During the last six months, the worldwide web has been buzzing with inquiries like “How to make an MVP for an ICO project”. However, before starting to create one, you should make sure that it is worth the effort of all the ICO organizers involved. Thus, let’s discuss the buzzing item on the agenda – the creation of an MVP for ICO startup.
Do I need MVP before ICO?
MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a project that implements the core idea of an end product, which, however, lacks all the additional (slightly significant) features and functions. MVP is released individually and is always prepared for employment in the field. Therefore, the Minimum Viable Product implementation is a great way to test how the end product will be received by users and to indicate issues that need to be corrected early on, with the least time and financial investment.
Nevertheless, some crowdsale organizers do not put the effort into developing such solutions. Let’s figure out why and what this can lead to.
What can happen if you don’t present an MVP before a token sale
Lately, teams that hadn’t made the effort to implement an MVP have been wondering why their ICOs can’t manage to raise sufficient funds. Let’s take a look at the standard chain of events faced by practically every potential investor:
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You get $500 or more and, being as cryptocurrency adept as you are, you decide to invest in some blockchain-based project;
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You are glued to your mobile device day and night trying to figure out all the technological aspects of blockchain;
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Then, you find out how blockchain can be implemented in practice, for instance, via dapps;
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After that, you examine the whitepaper of yet another ICO.
Here you come across an issue: you can’t seem to see the project’s profitability from the market-demand perspective. That, obviously, makes you decide against purchasing the ICO tokens.
The issue with many ICOs is that considering the buzz cryptocurrency caused on the global economic market around a year ago, many people with a couple of thousand c.u. in their pockets decided to immediately invade this as yet unoccupied crowdfunding niche. Being quite successful business people, they usually couldn’t boast of a clear understanding of the cryptocurrency and blockchain theory. As a rule, such people simply decided to hire developers. The hired team, interested solely in the development process, went along with their plan and were launching ICOs without trying to explain how pointless such a solution can be in some cases. Eventually, the world witnessed dozens of absolutely unprofitable projects that couldn’t compensate initial investments in 2017.
On the other hand, there are ridiculously profitable ICOs. Some managed to raise as much as $7 million. The organizers of such projects tend not to post the code on GitHub upon the pretext that their blockchain is developed in the private repository. Is that a right decision? We don’t think so because open source is one of blockchain's trademarks. Publicly available code of your MVP will, in turn, increase the level of trust toward your solution and demonstrate the potential value of your startup development to knowledgeable investors.
There’s even more. MVP can help you indicate the weak points, thoroughly work out pricing for your solution, and find out how unique it is as compared with other ICOs – not in theory (like in the case of market research) but in practice. Thus, the creation of an MVP is kind of proof that your startup will be able to resolve some important task, which, simultaneously, demonstrates its value for investors.
Are you planning an ICO? Then it’s a perfect moment for you to start developing an MVP.
MVP for ICO: success stories
It’d be enough checking out the following stories in order to realize how right the decision to launch an MVP for your ICO can be.
DeNet
Probably, many people have heard about the DeNet project. Briefly, DeNet is a blockchain-based platform that is, essentially, fully secure and protected web hosting available from any point on the planet where there is Internet access. The goal of the 19-year-old founder of the project – Denis Shelestov – was to revive the bygone anonymity unavailable nowadays to a regular Internet user. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?
In such way, a decentralized DeNet app is kind of a guarantee of private information security that doesn’t adhere to any legal systems and public security services. Using the platform, users can create backup copies of their files and stop worrying about their public availability.
Before launching an ICO, Mr. Shelestov decided to present and test an MVP. The product is an alpha version of a future full-blown DeNet project, which allows copying operations to be conducted without the necessity of employing a web browser.
As a result, investors have the opportunity to personally witness the basic functionality of DeNet; technical director – to indicate prospects for further development. Thus, we are confident that upon launch, Mr. Shelestov’s ICO will manage to raise its 20 million c.u. hardcap.
Decentralized News Network (DNN)
DNN is an ambitious, transparent decentralized news platform with a goal to eradicate or at least quickly expose shameless propaganda and fake news. Fake news has become a major issue in 2018, especially in the political and media spheres in the USA. DNN wants to change this situation for the better and let people see the truth in politics and media.
Thus, DNN's philosophy is that the users must decide if a certain piece of news is reliable and trustworthy. Once a consensus among the reviewers of the alleged news is achieved, it is marked valid. Also, the collective actions of users are rewarded.
Their public ICO is currently in process. Their MVP is an alpha of the future full-fledged web solution. It supports Ethereum smart contracts. It was tried and tested by over 1500 committed reviewers, as well as, many writers. The solution isn’t wholly finished yet, but it’s safe to say that it is quite a successful product with a good cause; people are really loving it so far.
Advantages of MVP deployment for ICO
When launching an ICO, many business people rely only upon the professional competence of dedicated team members and the vision of a core concept from the blockchain perspective. From the investor's perspective, however, the most reliable organizers are those that launch an MVP beforehand (as it can be tried out live; its benefits can be assessed properly as not only the dry facts and whitepaper statistics are available).
In fact, the mere availability of a great concept isn’t enough. It must also be thoroughly tested by the real users, coordinated in the UX aspect, and approved by independent experts from the financial analytics sphere. Only in such cases will you have full confidence that the money spent on ICO wasn’t spent in vain.
But that’s not all. It is MVP that clearly shows investors that your ICO is backed by a team of professionals who don’t want to simply get their money and disappear but are actually interested in the success of the startup.
Conclusion
Investors tend to regard ICOs, which can’t boast anything but a whitepaper, with caution. So you, as a business owner, must be thoroughly prepared and motivated to organize an express release for your project that would clearly demonstrate the value to users.
Already decided to launch an MVP for an ICO? Excellent, we will help you with that! Let us know if you need our aid via the contact form and we’ll definitely contact you to discuss further details of our cooperation.
