Hey all. I want to preface this by saying I am a crypto investor and Ambrosus is now my 2nd largest portfolio holding (behind Ethereum). My full time job is research/analysis (I do not do this for anyone else or a wage; my own portfolio is my skin in the game and yes this keeps me plenty sharp & motivated). I’ve been doing this for quite awhile since when I first bought BTC back in very early 2013, and then later in early 2016 became one of those early people who got deeply into Ethereum before it rocketed mid 2017. My investment philosophy is deeply rooted in fundamentals & not hype/marketing/coin-of-the-week with quippy one-liners & Facebook ads. You won’t see me discussing short-term price movement, technical analysis, FOMO/FUD, or any of that in this post. It’s long because, to be frank, the scope and vision of Ambrosus is very ambitious. Yes, this takes time to read but I hope you’ll find it educational as you read along.
I wanted to make this post for two reasons: 1) Begin to walk you partly through my analysis & thoughts on why this is now my 2nd core holding 2) For educational/awareness purposes in order to help other people in this community further understand why Ambrosus’ vision is so unique & why I believe it has a bright future.
This post will be quite long and comprehensive. The second & possibly third part which I’ll write in the next few weeks will dive deeply into competition, why Amber being (or not being) on exchanges doesn’t really matter as much as you think right now, price discovery thesis, Ambrosus business development/key partnerships moving forward, KYC/regulatory compliance in Switzerland, why this project above all others needs investment patience and why I believe the wait will be worth it, and of course anything else that people are curious to hear about based on feedback from this post.
I put a lot of time into this - if it makes sense to you I hope you’ll follow through on some of the links & relevant research you find interesting and please feel free to use parts/all of it as your own or leave comments or questions if I might have made something unclear. If you’d like me to expand on anything please let me know & I can likely go into much more technical or business detail. This is my way of giving back to the Ambrosus community - I have no hidden motives other than once again plainly stating and making it clear to all readers that yes, I bought a bunch of Amber and plan to hold it. If you find it valuable the best thing you can do is share it with others who might also share an interest in this project. I once again want to state this analysis was based on having done over 60+ hours of research on Ambrosus (as well as its closest substitutes) before making any financial decisions with my own Ether. It will begin to tell the story of Ambrosus and I’ve broken it up into 4 main parts to begin. So let’s get started:
Due diligence 101:
Q1) What is the problem they’re trying to solve?
Q2) Is the blockchain even a good solution to solve these issues?
Q3) What is Ambrosus doing that is so unique to tackling this problem?
Q4) Is this a team likely to make it happen?
Question 1) What is the problem they’re trying to solve?
At a high level overview, Ambrosus will be the first company to tell the complete story of Food/Pharmaceuticals as they go from farm to fork or as they’re made from the lab to the time the medicine is consumed. How this story unfolds can be called supply chain logistics and management.
Let’s first start with why Ambrosus wanting to do this even matters. To answer that we need to know why current supply chain solutions/logistics fall short and whether Ambrosus has a solution to these shortcomings. Right now current supply-chain solutions are ultimately built on a foundation of “trust.”
Christopher Martin
I use the word “trust” loosely because generally speaking there is absolutely no way to verify what it is they’re doing unless you take the supplier's word as gospel. Plainly stated: supply-chain solutions are currently fragmented, opaque, and suffer from multiple places of friction and corruption.
As an end consumer we are supposed to trust what businesses & suppliers say because they present us with information. When they say they’ve done what they’re supposed to do, we put whatever we just bought in our mouths and hope for the best. In a 1st world country this might translate to food poisoning (a $55B problem in America: fortune.com/food-contamination/) or maybe some medicine that is missing ingredients or has been transported in poor conditions that perhaps if you’re lucky won’t really do much to you. However, in 3rd world countries this affects millions of people daily and for hundreds of thousands of people this can lead to death (source: bbc.com/news/business-37470667). Once again, it may depend where you may live & products you consume, but it’s a global issue affecting many.
And let’s make sure we understand this: supply-chains logistics are very complex; many stakeholders along the way interact with a product/material. Even if 99% of them are well-intentioned, all you need is one morally corrupt stakeholder to cheat the current system intentionally or inadvertently (which is quite easy and commonplace). This is shown due to fraudulent products (in medicine) alone being a $200B dollar industry and climbing. source: strategyand.pwc.com/reports/counterfeit-pharmaceuticals.
