AKROPOLIS: Blockchain-Powered Pension Funds Infrastucture

Globally, the pension industry is in urgent need of serious reforms. The global deficit between pension assets held and existing liabilities are projected to grow rapidly in coming decades and risks triggering a pension-induced global financial (and social) crisis.

The population of the world keeps getting older and older because the medicine is always evolving and this means that people will be able to live longer than they used to in the past. This is making all of the current pension systems more and more inefficient.

Introduces you to Akropolis. A project aimed to solve this problem using the blockchain technology. Read the article for more detail!

What is Akropolis?

Akropolis is a blockchain start-up which was born with the mission to solve the problem of pensions. Pensions are deficitary in many countries as people age more than they used to. Even in the countries in which they are not as deficient, governments generally try to make it harder for people to get their pensions.

Akropolis is dedicated to building a global alternative pensions infrastructure. This is achieved by building an entirely new multi-jurisdictional protocol-agnostic blockchain infrastructure designed to enable low-cost, transparent, fully traceable, and secure pension provision for billions of people globally.

The platform aims to leverage decentralised technologies to deliver a transparent, accountable and portable pension infrastructure that provides services to meet the needs of the modern workforce. It will provide an efficient gateway between both individual users and institutional pension funds, and the fund/asset managers who traditionally manage pension investments.

What are the Important Features?

According to the description in the technical whitepaper, the platform will initially be built on Ethereum. The ultimate goal of the Akropolis project is to implement the technical solutions that use the most efficient and appropriate technologies to provide the necessary services and functions for the platform/ecosystem.

The Akropolis team is offering a decentralized blockchain platform with the aim to resolve the existing inefficiency and increase transparency in the existing pensions system using the advantages and features of blockchain. 

The team also intends to monetize the project through Premium Services Fees, Onboarding Fees, Enterprise License Fees and Performance Fees.

Premium Service Fees — While Akropolis adopts a freemium model for basic services, Premium Services are offered at an additional cost. These fees vary depending on the service offered.

Onboarding Fees — FMs who wish to participate in the Akropolis ecosystem will need to be on-boarded and vetted in accordance with strict governance and regulatory guidelines. A flat fee is charged in this process to cover the platform’s cost in undertaking the vetting process.

Enterprise License Fees — In comparison to the public Akropolis platform, an enterprise solution shall exist for PFs to manage and track their investments across the Akropolis platform. This enterprise solution will allow FMs to interact with specific PFs who wish to use a private or permissioned blockchain implementation, mainly for data privacy reasons. In this instance a license fee to use and access the platform will be charged to FMs and PFs.

Performance Fees — Performance fees are key in the Akropolis model to ensure that FMs are motivated to provide the best possible investment services to the Akropolis community. These fees will be based on transparent templates that will be released to FMs according to the performance of the assets under their management. This element can be automated on-chain using smart contracts, where fee withdrawals will be permitted based on the agreed value of the effective returns compared to an FMs expected/promised returns.

How It Works?

The initial implementation of the Akropolis protocol will be a hybrid of decentralised components managed by a centralised trusted entity.

Akropolis system will have five agents that participate in interaction on the platform; 

• Individual User (represents a singular, non-institutional individual who uses the Akropolis platform for their pension savings), 
• Pension Funds (institutional entities that may currently exist in the pension industry and who maintain their own platform and collection of users), 
• Fund Managers (institutional entities charged with purchasing or acquiring assets on behalf of users and/or Pension Funds), 
• Asset Tokeniser [centralised entities that provide a source of truth to the blockchain layer (through the minting of tokens) and as such are key actors in the trust model of Akropolis], 
• Developers (community members who contribute to the Akropolis platform, building extended/advanced services for pension users).

There are two types of tokens within the Akropolis platform. The Akropolis external Token (AKT), which primarily facilitates the actions of external users participating in the system, and the Akropolis Internal Token (AIT), which abstractly represents a stable coin and is also a bookkeeping mechanism used to track and record capital flows in the system.

The Akropolis External Token (AKT) is a fixed-supply token which will be traded on exchanges. AKTs can be used for:

• Onboarding and platform access.
• Purchasing premium services on the platform.
• Purchasing platform data.
• Staking various platform incentive mechanisms.

