Litepaper

HeadStarter is the project accelerator and thoroughbred native launchpad of the Hedera Hashgraph Ecosystem.

The HeadStarter decentralized application is optimized for the underlying distributed ledger technology and leverages Hedera Smart Contract Service(HSCS) in conjunction with Hedera Token Service(HTS) with the purpose of a wide Hedera ecosystem enablement by facilitating community awareness, visibility and the raise of capital in a fair and transparent manner.

 

Highlights

Headstarter is curating the best early stage Hedera projects and connecting them with the community & regulatory friendly decentralized funding.

Hedera is a Layer 1 decentralized network that has always stood for decentralization and building value for the long run. With recent steps in openness, compatibility & incentivizing development through foundation grants, the network is soon to see its mainstream recognition.

HeadStarter is the missing piece that will bring trust, utility and mainstream developer & retail adoption another step closer. Pioneering DeFi and crowdfunding on Hedera comes through the HeadStarter dApp functionalities, infrastructure and ecosystem accelerator program.

Our product is a vital component that provides the ability to democratize traditional financing models in the web3 tokenized world of today, but also make it widely accessible and tangible like never before. We have assembled an end-to-end decentralized platform with integrated regulatory friendly token sale rounds, publicly auditable functionalities and educational support mediums. An exciting array of new features, gamification and integrations are planned to be rolled out in the weeks and months to come.

Our application targets the Hedera community, as well as web3 & crypto users at large, providing an unprecedented gateway to innovations exclusive to the Hedera space, an ecosystem that is bound to revolutionize DeFi, GameFi & application specific projects because of its unique set of protocol hallmarks.

 

Product

HeadStarter is a decentralized application layer protocol designed to help existing and upcoming Hedera native projects with funding, visibility and a solid user base.

The pillars on which the project is designed are innovation, transparency and regulatory savviness. HeadStarter community members will be introduced to successfully vetted projects, connected with the respective teams & products and finally are being offered the opportunity to participate in their pre-listing, public IDO round(s).

The HeadStarter dApp is leveraging HTS & HSCS through secure, publicly audited smart contracts. Beyond the IDO platform, HeadStarter is built on top of an in-house built, open source Hedera Hashgraph development SDK, called Venin JS.

Outside its technical features, HeadStarter is a network of experts & enthusiasts, an incubation and accelerator, a support system that equips projects with the tools to grow smoothly, from ideation to mainnet and listings. Heading the rigorous due diligence process in vetting the most disruptive and transformational projects to our community, the HeadStarter Council is a collection of seasoned independent companies and individuals in their own sectors. They provide extensive advice and make the ultimate decision upon greenlighting any project for an IDO launch.

Given the Hedera network design and its emerging DeFi ecosystem, HeadStarter is uniquely positioned to ignite development and adoption on the gen-3 Hashgraph DLT while integrating & offering further DeFi solutions, pushing the limits of web3 crowdfunding and what a Launchpad can offer. Some of HeadStarter’s public ambitions are:

• Single & double sided staking rewards & yield farming
• Establishing a DAO and institute distributed decision making & voting mechanism to further democratize the vetting and funding of future projects & initiatives
• Pools with tiered participation
• Metaverse integrations
• NFT Launchpads
• Open IDOs

 

Problem

The Hedera ecosystem needs solid infrastructure to support the demand for further utility of the HBAR cryptocurrency, retail facing applications, DeFi and the pieces that will enable gamification & utility for HTS-based fungible & non-fungible tokens.

HBAR token holders and techpreneurs, despite being fully aware of the superior characteristics of the Hashgraph protocol, have been using other DLT’s where they can access DeFi instruments, communities and applications because these components have been missing on Hedera.

Crypto-savvy communities know launchpads are an indispensable infrastructural protocol that groom the growth of new projects. Community members will want to get informed about the latest projects’ vision & technology, and are thus also getting accustomed to the underlying DLT infrastructure while interacting with dApps.

There is no doubt that without a highly performing launchpad, Hedera would have missed the opportunity of speeding and streamlining its network adoption, TVL and number of organic transactions.

With over 1 million+ Twitter followers having high engagement levels with DeFi launchpads on other blockchains, and this untapped paradigm on Hedera is in safe hands with the emergence, commitment and ethos of HeadStarter.

 

Solution

Building a complete crowdfunding platform for the tokenized web3 world of today in line with cross-industry best standards.

HeadStarter is building an application that embodies the following values:

• Ensure an inclusive and secure model to run the project’s public funding rounds of their HTS-native utility tokens
• Deliver the highest level of functionality and regulatory sturdiness during the allowlisting and KYC process
• Offer an intuitive and smooth UI/UX experience throughout all user touchpoints
• Act as the issuer of a virtual seal of trust for upcoming Hedera projects through our vetting and verification process that secures the shortlisting of only the most valuable use cases;
• Provide support for projects through HeadStarter’s advisors and partners as part of the distributed accelerator programme
• Raise awareness and build communities around new Hedera projects by supporting marketing initiatives during pre-launch campaigns, throughout the IDO process and after.

In order to secure a constant stream of high quality projects, we have designed an end to end inhouse incubator accelerator structure that will onboard promising techpreuneurs and their team regardless of the development stage they are in.

Right from the beginning we support each cohort with marketing, investing, and mentorship up through their IDO launch. Moreover our full-fledged team continues to sustain the projects’ effort to scale faster beyond their successful IDO. As such the project pipeline will be built based on the market demands in areas encompassing DeFi, Payments, AI, Data & Privacy, DEX, DAOs, NFTs, GameFi and MetaFi.

