Uchain

Uchain is entering the market of decentralized platforms for sharing economy. The market cap of cryptocurrencies went up to over $600B during 2017 and received attention from the global central banks. Main factors likely to affect the future development of cryptocurrencies are, in our opinion, interventions by the government and central banks and questions on how the sector will be regulated. Apart from Ethereum, there are other large companies creating dApp platforms which already gained high market cap (Lisk, Waves, Stratis). That is why the competition on the market of Dapp platforms is severe and it might be hard for Uchain to attract a significant amount of customers.

UChain will establish a decentralized Blockchain network. During the transaction, UChain's token will be used as a transaction certificate when the user subscribes to or purchases a service, such as booking a room. The user may need to freeze a certain amount of tokens as a deposit, which will be released upon completion of the transaction. The whole transaction process will be handled by smart contracts and cross-chain hosting technology to ensure the authenticity, legality, and compliance. Blockchain architecture will provide users and enterprises the opportunity to distribute their own tokens. Through UChain, users can easily share, pay, and settle sharing services. UChain’s overall product structure can be divided into four layers: core blockchain layer, API / SDK Layer, service layer, and application layer. Any DApps built on top of UChain can issue their own token and develop its sub ecosystem. In addition to developing their own DApp, they can also issue their own token in exchange for UCN from their service users. The team was formed in Q2-Q4 2017. The product development start time is unclear. Testnet is not ready and is expected in Q3 2018. Mainnet is scheduled to go live Q4 2018. There is no link to GithHub to track source code and product development. The given roadmap is very high-level and does not describe the development stages in detail.

There are two major roles that drive the UChain ecosystem, users and developers. Users can be categorized in service users, independent service providers, and enterprise service providers. They use or provide services on UChain. Independent developers or UChain foundation developers create and maintain the infrastructure of UChain. Uchain will charge fees for access to the platform. The unit economy of the platform is unclear.

The team aims to raise 42000 ETH during 3 sale rounds, selling 40% of UCN tokens. Taking ETH price of $550, this gives a hard cap of $23.1M and post ICO valuation of $58M. In our opinion, the project is overvalued. Private Sale: 22,000 ETH with a 50% bonus, half the funds will be locked for 6 months | Public Presale: 8,000 ETH with a 15% bonus, the bonus portion will be locked for 3 months | Crowdsale: 12,000 ETH with no bonus The use of proceeds is given by share: 35% - Research & Development, 30% - Marketing & Growth, 30% - Global Operations & Expansion, 5% - Advisory. The use of proceeds distribution is not detailed enough. There is a three years vesting scheme with a one-year cliff for the team tokens reserve of 15%.

There are 9 people working st Uchain, according to LinkedIn. The team members are located in Canada and China. Most of the team members come from U-bicycle - Shanghai-based bike sharing service, founded in 2016. All the core competencies are represented in the team except blockchain & cryptography profiled experts. The team members have experience working at eBay, Meizu, IBM, Tencent, and Microsoft. There are just two developers in the team as of May 28.