“I first came across Bitcoin in the second half of 2013. Three years later, I decided to become fully devoted in blockchain. I witnessed the rapid development of the industry, and observed the market progression over the past five years. The several boom and bust cycles also provided significant insight to the market’s cyclical swing between euphoria and despair.”

Axonomy Feb 19

Firmly believed in the disrupting force of blockchain, my team and I explored the application of blockchain in the field of business and finance. Our project was launched in November 2017, with a distributed business whitepaper that discussed the feasibility of building a new business mode that uses blockchain to enable collaboration between different parties.

Soon, the madness reached its peak, and the market was flooded with speculative investors. The new token-based investment and financing model (ICO), due to its own design flaws, became a feast for Ponzi shcemes. Irrational market noise, accompanied by the most natural human greed, pushed the bubble towards new heights.

Throughout the process, my team and I recorded the many shortcomings of the ICO model (the Axonomy’s early white papers summarized them as five outstanding issues). Based on our understanding of distributed business, we started to experiment with a structure that magnifies the synergy between the investors, users, and startups through voting. this is the predecessor of Axonomy : DBA (Distributed Commercial Accelerator) was born in May 2018.

DBA Global Launch Event

Since the concept of Axonomy well-resonates with the community, a large number of blockchain-based medias and influencers actively promoted this idea, helping the project gain traction rapidly in just a few months without fundraising, listing, or hiring media channels.

1. In less than 4 months, our community has grown to more than 100,000 registered users worldwide;

2. Over 40,000 KYC certified users from China, the United States, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and other countries;

3. High-quality project candidates: By the end of 2018, Axonomy has undergone voting for 42 blockchain start-up teams world-wide;

4. Seven rounds of community voting. Each round involves high-quality projects from different blockchain categories.

5. The DBA Fund has completed investments in multiple projects such as MixMarvel, BitData, Lots, Leblock, and Smart Valor;

Along the way, Axonomy has been portrayed as a “blockchain investment training ground” by community users because it helps the users polish their strategy, without incurring hefty fines.

Despite the long-term optimistic outlook, the speed of industrial progression has experienced sluggish growth due to the economic slowdown. This macro systematic change has revealed some inadequacies of our original design, shown as follows:

 

The token mechanism needs to be improved. Since the project token is not listed on the exchange in the near future, the incentive for users to participate in community contributions is rather limited. The voting result and institutional investment are not directly linked. Thus the value network does not yet form a close loop;

In the very early stage, projects with only white-papers have limited opportunity to interact with retail investors, as they spend the bulk of their time on research and development.

On the other hand, in the bear market, we are delighted to witness some positive trends:

1. With the departure of a large number of speculators, the hype is finally over. Serious entrepreneurial projects, blockchain believers, and value investors have emerged. The mentality of all players in the industry has become more rational;

2. When the bubble burst, there was a huge price drop of 80–95% from the all-time-high. The low-quality projects gradually withdrew, decreasing the friction of spotting high-quality projects.

3. With the continuous improvement of infrastructures such as Ethereum, a large number of applications such as stable coin, supply-chain finance, and blockchain games made substantial progress toward mass adoption, providing the participants with a new wave of opportunities.

 

Axonomy Meet Up

In 2019, based on the observations and reflections mentioned above, our team will migrate towards the Axonomy 2.0 model based on the following principles:

A. More AXON usage scenarios.

Although AXON is not yet traded on the exchange, the value is first reflected in its right to usage.

At the core of distributed business is the consensus and tokenomics. We have been trying to get users to earn and consume more AXONs in the Axonomy 1.0. We predict that this initiative will gain more traction in phase two, where the token is no longer restricted to the community. The goal is to bridge the gap between the user and the project, and facilitate collective growth amongst the startups.

Axonomy offline meeting

We hope that these events can engage the users in the acceleration process and turn them into active shareholders. Only when more token holders turn a profit, can we set forth a positive cycle on constructing a mutually beneficial system.

B. More activated projects.

The ICO model is a flawed financial model that involves a high level of asymmetric information. Over time, the market will replace it with a more effective and rational protocol for token-based investment and financing.

Axonomy has been working to eliminate information asymmetry between users and projects. While keeping the original startup voting intact, we will start to mobilize users to participate in the evaluation, usage and commercialization of projects that have usable products. Together, we will identify high-quality teams and investment opportunities, creating real value while promoting the growth of excellent projects.

The key difference lies in a shift of emphasis from concept to activation. The value of the early users of the community can directly benefit the projects’ early development. The community-based nomination, investment, and construction is a new acceleration model grounded on the principle of distributed business.

C. More enterprises enter the market.

As a distributed value network, Axonomy 2.0 will expand the collaboration between the community and promising blockchain projects, integrate innovative blockchain services and products, introduce third party funds, and provide infrastructure for the mass adoption of blockchain applications.

Our goal is to make Axonomy a new type of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing ecosystem, tailored to the blockchain industry and its early adopters. The new version will establish a collaborative synergy for users/investors, project teams and investment institutions to explore the early opportunities and bonuses of industry development.

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