Whitepaper Projections: A New Way to Understand Decentralization

Reading Up on Revolution

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When new tokens, blockchain technologies, and ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are released to the public, evaluators look heavily into the integrity of their corresponding “whitepaper.” This document outlines all aspects of the technology’s outlook - the industry problems it is trying to solve, its underlying technology, how it plans to develop, the team behind it, and many other components designed to help others understand whether the project has merit. The whitepaper is simultaneously the manual, the pitch, and the proposition all at once and usually the primary material that the public considers prior to investing.

A whitepaper is typically used by speculative investors to decide whether or not to invest directly or participate in an ICO even before the token hits the market. You will often see speculators weigh the pros and cons of the premise and team to decide whether to endorse it. Instead of going that route, we at the @creativecrypto are looking to report on select whitepapers that strive to disrupt current creative and entrepreneurial sectors. We are less interested in the financial potential and more focused on how decentralized technologies can influence and transform the way we practice in the world. We believe that having these types of evaluations and conversations will help guide the structural use of these technologies to be as impactful as possible.

In these articles, we’ll take a token that has yet to release a public product or application. We’ll dig into its whitepaper to understand the following key points -

• Team and origin of the technology. Each whitepaper projection will begin with the history of the product and the team that is striving to bring it to fruition. ICOs come out of diverse situations including brand new teams, existing successful companies, as subsidiaries of a larger blockchain organization, and so on. Looking into the background will give insight in the potential trajectory of the new technology.

• Targeted industry or industry problem. We will choose specific cryptocurrencies and blockchain companies that are looking to change creative and entrepreneurial professions. We will focus on specific industry or company challenges that motivated the creation of the technology.

• Plan for disruption. We will provide a comprehensive bottom up + top down perspective with respect to how each blockchain project plans to transform its respective industry and professional environment.

• Current status and roadmap. The article will look into its various points of insight including social-media announcements, Steemit / Medium.com articles, updates in their dedicated subreddits, and any other outlets for news and access. We will contextualize what they are doing currently with their long-term roadmap.

• Potential use cases. With the current information available in the whitepaper and outreach, we will look into how this tech will potentially play out in the real world in terms of projects, communities, and general influence.

A core tenent of The Creative Crypto Magazine is to make the emerging tools of blockchain more accessible and usable in the real-world. This whitepaper review series will hopefully become an educational asset to help practitioners prepare for a more decentralized and empowered future.

So be sure to stay tuned for major reviews on upcoming blockchain projects and technologies. The first one we’ll do next week is a review of the upcoming Narrative platform, built with a NEP-5 token - NRVE - on the Neo blockchain. If you have particular projects and tokens that you would like us to report on, make sure to leave your suggestions in the comments below.

Illustrations by @carrotcake

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