Coin Report #58: Sentivate

N.B: In the spirit of full transparency, the following Coin Report on Sentivate is a Sponsored Post.

Welcome to the 58th Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Sentivate. This will be comprised of an analysis of a number of significant metrics, an evaluation of the project’s community and development and an overview of its price-history. The report will conclude with a grading out of 10. I hope you enjoy the read!

Introduction

Prior to conducting my research for this report, I was largely unaware of Sentivate, beyond the permanent fixture of its ticker on my Twitter feed in recent weeks. Clearly, there is a vocal community on Crypto-Twitter for the project, which we shall come to later in this report, but the project itself has many features of interest beyond this, having now concluded my research. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say that it was a breath of fresh air to research something different amidst the current DeFi mania.

I hope this report will prove objective where it must be and fair on more subjective matters. For those who’d like to learn a little more about Sentivate prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:

Fundamental Analysis

General:

Name: Sentivate

Ticker: SNTVT

Algorithm: N/A (ERC-20 until Mainnet launch and swap to VIAT on native chain)

Sector: Web Protocol

Exchanges: Uniswap, Hotbit, IDEX and STEX

Launch Overview

Sentivate was conceptualised in 2018 by Thomas Marchi, Matt Karasiewicz and Lew Knopp as a web protocol solution for the current problems facing the web, utilising both centralised and decentralised components. Development began late in 2018, with the project self-funded. As such, no public token sales have been conducted.

Sentivate was launched with an ERC-20 token, SNTVT, which has a maximum supply of 4.2bn SNTVT. Of this, 2.1bn has been allocated to the ecosystem, 1.05bn was airdropped to the community and 1.05bn has been allocated to the team and advisors but remains locked until the mainnet launch. Sentivate’s mainnet launch will coincide with a token swap to VIAT, which will be the native token of the mainnet, at a ratio of 1000 SNTVT : 1 VIAT. VIAT will have a maximum supply of 42mn, thus only 10% of the maximum supply will be directly available through the token swap; the remainder will be mined via Dynamic Proof-of-Work.

Price-History Overview

The SNTVT token has been traded since January 2019, with initial trading leading to the still-all-time-low of 1 satoshi in February. Its all-time high formed a few months later in April at 65 satoshis. Against the dollar, the all-time high is $0.0093. Given that SNTVT has been in existence for almost two years, there is a good amount of price-history available for detailed analysis, which I shall cover in the Technical Analysis section.

Project Overview

Sentivate has a refreshingly unique mission, particularly in the context of the current DeFi-dominated mania; simply put, Sentivate is seeking to provide a replacement protocol for the web, dubbed The Universal Web, in order to fix the current problems being experienced.

As stated in its whitepaper:

“Sentivate is a hybrid web (centralized focused but enhanced by decentralized components) built to be a viable & realistic replacement for the modern web. The network is designed to go beyond the capabilities that any solely centralized or decentralized network could offer. Sentivate addresses the following issues directly: bandwidth crisis, outdated protocols, broken DNS, lack of accountability, lack of identity, reactive security, Domain rules, and web categorization.”

I look forward to evaluating Sentivate’s progress since inception.

Let’s begin with some Metric Analysis:

Metric Analysis:

Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 18th August 2020. For anyone reading this who has yet to read a Coin Report, it might be worth reading this section of the first report, where any potentially unfamiliar terms are explained. For any terms or metrics specific to this post, I will provide explanations besides the figures.

Metrics:

General:

Price: $0.0076 (62 satoshis)

Circulating Supply: 1,757,765,051 SNTVT (source)

Total Supply: 4,200,000,000 SNTVT

Exchange Volume: $853,364 ($622,364 excluding wash)

Network Value: $13.4mn (1089.81 BTC)

Maximum Supply: 4,200,000,000 SNTVT

% of Max. Supply Minted: 100%

Network Value at Max. Supply: $32.029mn

Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 6.37% (4.64% excluding wash)

