ICOrating

ORIGAMI NETWORK Rating Review (https://ori.network)

ICO dates (23.02.2018 — 23.03.2018)

Web: icorating.com

Email: info@icorating.com

Twitter: @IcoRating

1. Ratings 3

2. General information about the Project and ICO 4

3. Description of the services and scope of the project 6

4. Market Review 10

5. Team and stakeholders 15

6. Token analysis 17

7. Investment risk analysis 19

1. Ratings

We assign the Origami Network project a "Stable" rating.

The main goal of the Origami Network project is to create a protocol for quick and effi-

cient launch of marketplace platforms, using a decentralized payment mechanism and a

review system for purchases.

The target audience for the technical solution being developed is other companies wish-

ing to create new businesses, as well as existing players in the trading platform market

who are looking to introduce more secure and optimal payment methods as well as

feedback systems.

A strong advantage for the project is a ready-functioning facet of the Origami Market-

place platform that is implemented on a number of existing centralized trading plat-

forms. It is also worth noting the team’s experience in the relevant field, their contacts

gained in this area, as well as a detailed financial plan for the next 5 years. The hard

cap is not overstated, being set at 5000 ETH.

Nevertheless, in our opinion there are a number of risks that could jeopardize the suc-

cessful implementation of the Origami Network concept and prevent us assigning a

higher rating to the project:

Risk of unclaimed ORI tokens on marketplace platforms using Origami Payments.

Risk of non-realization or delay in the launch of the ChainLink project, whose func-

tionality is necessary for the operation of Origami Network services.

Significant regulatory risks.

2. General information about the Project and ICO

The Origami Network is a project that provides an all-in-one solution for companies

wishing to create trading platforms based on blockchain technology. The product line

includes:

Origami Marketplace - a site for interaction between sellers and buyers.

Origami Payments – a decentralized payment system which enables users to re-

duce the cost of escrow services in payment transactions.

Origami Review – a decentralized feedback system preventing the creation of coun-

terfeit and customized reviews.

It should be clarified that each of these developed products can be used separately

when creating trading platforms on the Origami Network.

The project already has a working product, the CommentSeRuiner trading platform,

working on the basis of the Origami Marketplace protocol.

The team is based in one of Europe's largest business incubators - Euratechnologies1

in Lille, France.

Website

Whitepaper

Token: ORI

Token distribution: For sale – 70%, foundation - 18%, founders – 6%, bounty - 6%. Un-

sold tokens will be burned.

Round 1: Pre-sale (closed on 20/02/18)

Price: 1 ETH = 6000 ORI

Cap: 250 ETH

Bonuses: 15 %

Minimum Buying Transaction: 0.5 ETH

Round 2: Public sale

Start: February 23rd, 2018

End: March 23rd, 2018

Soft Cap: 300 ETH (already reached)

Hard Cap: 5,000 ETH

Price: 1 ETH = 6000 ORI

1 https://www.euratechnologies.com

Bonuses: Week 1- 10%, Week 2- 5%

Additional bonus depending on the amount invested:

50 ETH - +5 %;

100 ETH - +10%;

200 ETH - +20%.

Minimum Buying Transaction: 0.1 ETH

Maximum Buying Transaction: no

Accepted currencies: ETH

Funds allocation:

Token Issue Date: Will be unlocked 7 days after the end of the token sale - 30th March

2018

Vesting: 1-year lock-up

To participate in the ICO, each user must register on the whitelist and pass the KYC

process.

According to the project website, residents of the USA, Canada and Singapore cannot

participate in the ICO.

3. Description of the services and scope of the project

The Origami Network project is working on implementing a protocol that makes it easy

to create decentralized marketplaces. This consists of 3 basic elements:

• Origami Marketplace

• Origami Payments

• Origami Review

These are complementary aspects which can be used in any combination, both with

each other and with other e-commerce services.

Origami Marketplace is an e-commerce platform that enables selling products via an

online market. The solution itself is centralized but its use with other elements makes it

possible to achieve the transparency and reliability inherent in blockchain.

