Extended FAQ - Why Does Efforce Matter ?

Getting closer to the end of a hectic 2020, I wanted to take the time to publicly answer some of the most frequent questions we received about our work at Efforce during the first month out of stealth mode.

Since this might also be a new topic for many readers, I'll start from the basics.

1) Who are you guys?

Efforce is the revolutionary spin-off business of a fast-growing financial institution which was started 11 years ago by Harvard graduate, Jacopo Visetti and his three cofounders. Over this past decade the team focused its attention on all sides of Energy and Carbon Trading. Without any outside investors, they grew organically to a staggering $ 240M in annual revenue.

Our core founding team together with Jacopo Visetti, has another Jacopo (Vanetti), Andrea Castiglione (myself), Stefano Scozzese, Ken Hardesty and Steve Wozniak. Vanetti is a leading software developer and serial entrepreneur in the Italian fintech sector who serves as the company CTO. Personally, I am a techie who has been involved in the Blockchain and Fintech space for a large portion of the past decade; my role at Efforce is Head of Public and Investor Relations. In essence, I build bridges between different worlds. Stefano Scozzese who serves as our Head of Marketing, is the creative mind who works for the likes of Andrea Bocelli, Giorgio Armani, Disney and Samsung. Ken Hardesty is an international technology manufacturing C-Suite executive who founded and ran operations with as many as 7,000 employees across different parts of the world. Ken is an invaluable member of our Board of Directors. Last but not least is Steve Wozniak whose incredible brain brought Apple to the world. Steve dedicated his whole life to efficiency and after revolutionizing personal computers, he is ready to make an impact on the future of the environment.

Besides us, Efforce is made of an extraordinary group of 50 people led by our CEO, Sergio Carloni.

2) What is Efforce ?

Efforce is a multi-party ecosystem which brings together Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), Projects and Contributors. Projects are the ultimate beneficiaries of the Renovations. Companies across the world will cut their energy consumption and as a consequence their Carbon footprint. ESCOs are licensed engineering and Construction companies. They propose projects that are listed on our platform, and after financing is completed from the crowd, they perform the engineering/construction improvement. Contributors could be anyone from anywhere with any ticket size. This is the crowd component which will allow us to break the geographical barriers and bring capital to Projects while benefiting from the Savings generated.

3) Is it a Crowdfunding platform ?

We consider the Efforce platform to be closer to a marketplace. It creates a win-win-win model for all the participants in the ecosystem.

To some extent you could certainly associate it to a crowdfunding tool given the contributors’ role in the financing of Energy Efficiency projects; however, the dynamic participation model deriving from a tradable token creates a free market structure where opportunities can turn into usable credits.  Our main goal is to effectively reduce energy consumption without changing people’s habits. By doing so, businesses globally and indirectly reduce their carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

4) Is this similar to other Energy Tokens focusing on "Green" and Renewables?

Absolutely not. In order to understand this point we need to consider a few crucial facts. The world's population has already topped 7.5 billion individuals. Each individual is increasing exponentially their energy Need (we all have multiple devices which continuously need more energy to run).

Investing in Renewables means we are chasing the world's fast growing energy demand which is not sustainable as a long term solution. On the other side, Efficiency means to improve the existing infrastructure in order to lower the energy consumption/need. There are no limits to the amount of efficiency improvements a given system can undergo, and thanks to the use of Blockchain we will be making everything totally transparent to all the stakeholders in the system.

5) I'm not sure I understand, could you please give an example?

Just think about the most intuitive example of efficiency we can perform in our own household. We all pay electricity bills at the end of the month. These bills depend on how much energy (in kilowatt) we consume. If we perform our household audit, we can see that there are about 50 incandescent lightbulbs from 100 W each. If we change those bulbs with a more efficient (in terms of energetic requirement) 10 W LED light, we will heavily reduce our consumption of energy, thus reducing our energy bill at the end of the month.

If you now stretch this simple example to a shopping mall which needs full "relamping" you can see that the business owner might not be able to find credit so easily to finance the purchasing of the materials especially if the project is located in a poorer and underserved area of the world. That's why ESCO's and the Efforce Community are needed.

6) Is this really feasible?

Yes, and in fact we are already doing this professionally, and like us, a growing number of ESCOs worldwide.

7) Where can we find independent research to validate the claims ?

You could visit the International Energy Agency which is an independent intergovernmental body which monitors the energy and efficiency market at large.

