Karma
Karma is a P2P platform for creating socio-economic relationships between people, regardless of location, around the world.
Contents
History and philosophy
There is a noticeable imbalance in the world where there are countries where there are many citizens with available free capital and investors have a lot of money, while at the same time, billions of people live in environments with severe shortages of money and disadvantageous credit rates.
Excessive regulation and centralization of banks have led to the fact that investors receive a negative return, taking inflation into account. Moreover, up to 80% of small and medium-sized business owners in many [JU1] countries do not actually have the opportunity to obtain a loan for business development in banks.
In many countries, $100 USD is a large amount of money that can change the lives of several people and give a much needed boost to their creativity and the development of their business. In other countries, $100 USD is a cheque for dinner in a restaurant or even a treatment at a beauty salon.
18th-20th Centuries
Historically, banks have played a connecting role between investors and borrowers. Investors lent money to the bank, and the bank gave out loans at a higher rate, providing a revenue stream for the bank.
Investors and borrowers did not interact directly because investors did not have enough competencies.
Therefore, they delegated this to the banks:
●legalization of credit relations; ●assessment of borrower’s financial position ●return of funds in case of default
The disadvantages of such a scheme are obvious, and centralization in the form of banks has led to the fact that the world’s finances are distributed unevenly. 1% of the population owns more than 90% of the resources, and billions of people have almost no access to financing or banking in its simplest forms. In addition, about 20 to 30% of the GDP is spent on banks and insurance companies, while the salaries of top-managers of the financial sector are millions of dollars per year.
21st Century
P2P platforms first appeared in the 21st century. The main idea is to make the direct interaction between the investor and the borrower possible. The volume of the P2P lending market began to grow rapidly because people responded positively to the new model.
First, there was the first step towards the decentralization of financial services. Each investor used his firsthand experiences, knowledge and competencies to make decisions about investing in a particular business. For example, if an investor liked and understood the catering sector, he would lend to companies in this sector. It is extremely difficult for banks to keep narrowly qualified specialists from all areas on staff, so banks tend to stick to financing a small circle of large corporations.
Second, banks are very limited by governmental legislation. Therefore, the issuing of loans is often reduced to seeking loan applications that meet the requirements of the regulator. In many countries, banks do not lend to small and medium business (SME), and access to financing from such enterprises is conditionally blocked. In this respect, private investors are much freer.
Third, the speed of decision-making. The process of obtaining a loan from a bank can take anywhere from several weeks to several months. In Russia this period takes, on average, 2 months. The process of obtaining credit on a P2P platform is much faster and easier. Therefore, an increasing proportion of high-quality borrowers from SMEs have moved from traditional bank lending to modern and progressive P2P.
Fourth, is its effectiveness. In many banks, very old methods of working with a high degree of manual labor are still being used. This greatly affects both the speed of decision-making, and the quality of the analysis of borrowers’ solvency. As a result, over the past 10 years, P2P-platforms have been actively taking away some of the market share of traditional banks. The winners have turned out to be entrepreneurs who received a channel for access to money, and investors who were able to receive a decent income, observing the elementary rules of diversifying their investment portfolios.
Future
With all the advantages of P2P-credit platforms, there are also a number of disadvantages:
1.In most cases, they are closed inside one country. 2.Participants of the platform can play either the role of an investor or a borrower. All other roles are centralized and non-transparent. 3.A limited set of assets that can be left as collateral or on credit.
The Karma project creates a new level in the development of the financial sphere: an open community for the creation of social and economic relations. Any existing financial institution, cooperative or P2P-lending platform can become a part of this ecosystem too.
The following bullet points are the main areas of development in Karma’s P2P platform:
Development of cross-border capital exchanges. Increased liquidity of resources around the world and interest rate adjustment. We will create opportunities for investors from countries with zero interest rates: scoring borrowers from emerging markets will allow investors to get a higher return in comparison with investments within their regions. We create opportunities for entrepreneurs from countries with expensive money, opening access to capital.
Establishment of networked communities where decentralized groups of people accumulate competencies in scoring, insurance, portfolio management and other financial services. Members of the community value their reputation, and therefore approach each transaction individually, with the desire to do their best at work.
Creating an open market for access to funding. Currently, attracting money is a complicated, non-structured process. We want to make the capital market transparent and accessible to those who have proven themselves in the role of a quality borrower. Thanks to the Karma decentralized ecosystem, people will be able to determine interest rates, collateral volumes, return dates and types of assets used as collateral or credit for various types of transactions.
Technical features
Karma will be implemented using blockchain technology. This will give the project:
1.Reliability of data storage due to encryption technology.
2.The increase of fault tolerance due to decentralization.
3.The ability to operate with crypto-assets: BTC, ETH, tokenized assets (gold, real estate, shares of factories).
4.Binding to present and future blockchain registries: identification of individuals and companies, the state register of inventory, registers of depositories of valuable papers, identifiers of purses and transactions of crypto-currency.
5. The role of the electronic notary for fixing promises and the facts of their fulfillment.
The basis of our blockchain is the Graphene technology: Maximum speed: 100,000 transactions per second (for ETH – 30, for BTC – 7). The minimum transaction price: 0.02 dollars (for ETH – up to $ 1.5, for BTC – up to $ 5).
This speed and efficiency of transactions are possible due to the fact that Graphene is based on consensus dPoS (delegated proof-of-stake). Thereby, there is no expensive and labor-intensive mining in this ecosystem. Tokens were mined in advance, and the network members simply exchange them and fix transactions in the blockchain. There are a lot of crypto assets without mining: on https://coinmarketcap.com they are marked with asterisks. Of the most popular: Ripple, NEM, OmiseGo, NEO, TenX, BAT.