 

Market

The robust Hedera native launchpad, taking it one step further

HeadStarter is a startup designed to unlock the full potential of the Hashgraph technology to increase the overall efficiency and growth potential by connecting communities with new projects, as well as offering projects public sale funding opportunities. Bundled with the ambitious roadmap of delivering an extensively comprehensive set of funding tools, it has a competitive edge over other crowdfunding solutions.The following table illustrates how the HeadStarter IDO platform compares with other types of public sale offerings.:

Characteristics	ICO (Initial Coin Offering)	IEO (Initial Exchange Offering)	HeadStarter IDO (Initial Decentralized Offering)
Fundraising	Crowdfunding is generally done anonymously and under opaque circumstances.	Crowdfunding mediated as regulated through centralized cryptocurrency exchange (CEX)	Crowdfunding done transparently through smart contracts by swapping HBAR for new project token on HeadStarter at a predetermined date and time.
Marketing & Community outreach	Project teams fully own and deliver all advertising and marketing activities at their own expense.	Project teams rely on CEX to support the marketing and advertising.	The team behind the projects and HeadStarter collaborate on the marketing and advertising efforts.
Trading & Liquidity	The issuers are responsible for transferring the token/coin into purchaser’s wallet and ensure immediate liquidity is available.	CEX ensures immediate liquidity is available on newly created markets for the newly launched token.	After the IDO event, the token/coin is traded on DEX via liquidity pools provided by project teams and token holders.
Security	Project teams offer little to no security guarantee as they generally conduct the ICO launch on their own website.	CEX offers some level of transaction security on their platform. However, the centralized nature of the emitter resprsents a single point of failure and users are not custodians of their tokens.	Transactions are completed using self-custodian wallets, transparently and users are always completely in the possession of all their tokens and crypto-holdings.
Regulatory conditions	Token/coin issuers decide on favourable regulatory jurisdiction or are not even incorporated.	CEX are established financial institutions and must abide to applicable regulations	HeadStarter IDOs are regulatory friendly across permitted jurisdictions.
Trust	Perceived as extremely risky after numerous low quality ICOs.	CEX requires KYC/AML verification for all participants involved in a token sale on the platform.	HeadStarter carries a rigorous due diligence on all projects and only vetted ones are listed for IDO. Every single investor undergoes KYC through a 3rd party entity.
Fees	Fee structure is unclear and highly dependent upon the token/ICO issuance model.	CEX charge token/coin issuers commission and listing fee for launching and trading on their platform. Equally traders are also subject to fees.	HeadStarter offers a personalized service with different options when projects are onboarded. Investors only pay gas fees when swapping tokens.

 

Tech Stack

Builder Labs is HeadStarter’s tech cradle that incubated the platform. It’s a team of top-notch, full stack developers with an impressive proven track record building both on the Hashgraph tech and for the Hbar community.

The HeadStarter dApp will, among other things, permit people to apply for allowlisting (or, traditionally called, "whitelisting"), join IDOs, swap & claim token allocations and stake HST tokens. It makes use of Buidler Lab's passionately crafted Hashgraph-Venin-JS library for smart contract interactions, while the projects' data is being kept on a set of S3 buckets spread across multiple regions for resilience and uptime. An overview of the functionalities carried out across the infrastructure is pictured below:

HeadStarter's IDO Pool Contracts have been publicly audited and, through their different Smart Contract Pool extensions, have been specially tailored to be flexible both towards projects launching on the platform and to the investors. All the pools are interacting through ERC-20-like contracts (via HIP-218) with the Hedera Tokens Service (HTS) while account-to-token associations are being done through the interfaces introduced by HIP-206.

The dApp is leveraging a backend service that ingests contract events based on which the application shows various pieces of information to the user. One of the main priorities is to have the backend service highly distributed and to work in a more decentralized manner.

Hashgraph-Venin-JS is the open-source library being developed by the Headstarter dev team. It's meant to integrate all the Hedera Services, minimize the verbosity and work needed to be done by the web3 developer and bring vital functionality for all Hedera native dApps.

 

Roadmap

Our overarching vision is to transform the Hedera Ecosystem into a vibrant web3 sandbox.

The IDO launchpad is only the first step in providing a pivotal tool to attract new exciting ideas building in web3 as well as web2 solutions transitioning to the crypto economy. Already we are working on add-on features to enhance our DeFi stack and offerings proposition. The public roadmap can be visualized below:

 

Team

 

Token Utility

The HeadStarter dApp is built around its native HST token that offers native incentives and gamification features in order to secure its intrinsic utility.

The HeadStarter ecosystem is fueled by the native HeadStarter token - HST. The token is minted on the HTS(Hedera Token service), staying true to our ethos and leading the way in Hedera’s visibility, interaction and network growth. $HST holders acquire privileges to participate in allowlist lotteries and potentially have access to sought after projects via IDO token launch. Although the $HST token lives on the Hedera mainnet, it will be accessible across multiple DEXs and CEXs. The incentivized $HST token lock-up period will soon follow, where holders will receive additional perks, such as staking rewards. More utilities can be found in the project whitepaper and roadmap.

 

Token Metrics

• Token Supply = 2,500,000,000 HST Tokens
• Tokens for sale at Pre-Liquidity round = 12,500,000 HST tokens
• HST token price at TGE = 0.01 USD