There is a video link at the bottom for those who prefer an audio version
Good day guys. today I want to introduce you guys to the coin SKM/ Skrumble Network.
Skrumble Network is a blockchain project that completed its ICO less than a month ago, it was so popular that the ICO was completed within 1 hour and the token hit it’s first exchange, gate.io, within 5 days. The exchange volume was also so high that it pushed gate.io from 15th place in market exchange volume to 12th place, and it’s token price rose by 130% within 24 hours. So this is definitely a coin token investors should be aware of currently.
Skrumble defines itself as a “Secure communication-centric blockchain”.
Think of the current social media apps you use, it might be text messaging apps and calls like WhatsApp or WeChat, it might be video chat and conferences like skype, maybe social media blogging like Facebook or data sharing like Dropbox, even a wallet for money transfer like Jaxx.
Now imagine a single blockchain project that will do all the above, not in a centralised manner as these platforms do, but in a decentralised manner, where all your data is truly not monitored or regulated, your communication is encrypted and truly secure, an app that can even bypass firewalls, so countries e.g. China will be able to have the same access and open communication with the rest of the world.
That singular project is Scramble.
Currently internet communication has 3 problems:
Because these companies are all centralised, it means our information is stored in a single place and easy to be hacked. Facebook recently had the data of over 50million users stolen and misused, Whatsapp was also found to have a backdoor to infiltrate group chats. So whatever we send and they store, is not secure at all.
The internet is monopolised by big companies like google, facebook etc.. and each of them have terms-of-service, we as users need to agree to use their essential services which allows them to collect and sell our information for free. E.g. what you browse on Google will magically appear in your facebook feed. This is because there is an exchange of information happening behind your back that you unknowingly permitted when you clicked agree in the terms and services.
Furthermore our data can be scanned, stored and even adjusted by the companies, who do it under the name of quality control and scanning of inappropriate content, but does it really feel safe to know that they will keep a copy of your sent data for legal purposes?
Consider blockchain for example. Google, twitter, facebook cooperated to ban all cryptocurrency related advertisements. Good and helpful information e.g. proper hardware wallets to help new investors avoid being scammed or lose their money are now banned and there is nothing that the blockchain community can do about it. Google and facebook alone control over 70% of all internet advertising. There is no freedom of information or global access, in fact, mass media can actually manipulate the masses by promoting or slanting announcements in a certain manner. Centralised information control is a multi-billion dollar business and one of the greatest threats to true internet freedom.
Alright, now that we know the problems, let’s look Skeumble’s tech and how they plan to offer the solution.
First of all, Skrumble is of course a decentralised project. This is pretty standard for any Blockchain project, but the fact that the information is stored not on a centralised server, but a decentralised server, makes it virtually impossible for hackers to hack.
The actual Blockchain structure is not well described in the whitepaper. It says that the “Blockchain protocol is similar to that of Bitcoin, however, the data structure such as blocks or transactions is significantly different, because it contains not only financial data but communications instructions and encryption information as well”.
Like most blockchains they use a hashing algorithm, but this too is not described in detail and all they state is that the Skrumble Blockchain will be able to achieve concensus quickly. Their initial operating speed is 500TPS, and the design will allow scaling to an eventual 1000TPS. This figure is a bit underwhelming for me, because most systems are starting at 1000TPS with aims to scale to much higher numbers, up to a million TPS. With 1000TPS, that works out to around 86million transactions per day.
Just Whatsapp alone has 55 billion messages/ day, 4 billion photos and 1 billion video transfers/day. And that’s excluding their other features and excluding China whom they want to include because they are boasting being able to bypass firewall. WeChat processes 38 billion messages/ day. So all the big players are talking billions of messages/ day and that’s just one aspect of what Skrumble is targeting. 1000trx/sec is not enough, even 1million trx/sec might not be enough.
