An ICO’s tale Pt. 1

Writing about blockchain and ICO is not easy being young technologies and subject to speculation. In this article and in the next I’ll try to show some of my study cases, i wish to have comparisons that can improve my knowledge and meet people interested in this topic.

As a visual designer I try to have an open approach to the world and what happens. I can say that people are my inspirational muse and as UX Designer I think I am a community servant, in few words my job wants to simplify how people live.

In everyday life I am a tech enthusiast, I was pleasantly overwhelmed by web 2.0, by the sharing economy innovations and I am so curious to live next technological progress.

About technology one of those from the most interesting perspectives will certainly be the blockchain (IMHO). Someone can think:”easy to talk about it now that it’s on everyone’s lips! “

Unlike what you read or hear from media I would like to debate this topic in more depth so to speak, leaving out aspects as trading or phrase like To the moon! That I read every day on Telegram.

Attending cryptocurrencies community on telegram, I think the biggest neologism is the one with a sketch taken from Simpsons episode named «Ride of Broken Dreams»

Back to the talk, I approached cryptocurrencies world 6 months ago.

I’ve been intrigued for years without ever delving into it, a bit for diffidence and fear, a bit for university commitments.

Last summer I began my journey in a fibrillation period, was missing shortly to the famous Bitcoin hard fork that would generate Bitcoin Cash, those days you could breathed a frenzy in the air as Christmas Eve where everyone runs to make the last gifts.

Well, yes, I didn’t even enter them in the cryptoworld due to technical problems caused by transfer times, etc.

The failed entry into Bitcoin allowed me to delve into another fabulous ecosystem that months later I think much more evolved and full of possibilities: Ethereum.

Studying this system I understood the infinite possibilities that blockchain technology has got, above all I am also understanding the limits it has at present.

One of the most fascinating things about cryptocurrencies world is the possibility to create an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) for many years I asked myself: ”is possible there is no way to invest into innovative start-ups?” Excluding crowdfunding, a very noble way to get funds but i think reward mechanism breaks the bond that an investor should feel when decides to invest in a start-up. Instead, it exists and it called ICO these are private donations through blockchain transactions where people invest capital in projects to receive so-called Tokens.

So my interest has grown even more, passing through projects and different ICOs i focused at key concept of networks like Ethereum, the so-called Smart Contract.

Studying them I understood their great possibilities. Smart Contracts can help to realize the decentralized world utopia.

As a designer I’m used to thinking and solving problems so I made my first idea of ​​Smart Contract.

I decided to analyze sports world, specifically i focused on football (soccer for Americans).

As Italian i’ve got many friends tried to have a football career, who more or less they stopped in the amateur sphere, which, however, reserve beautiful surprises if we analyze the business mechanisms.

I don’t know how much people know about amateur football world but I can say there’s very little of “amateur”.

There are salaries, contracts, badges and even pseudo prosecutors.

The thing little known is that inside non-professional football world, players are not protected by real contracts but they are paid in the form of expense reimbursements. In this sphere I leave you to imagine what can happen… agreements not respected, failed companies, unpaid wages.

So what I asked myself is: “could you write a Smart Contract that protects these guys?”

Tool as Smart Contract could replicate real contracts canons remaining in amateur world. This way allow companies to be more transparent, players to be protected, not only, figures like prosecutors could be put in the background!

Perhaps my idea could be obvious and trivial for someone or innovative for others, what I would like to have with this article are opinions for a collective growth to use these new technologies in everyday life.

In the next articles i’ll continue to argue this idea with some technical details.

Ciao!!!