Episode 1: Introduction to Aviator

Introduction

I originally wrote this to post on one of the cryptocurrency subreddits, but I had issues with my account which meant that I couldn’t post so I thought I’d post on here. Below is the content that I intended to post:

Hi frens,

I’ve noticed that on this subreddit that we’ve been getting a large amount of “junk food” information. I’ve been in the crypto space for a few years now and often find that the lack of pertinent information about particular projects influence my overall sentiment.

Often promising projects go under before their project can get to launch, the pre-launch marketing seems promising, but the project ends up not delivering, or they’re just a blatant rug pull like many of the projects being brought up here.

What I want to show you is a more methodical and structured approach to analysing these low market caps gems. Just to be totally clear, this is not a checklist, but an approach that has served me well. I want to guide you through it and in doing so highlight to you what makes a crypto project worth getting involved with or not.

The more we can see through what is actually relevant and what is not we’ll all be a lot better off if we get more methodically analysed posts, rather than the junk food that we’ve been fed.

To explain the approach there’s both qualitative and quantitative measures or general points that we want to analyse, namely:

• Product
• Team
• Tokenomics
• Security
• Marketing

To make it easier on you to follow along more with the logic of the analysis, in the comments I’ll post all of the references, and other materials that we’ve used so that you can look up that information as you read along.

As well just so you’re following and along and to be concise at the same time when I am merely populating information this will be highlighted in italics, assume every other time I’m asserting my own opinions.

As you use this approach, you may find that some of the information that I’ve highlighted here might be relevant or irrelevant to your own research. To reiterate, it’s a way of thinking critically, more so than following this approach to the letter and expecting a magic bullet.

Product Offering

Ok great! Here is where we actually start to gather information and start to form opinions.

The project that I’ll use is: Aviator ($AVI)

Let’s run through a brief overview of the project as a whole and understand where it’s place in the market is, and how we can position ourselves.

As at the time of writing, Aviator is actually a set of two of interrelated and complementary products namely:

• Aviator Arcade - which sets to become a hub for Web3 gaming on the Base network; and
• SkyBridge - a new type of bridge that extends the abilities of conventional network bridges.

We’ll go through both in line with each of their respective offerings being analysed — analysing the strengths and weaknesses of both and some of the potential implications for both shortly, but we also want to see exactly where they are going with it.

Vision

Aside: In my opinion, this is often a lot more of a nebulous concept rather than a solid measure, what’s more important here is that the team holds themselves to a roadmap / vision / milestones - or in a few words holding themselves accountable.

Aviator does have a roadmap and has the following stages (with my own assertions as to their status):

I will return to these points in due course but they are important to get an understanding of where the project is heading so you can orient yourself as you analyse the overall project.

The reason being — and as I mentioned above — that in my opinion I find it more important that the team is accountable to themselves and delivering according to the roadmap, rather than the roadmap being perfect in of itself. Therefore the roadmap really is more or less a convenient litmus test on the integrity of the team.

Where a project does not have a roadmap it does indeed become harder to conduct that analysis, but it is a useful qualitative measure to determine the integrity of the team. We’ll come back to more on that when we get to the team section.

Questions to ask in this scenario are:

• Is the team consistently delivering what they are promising to deliver?
• How often do they communicate when things go wrong?

Evaluation and Take-aways

What I wanted to show (and we’ll return to when we come back to SkyBridge and Aviator Arcade) is the current work-in-progress report for each item on the road map. We’ll come back to this in time, so we also can measure these items over time.

Let’s go through each in turn:

From looking at the promises of the road map, we can see that the team is working through the items methodically, and according to the schedule published on the website. Overall this is a green flag, and overall boosts the credibility of the team.

Speaking of which…

Understanding the Team: Trust and Competency

The long and short of this particular piece of analysis is to determine whether or not you can trust the team. The key points that we will derive draws from my professional experience in insurance and risk management. Those being (1) can you trust the team, and (2) can the team deliver? You will need to critically analyse the team, and also the individual experience of the core team members to come to a firm conclusion.