Owen Ortiz
fuck second. tell us first... and third
Cooper Sanders
A brief bit about me: I live in Vancouver Canada (1st world country, liberal leaning culture) and there is a huge market of unmet demand for food transparency. Even if you personally don’t care whether something is ‘organic’ or what ingredients are in what you’re eating, I promise you there are people/businesses/governments who do. 8 in 10 people want a better understanding of where their food is coming from (source: newfoodmagazine.com/news/42541/8-10-consumers-labelling/ & you better believe big businesses are noticing this trend and paying attention to what Ambrosus is doing.
Very relevant: Angel (CEO of Ambrosus) mentioned in the Ambrosus discord channel that 50+ businesses have already approached them with interest. That’s proof there is a ‘problem’ and these businesses see Ambrosus’ vision as a viable solution. Make sure you understand that these business reached out to Ambrosus and not the other way around. This isn’t even hyped, but it goes without saying that it’s extremely promising when businesses seek out Ambrosus as a solution. They’re working on those relationships behind the scenes now, but more on that in another post. The point I am making is that the ‘real world’ is noticing. Collectively, these use cases are easily $1T+ industries Ambrosus is looking to disrupt.
Lincoln Thompson
Question 2) Is the blockchain even a good solution to solve these issues?
Before I ever part with my Ether the first thing I look for with an ICO is: Does this ‘problem’ they’re solving actually need a blockchain? (In other words: Is this ICO a solution looking for a problem/money grab or an legitimate usage case) For blockchain -> supply chain -> Ambrosus the answer is unequivocally yes. Listen to minute 52-53:30 here vimeo.com/232316774 where Vitalik describes Ambrosus’ business model (To be clear: he doesn’t use the word Ambrosus in his description, but I’m betting he clearly knows of Ambrosus because he described its vision perfectly, so much so that it can’t just be a coincidence). What he says:
(….and in the end ideally you could have the consumer be able to check on their smartphone through an app the whole [complex] supply chain history and ensure its authenticity every step of the way)
How cool is that?? Because that right there is exactly what Ambrosus is doing. Bingo! (PS - Ambrosus, be sure to introduce yourself to Vitalik whenever you ever get a chance!)
So let’s briefly recap and elaborate a bit more on what the current supply-chain solutions are and why they’re falling short. Supply chains & logistics greatly vary industry to industry. But generally speaking for high-value goods, the current ‘best’ solutions are RFID tags. RFID tags ‘track’ a product. You know how your phone can show you via GPS where you’ve been? Think of NFC/RFID tags like that. Now why isn’t this a good-enough solution?
Sebastian Stewart
If this coins so great how come Reddits not talking about it?
Gavin Jones
... > my 2nd largest portfolio holding (behind Ethereum)
Are you retarded, cunt?
Hudson Howard
Once reddit catches on then its too late
Tyler Reyes
Relatively new, they hired a CMO to handle marketing but they're overall concern is developing their product with integration of the Amber token as a beneficiary
For some products it very well may be, but for many others (food/pharmacy amongst others) we can easily say just because you can track a crate that doesn’t actually tell you what actually has happened to that crate from point A->B. Think about it: Did someone in the supply chain switch the ingredients for lesser quality to save on costs? Were they stored properly to industry standards? RFID is just ‘one’ piece of the story told in supply chains and once you understand that you can begin to understand how it is gameable by the current system. It can be a necessary part of the story, but it’s never the complete story. That’s why I said earlier it’s based on ‘trust’. Gee, I hope this Olive Oil I just bought from my boutique grocery store in North America isn’t among the 70% of them that are basically a $26 dollar bottle of Canola oil. source: ambrosus.com/assets/Ambrosus-Olive-A4-v4.pdf This post will already be very long, but to keep it from being even longer if you’re still not convinced yet just spend 10 minutes reading about Pharmaceutical industries here ambrosus.com/assets/Ambrosus-Pharmacy-v2.pdf and I promise it’ll help you understand how dysfunctional the status quo is and how ripe it is for disruption.
