On 14 Mar, 2018Welcome to the Factom Coin Profile. In this article we are going to help you get an understanding of what the Factom blockchain is trying to accomplish.
If you’re thinking about investing in cryptocurrency check out our other articles so you can get an understanding of which investment choices might be right for you!
Relevant Links
What Is The Factom Blockchain?
Per the company’s website, “Factom Inc. is a company that builds blockchain software. Factom technology secures data for private and public organizations by publishing encrypted data or a cryptographically unique fingerprint of the data to Factom’s immutable, distributed Blockchain.”
Essentially FCT is trying to create “cryptographic audit trails” that make corporate systems faster, cheaper, and more transparent. Factom currently has applications in Banking and Finance, Insurance, Medicine, Security, and Supply Chain Management.
Who Created Factom?
Development Team
Factom has a pretty solid team in place driving the project towards success.
Founder and CEO, Paul Snow, is considered a leader in the “open-source technology arena” and brings over three decades worth of software development experience to the team. Snow states, “We believe that Factom has a huge role to play in the evolving blockchain ecosystem. Two billion dollars have been invested in blockchain companies in the last year, and Factom technology is uniquely situated to solve many of the complex problems these companies face. Factom continues to build practical, efficient software that makes it simple to solve complex blockchain problems.”
CFO, Zachary Lynde, is accomplished in the world of finance and economics. He adds massive value to the team with his experience of increasing enterprise value, solidifying financial operations and managing enterprise risk. Lynde also has experience from working at the Big 4 accounting firm, KPMG, and served as CFO/CEO in a number of other business ventures.
There are also a lot of developers on team, over 8 are listed on the official website. This is a good sign to see the team is focused to supporting the network from a technical perspective.
Partnerships and Other Influences
Factom is currently partnered with any established technology companies and financial firms. Some of the major partnerships include:
- The government of Honduras
- US medical services provider HealthNautica
- Intrinio
- The Bill Gates Foundation
- US Department of Homeland Security
Competitive Advantages and Risks
Competitors
The following are FCT’s main competitors:
- NEM
- Tierion
- IOTA
- Digibyte
Competitive Advantages
The following should be considered when determining the strengths of the Factom blockchain:
- FCT has a great understanding of corporate culture. The team recognizes that it needs to be a unique solution in the space. This is what the focus has been around. The team has been able to customize their go to market approach because of this.
- It seems as though the marketing department and sales department can anticipate and custom cater their technology to potential clients. It’s advantageous to be able to explain what he weaknesses are in current processes and how Factom can fix it in a customized way.
- Factom has a proof of concept in their first commercial product for the mortgage industry, Factom Harmony. Since the team can prove to clients that they can make these unique solutions in different industries, it will be much easier to attract new users.
Risks
Risk can hint at a project’s chances of ending in failure:
- The technical problem the FCT blockchain is solving is not really ground breaking. It is easily achievable, meaning other projects can easily enter this market.
- There is not a lot of “hype” or “buzz” about the project on the internet. Although many who research the project love the potential and are huge supporters, it doesn’t seem as though the marketing team is doing that great of a job making sure Factom is getting the most press it could be.
Network and User Trends
As of this posting, the network had ~22,815 total addresses, 8,191 of which are non-zero balance Factoid addresses (meaning those addresses actually contain Factoids within them). It is difficult to gather the historical information for smaller projects such as Factom. Therefore, it can be challenging to assess the growth of the network over time.
What we can do is point you to the statistics that matter and advise you monitor them over time. As the network grows the number of non-zero balance addresses will increase. Stay alert and see how fast this key stat is increasing. You can keep a tab of these statistics here.
This is another great resource to track Factom’s blockchain network. It looks as though approximately 150 blocks are being processed per day. This is a good starting point but it will be very important to see if the network will be able to handle a larger volume of transactions.
As far as “influence” is concerned, CryptoCompare shows the figures below. There seems to be a lot of activity on CryptoCompare’s website itself. However, there is a lack of activity on social media platforms. This confirms point number 2 listed in the “Risks” section above.
What’s The Verdict?
Factom is an established project. The team is working to solve a massive problem which spans across multiple industries. The Factom team is changing the way companies will store and protect their data forever.
Although they have a great product, marketing clearly hasn’t been the team’s main focus. In spite of this, the team should be credited for their hard work to form business partnerships and improving their product offerings.
As the Factom blockchain grows, it will be interesting to see how the price of Factoids respond. The price should increase as the team brings on more customers but only time will tell.
Overall, Factom is a great investment opportunity with huge upside. The network has the potential to solve some important problems as it regards data integrity. Despite the lack of “buzz” surrounding the project this has a real chance to be a major force in the blockchain space moving forward.