The good part is that most people are predictable in behaviour, thus a team’s past actions and experiences often provide a reliable indicator of their future behaviours and commitment to a project. So this section more or less involves you matching behaviour with their promises and looking for discrepancies.

Drawing from this post, here are some key aspects of a team:

Green Flag, Red Flag

To reiterate above, we’re going to critically examine the two major points; (1) establishing trustworthiness, and (2) competence.

Trustworthiness

Establishing a team’s trustworthiness involves verifying the team’s bona fides, ensuring they operate in good faith and are not involved in scams or rug pulls. This involves scrutinising their promises and critically analysing their claims. Truthful teams provide direct evidence, whereas deceptive ones pad their stories with small falsehoods to create an illusion of truth.

There’s two ways in my opinion to verify trustworthiness:

1. Evaluating the main promises made; or
2. Evaluating the cost or time of operating.

This comes from the idea that:

1. A lying team will eventually make inconsistent statements; or
2. A scamming team prefers short-term scams over long-term ones due to a better risk-to-reward ratio.

What this means, is that finding evidence:

1. That aligns itself with the assumption that the team is working towards making the main promises a reality; or
2. Of a team that is working consistently over an extended period of time, or at the cost of operating a legitimate business.

Generally indicates a trustworthy team. However, if that was all you would have an incomplete picture. Understanding versus determining a team’s trustworthiness involves nuanced analysis, much like piecing together circumstantial evidence in legal dramas. Combining various contextual details can support claims beyond a reasonable doubt and reveal a team’s legitimacy. There is no definitive authority on what constitutes a trustworthy project, so thorough scrutiny is essential.

In the table above I highlighted that a lack of transparency, unverifiable claims, inconsistent communication, and poor community engagement are major red flags. The principle is straightforward: if I can’t verify it, I’m not interested in the project. It shouldn’t go without saying that transparency and consistency in communication are critical markers of a reliable team.

It’s also crucial to consider how a team handles disclosure of their identities. Not revealing identities isn’t an automatic disqualification, as premature disclosure can sometimes indicate overconfidence. The most telling indicator of trustworthiness is how the team responds to challenges – ask yourself “Who benefits if things go wrong?“. A truthful team will address issues and strive for resolution, whereas a deceptive one may abandon the project at the first sign of trouble.

Tying this together – let’s now critically analyse how Aviator has gone.

Transparency

Registered Entity

Trademarks / Copyright

Responsiveness

Engagement with Community

Competency

A team that has established their trustworthiness, does not equal a sure reason to get invovled. Their integrity means little if they lack the capability to deliver on their promises. Conversely, an ill-intentioned team can be easily more competent than those with integrity.

In my opinion, it comes down to three things:

• Experience;
• Technical skills; and
• Organisational skills.

These are the critical aspects because:

• Experience means that they’ve learned from past mistakes, making success that much more likely;
• Technical skills means that they can actually build what they are promising; and
• Organisational skills means that they can finish what they start on time, on budget and according to expectations.

These traits often overlap, but the presence of one doesn’t guarantee the others—some are great technically but might be terrible organisers. Also it’s generally not worth your time to evaluate all of the team – especially a large team. Usually the main 3 or so team members are worth taking a critical look.

Aside: You will need to have these qualities yourself to accurately establish competency, but it is outside of the scope of this post. I will however provide links to some good materials (in my opinion) that should give you some more in-depth information without being overly verbose.

The best way to take a critical look is to assume the role of their boss. Would you hire them? How much confidence would you have in their abilities? Let’s have a run through the top 3 people.

Stixil

Mitch

Kerasu

This analysis does not cover the entire Aviator team; notably, MagicMoneyMover, another co-founder and the accountant, is also integral. My focus here was on a range of top positions—management, engineering, and marketing—which are critical for assessing the team’s breadth of experience, technical prowess, and organisational skills.