Origami Payments is a decentralized payment system that runs on Ethereum. This solu-

tion is designed specifically for transactions in the P2P market where the trust between

buyer and seller is most often limited. In using smart contracts, the system offers a safe

method for paying for goods and a significant reduction in costs for vendors. In particu-

lar, when making a purchase on a platform a smart contract acts as an escrow and reli-

ably blocks funds, transferring them to a seller only after the goods have been delivered

to the consumer.

The process for Origami Payments is presented below:

According to the description, the developed payment system will work with different

means of payment:

● ORI token

● Ethereum

● BTC

● Fiat assets

Due to the choice of the Ethereum blockchain for the implementation of the project, ini-

tially the system will not be able to accept payments in BTC or fiat currencies. However,

the team is planning to use the BTCRelay2 protocol for communication with the Bitcoin

blockchain. Thanks to a BTCRelay franchise contract, payment in the system will be

able to be made in BTC and the payment information will be re-transmitted through Ori-

gami Payment Smart contract.

Fiat payments at the initial stages will be implemented within the framework of a central-

ized approach with normal transaction costs. Nevertheless, in the future the team is

planning to facilitate using traditional asset types using smart contracts based on the

2https://github.com/ethereum/btcrelay

ChainLink3 project’s functionality - a decentralized oracle that connects blockchain with

external sources.

Origami Review provides the opportunity to leave feedback about a product and/or a

seller. Any feedback will initially be authenticated and only users who have actually

completed a purchase process will be able to publish reviews, signing them with their

own private key before publishing. Further, Origami Review will check shipment of

goods using Chainlink. Thus a seller's ratings cannot suffer from users leaving negative

comments without actually making a purchase.

According to the Roadmap, all intended modules are planned to be launched by the end

of 2018:

3 https://github.com/smartcontractkit

The system will provide a marketplace with secure payments for transactions between

seller and buyer using smart contracts; a buyer will be able to share her user experi-

ence with the community.

It is important to note that the system involves operators on the trading platform - they

will be necessary to maintain the network (advertising and marketing, transaction track-

ing, vendor registration, etc.). However, intermediaries are completely excluded by the

framework of Origami Payments/Origami Review.

It is notable that initially the team created its marketplace protocol for their own use on

the centralized platform of CommentSeRuiner.com; the founders decided to create a

decentralized platform after this, adding a secure payment system and functionality for

authenticated feedback.

4. Market review

In recent years, the quantity of online shopping carried out has grown rapidly and peo-

ple are increasingly using their personal computers and mobile devices for various

online purchases. According to the Statista portal, in 2017 more than 10% of all global

purchases were made online4. The forecast showing growth of this indicator to 15% by

2021 is presented below:

E-commerce share of total global retail sales from 2015 to 2021

The best-known form of e-commerce for private consumers is in the category of busi-

ness to consumer (B2C), which includes online or online stores. In 2016, about 1.6 bil-

lion people worldwide bought goods online. In the same year, the volume of retail sales

in the world amounted to $1.9 trillion and forecasts indicate reaching $4.06 trillion by

2020.

According to the results of a survey in the US5, 90% of independent online sellers sell

their products on marketplace platforms.

4 https://www.statista.com/topics/871/online-shopping/ 5 https://www.nchannel.com/blog/ecommerce-stats-trends-online-shopping/

Some prefer to make online purchases for convenience, others are attracted by prices.

According to statistics, the number of online buyers is growing rapidly every year. The

table below shows a forecast for the number of digital buyers worldwide from 2014 to

2021. In 2021, it is expected that more than 2.14 billion people worldwide will buy goods

and services on the internet, compared with 1.66 billion global digital buyers in 2016:

The major e-commerce platforms include Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and others which

have revolutionized commerce by connecting buyers and sellers directly using an open

network online. They generate basic revenues using the Web 2.0 playbook: Aggregate

proprietary data (of users, products, surveys, etc.) reach enormous volumes, due to

which each participant is interested in access to both a website's customer base and

the network of sellers operating on one website. By attracting buyers and sellers to their

proprietary platforms, these companies can charge commission fees for each purchase,

even if they have no role in the physical delivery of goods.

