Almost two weeks ago I asked you which coin I should cover for my second fundamental analysis on Steemit. The winner was Etherparty (FUEL). I had planned to do the full analysis in the week after announcing the winner, but unfortunately I was not able to.
Last time I made one longpost and later I posted a summary. This time I will be using a slightly different approach. I will be posting several smaller parts where I focus on one thing, such as: project, team, funding, road map, et cetera. By doing this, I can get the information to you faster so that we can have discussion sooner. In addition, I think the posts will be easier to read as they won't be as long. After releasing all the parts, I will also post the entire analysis and a summary.
In this first part of the analysis I will be focusing on the basics, i.e. the project and the currency itself.
As Etherparty itself puts it:
"Etherparty intends to create a platform and value-add services that allow any user to access smart contract and blockchain technology, without requiring specific technical knowledge of either."
So what are smart contracts? A smart contract is, in essence, an automated digital contract between two or more parties. The terms of the contract are pre-programmed in the contract. This allows two parties who do not necessarily trust each other to interact without needing a third (trusted) party.
Clearly smart contracts are the future. However, there's a big problem: complexity. Smart contracts on the Ethereum platform are written in Solidity. This poses a problem as Solidity, or any programming language for that matter, is far too complex for a typical user. There's no way lawyers will learn Solidity just to write digital contracts.
This is where Etherparty comes in. Etherparty allows users to create smart contracts without any technical knowledge of programming, blockchain or crypto. Etherparty does for smart contracts what Wordpress does for web sites. It intends to be a one stop shop - only Etherparty will be needed to create a smart contract. Apart from creating contracts by yourself, users will be able to buy pre-made contract templates from a marketplace.
Etherparty is built on top of the Ethereum network. Smart contracts are executed through the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). In the future, Etherparty intends to be blockchain agnostic and support other blockchains as well (such as Bitcoin).
The Etherparty application has three subscription tiers. Users in the lowest tier will be able to execute one or two contracts per month. The second subscription tier offers a higher limit and more functionalities and the third tier increases upon the second. The white paper does not specify which functionalities are available for each subscription tier.
In order to execute contracts, FUEL is needed. FUEL is the platform's native validation token. Etherparty mentions that:
"Because the price of FUEL may fluctuate, we will peg contracts to a fixed amount of USD, and adjust the amount of FUEL required to execute the smart contract based on this fixed price."
This is really strange to me. If you're going to charge a fixed amount of USD for the use of contracts, why bother with a crypto currency? I strongly believe that in order for a cryptocurrency to succeed, it must be fundamental to what the project is trying to do. Do you really need FUEL in order to purchase contract templates? Would it not be possible to buy templates and execute contract using ETH?
The total supply of FUEL tokens is one billion and a hard cap. Etherparty mentions that:
"Tokens that are used on the platform will go back into the platform supply. We will provide a service for users to purchase FUEL from this supply."
However, there's no mention who will be the owner of these tokens. Do they go to the Etherparty team? Who will users be buying the FUEL from?
Sadly, the white paper contains only about half a page on the FUEL token. Consequently, some critical questions remain unanswered. Hopefully the Steemit community will be able to provide more information. Additionally, I might reach out to the Etherparty team to get these things cleared up.
FUEL will be available on the Etherparty platform in the future. For now you can buy the tokens on exchanges. Binance has by far the largest volume at about 97% of total volume.
What do you think of the fixed USD price on contracts?
Is FUEL really required in order to execute smart contracts? Why not use ETH?
Where do you think the used tokens go?
Part two will be coming soon! Stay tuned.
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FUEL: 0x050451c41c91a72683c99472f0566b55a4c6627c
BTC: 1NQLE91WbHHMDCm2rbyg6yadhz423YsMnM
ETH: 0x050451c41c91a72683c99472f0566b55a4c6627c
LTC: LiVkom4hFT1y3iJrsgaQx1JfiUuXscPhg8
Thanks!
-longcat