They did say that they are considering sharding, and will also be constantly researching and evaluating new and faster methods of concensus and Blockchain load times reduction. So I actually think their Blockchain is not fully developed yet and they have yet to decide on the actual final concensus algorithm. This will definitely be something to pay attention to if you’re thinking of investing in this project.
They will also have an identity-based network security. The creation of digital identity is something that is fast growing in the Blockchain space, other projects like Ontology, TheKey etc.. specialist in it, but even projects like Skrumble also use it because it helps with privacy, security, data management etc…
Skrumble Network Blockchain will employ a novel solution known as the Skrumble Network Transport Access Control (SKTAC) technology to provide permission control, unlinkable identity privacy and improved scalablility.
I think it is very good that they are creating an ID system that caters to the specific needs of their service e.g. security, permissioned control etc.. the actual features e.g. permissioned control etc.. is quite similar to many other blockchain ID projects.
What I would be interested to know is whether their ID technology is compatible with other Blockchain ID systems. One of the key features that attracts me to the skrumble project is that skrumble bypasses firewall. So for the first time in history, closed countries like China will be able to access a chat program that the rest of the world uses. This is going to be huge, and their Chinese community is already very big because of this. But in China for example, the biggest ID Blockchain project is TheKey, and we are talking about a database with hundreds of millions of users. Rather than every Blockchain project creating their own individual Blockchain ID data base, I think the future is Blockchain projects combining their ID data bases to build a more secure ID reputation, ID use-case etc… That’s why you have big projects like NEO, Ontology, TheKey all working together, because they realised the strength in pooling together ID data resource. If Skrumble wants to be a global game changer or even a China game-changer, particularly because their project is quite ID based, then I think it’s prudent at some point they will be confronted with the possibility of being part of that eco-sysyem. So I’m sure the Skrumble’s SKTAC is a very workable technology, but I would be interested if it is compatible with other projects ID system.
Skrumble will also use an encryption scheme. This will be used for all aspects of communication, including voice, video, and file transfers. They have developed their own protocol which is called Skrumble Secured Real Time Protocol (SKRTP) and the white paper for this protocol will be published at a later time.
So I think by now you’re getting the feel that we are really getting into this project quite early, a lot of the technology is not fully explained in the white paper.
One of the features of the SKRTP they did explain is Key Derivation.
Simply explaining, not your entire profile will be used for every communication. Different crypto use cases will only require different parts of your profile. So as many as six different keys are needed. But all of these keys are derived from a single master key in a cryptographically secure way. This prevents any attacker from being able to collect a large amount of information from a single certain key session they might have, but the key management protocol itself will only need to exchange one master key for the SKRTP to derive all the necessary keys.
They also mention that “Skrumble Network will achieve truly decentralized file storage by utilizing an algorithm that uses unique session identification and randomized key data per user to ensure file information is encrypted.” But again the algorithm details this safe storage are not revealed yet.
I think maybe if we come back to this whitepaper one year from now, it should have a lot more information.
Finally the feature I’m most excited about. No firewalls.
They way they explain how they can achieve bypassing all firewalls, is because every conversation in the network is distinctive, encrypted and anonymous, so it becomes impossible to trace the user and block access. The only way you could block access would be to block internet access. Otherwise once a person has access to the internet, you can’t actually trace that they are using the Skrumble network.
This is the feature I’m most excited about. Their explanation kinda makes sense, but it is also very simple. Almost too simple. I’m just thinking aloud as a very lay person. What if the country bans the Skrumble app from google and itunes stores in that country which is easy for them to do. Can you still chat? Because as a lay person, I still the app to use the chat, I don’t know how to utilise the technology without using the app. So I feel like I’m missing something here, I can see how firewalls can’t stop the technology, but I don’t see why governments can’t stop the app. If that makes sense. Like I said, I’m probably missing something.
Nonetheless, I’l be holding out to see if this really takes off, and if it does it’s game changing, and this alone, will make the project huge.
