Democratic Voting Platform launches pre-ICO

The main idea lying behind VOTES is voting platform. It uses blockchain and smart contracts as a basis for ensuring transparency and foolproofness − which are key components in many public polls, especially the ones hosted by governmental agencies, be it simple voting on some local matter, or prime minister elections.

Votes Platform (VOTES) has launched its pre-ICO that would come to an end on August 31th. What is the unique offering of Votes Platform? Let’s find out.

Business Idea
The main idea lying behind VOTES is voting platform. It uses blockchain and smart contracts as a basis for ensuring transparency and foolproofness − which are key components in many public polls, especially the ones hosted by governmental agencies, be it simple voting on some local matter, or prime minister elections.

Private companies might have a use for blockchain voting too, with vote manipulation being one of the most often complaint in various marketing polls and surveys. VOTES team lists other use cases as well: conducting exam at universities, shareholders voting, testing and questionnaire for employees and sociological surveys.

More significantly, VOTES team has built a solid product already − they benefit from codebase and business relationships of Simpoll.pro solution, web-based voting platform with active user base of thousands of clients, including such big fish as Samsung, Adidas and Bosch. Simpoll is also considered to be one of the top online surveys in Russia, with 5 million survey respondents and 40 thousand local businesses, including Russian internet giant Mail.Ru.

Market
IBIS World analytics have reported $2 billion approximate online voting market size for year 2016, with 4.9% of annual growth in the recent 5 years. Main competitors of VOTES are well-known Survey Monkey, Survey Gizmo, FluidSurveys, and qualtrics. Market leader, Survey Monkey, has become a unicorn startup in 2015, with latest valuation of $2 billion. CEO of Survey Monkey has reported $200 million revenue in 2016, so it makes only about 10% of the total market, which means that either this market is very competitive, or has enough space for new businesses.

Team
VOTES team publicly lists only 4 members of the team on its website, but it seems that part of Simpoll development and business team is aboard the VOTES train too. Due to the nature of originating startup, everyone on the team is Russian with education from top Russian university, MSU. Dino Pastos is listed as project advisor, who has been positioned as CTO or business developer in various IT / Gaming startups.

Token model
VOTES token could be used for the services that voting platform provides − that is, hosting surveys. Platform presents three possible types of using tokens: as a fee for hosting public poll, as a bounty for respondens of the survey or test takers or as a ticket for company employees for taking some corporate questionnaires. It is unclear whether token is going to be listed on one of the exchanges, but it seems that it is inevitable with the suggested use cases of the token.

Pre-ICO
VOTES is offering 10 million tokens (12.5% of total token offering according to project roadmap) at its pre-ICO stage, which will end on August, 31st 2017. Platform team is planning to spend gathered funds for marketing and ICO launch. The price is only 5 cents, with ICO stage 1 price set at 10 cents and minimal price for ICO stage 2 of 15 cents. VOTES plans to gather $100 000 at pre-ICO stage.