DAV Network (DAV) ICO review

Review

The world of today is experiencing many changes, in addition to the emerging change into a sharing economy, advances in technology will soon make autonomous vehicles an integral part of our daily lives. A development which was pure science fiction in the 80’s, but becoming more and more of a reality right now. It seems that science has caught up with fiction, and these developments will revolutionize the way we think about transportation as a whole.

We will be able to order a ‘car on-demand’ or ‘drone on-demand’ in the near future, for either bringing us from point A to B, or to just drop off a package. Not only will it change the way we think about transport, it will also have an impact on how we think about owning our own car.

An average household can save up to $5.600 annually when they would use ‘car on-demand’ services. As a result, experts predict that we will switch from car ownership to ‘car on-demand’ services by 2030.

Companies and governments will also benefit from the many advantages of this new technology. For one, the roads will be used more efficiently and because of that traffic jams will disappear like snow in the sun. In a country like the Netherlands, with 17 million inhabitants, this will save 3.7 billion Euro on an annual basis.

Traffic jams are not only costly but they also pollute a lot, traffic congestion together with the economic and environmental costs, are one of the main drivers for companies and governments to experiment with autonomous vehicles.

The key to truly unleashing innovation, is to collaborate on all fields to (when combined) form one framework that all parties can benefit from. But the current problem lies in the fact that economic incentives between current parties are not aligned. The centralization of technology and economic interests, restrict the pace at which the technology can be developed and adopted by the market. This is the main reason why DAV network was founded, DAV network plans to open-source their technology stack, protocols and UI, which can then be utilized by other companies to speed up the pace (and direction) of innovation in this field.

In short: DAV is a framework of open-source software, open-source hardware, and a free decentralized marketplace where anyone can buy and sell autonomous transportation services using the DAV token.

* (The functionalities described below are an excerpt from the DAV Network whitepaper and/or website and will form the basis of our rating and conclusion)

Let’s take a look at their product:

DAV Network Technology

As a developer-centric platform DAV creates SDKs for popular development platforms and APIs. It actively encourages developers to take part, making it easy for any developer to participate and contribute within their domain of expertise. The technology behind the DAV network is a stack of open-source software with a developed UI for simple interaction, which enables a truly autonomous, fast-scaling transportation system.
Their technology stack consists of 5 components:

• Identity
  The identity stack enables users and devices to authenticate themselves to other network participants.
• Discovery
  Decentralized discovery provides the tools for different DAV identities to discover each other in a decentralized way on the Ethereum Blockchain.
• Communication
  DAV’s decentralized communication allows direct communications between two or more DAV participants using a common communication protocol, it enables different entities from different manufacturers to communicate with each other, for example vehicles and charging stations.
• Mission Flow
  For enabling an exchange of services between two or more parties from the initial statement of need through bidding, service fulfillment, and eventually payment.
• Payments
  The DAV token is a core component of the DAV stack and was created to enable secure, trustless payment for services provided in the DAV network.
  

How advanced is the project

DAV already has completed their first drone delivery app and launched their testnet in December of 2017. Github: https://github.com/DAVFoundation/missions ,
website: https://missions.io/

Below their current and future milestones:

For a full detailed future roadmap please visit: https://dav.network/#roadmap

Team

The DAV NETWORK project features a team of 18 full time members and contributors. The core team members all have proven track records of entrepreneurial and technical skills. We will only list the most important ones.

Noam Copel — CEO and Founder
BSc, Computer Science
Co-Founder of MetaCafe along with advisor Eyal Hertzog
Multi-Founder of several startups

Tal Ater — CTO and Co-Founder
Works on creating standards for automotive projects within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Former VP of Product Management at Somoto Inc.

John Frazer — CCO – BSc, Computer Science
Web, design, and social media marketing experience since 1997
External Relations Lead for Ethereum Foundation

Furthermore, their list of contributors to their project is huge, there are lots of developers playing around with their software and doing their magic to create wonderful things.

Advisors:

Their list of advisors is even more impressing and consists of: Dr. Alan Messer, former CEO of General Motors, Dr Scott Horowitz a former NASA space astronaut (WOW), Dr Greg Colvin, a sage-like technologist who lives on a remote mountain in the Rockiesand who makes a living by creating obscure algorithms and designing complex software systems and many more. Truly by far the most impressive Advisor list I have seen so far.

Token Dynamics:

40% Crowd
25% Bounties and Partnerships
20% Long-Term Budget
15% Team and Advisors (Vested)

Proceeds:

45% R&D (17.1 M)
20% Expansion (7.6 M)
15% Marketing/Business Development (5.7M)
10% General Admin (3.8 M)
10% Legal/Compliance (3.8M)
Their token supply has yet to be released but the DAV team promised us that they will release this soon.

DAV Network Token Dynamics:

DAV is a utility token, it is used to pay for a service and earned by providing a service.
Two main purposes:

• Earn DAV
  by renting out an autonomous vehicle, car/drone/etc.
  by renting use of infrastructure (rechargers/docking bays)
  by providing support services (repair/insurance/arbitration)
• Spend DAV
  to rent vehicle services, to transport goods or people/etc
  machines themselves will be able to make purchases/request support service.

Opportunities

• The future is tomorrow and DAV is creating a solution that is future proof. It is expected that most cars by 2030 will be autonomous driving cars whilst drone delivery services are already in advanced development stages. If DAV is able to convince the major players in the market to collaborate on their platform, their future will be very bright.
• DAV Network is led by an expert team that has been developing the product since early 2017 with working prototypes and a vast developer community. Besides that, they are advised by titans of Industry who pack a lot of weight in their respective fields 014. All members are highly qualified and experts in their respective fields.
• They have a vast network of partnerships, members that include Amazon, UPS, FEDEX, Intel, Lockheed Martin and others. It is needless to say that these names are a big plus and give confidence that they are not only talking about grandiose ideas but actually have the partnerships in place to back their words up. There must be a reason why these companies are attaching their names to this project..

 

Concerns:

There are some key risks, here are the most important ones:

• Their solution is built with core technologies that are immature and unproven, if those core technologies do not perform according to their needs or expectations, they may be required to change the specifications or to reduce or eliminate features on the platform.

The biggest problem right now it is the scaling problem that exists on the Ethereum network, Vitalik (the creator or Ethereum) himself addressed this issue this week by saying that you should not expect to be able to run an Uber on the Ethereum network.

• This project depends on attracting some big players to collaborate with their project, providing services to DAV Network at a level sufficient to become (or remain) useful or viable. Any such lack of use or interest could negatively affect the development of DAV Network and therefore the value DAV Network and their token.
• Law are not yet fully on track with blockchain technology, there is a risk that DAV Network needs to make substantial modifications to their token dynamics. It is not known if, when, or to what degree different jurisdictions will interpret existing laws and regulations or adopt new laws and regulations that could adversely affect them.
  

Conclusion:

DAV Network is another project that is in an advanced stage of development. Instead of issuing an ICO whilst being in the whitepaper, – alpha, – or beta stage, their solution is nearly ready to hit the market.

DAV is a project for the long run, they were able to obtain elite partnerships and advisors who look into the future and decided to attach their faith to this project.

Do not expect great gains immediately, you will probably become dissatisfied, but buy their tokens and hold on to them for ten years. After which you will be able to tell all your friends that you where the one who saw the same thing as the leaders in the industry the future.

We are positive about this project.

Thank you!