GIANT is Building a Global Resource Network to Coordinate, Tokenize, and Financialize Connectivity…

GIANT is Building a Global Resource Network to Coordinate, Tokenize, and Financialize Connectivity Access

Links: Giant Protocol Website, CoinFund Portfolio

Investment Thesis Summary

• Global Opportunity: Telco networks have historically been functionally local, yet our lives have become more international and interconnected. GIANT’s ambitions are to improve user experience of provisioning, payment, and accessing existing connectivity networks in a better way.
• Novel Demand-Side Approach: There aren’t direct competitors to GIANT, though Helium’s success in bootstrapping its supply-side network is a project that invites comparison. We are fans of GIANT’s natural sources of demand, driven by the Wificoin business that originally started with just in-flight wifi, but has now grown to enable LTE mobile data in over 200 countries and helping to bootstrap usage of the decentralized GIANT network.
• Execution Momentum: Suruchi and the team have demonstrated their ability to execute on the business development front with the volume of wholesale agreements for network access signed, but also organizationally, as the project counts former Sprint CEO Dan Hesse as an Advisor.

CoinFund is proud to lead GIANT’s recent fundraise and specifically excited to see the continued improvements special-purpose blockchain resource networks can bring to legacy systems, and our existing telco experience is the epitome of “status quo”. We all suspect that there are inefficiencies within the broad global network of telecom service providers and infrastructure companies that enable us to call and video chat our friends and family, post and consume social media, and even sign and broadcast blockchain transactions. In the United States, wireless carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile (+Sprint’s network) have to coordinate their capex-intensive businesses, manage network load and upgrades (including the current 5G rollout, which also involves coordinating with chipset and radio frequency semiconductor manufacturers), while also maintaining storefronts for distributing handsets that they have to maintain correct inventory for. Clearly, the overwhelming complexity of this task is likely seen in the generally low consumer trust in their carriers, a problem that T-Mobile historically took advantage of over the past decade by taking subscribers from AT&T and Verizon. GIANT now has that same opportunity to continue the trend of disruption, not only in the United States, but across the globe, by leveraging the efficiencies of blockchain and applying them to connectivity itself as a tokenizable asset.

Many venture bets ultimately boil down to the team, and our conviction here rests on our confidence in Suruchi and the team she has attracted and retained. One telling datapoint was the team’s ability to pivot towards, architect, develop, and deploy an overlay network coordinating the self provisioning of communications services while the temporary pandemic disruption muted travel demand for in-flight WiFi and out of home LTE access is inspiring. Similarly, we found notable the traction that the GIANT team has been able to demonstrate to date with respect to the wholesale agreements that power the easy-to-use customer app, as well as the advisors that Suruchi has been able to gather around the project, which include former Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. At same time, the team has made thoughtful technology and economic choices that benefit the future of the network. Specifically, we appreciate the beneficial interaction between the GIANT network and the existing Wificoin business, which will be an initial source of demand for the network as it expands its feature set and moves towards decentralization over time. The broad vision for the GIANT network also includes an ambitious distribution strategy to more easily enable the purchase of the on-chain stablecoin-based usage credits at kiosk-based points of sale in certain markets, consistent with the majority of the world’s population being more comfortable with prepaid data connectivity versus western markets like the US operating on a postpaid basis. While there are variables that are difficult to handicap at this point, the need for a better telecom services experience is extremely clear, similar to how the problems with the legacy financial services infrastructure is now well-understood by most crypto enthusiasts.

One question that we had to answer for ourselves is how GIANT protocol compares to what the Helium project is looking to do. To be clear, we don’t view GIANT as directly competitive, but rather complementary to HNT. Specifically, HNT is focused on bootstrapping a brand new network through strong supply-side incentivization enabling scale of hardware node infrastructure that will be compatible with more and more handsets, though initially for purposes of cellular offloading (similar to what happens today if you’re a Comcast or Spectrum residential cable subscriber and happen to be spending time near another user’s home whose router has been bifurcated to have 2 SSIDs). However, it will be quite a while before the Helium network can offer true out-of-home capabilities even with some expectation that they may look into spectrum purchases. Using publicly shared spectrum in the United states won’t get Helium the same coverage capabilities as the fully-owned cellular tower networks with licensed spectrum holdings. At the same time, consumer residential fixed line broadband (which currently is how the data that powers the HNT network is sourced) could potentially take price in the future success case of Helium it’s ultimately a costly ingredient that Helium needs whereas GIANT’s approach is one of incentivized cooperation which can leverage existing networks for incremental revenue opportunities, similar to what we have seen in their initial in-flight WiFi product. More specifically, the network should jumpstart the flywheel of demand-side network effects which will directly drive value to the governance network as well as the initially-centralized business.

The risks associated with the investment opportunity in GIANT include consumer adoption, wholesale network access and blockchain specific risks around the future architecture of the token-based backend that will drive the self-provisioning, payment, and governance functions of the GIANT network. On day 1, it’s true that the users of the Wificoin app will require some education to understand the change in functionality when their prepaid balances gain new abilities when transformed into GIANT-compatible credits, but we believe the value proposition of suddenly being able to access international remittance, yield generation, and liquidity products using a previously unexciting asset should help bootstrap interest and excitement, underpinned by the core functionality of travel-based data consumption that continues to rebound each day, especially in Western markets.

Ultimately, the future we envision is one where today’s carriers migrate further down the stack to doing what they do best (and competing more directly with the tower / fiber / data transport companies), while the high friction and high frustration telco access frontend is replaced by a user-owned and governance-managed network with incentive alignment and more efficient self provisioning system that is nevertheless compatible with multiple standards and across geographies. GIANT is at just the beginning stage of that global coordination network, and we’re excited to see its evolution over time!

About CoinFund

CoinFund is a diverse, leading blockchain-focused investment firm founded in 2015, based in the U.S. Collectively, we have an extensive track record and experience in cryptocurrency, traditional equity, credit, private equity, and venture investing. The CoinFund strategies span both liquid and venture markets and benefit from our multidisciplinary approach that synchronizes technical cryptonative aptitude with traditional finance experience. With a “founders first” approach, CoinFund partners closely with its portfolio companies to drive innovation across the digital asset space.

Disclaimer

The content provided on this site is for informational and discussion purposes only and should not be relied upon in connection with a particular investment decision or be construed as an offer, recommendation or solicitation regarding any investment. The author is not endorsing any company, project, or token discussed in this article. All information is presented here “as is,” without warranty of any kind, whether express or implied, and any forward-looking statements may turn out to be wrong. CoinFund Management LLC and its affiliates may have long or short positions in the tokens or projects discussed in this article.

GIANT is Building a Global Resource Network to Coordinate, Tokenize, and Financialize Connectivity… was originally published in The CoinFund Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Source: https://blog.coinfund.io/giant-is-building-a-global-resource-network-to-coordinate-tokenize-and-financialize-connectivity-8d67ce1d0ecf?source=rss—-f5f136d48fc3—4