In a press release dated Tuesday 27 November 2018, PLAAS, the blockchain platform seeking to use smart contracts to revolutionize farming in Africa, announced that it was changing from conducting an initial coin offering (ICO) to a token giveaway. This comes days before start of the initially intended date for private sale on December 1 2018. In a press release appearing on their medium page, PLAAS explained that legal reasons contributed to thier change in strategy. Specifically, the statement said
‘After wide consultations with different parties, PLAAS has opted to go for a token giveaway instead of Crowdsale through an ICO (initial coin offering). The move has been necessitated by the need to abide by existing regulatory framework and protect both the company and the investors. PLAAS will continue to peruse private funding in order to ensure the project is fully implemented. PLAAS team remains committed to bringing new innovation to agriculture and farmers management throughout Africa‘.
Legal uncertainty has been one of the major issues affecting many ICOs especially in Africa. In majority of ICOs there is a provision about which countries can participate and which ones cannot participate. Majority of ICOs have clauses in their whitepapers legal section restricting participants from countries such as USA and China. Nonetheless, some countries have undertaken measures to give guidelines on blockchain technology. One of the most pronounced has been Malta which has been termed as the ‘blockchain island’ and seeking to lead the way in blockchain and cryptocurrencies regulation. Kenya is one among the countries in Africa that earlier in 2018 formed a blockchain and artificial intelligence taskforce. The task force recently indicated that it had completed its report and will be released to the public soon.
Nonetheless, PLAAS has said that it planned to continue to pursue private funding and thereafter conducting token giveaway starting from January 1 2019.
In a post on The PLAAS Telegram community, core team also added that
‘We will carry out a token self drop and an Initial Exchange Offering to make it easy for you to get hold of the PLS token and trade it.All the information will be shared on this Platform as to how you will all do that‘
PLAAS was launched earlier this year and has grown in leaps and bounds. The whitepaper was released detailing how the platform will use a combination of RFID tech and smart contracts to enable timely capturing and recording of important animal and farm data. additionally the platform will have a marketplace to enable farmers easily reach the end consumer. This will ultimately unlock value for the agriculture value chain enabling transforming the food ecosystem in Africa which is valued to reach $1 trillion by 2030.
The project has already achieved considerably success with the release of its prototype which is in the testing period. Furthermore, PLAAS announced partnership with Sierra Leone based CAPD a move that would see it expand to more countries across Africa. Marketing of the project has also kicked off with features on major ICO rating platforms and crypto forums such as Bitcointalk and Reddit among others. Their Telegram channel has also experienced phenomenal growth of more than 5000 members and growing.
It is expected that the change to token giveaway will give even more people an opportunity to get PLS tokens when it opens on January 1.
You can join the PLAAS telegram channel to get all the details about the token giveaway
Telegram: https://t.me/Plaas2018
Website: https://plaas.io/
