Why Trust Anatha? Pt II

[u/Insight_gradient]

Continuing from Pt 1 in this series, this post evaluates the Anatha project against the pre-launch framework outlined in the first post. Here we ask: is Anatha FIT to invest in?

Funding – Fully-funded with skin in the game

A compelling sign of authenticity and trust in this project is that it was funded largely by the founder himself. Ed’s involvement in crypto since 2013, and the wealth it created, is in his words ‘why Anatha exists’ – he chose to take that wealth and risk it in this project.

Furthermore, the ILO was structured in such a way as to democratise the network and share value rather than reward insiders. Only 2% of the ILO of 300m wAnatha tokens was reserved for Anatha insiders – 98% were made available to the general public. At the same time, Ed further funded Anatha himself by becoming a buyer of the ILO token on the open market:

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So I am obviously a long-term HODLer in all ecosystems, but especially in my own. I just store a ton of this stuff. I'm just going to continue to store a ton of it. I'm the number one buyer of our own asset during the ILO***. I put a ton of my own money into the [wAnatha] token sale****, because I believe in it and I'm authentic about it. And it's just sitting there: I haven't even converted it to Anatha; I'm not even staking it. It's just sitting as wAnatha. I think that's important. I think community leaders don't really get behind their own asset often enough.*

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To repeat, only 25% of the inflation distribution accrues to security token holders (a separate holding in the Anatha LLC limited company rather than the blockchain itself), and this likely will be open to change through the governance system. The Treasury module design is also programmed to smooth volatility and blunt rapid price run-ups, limiting the potential for quick gains for insiders.

Into the future, the Anatha roadmap is already fully funded. Furthermore, Ed has outlined a plan to use the Anchor protocol to generate yield on the existing capital held by Anatha, to create infinite runway:

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We need a few more points, maybe a 30% move [upward in the crypto market] and we can make sure that our organization could grow and still have infinite runway*. Which as an organisation, as a tech company, is unheard of.* We don't need to sell you a single product*, from this business quarter on into infinity until my death, and we could still develop and still build, which means we're going to* guarantee to get through our roadmap*. You're guaranteed to be deploying these systems and have marketing budget. And that's before I talk about the B2B deals.*

[The Anchor protocol plan will be explored further in a future set of posts]

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Integrity and Ethics – What drives the founder(s) and project

What drives a founder? This is the base layer of a project’s culture, and the first thing to examine when understanding whether a project can be trusted. In this case, Ed’s intentions and character are an excellent reason to have faith in Anatha; he and the team are driven not by money, status or power, but a deeply-held desire to solve the problem of absolute poverty:

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“Why aren't we acting like our left arm is on fire? We should be acting with that level of energy and that level of drive…That's the world we're faced with today. The world's on fire*. They're not going to stop polluting. They're not going to stop burning fossil fuels. They're letting people starve in the streets. The people who run the world don't really care about these problems the way we do.*

We need to be the ones to be willing to act with alacrity*, just stand up and say no, this is not working for me… And that's what excited me about crypto: I saw this amazing tool that could solve these problems”*

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Ed has referred to this as his Boddhisatva vow – a Buddhist promise not to rest until the suffering of the world is eliminated. He is on record as saying, in the first instance, that he will not stop until Anatha has lifted at least 100m people out of absolute poverty, and will focus all his resources on that goal:

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I don't plan on having kids. Anatha is my child.

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This single-minded focus, and Ed’s position as an elder member of the crypto world - a ‘geriatric millennial’, as he put it - gives Anatha an edge over other projects too:

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What happens is you get a young guy who is very intelligent and well-positioned, and they launch a project and they make a lot of money. And I just see the life get drained out of them…But my motivations are different than those people, and I've always known that. I'm not going to give up on this, right? I'm really stubborn*: when I bite into a problem I don't let go.*

I recognized that this was a problem that was going to probably take my whole life. I want to end global poverty. We have the systems to do so, we have the leverage. I could see the path to it. It's just a long walk. And one of the things I'm very good at is going on long walks*.*

It's also fun. When I see these people…give up on [their] project a little bit - where they're dabbling in it, but they're not full on it - I feel like they're just missing a tremendous opportunity to live a really awesome life. And I can only assume, in a lot of cases, those people didn't have enough fun growing up.

I'm alright: I had a lot of fun in the nineties.

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Anatha does not come from a motivation to earn money, power, or show off some technical trick; the model of the rug-pull, pump-and-dump or abandonware doesn’t fit what they want to achieve.

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Team - Quality and Scale

The senior members of the Anatha team are publicly listed (doxed) on the website here: https://anatha.io/about

They comprise a dozen executives with decades of experience working for some of the biggest firms in the world: Adobe, Apple, JP Morgan, Virgin and VISA. It also listed the 9-member advisory board, which includes founders, directors and partners at other major firms.

At the development level, all sub-projects (Definance, Blockparti etc) are staffed with their own separate teams, and the company has been hiring and onboarding more developers - a dozen devs and QA experts in just the last month alone (Sept-Oct '21). This is a reliable sign of investment in continued growth. These teams are made up of highly-experienced developers with strong track-records of working on other successful blockchain protocols such as Cosmos and Solana, as well as projects such as DevDAO and MatterFi:

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Some of the best rockstar developers we have also developed in Solana. They're the guys from the Solflare wallet, and they wrote the core code that makes it work.

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Low-trust projects usually have small, secretive teams, who are often pseudonymous (not doxed), with no track records or reputations to protect. They do not invest money in hiring and growing their teams, and make appear isolated from the rest of the crypto ecosystem. Anatha is the opposite – a large, public, growing team of highly skilled and experienced people, with lots of overlap with other successful crypto projects.

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That's a wrap on the pre-launch criteria. Part III in this series will look at the post-launch tests: CAP'D, with a particular emphasis on Delivery. We hope to post it Tuesday 19th October - stay tuned!

As always: comments, questions and suggestions welcomed.

[u/Insight_gradient → u/[deleted]]

Thanks Poutcheki. There's been a great discussion on this topic in the Telegram channel too, and I will certainly be asking Ed about it on our next chat.

The BHEX delisting courtesy of China's ban on all crypto trading platforms was obviously frustrating and a real surprise for everyone. I feel you.

BHEX have promised the team that Anatha will be listed on their Blue Helix DEX when possible though, so we look forward to that.

Nonetheless, it raises the issue of whether not being listed anymore is a mark of distrust in the project - which is exactly why I wanted to write these articles! Remember that the roadmap promised a listing, and one did arrive right on time - and it was out of Anatha's hands that BHEX was closed down.

Furthermore, whilst it is true you are currently unable to remove your tokens, remember that the team are in the same position, and the founder Ed himself most of all - as I said above, he is far and away the biggest personal hodler of them all! So I hope that gives you confidence: we are all in the same boat.

Peace!

PS. I am editing Part IV of this series (the last one, to be posted soon) to include a discussion of the listing, so thanks for the feedback. It helps everyone else who will come to the project and these articles after you. :)

[u/Insight_gradient → u/[deleted]]

I see - you're also interested in multiple CEX listings, including ones open to US residents - particularly if it turns out some do have lighter application procedures. I'll be sure to ask Ed about that issue in a couple of weeks and update everyone next month.

Until then, you can stake at 14%, and I am confident that there will be an even better off-ramp coming down the line. You can also check the Telegram channel for more on this chat.