Category: Lowcap

Average Price (30-Day): $0.0038

Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $210,870

Average Network Value (30-Day): $9.569mn

Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 2.20%

Volatility* (30-Day): -0.5917

Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day): N/A

Average Daily Transactional Value** (30-Day): N/A

NVT*** (30-Day): N/A

% Price Change USD (30-Day): +383%

% Price Change USD (1-Year): +476.8%

USD All-Time High: $0.0093

% From USD All-Time High: -18.3%

Premine % of Max. Supply: 0

Premine Location: N/A

Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 2.03 BTC (excluding Uniswap)

Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.19%

Supply Available on Exchanges: 33,998,561 SNTVT (excluding Uniswap)

% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 1.93%

*Volatility is calculated by taking the average price over the given time-period, calculating the difference between it and the highest price and it and the lowest price over that same time-period, and multiplying those figures together. The closer to 0, the less volatility during that period, and vice-versa. Read this for more on volatility.

Supply Emission & Inflation:

Block Reward Schedule (and Token Details):

SNTVT is a utility token that will be swapped to VIAT on Mainnet launch at 1000 SNTVT: 1 VIAT. The SNTVT maximum supply is 4.2bn, with its maximum circulating supply at 3.15bn SNTVT, with 1.05bn allocated to the team and advisors but currently locked (address #2 on the rich-list). The token distribution is as follows: Ecosystem allocated 2.1bn SNTVT; Airdrop of 1.05bn; and team & advisors allocated 1.05bn.

However, following mainnet launch, there will be a 42mn VIAT maximum supply, with 4.2mn VIAT available directly from the swap from SNTVT; the remainder will be mined. As such, current inflation is 0 but post-mainnet only 10% of the total supply will be in existence, which means that the fully diluted market cap of VIAT is 10x higher than SNTVT. It also means that ownership of SNTVT does not equate to equal ownership of VIAT.

Average Block Time: N/A

Current Block Height: N/A

Annual Supply Emission: 0 (until mainnet swap to VIAT)

Annual Inflation Rate: 0%

Circulating Supply in 365 Days: N/A

Distribution:

Address Count: 4,712

Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 46.45%

Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 49.44%*

Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 59.25%

Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 7**

*This excludes the #2 address, which contains 1.05bn SNTVT that is locked until mainnet swap, as well as the #6 and #7 addresses, which belong to Hotbit and IDEX, respectively. It does include the #1 address, which contains 1.393bn SNTVT, as this is clearly accessible at present.

**Excluding exchange addresses and the locked team/advisor address.

Analysis:

There’s rather a lot to work through here, but I’d like to begin by looking at the General metrics before moving onto Supply Emission and Inflation and then concluding this section with some Distribution analysis:

Firstly, let’s take a look at Sentivate’s Volatility, which came in particularly high. I calculated its 30-day figure to be -0.5917, which places it 2nd-highest amongst coins previously reported on, indicating to me that it is certainly not currently in its accumulation phase and is well into it market cycle.

Moving on, let’s take a look at the two Liquidity-related metrics:

For buy-side Liquidity, I calculated that there was 2.03 BTC of buy support within 10% of current prices across listed exchanges (not including Uniswap), equating to 0.19% of its Network Value. This is very much average relative to other coins in previous reports, placing it joint-23rd-highest, which is somewhere in the middle of the pack. It is a little more impressive than other similar degrees of liquidity, however, because SNTVT is only listed on a handful of small exchanges.

Looking at the sell-side, I calculated there to be 33,998,561 SNTVT available for purchase on the orderbooks (not including Uniswap), equating to 1.93% of the circulating supply. This is the 30th-highest among prior reports, which again is very much average, indicating that there is no overwhelming desire among holders to sell at any price, with so little SNTVT held in orderbooks.

Before I move on from the General metrics, let’s take a look at those related to volume:

Sentivate traded a reported $853,364 of Exchange Volume over the past 24 hours, equating to 6.37% of its Network Value; an impressive figure. Unfortunately, it is highly likely to be a false one, although through no fault of the project itself. It appears that ~$230k of this volume is wash traded from Hotbit. As such, if we discount Hotbit’s wash, Sentivate traded $622,364 in the past 24 hours, equating to a more modest but still impressive 4.64% of its Network Value. Further, its Average Daily Volume for the past 30 days was $210,870, equating to 2.2% of its Average Network Value for the same period.

