Altair VR is the first professional project that aims to launch a full virtual reality solution on the blockchain. Participants on the Altair VR platform will be able to not just participate in unique virtual reality experiences, but actually create their own VR scenarios and share them with others. With both VR and blockchain set to dominate the next decade, Altair is in a unique position to be a pioneer by combining these two fields together.
How Will Altair VR Work?
Participants on the platform will purchase special virtual reality headsets, covering their natural vision with a full virtual interface. The user then chooses their virtual reality scenario, and interacts with it. The scope of virtual reality scenarios on Altair VR seems to be limitless; creators can create any scenario imaginable, ranging from climbing a mountain or visiting a neutron star, right through to more useful applications involving education where you can be in a live virtual classroom learning your favorite topic, or virtually fix a car/fighter jet with your own hands to gain “hands on” experience at a task.
The Altair VR team aren’t just ivory tower visionaries either. The founder has success creating a large number of planetariums (educational theatres with giant screens) throughout Russia, and runs one of the leading planetarium service companies within Russia. The motivation behind Altair VR is to create a virtual education platform that makes learning easier, more fun, and most importantly, more efficient. Whilst this is the primary motivation behind the platform, the actual applications could indeed be anything.
The AltAir VR team has actual experience launching various planetariums in Russia.
What I like about this ICO is that the team is transparent, and they have real business experience related to their project. Many ICOs have teams that seem too afraid of the spotlight, perhaps not confident enough in their project. Not the case with Altair VR. As can be seen from their team video, they are transparent and are putting themselves out there in marketing their project and what it aims to solve. This automatically adds a tremendous amount of legitimacy to the ICO in my eyes.
More than just words alone, Altair VR plans to actively incorporate blockchain into its virtual reality vision.
On the platform community members will be able create their own virtual reality scenarios and upload these to the blockchain for others to experience, whereby other users can “vote” on them decentrally. This also gives an opportunity for large, established companies to launch comprehensive VR scenarios to the blockchain, which could lead to very interesting things. Perhaps even universities one day may launch their own educational classrooms if the platform takes off. The idea of a virtual Coursera has me honestly excited, but I might be jumping ahead a bit here.
The Altair VR team also seems to respect the underlying principles of blockchain technology, and is not going to be too greedy with their commissions. In fact, all purchases of VR scenarios will only incur a 10% fee, with the other 90% going to the scenario creator. Compared to centralized networks that charge up to 70% commission, this will hopefully incentivize a lot of content creators to create unique virtual reality experiences.
The platform will use the ALT token as its currency, the same token sold during the ICO. All scenario purchases and payment to content creators will be in the form of ALT, which gives it obvious utility. In addition to payment, users will need a certain level of ALT tokens in their account to gain access to special benefits, such as unlocking of various scenario types, providing another avenue for ALT demand. ALT token holders will also act as gatekeepers to the community, giving them voting power on the platform, and other benefits.
The Altair VR platform will also undergo a token burning process, whereby 1% of the daily turnover of tokens will be burnt, until an ideal number of 100,000,000 ALT exist from the initial 1 billion creation supply.
All team tokens have 1 year vesting restrictions.
40% of funding will be spent on marketing, 39% on R&D, and 1% on charity. Rest will go to the team, bounty, and legal/administrative expenses.
Private pre-sale is active at the time of publication with a 50 ETH minimum investment, however the main public ITO will begin June 15th with a fair bonus structure, beginning at 15% and ending at 0%. Platform launch after ICO is aimed to be Q3 2018.
There is not much that I can critique about this ICO. The team is verifiable and real, they have real world business experience related to their project, and they have a clear roadmap. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Altair as a household virtual reality name in the not too distant future. Like with any ICO however, you should not invest more than you can afford to lose since there are inherent risks with any investment that are not obvious. Will the team exercise their funding correctly? Will they stay engaged to the community post-ICO? I think there’s a high chance they will given their past experience and enthusiasm with the project, however no one knows these things for certain.
All in all however, if you believe in virtual reality, and would like to see a VR solution incorporated into the blockchain, then I’d definitely say Altair VR is poised to take the dominant role in this position, and has my recommendation.
The team behind Altair VR has actual business experience launching a successful company in Russia that has a large number of planetariums. This puts them ahead of most ICOs. Their vision, to provide the first virtual reality platform realized on the blockchain, is a unique one with potentially huge potential impact. Like with all investments, risk is inherent, however I'll personally be following this project as it has me genuinely excited.