ICO Review - Adpump

(I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. Please DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!)

Website: https://adpump.io/

When I took a quick look at the Adpump ICO website I was pretty excited to begin with…..until I dug down into the nuts and bolts of the ICO.

Adpump is affiliate marketing on the blockchain. It is a platform bringing together the key stakeholders in affiliate marketing: the advertisers, publishers, trackers and affiliate marketing companies. This decentralised system on the blockchain looks to streamline and simplify the marketplace.

The Adpump platform will provide an instrument where advertisers, publishers and trackers can co-exist. Agreements between parties are locked in through a smart contract on the blockchain, ensuring that publishers are paid for a pre-determined rate with fixed terms. These payments are made within the Adpump marketplace using Adpump (ADP) tokens.

Problem:
• Payments by advertisers not based on a fixed price but a percentage of turnover.
• No formal agreements between advertisers and publishers.
• No ideal payment tool for advertisers & publishers.

Solution – Adpump offers the following:
• Tracker built on the blockchain making fixed payments to publishers.
• Transparent agreements and transactions.
• Prevent scam and fraud.
• Single platform for affiliate payments.
• Affiliates unable to hide traffic sources.

Prototype / Beta
Adpump is a current business operating outside the blockchain for the last 1.5 years. It has over 1,000 offers for 100,000 registered publishers from more than 300 advertisers. The company aims to convert these current users to the Adpump Blockchain Affiliate Marketplace as well as targeting companies launching ICOs and interested in affiliate marketing.

There is no current prototype or beta version of Adpump Blockchain Affiliate Marketplace however the company is aiming to release this in December 2017. The form that this will take is not detailed within the whitepaper

Team
CEO - Nicolas Liakhovski
The LinkedIn profile for Nicolas is very vanilla. I conducted a few searches on previous positions he has held and could find no information to corroborate his profile.

CCO – Mikhail Kirillov
Listed on LinkedIn as a current CTO / co-founder of two other companies. My concern is that if I’m investing my money into a project I want to know the main players are focused on the project and maximising returns for my $. I think Mikhail will be stretched to give Adpump the attention it needs.

CTO - Dmitry Dunskiy
Dmitry lists his only experience on LinkedIn as being a programmer at Preview Networks, which was a content marketing platform listed on Crunchbase as being acquired by Brave Bison in February 2013. There is no other experience listed on LinkedIn for this team member which tells me one of two things: 1) He has not worked since this acquisition, OR 2) He hasn’t updated his LinkedIn (which I would think is a MUST if you’re listed as a critical team member during an ICO).

Strategic Partnership Officer – Helga Rebeck
From the research I conducted the only information I could find on her was listed on her LinkedIn profile. She has limited skills / endorsements listed on her profile and appears to have graduated from college in 2016 with Adpump being her first position following graduation.

PR & Marketing Director – Alex White
I was really hoping that being a PR & Marketing Director, Alex would have kick arse social media accounts. I struggled to find anything for him apart from his LinkedIn profile, which is lacking to say the least! I suppose it’s indicative of the lax community engagement, which is detailed further into this report.

Advisor - Nickolay Davidov
Nickolay is the real deal. He has several successful start-ups and advised MSQRD (Masquerade) leading to their acquisition by Facebook within 3 months of launching. If he is advising the Adpump team it doesn’t seem like they’re taking his advice (from what I’ve seen).

Concept
The concept seems sound to me. There does appear to be a need to use the blockchain to solve problems within the current affiliate marketing model and there are advantages for advertisers, trackers and publishers.

Token Metrics
• Pre-sale closed – 5 million tokens sold
• Stage 1 ICO is open and concludes midnight 25th December 2017 (UTC)
• Minimum contribution – 0.1ETH (200ADP)
• Cost per token – 0.0005ETH
• Maximum contribution - none
• Bounty – this is unclear. The website states the social media campaign is open however admins in their Telegram channel advise the social media campaign closed.

