Situational Analysis

Owned by Jonathan Syu
Last updated: Aug 19, 2020
3 min read

Background

This situational analysis was performed at the outset of the FIO Protocol back in 2018 and ported over to this page with minimal formatting changes (+ emojis). It has not been updated since its original creation.

This situational analysis includes an overview of the 4 C’s (Company, Competitors, Customers, and Collaborators) and then a SWOT analysis of the FIO project as a whole

This document is a precursor to the customer segmentation section - which lays the groundwork for messaging and targeting audiences.

4 C’s Analysis

Company
Organizational strengths, weaknesses, resources, and capabilities

  • Strength of a community that is economically incentivized in its success

  • Capable of trying multiple campaigns simultaneously, but reliant on community members interested in doing so

  • Vulnerable to free-rider problems

  • Dapix can act as a centralized change agent until community members effectively take over tasks

  • Will suffer from coordination problems due to decentralization and relative lack of efficiency (in comparison to a centralized company)

  • Will be resource dependent on the FIO Token

  • Broken funnel problem - little insight into users past the point of awareness since all activity is within the wallet

Competitors
Alternative project strengths, weaknesses, potential reactions

  • Vulnerable to incumbents with far larger financial resources

  • Centralized entities may be able to move faster and more effectively in the market

  • Protocol-specific naming solutions can inherit the community from that protocol, which may be substantially large from the outset

  • Most naming solutions will struggle with any type of rotating address scheme - i.e. Bitcoin wallet with rotating addresses, and even things like payment processors and exchanges that will need to use different public addresses for deposits

  • Naming systems will be isolated towards mapping-related functions, and we not be able to be used as a routing system for things like requests without building an entirely new layer

  • Naming systems are almost inherently non-private by design, FIO Addresses can be private by default by encrypting public address mappings used on a per-transaction basis.

Customers
Demographics, motivations, wants and needs

  • Crypto users who want an easier experience in using their cryptocurrency

  • Wallets, exchanges, and crypto payment processors who want to reduce customer support issues and gain potential revenue from FIO Address registrations

  • Block Producers who want to secure the network and receive FIO Tokens for doing so

  • Developers who want to contribute towards improving crypto usability, and those who want to improve the usability of their applications and create new flows

Collaborators
Risks, rewards, strengths of partner and potential other alliances

  • Provides actual business model improvements to wallets and other crypto providers through on-chain economic incentives

  • Chain-neutral - since FIO operates on its own blockchain, the promotion and usage of FIO (even by protocols) does not directly push users onto competing protocols.

  • Theoretically can partner with anyone that stores, receives, or sends crypto - though only wallets are likely going to financially benefit from the protocol.

  • FIO will be extremely dependent on wallets for its promotion, if wallets can’t, or won’t, market FIO, then outbound marketing becomes quickly restricted

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

  • Uniquely positioned to solve usability issues in an economically-incentivized form

  • If achieved, a vibrant community can greatly expand the potential of the protocol

  • Can partner with nearly anyone in the blockchain ecosystem

Weaknesses

  • Broadly must bootstrap a community from scratch

  • Dependent on wallets to increase awareness of the protocol

  • “Broken funnel” problem → FIO itself does not retain a lot of data about users

Opportunities

  • Protocols may like FIO since it removes the usability component of their blockchain (assuming they care)

  • Companies can potentially issue FIO Addresses across all their employees and users

  • Can become a foundational component of a crypto-economy

Threats

  • Questionable on whether peer-to-peer usage of cryptocurrency is a broad interest right now, even within the crypto community

  • Wallets may not be a position to implement the FIO Protocol or to promote it

  • New incumbents can probably outspend in bootstrapping a network effect (may not matter)