Ampleforth Review and SVET Rating

12 Nov 2020 by rate3

System (Security - Velocity - Engineering - Transparency)
Ampleforth protocol is built on top of EVM but, theoretically, can be supported on other blockchains too. Basically, it enables data providers to broadcast the, so-called, VWAP (volume weighted average price) to an on-chain aggregator, which then adjust (at the 24 hour mark) the monetary supply across all wallets. (Engineering is a, I like this idea). On the other hand, the project team still controls two smart contracts' functions: setRebasePaused (halts changes in supply) and setTokenPaused (funds freeze). (Transparency is c+). The team exercises a full control over the protocol. At the same time, the latest audit report is dated Oct 2018. (Security is c+). As the number of BAND holders grow exponentially not sure how it might affect throughput and scalability (Velocity is b-).

Result for Ampleforth System (Security - Velocity - Engineering - Transparency): c+ / b- / a / c+

VISION (Singularity - Volume - Empathy - Timing):
Ampleforth has unique characteristics, which allows AMPL to maintain its price stability, acting as a stable coin, and, at the same time, increases its value for hodlers while they continue to receive more AMPL as its market cap grows. (Singularity is a).

In fact, from many respects on a micro-economical level, AMPL is the closest thing we have to the Bancor - the so-called, 'supranational currency' that John Keynes and his colleagues came about in the 1940–1942.

According to their idea after-war world would need Bankor to help the world's governments to subdue international finance to their complete control by eliminate cross-border capital fly in case of lowering local interest rates during the depression periods.

Quote (wiki): 'Gold could be exchanged for bancors, but bancors could not be exchanged for gold. Individuals could not hold or trade in bancor. All international trade would be valued and cleared in bancor. Surplus countries with excess bancor assets and deficit countries with excess bancor liabilities would both be charged to provide symmetrical incentives on them to take action to restore balanced trade.'

And here's the key of Keynes' technical proposition (quote): 'Each item a member country exported would add bancors to its ICB account, and each item it imported would subtract bancors.' All settlements between countries state banks supposed to be a function of the monstrous clearing system — the International Clearing Union.

I would argue that Ampleforth creators copy-pasted AMPL blue-prints directly from Keynes and Co code books :)

Of course, it doesn't mean that AMPL has a better chance than, say, BTC to become the next world's reserve currency. For that it's not a good enough 'store of value' because (as Bankor itself) it's a subject of constant inflation.

On the other hand, however, it can be used as an unit of accounts in inter-companies cross-border settlements, specially inside of large and geographically dispersed consortium. (Volume is b). From that regards the Timing for such experimentations is a bit off for Ampleforth and is set to b-.

As to the Empathy (a) it's curious how much of that can be gained among our community by the UoA, coming from such a sinister stock. However, at present, I'm sharing that sympathies with most analytics in our market, providing, of course, Ampleforth starts not to move into the top five coins by its capitalization.

Result for Ampleforth Vision (Singularity - Volume - Empathy - Timing): a / b / a / b-

EXECUTION (Solution - Validity - Equity - Team):
Ampleforth (registered at 2800 Mission St, San Francisco - Validity is b-) had stirred a lot of FOMO among VCs landing $9.8M over 4 rounds (latest one in Jul 20, 2019) during the crypto-winter period of 2018-2019 (not to mention their $3 mio ICO hold in March 2018) - Equity is b.

Among their most prominent stake-holders are Pantera Capital and True Ventures (founded in 2006 by former Summit Partners employee Jon Callaghan; has made 495 investments to date and 86 exits after raising 11 funds in total).

Ampleforth's other financial backers list also includes Slow Ventures (which was not that slow with its $165M investing in more than 400 deals and making 90 exits), FBG Capital (founded in 2015 Beijing based fund, which has invested in more than 30 projects during past four years ) Skunk Capitals (one year old fund launched by Jerry Chang - former Security Designer in Commonwealth Bank - and his partner Alex Martell - previously an analyst at Merrill Lynch), Nima Capital (a freshly minted New York private fund with a sole owner - former editor of NameCity of West Hollywood Publications Suna Said - and 10 investments in its portfolio), Huobi Capital (a Beijing base blockchian investing branch of Huobi crypto-exchange, which has already made eight investments including Nervos, Terra, Ren and ThunderCore), Spartan Group (another fresh addition to the crypto-VC growing population with three more DeFi projects in their portfolio - Band (oracle), Acala (stablecoin) and Blockstack (storage)). Also, Brian Armstrong - CoinBase CEO - acted as an individual investor in this project.

Ampleforth founder Evan Kuo is a graduate of Berkeley University 2006, who started his career path at Yahoo as a product Manager. His co-founder Brandon Iles previously worked as an engineer at Uber and Google. Team is b+.

As to Ampleforth Solution this company's business is printing money, literally :) Hence, it is a.

Result for Execution (Solution - Validity - Equity - Team): a / b- / b / b+

TRUST (Sustainability - Value - Engagement - Transaction):
Ampleforth is named after a character in George Orwells 1984, who is responsible for translating poetry into Newspeak. In that sense AMPL (ERC20). which is listed on Uniswap and BitFinex (Transactions is b), simplifies money for users by eliminating psychologically damaging effect of watching your portfolio going up and own in a matter of minutes and replacing it with a nominal stability and participatory inflation (Value is b).

At the same time AMPL has a terrible distribution (Engagement is c) with only 10% of all AMPLS allocated to users. The rest is going this way: Ecosystem: 23.2%, Seed Investors: 18.5%, Series A Investors: 3.3%, Initial Exchange Offering: 10%, Team & Advisors: 25%, Treasury: 20%, Additionally, almost 60 percents of all tokens are allocated to only two addresses. That increases the likelihood that pack of whales will be tempted to periodically pray on herds of small hodlers. In fact, we have already seen how it is manifested itself during this Summer DeFi boom when AMPL prices spikes were abruptly changed to deep ravines. (Sustainability is c)

Result for Ampleforth Trust (Sustainability - Value - Engagement - Transaction): c / b / c / b