The main purpose of the AKT is to serve as an onboarding utility token that allows participants to access the platform. However, the team specifies that the platform will operate on a freemium model by default, meaning that individual users are able to use the system without AKT tokens. All expenses relating to the basic operations in the freemium model will be paid for by the Akropolis Foundation. This model is introduced in order to make sure that all individuals that wish to do so, can access the platform. Individual users will also have access to a number of extended services offered on the platform which will require AKTs. The team notes that a mechanism is required to decouple the price of the volatile AKT to the fixed stable cost of services on the platform. In the initial implementation, a price oracle will perform this task.

AKT can be used as a staking token, however, this exposes its users to an unnecessary volatility risk. A mechanism that punishes good performers is unlikely to prove successful, as the users will be risk-averse. Therefore, the team believes that there is a need for a stable token which is immune to volatility.

The Akropolis Internal Token (AIT) is an independent token which abstractly represents an arbitrary stable coin. This token is supposed to give participants a volatile-free option when engaging with staking incentive mechanisms. AITs will also serve as a bookkeeping tool within the system. User’s funds are represented digitally by AITs (i.e., users acquire AITs after depositing funds into the system) which can be converted to other tokens that represent ownership in different asset classes. AITs will be able to be exchanged for both cryptocurrency and fiat deposits and will fundamentally act as an internal accounting tool whose audit trail lies on the public blockchain. The AITs will be entirely independent from the AKTs.

Token utility services

Who are Behind Akropolis?

FOUNDERS & TEAM MEMBERS

Anastasia Andrianova

Founder & CEO

Founder of Akropolis IO. Advisor to Dr Gavin Wood's Web3Foundation. An experienced private equity professional with strong interest in decentralization and blockchain. She has analyzed and transacted over USD 3.5bn and advised on over USD 300m of acquisitions. Board member of a regulated private equity fund. Always open to new board member or advisory opportunities. Member of the Blockchain Ecosystem Network. Anastasia worked for the Lehman Brothers, United Nations and Commerzbank. She graduated from the University of Oxford in 2007.

Sandra Wu

Senior Advisor to the CEO and General Counsel

Sandra has over 10 years of legal experience in M&A, corporate & securities law, and private equity fund formation. She was previously the Head of Legal and Chief Compliance Officer for a global asset management company managing more than USD 23bn under advisement in the Asia Pacific region. She has worked for the Mercer Fund Foundation and Weil Gotshal & Manges. She graduated from the University of Sydney.

Peter Robertson

Pensions Lead

Peter has over 25 years of experience in asset management and life insurance in Europe, North America and Asia. His recent engagements cover ETFs, acting as an interim CEO, developing a new UK investment proposition, D2C distribution strategy, and the evolution of UK advice, auto-enrolment and platforms. He previously played an integral role in startups in UK, Germany, India and China. He is a former CEO of a listed company in Malaysia and has served on a number of Boards in the UK and Asia. He also worked for the Vanguard Group for more than 5 years. Peter has been involved in the pension industry in Europe, Asia, and the USA in various capacities, including designing innovative and low-cost solutions for UK DC pension investors, as an administrator of corporate and individual pension plans, and as a pension scheme trustee in the Eurozone and Asia. Peter graduated from King’s College, London.

Aylon Morley

Business Development

Aylon is an active member in the Blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem, having worked extensively with Fintech and Blockchain start-ups globally. For the last 11 years, he has served as the Tech Investment Director for Wentworth Hall, a London-based family office that specializes in private equity ventures and startup investing. With more than 16 years of experience in the capital markets, Aylon previously worked as a senior analyst for Reuters and as a Business Development Director for Granite Alphen Capital, an algorithmic hedge fund.

Abhimanyu Dayal

Head of Strategy

Abhimanyu is a Finance graduate who has been heavily involved in the bitcoin/blockchain space since 2013. He recently founded a blockchain and real estate research company Estatechain, which addressed the ongoing issue of liquidity in real estate investment markets. He has extensive experience in working with companies in the Blockchain sector. Abhimanyu has also been passionate about managing client investment portfolios and has served as an Investment Advisor for Interfacemax which is one of the largest crypto funds based out of India. In addition, he has worked with Bitnation as a Decentralized Application Fund manager and a crypto-economic advisor in creating a decentralized blockchain application governance protocol. Abhimanyu has previously held positions such as Director of European Operations for Bitcoin ATM machine company, Coinoutlet and a Product Designer for automated governance protocol in Bitnation. He graduated from the University of Leicester in 2016.

Chris McClure

Head of Marketing

Chris has led marketing and communication teams across heavily regulated industries like healthcare. He worked as a marketing specialist at Svandis, Vice President of Global Sales at SidekickHealth, Chief Marketing Officer at Oxymap, Senior Director of Analytics at GetWellNetwork and Director of Research at the Health Management Academy. He also serves as an Advisor to Medilync and Íslandsstofa and he also a board member of the Icelandic Blockchain Foundation. He graduated from Yale University in 2011.