Now, with regards to SNTVT’s supply emission, in short, there is none at present, as tends to be the case with many ERC-20 tokens. All tokens are in existence. Thus, annual inflation is 0%. However, this isn’t the end of the story for emissions, as SNTVT will be swapped to VIAT upon launch of the mainnet, at a rate of 1000 SNTVT : 1 VIAT. The maximum supply of VIAT, however, will be 42mn, thus only 10% of the maximum supply will derive from the swapped SNTVT; the remaining 90% will be mined. As such, only 10% of the post-mainnet supply is currently in existence and the fully diluted network value of Sentivate is 10x higher than it currently suggests. Given no information as of yet on block reward schedules, we cannot estimate inflation rates post-mainnet, but they certainly won’t be zero as they currently are.

Let’s wrap up this section with a look at Distribution:

Looking at the Sentivate rich-list, I found that there were 4,712 holders, which is the 13th-lowest figure recorded in these reports. Of these, the top 10 addresses control 46.45% of the total supply; the top 20 control 49.44%; and the top 100 control 59.25%. This is excluding the #2 address, which contains locked team and advisor tokens, as well as the #6 and #7 address, which belong to Hotbit and IDEX respectively.

Regarding the activity of the top 20 non-exchange addresses (and excluding #2), I found that 7 were inactive over the past 30 days. Of the other 13 active addresses, 6 were distributing and 7 accumulating, with cumulative net outflows from the top 20 of 89.73mn SNTVT over that period, equating to 2.1% of total supply.

And that concludes this section; onto the Sentivate Community:

Community:

There are two primary aspects of community analysis: social media presence and Bitcointalk threads. I’ll begin with the former before moving on to the latter.

Social Media:

Concerning social media presence, there are four main platforms to examine: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Discord.

Sentivate is present on all platforms except Discord. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Sentivate Twitter and Facebook accounts:

Twitter Followers: 15,240

Tweets: 2,102

Average Twitter Engagement: 1.07%

Facebook Likes: 1,391

Facebook Posts (30-Day): 0

Average Facebook Engagement: N/A

As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.

Twitter:

Sentivate has a modestly-sized Twitter audience of 12,709, which places it in the top third among coins previously reported on. However, it has impressive engagement for the size of its audience, with its average engagement rate at 1.07%. This is 23.7x greater than the average across all industries of 0.045% and 39.6x greater than the average in the Tech and Software industry of 0.027%. Relative to other reports, it is the 23rd-highest. Overall, even beyond the engagement rate, I like the fact that the team are regularly tweeting and interacting with the community.

Facebook:

Now, with regards to Facebook, Sentivate has a much smaller audience of 1,391 Likes. However, the Facebook page is clearly not in much use, as they have not posted once in the past 30 days. This is a bit of a shame, as clearly the Sentivate community is vocal; perhaps it would be wise to build out the audience on another platform to bring further eyes to the project.

Discord:

There are 1,739 members of the Sentivate Discord group.

Despite the existence of a Discord group, it is clearly not in much use, as many of the channels have had no activity in months and even the General channel hasn’t been used in over two weeks. The community hub, as I’ll come to in the next section, is quite clearly Telegram.

Telegram:

There are 10,009 members of the Sentivate Telegram group.

I have summaries the key takeaways from the previous week’s activity below:

The community is incredibly vocal, with constant daily discussion to the point of which it becomes difficult to keep track with the number of incoming messages. This is no bad thing, of course.
Much of the discussion is more general, with the community engaging on all manner of topics beyond Sentivate itself.
The transition to VIAT from SNTVT is expected in 2021.
A Kucoin listing is expected in the near future according to the community.
Admins answer questions and queries promptly.
After the Viat swap, the team and advisors will own 2.5% of the maximum supply, effectively acting as a very modest premine.
The mainnet launch is expected at the end of the year.
Viat itself will be mineable via Dynamic Proof-of-Work, which means that both direct, traditional mining will be one of the mechanisms by which VIAT can be procured, but also via packet puzzles in UDSP (more on this later), so users can ‘mine’ VIAT by browsing the Universal Web.