Based on the Ethereum price at writing (~$729USD) Adpump are looking to raise about $29,000,000.

The Adpump (ADP) token will be used as a payment tool for services in the marketplace including joining, traffic, target actions and buying traffic. Tokens can be acquired through a bounty program (about 2.5% of all tokens produced), purchasing pre-ICO with discount or during ICO with no discount.

100 000 000 ADP tokens will be produced based on the Ethereum blockchain. They will be distributed in the following way:
• 80% during ICO
• 10% to the team (8% released each month commencing January 2018)
• 5% to Adpump foundation
• 2.5% for advisors
• 2.5% of tokens for bounty

The ICO is broken down into 5 stages as follows:
• Until December 25, 2017 – 17 546 000 ADP
• 1st quarter 2018 – 15 076 000 ADP
• 2nd quarter 2018 – 16 060 000 ADP
• 3rd quarter 2018 – 15 514 000 ADP
• 4th quarter 2018 – 15 804 000 ADP
Any remaining tokens not purchased at the end of each stage are burnt.

Community Engagement
• Facebook – 131 Followers. Inconsistent posts and low community engagement.
• Reddit – No community engagement. Three posts only – last post a month ago.
• Telegram – 791 members.
• Twitter – 1936 followers however following 4866.
• Medium – 45 followers (following 46). Very inconsistent posting and only 5 posts.
• GitHub – last commit 7 days ago. Two developers committing.
• Google searches reveal a large number of publishers extremely unhappy with Adpump claiming failure to make payments to them. (https://netbusinessrating.com/en/review-19872-adpump-)
(https://au.trustpilot.com/review/adpump.com)

Things I Like:
• An established business with current clients and affiliates.
• Some big advertisers as current clients – Target, Uber, Marriott and CBS to name a few.

Things I Don’t Like:
• The team appears quite weak. It is debatable if this is actually the case or if profiles of members have been presented poorly. Either way, I would expect a marketing company to nail this.
• Website says, ‘ADP is going to grow more than 929 times by the end of 2020’. To me this seems like an over exaggerated claim with no guarantees. So, if I invest $1,000 at ICO I should hold $929,000 by the end of 2020. If I invest and there isn’t a 929x growth by the end of 2020, will Adpump pay the shortfall?
• The website states that there is ‘direct correlation between turnover in eco-system and valuation of ADP.’ This isn’t consistent with their financial forecast, which models a 548x growth.
Adpump Financial Forecast
• Claim to be the ‘next Bitcoin’.
• Financial forecasting appears to be based on a lot of assumptions that aren’t disclosed. Generally, Adpump are assuming the numbers of clients are doubling each quarter except for a staggering 100x client growth on a Basic Plan from Q1 to Q2 2018.
• Token growth model in the Adpump Whitepaper states that ‘The higher the circulation in the system and the demand for tokens are the higher the token price is.’ WRONG! The lower the circulation in the system and increasing demand is what will drive the price of ADP tokens up. This shows a lack of understanding in cryptocurrency and raises concerns for me about the financial management and token metrics of Adpump.
• A long running ICO with tokens released at intervals. It is not clear in the whitepaper when tokens are unlocked and able to be traded. This concerns me, as token value will be diluted at each stage as more tokens are released.
• Poor reviews from publishers which (if true) reveals unscrupulous (at the very least) and possibly even criminal behaviour by upper management.
• There is no mention in the whitepaper, website or roadmap of when ADP is expected to list on an exchange. Given the issues identified with token metrics I’m concerned that demand will be low and may not even list on exchange.
• Minimal community engagement through social media channels.
• Limited commits on GitHub (although we cannot see what is happening behind the scenes).
• Poorly written whitepaper and website with spelling and grammatical errors throughout.

Will I invest?
In a word – No. Whilst I believe the concept is sound, there’s too many things I don’t like about this ICO to put my money into it.

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