It is no secret that Amazon does not offer the lowest prices in the market. Nevertheless,

this company has one of the most effective search algorithms for an extensive database

of goods and related services (Amazon Prime, Fresh etc.).

Online buyers can also be influenced by a number of digital resources when making

purchases, such as e-newsletters and reviews of advertised products. PayPal is the

most preferred centralized payment method among online buyers worldwide - more

than 40% of online buyers confirmed the use of this method. The traditional credit card

takes second place with a utilization rate of 31%, followed by debit cards6.

The BigCommerce portal published7 characteristics and trends for buyers in 2017. The

main ones are as follows:

• 55% of all sales in e-commerce are implemented via branded electronic stores and

45% are made via trade platforms.

• Out of 45% of all marketplace sales, the most common destinations are:

o Amazon - 36%

o eBay - 8%

o Etsy and others - 1%.

Unfortunately, the market for developers of B2B platforms for e-commerce does not yet

have statistical data available for analysis, but it is obvious that this industry will only

develop further due to the generally growing interest in online shopping.

However, it should be recognized that current platforms do not guarantee the safe use

of personal data and do not always successfully resolve disputes and conflicts that arise

between seller and buyer. In addition, transaction fees when paying for goods on these

types of platforms most often greatly reduce potential income for sellers.

There are several projects in the blockchain sphere whose goals partially coincide with

Origami’s.

OpenBazaar8 - a project that uses a protocol for e-commerce on a fully decentralized

platform. Transactions between all parties are modelled on Ricardian contracts9, and

each step of a trading operation on the platform is cryptographically signed. This en-

sures reliability of data, prevents forgery and enables arbitration disputes to be resolved

if they arise. Escrow is achieved using several digital signatures. Payments are made

using cryptocurrency; however, prices for goods are indicated in fiat.

The decentralized nature of this service involves the installation of special software on

the user's side. It consists of two parts, server and client. The server part is responsible

for interacting with other nodes on the network, implementing transactions and storing

Bitcoins. The client stores descriptions, photos of goods and settings for the visual as-

pect of the store.

The OpenBazaar network relies heavily on IPFS to provide data distribution, and the

system has also supported Tor since February 2017. In total, the project has attracted

6 https://www.statista.com/statistics/251666/number-of-digital-buyers-worldwide/ 7 https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-trends/#147-online-shopping-statistics-behind-

why-these-ecommerce-trends-matter-most 8 https://www.openbazaar.org 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_contract

about $4.2M of investment since 201510. Immediately after the launch of an updated

version of the platform in late 2017, the project attracted more than 100,000 new nodes.

However, in comparison with centralized platforms this volume of users leaves much to

be desired, at least at this stage.

In comparison with Origami, the platform does not provide a feedback system. The

need to install additional hardware and software also complicates the user experience.

Nevertheless, the fact that it is free is a significant plus.

UHUB11 is a decentralized e-commerce ecosystem. Hub is a cryptocurrency based on

the Ethereum blockchain, which can be used to purchase any product in a given eco-

system. In being a part of the uhub.io community, a user will be able to make all pur-

chases, exchange currency, use rental services, book travel, etc.

Uhub Pay uses blockchain technology and smart contracts for electronic transactions.

The project is currently staging its ICO. According to the project description, its planned

scope is more extensive than Origami’s. However, according to the website, the project

has raised only 185 ETH. A significant disadvantage of this development is its high cost:

the soft cap for UHUB is 18,000 ETH.

These platforms occupy the B2C niche, being competitors for Origami's potential cus-

tomers as well as for the founders’ platform, CommentSeRuiner, which already uses the

Origami Marketplace protocol. Since the Origami project offers its services to business-

es primarily, not to end customers, the projects considered above are not obvious com-

petitors. There appear to be no similar projects in the blockchain systems market. Nev-

ertheless, there are a number of centralized solutions for similar purposes. Their main

providers are:

Mirakl12 offers a centralized solution for creating a B2B platform. The system helps

companies increase their product ranges, excluding traditional overhead costs. The

platform provides opportunities to expand a range of products, increases price competi-

tiveness and administers orders.