Overall, the community is very much engaged and active (and growing, to boot). I would have liked to have seen more engagement with the actual development of the project itself, or perhaps even more community-led initiatives for user-base growth, as is often found with more vocal communities.

BitcoinTalk:

The (current) Sentivate BitcoinTalk thread was created on April 2nd, 2019 and has since generated 79 posts spanning 4 pages in 503 days. This equates to 0.16 posts per day, on average. However, in the past 90 days, the thread has had 5 posts via 3 individual posters, giving an average of 0.055 posts per day; a significant decline in engagement. Clearly, this thread isn’t really used by the community anymore. The announcement itself is relatively informative but the information is far better presented on the website and blog, as we’ll come to in the next section.

And that concludes my evaluation of the Sentivate community.

Development:

For the following Development analysis, I will be evaluating project leadership, the website, the roadmap, the whitepaper, the wallets and finally providing a general overview:

Project Leadership:

There are 11 employees listed on the site, along with 7 advisors. There are currently 10 employees on LinkedIn. Moreover, the team are based in New Jersey, United States.

More specifically, the listed team is comprised of:

The advisors to Sentivate are:

Website:

The website can be found here.

The website itself is a little bit dated in its design but certainly easy to navigate and comprehensive in its detail on Sentivate.

Beginning with the homepage, we find the tagline The Future of The Web, with a mission statement below stating that Sentivate is seeking to be a viable and realistic replacement for the modern web. We also find the logo, which is very much recognisable and well-designed. Below this, we find the three core traits of Sentivate: Vision, Power and Viability. We also find links to detailed articles on the issues facing bandwidth, HTTP, DNS, Web 3.0 and domain regulations, as well as the exchanges currently listed for SNTVT. If we continue scrolling down the page, we find articles on the Universal Identity System, Identity Registrar and Identity Certificates, all covered in depth a little later in the report. There is also a brief introduction to Hybrid Apps (again covered in detail in the Whitepaper section) and a link to that whitepaper is provided. Finally, as we come to the footer, we find details on the SNTVT token and the future VIAT token, where a swap will be conducted post-mainnet from SNTVT to VIAT at 1000:1, with the maximum supply of VIAT 42,000,000. This means that 90% of its supply will be mined post-launch.

Turning to the navigation menu at the top of the page, we find a link to the Blog, as well as a menu titled Info, which contains links to pages on the team (covered above), the roadmap and whitepaper (covered in the following sections), the Bitcointalk ANN and a detailed FAQ, which also contains many links to PR and interviews conducted since inception). There is a great deal of useful info here for new users. There is also a Contact menu with links to various social platforms (also found in the header of the homepage), as well as a Downloads page with the v1.0.8 Alpha of the Universal Web Browser. Lastly, from the navigation menu, you will notice an entire drop-down menu titled Network containing concise sub-pages on specific components of the ecosystem. Much of this is covered in the Whitepaper section, so I’ll refrain from repeating myself here, but these are quite useful for newbies.

If we look at the blog, here we find that the team post once a month, in general, with long-form discussion articles, development updates and more.

Overall, though the website isn’t particularly visually appealing, it has pretty much everything one could want to know as a potential new user or speculator.

Roadmap:

The roadmap can be found here.

The roadmap itself is present as an infographic, segmented by month and with a separate roadmap available for 2019 containing historical accomplishments. There is also some indication provided of progress on each goal, which is good to see.

