ARPA

ARPA product is relevant to different markets. Its secure computation network enables 1) private smart contracts, 2) privacy protection for data sharing, 3) scalable computational sharding and its verification. So ARPA may appear as a mix of the decentralized cloud computing network and secure data sharing protocol. Both of these segments face different competition. We outlined in other our reports that the blockchain may have a relevant application in the cloud computing industry, but there are too many projects on the radar this year: Ankr, Cartesi, Solana, DeepCloud AI, HyperNet, Uranus, Covalent, Hadron, Perlin, Oasis Labs, Dfinity, Amino and so on. And the second layer of ARPA - data sharing protocol - appears to highlight the project among competitors. Here we see fewer competitors: Dusk Network, Origo, Skrumble, Orchid Protocol, Mainframe. To sum up, ARPA enters the attractive markets with the potentially strong offering, but strong competitors must be noted and followed.

ARPA is a platform and network that provides users with privacy-preserving computation and secure data sharing protocol. ARPA enables data to be shared and used without disclosing the raw data to anyone during data-at-use, that may be an interesting and demanded solution for the industry (in comparison to other decentralized cloud computing solutions with having blockchain implemented). The correctness of computations is verifiable using Information-theoretic MAC and Zero- Knowledge Proof. ARPA also offers a new node communication scheme and multi-party computations allowing to build a privacy-preserving computation protocol and a new way of data monetization called "data renting" - monetizing data without letting counterparty to see the raw data (so data provider essentially rents data out and earn revenue every time others run model with that data). It must be noted, that the problems of multi-computations and security are technically difficult and no effective solution has been presented yet in the industry. Also, the crucial problem is that no work is done yet and no documents are published as well. The team promises to present whitepaper and its computation protocol POC till the end of Q3 2018. Testnet release and off-chain computations are projected to Q4 2018. Private Smart-contract - Q1 2019. Mainnet - Q4 2019, that may be considered as a bit late. In addition, the core technology MPC is projected to be released only at the beginning of 2020.

ARPA develops its own token with use cases still not announced yet.

A few investors must be mentioned: GBIC, Arrington, Connect Capital, Ledger Capital.

The tokensale will take place on the BISS exchange (IEO) with the allocation of 2M USD.

The team includes 11 members. CEO has finance&data experience since 2006 - Internships in IBM, The World Bank, 3 years in AIG and work/management in some not well-known startups. Co-founder Felix Xu mostly has finance experience since 2009. Software engineers are experienced enough: the first one is with 3 years in Google (Cloud Datastore and IAM), the second one with 1 year in Amazon (Web Services and Music), 1 year in Uber and 1 year in Google. ARPA has a strong research team with the relevant academic background in cryptography but with average 2-3 years in research.