Cofound.it

What is Cofound.it?

Cofound.it is a platform that brings together people who have a strong belief in the power that blockchain technology has to offer, and teams that are building some of the most amazing blockchain projects.

For the longest time possible, brilliant ideas have always been associated with Silicon Valley. This explains why some of the top companies like Google and Facebook have been thriving. These are companies who have benefitted from being in the right place at the right time. It has always been about timing. What about those who do not have access to Silicon Valley?

Realizing that lack of access hinders the growth and progress of a lot of talented individuals, Cofound.it works hard to find exceptional entrepreneurs and experts who can be nudged to reach their potential. Bearing this in mind, Cofound.it handpicks some of the best projects and pitches them to the masses on the blockchain.

Through Cofound.it, anyone from anywhere in the world with an amazing project is able to make a pitch, and hopefully, find investment. This is an opportunity for people, developers and anyone else with an amazing idea to use the blockchain as a means of getting the backing they need.

Cofound.it brings together experts with years of experience and expertise in their fields of operation. Through a careful vetting process, millions of investors are in a good position to find and invest in projects without worrying about losing their money through illegitimate projects, as has been the case in so many scenarios in the past.

What is the problem that Cofound.it Solves?

Crowdfunding has been a spectacle over the years. Since 2016, crowdfunding has become a means through which people can get support for whichever idea they have.

There are so many crowdfunding platforms on the internet at the moment, raising thousands and even millions of dollars for a worthy cause, and in some cases, a not so worthy cause. It is about people who are willing to give what they can spare so that someone can realize his or her dream.

Crowdfunding keeps growing, and each year, more and more people invest in some of the projects that they believe will have a lasting impact on the world, or in someone’s life. Blockchain projects have also followed suit, leveraging ideas on crowdfunding. This explains why there has been an increase in companies and projects that raise capital through ICOs.

Between 2017 and 2018, a lot of blockchain projects raised capital through ICOs than any other form of financing. This concept on its own has turned heads, flipped the basic concept of traditional venture capital structure. Venture capitalists have since had to change the way they do things and look into engaging further in the ICOs. Gone are the days when people would approach a venture capital firm to fund their projects.

There are so many obstacles involved in this, and there is also the risk that the venture capitalist would impose certain terms and conditions for them to support a given project. Instead of allowing this monopoly of events, project owners are finding it easier to pitch the idea to the masses and source for funds. Given that the distribution of funds is so diverse, it is virtually impossible for any investor in the project to attain a controlling stake by virtue of the size of their funding.

However, even with the sudden shift toward crowdfunding, what is lacking in the crowdfunding space is structure, a service that makes sure people are not investing in a scam. There are so many people who have taken advantage of the crowdfunding space to launch dummy projects and fleece money from investors.

This poses an opportunity for a service that would bring structure into the crowdfunding realm, and this is where Cofound.it comes in. The role of Cofound.it is not just to establish a form of structure, but also to provide mentorship to the project owners where necessary. This explains why there are several experts onboard the Cofound.it project.

How does Cofound.it Solve the problem? 

Mentorship

Cofound.it does not just connect project owners to investors, it also helps them get the support they need in terms of mentorship. A lot of people come up with brilliant projects, but by virtue of the fact that they lack the right mindset, they cannot see their projects to fruition. Other than mentorship, Cofound.it also connects the startups to early adopters, and evangelists for their projects.

Teams Involved

One of the challenges that project teams experience during crowdfunding is that they lack the business language. Most of these teams are very good at the technological aspect of their projects, and the vision they have for the same. However, they fail in the business language.

Most of the people who support these projects and fund them expect them to hit the ground running as soon as they receive the funding. This becomes a problem, and soon they feel disappointed. Given that these teams are new to the element of growing a company and investors who demand results, Cofound.it bridges the gap between these two parties, making things easier for both of them.

Traditional Investors

In the case of the traditional investors who fund startups, a lot of them are currently left on the sidelines. The reason for this is because there is a lack of structure, diligence in the process of startup investment. As a result, they struggle to identify the ideal project that they can finance.

What Cofound.it does for this group is to put in place a secure and structured place that makes them feel safe especially for their investment.

Through this, Cofound.it is able to make sure that there is a constant flow of large amounts of cash to support the distributed economy.

Even with the growth and advancement of the internet, a lot of these investors still insist on working with local projects only, and for a good reason. They need to be in a position where they can actively monitor their money in use, and make drastic decisions where necessary. Such investors risk missing out on funding world-class projects thousands or millions of miles away from their local base of operation, another concern that Cofound.it is doing away with.

Supporters

Token crowdfunding has been the in thing for a very long time. For individuals who are interested in supporting these projects, it becomes a challenge for them, trying to pick the right project to support. The success of most projects does not just depend on the technology or the idea behind it, but also on the goodwill of the supporters.

