Gas

Trader#6510
www.twitter.com/Crypto_Gass

**THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE, JUST MY OPINION. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH
AND HOLD NO ONE ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR TRADING ACTIONS BUT YOURSELF**

Coin Pitch – Project Analysis for Republic Protocol [$REN]

Brief Overview

Republic Protocol is a decentralized dark pool for trustless cross-chain atomic trading of Ether, Bitcoin
and ERC-20 tokens. A dark pool exchange involves the use of hidden order books. Miners matching
orders without revealing the underlying trade until execution. This system enables a trustless trading
system with minimal price slippage and protection from front running (practice of stepping in front of
orders placed or about to be placed to gain a price advantage). In the traditional markets, centralized dark
pools make up about 10-30% of all trades and banks such as: JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan
Stanley are some brokers who own and operate dark pools. Users can trade large amounts of BTC, ETH
or ERC20 tokens without revealing their identity or size of trade until after the trade is filled. It also
allows users to trade crypto with more liquidity at better execution prices with minimal market impact
(when compared to a traditional order book). When comparing this decentralized exchange to the existing
centralized exchanges, the risk of asset theft, confiscation or malicious operator actions are removed
completely. This protocol is a dark pool for atomic, cross-chain trading and will allow institutional
investors to make trades for any size without releasing important details such as price, volume and
identity. The protocol distributes a primary order into tiny fragments (on it’s own cannot reveal anything
about the underlying order) across the network, where 2 primary ethereum smart contracts are used. The
first contract is the Registrar and Judge. The registrar is responsible for organizing the network of nodes
in such a way where the recombination of order fragments is impossible. The nodes will be responsible
for computing whether or note 2 fragments are from the same order then will call the judge smart
contract. A Judge will determine the integrity of the trade use Zero Knowledge Proof (process by which
one party can prove to another party the statement/trade is legit without conveying specific information of
the trade). An atomic swap will then occur and the trade will be executed, as a result, a trustless and
anonymous trade just took place. The main components of this protocol are: the hidden order book,
decentralized order matching, atomic swap infrastructure and the protocol token, $REN.

Company Background

Republic Protocol is a company based out of Singapore. The team is all relatively young with most of
their members just graduating University. There is no notable experience from any of the members of the
team that would be useful in bringing this project to fruition other than some developer internships. It can
be noted that they do have some quantitative analysts on the team.

The advisors are a completely different story. They have added advisors that are extremely relevant to the
industry. These advisors include: the COO of Santiment – Dorjee Sun, CEO of Kyber Network – Loi Luu
and a Partner at Signum Capital – John Pangilinan. These advisors will help ensure the ICO is a success
and help this amateur team of developers to mature.
 Gas Trader#6510
www.twitter.com/Crypto_Gass

Investment Analysis **but not advice**

The main utility of the token is used to reward nodes. The $REN token is paid by the traders to the nodes
in order to pay for the computational efforts that are required to match fragments on the network. It also
allows for traders to prioritize orders by paying larger fees. As I will discuss below it is also used to
secure the network. There is also an increase in the reward size that incentivizes nodes to match orders as
quickly as possible.

As more institutional investors (with large transactions) begin to join the market, the use case for dark
pools will also get stronger. This exchange requires no trusted middleman allowing companies to join the
crypto space in an easier, risk free way. Republic Protocol is also developing a decentralized application
(DApp) for traders to interface with the protocol. This will allow traders to create, cancel or edit orders, as
well as, history of their orders.

It is also important to note that cross-chain swaps are one of the methods that have been considered to
solve the scaling issue of existing block chains. If Republic Protocol can successful implement these
swaps on their platform it would be absolutely massive for the project and token’s value.

The tokenomics for the project are very good and in the form of Bonds. In order to prevent Sybil attacks
(adversary joining the network with a large number of nodes in hopes to reconstruct trade orders) traders
and nodes must submit a bond in REN before they can access the network. This bond is associated with
one identity in the Registrar smart contract. Traders who submit higher bonds allow for a higher number
of parallel open trades. Nodes will be forced to submit a bond above a “sufficiently large financial
commitment.” During the verification stage of the protocol if the trader is correct and the order matching
nodes that are unable to provide evidence of a truthful computation lose their bond. Likewise, if the nodes
are correct the trader loses their bond. The value will come as more traders use the protocol, running a
node will be more lucrative, and as more nodes are run on the network it will become more secure,
enticing more traders to join the network. The more traders and nodes on the network, the more tokens
locked up by bonds, creating a pseudo decrease in token supply.

The company is relatively new and only has commits to their GitHub dating from December 2017. But
with only 5,000 ETH left in their crowds sale, there could be some unmet demand (creating FOMO).

Catalysts

Catalysts in the next 6-12 months for Republic Protocol include:

• Q1 2018: REN ERC20 contract

• Q1 2018: Atomic Swapping contracts supporting: BTC, ETH and ERC20
• Q1 2018: P2P pooling network
• Q1 2018: Registrar contracts
• Q2 2018: Private + Public test net
• Q2 2018: Secret Sharing, order book contracts and trader terminals
• Q3 2018: Main net launch (open source reference)
• Q4 2018: Support for more chains
• Q4 2018+: Support for HFT and Institutions
 Gas Trader#6510
www.twitter.com/Crypto_Gass

This is a highly ambitious roadmap spanning all of 2018. This shows that Republic Protocol plans to have
launched the main net in under 8 months as already moved onward at looking to support more chains for
atomic swaps.

Valuation

The value of this token in the existing market conditions can be very easily assessed. Some of the
traditional exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin and Cryptopia (with markets caps of: $1.45B, $919M,
$13.5M respectively) could be looked at to determine a very estimated value if the exchange is up and
generating revenue. However, decentralized exchanges such as 0x (Mcap of $891M) could be compared,
and they only accept the decentralized trading of ERC20 token. It is fair to say that if Republic Protocol
can deliver the cross chain atomic swaps in the dark pools, the project is undervalued at only ~$37M. If
the project is successful they will draw institutional investors that will be trading millions of dollars daily
(billions in daily volume in expected on Republic Protocol) generating revenue for every node in the
network. Another project that could be compare is $QASH (Mcap of $586M), they are not a
decentralized network but developing their own solution to the liquidity problem in the crypto market.
This project is also a year or so out from having their platform completed.

Investment Risks

The top risk factors include:

• The young and inexperienced team of developers working on a super ambitious project with fast
approaching timelines is a daunting task. If these timelines are not consistently met it will be
reflected in the token value.
• As stated above, the project is in a very early stage and has little activity on the GitHub.
• Given the two risks above the daunting nature of the project becomes even more impressive IF
they can pull it off. The demand is there for anonymous transactions using dark pools, it is a
question on whether this team can deliver.