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ICO Alert Quick Facts

1. Trust Rating platform using machine learning engine for anti-fraud tools
2. Private pre-ICO (currently live): Dec. 22, 2017 — Jan. 21, 2018
3. ICO: Friday, Jan. 22, 2018 — Feb. 22, 2018; $1 USD = 1 CTN token
4. 10,500,000 tokens total available / 15,000,000 total supply
5. CEO named 2016 High Tech Young Achiever Award finalist
6. Existing software pre-renders Trust Ratings for transactions, wallets, and more

What is Crypto Trust Network?

Crypto Trust Network (CTN) is a platform offering tools to help protect people from cryptocurrency loss through fraud and theft. CTN’s goal is to provide extremely powerful tools backed by high-quality data analysis to help make cryptocurrency safer for mainstream adoption.

— Jim Dowling, CEO, Crypto Trust Network

Q&A — Jim Dowling, CEO

ICO Alert: For those who are not familiar with Crypto Trust Network, can you explain what it is, and what the team aims to accomplish?

Jim Dowling, CEO: Crypto Trust Network is a platform offering tools to help protect people form cryptocurrency loss through fraud and theft. CTN’s goal is to provide extremely powerful tools backed by high-quality data analysis to help make cryptocurrency safer for mainstream adoption.

ICO Alert: How does the Crypto Trust Network token (CTN) function within the platform and why is it needed?

JD: The CTN token has two key purposes: firstly, as a currency for the various services the platform offers and secondly, as a reward allowing anyone to operate a CTN node and be paid in tokens.

ICO Alert: Imagining your machine learning analysis engine aggregating large sets of breach and transaction data is an exciting idea. Can you elaborate on how CTN’s Trust Rating is unique compared to another blockchain trust system or verification program?

JD: I believe one of our key points of difference is our focused niche and integrations. Our Trust Rating is set to be our USP [minimum viable product] and it will rely on extremely high-quality data to drive an accurate rating. All our services are built to be fully integrable, allowing us to seamlessly integrate to a wide range of companies without limiting ourselves or holding any biases.

Our intention is to provide a powerful backbone for cryptocurrency services to integrate with regardless of their technology choices or platform –potentially without the customer even knowing. Think of the millions of calls to Google’s extensive API infrastructure in the background of almost any site online today.

ICO Alert: You have stated that users will only be able to utilize CTN tokens on your platform. Please highlight some capabilities of these tokens on the CTN platform and how their use differs for an average investor versus a major crypto exchange firm, for example.

JD: With CTN Tokens being the sole currency for access to our services, their success is directly linked with the quality and success of the platform’s services — the token (meeting ERC-20 compliance) will be tradable.

For companies such as crypto exchange firms, the token will be invaluable as it fuels the API calls for CTN’s real-time risk assessment data and malicious transfer information, integrated directly into their services.

For an average investor, we have a special service in the works that involves an insurance and recovery mechanism leveraging CTN Tokens — although it requires more planning and scrutiny before full details are released!

ICO Alert: CTN has a vision for blacklisting fraudulent wallets and funds and tracking stolen currency, yet it’s hard to imagine crypto thieves returning stolen assets. How will CTN’s token incentives be used to solve or mitigate losses from theft and phishing scams wreaking havoc on the cryptocurrency industry?

JD: Prevention would definitely be our primary weapon in battling cryptocurrency fraud and loss — with tools geared to pre-warn of a suspicious or harmful wallet before a transfer occurs (our CTN Verified Address Book service). However, once a transfer has made its way into a malicious wallet it’s extremely difficult to recover — the process would require cooperation from recipients of this currency such as exchanges or e-commerce sites.

If we could flag the currency which was being attempted to be spent as stolen and we had a verified, blockchain signed identity pre-existing to show ownership we have the possibility for a recovery process (although this may be a controversial subject!). Keep an eye on our GitHub for clues on special CTN currency recovery service we’re working on behind the scenes…

ICO Alert: The core of your platform is geared for Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, yet nuanced with generic features for adaptability. For now, is there any concern that as the Crypto Trust Network platform grows, the Ethereum network will no longer be able to scale such a large amount of partnership integrations?

