As Ethereum prices and investments surge to ATHs, the need for security could not be any higher for companies and consumers. Today, the average loss companies experience during a hack is about $30 million, but in the cryptocurrency world that number can be much higher. For example, earlier this year we witnessed the Parity Wallet hack that lead to 512,774 ether ($242mm USD) being stolen, and in 2016 the DAO hack that lead to $60 million USD worth of ether being compromised. What if I said that these hacks could have been prevented by correctly auditing their Ethereum smart contracts? QuantStamp (QSP), a project out of Y Combinator’s winter 2018 class, has set out to fill this massive void in the market and become the first decentralized smart contract security audit platform. Today, QSP trades at $.16, but within the next 12 months I see this token trading at $3.20 because of the resources and backing that Y Combinator offers, a pipeline of 40 audits scheduled, partnerships with Request Network and others, and the additional drivers of growth that I will outline below.
Basics:
- QuantStamp is the first scalable and cost-effective security-audit protocol designed to find vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts
- The QuantStamp project is originating from the incubator, Y Combinator, as part of their 2018 Winter class
- The only form of payment for these security audits is with QSP tokens and half of the tokens used as payment will be burned
- The QuantStamp project is based out of Vancouver, Canada and was launched in November 2017
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Ticker: QSPPrice: $.16Ranking by Market Cap (Token): 135Market Capitalization: $100,964,819 Circulating Supply: 617,314,171 QSPMax Supply: 976,442,388 QSPAverage Trading Volume: $2,209,547Consensus: Ethereum consensus (currently proof of work, will be proof of stake later on)
Team:
- The QuantStamp team is lead by Richard Ma. Mr. Ma was a former Algorithmic Trader at Tower Research, where he handled millions of dollars trading while using Extreme Software Testing Methods. Mr. Ma also received his ECE at Cornell University
- QuantStamp’s CTO is Steven Stewart. Mr Stewart previously founded Many Trees Inc that specialized in building GPU in-memory databases. He also worked for the Canadian Department of National Defense.
- The QuantStamp team currently has 5 additional developers working on the project full time
- The team also has 2 additional social media managers and community manages
- Rounding out the team is 1 graphics designer and 8 experienced advisors
Drivers of Growth:
- Within the next year, it is expected that another 10 Million Smart Contracts will be built, creating a natural increase in demand for the services that QuantStamp is offering
- As of October 2017, about $3.2 Billion (11M ETH) have been locked in Smart Contracts, companies will want a efficient, cost-effective, and secure way to audit their smart contracts to protect themselves against losses
- QuantStamp is part of Y Combinator’s 2018 winter class. However, QSP has not been officially listed on Y Combinator’s website, but expect a huge surge of interest when it does
- QuantStamp successfully completed a smart contract audit for Request Network, which is another project from Y Combinator
- The QuantStamp team already has an additional 40 audits in their pipeline for the new year
- QuantStamp intends to expand their services to other protocols, such as Neo, in the future
- Another motivation for investors to hold QuantStamp tokens is that they will receive tokens of the companies QuantStamp audits. This is one of the biggest benefit of owning QuantStamp tokens because, in many cases, token holders will have access to companies that would normally only be available to VC’s
- Additional supporters of QuantStamp include: Blockfolio, Science Blockchain, Quoine, Team in Residence, Block Asset, Blockchain Partners Korea, Iconic Partners, Luna Capital, TLDR, and Kenetic Capital… I think this QSP army speaks for itself
Headwinds:
- If a project that has undergone one of QuantStamp’s audits becomes compromised, the value of the QSP token will take a massive hit
- During the initial stages of this project, QSP will have to build their audit automation protocol by undergoing several manual audits, so keep in mind that this is a long term project
- Until the QuantStamp team expands their services to other protocols the success of their project is directly linked to the growth of the Ethereum protocol
Summary:
Since this project is so unique and is first of its kind, we will use a bit of estimation to get our 12 month price target. First, I will assume that half of the current price of QSP, $.08, is the result of successfully completing the Request Network audit. We also know that QSP has roughly 40 audits lined up for next year. So, we will take $.08 * 40 = $3.2, which gives us our 12 month price target. In closing, please keep in mind that this price target does not include a market growth rate.
I hope you enjoyed today’s write up because this coin solves too many problems for it not to succeed. QuantStamp team… I know 2018 will be your year!!