The tenacity and relationship that supporters have with the project will go a long way in making sure it becomes a success. Just by looking at a web page, it is virtually impossible for an individual to tell whether this is the right project to support or not.

There are a lot of promising opportunities that keep coming up, and scammers are also getting better at their game. Therefore, supporting projects is increasingly becoming a gamble. With Cofound.it, however, supporters no longer have to worry about this. Cofound.it takes up the risk of vetting projects and their project owners before they are allowed to pitch the projects to financiers.

What makes Cofound.it better than the competitors?     

While there are so many options available, especially for those who are interested in crowdfunding, based on the challenges inherent to the crowdfunding market as a whole, the following are some of the reasons why Cofound.it is a better alternative.

Team Selection

One thing that Cofound.it does so well is the selection of teams. This is in realization of the fact that there has never really been a shortage of ideas, but selecting a team that can execute those ideas accordingly.

What Cofound.it does is to carefully choose the teams that have the highest potential for progress. The selection process is done through a careful analysis, thereby choosing some of the best projects that can be leveraged on the Cofound.it platform. This makes it an ideal option for project owners and the financiers. The projects on Cofound.it are reviewed by Deloitte, which makes this one of the most straightforward platforms for crowdfunding.

Preparation for Success

Cofound.it has a coaching and communication process that is streamlined to ensure that each team is able to successfully run a crowdsale and make sure that their project is up and running. This is also a good idea because it helps to overcome some of the challenges that are experienced by project owners, where they are unable to establish a good foundation upon which they can build their business.

Token crowdsales are a far superior way of financing a project compared to the traditional ways and for so many reasons. There is a bias in the startup financing world, where certain projects easily get financing over the others. For startups that are not in the top cream of the startup financing attraction, it is not so easy to raise funds.

However, with Cofound.it, these startups are now able to get the support they need. Through a successful crowdsale, these startups stand to enjoy similar benefits that they would enjoy from an IPO. Apart from that, the investor expectations are different, given that both the investors and the startup team are fully aware of the nature of their interaction.

Business Launch

One of the challenges that most startups experience is understaffing. This is, in fact, a problem that is common in so many instances pre-sale. Soon after the pre-sale, the teams would have to spend weeks if not months, trying to set their company on the right path, especially by defining new roles, hiring new members to their team and so forth. This is one of the most complicated experiences, and most startups struggle to deal with it accordingly.

Such startups can benefit from the evaluation team at Cofound.it. The role of this team is to define some of the important roles that the startup needs in order to launch the business successfully. This is through the coaching network and the rich team of experts on Cofound.it. With this in mind, as soon as the funds have been raised, the company can proceed to define roles, hire the right people for those roles and execute their plan.

How can Cofound.it be categorized?

Cofound.it is a distributed VC ecosystem, designed for a distributed future. It is a blockchain incubator for projects that are poised to have a positive impact on the world as we know it. Cofound.it runs as a self-sustaining business consultancy.

Cofound.it aims to become one of the most disruptive platforms, harnessing the ultimate power of the blockchain to shape the future, and leveraging this on the power of logical interactions. It is a project that is built for the blockchain community by the blockchain community and released to the rest of the world.

What’s Cofound.it’s vision on Security?

One of the things that Cofound.it has done so well is to enhance the security of the platform. By bringing on board some of the top brands in the market like Deloitte, Cofound.it has a robust security auditing system.

This is important in order to support the framework for project owners and to give investors and supporters confidence in the projects that they are investing in within the Cofound.it ecosystem.

Examples of Cofound.it use cases/applications

The blockchain system is on a growth spiral that is unstoppable. Cofound.it will be leveraged on each hub so that it can be used for the following:

Brand Recognition – By increasing the presence of Cofound.it on different platforms, this will make it easier to provide wider access to experts and projects on a regional level. This, therefore, will further accelerate the growth capacity of Cofound.it, and increase the number of incoming projects for funding.

Simplicity – As Cofound.it evolves, the process of collaboration and team selection will be easier for participating project teams and supporters.

Engagement – Cofound.it should further allow engaged communities and talented persons to interact freely and more often, for the greater good of both parties.

Resources

https://cofounditmedia.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/documents/Cofound.it_business_plan_Na27itB.pdf

https://blog.cofound.it/

https://cofound.it/

https://coincheckup.com/coins/Cofound.it

 

 

 

Gridcoin

What is Gridcoin?

Gridcoin is a distributed computing network built on the blockchain. There is a lot of unused resources or underutilized resources lying idle in terms of existing hardware. It is these resources that Gridcoin is designed to put into good use.