So just in terms of their tech, I get the impression they are still very early in development. They will be lauching their android and IOS app soon. But I don’t consider that a (MVP) minimum viable product from a Blockchain project point of view, because that app is actually a centralised product. I don’t think many people are aware of this, people think its a blockchain project already, but it's not. It’s currently just another chat program like Whatsapp. They haven’t decentralised it yet, it’s not a blockchain product, they are still working on the actual blockchain architecture and deciding on very core features like the concensus algorithm. It’s not that hard to develop a centralised chat program, there’s thousands of them. But I would definitely be looking out for an actual decentralised product before calling it a blockchain product. The features are sounding really great and game changing, but the risk is the technology is not developed, they haven’t confirmed they scaling solution or even concensus algorithm yet. So I think this is a great project with great potential but I just want people who getting involved at this stage to go in with a realistic awareness of where the project’s tech development is really at.
Skrumble network is the child of Skrumble technologies which is the parent company.
Skrumble technologies has been around since 2014, they have over 30 filed global patents, have been used by over 400,000 users and have launched a unified communication platform in 2017 with strong market response. They have more than doubled their staff last year and currently have over 40 team members.
This is the team. It’s a big and well balanced team in terms of roles. As always, Il go through a couple of the profiles.
Christine Guo is one of their co-founders, her working resume isn’t that long. She started work in 2009 according to linkedin, so that’s less than 10 years working experience, her first 4 jobs were 2 teaching assistants and 2 investment analysts, all less than year long. Her next job was as an investment and corporate development Associate at Umiwi Technology where she worked for almost 3 years, and she must have done really well there, because r next job then was to be Vice president of CanTech Capital, a VC fund which she worked for 2 years until Oct 2017, before moving over to Skrumble to serve as Vice President of the corporate development department and co-founder of this project.
Another of their co-founders is Eric Lifson, according to Linkedin, he started work in 2009 as an account executive for 8 months, before moving to Cossette where he was for over 4 years. Whilst at Cossette, he worked as an account executive in the team responsible for managing a few of McDonald’s advertisements and more. He then took a break from work to pursue his MBA between 2013-2014 and after graduation started work at Skrumble as one of the co-founders of Skrumble technologies as well as the Vice-president of Marketing and Strategy.
And you can go through the rest of the team’s individual’s profiles. I went through most of them briefly, just to get a feel of the team, and generally speaking, most of them have about 8-10 years of working experience, some more, and a handful even less than 5 years working experience. It’s a very young team. For all of them, this is their first blockchain experience. They’ve almost all been in the communication industry for quite a while, so again, this just emphasises to me that getting communication app out isn’t hard for them, but integrating that with blockchain technology might be. So I’d caution against a false sense of security that their current mobile apps are a working blockchain product, I don’t it is, the true test will be later on when they integrate the current app with blockchain technology. Many people think that its easy to create a blockchain, it’s not that easy guys. When you’ve seen many blockchain projects fail, like how 70-80% of all ICOs projects in 2017 have now failed to deliver their whitepaper, you understand why many investors choose to invest in projects with a MVP (minimum viable product), because it lowers the risk tremendously in an already very high risk crypto market. This is not FUD, it’s just caution. I think this project has a very promising concept.
Coming to their strategic advisory board and early investors, and this is where it really picks up for me.
Their advisory team includes Anthony DiIorio who is a Co-founder of Ethereum and the CEO of Jaxx and Decentral. They also have Jinius Tu, who is the CTO of AION on board as well. So these are big names, these are guys who know how to get a working blockchain product out. Having them on board is very reassuring. They have other advisors who all have pretty heavy resumes with lots of experience.
Their early investors include Matthew Spoke, founder and CEO of AION Network. I have a lot of respect for the AION project, so its great to see the CEO and CTO involved in this project. And there’s close to 10 capital venture firms invested in this project. That says a lot. Capital firms are professional investors, so if one chooses to invest in this project, that’s good. I think in the recent interview they actually mentioned they now have 15 capital firms invested in them, so that’s very reassuring for token investors like us.
So even though the team’s resume was abit underwhelming, the advisory and early investor’s resume is impressive.