I could go on, but one of the biggest takeaways is how this problem needs to be solved. It can only be solved through an end-to-end solution that captures the full supply chain and holds it accountable, otherwise it’s pretty much useless (due to now being gameable & thus removing any future data integrity): cips.org/supply-management/news/2017/august/investigators-hired-as-fake-food-incidents-rise-in-china/ with relevant quotes of “In most food supply chains, there is one or more unreliable data providers,” he said.
Jaxson Price
For those who don't know this is pasta from r/Ambrosus 2 months ago
Aiden Taylor
This means blockchain is likely useless for protecting against food fraud unless every piece of data is scrutinised to be accurate.” - (Mitchell Weinberg founder of Global Base Food Supply Chain Investigator Inscatech speaking about skepticism on blockchain solutions to uncover food fraud). I cannot stress enough that Ambrosus is the only blockchain/start-up that seems to really understand this and has built in solutions in their vision and roadmap to address these very concerns.
Question 3) What is Ambrosus doing that is so unique to solving this problem?
Simply, their approach and introduction of disruptive technology. It’s brilliant. Once again remember supply chains logistics as being extremely finicky & industry dependent. Each industry/corporation/business, whether it’s Pharmacy, Baby food, Olive Oil, have their current approaches & needs will all be different depending on a variety of different factors, such as frequency of sensor readings, pH levels, level of light, temperature, RFID/NFC requirements, etc.
So how do you go about solving all these different needs? You can try to make tailored solutions to niche industries from the ground-up (briefly the problem with this approach is that it's extremely time consuming, expensive & not scalable and only a single usage case that is rigid for each supply chain) or you could take the Ambrosus approach and design a protocol approach through building up an entire ecosystem. If you want, here is the technical post on expanding on the ecosystem concept: blog.ambrosus.com/ambrosus-roadmap-whats-next-by-vlad-trifa-eb3acc88a759 or scan page 7-9 here ambrosus.com/assets/Ambrosus-Vision-Paper-V.2.3.2-EN.pdf for what the 6 core technologies are in this ecosystem.
Gavin Gomez
looks like a budget VEN
Carson Wilson
Okay how's this better then Vechain?
Ryder Martinez
In my own words I’ll explain this because it’s where I get really excited and it seems most people have fallen short on understanding why Ambrosus is truly so much different than anything on the market or currently being built.
To begin, great examples of protocol tokens are 0x and Ether. Think of them as a foundation layer where software implementations can then be easily built on top of. Ambrosus is also a foundational protocol layer that allows related software to be easily built on top of it. This allows industries to easily create and integrate their specific supply chain solutions on the Ambrosus architecture. Hard to wrap your head around? Think of Ambrosus as the Ethereum network and AMB as ETH (the gas that runs these ‘Dapps’. The ‘Dapps’ in this example will be the supply chain solutions for each industry/business/corporation, etc).
Let’s make sure we clearly understand from a business perspective why it’s so much better to build your supply chain solution on Ambrosus rather than somewhere else. The brief business case for why a corporation would want to build on Ambrosus is you’ll save money (overhead), reduce friction, will have more data than you’ve ever had before to analyze and improve logistics further (and stored for cheaply on Ambrosus private blockchain which will be tied to Ethereum public chain), can leverage existing synergies with others in this ecosystem (network effect - much like 0x and Ether), will integrate with existing IT solutions and infrastructures & tested smart contracts to streamline your processes. You’d also have the possibility of quickly leapfrogging your competitors and become an industry leader in your field for supply chain transparency. The cherry on top is of course that it’s extremely good press for said company.
Sebastian Morgan
To be fair, let’s pretend you wanted to build your own ecosystem and cut out Ambrosus? Well you’d first have to build a technology stack similar to Ambrosus, so step 1 go hire some developers & engineers. Then you’ll need to create a private blockchain that is scalable to your exact needs so you’ll need some blockchain developers. Then you’ll need to do groundbreaking innovative R&D into hardware sensors much like Stephan Meyer in the first half of this article is doing (blog.ambrosus.com/progress-report-15-oct-17-sensors-new-hires-activities-future-events-86984665a8d9) so you’ll need more scientists/PhD’s in relevant fields of expertise. Then you’ll likely need to create a test lab to run these experiments before scaling it (meaning you’ll need a CTO & more guys with lab coats). You’d have to code and create smart contracts that all properly facilitate the recording of data along the supply chain. Then the CTO would have to explain to the CEO why they’re taking this huge unproven risk & how it’s going to integrate perfectly first try with their existing solutions. Haha yeah, I know…that CTO clearly has ambition.
