Following the well documented hack on the Etherdelta website recently, it would be understandable if the owners of the decentralised exchange kept a low profile. Instead, the platform has been looking to raise just over $70 million dollars from its own token sale.
Regularly drawing criticism for its extended lag times and non-intuitive interface, the Etherdelta team have been facing an uphill battle to convince investors to take a punt on financing the project’s next stage of expansion.
To date, only 3.3% of the 750 million Etherdelta Tokens (EDT) placed up for sale in its ICO have been purchased. They are being offered at a rate of 1 ETH to 8500 EDT.
White-paper Missing Key Elements
Etherdelta’s three key selling points have been its ability to rapidly onboard new ICO tokens faster than other exchanges, the large array of ERC-20 compliant tokens it platforms (230 as of writing), and its decentralised model.
Under a decentralised model, traders remain in full control of their assets at all times. There is no requirement to deposit coins and tokens into a private address that belongs to the exchange and where traders do not technically own the assets until they have withdraw them back into their own wallets.
The platform’s user experience issues, along with the recent hack as well as its lack of communication in relation to possible customer redress, have rendered the platform’s advantages nominal at best.
Under new management since just before the hack, Etherdelta’s whitepaper is less than clear on where and when the new funds will be spent.
Part of the proposal is to use the EDT to pay transaction fees within the platform similar to Binance but the roadmap also includes vague promises such as “2018 Q2 increases in-app customer experience.”
In their whitepaper the owners state the past 90 days of trading on its platform have resulted in $1.1 million USD net profit.
With such figures already in place, the need for outside investment at this stage is likely to require more detailed clarification to tempt investors. The Etherdelta team were unavailable for comment on the platform’s Telegram channel at the time of publication.
The ICO is due to close in eleven days.