Aside: Gathering this information was a protracted effort, spanning several weeks, and often yielded only general responses. Stixil provided the most specific and verifiable details. This general lack of detailed disclosure doesn’t necessarily question their skills but does introduce an element of uncertainty about their transparency. It’s not uncommon that anonymity is often maintained for security and other reasons, take Satoshi Nakamoto for instance!

The point here is not to dox the team, but to gather specific information that can be independently verified.

Evaluation and Take-aways

In my opinion from my analysis and information that I’ve populated above, I think the following key points are relevant:

• Trustworthiness: Overall, the team shows good overall indicators that they are trustworthy, yet noting the restrictions on wanting / being able to being more transparent about updates;
• Competency: Hard to judge as the lack of information, and unwillingness to provide further details makes it an exercise in speculation and opens up more risk. At the same time, the team appears to have a good level of competence for what we can verify.

Marketing: Pre-launch and Critical Mass

Whether a project lives long enough to see the light of day comes down to marketing. You are all likely aware here, a lot of coins are advertised here usually highlight the same key areas, like:

• A low market-cap;
• Ambitious future plans or vision;
• Vague comparison to some other successful project; and or
• Marketing gimmicks to stand out.

While they are important for investors who are trying to make a quick buck, you’ll need to see through that snapshot and develop a deeper understanding of marketing. Generally speaking if you can’t see the marketing, you are probably being marketed to.

Currently, Aviator does not have a product that they can actively promote, they are currently still in the early stages before any product launches. As noted above, we are yet to see the release of SkyBridge, and Aviator Arcade.

I will go over the marketing efforts of both SkyBridge and Aviator Arcade in due course, and in the interim it provides an opportunity to show how to analyse pre-launch marketing. Making an evaluation of pre-launch marketing is obviously a different task compared to understanding marketing post-launch.

Early Marketing

The main objective of early marketing is to generate interest by educating and bringing awareness to the launch of the product.

In a broad sense, this is what is important to marketing in a pre-launch stage:

So let’s have a look at each aspect. I’ll try to go through each aspect, and some in some more detail than others so you can see the analysis in action. We’ll do a short highlight on 1 indicator per aspect, and the others I’ll provide a simple summary of information and conclusion to round it out.

Building Interest

Ongoing Marketing Campaign

Current State:

• Aviator currently lacks a concerted marketing campaign prior to the launch of SkyBridge, with plans to ramp up once the product is released.

Evaluation:

• Red Flag: Not engaging in active marketing before a product launch represents a significant underutilization of potential opportunities. Initiating marketing efforts early is crucial as it warms up potential users and investors, enhancing the rate of adoption from the outset.

Proving Effectiveness

Beta Testing Underway

Current State:

• SkyBridge is currently underway for beta testing on the Sepolia testnet. You can use any testnet ERC20 and ETH and bridge over to the Base chain. There have been formal feedback sessions on the UX/UI, as well as a bug bounty program. Details are in the appendix.

Evaluation:

• Green Flag: Beta testing a product prior to launch is an efficient way of marketing, testing and getting feedback all in one action.

Building Profile

Partnerships: Coinbase

Current State:

Aviator has a few partnerships, namely Hacken (the smart contract audit firm that did audits for Binance), and GotBit who is a market maker, and required for Tier 1 listings.

The most material (and still unconfirmed) partnership is Coinbase.

From a recent DAO proposal you can see that Aviator and Coinbase have a potential partnership. The proposal entails moving $500,000 from the Treasury to a Coinbase address for the purposes of integrating with the Coinbase Smart Wallet.

It would be used for the Smart Wallet learn-and-earn questing rewards, as part of Coinbase’s initiative to bring more new people into crypto, and also onto the Base chain.

A link to the proposal in the appendix.

Evaluation

• Green Flag: Aviator’s potential partnership with Coinbase is a major highlight. This collaboration not only adds credibility but also opens up significant opportunities for user acquisition and market expansion.

Reaching Critical Mass: The 16% Rule

One important goal in marketing is to reach enough users so that a product starts growing on its own. This is often measured using the “16% rule,” which comes from the diffusion of innovation theory.