Anyone who has access to the Gridcoin network and can process data is granted free access. Those who participate in the network are given incentives through cryptocurrency that is minted under the Gridcoin protocol.

There is too much idle processing potential on the internet at the moment. These are resources that instead of being left to lie fallow, can be put into good use.

What Gridcoin does is to mint and distribute cryptocurrency in lieu of the processing power needed, and what a participant in the ecosystem makes available.

Instead of being wasted, this processing power is then channeled towards scientific discovery and data-driven analysis

What is the problem that Gridcoin Solves?

One of the biggest challenges that Bitcoin has is a waste of resources. Bitcoin is a resource-intensive blockchain platform, and in the long run, it becomes unsustainable given the amount of resources that are burned just to process transactions.

This is where the concept of Idle Processing Potential (IPP) comes in.

IPP is the processing power of one computing device multiplied by the unused processing potential over a given period of time. What makes up the IPP network? Anything that has a processor falls in the concept of IPP. This means that anything from computers, toys, cars, gaming systems, phones and so forth.

The challenge behind IPP is that there is a lot of idle processing power lying around, and as more and more devices are made available, this points to idle resources. We must face the reality that these devices are part of our life at the moment.

You will find them in almost any house. Therefore, there is an insane amount of processing power that is lying idle. Instead of letting this processing power go to waste, Gridcoin proposes a solution where the developing systems and legacy systems can contribute their IPP to distributed computing systems.

How does Gridcoin Solve the problem?    

Gridcoin is a pioneer in the blockchain industry. It directs computational power to help advance scientific progress. In order to solve the problems above, Gridcoin sets itself apart from the competition in the following ways:

Energy Efficiency

There is a lot of energy waste that is associated with Bitcoin and most of the other projects that are built on it. Why waste so much electricity? It is estimated that millions of dollars are put to use each day on electricity use to run Bitcoin.

Instead of struggling through this, Proof of Stake is a feasible workaround that has been implemented by Gridcoin. The good thing with the Proof of Stake algorithm is that it has proven the feasibility of immense cryptographic strength without having to spend so much on electricity bills.

Therefore, users can still perform the same transactions they would on Bitcoin, or even more, but at a lower cost of operation.

The other issue when it comes to efficiency is coin velocity and coinage. Coinage is a concern that arises out of remuneration and retention of coins.

On the other hand, coin velocity is as a result of transactional spam. These are issues that have dogged Bitcoin for the longest time, making it unattractive for those who do not have the resources.

What Gridcoin does differently is to offer rewards to users who support real scientific contributions. Gridcoin is for a worthy cause, and such causes need all the support possible. It is about changing the world as we know it today and redefining the future. As an energy-efficient blockchain project, the playing field is level on Gridcoin.

To protect the network, Gridcoin uses distributed signatures. The distributed signatures belong to the majority of the stakeholders who own coins on the platform. Payouts are shared in terms of the quantified contribution to the scientific causes on Gridcoin.

Distributed Research

Since the goal behind Gridcoin is to reward contributions to science, fairness is mandatory. This is where BOINC comes in handy. This is a system of distributing credit nodes.

The University of Berkeley distributes tasks to volunteers in computational research. On the Gridcoin platform, the work is handled through cryptographical validation.

BOINC is an open source volunteer computing grid that uses the computing power of individual users, combines the computing power to advance scientific research.

Using BOINC is free, and it has already supported more than 30 projects in different scientific areas.

Gridcoin runs a robust protocol such that even in the worst-case scenario where there is an attack or disaster that renders BOINC ineffective for up to 14 days, the platform would still thrive. What this means, therefore, is that Gridcoin strives to encourage new uses and incentives, especially towards directing resource use into science.

Continued Decentralization

One of the reasons why Gridcoin has become easily acceptable and appreciated by a lot of people is the low resource requirements. Compared to other platforms, Gridcoin is not resource intensive. Therefore, this means that anyone with a basic machine can run Gridcoin on their devices. You can even run it on your phone. The hardware requirements of most of the blockchain projects usually lock a lot of people out of access.

Being an easy to set-up platform, anyone, including those who research in their leisure time, and beginners who do not know the first thing about blockchain platforms can contribute the idle processing power of their devices to the Gridcoin platform. Standard devices like mobile devices, home computers can all form a part of this network.

There are a lot of computational tasks that are carried out in the world at the moment, and this might be too much for ASICs.

This is because they are designed in such a way that their general-purpose computing setting makes them resistant to hardware optimization. As long as you have a computer at home, you can include its processing power into the blockchain and get rewards for your contribution to scientific research.

What makes Gridcoin better than the competitors?

Open Source

Gridcoin is hosted on GitHub under an MIT license. By hosting Gridcoin on GitHub, this means that anyone who is interested is free to view, access, modify, experiment with, learn from or even make a copy of the Gridcoin software. There are a lot of benefits that accrue to open source projects.

