do believe the market demand for PSP crypto lending service will be big enough for multiple players in the industry. The team seems fairly decent as well.

White paper - The white paper problem and solution statement is very clear. The idea of having a smart-contract based lending platform isn’t new but the crypto-collateral is quite interesting. The white paper has failed to mention the specifics about lending. The white paper has almost enough to educate investors about their project. A bit more effort is needed to show investors the value of investing in this project in terms of expected ROI generation with market penetration.

Team - The team composition and advisory is small but capable. Inspite of that they seriously need to add team members for making it diverse in terms of PR, marketing, etc capabilities.

Tokenomics - They have not mentioned the token generation amount and funds deployment as of yet.

Business Model - The business model is clear - Use tokens as collateral to take loans and earn by keeping tokens as collateral. But the rate of 1% p.a as service fee is quite low to be honest and needs a detailed analysis if this amount is sufficient for the company to operate on. The also lack a clear roadmap about reaching various markets and increasing user base.

MVP/ DApp/ Working Product  - They claim to come up with a test net before token emission. The platform is live and operational.

Great idea but small team composition and lack of specifics makes me wary.

So in view of the Product MVP provided I am updating my rating. The product is fully operational and acc to their team member - "yes fully on tezos alphanet, the transfer etc all shows up on tezos blockchain"

There are many projects to realize the platform for raising funds, but I felt that their project was outstanding among them.
I think that it can be expected project.

2019/01/24
Progress had been made in the development of the prototype, so we changed the evaluation.

Advisors have no visible linkedin presence. Difficult to assess their strengths. The same for the team.

No product on github. Just text files.
The product described in one article on medium is creating an account and sending tokens. Creating app which sends token can be created within hours.

Miniscule presence on medium, only 19 followers.

Good white paper and vision.

KYC of members ✔
MVP ✔
Whitepeper ✔
Advisors ✖
LinkedIn of team members isn't good very less connections.
Most of the team members aren't the core members of team.
Many other projects offering same Business services. How Viaz is different from them.

I changed my rating after talking with their team, they are very small team but their work is good.

They showed me the prototype https://app.viaz.io

Idea is not creative, and whitepaper is not describing as per my requirements, it should be more explaining.

CEO can’t be reached as no information of social media provided and advisors team consist only two members.

Team needs to do more work on profiles, vision and products

==updated comments
Got response from team with MVP and that looks fine to me,CEO linkedin profile is added, team provided additional documents for revaluation and I am satisfied with them

Lot of p2p funding platform so there is not much left to explore with this. only interesting things is tokenized on TEZOS platform. The plus point is they have working MVP.

Updated: After having dialogues with Nauman the CMO of VIAZ i 'm changing my ratings for the project as I was displayed the comparison document which is not available on the website earlier.

Linked in missing hard to check reliability
White paper has no structure. Financial plan not explained in white paper Tezos market cap compare to ETH only 2% of ETH size. And it's a centralized organization.

The vision of the project is a very good one and can safely become part of the most successful payment platforms in the future.

The whitepaper is very carefully written and presents all the aspects that those who read it need. Social media and communication channels are considerably lacking in community, a sign that they should do better on the marketing side.

In the distribution of tokens there is no "reserve fund", a very important aspect for a project like this, while there are 75% of tokens for sale.

The team present various figures, which are essential for the management of a project like this and verifying the background of some of them, are having good experience behind, but unfortunately the CEO is almost unattainable and it is difficult to do research on him. On the team members' linkedin profiles, it does not appear that they are collaborating with viaz.

Not even github presents updates or developments, but only a few files, but the available MVP works very well and offers a nice preview of how the platform will be.

I'd like to re-evaluate my review of them in the near future.

It's a great ICO. It has introduced innovative products solutions with the use of Blockchain Technology.............overall very good ICO to invest.
...

Viaz has a promising project in terms of connecting lenders and borrowers but their team still needs to be expanded to include more and a diverse group of members. Overall the project has a promising future if handled well.

I seem to be the first expert giving a rating to this project. Benchy gave a 4.3 and after taking a closer look, I understand why.
Their team passed the KYC, they have is a page on Bitcoin Wiki, they have a working MVP.
They will need more advisors.
The project is not very original but innovative on the Tezos platform.
Good luck Team

Team - Based on the review of the team credentials in the whitepaper and social media it appears that they do not have any significant experience in running a lending business.

Vision - The idea of the project is not new and there are already many projects who are doing similar things. Use of blockhian technology is not the core requirement for what the project aims to do, as most of the things can be done effeciently done off-chain. Infact those thing would be cumbersome if done on blockchain due to inherent scalablity issues with existing blockchains protocols.

Product - It appears that the project is currrenlty at ideation stage. Though it is mentioned in the whitepaper that the development is in progress, the project has not been able to provide any evidence to support its claim.

Overall not a very compelling project which should warrant any significant attention untill they can deliver something tangible.

Disclaimer: Above is my personal opinion and not an investment recommendation. Please do your own research and take independent financial advice before making any decision

You can find my raiting methodology here. https://medium.com/@niravgala/nirav-galas-ico-bench-rating-methodology-c7186a354c9e

Update 27 Feb 2019
The team reached out to me and provided me with the details of MVP. I had a look at the MVP and tried to create new loan request. It was working fine. Based on that I have updated the product rating, as per my rating criteria to 2. Will updated the rating if the project has further updates on the execution front.