This is their roadmap. It’s very sparse, with 9 milestones set from 2014 – 2019. We are currently in Q2 2018, so the next milestone is the one I’ve been mentioning to look out for, which is the launch of the Beta Decentralised App Product.
The full Skrumble Network Ecosystem will only be launched in Q2 2019, so that’s a year away. That’s alright, for a good project, that’s worth the wait.
The token use is expected to be used across all the different features of the project, so that sounds like a lot of use case. The actual manner of how the tokens will be used is not clear yet, we will have to wait for more information e.g. how many tokens for a video conference etc..
One that that caught my eye in the whitepaper, which kinda confused me a bit is the mention that the tokens would be used as membership rights. So it’s like a license. The number of tokens you hold will determine the membership class you have. So for example if I want to send you a big data file, both of us will need to hold enough tokens to be premium members. But in this case, what is not clear is, do I still need to pay tokens to do the transfer? Cos the impression I get is you don’t need to. You just need to hold enough tokens to be a premium member.
As a user, great. Especially if you get in early and buy tokens cheap to get a cheap premium membership.
As a token investor, that would be a nightmare, because if everyone just buys tokens once to hold forever, then there is no liquidation, meaning no circulation or demand and no demand means poor token value.
But it’s a tough balance, because if you charge people for video calls, they will just go with whatsapp or skype cos its free. So I think token economics is also something that investors should pay attention to. No point guessing now, just wait for the team to actually announce the token use and costs down to how much the use of each feature actually costs and then do the maths to work out if it’s profitable. Because token use is one aspect that literally breaks of makes whether any project a worthwhile investment for token investors.
This is their current price. A token is worth 7 cents. As mentioned before, they have only been on the exchanges less than a month. When they first hit the market, they were doing huge volumes on gate.io. Since then both the token price and volume has cooled down significantly. The spike in mid May was due to another exchange listing.
Currently they are only on gate.io, Idex and Ddex. Very small exchanges. There’s certainly a lot of room to grow when they hit the big exchanges. Also the dip over the last 2-3 weeks is because of generally market trend, not them specifically. They just got launched in an unfortunate month. Like every other project launched this year.
Overall, I think this is a great concept. It’s a very ambitious project. Even if they aimed to be just a blockchain chat app that could bypass firewalls, I think that itself would have been huge. I mean just taking on Whatsapp and Wechat would be massive. But they are literally taking on the entire internet communication world (whatsapp, wechat, facebook, skype, jaxx and more) in one go. The scope of this project is massive. And I think that’s why many investors are so excited about the game changing potential of this project and jumping in early.
I love the concept, the philosophy of personal data protection. When their product comes out, Il definitely be trying it.
But apart from the concept, this project is still in it’s infant stage based on their whitepaper. Core aspects of their blockchain technology like the concensus algorithm still isn’t decided, their fastest transaction speed doesn’t make sense to me, it doesn’t even seem like it can support a fraction of the services they want to provide, and there’s still a lot of unknown in terms of the actual blockchain technology as well as token use and actual pricing. So overall I think as an investment, Skrumble is a higher risk that some of the other good projects we’ve reviewed at the moment, but with the scope it’s trying to achieve, it could potentially give crazy returns as well.
Let me know what you guys think of Scrumble, I’m interested to know how many people are aware of this project already and what your thoughts are. Your comments also go a long way in helping the rest of the community to decide if this is a project worth investing in.
That’s my thoughts on Skrumble, I hope you guys found this review helpful, especially those who requested it. Thanks for introducing me this project, I definitely think it’s a project worth keeping an eye and introducing to the rest.
Always remember none of this is professional advice, its just me sharing my thoughts and personal opinion with you, always do your own homework and do your own research.
Give us that upvote to support us, and if you’re not following us already, definitely hit that follow, we have many interesting coins in the line up for the next couple of weeks.
Thanks so much for reading this. Have a fantastic day wherever you are, and I’ll catch you again soon!
