It’s a sad fact, but there are not many projects in the blockchain industry that really work on creating great products. What’s even worse than that is that there are even fewer that really engage their followers in what they’re doing. Today, we’re looking at one project that has managed not only to release a fully functional product in the few months since fundraising, but also does a great job in keeping its audience engaged. Meet Akropolis, a project aiming to provide businesses and their users with decentralized financial structures (DeFi), helping them become less dependant on governmental entities in the process.
Building a DeFi Economy
Akropolis is all about decentralized finance, so let’s first give a brief definition of this relatively new phenomenon. Discussed even at Forbes, DeFi has been a hot topic over the past few months. In short, this is simply a set of blockchain-based financial tools that typically include:
- Open lending platforms
- Stable coins
- Investing platforms
- Exchanges
- Prediction markets
These tools are usually built upon Ethereum, the most popular platform for decentralized applications. Akropolis will use it as well, which may cause some concerns regarding the network’s scalability. Currently, Ethereum’s throughput index equals only 19 transactions per second. However, Vitalik Buterin’s team doesn’t stand still and is steadily moving towards its next planned hard forks Istanbul and Serenity that will eventually help it switch to PoS and implement Casper.
The Core Purpose
Initially, Akropolis was to reshape the whole pension industry. In their whitepaper, it is stated that the global deficit between pension assets held and existing liabilities is large and is only expected to grow in the coming decades. Akropolis was planning to deliver a transparent and portable pension infrastructure based on blockchain technologies. However, in May 2019, the conception changed and the new whitepaper now targets autonomous financial systems. There’s not too much to complain about here, as it would have been literally a miracle if they had managed to push their initiative with pensions through numerous legal obstacles across different countries. Now Akropolis aims to build a bank-free financial system where individuals will be able to unite into groups for cooperation and exchange of value, leaving centralized control systems out in the cold. The most obvious example of how this approach can be implemented in reality is related to money loans. The platform allows users to operate with:
- at a pretty low rate of interest,
- with no bank account,
- with no need for long-term lock-ups to receive interest,
- With the possibility to get your money back even if your agent “dissolves or fails”
- …and many other perks.
An Actual Use Case
Having raised its full cap of $2.4 million, the team behind Akropolis doesn’t sit idle on their newly-acquired bags of cash. They have already presented a finished product, Cashflow Relay, the first in line to serve the decentralized society. This is a DeFi equivalent of cashflow financing, with a chief goal of helping companies get investments without having to jump through the myriad hoops that exist with traditional centralized platforms. Projects can get funds directly from investors, accelerate their growth and pay it back as they grow. The product, which is integrated with MakerDAO, 0x, and MetaMask, relies heavily on DAO, unlike the infamous Tether, and offers a true stablecoin that has never been suspected of manipulation surrounding minting of new tokens.
Reaching Key Milestones
A working app is not the project’s only achievement so far. Here are some of their most successful steps:
- Partnership with DAI – as has already mentioned, Akropolis is heavily involved with MakerDao’s stable coin.
- Partnership with ChainX and PolkaDot – taking on board projects that aim to connect different blockchain-based apps between each other.
- The launch of Testnet – due to occur on July 1, 2019, when a workable platform will be launched.
Keeping Audiences Engaged
One of the interesting aspects to highlight is how Akropolis keeps its audience engaged. Generating an audience interested in more than just profits is a well-known issue that many blockchain projects have to contend with. Bounties, airdrops, free tokens – all these tools serve to catch freebie lovers, but not true supporters. Chat groups of such projects are usually full of rocket emojis with no serious discussions of what these projects really offer.
Akropolis has attempted to buck this trend by launching a community quest where participants have to solve tricky riddles, with the fastest getting Akropolis native tokens as a reward. One of the first was on the subject of the Roman Empire, with tasks ranging from writing a short essay on the subject matter to solving a cryptogram encoded with Julias Caesar’s secret encryption method. Such quests generate interest and a hard core of fans, and help make the project memorable.
Keep an Eye on Akropolis
Having released its first product, the Akropolis team hasn’t rested on their laurels and keeps pushing along its established roadmap. All-in-all, this is definitely a project that blockchain enthusiasts should keep an eye on, especially if it continues to keep community creation at the forefront of its efforts.
