Grain Review

Ticker:
GRAIN

Token type:
ERC20

ICO Token Price:
1 GRAIN = 0.0342 USD
(0.02778 EURO)

Fundraising Goal:
36,900,000 USD
(30,000,000 EURO)

Total Tokens:
3,600,000,000

Available for Token Sale:
30%

What is GRAIN?

GRAIN is a new platform designed to improve the way that businesses and their employees handle their contracts and payments. They have developed an Ethereum-based blockchain that allows for easy, timely, secure payments to employees of all types, regardless of location.

They are also releasing a token currency in conjunction with their contracts platform that will serve both as a way to generate startup capital for the company and as the main way that contracts will be paid in and out. GRAIN hopes that this will simplify the way that business contracts are executed in today’s economy and have developed a number of unique features and functions for their product to help achieve that goal.

How Does GRAIN Work?

GRAIN’s mission is to provide the business world with a more efficient and effective way to manage their contracts. One of its primary functions is as a payment mechanism that sends compensation instantaneously upon authorization, which can help to alleviate a number of the most pressing issues regarding payroll management.

The GRAIN whitepaper estimates that there are more than 100 billion euros spent worldwide on payroll systems alone. Ensuring safe, reliable, and accurate payroll can be a challenge for many companies, especially those that are in the process of growth. It can be even more challenging for companies that use remote, international, or short-term workers, many of whom may have specific requirements regarding the ways that their payments are released.

GRAIN seeks to streamline this process and eliminate the frustrations and unnecessary costs that can come along with managing payroll requirements. It can account for such issues as minimum wage, overtime, unemployment, taxation, and other factors that can take time and resources away from other company needs.

They use blockchain technology that is both effective and transparent. They offer both sides of a contract a clear picture of the agreement’s terms including responsibilities, timelines, compensation amounts, and payment conditions. These smart contracts help ensure employers that work will be completed on time and up to their standards, while employees no longer have to worry when or if their employers will pay them.

For compensation purposes, GRAIN is creating their own form of cryptocurrency, called GRAIN tokens. These tokens can be purchased using most forms of legal currency and are converted into the fiat currency of the receiver’s choice.

Because of the volatility of the value of GRAIN tokens, especially in their initial phases, there are several protections built into all of GRAIN’s contracts that ensure that all parties are adequately compensated. In the event of fluctuation of GRAIN token value, especially during the escrow period, GRAIN provides a measure of compensation to help offset those losses.

Features and Benefits of GRAIN

The GRAIN platform offers a variety of ways that companies and their employees can manage payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and other forms of work contracts. It uses blockchain technology to help make payments instantly, regardless of location or currency.

This is a mutually beneficial platform that can help both employers and employees streamline the compensation process, while also providing added security and liquidity insurance. GRAIN is functional for paying regular salaried staff, independent contractors, and for one-time payouts. It is scalable and adaptable to a variety of different contract types and can be used by people from multiple different departments, including payroll, human resources, accounting and others.

It is GRAIN’s intention to be flexible and compliant with all regulations regarding payment and labor laws, regardless of the location of the business. Additionally, it should be compatible with a number of different types of payroll and accounting software.

Additionally, it features a number of protections that help alleviate the potential volatility of the cryptocurrency market. One of these is a liquidity insurance feature that provides several options that help to ensure both employers and employees receive just compensation, even if the market changes unfavorably.

These options include direct currency payments that can be done before, during, or after an employee’s work has been completed, as well as an escrow system that can be used to prevent fraud and protect both sides of the employee/employer relationship.

One issue that arises with a remote workforce is that it can be too easy for an employee to accept payment and not deliver work, or for an employer to fail to pay their employees their agreed upon amount. The escrow feature ensures that both sides must uphold their sides of any contract while also protecting against economic volatility.