8) Why use Blockchain ?

Standard processes involve, at present, several steps which are time consuming and costly. They reduce the number of potential efficiency projects that can benefit from fractionalized Energy Performance Contract (EPC) contracts.

With the tokenization of the savings instead, the process is reduced from 4 or 5 months to a few days. The costs are reduced on average by 10X!

Efficiency improvement is an important aspect of cost reduction. Blockchain can help reduce the number of actors involved in the process. Not only does it facilitate immediate distribution (e.g. smart contracts can handle complex rules for competitive bidding), it can also reduce reconciliation activities (e.g. cryptographic signatures remove the need for anti-fraud or error checks), and improve settlements (e.g. from 2-3 day settlement period to instant).

9) How large is this market ?

On average, $250 Billion is invested annually with a growth of 10% per annum.

10) Did you launch an ICO ?

No we did not.

EFFORCE current token model is the culmination of more than two years of iterations. In our earliest model we thought it would be optimal to bring the token to market through an ICO process; however, we decided to put everything on hold and go back to the drawing board in order to build the ideal go to market strategy for the creation of a thriving ecosystem. 

11) What is the official Contract Address?

Address on Etherscan

12) Why did you choose to sell 45% of your token supply in two rounds of private placement?

When designing the tokeneconomics of Efforce, we had to consider all the external variables which could weaken a nascent network and hurt a perfectly functional business. Having Woz as Co-Founder is also a factor which might push the general public towards a "pump and dump" scenario out of pure FOMO (fear of missing out).

In essence we wanted people to confidently understand our existing business model, our track record and most importantly the mission driving our group. Too many people classify us as a "green token" like others before us, but the difference is substantial.

Networks need time to form and grow healthy. By hand picking our private sale investors who will be vesting their tokens over 1 to 3 years we ensure to minimize the impact of the wild crowd effect. Education is the primary form of preservation, and we will ensure that, over time, all our ecosystem participants understand the impact of this opportunity.

13) How is the remaining 55% distributed and vested?

From the total of 1 Billion WOZX minted, the remaining 55% is divided as follows : 20% is the Team's allocation which is going to be vested over a period of 20 years, then another 15% to the Ecosystem and consultants which unlocks at a maximum rate of 1.5% per month, and finally the 20% for (Liquidity) Mining Incentive which unlocks over 10 years, 50M WOZX in the first year, 25M in the second and then 20M every year after that until the tenth year.

14) What can I do with my WOZX? Can you please explain the Utility of the token ?

Once a given Energy Efficiency Project has been listed on the EFFORCE platform, it will be possible for the crowd to contribute to the liquidity pool to finance the infrastructure improvement.

WOZX is designed to be staked by contributors in the chosen project pool to farm megawatts.

Staking WOZX for the duration of the Project is necessary in order to gain the right to provide liquidity to a project pool using a Stablecoin.

Megawatts will be distributed over time as a form of Credit— an internal reward system.

Once these credits (which effectively digitize the energy saved) are accrued on the Efforce wallet, Contributors will be able to use these credits to do various things inside the marketplace from offsetting their bills to simply reselling Megawatts back to the market.

15) What is the Reward system based on ?

Digitized megawatts of energy saved.

16) Is the platform already live ?

The platform is currently in private beta phase. We started the first test project in May 2020 which will be completed in Q2 of 2022. This test project is already yielding Savings at the expected rate. In Q1 of 2021 we will be opening Version 1.0 of our platform to the public for active participation. 

17) Why doesn't Steve Tweet about this? Is he really involved?

To answer this question I would suggest watching this independent live interview in which Woz talks about innovation and responds to a question about Efforce. Steve is not here as a marketing stunt. He would not want his follower base to feel like he is promoting his token. None of us are here for short term speculation.

Also, by going to his personal site, it'll be possible to see the Efforce banner and not much more in terms of active engagement.

18) Why did you list on less liquid exchanges first?

Connected to question 12 , going too big too soon would have simply hurt the project as the aggressive growth would have exponentially increased an uneccessary pressure to sell. We wanted to dampen the effects of a wild speculation on a nascent network.

Moreover, the exchanges we partnered with are actually not that small in size.

19) Will you list on larger exchanges ?

As we have proven in the first month out of stealth with three core listings, our team will keep rolling out more exchanges over time in order to guarantee healthy growth of the network and access points into the ecosystem.

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