Koinify: The Crypto Funding Platform

“Koinify is a crypto funding platform focused on fueling the crypto economy, in particular decentralized applications (DApps) and autonomous corporations (DACs). Koinify makes your token crowd sale simple and streamlined, so you can focus your valuable time on building your product,”
— – Koinify

Founder and CEO Tom Ding found the inspiration for his project in the Bitcoin white paper. Fascination with the technology, and the possibilities of smart contracts, spurred the creation of Koinify, “I thought, wow, I haven’t seen this kind of breakthrough thinking for many many years in the software world,” Ding

Ding tells Brave New Coin that he felt there were several topics in the Bitcoin white paper that were intriguing, “The one that truly gets me most excited, and I think is the most radical and revolutionary idea of crypto space, is the concept of decentralized applications which could replace a whole traditional company with the help of blockchain, cryptocurrency and smart contract.”

With funding and inspiration Ding focused Koinfy on DApps and DACs, making a unique crypto funding platform. Ding explains, “[DApps and DACs] are unique types of software that run across various nodes, driven by transparent & autonomous business rule, massively scalable, and very low cost. Each application could potentially replace a traditional corporation or even a whole industry, anywhere from peer-to-peer storage, computation to decentralized financial exchanges.”

Koinfy utilizes Counterparty, the Bitcoin 2.0 platform providing financial tools for extending Bitcoin’s functionality from a peer-to-peer payment network into a full fledged peer-to-peer financial platform. Dings platform uses Counterparty to issue tokens for the projects hosted on Koinify. Ding then promotes and sells the assets, raising funds for the projects.

The funding is designed to be available in limited withdrawals, which can only be made once agreed upon milestones have been reached. This is to ensure that developers are continuously incentivized to deliver quality products, and to minimise investor risk.

To manage a projects funds Koinify created a wallet, specifically focused on transparency and security. Koinify’s wallet will use the multi-sig function added to the bitcoin protocol earlier this year, and incorporates two-factor authentication (2FA). Ding explains, “We are the first to use a BTC multisig wallet that stores all the incoming funds with 1 key held by the developer, 1 by an independent software evaluator (in Gem’s case, it’s Adam K from counterparty), and 1 by Koinify.” With a 2 of 3 Multi Sig approach Koinify and the developers of a project, such as Gems, can agree to release funds. In the case of a dispute Adam acts as arbitrator, siding with one party or the other.

The Koinify team had been watching the crypto space for some time anticipating a project that would be right for funding through the platform. The first project raising funds through Koinify is the decentralized social network Gems, currently available for iOS.

Gems is designed to make social networking not only fun and secure, but also profitable. It is the first network that shares its profits with its users, and attempts to bring crypto-tokens to the mass market. “We’re excited that Gems is designed with complete decentralization in mind and shifted the traditional ‘You are the product and we sell you to advertisers’ paradigm of a Facebook-type social network into a network where each user owns their privacy and gets rewarded” says Ding.

Tokens, or appcoins, are a hot topic in the Bitcoin industry, Daniel Krawisz, the Director of Research at Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, provided and in depth analysis in May, concluding “Appcoins are pump-and-dump scams disguised as Rube Goldberg machines, so don’t get fooled.”, the founder of Factom was quick to respond with an equally in depth reply, concluding “Without the Factom token, I must resign myself to centralized control, risk, abuse, and failure.”

Despite the split in opinion within the Bitcoin industry, the Gems project raised over $152,000 in a two week period. This equates to just over 7 million Gems tokens (XGEM) sold to 300 unique buyers. A portion of the remaining XGEM will be used to incentivise users, which will in turn supports the overall value of the Gems network.

Koinify takes its users trust very seriously, and aims to set high standards in the crypto environment. After two months of in-depth due diligence on the Gems business model, and the developers technical capability, Ding flew to Israel to meet the Gems team concluding, “We’re excited about its potential and their team’s execution.”

Koinify will not limit the projects they will consider, but the funding platforms focus is to embrace the massive potential of DApps and DACs. Companies funding through Koinify will receive support in many areas. One area of support is promotion using Koinify’s media connections and marketing channels. In addition, the platform will share the overheads and its experience with the participating projects.

B.Holmes, author of The Range of Illusion and The Private Key installments, is currently located in Thailand, researching and writing about crypto. You can follow B.Holmes on twitter @BanteringB, or contact via email: [email protected]