Even after all that it also doesn’t solve the biggest problem - trust. Why? Back to what Vitalik said and why the blockchain is so perfect for this usage case. Who’s watching the watcher? You employ your own solution, no one can see whether you’re actually meeting industry standards. It could all work and you could have all the information and still game the system because you’re the only one who can check-up on it. Let’s once again play devils advocate: What happens when you mess up your medical delivery during the shipment because it was exposed to excess heat? Well who’s going to know except the corporation who holds all the power in a centralized manner & hides this data from those who want to see it?
Jordan Torres
Ambrosus is ungameable and meets this stringent criteria. Any solution that doesn’t is incomplete and worthless as we can understand from part two. In another post I’ll do a competitor analysis, but I can tell you right now they’re the only company whose vision & scope is looking to tell the complete story from farm-to-fork and lab to the time medicine is consumed and that’s why what they are doing is so unique. The Amber token can be tied to the incorruptible hardware sensors and records real time data that is securely uploaded on an immutable blockchain. This private blockchain that they’re building will connect to the Ethereum blockchain. Those parties who need to see certain information will be to do so, but what this solution ultimately entails is no one corrupt stakeholder is above the ecosystem and will ever be able to re-write history or tamper/trick the sensors even if they tried their hardest.
So briefly to recap this structure what is it they’re doing?
1.) They’re creating new R&D into hardware sensors that expand scope of any existing solutions.
2.) They’re building a foundational layer (protocol) layer that makes enterprise solutions easy to build on top of (scalable, multi-usage cases in the future)
3.) They’re building an R&D lab for food product testing
4.) They’re creating a private blockchain to store data uploaded from the sensors
5.) Building smart contracts to streamline payments, quality control (supply chain monitoring) that will all talk to each other to remove friction on supply chain logistics
6.) Building developer tools for supply chain management & a P2P marketplace
7.) More key hires & expansion of team
8.) Forging new strategic partnerships with blockchain/software/IoT businesses that will allow them to integrate their sensors into existing hardware solutions to build scalable solutions quicker
9.) Forging new business relationships behind the scenes with corporations to help onboard them
Ryder Cruz
What is it they’re not doing?
1.) Wasting money marketing towards the crypto community to build awareness (instead they’re putting these resources into enterprise & corporate partnerships)
2.) Driving consumer awareness for mass adoption (at this point - it’s still too early)
3.) Announcing behind-the-scenes discussions for quick pumps & price speculation
’What is it they’re doing?’ can be stated as building a robust, proper ecosystem. I call this planting seeds for the harvest - much like Ethereum did all through 2016 before it exploded in popularity mid 2017. These things matter more than ’What is it they’re not doing?’ which is just white noise & a waste of time from a long-term business strategy perspective (at this stage - especially #2, but when they’re ready they will do this). I care about the fundamental growth in this ecosystem, not the price of Amber tomorrow, if you’ve read this far you’re probably like me and know this is ultimately what matters when measured in months/years. If you want more details on 1-9 click here: blog.ambrosus.com/ambrosus-progress-report-24-oct-2017-4b71850c082
Question 4) Is this a team likely to make it happen?
Start with the ‘About Me’ of each core member. Check their LinkedIn, GH, etc and see how they read here: ambrosus.com/#team
That’s pretty lazy research on my end if all I did was plug a link. So let’s go deeper.
Matthew was the one of the main developers behind Storj and is a great hire. I’ve spoken with him on some developer issues and he’s quite logical and has well-thought out positions including making an extremely strong token usage case for Amber being the heartbeat of this project. I wish I could find his exact words, but I remember being satisfied about him taking the time to explain thoroughly Amber's utility and how it will capture the transfer of value functions within the Ambrosus ecosystem as apps are being built on top of the protocol.
Josiah Jackson
Vlad penned this blog post here: blog.ambrosus.com/ambrosus-roadmap-whats-next-by-vlad-trifa-eb3acc88a759 and you can see how deeply he understands this field. He’s dropped into Discord, answered questions on the fly and my impression of him is he understands the hurdles & realities that must be overcome for mass adoption down the road. I get the feeling he undersells and over delivers (which in my personal opinion I really like).