Adrian Manning

Head of Blockchain R&D

Adrian completed his PhD in theoretical particle physics at the University of Sydney, where he leveraged his long-term interests in applied mathematics, computer science and artificial intelligence to analyze and solve complex problems. Specializing in blockchain technologies, cryptography and information security, Adrian's expertise in physics and mathematics now supports his work at Sigma Prime.

Paul Hauner

Smart Contract Development and Audit

Paul is a multi-disciplined software engineer with extensive experience as a lead developer for critical systems in the corporate, military and health sectors. As a freelance software developer and technology consultant, Paul implemented systems for a diverse range of institutions, including major banks and a government cybersecurity operations center. Paul was an early adopter of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies and has experience in all phases of blockchain service implementation. Possessing particular expertise on the Ethereum network, Paul is experienced in smart contract development, testing and implementation.

Mehdi Zerouali

Cybersecurity Lead

During his time as a penetration tester at Ernst & Young's advisory department, he performed hundreds of penetration tests on corporate networks and applications across a range of industries including financial services, telecommunications, and the public sector. Mehdi's professionalism and expertise resulted in his rapid rise to management in EY's Advanced Security Centre where he nurtured the firm's next generation of ethical hackers. Since joining Sigma Prime, Mehdi’s focus has changed to blockchain technology, especially the Ethereum platform. He graduated from Institut National des Sciences Appliquees de Lyon in 2011.

Jay Mehta

Content and Community Management

Jay served as Media Marketing Manager at Blackmoon Financial Group and Community Manager at Polybius. He graduated from the University of Wolverhampton in 2013.

Victor Wiebe

Blockchain Developer

Victor has built apps for Intel and ESPN. He worked at Trimble Inc, where he created emergency response software that kept lone workers, north of the arctic circle, safe over satellite. We would like to note that Victor does not have significant exposure to blockchain development. He graduated from the University of Calgary.

BOARD OF ADVISERS

Ian Grigg

Blockchain / Technical Advisor

Ian is a noted financial cryptographer, having entered the space in 1995. He invented the Ricardian Contract as a process to capture all of the prose in a legal contract of issuance and permit unique identification among many competing issues without the need for a centralized registry. Ian has worked for R3, a $100m+ blockchain consortium of the largest financial services firms and technology companies in the world. Leading investors included SBI Group, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Intel and Temasek. At R3, Ian developed early architecture, he continues to consult with leading firms in the blockchain sphere and he is currently a partner at a USD 200m post-ICO venture, Block One (EOS).

Kate Kurbanova

Advisor

Kate is Head of Analytics at Cindicator. Together with her team, she is reinventing the approach to financial analysis, creating the world’s first ecosystem run by Hybrid Intelligence. Kate knows that crypto traders, investors and analysts today face an unprecedented challenge in researching and processing the vast range of information sources that inhabit the crypto space. She was one of the main drivers of the Cindicator token sale in September 2017 and she continues to be a deep analyst of current token sales’ changes as her team analyses all ICOs worth noticing every day. She is also a Product Advisor at Svandis.

Bokky Poobah

Security Advisor

Bokky is a world-renowned blockchain and smart contract security expert, who rescues trapped ETH on a regular basis. He is also an active Ethereum community leader. Bokky has been working on the ETH Blockchain since it's platform launch in 2015. The prospect of transacting monetary value over a trusted Ethereum platform by means of smart a contract is what excites him the most. Bokky is also a respect smart contract security auditor, having developed and audited smart contracts for over 20 companies, including Status, Cindicator, Stox and many more. Bokky is an Actuary and Quantitative Software Developer with over 28 years of industry experience with expertise in fixed interest & derivatives in risk management and trading systems, and other blockchain technologies. He is working to bring decentralized trustless exchanges and traditional fiat financial instruments to the Ethereum platform and is currently editing "Mastering Ethereum" with Andreas M. Antonopolous and Gavin Wood.

Ros Altman

Pensions Advisor

Former UK Minister of State for Pensions 2015-16, currently Expert on Pensions to the House of Lords, Baroness Altmann is an experienced Investment Professional and Economist, driven by the desire to improve policy for ordinary people and ensuring good value for customers. Ros started her career as an academic at University College London, London School of Economics and at Harvard University, researching and publishing on UK pension policy, occupational pensions and retirement. After this, Ros managed institutional investment portfolios for 15 years, including pension funds, insurance funds and mutual funds, as well as advising central banks and private client fund managers. She was Head of International Equities at Chase Manhattan’s International Investment Operation in London, and a Director at Rothschild Asset Management and at NatWest Investment Management.