Izberg13 also provides services for the creation of B2B/B2C platforms. The IZ-BERG

platform is the only centralized solution for creating a marketplace, offering multifunc-

tional solutions for products and/or services. This includes maintaining various back-

offices, including Seller / Data / Order / Revenue / Customer Management tools. The

system is also compatible with various ERP and warehouse systems (SAP Hybris, Ora-

cle Commerce, Magento).

10 https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/openbazaar#section-overview 11 https://uhub.io 12 https://www.mirakl.com 13 https://www.izberg-marketplace.com

After conducting a detailed analysis of the market, we came to the conclusion that there

are no products completely identical to Origami and this project has potentially high

chances to occupy its niche.

5. Team and stakeholders

According to the white paper, there are three founders and key participants of the Ori-

gami Network project; all are based in France.

● Julien Bruitte, CEO

Julien combines work in the Origami project with the position of CFO in several compa-

nies: Cute.Land, CommentSeRuiner, Comptoir Du Code, being a co-founder of all 3.

Previously, for more than 5 years he worked as an engineer at Atos14 (IT services). He

has a BSc Software Development degree from the Institute of Science (Carlow, Ire-

land), and a Master’s degree from the Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille.

● Alexandre Duquenoy, CMO. Alexandre also combines work as CMO for Origami with

other projects by the team - Cute.Land, CommentSeRuiner, Comptoir Du Code. He has

been working in marketing for the last 5 years - on development and promotion of this

team’s projects. He worked in software development at Atos until 2012. He has a BSc in

Software Development from the Institute of Science (Carlow, Ireland), and a master’s

degree from the Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille.

● Vincent Pichon, CTO. Vincent, like his colleagues, works as CTO in all the previously

named projects (Cute.Land, CommentSeRuiner, Comptoir Du Code). He worked in

software engineering at Atos until 2012. He has a BSc Software Development degree

from the Institute of Science (Carlow, Ireland), and a Master’s degree from the Universi-

té des Sciences et Technologies de Lille.

According to the white paper, the team has the following members:

Account manager (Customer service)

Sales/Marketing manager (Origami Marketplace marketing, and Origami pay-

ment/review after their launch)

Full-Stack developer (CTO assistance)

2 Backend/Blockchain Developers.

However, no more detailed information about employees is provided in the documenta-

tion.

According to the team, 2 banks, CIC and BPI France are creditors and advisors to the

project. These banks advised the founders on various issues related to the promotion of

Origami; however, in our opinion, it is incorrect to call them advisors.

14 http://atos.net

CIC15 is one of the largest national banks in France. The bank granted a loan of 50,000

Euros to the project with a maturity date of May 2025 (interest rate 0.58% per annum).

BPI16 has a network of more than 800 offices in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Eu-

rope. The branch in France also became a creditor of the project in February 2017 -

providing a loan of 100,000 Euros with a maturity date of March 2022.

A positive point is that the founders and key figures in the project have been working

together for more than 5 years on other projects. The fact that there are centralized plat-

forms successfully implemented by the team (Cute.Land, CommentSeRuiner) closely

related in essence to Origami, significantly increases confidence in the development.

15 https://www.cic.fr/fr/index.html 16 https://www.bpiexpressonline.com

6. Token analysis

ORI tokens will have three main functions:

● ORI tokens will act as payment method on Origami Payments.

● Tokens will be part of the reward system on Origami Review (Cashback is as-

sumed to be implemented).

● Holding tokens will confer the right to vote on the development and implementation

of upcoming functions for the Origami Network.

Using ORI tokens as a form of payment guarantees no additional transaction costs. The

system will also accept other types of cryptocurrency; however, a commission of 0.8-1%

of the price of goods will be applied when making transactions in other tokens.

