AdEx (ADX) stands for “advertising exchange.” AdEx Coin is a blockchain-based marketplace for ads that aims to change the existing online advertising landscape and solve its major problems: ad fraud, privacy and consent to receive sponsored messages, etc. AdEx is fully transparent and built on the Ethereum Smart Contracts. AdEx is still in development, so it’s difficult to say much yet about it at this point. The original roadmap anticipated a beta release in February 2018. It remains to be seen if the team will meet that deadline. Future plans for version two of AdEx after launch focus on improving the user experience and scalability. AdEx has also expressed an interest in implementing a real-time bidding solution that could take place off-chain or on a high throughput network, like IOTA. AdEx raised $10 million in the first three hours of token sale. AdEx as a platform has room for a good amount of growth since digital advertising is a booming business anyway. But by eliminating flaws and continuing updates on its current platform, AdEx aims to stand firm in the near future.
Quantstamp is a security-auditing protocol for smart contracts. As a apps platform, Ethereum has proven its security time and again. However, apps and smart contracts on top of Ethereum may still have bugs in which malicious players can cause havoc on the network. The two most notable examples of these being the $55 million DAO hack and the $30 million Parity wallet bug. These issues not only affect the people who’ve had their funds stolen, but they also diminish the credibility of the entire ecosystem. Quantstamp is making smart contracts more secure through automated software testing and a system of bug bounties. Although starting with Ethereum, the team is building the protocol to be available on any DApp platform in the long run.In an industry where security is a primary concern and bugs have caused the theft of millions of dollars, Quantstamp should help to legitimize blockchain projects and ensure that large-scale smart contract hacks are a thing of the past. Quantstamp held a successful ICO in November 2017 in which the team raised a little over $30 million dollars. They distributed 650 million (65%) QSP out of the 1 billion total supply to ICO participants at a price of $0.072 per token. After the usual post-ICO volatility, the QSP price stabilized at around $0.10 (~0.000005 BTC) through the end of November. The price followed the trend of the altcoin market and rose rapidly to an all-time high of $0.82 (~0.000051 BTC) before slowly falling to its current price of ~$0.286. The QSP price weathered the beginning of the year market downfall better than most other altcoins.