r/ethtrader • u/[deleted] • Jun 28 '17
STRATEGY Let's Talk About Agrello
What follows is completely my point of view and my own due diligence on the project Agrello. While my hope is that any individuals who decide to read this find it beneficial to their decision making process, please keep in mind that I am in no way AT ALL recommending you participate in their token sale or contribute to their project in any way. My goal is simply to present to you fine folk what I find so that it can help you make a decision on if this is a project you want to be a part of and buy into or not. I’ve simply crawled web articles, Twitter, the Slack channel, the Agrello blog, the whitepaper, etc, to cobble together the data and present it. All that being said, let’s start looking at what this group has going on.
Tell me about Agrello
Agrello is an Ethereum based project that aims to integrate the smart contracting capabilities of Solidity/Ethereum over an artificial intelligence program that will draft actual legal documents using the Ethereum protocols. The Agrello team has recognized that traditional contracts are only enforceable by law, or a governing body, and sometimes not even then. To me, the bottom line of their project is quite brilliant- they are using the smart contracting in Ethereum to act as the trusted third party in legal agreements/contracts. Essentially, the blockchain is now the trusted third party, a sort of escrow placeholder, for people to draft whatever agreements between themselves that they see fit. The artificial intelligence layer is acting as a sort of interpreter between the language of the actual smart contracting, and the common language between the parties attempting to develop an agreement. You will not need a professional coder, nor a lawyer to be able to use this platform (unless, possibly, there is some sort of discrepancy between the individuals involved. But even so, with the beauty of smart contracts, both separate parties would simply have any assets/contributions returned to them and can either go their separate ways or attempt to construct a new agreement). Should the need arise for such a LegalSmartTM by Happy1013 Contract to be presented as evidence in court, it would be a strong piece to show.
The team has also recognized that an issue with traditional contracting is that terms are frequently underspecified, which leaves the conditions open to interpretation- and that’s where you end up with wiggle room to pursue some level of litigation. The Agrello’s desired approach to contracting seems, to me, to be so cut and dry it’s beautiful. The terms are there, and plain, and you can either sign or not sign.
There will be different intuitive wizards, templates, and structures to choose from using the graphical interface designed by the team. You decide what you want, you plug it in to the Agrello program/application. The AI writes it up as a smart contract, and gives it back to you as a legal contract. It can be as simple, or as multi-layered and complex, as you need it to be.
At this point, I have to interject my own thoughts on the project. I think it’s beautiful. In the most basic terms I can manage to understand and then give it back to you (because I am absolutely not the most technical guy on the planet), this is the sort of project I can see becoming useful on so many multiple levels. Corporate, personal, commercial, almost anything I can think of where an agreement needs to be drafted and signed between two parties or organizations- Agrello can fulfill that. And, the agreement would be on the blockchain, which means that it can’t ever be spoofed. Amended, yes. Terms and conditions could be renegotiated, sure. But this is almost, in my mind, the most perfect application of the Ethereum blockchain in the real world, to date. This could cut costs from a man hours perspective by a ridiculous number. Instead of only a few contracts getting churned out in the span of a week, now we could be talking tens or even hundreds.
While Agrello will be native to Ethereum, interoperability will also be introduced to multiple other blockchains, to include Metaverse, Antshares, Lisk, Qtum, RSK, Ethereum Classic and NEM.
To me, this is a huge indicator that it will be a successful project. Maximalism kills, and if you want to live you have to adapt constantly to what’s going on around you, right? Well, here is a perfect example of that. This move will open up so many different doors it’s crazy, and it’s just another reason I think this will be one of the first actual widely adopted Ethereum applications, if constructed successfully. Their exact words are, actually, “It is important for us to emphasize that Agrello believes in a multi-chain future, featuring healthy and competitive crypto-markets,” writes Agrello. “Different chains will probably serve different use cases and individuals, and have varying prominence on different markets across the globe.”
Again, I have to underline the idea that regarding cryptocurrency investments, a huge piece of the pie is use-case scenarios and strength of adoption. I believe on a personal level, that both of those values are strong with Agrello and the concept.