For 2020, the goals are as follows:

January: Congestion control for the protocol – added to the public repo
February: Executables for Mac and Windows for the early version of the browser
March: SNTVT Global – websites will be published in numerous languages to bring Sentivate to other markets
April: SNTVT Family ambassador program
May: Documentation for developers to build on UWapps, with a search engine and directory built to explore early Universal Web apps.
June-July: Private alpha for Universal Web and beginning of rebrand
August: Rebrand rollout for Universal Web, with transitions to new systems and marketing campaigns for awareness. New browser and Github branded under Universal Web, Inc plus organisational restructuring and smart contract audit completion
September: Closed beta for Universal Web and continued marketing campaigns
October: New exchange listings and partnerships
November: Open beta for the Universal Web
December: Mainnet launch for the Universal Web

Overall, I think the fun begins after December’s mainnet launch and the full rebrand has taken place. I look forward to seeing what the next roadmap rollout (updated every 3 months) consists of for 2021!

Whitepaper:

The whitepaper can be found here.

The whitepaper is presented via Github and is a more technical document discussing the components of the Universal Web more so than the tokens (SNTVT and VIAT) themselves. I have provided my key takeaways below:

Sentivate will be both centralised and decentralised as a web protocol, though its focus will lean towards centralisation.
The aim is to be a realistic replacement for the modern web.
Current issues facing the web include the bandwidth crisis, outdated protocols, broken DNS, lack of accountability, lack of identity, reactive security, domain rules and web categorisation.
An additional whitepaper is expected to be released on Viat itself in the future.
Currently, the World Wide Web is facing many problems that are being patched up rather than resolved; Sentivate believe that the world requires entirely new protocols and designs to fit the modern world.
The bandwidth crisis is one of the key issues, where bandwidth is limited and demand is out-pacing network capacity; modern technological components can resolve this.
HTTP and DNS are also facing issues, as HTTP is currently failing to scale and is the current vehicle through which the internet economy interacts (where lags = significant decreases in sales for ecommerce etc.), and DNS is stated to be untrustworthy and also not scalable, as much of the web can be shut down temporarily by attacking specific servers.
Web 3.0 is the Decentralised Web, which is a current proposition outside of Sentivate’s Universal Web; however, Sentivate believe the intrinsic decentralisation of important components will only augment the bandwidth crisis and decrease speeds.
Following this, we find some technical details on the cryptography of the Universal Web, including info on key signatures, packet encryption, hashing algorithms and key exchanges. (Much of this is beyond my scope of understanding).
Sentivate will be a hybrid network, utilising the best aspects of decentralised and centralised tools.
The protocol being developed for the Universal Web is the Universal Data Stream Protocol, or UDSP; this is a low-latency, real-time, bi-directional, encrypted and reliable data transport protocol. It improves upon HTTP by enforcing encryption, reducing noise to declog the network, and provide low latency.
UDSP also has optional packet puzzles allowing providers and solvers to earn VIAT by browsing the web; these puzzles also control congestion and limit DDOS damage. Clients and domains are credited with VIAT when the client solves the puzzle; when a DDOS attack is carried out, the server can dynamically reward the domain 100% of the VIAT, ensuring attackers suffer greater financial loss and reducing gain. This concept will be fleshed out in the Viat-specific whitepaper.
The Universal Domain System will consist of Domain Certificates, the Domain Registrar and the Domain Information System (DIS).
Domain Certificates are signed by 3 or more keypairs (ephemeral, master and domain registrar) and provide routing, cryptography and other details required for hostnames. The ephemeral certificate of a domain acts as a wallet in which VIAT is stored.
The Domain Registrar allows for the registration and management of a public domain certificate, validating the certificate by signing it. This certificate is stored in the DIS for distribution.
The Domain Information System returns domain-specific information, allowing for 0-RTT (Zero Round Trip Time Resumption – a superfast handshake) without the user being required to have visited a domain previously. This is unique to Sentivate. Further, when invalid certificates are used to request information from the DIS to go to a service, the DIS denies any return.
Decentralised nodes providing domain certificates will be able to earn VIAT for their service to the network.
The Sentivate Network, which is a Hybrid Domain Information System, will be comprised of centralised DIS nodes and a decentralised DIS.
Domains: domains on the Universal Web will be human readable hostnames with full extension names and the capacity for single full names for trademarked entities, where domain rules and regulations are designed to limit malicious activity and make extensions more descriptive (and thus more recognisable), whilst also protecting trademarks. An example provided is that the user would be able to navigate to Amazon simply by searching Amazon, with no domain squatting allowed or else the domain is lost.
The Universal Identity System will consist of Identity Certificates and an Identity Registrar.
Identity Certificates represent you on the network; users are able to signup, login and make purchases instantly using their identity certification, forming the basis for a decentralised reputation system where bad behaviour is tied to a specific certificate.
The Identity Registrar will sign certificates and act as first-layer network protection by filtering faulty certificates, stopping Sybil attacks and other malicious actors.
Active certificates will continually be updated and signed.
Regarding development on the Universal Web, Sentivate opens up the possibility for hApps, Hybrid Universal Web Apps, which are self-constructing single-page applications, with the benefits of both centralised and decentralised networks. hApp assets will be contained within their own files and only streamed on a required basis for each client, like “a bridge build itself as you walk across”.
Server loads and bandwidth requirements will be significantly decreased with hApps.
VIAT will be the native cryptocurrency of the Universal Web, and it will be issued via a hybrid blockchain. This will be the opposite of Sentivate’s web protocol in its focus; decentralised predominantly, with some centralised aspects.
VIAT will have dynamic Proof-of-Work, making it mineable either by direct mining or solving packet puzzles.
Identity and domain certificates will double as Viat wallet keys.

