Selection criteria

During stages 2 and 3 of our IDO selection process, our teams are looking for specific indicators of a project’s success not only during the IDO, but beyond. Below are some of the criteria and metrics our analysts and team members look for when a project applies for an IDO on Gonear.

Broadly, we base our selections on five criteria: basics, development, team and leadership, and tokenomics.

Application and marketing

Application. First, we take a look at the initial Gonear application and automatically eliminate all projects that are missing core required information, such as a website or Whitepaper. We have found that these omissions are the most common reason for projects’ early rejection.

Marketing, Content, and Community. Next, we dig deeper into the content on the website, whitepaper, social channels, and blog to assess the overall marketing of the project. We look at these core channels to determine the quality of information available and overall professionalism.

Certain marketing criteria stand out among applications. We look for engaged existing communities across Telegram, Discord, Twitter, etc. to ensure there is a primed group of passionate users. We also look for an updated and detailed roadmap; transparency with the community is critical to success.

Some patterns that hurt a project’s chances include dead or broken channels, incongruent or misleading information, an outsized presence of bots and spam accounts, and low engagement with the community.

Development: idea and execution

Next, we take a look more at the technology, the product roadmap, and the execution plan.

Innovation. If the project is something that has been done many times, we tend to reject it unless we have valid reasons to think that it could be a competitor to market leaders due to, for example, a particularly experienced team. We are looking for projects that push the mission forward. In other words, projects that add a missing piece of infrastructure or tooling, aid the vision of a decentralized world, or open up brand new opportunities for the space.

Projects that are rejected on the grounds of insufficient innovation tend to be copy-and-paste of existing projects without an edge that situates it as a serious market competitor.

Practicality. There are a tremendous number of novel and unique ideas out there for blockchain technology. However, if the idea has a too-distant product-market fit or an unrealistic vision, we will consider rejecting the project based on the amount of time we could anticipate it finding traction in the market. Part of this criteria is a proven track record and/or demand. If product-market fit already exists, the chances of approval are higher.

Development progress. We accept projects at all stages of development. However, all projects must be able to show alignment between their external roadmap/communications and their internal development progress. If we have reason to believe the project isn’t set up to deliver on its development promises to the ecosystem, we are less likely to move forward.

A development criteria that hurts a project’s chances is an incongruent roadmap and Github. If a public roadmap promises releases but those releases are not reflected in the company’s Github, we are less likely to approve the project. As part of the selection process, Gonear will request access to projects’ Githubs in order to analyze development progress first hand.

Team and leadership

If the idea fits our criteria of innovation and practicality, we dive deeper into the team. We look at objective facts like the prior experience of the executive team and the developers, and we also consider the impression they leave with us after our calls.

It’s important for us to not only find projects that can succeed, but find people that are genuinely excited to be in this space and want to add value to it. We want the team to endow the project with an unfair advantage by virtue of their experience, their skills, their market knowledge, and their relationships.

Tokenomics

Additionally, we make sure that the tokenomics of the token that would launch on Gonear make sense. Some factors we look at for tokenomics are: vesting periods and lockups, allocation post-TDE, token utility, and security.

Vesting periods and lockups. Typically, we find slow and graduated vesting periods create stability and stronger community engagement. It is safe to assume that a project without a vesting period or lockup will have a greatly reduced chance of approval for Gonear.

Allocation post-TDE. We like to see fair and sensible ratios of public to private token allocation. If an overwhelming percentage of tokens will be allocated to private sale investors, we will reconsider the token’s stability and community trust. We want to ensure projects engender maximum token decentralization to prevent rug pulls, which relies on sufficient public allocation.

Token utility. The relationship between the token, the project, and the community must make sense and be mutually beneficial. In the blockchain ecosystem, we don’t believe every project necessarily needs a token. Any project that comes to Gonear for an IDO should have a strong product-market fit not just for the project, but for the token as well.

Security. We want to ensure token buyers on Gonear have confidence in the security of the projects’ underlying code. An existing audit from a high-quality security firm is a strong asset in favour of a project’s acceptance.