The documentation provides information on the size of transaction commissions for

other popular payment systems compared to Origami:

As a result, sellers will be able to use the savings achieved by paying for goods using

ORI tokens to reward buyers in the form of cashback or to promote their products in the

marketplace.

Holders of ORI will also have a set of tools for tracking and participating in project deci-

sions. Thus, the development of Origami Network will be managed by the community,

but the mechanism for implementing this process is not described in the documentation.

We believe that with the successful implementation of the planned functionality and

build-up of the client base, the demand for ORI tokens could show significant growth.

The Origami business model includes two sources of income:

● Subscription to the Origami Marketplace

● Commission for conducting trading operations on Origami Payments.

Origami Marketplace subscriptions are differentiated depending on the total number of

potential transactions per month on the trading platform introduced:

The team provided a business plan according to which the project intends to attract at

least 14 clients in the first year after the implementation of its decisions. In our opinion,

this is quite an achievable goal, since Origami has 3 client platforms in production and 2

additional customers with which cooperation agreements have already been signed;

this can positively influence demand for project tokens in the medium and long term. In

addition, the team is recruiting staff for the sales department.

From a short-term perspective, the white paper provides a roadmap according to which

the team is planning to promote the project at various conferences and other retail

events during 2018; it is planned that Origami Payments will become the leading decen-

tralized payment escrow system by the end of 2018. In our opinion, these expectations

are overly optimistic as the launch of Origami Payments on Mainnet will take place no

earlier than the 3rd quarter of 2018 according to the Roadmap.

7. Investment risk analysis

In the process of analyzing the Origami Network, we studied the project documents ex-

tensively and we find them well-elaborated. In our opinion, the creation and implemen-

tation of the Origami system has a number of risks potentially influencing the success of

the project:

Risk of unclaimed tokens in the payment system.

The prices for goods are in fiat currency and their purchase, as part of the Origami Net-

work, will be implemented using ORI and ETH (and also BTC). Since the crypto market

is highly volatile, the very mechanism of conducting a payment transaction seems to us

to be highly risky - in fact there will be some temporary difference between the buyer’s

order and the final settlement with the seller (the period of shipment and delivery of the

goods to the destination) expressed in fiat money; this can significantly change at the

moment of transaction completion. In this regard, both sellers and buyers may be un-

happy with the outcome of the transaction under different circumstances and volatility

levels of crypto economy. In our opinion, people will more often make purchases in fiat,

paying appropriate commissions, minimizing the risk associated with the volatility of

cryptocurrency, which makes the latter a less attractive means of payment.

Risk of the non-realization of the ChainLink project.

One of the key problems that need to be solved for the introduction of an escrow ser-

vice to pay for goods and services with the help of crypto tokens is the connection be-

tween blockchain and the outside world. In this task, Origami Network relies on the

ChainLink project which is still under development. If there are insurmountable prob-

lems for its launch or any other difficulties, this will also lead to a delay in the implemen-

tation of the Origami Network project.

Risk of insufficient Ethereum capacity.

The speed of Ethereum transactions is very limited. With total system load, all platforms

based on Origami protocol may experience failures and/or delays in transactions.

Regulatory risk, since platform tokens will have a payment function.

Since the company is planning a large-scale globalization, the future of the project de-

pends heavily on official position of world regulators regarding turnover of cryptocurren-

cy. On the one hand, some countries such as Germany demonstrate an open approach

to regulating this sphere – Germany recently announced recognition of Bitcoin as an

official means of payment. On the other hand, the US authorities are stepping up their

pressure on the crypto market, stating that some companies are violating existing law

since many ICO tokens can be identified as securities17.

17 https://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-launches-cryptocurrency-probe-1519856266

The information contained in the document is for informational purposes only. The

views expressed in this document are solely personal stance of the ICOrating Team,

based on data from open access and information that developers provided to the team

through Skype, email or other means of communication.

Our goal is to increase the transparency and reliability of the young ICO market and to

minimize the risk of fraud.

We appreciate feedback with constructive comments, suggestions and ideas on how to

make the analysis more comprehensive and informative.