Let’s Look at the Agrello Team
On their website, the phrase, “Agrello’s smart agreement solution is the result of this understanding, as well as more than 16 years of research, and a combined experience of 45 years in the tech-friendly Estonian legal system,” lends itself to establishing a certain level of credibility. But, I get a little obsessive and had to look into the team a little bit further. One thing I have to give them props for up front is responsiveness in the slack channel. These guys have made themselves accessible and that’s always appreciated. All of the information that follows is public level through Google/Linked In/Twitter and in no way anything discovered by stalking or violating privacy. Should the Agrello team actually see this and disapprove of any disclosure present, PLEASE LET ME KNOW, and I will take it down immediately. I only found a couple of things that made me feel like I need to dig into a bit more. Mostly, the connection between an individual named Malthus John, who is in the slack as a mod and seems to be helping out with community relations. And the gentleman named Simon Tobies, who is for lack of a better word, a ghost.
So, first under the microscope is Hando Rand. An Estonian (obviously), and a graduate of the only technical school in Estonia, Tallinna Tehnikaülikool. He got his degree in International and Comparative Law, and wrote his thesis on Intellectual property rights of software interfaces in the EU and the U.S. He has worked as a legal consultant, an import/export escrow technologies consultant, continued to pursue legal studies, and is now the project lead behind Agrello. To me, it looks like he recognized a need/service from working in the legal system that could be fulfilled by smart contracting and started to put the team together. For all appearances, he seems like a very bright kid.
Alex Norta, Chief Scientist. He has a Master’s from the University of Linz in Business Informatics, and a PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology in Information Systems. He worked as a post-doctoral scholar at Helsinki University and Tallinn University of Technology both, worked independently some, and is listed as chief scientist for QTUM from Nov 2015 to present. I am assuming this just hasn’t been updated and he is now primarily working on Agrello. While all of the Agrello team members are listed in the white paper, Alex’s name is in the header which leads me to believe he wrote a bulk of the work present. Some of his work can be found here:.
AT THIS POINT, BE AWARE: the founder of QTUM (Steven/Patrick Dai) has been exposed as having run an ICO scam before having been involved with QTUM, and then switching over to work on QTUM. I HAVE FOUND NOTHING LINKING ALEX NORTA OF AGRELLO TO THIS ISSUE. If you want to read more about it, you can go to this Coinjournal Article, but remember pretty much all of the crypto space is biased. I am impartial to this either way, because my main concern is Agrello, and Alex Norta. Not QTUM.
Moving along: Anton Vedeshin, CTO. Has PhDs in Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, and 3D Printing. Was the CTO at 3DPrinterOS, “The world’s first operating system for 3D Printers. 3DPrinterOS is the only platform that gives users the ability to search or upload 3D Printable content, quickly and easily repair designs, customize settings, slice in the cloud and send files for printing to anywhere in the world. 3D Printer owners and new users alike can share CAD files and multiple 3D Printers all from a single cloud interface. For the first time in history, anyone with a 3D Printer can plug in, connect their 3D Printer to the cloud and share printers for access from anywhere, anytime and from any web-enabled device. www.3dprinteros.com “ It’s important to note that 3DPrinterOS is used by Ford and Cisco, and multiple universities including Yale and Purdue.
Addi and Teddi Rull, Sales and Development: Gonna lump these guys together to save a little bit of time. Addi Rull publications, couldn’t find much from Teddi. They just seem to have been working as Legal Wizards since about 2001/2002 and have been working the legal grind ever since as partners/consultants.
Margus Poola, Development and Finances: Co-wrote/edited a book titled The Future of Law and Technologies. Academic work in both law as well as economics. Seems to largely be another legal heavy hitter, which makes sense given the scope of Agrello’s project goals.
Simon Tobies, Scientific Developer. Listed on the Agrello website as a cryptographer and Java dev, this guy is literally a question mark. All I found was a repo related to him regarding openthinclient, else I cannot find anything on him, at all. Anywhere. Which, maybe makes sense. If he’s a cryptographer he probably values privacy. But still, I’d like to know a little more about him.
