DEBITUM NETWORK - Global Small Business Financing REVIEW

Project details

Name: DEBITUM NETWORK

Ticker symbol: DEB

Project Type: Platform, Business services, Cryptocurrency, Investment

Extended company description: Debitum Network is an ecosystem for small business financing that brings together borrowers, local and regional risk assessment experts, insurers, and global investors through smart contracts.

Company: Debitum Network Limited

Website

Whitepaper

ICO details

Public ICO Start: 25.01.2018

Public ICO End: 25.02.2018

Token Sale Duration (weeks): 4.4

Token type: ERC223

Total number of tokens issued: 400,000,000

Tokens available (Pre-Sale + Public ICO): 156,500,000

Investment goals:

Price of 1 DEB: 1 ETH = 7.800–6.500 DEB

Accepted payments: ETH and FIAT

Bounty: The program is valid from January 12, 2018 until February 25, 2018.

Token Role: Utility

Team

Team size (number of persons): 13

Number of advisors and partners: 9

Github

Social media

Twitter: Followers: 3781

Telegram: Followers: 5750

Medium: Posts: 5

LinkedIn: Followers: 153

Facebook: Followers: 10850

YouTube: Posts: 18, Subscribers: 218

Project information

Debitum Network is an ecosystem for small business financing that unites borrowers, local and regional risk assessment experts, insurers, and global investors through smart contracts.

The Debitum network is an initial market-maker and mediator intended to address lack of credit by connecting small and medium-sized business owners to global investors who are able to rely on the services provided by local or regional contracting parties, for example inspection, risk assessment, insurance or debt collection.

The Debitum Network ecosystem consists of the following:

Communities combining service providers. Each community will have a rating depending on the services provided.
Trust mediators.
Investors and borrowers.

Loans will be granted in fiat currency until the point that cryptocurrency is adopted by the mainstream.

Advisors:

Eyal Hertzog (Linkedin) — Product architect of for the Bancor Foundation, formerly co-founder and product architect at Appcoin, co-founder and president of Metacafe Inc.;

Tadas Langaitis (Linkedin) — Member of Parliament in Lithuania, founder of NGO Goodwill projects, formerly founder of Spire, business angel.

Honourable Richard Evans (Linkedin) — Founder, director and CEO at ACE Funding Ltd, Lithuania GB, Balmoral Global Capital Ltd, shareholder and consultant at Interestates (Europe) Ltd.

Andrius Bogdanovičius (Linkedin) — General director and Chairman of the board at Creditinfo Lietuva, member of the supervisory board at Creditinfo Eesti AS and Kredītinformācijas Birojs, chairman of the Council at Finansinių paslaugų įmonių asociacija FINCO.

Andrius Nikitinas (Linkedin) — Commercial attaché to the Lithuanian Embassy, formerly: deputy general director at Balto Media, UAB, director of economics and finance at Balto Media, UAB, CEO at Lietuvos Zinios, UAB.

Michael Ricks (Linkedin) — Head of the George C. Marshall Center, senior advisor at Lancea LLP, ysura GmbH, FITFIRM.

Peter Howitt (Linkedin) — Founder of the Ramparts European Law, formerly: general counsel and secretary of the Transact company, founder of Internet Media, director of Bentworth Holdings Ltd.

James Downton (Linkedin) — CEO and founder of Clickverta Inbound Marketing Agency, marketing consultant at Monetha, co-founder and member of the board of directors at The Marketing Group Plc: A Full 360-degree Offering.

Lex Sokolin (Linkedin) — global director of Fintech Strategy & Partner, Managing director and co-founder of Lightshed, formerly: operating director and founder of AdvisorEngine, CEO and founder of NestEgg Wealth.

Project partners:

Ramparts — legal partner.

Lithuanian Ministry of Economic Affairs — governmental partner.

Credit Info — credit bureau.

Finpass — information systems partner.

InnTec — partner for outsourcing.

DebInfo — partner for factoring and account financing.

Alpha Advisors — partner in the field of consulting.

Lenderwise — Fintech lending platform.

Eskolos — legal partner in the field of lending.

Attracted investments: $1.2m was raised in round A.

Summary

The Debitum Network project has experienced specialists (team and advisors) in the field of finance and IT behind it.

Strengths of the project:

The market chosen by the project is dynamically developing.
Unique hybrid lending solution which is really pragmatic – blockchain processes and fiat loans.
A strong team of experienced advisors.
Backed by successfully operating IT and finance businesses.
The team already has the partners required to make the ecosystem functional.
The project has a finished MVP working on the Ethereum blockchain.

Weaknesses of the project:

Highly competitive environment of the selected market segment.

Market and industry

According to research by McKinsey & Company and the World Bank, there are 130 million SMEs and 100m developing enterprises in developed markets. [http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/financialsector/brief/smes-finance]

Based a the study by the team, 70% of all micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets are unable to obtain loans. There is a $2 trillion loan shortage.

