What is ArcBlock?

Unlike its predecessors, ArcBlock is a platform service, rather than a standalone software package or set of APIs. ArcBlock is a comprehensive solution that combines blockchain technology with Cloud Computing. With the below features,  ArcBlock claims to bring great technological advancements that will open the third generation of blockchain applications.

• Build for the new Token Economy
• Optimized for the best experience
• Built for the Cloud
• Built with an open Standard

       Token Allocation:

• 45% for token sale
• 32% to miners
• 15% to the team
• 8% for marketing and partner support (1% of this to bounty program)

What does ArcBlock claim to solve?

Blockchain technology is still in its infancy, then there are many issues preventing developers and businesses from creating widespread, decentralized blockchain applications.

• Current block chain suffers from poor performance and is not consumer friendly
• High transaction fees
• Platform specific code required which ‘locks’ an application to one blockchain
• Lack of features which restricts mass adoption of blockchain technology

      ArcBlock is a solution by being:

• a platform service which combines blockchain technology with Cloud Computing
• an incentive driven marketplace for reusable services, components and applications
• the platform where miners assist in building by providing reusable components, new services and applications
• an Open Chain Access Protocol which enables open connectivity over multiple blockchain protocols
• the Blocklet component and ArcBlock technology can be implemented with any platform or language (on or off chain )which provides a high-performance, user friendly, cost efficient and protocol agnostic platform
• encouragingly developed by the blockchain community

The team, Road map and Five-year plan

ArcBlock is firstly considered reliable for the reason that, this is an ICO project with a clear development path, a well-known founder team in the blockchain community.

  The team

• CEO/ Chief Architect – Robert Mao

Robert LinkedIn profile lists him as still being the CEO of PixoMobile. He has previously worked for Microsoft for a 6 year period as a Software Development Engineer and was the co-founder / CEO of LodeSoft Corp and uuzone.com.  Lodesoft Corp developed an Instant Messenger in 1998 before IM was even a thing and established strategic partnerships with Huawei and ZTE (top 2 telecommunications companies in China at the time) and claim China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Chine Netcom and China Railcom as customers.

• ChiefScientist – Flavien Charlon

Flavien has recent and relevant experience in blockchain development.  He was previously at Microsoft as a Software Development Engineer and worked on AdCenter Analytics, Bing Search and Windows Azure development.  He is listed on LinkedIn as being current the Founder / CEO of Predictious (a Bitcoin prediction market), Coinprism (a blockchain technology startup) and Trezeo (an income smoothing’ service for freelancers). 

• VPof Marketing – Jean Chen

Jean appears to have a background in journalism and has transferred into biz dev and PR / Marketing.  He has a wide circle of connections and given his experience in journalism and marketing would be able to leverage this to actively develop ArcBlock.

 ArcBlock also have a varied panel of advisors which rounds out their capabilities and potential relationships / partnerships quite well.

    Road map and Five-year plan

Is ArcBlock a scam?

Despite those green lights that ArcBlock show us, there is a growing question that whether ArcBlock is a scam project or not by Twitter and Reddit users for the following reasons:

Regarding their team:

• On LinkedIn, the ArcBlock consists of 4 people total however they claim that they have a development team. When being questioned on Telegram, Robert Mao (CEO) claimed that it was their strategy to keep the developers away with social media, so that they will not be distracted.
• The CEO (Robert Mao) has been working on an application, PixoMobile for the past 5 years but reviews on the app store are not viable due to minimal downloads.  These reviews however are poor, to the point of being unusable.
• Justin Tomboulian - one of the advisors, is not the Microsoft CIO of Japan like claimed; if were ever, his career there ended in 2013.
• The team all have a track record for starting businesses that do not go far; this raises a question whether they are just jumping on the bandwagon?
• Telegram admins using fake photos
• Telegram admin and boosters like Ian Balina have responded to legitimate criticism with  'FUD', without addressing any criticism, while absurdly claimed that people 'hired' to spread FUD about the ArcBlock project.

Regarding their claims:

• Arcblock claims to have partnerships with big companies like IBM and SAP - meanwhile there is no evidence of this anywhere to be found.
• The CEO also refused to show the evidence "Yes, however we will not release it. The agreement between us and our NDA partners. We can jointly clarify here, but we will not post those materials here." even though before state "We have just become a member of IBM Partner World, and as in the White Paper, we plan to support IBM Cloud (Bluemix) in the future. We have also become part of the SAP co-owner blockchain program."

Regarding technical terms:

• ArcBlock has no code on Github.
• Technical development roadmap is insufficient.
• No answer regarding how they will prevent SIBIL attacks if the developers pay the “gas fee”.
• No mention of a lockup period for their coins.

Regarding their communication channels:

• There website is just only registered 28th November 2017.
• Twitter page is only launched in December 2017 however, pattern of fake followers, tweets and likes matches other projects that have used aggressive bot campaigns to fake heavy interest.
• On Telegram channel, there is no answers to direct questions but just a general 'cut and paste' response with a lot of 'I think' and 'yet to be finalised' statements.

Conclusion

Now, on Reddit, some users have presented their disappointment in ArcBlock, saying that it is sad, since it seems potential. ArcBlock Founder and their team meanwhile are trying to calm down the users by going on Twitter and Reddit answering and clarifying questions. 

Currently we can not say anything about this project, in the future, Fancy District will update the project as soon as there is more information.

What do you think about this? Is it a good deal or is it just a scam?