Next up I wanted to touch upon Oliver Bussmann, an advisor to Ambrosus. What people may not also realize is that Oliver is a boss in the crypto world. This is extremely underrated and it seems quite overlooked. Of note, he’s also a top advisor to IOTA.
The other advisor I wanted to touch upon is Parity Technologies (and by default Gavin Wood). Parity Technologies is the company founded by Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner. Their whole team is the core technology partner to Ambrosus. From my understanding of asking in chat, they’ve already helped hash out, in a collaborative process with the Ambrosus team, some of the questions regarding underlying protocol development and I believe they will continue to have face-to-face future meetings. My own speculation is the true value of this partnership is in the bouncing of ideas from all of Parity Technologies they collaborate on as Ambrosus continues to scale and grow its ecosystem. If you’re curious, you can see Ambrosus Github, where you can see Gavin’s commits to the Token Generation Event for Ambrosus page here: github.com/ambrosus/tge-contract/graphs/contributors and from his twitter account an endorsement of their partnership here: twitter.com/gavofyork/status/906555627526410240
The bottom line is this guy is a fighter, who above all else gets shit done. I could talk about why he strategically turned down over $30M of money during the ICO (and why as an Amber holder in a later post this makes very good sense strategically once I understood the bigger vision) but that is a digression from the main points I want to speak of, which is that I’m pretty sure his spirit animal is a honey badger. What I can definitively tell you is through these last few months I’ve spoken to Angel more than a few times on Discord. He doesn’t bullshit you by only telling you what you want to hear. He’s extremely determined, but pragmatic at the same time and when I’ve pressed him on certain issues he’s come back at me sometimes with answers that I wasn’t hoping to get, but I can follow his sound logic/business acumen and respect why he sees it differently. I’ve been a business owner myself and have talked with many project leads/CEOs (for research/analysis) and I haven’t been more impressed by anyone else. He’s struck me as someone who has integrity and a long-term vision & knows to focus his time and effort on building true fundamentals and not glittery stuff that doesn’t move the long-term needle. Many times there were questions I wanted answers to and I’d see him replying 3am his time (4pm my time). Or here he is penning this blog post here blog.ambrosus.com/ambrosus-progress-report-24-oct-2017-4b71850c082 at 4:01am Swiss time when it seems most CEO’s would be out popping bottles after raising ~$35M
Luis Perez
Picked up about $1k worth yesterday night (yes poor). Looks to have potential and the team is absolutely STACKED
Jack Ramirez
Let me condense OP's post for you other anons >I live in Vancouver Canada >How cool is that?? >how ripe it is for disruption >Bingo! >cherry on top Fuck off back to the marketing hell hole you crawled out of
Ayden Baker
Not really, but you tried
Joshua Reyes
Could have some nice gains or be forgotten like civic forever. Meh, vechain is way better
Oliver Harris
really, really intrigued by this project. have a little, but looking to increase my position soon. I know if Nestle's pilot project and several NDAs, however, I'd like a little more buying power from some of my other coins before trading. I know noone can time the market, but was wondering if you knew of any upcoming news. thanks for the write-up.
Liam Hill
They released a development update yesterday - primarily addressing their business application use and what they have in mind for design. Basically, project management updates.
Angel has stated they do have NDAs where they can't even disclose they have a NDA with the company. For its current valuation it seems promising to get it now for a hold. Ambrosus isn't the type to really generate unnecessary hype but we'll see how the CMO handles their site update and press releases
Cameron Scott
No reason to not own a basket of supply chain/contract/rfid tokens
Justin Diaz
Just dropped 1k. Was already gonna buy after hedge guy yesterday shilled it but your post reminded me to pull the trigger.
Adam Thompson
No such thing as unnecesary hype. Hype is one of main driving forces in this market
Evan Murphy
It's valid and I agree, which is why it is not 100% of the portfolio. From my understanding, they want to drum up more marketing in a timely fashion as further development progresses along with being able to announce their cooperation with their current NDAs. Privacy is more of a concern for the companies being involved early with the project
Ethan Moore
He was correct in that there is minimal marketing besides normal updates from their social media. Some could view that as a nice entry point before hype starts unnecessarily influencing the price.
Isaiah Brooks
What else are you feeling bullish on that is currently undervalued?
