Ocean Token is 0.22€ for the Network Launch

This blog gives you the background and our thinking about how we came to the price for the Ocean Token.

This announcement concerns an offering of securities exclusively to International investors under a Regulation S exemption and accredited U.S. investors in reliance on Rule 506(c) of Regulation D of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933.

Ocean Protocol is getting ready to Launch! Participate in the token sale at coinlist.co/ocean by March 19th. Contribute until March 20th.

0.22€

We decided on 0.22€ as the fairest price for everyone. New contributors will get an attractive entry point for acquiring Ocean Tokens, with a network valuation of $47 million that is fair for the stage and progress of the project.

Our primary guiding principle is fairness, followed by openness to the community. In an ideal world, the price for the Ocean Token would be determined via an open auction by the market. But for the Network Launch, we hit a snag.

We were fortunate to sign a deal with CoinList to be our technical partner for all new contributors. Meanwhile, 14k whitelisted contributors from Pre-Launch were already on the Fractals platform. We faced a dilemma. Do we force the existing Pre-Launch contributors to migrate to CoinList?

We decided to use both CoinList and Fractal to minimize the hassle for existing contributors and to minimize their data footprint for sensitive personal data.

This decision meant that running an auction across two platforms simultaneously wouldn’t be possible, at least not without significant technical integration and testing.

The team was left in an unenviable position to manually set the price of the Ocean Token.

To reach a decision, we polled advisors, crypto-experts, team members, investors and exchange partners. We monitored our Telegram channels to garner insights from the community. The prices suggested by people ranged from 0.10€ all the way to 0.70€.

0.70€

Let’s take €0.70 for example. This would have given us a fully diluted Y2050 valuation of the total token supply of €1 billion. We’ve made a lot of progress and think that Ocean is foundational technology for data sharing, but this type of fully diluted network valuation would be absurd.

0.10€

How about 0.10€? Given the strong downdraft in the crypto-currency markets in 2018, arguments could be made that projects like Ocean Protocol should receive similar resets as other projects that suffered 80% decreases on the open market. At 0.10€ for Ocean Token, Pre-Launch contributors would see a 58% reduction on their initial contribution at 0.20€ per Ocean Token.

The project and team have delivered on milestones and significantly de-risked the technical implementation. We have built our way through all the noise and came out of the tunnel with a working product and framework that serves as the foundation for global data and services sharing for the future.

Going down to 0.10€ didn’t seem fair to Pre-Launch contributors, nor did it recognize the significant progress of the project.

0.40€

What about splitting the difference between the high and low ranges?

At 0.40€, the team felt that it would be a good entry point for further discussions. The price was fair to the team and Pre-Launch contributors. But is 0.40€ fair to new contributors? Is this a price that allows everyone to be a winner?

At 0.40€, the network valuation is around $80 million on the secondary markets. Although the team felt it was fair, it was a little too high to give new contributors a safety margin with their stake on Ocean Protocol.

0.20–0.28€

We coalesced to a range of 0.20€ to 0.28€ as a fair price. At 0.28€, early backers would see a healthy increase in their holdings. At 0.20€, early backers would see no gains and still be bound to a 6 month vesting period while Network Launch participants receive all their tokens immediately.

We’re going with 0.22€ per Ocean Token.

0.22€ gives new contributors an attractive entry point to acquire Ocean Tokens, while acknowledging the progress and allowing Pre-Launch contributors to remain whole.

Pre-Launch contributors will also receive 10% more tokens on their initial contribution. This means that someone who contributed 200€ will receive 1,100 Ocean Tokens instead of 1,000 Ocean Tokens, with the same 6 month vesting condition. The entry price for Pre-Launch contributors is effectively reset to 0.18€ giving them a 21% gain for an 18 month vest.

It’s fair to all stakeholders.

Network Launch Token Sale

32 million Ocean Tokens will be available for the network launch giving us a hard cap of 7M€ ($8M).

If we don’t sell all Ocean Tokens, they will be held over to be released for Enterprise on-boarding, for grants and distributions on the open market.

Network Reward Adjustment

The network reward has been adjusted from 45% to 60% of the total token supply. The network reward is a very healthy chunk of the token supply and is a strong incentive for network keepers to participate in the network.

For Contributors in the Network Launch

Those that can contribute more will be eligible for modest bonuses. Starting from 22.000€ ($25,000), bonuses will be granted according to the following tables:

Pre-Launch contributors will also get a 5% loyalty bonus on any new contributions during the Network Launch in addition to the above threshold bonuses.

For example, if an existing Pre-Launch participant contributes 100.000€, they will receive a total of 15% bonus on their contribution, 10% for reaching the top threshold and 5% additional loyalty bonus.

Those whitelisted in March 2018 but were not able to contribute in the Pre-Launch will receive a 3% bonus on top of the general bonus. We will send an email to those who qualify.

Summary

Fairness is our guiding mantra and we believe that this construct is fair to everyone.

The Network Launch price for Ocean Token offers an attractive entry point for new contributors at a fair valuation.

Existing Pre-Launch contributors are fairly compensated for their vesting and lock-ups with a 10% bonus of Ocean Tokens for their initial contribution, along with the opportunity to re-up to get even more tokens.

There are no changes for the Seed contributors who still maintain a 12 month lock-up and vesting post-Network Launch.

Finally, the Ocean Protocol Foundation has sufficient resources to continue building out additional features and integrations to kick-start a new Data Economy.

Ocean Protocol is getting ready to Launch! Participate in the token sale at coinlist.co/ocean by March 19th

To learn more about our thinking around Ocean Tokenomics, you can read our Tokenomics blog (Feb 2018) and an upcoming Tokenomics II blog which elaborate on vesting, token distribution goals and network valuation.

Ready to dive in? — visit oceanprotocol.com or check out Dev-Ocean to get a sense of what we’ve been working on, and fire all your technical questions in our Gitter chatroom.

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This announcement concerns an offering of securities exclusively to U.S. “accredited investors,” as defined by Rule 501(a) of Regulation D of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, in reliance on the exemption from registration afforded by Rule 506(c) of Regulation D of the Securities Act. The securities offered hereby have not been approved or disapproved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) or any U.S. state securities commission or regulatory authority. Accredited investors who desire to participate in the offering must carefully review all offered materials issued by Ocean Protocol Foundation Ltd. Certain statements above are forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks and relate to future events or future financial performance. The words “may,” “will,” “should,” “project,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “intend,” “expect,” “continue,” and similar expressions or the negatives thereof are generally identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may materially differ. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that could cause the actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward­ looking statements. Ocean Protocol Foundation Ltd. believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, but cannot guarantee future results, events, levels of activity, performance, or achievements