May 13
How To Have A Positive Social Impact With DeFi
Analyzing DeFi Platform $POP Popcorn.
In this article, I will share my research results for Popcorn $POP, a DeFi platform aiming to have a positive social impact on the world. It is based on an earlier Twitter thread about this crypto project. For this article, I added a few more info.
These are the points that I will cover in this project:
• Website
• Team & Partners
• Whitepaper
• $POP Token Use Case & Distribution
• Social Media
Let’s go!
This is $POP
What’s special about this DeFi is that it wants to have a positive impact on the world.
This is how it works: A percentage of the fees generated by transacting with the Popcorn smart contracts are shared with social impact organizations elected by the Popcorn governance token holders.
$POP holders nominate and elect these beneficiaries who will be awarded a grant through a voting process. A successful nomination will contain financial or impact reports, a mission statement, and an Ethereum address proof of ownership
This idea of enabling users to do something good while they are earning money using the platform’s DeFi products is Popcorn’s main selling point.
A promising idea. But will it work?
Popcorn’s Website
Popcorn’s website is light in content but I like it.
The homepage is clearly structured. Visitors see at a glance, what the platform is all about. There’s also an overview of the platform’s partners and investors, and important links (whitepaper, social media channels) can easily be found.
Via the homepage, users can also reach Popcorn’s DeFi app.
It offers two main features.
- Staking, offering the high APYs common for DeFis in their initial stage, which are paid out in $POP.
- ‘Butter’ is a basket of wrapped yield-bearing stable coins.
From my point of view, these APY offered are very high, anyone who wants to stake should do extensive research and try to avoid risks. Please check out my previous article explaining high APY in DeFi space:
Popcorn’s Team
Let’s check out the people behind Popcorn next.
The website has a team & contributors page that lists and links to the team’s LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. From this, we can learn about people’s backgrounds. And things are looking good!
Founder Anthony Martin has experience as an entrepreneur having worked with several venture-backed start-ups. Co-founder Michael Kisselgof brings a lot of experience in tech and crypto with him.
Among the team, there also are 10 developers plus several contributors on Github.
Popcorn’s Partners
Popcorn has renowned partners such as Olympus and Giveth.One. Also, DeFi received funds from VCs such as Kenetic Capital and Jump Capital. Having professional partners and investors on board is a great sign for a crypto project.
Popcorn’s Whitepaper
What about the $POP whitepaper?
Overall, it’s OK. It offers insights into the why and how, gives examples for use cases, and explains some important organizational aspects and software specifications.
However, I find it lacking in some places.
This has 3 reasons.
- The part on what makes Popcorn a better DeFi than its competitors in terms of economic opportunity for its users is very short.
- There’s no info on tokenomics. To learn about that I had to go to a 3rd level page and a Medium article. This is definitely a major weakness in this whitepaper.
- There is no roadmap. When I pointed this out in my Twitter thread, Michael Kisselgof sent me a link to the roadmap which you can find here.
$POP Tokenomics
Moving on, what do $POP tokenomics actually look like?
For this I also checked 3rd party sources such as Coingecko and Etherscan.
- The fixed total supply is 99,999,700 POP.
- As of now, the circulating supply is a little over 20 million $POP.
- 22% are held by early investors, and 12% are held by the team with 6–12 months of lockup and varying vesting.
- 53% are allocated for the $POP ecosystem. They are reserved for liquidity mining, incentives and grants.
- When I wrote the Twitter thread one month ago, there were 273 holders. Now there are 274, so not much of a change here. The top 100 wallets hold 99% of all tokens.
- This is because a large part of the tokens will not come into circulation until Q2/Q3 2022.
So far, $POP is only traded on uniswap (one pair). Because of the small number of holders, trading volume is expectedly low. Since the token started trading in December 2021, the price has held up very well.
Popcorn’s Social Media Channels
What about Popcorn’s social media channels?
Each channel has several thousand followers. The team is active daily with good user engagement. Looking very good.
- Discord: https://discord.com/invite/w9zeRTSZsq 7.000 followers
- Telegram: https://t.me/popcorndao 11.000+ followers
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Popcorn_DAO 25.000+followers
- Medium: https://medium.com/popcorndao 3.000+ followers
Final Thoughts
Time to wrap things up!
Popcorn is an ambitious, new DeFi project with a maybe not unique but promising use case. The fundamentals (team, partners, investors) look very solid.
However, the project is still in an early phase. The big question is: will Popcorn get traction?
Risk-taking investors looking for a crypto project that’s done its homework should definitely take a closer look at Propcorn. But as always, this is NO financial advice. Do your own research!