Any developer who has in-depth knowledge of C++ is in a good position to contribute to the development of Gridcoin. Other than that, the Gridcoin software was specifically designed for easy maintenance, auditing, and extension.

One of the perks of running such a project as an open source project is that it allows the users a world of opportunities, especially when it comes to developing projects pegged on Gridcoin.

Apart from that, it is very easy to address any challenges concerning the Gridcoin environment as and when they arise.

For programmers and other contributors, an open source project means that they are free to identify any concerns or issues that might be present in the code before they move to production with their projects. Besides, the GitHub community is one where developers can always ask for help from other experts in the field concerning anything that they might be struggling with.

Open Data

Apart from being an open source project, Gridcoin is also an open data project. This means that you can either access the data on the blockchain through a web-based blockchain explorer or through your wallet software.

Why is this an important feature? The blockchain environment was specifically designed with a view of transparency. Anyone is able to audit the ledger at any given time.

Gridcoin is part of a global open-ledger system, hence all data accessed through it is secure and open. Open publication of data means that a lot of people are free to experiment with and analyze the data.

Open Access

The Gridcoin network is unrestricted. Therefore, anyone who wishes to access it is free to do so. The only barrier put in place to secure the computing services for the Gridcoin project is a network consensus.

Through network consensus, anyone on the network has access to instant, borderless services. Other than that, this is a platform that is free from censorship constraints. Open access is primarily encouraged for academic publications. In so doing, Gridcoin opens up the project for public engagement with open data and science, and this is in line with the ideals of Gridcoin of making the world a better place.

Open Education

Open access supports the learning initiative, culminating in an open education platform. As an open source project, Gridcoin fully supports the open education resources (OER) development. Gridcoin is one of the projects that is actively involved in supporting easy access to educational facilities for the masses.

An educated society is an empowered society. This also makes it easier to draw lots of participants and experts in different fields to engage one another, and in the process make the Gridcoin ecosystem better through their interaction.

Gridcoin employs BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), an approved distributed computing platform. Through this platform, Gridcoin can support massive organizations, laboratories, and research institutions to create and develop projects not just for the purpose of research and discovery, but also for individual needs.

To show support and commitment towards open education initiatives, Gridcoin whitelists any relevant project that has a large scope potential.

How can Gridcoin be categorized?

Gridcoin is a distributed computing network. What sets Gridcoin apart from other distributed networks is that it is powered by idle processing potential of hardware that is already in use. Gridcoin is a free access platform for anyone who needs to process some data.

What’s Gridcoin’s vision on Security?

The security protocol employed by Gridcoin is Proof of Stake (PoS). This is a security system that has been successfully used by so many other blockchain projects in the past. A lot of projects are actively migrating towards Proof of Stake because this protocol is not resource intensive as compared to Proof of Work. Apart from that, Proof of Stake is also a protocol that rewards those who stake blocks through the transaction fees employed in the said blocks.

Proof of Stake secures the blockchain project without having to perform energy-intensive calculations.

As a result, it frees up CPUs and GPUs from having to secure the blockchain. The processing resources, therefore, can be invested towards other useful ventures like completing analytical tasks.

Examples of Gridcoin use cases/applications

There are a lot of projects that currently use Gridcoin or BOINC. These are projects that are geared toward solving world problems like global warming, investigating diseases, discovering pulsars and so forth. The following are some of the projects that have benefitted from the Gridcoin project:

POEM@home

This is a scientific project that studies the protein structure to understand protein functions and predict the structure of the protein from the unique amino acid sequence.

Other than that, it also investigates the interaction between different proteins, in an attempt to understand how sicknesses and diseases are caused by malfunctioning proteins. The knowledge from these studies should be applied in developing treatments for diseases.

World Community Grid

In this project, millions of data-based computing experiments are distributed to volunteers on their devices. Once the experiments have been completed, the results are collected and sent back to the research teams.

The research teams study these results in an attempt to identify existing patterns and hopefully use this as a stepping stone towards scientific progress.

Since the project was started, scientists have managed to accomplish work that would have taken them thousands of years, in a very short time, thanks to the input of the volunteers. In cancer treatment and solar energy research alone, the World Community Grid has been able to make significant progress, with the research partners publishing lots of articles in scientific peer-reviewed journals. This has also helped advance knowledge in poverty, health and sustainability.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/GridCoin

https://www.gridcoin.us/

https://gridcoin.io/

https://gridcoin.science/

https://www.gridcoin.us/blog.htm

https://steemit.com/created/gridcoin

http://wiki.gridcoin.us/FAQ

https://gridcoin.io/#FAQ

https://www.gridcoin.us/assets/img/whitepaper.pdf