JD: I think this is a great question — we’re seeing a growing trend of people throwing a lot of stuff into a decentralized architecture (or at least promising to!) because it’s “in.” Decentralization is great for when your service needs resilience and protection against tampering — however they are often slower and more expensive to run compared to a traditional centralized model.

As such, our platform will support serving information for both the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks (and more in the future). However, in terms of our infrastructure, the CTN token is Ethereum based and although our CTN node’s payment layer definitely will be powered by ETH, the raw data processing tasks such as ML model learning may not be. This is due to barriers such as performance scaling and cost (although there are plans in motion that may change this in the future.) CTN’s goal is to eventually completely remove our centralized services and operate a self-sustaining, scalable, un-censorable platform served solely from CTN node operators.

ICO Alert: High risk programs and blacklisted wallets would be wonderful to raise red flags for consumers and companies alike. Without getting into analysis of past negative events, how may have the DAO hack or Mt. Gox hack been avoided or lessened by anonymized tools that CTN would like to provide?

JD: Whenever crypto is stored in a centralized location (be it a smart contract or exchange) there is always a huge risk of either external malicious attacks or insider theft. In the case of Gox data analysis and negative events leading up to the event such as account locking, withdrawal refusal, and falsified off-block trading volume (as some have speculated) would all feed our risk-rating potentially limiting the amount of incoming transactions to the exchange, minimizing loss. Additionally, where CTN would offer huge value is the post-event tracking of assets as they are disseminated and spread across the blockchain.

ICO Alert: With what’s going on in countries like South Korea and the United States’ government seeking crypto regulations to protect assets, please explain how the CTN platform access may perform more effectively than current regulations for your potential integration partners.

JD: It’s a time of great uncertainty for cryptocurrency driven by looming regulation, compliance, and potential restrictions or red tape required to hold or trade; however, we believe this is sign of acceptance and maturity in the transition to the mainstream. Based on this, we’re gearing towards making CTN integration a required tick box towards compliance; with top services displaying a “CTN badge” a prerequisite of this could potentially be conditional to them taking part in a program/process for returning stolen cryptocurrency to it’s original “owner” (which in itself is another large question) or at least go a long way in showing services are taking proactive steps towards protecting their customers.

ICO Alert: CTN holders are said to have a say on the distribution of deals and direction of the network. How much autonomy do you foresee users having moving forward?

JD: Absolutely. We’re very, very excited to introduce our “voting” mechanism (likely built off the back of our crypto-signed message feature from our wallet verification platform). We foresee the types of decisions for token holders to have a say in will be in partnerships, distribution of resources “for industry good” and token-holder perks.

ICO Alert: How far along is the project today and when can contributors expect to use the platform? Please feel free to share any recent updates.

JD: Work is underway way for our first deliverable feature, the “CTN Verified Address Book” (name pending). This service is our first major milestone. This CTN VAB allows organizations and individuals to verify wallet ownership through a validation process and the signing of a blockchain message and to pre-warn a user of a transfer to a suspicious or harmful wallet. There are a range of benefits for this service:

• For the end user (especially crypto newcomers): the service aims to reduce the likelihood of malformed or incorrect blockchain transactions by offering autocomplete services similar to an online bank’s pre-registered payee. Additionally (and potentially more importantly), we will warn a user of a transfer to a dangerous wallet with links to phishing, fraud, or theft before it’s made.
• For organizations listed: the services give customers a greater peace of mind, allowing them to ensure payments are made correctly and to a real, valid address.
• For integration partners: a wallet, exchange, etc. being able to pre-warn a user of a withdrawal or transfer to a fraudulent wallet is an extremely powerful tool.

ICO Alert: As a non-Crypto Trust Network question we like to ask for unique predictions for the ICO and crypto currency space in the future. Where do you see both in the next 3–5 years?

JD: I have no doubt that more and more of the world’s GDP will be stored on blockchain assets. There will be a lot of rises and falls and I feel in 3–5 years time, the landscape of big players will be very different than now. In terms of ICOs and token sales, I would say registered crypto equity tokens with a tie to real-life share ownership is an upcoming natural progression.