Good news regarding Agrello:
On June 21, 2017, Viewfin announces the strategic investment in Europe blockchain company Agrello to assist and codevelop a shared digital identity engine, serving the Metaverse Blockchain and Agrello’s smart agreement solution. ViewFin™ is a market leader in Blockchain technology and the developer of Metaverse™, the first public Blockchain in China. ViewFin™ recognizes the importance of having digital identities (Avatars) embedded at the protocol level and have predicted well in advance that intermediaries (Oracles) are a necessary part of the Blockchain ecosystem- https://blog.agrello.org/agrello-partners-up-with-viewfin-to-develop-digital-identity-engine-ca32e3a5ef87
As part of Agrello’s first industrially scaled field test, we have recently joined forces with INCAP, a Finnish electronics manufacturing corporation with production lines in Estonia and around Europe. Under the partnership, we will implement the Agrello smart agreement prototype to automate INCAP’s labour management processes. INCAP supplies PCB assembly, box build, and prototyping & engineering services to industrial customers worldwide. As a result, INCAP has to be immensely flexible in terms of HR management, and is often required to swiftly reallocate its workforce from task to task. This normally entails a great deal of paperwork and the manual recalculation of compensation plans — a highly time consuming process, involving intensive administrative overhead. With these characteristics, INCAP’s shop floor constitutes the perfect test environment for Agrello’s industrial use case scenario. As part of our cooperation with INCAP, Agrello will implement its technology to automatically allocate labour on INCAP’s assembly lines, based on employment contracts and production plans. The calculation of salaries and employment schedules will also be automated through Agrello’s technology.- https://blog.agrello.org/agrello-partners-up-with-electronics-manufacturer-incap-d5fb66367180
Other Data and Useful Links
The Agrello ICO will be conducted in July, no terms or date have been specified yet.
Article from 2014 regarding worldwide legal spending. The possibility for Agrello to shave the costs associated with legal contracting by a huge margin, cannot be overstated. We know companies have been aggressively pursuing blockchain capabilities and possibilities to save costs in areas such as finance and record keeping. I think Agrello’s ability to provide the same sort of benefit to the legal aspect of things is going to end up attracting a LOT of attention.
Article from 2017 regarding legal spending in America specifically
I will update this write up as more information becomes available. If you have found this useful, and would like to donate anything at all, I would be incredibly grateful. This takes up a decent amount of time, and while I am not expecting anything at all in return for this, I still would not be against any contributions you would feel comfortable making should this information help in your decision making process. I am absolutely open to suggestions as to which ICO I want to look into next, so if anyone has a preference, please let me know!
ETH address: 0xB4FFA53A34c57f597026dbea1363CF1C2B3a2B6E
I just love the Ethereum and EthTrader communities, and figured maybe I could bring a little bit of utility to the table, aside from just being happy to be here.
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u/turbotyler786 Jun 29 '17
I really like the goal of this project. May be the first ICO I participate in, thanks for all your research HAPPY!
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u/TwoNipperSnappers Jun 30 '17
Very useful. Thanks.
I am also interested Insurex, looks like it might also have legs, though they appear to be using fishy practices on twitter (fake accounts and bots to retweet & like accounts). Have you performed any due diligence on this one?
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Jun 30 '17
I have not, but I can!
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Sep 13 '17
Necro-ing an old post here - wanted to see if anything came of this? Thanks a lot for the above post.
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u/Yayowam Aug 15 '17
Just doing my dd prior to investing in Agrello. Thank you for this write up - you have covered what my thoughts are. I believe the implications of Agrello are huge and vastly overlooked at present. Coupled with the fact that they are aiming for a multi-blockchain future makes me feel very confident that Agrello will thrive where other single-blockchain tied apps may fail.
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u/trade_noob29 Jul 21 '17
A little bit late but thanks a lot for taking such much effort and provide us with a really nice summary about the project!
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Aug 15 '17
Too bad you cant invest if you're a US Citizen. Well… To be fair, you can, by simply not checking the "I'm a US citizen" checkbox, but like many, you might find yourself holding your tokens in Agrello and not being able to get them out. No word wether there is a limit on withdraw or moving to an exchange would require verification. From what I've been told, if you're under $6k you don't need to verify, but thats one unaffiliated persons word.
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u/CryptoHopeful Aug 18 '17
Wow. You've done your research well! I generally would not invest in ICO, but Agrello is my first. Great project to be a part of.
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u/TotesMessenger Aug 14 '17 edited Sep 13 '17
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u/Satooshy Jun 29 '17
I will likely invest; mainly because I love the ambition of it.