Alexander Butler
Supply chain is certainly a branch where the blockchain is very useful, I've seen other ideas which could improve and simplify the supply chain greatly, including this one. However, I'm not too keen on erc20 tokens as they are at the mercy of the ethereum network. Are there any plans for their own coin?
Ryder Wilson
One I can think of is car registrations, at the moment in UK you have to pay to check a used cars history to see if its been stolen or wrote off/totalled.
Putting this stuff on a blockchain would be gold for someone
Cameron Garcia
Yea I could see how that would be useful, but my question was if Ambrosus was planning on making their own coin, with their own blockchain/lattice/whatever.
The idea is golden, but erc20 tokens are dependent on the Ethereum network, which is known for congestion and such, which als affects the tokens on the network.
Daniel Howard
Lmao
Are u this faggot?
One day you work for hedge fund, another you are a fedora investor, but everyday you are lowkey shilling amb
good job faggot
Noah Reed
to top it all
your stupid posts all read like a fucking marketing slogan
go kys
Leo Green
Ill admit i put a bit into AMB, I had a look a round and it looks a good project and is at a good early price.
That guy last night though was pretty much saying sell all VEN and buy AMB which wasnt happening.
Jonathan Martin
Rofl it’s the fucking AMB hedge fun larger again. Fuck off user those bags must be awfully heavy. Did you sell VEN at $6 because you thought it finished mooning?
Bentley Smith
Dont get me wrong, there might be some potential in amb, you never know in this market after all but this faggot make me not want to ever touch it
Juan Parker
I have been digging around for awhile, there's a lot to sift through and it takes awhile to do due diligence for each. Nothing else at the moment besides some staples but I wouldn't claim they're undervalued
No
I've held some VEN since $3.20, I'm hedging
I like VEN for Asian markets and I like AMB for Euro/NA
Mason Hernandez
>VEN for Asian markets lmao
first of all, ven and amb are different for different usecases
secondly, ven is literally aimed at westerners
op you are not very clever, you did not take much time with your research
I feel like you just bought into something with your 500 dollars and now you are feeling uneasy about your bags, you little insecure fag, so you just copypaste various poorly written bs
Jose Adams
China itself has an issue with authenticity in their products, it as much of a benefit and necessity for them as it is for Westerners. These projects could be used globally, I'm trying to explain to you to think from the lens of their regional location and who they're likely based to work with off of geography alone.
That's why PWC CN works with VeChain and not PWC US itself, does that make sense?
Chase Edwards
Bumping, hope we can continue our discussion
Thomas White
sorry to be an ADHD tl;dr idiot but, what kind of marketcap increase will this see by the end of the year?
Sebastian Miller
Impossible to tell you that. I'm just suggesting it's a project considering given its current market cap along with the team, partnerships, framework, and plans for 2018.
If you're interest in swing trades and stuff this probably won't be of any interest to you really
Josiah Ramirez
yeah but presumably you don't invest in a project because you like it you invest because you think it will make you money. and because you've chosen this one over all others you think that this will increase in value more than any others. are you thinking $10billion marketcap within a couple of years?
Kevin Bell
Fair, I wouldn't put that out of uncertainty for years down the road.
They have a team comprised of people in academia and those that were seniors within CPG companies. While Angel has confirmed that some of their NDAs have the clause to not even disclose the NDA exists between them and the company it's presumed that they're working with big players, such as Nestle (AMB and Nestle HQs in Switzerland).
Retailers can tote the value of transparency with their products which is a value to consumers. Along with that this process would make supply chains more efficient for the fact that it can reduce product staleness, for example, the sensors would detect if produce was bruised, aged, etc. based on the chemical composition and adjust the pricing in real time versus having an analyst determine when and how the stores discount products > management receiving information > using store employees to make the necessary changes. It's a big cost saver for that alone. When you consider that value and how supply chains can be impacted by this globally, then 10 billion doesn't seem unrealistic years down the road.
However, the dominos do have to fall in our direction but based on the team's human capital and assets via partnerships the framework is there for project ideas to move from development to fruition.
As you can see it appears to be a safer hold and that's where I find value.
Xavier Moore
There are also more levels to this and use cases as well
If you're interested in further resources on the topic consider below.
Engineering Progress Report (more use case cases for business application, and where they're focusing development efforts on)
