Ethos Review: Project to Launch New Mobile Wallet - Is it Worth a Look?

An interesting new cryptocurrency project has appeared and is aiming itself at creating a mobile wallet and a currency. It will hypothetically aid mass adoption of cryptocurrency if successful.

That project is called Ethos. Not to be confused with the "EthOs" operating system with a similar name. Ethos will create a multi-asset mobile wallet with a unique smart key security design.  

As well, it will allow its users to keep track of assets on other platforms much like how Coin.fyi works. The wallet will also allow for quick and easy asset diversification without the need for advanced trading knowledge.

The company will be releasing its own cryptocurrency, the Ethos Token. The token may have different uses in the future once the platform is more popular.

The Ethos wallet

The company behind Ethos describes itself as "a people-powered cryptocurrency services company". The main attraction to the Ethos platform seems to be the multi-asset mobile wallet they are developing.

According to the official website, the wallet will support bitcoin, "altcoins" and ERC-20 tokens. No further details are given on what other altcoins will be supported.

The wallet will supposedly allow for quick and category based automated diversification. For instance, it appears that if you deposit only bitcoin, you could use the wallet to diversify that bitcoin into multiple other crypto assets quickly. The wallet will apparently allow you to choose what types of assets you want to diversify into, such as platform tokens, utility tokens, privacy coins, and so on.

The site also claims that the wallet will be a hotbed for airdrop activity. Specifically, ethos claims that they will have many partnerships with other blockchain projects that will perform air drops onto ethos wallets.

Recently, air drops have been a somewhat popular way of some smaller blockchain projects to get there tokens in the hands of the public. However, air drops of also been a source of confusion as some users don't understand what type of wallet is necessary in order to receive in airdrop. We wrote about this regarding the OmiseGO airdrop previously.

It seems likely that the air drops that would occur on the Ethos platform will not really be "air drops" as they are defined today, typically meaning ERC-20 tokens that are given to ETH holders. Instead, it could be a proprietary distribution method that is used only on their platform.

The company has not yet specified which partners they have made deals with, but they state that they already have several and there are many more that are excited to get involved.

The Ethos Token

The official website also describes a native currency that will exist for the wallet. However, the site seems a little unsure of itself as for what the Ethos Token is actually for.

First it states that Ethos Tokens can be sent anywhere with no transaction fees. However, it also states that Ethos Tokens can be used to pay for transaction fees (as well as other unspecified "services" on the platform).

If users can pay for, for example, bitcoin transaction fees using ethos tokens, then that may be a compelling use case if the result is lower transaction fees. This does not appear to be explained on the main site, however, and so it's difficult to ascertain exactly what they mean here.

Digging a little deeper, we found the project's white paper. The paper itself is hidden inside the FAQ under a specific question. An odd design choice, to say the least.

According to the white paper, the tokens will be used to do some fairly straight forward tasks like "reduce costs for consumers for crypto-related transactions". Then there are few which are more difficult to decipher. Try your best at understanding this one: "create a scalable micropayment transfer mechanism for all platform services". Your guess is probably as good as ours.

Even more vague descriptions exist on the main website, such as saying that Ethos Tokens "[enable] consumers to safely interface directly with blockchains". So they are saying its implicitly "unsafe" to "interface directly with blockchains"?

The site is also quite cautious, using specific legalese. It specifies in no uncertain terms that Ethos Tokens are not shares in the company. They do not provide voting rights, and do not entitle anyone to dividends. This is likely done as a measure to dissuade the SEC from labeling their currency as a “security.”

On the same page, the site makes even more vague comments implying that Ethos tokens may be "used to send value, similar to PayPal", but it says this would not likely to occur until sometime in the future.

What they mean by this is unclear, as we are not sure if they're saying you can transact Ethos Tokens themselves as a means of moving value, or if they will be some sort of a representative token for fiat currency or something else. The white paper suggests this ties to fiat support, writing that "A core piece of the Ethos platform is a Fiat gateway and diversification platform". 

Final thoughts

An easy-to-use multi-asset wallet will likely find an audience in the cryptocurrency community. Especially among those that are new to cryptocurrency, and do not want to download many full node wallets on their computer with many hundreds of gigabytes of blockchain data. Likewise, it is unsafe to store assets on exchanges long-term, and so multi-asset wallets are attractive.

However, Ethos may be behind some of their competition already. Multi-asset wallets such as Exodus and Jaxx already exist and are quite popular. Further, new multi-asset wallets will be coming out this year that offer additional incentives. For instance, Celsius Network will be releasing its own multi-asset wallets that will allow users to earn interest on deposited cryptocurrency at a rate of around 9% per year.

If, however, the advantages afforded by the Ethos Token are compelling enough, it may attract users. Especially if they need to make many small transactions, and if the Ethos platform is able to lower their transaction fees somehow.

This again is unclear at this point, however. In any case, Ethos is a project to keep your eyes on. It could have some interesting features when the wallet goes live sometime in the near future.