Even the creators of Ethereum pointed out in their whitepaper that mining is too expensive a technology, and the miners‘ expenses will make up to 52% of the total network turnover by 2020, therefore: “Most likely, Ethereum will be transferred to a proof of stake to reduce network maintenance costs “.
A brief description of the essence of the consensus dPoS:
●Transactions are signed by witnesses. ●Selection of a set of witnesses who have the right to sign transactions is carried out by voting of the owners of the tokens. Thereby token owners delegate their voting rights to people who have server capacity. ●Changing the network code, commissions for transactions and other key points is done by delegates who are also selected by voting of the owners of the tokens.
More information about dPoS can be found here https://bitshares.org/technology/delegated-proof-of-stake-consensus/ and here http://docs.bitshares.org/bitshares/dpos.html We will fork Graphene to supplement the data structure with our fields, and make smart contracts (DApps) in the form of C ++ plug-ins. To connect to the blockchain core, a web application will be used that is connected via the HTTP REST API. This is the most convenient option for starting, because it works on computers, tablets and mobile devices, and frees you from having to harmonize each version with the App Store. This is the way that Steemit, Golos, BitShares (OpenLedger, ruDEX) and Peerplays are organized.
Important point: Karma is an Open Source project, and we will publish all our releases in the public access on Github.
Team of the project
10−15 years of experience in finance and IT. Public persons, sharing the ideas with community, we value our reputation.
George Goognin, Founder, Evangelist, Producer The first IT-startup was developed in 2008 by Ex-director of ADV web integrator, automated large financial holdings: MICEX, VTB, FG Life, PSB, ICB. The founder of digital school RIC: more than 1000 students across the country. Automated large e-commerce: Hoff, re:Store, Samsung, LEGO, Nike, Facebook.
Artem Laptev, Founder, Director of Investments Has managed a private fund of P2P-lending to small and medium-sized businesses since 2010. He has own scoring strategy with stable, positive results. More than 10 years of experience in asset portfolio management in the financial sector: Troika Dialog, Sberbank, Ancor. He is the holder of the international degree CFA.
Ronny Boesing, OpenLedger, Partner in Denmark The founder of the world’s first decentralized crypto exchange OpenLedger, as well as several other projects, including CoinsBank, OBITS, Apptrade. Together with the partner, Dan Larimer, constantly develops the ecosystem of Graphene / BitShares.
Stephane Konan, Advisor Managed a large department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ivory Coast, spear-headed all cyber-criminality investigations, forensic analysis, and the screening of individuals and organisations. Developed official partnerships with international intelligence community: FBI, Korean Cyber-Terror Response Unit, the French Ministry of Defence, Interpol.
Mikhail Shlemov, Mentor UBS, Executive Director of the Analytical Department. Experience of more than 10 years. In Deutsche Bank, he took part in the IPO of VTB and “St. Petersburg” bank. In VTB Capital, he participated in the IPO of MICEX and Nomos-Bank. Repeatedly recognized as the best industry expert in Russia (Institutional Investor). He was in the top 3 analysts of the financial sector (Extel Russia).
Dmitry Shnelreikh, Consultant An expert on b2b sales, marketing and partner development, business lobbyist. Has helped with the launch of more than 20 start-ups since 2012. In the past, he was an adviser to the Presidential Administration.
Denis Svinarchuk, Fintech Advisor An architect of the IT infrastructure of the MICEX. He designed the core of the exchange trading system and assembled a team of developers. Specialist for high loads: in the recent update, the core of the exchange allows processing 140,000 transactions/sec.
Rustem Zubairov, Legal Partner A director of the department in Deloitte, one of the 4 largest audit and consulting companies in the world. Participant of the project on the legalization of crypto-currency in Kazakhstan at the state level.
Alex Chinyaev, Legal Partner Partner of Karma in England. He worked for Citibank, RBC and PWC in London. Experience in the field of finance and investment for more than 15 years. Has an English certificate IMC.
Philip Agyei Asare, Partner in Africa The founder of Dream Bitcoin Foundation, a member of the Humaniq project since the pre-ICO. The creator of the BTC Ghana service, which provides African labor migrants with sending money to their homeland with the help of crypto-currency at a price 3-4 times cheaper than
Thierno Madiou Bah, Partner in Africa The founder of the blockchain community in Sierra Leone: educational programs for the inhabitants of Africa, the exchange of crypto-currencies and the development of IT solutions. The creator of the online marketing platform OnlinePromo.
Yuri Myshinsky, Funds Relationships Executive The ex-director of the State Corporation for Development of the Chuvash Republic. Has experience in attracting tens of millions of dollars of foreign investments in infrastructure, financial and IT projects. 15 years of experience in business consulting, integration of large IT projects.
Evgeny Boev, GR partner Manages projects in the RSPP Committee on International Cooperation. More than 10 years GR, project financing and building partnerships. More than 6 years in the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in the direction of countering the legalization of income by criminal means.
Interesting facts
●Collected 500k on presale with 700$ advertising budget ●Collected 10M USD on main sale with less than 10k USD direct advertising budget ●More than 4000 token sale participants, average buying volume: 2.5k USD ●Alpha version published before the token sale end
Community
Telegram https://t.me/karmaprojecten Kakao Talk https://open.kakao.com/o/gKNwGqA Medium https://medium.com/@karma.project Bitcoin Talk https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2085967.20 GitHub https://github.com/goognin/karma