Another element of GRAIN that their site promotes is what they call the Harvest. The Harvest is a program that they have to help reward GRAIN users and to help stimulate the GRAIN ecosystem. With Harvest, one percent of every transaction is stored in a specific account for employees, helping to stimulate and grow the GRAIN economy.

The GRAIN Coin Offering

GRAIN is a decentralized ERC20-compatible currency that uses independent miners to help power their blockchain. There will be 300 billion GRAIN that are being created, yet only 30% of that is being released at this time.

At the time of this article’s publication, 1 GRAIN = .034 USD, or .02778 EURO. Their fundraising goal is 36.7 million USD (30 million EURO) with a maximum cap of 100 ETH per buyer. Presale begins on March 29th, and all presale buyers will receive an additional 20% of their purchase in GRAIN tokens. Sales are not open to residents of the United States or China.

Their minimum sales amount in order to achieve viability is 4,000 ETH, and their maximum goal is 40,000 ETH. Assuming that they make their goals, their budget outlay accounts for 35% each for both marketing and development, 7% for operations, 2% for legal and security needs, and 1% for the cost of the token sale itself. The additional 20% is being held back in reserve for now.

Who’s Behind GRAIN?

The CEO and President of GRAIN is Onno Hektor, a technologies entrepreneur that has started several other companies that provide labor and workforce solutions. These brands include Sitrion, Tao.company, and Atlantic Crossings, a company that’s focused on facilitating trans-national commerce.

Onno Hektor is also the founder of Flexentral, which is a blockchain-based labor contract manager that helps employers and employees reach secure, transparent, and mutually beneficial agreements. Flexentral will be the first front-end solution to use the GRAIN technology to help them encrypt, track, and pay out contracts.

The board of GRAIN includes both serial entrepreneur and investor Andre Bonvanie, Globalscreen CEO Erik Koster, both of whom have experience in getting startups off the ground. The other founding members mentioned by GRAIN in their whitepaper are the CTO of Flexentral Arjo van Ramshorst and Maurits Elzinga, who acts as the liaison between GRAIN and Flexentral. Beyond these key figures their whitepaper highlights a number of other blockchain and programming experts, marketing and public relations representatives, and an expert specifically devoted to smart contracts.

GRAIN has a six-member board of advisors from a wide array of different industries. This includes professors of information technologies from the University of Groningen and Nyenrode Business University, experts in the financial and legal needs of multinational corporations, and other entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Conclusion

GRAIN has created a product that is designed to fill a very specific niche in the business world. There are billions of dollars that are spent across the globes on the contracts and payroll industries alone, and the hassles that corporations have to face regarding international, remote, and short-term employees are endless. A smart contracts system that can bridge these gaps is certainly an idea that could be useful to many companies and individuals the world over.

They will be using Ethereum-based blockchain technology to help increase the transparency and reliability of the contract experience, using open-sourced coding to ensure that all parties are being dealt with fairly. This, in combination with their new GRAIN ICO that’s currently in presale, are structured to provide a new, more efficient and comprehensive way to handle business contracts.

There are currently some risks associated with GRAIN. It is not possible at this juncture to view any of their contracts, code, or to test the platform. As such, it is not known how effective or functional it is in practice, or how smooth their rollout of it will be.

Additionally, there are also still some legal hurdles regarding the legality of online contracts. There are still some regions that fail to grant the same kinds of rights and protections to digital contracts as physical ones, which has the potential to lead to discrepancies later on down the line.

Other potential issues include the small proportion of tokens that are in the hands of investors vs. company members and a lack of currently existing cooperation agreements. Despite these potential issues, the website ICORating gave GRAIN a Stable+ rating, meaning that they believe in the chances of its viability overall.

The final proof of GRAIN’s viability will come when their product is finally delivered and we can see firsthand how functional it is. Until then, it is only a good idea that has the potential to turn into something larger.

Peter Lehmann

Peter is a blockchain investor and cryptocurrency writer at Vkool.com. Since 2014 Peter has advised blockchain startups and ICOs on content marketing, strategy and business development.

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