Marcus Killick

Legal Advisor

Marcus is an English Barrister, a member of the New York State Bar, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments, a member of the Chartered Management Institute (Diploma in Management and Leadership), and a member of the Chartered Insurance Institute. Marcus was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honors List. Marcus was also Chairman of the Gibraltar Investors Compensation Scheme, the Gibraltar Deposit Guarantee Board and the Group of International Insurance Centre Supervisors. Marcus is also a director of Kalphe Advisory Ltd, Kalphe Properties Ltd and Callaghan Insurance Brokers Ltd. Prior roles include Deputy Chief Executive of the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission, Head of Banking and Investments at the Cayman Island Monetary Authority and Director of KPMG’s Financial International Regulatory Services Team. Marcus was one of the founding directors of the United Kingdom Association of Compliance Officers (subsequently renamed the Compliance Institute). He was also principle author of two Transparency International’s reports on Money Laundering.

Saber Aria

Advisor

Saber is the founder of a prominent digital marketing agency and an advertising software company, each with a diverse portfolio of clients including several fortune 500 companies. He is the co-founder of Beyond Blocks, a global conference for blockchain enthusiasts, investors, and developers.

Roderic van der Graaf

Fintech / VC Advisor

Roderik has been involved in the crypto assets market since 2014, both as an investor and advisor. He has advised Beetoken, DML, NapoleonX, and Svandis. He also advises pioneering Korean blockchain company Blocko and is a member of the Argo Foundation council (which oversees Blocko’s Argo protocol). At the end of 2017 he founded Lemniscap, an advisory/investment firm in the blockchain space.

Prabhakar Reddy

VC and Crypto Advisor

Prabhakar is a Seed/Early stage investor at Accel. Prabhakar has been a Serial Entrepreneur all his professional life, with over 9 years of experience running successful digital-media and online video platforms. He sold his first startup in 2008 while still an Undergrad and scaled his second start up to the Top 100 websites in the world, having bootstrapped it into a USD 5m ARR venture in under 3 years. More recently, Prabhakar co-founded Dramatize, a Bollywood content streaming platform, which he left to BookMyShow – India’s largest ticket booking platform. Prabhakar has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and also holds a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Electronics & Instrumentation. At the age of 20, he won the “Dubai Software Development Trade Show 2008” in Dubai.

Steven Reynolds

Partnerships

Steven brings his extensive leadership experience from the military and financial services sectors to the unique challenges surrounding the digital asset space. Steve has extensive experience in business development, communications, public relations, and crisis management. His steady hand helped to guide Binance through a period of explosive growth and uncertainty all while managing their customer facing communications and media channels. His online presence during US hours facilitated Binance’s rapid rise to the #1 exchange in the world.

The experience and expertise off the project is diversified, extensive and covers all major areas where advice may be needed. Advisors include several notable names like Steven C. Reynolds (Binance), Ian Grigg (EOS) and Bokky Poobah.

ISOLAS, PwC Hong Kong, King & Wood Mallesons are all advising Akropolis on legal, tax, and token sale matters. Kenetic Capital and PrimeBlockCapital are early backers, and Kenetic Capital are also advisors too.

Why Choose Akropolis?

The idea behind the project that is targeting a global problem is really interesting. Their roadmap is pretty clear with their objectives, they announced a B2C product as well as B2B product prototype for Q2-Q3 2018 which is a good indicator for flipping. Furthermore, their presale allocations are only available to the investors who will contribute to the project development.

Akropolis is the first project that proposed the idea of a decentralized pension system. The project is led by a strong and professional team with a serious experience and knowledge in the corresponding sphere. Since 2017, the project is being developed due to angel investments. We can only imagine how difficult it was for the project to obtain the investments. The website contains a detailed, high-quality and thoroughly thought-out Whitepaper.

Their advisory board looks really strong, with many significant names such as Ros Altman (former UK Minister of State for Pensions), Kate Kurbanova (Head of Analytics at Cindicator) and Steven Reynolds (former Community Manager at Binance).

You can get more detailed information by visiting the following links: WEBSITE, WHITEPAPER, TELEGRAM.

About Author:

Forum Username: tpq01349

Forum Profile Link