Wallets:

As SNTVT is an ERC-20 token, it can currently be stored on any ERC-20-compatible wallet, including hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor, web wallets, mobile wallets and desktop clients. It is yet unknown which wallet options will be available following the Viat mainnet launch and token swap.

And that concludes my fundamental analysis of Sentivate. Let’s take a look at its price-history:

Technical Analysis

SNTVT/BTC

*The above chart is accurate as of 15th August 2020.

As you can see from the above SNTVT/BTC chart, there isn’t a huge amount of available price-history; however, there is a clear short-term market cycle that played out following initial listing in February 2019, with price finding its all-time low at 1 satoshi very briefly before rallying all the way to the current all-time high of 65 satoshis by May. This led to the classic bear cycle that follows every euphoric high, with price falling swiftly back to 10 satoshis, which held as support for a few months before giving way to a new range support at 7 satoshis in February 2020. Since then, price has printed a double-bottom at 7 satoshis, finding resistance at the historically significant 25-satoshi level. before breaking out last month on significant volume, with price having rallied all the way back to within spitting distance of the all-time high this month. Price is now consolidating beneath this high and there is no reason to believe that the momentum won’t push this to new all-time highs, particularly in the current macro environment.

That said, the 43-satoshi low would be my invalidation point for bullish continuation from here if I was a holder, with a break of that level likely sending SNTVT back into the low 30s, if not to retest 25 satoshis as support. As someone without a position in SNTVT, I would prefer to wait for a significant dip towards that 25-30 satoshi area (though I suspect I would not get it), hence an entry here, with a tight stop on a daily close below that swing low ~43 satoshis is perfectly valid.

And that concludes my Coin Report on Sentivate.

Conclusion

This report is now approaching 5,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.

My final grading for Sentivate is 7 out of 10.*

*Whilst the concept itself is fantastic and genuinely unique, there are a few things that prevent me from currently grading Sentivate an 8 like I had wanted to. Firstly, it is relatively illiquid, which is to be expected of a small project with few listed exchanges (and I believe this will improve in due course). Secondly, the mainnet is yet to launch, and upon launch there will be a 10x proportional increase in the supply, once the swap ratio is adjusted for; as no details have yet been released on reward schedules, I cannot determine supply emissions. Lastly, once the Universal Web and Viat are fully up-and-running and liquidity has improved a little, I see no reason why Sentivate could not push to an 8 or even a 9, if inflation is not too drastic in the early years.

Here, you can find my grading framework, for reference.

Lastly, here is a link to a Google Sheets file with any significant data from previous reports compiled for cross-comparative purposes. I will keep this updated as I continue to write these reports.

I hope this report has proved insightful and that you’ve enjoyed the read! Please do feel free to leave any questions in the Comments, and I’ll answer them as best I can.

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