According to the World Bank, an alternative financial market is developing in business financing, and this could grow to $90 billion of investment by 2020; currently it is $34 billion.

Global growth in lending to small and medium-sized businesses (Credit Gap, $M)

[https://debitum.network/assets/files/Debitum-White-Paper.pdf]

Comments: Growth rate in the market is high.

However, we should note that the number of platforms for investing in small and medium-sized businesses is also growing rapidly, as discussed in the section on competitors below.

Competitors

In the course of our review we have identified the following competitors, but most of them operate in the segment of consumer lending:

Polibius — A cryptographic blockchain bank.

Everex — A platform for making payments in cryptocurrency and for exchange of microfinance services.

Suretly — A crowdvouching platform enabling users to earn commission by providing paid vouching services.

WeTrust — A financial services platform.

MarketInvoice, BankEx, Lending Club, SALT, BTCJam, LoanBase (Bitlendingclub), BTCPOP, GetLine, BM Chain, Bitbond, Dharma, ITTEX, Kiva.

In addition, the following competitors can be specified:

GetLine — A decentralized lending platform.

Lendoit — A decentralized P2P lending platform.

Genie — A decentralized platform for P2P lending.

Summary: Key differences to the competition are the specialization in loans to small and medium businesses, and a new system of communities.

Engineering features of the platform

The platform is built on the basis of blockchain technology using smart contracts and a number of gateways ready to include contracting parties. An EVM will be deployed in a private subnet to communicate with the blockchain.

The Kubernetes cluster in which the application resides will communicate with blockchain and provide data on changes in status of the smart contract. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q22661306]

All infrastructures not involved in the Ethereum blockchain will function via the Amazon Web Service infrastructure.

System backup services:

Gateway service.
Discovery service.
Configuration of the server.

Server functions:

Asset service.
Risk assessment management service.
Debt collection service.
User management service.

Technical description

The process of financing small and medium business (SME) is based on securities. Insuring an issued loan and access to the secondary market for the sale/purchase of existing investments (previously issued loans) will be provided as additional services.

Screenshot of the service:

Comments: The project already has a working MVP.

Technical roadmap

In the future, with the development of the technology and the amount of data it is planned to implement the following:

1st–3rd Quarter of 2018 — Creation of the Debitum Network 1.0, the beginning of the product development:

September 2018 — Testing and auditing of the Debitum Network version 1.0 before public launch.

4th Quarter 2018 — Debitum Network 1.0: - Development of version 1.0 of the Debitum Network ecosystem, including manually attracting asset generators, investors and additional service providers.

Comments: The project has presented the final stage of project development. there are software specialists on the team, so it is reasonable to assume that all developments will be completed on time. The project co-founders are converting their IT company into the development department of the Debitum Network which offers a great advantage over other projects.

The following active modules are presented in the open repository:

Github

Repository

Commits: 144

vvv7777777: 27.86%
philtable: 26.61%
maxbron08: 9.15%

Repository

Commits: 1

mazvydasm: 100.00%

Repository screenshot:

Comments: The repository contains 7 modules:

Contracts — a module intended for debt collection.
Assets-microservice — a module for the Debitum Asset Service.
Gateway-microservice — a module for Debitum Gateway Services.
config-server — Debitum server configuration service.
Discovery — Debitum Discovery Service.
ico-contracts — a module dedicated to the ICO.
UltimateICOCalendar — ICO calendar.

The repository belongs to the Debitum Network. There is no current activity in the modules.

Documentation

We checked the site and the documentation of the Debitum Network for sufficiency and consistency for making investment decisions.

Information about the project is contained in the following documents: The white paper, privacy policy, Debitum Network Executive Summary, Token Generation Event and the pitch story, in English and Russian. The project is described in detail in the white paper. The main emphasis is placed on how the platform will operate, market analysis and the technical aspect.

The website also provides information on the project, the ICO, how the project functions, the roadmap, bounty and affiliate programs, MVP, blog, frequently asked questions, consultants and the team. The site is available in English, Russian and Chinese. Features of the site include a section for questions and answers, the MVP and links to the bounty and affiliate programs.

Summary: The documentation provides insight into the project. Principles of the platform’s operation are described in sufficient detail.

ICO

Tokens to be issued for sale, %: 60

Public ICO start date: January 25, 2018

Token type: ERC223

Accepted payments: ETH and FIAT

1 DEB price: 1 ETH = 7.800–6.500 DEB

Crowdsale duration: 4 weeks, until February 25, 2018

Debitum token — the cryptocurrency of the Debitum unified ecosystem, used to pay for all services provided on the Debitum Network. Certain network services will only be available for purchase with Debitum tokens.