Aviator is introducing two products: SkyBridge and Aviator Arcade. These products are being released one after the other, which complicates their launches a bit.

As of the time of writing, these are the market sizes of their respective markets according to CoinGecko and the targets based on the 16% rule:

Starting with SkyBridge makes sense because it’s easier to reach the smaller target in the bridging market than the larger target in the gaming market.

It is important to understand that releasing SkyBridge first and Aviator Arcade later can have different outcomes:

• If SkyBridge does well: It could help Aviator Arcade succeed too because the project would already be popular and trusted.
• If SkyBridge doesn’t do well: Then Aviator Arcade might have to work harder to hit its target without the help of SkyBridge’s success.

For more details, I’ve created a logical rubric in the appendix so you can understand the logical outcomes of both products launching.

Evaluation and Take-aways

In my opinion from the above information that we have assessed that Aviator is not perfect in it’s marketing strategy and execution, but that’s not without a lot of positive notes. These are my key take-aways:

• Building Interest: Starting a marketing strategy, regardless of whether there is a product or not, warms up potential investors and users for later on, and this is something that should be attended to;
• Proving Effectiveness: The documentation is currently absent, but in the works. Beta testing is providing feedback and testing key components of infrastructure;
• Building Profile: The Coinbase partnership is the “Hail Mary” of marketing, and will likely continue to be a huge boon if successful in execution; and
• Critical Mass: The 16% rule shows that the launch of each product is strategically well-placed if the products are well-executed. Mutually counterproductive results may result if either product fails to live up to expectations.

Conclusion

Piecing Conclusions Together

This is more or less just putting our evaluations together so you can start to piece together your understanding of the project, and also to start making a decision on whether or not you would get involved or not.

To not simply just reiterate over the take-aways again, I’ll put forward what I think is material from our evaluations:

• The team has delivered to the roadmap very closely, and is still working;
• The team has ex Shiba Inu team members, showing both trust and competency; and
• The potential Coinbase partnership in of itself consists of a major marketing win prior to the launch of the bridge.

Is the project perfect? No. Is any project perfect? Also no, but I think that we’ve just from this particular evaluation that the project is at least worth a watch and wait.

Moving Forward

I want to preface this part not with some cliche like “Good things happen to those who wait”, but to be clear that due to the volume of information that I’m trying to deliver, that it will necessitate that the post itself be split to the complexities of analysis and keeping a good balance of providing information, performing analysis and providing conclusions. However on the other hand I want to keep the post engaging and concise so you don’t feel like you’re reading your college textbooks.

As such, the content will be split as follows:

1. Introduction: This post in which we’ve gone over general information, and setting the stage for analysing the products;
2. SkyBridge: We dive into the details of the SkyBridge product, and go over some major points of analysis: Security and Tokenomics.
3. Aviator Arcade: We’ll end with analysing the Aviator Arcade, and run through the particular economics, and marketing efforts. We’ll also go through how we can make some conclusions.

As a bonus, if you guys really like it we’ll release some checklists which would bring it all together. Of course as well if you find this information that I will go through informative and compelling then please let me know how you went with your own analysis.

Appendix

Website details for:

• Main website
• Road map
• Flight paper (white paper)
• Public beta for SkyBridge on Sepolia testnet

Social media links:

• Twitter / X
• Telegram
• Discord
• Reddit

Transaction details for:

• Token creation on 13 July 2023.
• Uniswap pairing on 13 July 2023.
• Shiba Inu x Stixil transaction

DAO on Snapshot.org:

• All proposals
• DAO Proposal on Coinbase Smart Wallet

KYC Details from SolidProof: Link

Bug bounty details for the ongoing SkyBridge smart contracts audits: Link

Audit results from Hacken: Link

Business and Trademark details:

• Registered Company Details: Aviator Technologies LLC - 2201 MENAUL BLVD NE STE A, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO UNITED STATES 87107
• SkyBridge trademark 1
• SkyBridge trademark 2
• Aviator Arcade trademark 1

Miscellaneous details:

Logical Rubric for Critical Mass: