Share your crypto research with fellow Steemers and help make the crypto space more transparent.

Dear Steemers and crypto enthousiast.

In the last 6 months I have not been writing any posts as I locked myself up in the garage for a couple of months whilst creating crypto owls. Crypto Owls

What is crypto owls?
It is the first crypto comparison and ranking website build on using the functionality of Steemit.

Why did you build it?
Crypto ranking websites are extremely popular, some of them are in the top 400 most viewed websites in the world. As an investor I have been trying to comprehend why the main ranking sites are being viewed this often and what this means for crypto currency in general.
The ranking sites only rank on the basis of marketcap, which in my opinion gives out a ranking that has a lot of flaws in it.
Marketcap itself only tells one side of the story and considering the amount of money people invest in crypto assets I think an improved ranking system is the way forward. This is why I created crypto owls, by using our website, crypto assets become more transparent as the more viewers and participators we have, the more research and incentive there is to write benchmarks.

How does it work?
If you own a Steemit account, you are now able to write benchmarks and research your favourite crypto assets on https://cryptoowls.com

Benchmarks
A benchmark is simply a test to find out how well a test object scores at different aspects.
Crypto assets can be researched and benchmarked/ graded, based on measurable properties.

Grading
Every benchmark consists of 20+ questions that are relevant to how a crypto asset is defined. Every answer to a question adds points to the benchmark depending on the weight of the answer.

Ie. fast transaction speed earns more points then low transaction speed.
High fees earns less points then low fees.

Data gathering
Before writing a benchmark research has to be done. With the precision of an owl, one must research the different aspects of a crypto asset and elaborate factual information about the specific assets.

Why on earth would I do this?
Understandably creating benchmarks is not for everyone, however if you are a new investor or have been around for a while here are some points that might give you an incentive:

• Doing actual full research into a crypto asset will help you understand better what it is that defines a crypto asset.
• You will accrue Crypto Owls reputation points.
• Your benchmark adds to transparancy within the crypto space, by creating a more transparent ranking.
• Your benchmark will increase the incentive for a developer/ creator of a crypto asset to also write a benchmark.
• Your benchmark may be upvoted and you may be rewarded for your efforts.
• The more you understand about crypto, the better your judgement will be when you decide to invest.

A more transparent crypto space means more people will be attracted to investing in crypto assets, which means you directly influence your own investment by participating in gathering data. Perhaps farfetched, but I think it makes sense 😄.

Writing benchmarks
Benchmarks are written in a fixed format by selecting answers to a question and then elaborating on that answer.
It is a normal editor, so no markdown is required, like ‘word’ you just select your style in the toolbar for your elaboration.
However be aware that your post will look different in Steemit then it does on our website. In terms of color and possibly layout. It has not been battle tested to the full yet.

My benchmark looks different on Steemit then it does on cryptoowls.com.
Although your benchmark is posted on the steemit blockchain, we als save your benchmark in our database, this allows us the freedom of using the data in the future and will make your benchmark data usable for the future. We can for instance change the weights of the gradings and your benchmark will still be valid only a different grade will be connected to your benchmark.
It also allows us to use color in the editor and some other advantages over using the Steemit markdown editor.

Hard work
Writing a full benchmark takes a lot of time, the best thing to do is to go to our faq. section and copy paste the questions that need answering.
Then whilst you are travelling around during a dull moment, you can try and find the answer to a specific question.
Write it down elaborate on it and state the source lf the answer.
Slowly you will get enough info, so that all the data required to fill in the benchmark is ready to be copied from your notepad or whatever you used to save your accrued data.

partial benchmarks
Although it will be harder to get upvoted for doing a partial benchmark it takes a lot less time. A partial benchmark only requires a minimum of 3 properties to be researched.
Your research will help to back the data in full benchmarks.

Beta version
There are still some issues with the website that I added to the faq, please read the faq first before writing a benchmark this will save you a lot of hassle.
The main issues are that chrome and safari are the preferred browsers to use, as there are issues uploading images with IE/ edge.

Finally
After sending the benchmark to the steemit blockchain your results will be shown on: cryptoowls

I hope you are able to see a similar future for Crypto Owls as I do.

Let us make the crypto space more transparent and by doing so educate and hel new and old investors with gathering data, so that their investment decision is not just based on marketcap and how well a graph looks. Because without proper knowledge on how to read a graph or what crypto is about, it will be hard to be 100% convinced about your investment decision, which will ultimately mos likey lead to mistakes that cost money.

Please join/ participate and subscribe at https://cryptoowls.com for the latest benchmarks/ studies and grading.