There are two internal values for the Debitum token:

Token limit: 400,000,000

Advantages for token holders: Tokens are functional, for payment for services on the platform; they can also be sold.

Dividends: No

Additional issue of the tokens: No

Escrow: n/a

Max Goal: 24,000 ETH

Currently raised: $1,200,000

The token sale is offered with the following bonuses at different stages:

Bonuses:

Comments: All unsold tokens will be blocked and frozen after the ICO. Minimum purchase is 0.05 ETH.

Bounty

Link to the bounty program

The project has allocated 2% of 156,500,000 DEB to the bounty program, which operates in the following directions:

Bitcointalk (Signature Bounty): 35%.
YouTube (Blog posts, Articles Bounty): 20%.
Twitter: 15%.
Facebook: 15%.
Telegram: 15%.

Summary: The project has an extensive bounty program. All the terms of the program are specified at the link above. Rewards will be distributed within 6 weeks of the end of the sale. In addition there is a referral program, in which participants can receive a bonus of 7% of the amount purchased by those referred.

Token and capital distribution

Tokens and capital are distributed according to the following scheme:

Summary: Tokens do not affect the distribution of shares in the company. The reward system is set up so that it is more advantageous to buy tokens earlier.

Development plans

Roadmap of the project:

1st–3rd Quarters 2018:

February 2018 — round B of the crowd-sale;
March 2018 — expansion of the Debitum Network team to prepare for global expansion;
June 2018 — creation of the Debitum Network in the first target country

4th Quarter 2018:

Development of version 1.0 of the Debitum Network ecosystem, including manually attracting asset generators, investors and additional service providers.

Expansion:

Step 1: Eight European countries: Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Step 2: Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Balkan countries;

3rd Quarter 2019:

Step 3: Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, South Korea, China and India.

Step 4: Argentina, Chile, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Honduras, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, South Africa, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.

Summary: The team has presented a detailed plan for scaling, but does not disclose how users will be attracted to the platform.

Team

The team consists of 13 people and 9 advisors. Information on core members of the team (LinkedIn) is as follows:

Martins Liberts (Linkedin) — Co-founder. Member of the board of DEBIFO, director of INNTEC, formerly managing director of Tieto.

Donatas Juodelis (Linkedin) — Co-founder and partner relations specialist. Co-founder and member of the board at DEBIFO, co-founder of INNTEC, UAB, director of Broliu investicijos, UAB, formerly member of the board at Beata Amber Holding Company, UAB.

Justas Saltinis (Linkedin) — Co-founder. CEO and founder of DEBIFO, formerly corporate finance specialist at Orion Securities, freelance analyst at Euromonitor International.
There are 10 other people in the team.

Summary: The team is mainly from Lithuania. The team also has the following experts: A technical director, lead product manager, marketing director, software developers, business development manager, operations manager and a community manager.

Marketing

Information about the project is available via a variety of popular services such as Twitter, Telegram, Medium, Slack, LinkedIn, Facebook, Github, Bitcointalk and Facebook. The project has a bounty program.

The project is active on social media. On Twitter and Facebook there are regular news updates, and videos are being posted on Youtube.

The format of articles on the project suggests that they were primarily ordered by the project.

Comments: Interest in the project is increasing. The marketing campaign is mainly being developed via Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. However, we would like to note that most of the traffic is currently obtained through ad clicks.

Analysis of traffic on the Debitum Network website, based on Similarweb.com data showed the following:

Traffic sources: Similarweb

Comments: direct: 24.71%, referrals: 14.91%, search: 39.90%, social: 14.05%, mail: 0.85%

Search traffic: 39.9%, of which 27.10% is 'organic' traffic

Referral Links: 14.91%

Analysis of traffic on the Debitum Network website based on data from BE1.ru showed the following:

Top 5 countries for site visitors: USA — 9.01%, Vietnam — 7.61%, Turkey — 6.87%, Russia — 6.06%, Brazil — 4.65%

Referral Links: icoalert.com: 41.48%; bitcointalk.org: 14.90%; icodrops.com: 9.15%; tokenmarket.net: 7.70%; icorankings.io: 4.73%

Social activity: Facebook: 79.74%; Youtube: 15.41%; Twitter: 2.27%; Linkedin: 1.57%; WhatsApp Webapp: 0.83%

Analysis of traffic on the Debitum Network website based on analysis data showed the following:

Site evaluation: 0.8.

Traffic: visitors: 22,251, views: 89,010.

Social activity: score: 1148, source: VKontakte: 2, Facebook shares: 1146, Google+: 0. https://a.pr-cy.ru/debitum.network

Summary: Based on available data, it is clear that there is interest the project. The team is leading an advertising campaign on Twitter and Facebook; it is communicating with users via Telegram and posting videos on Youtube. There are published articles on the project. Over the last month, the project’s website traffic has increased by 150,000.