A new project named Ehab aims to empower people to create and finance affordable, sustainable housing projects through a decentralized platform. The platform will enable collaborative design efforts and allow investors from around the globe to share in the profits from these innovative developments.
A Need for Change
The world population continues to increase dramatically and is expected to reach 8.5 billion people by 2030, posing a growing strain on the Earth system and its resources. At the same time, there is a resource management system in place which sees the majority of resources and gains in production going to a small minority at the top. Ehab is a new project that is hoping to rectify this imbalance in power, enable more sustainable places to be built and to grant autonomy back to underserved individuals and groups in the housing market.
Over one billion new homes need to be built by 2025 to meet the growing demand of cities and 330 million households already live in unaffordable or unsuitable housing. As the costs to build affordable housing increase, governments struggle to keep up with demand. The houses being built by the private sector are often of inferior quality, have low environmental standards, and are still unaffordable for a large portion of society, and yet their profits still rise. This ultimately leaves many individuals powerless, which negatively affects their; livelihoods, wellbeing, and place in society.
Ehab’s Vision
Ehab plans to solve this global crisis with their decentralized platform that will act as a tool for the democratic designing, funding, and building of new homes. Decentralization takes the financial influence out of the hands of banks who have control over how money is invested, and ultimately who builds and what type of homes are built. Decentralization also removes the decision-making power over how our urban areas look and are built from developers and hands it to people working with designers to create truly human places.
The Ehab platform will connect housing developers, landowners, and crowdfunders seamlessly. Circumventing banks gives individuals the power to use cheap, modern technologies for their housing projects, and community-driven development gives people a say in how their community is designed. Finally, the investors and builders are compensated quickly and fairly, via smart contracts, with all transactions being recorded for transparency. This feature is particularly relevant in emerging markets as it can help determine the best and most ethical builders in locations which need to see more investment realized.
Token Sale
Ehab is preparing to launch their token pre-sale, which will last from February 9th through February 19thst. During the pre-sale, the following incentive structure is being offered:
- February 9 – 13: 50% bonus
- February 14 – 19: 30% bonus
The main token sale will take place from March 1st through April 30th and contributors who get in before April 1st will receive a 10% bonus.
Ehab’s token (EHB) will be valued at 1 ETH = 20,000 EHB, with the lowest possible purchase denomination being 0.05 ETH = 1000 EHB.
Ehab is set to sell 50% of its 3.1 billion tokens in the overall token sale and plans to retain the other half. 7% are being distributed to advisors, team members and other partners. The other 43% are being placed in a 12-month lockup, after which they will be in a future development pool and only accessed to use for liquidity, to prevent the delay of a project, or to run another token sale for expansion of the Ehab platform.
The Road Ahead for Ehab
Ehab is set to recruit full-time staff over the course of the sale and pre-sale who will help to propel the project forward. Based on the success of the token sale, Ehab will tweak its hiring strategy.
The team plans to focus energy on developing the base modules of the platform throughout 2018. In the first quarter, the company will work on their discovery portal, construction tracker feature, and design room. These 3 modules will allow the building of homes to occur through the platform. Later, they will create a dedicated Ehab wallet for holders of their tokens. Moving forward to the third quarter, they will develop the crowdfunding marketplace aspect of their platform. This marketplace feature will be released with the wallet feature and in combination with receiving regulatory approval by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). At this stage, a project will then be available t be crowdfunded.
Test products will be released throughout this process where token holders will be able to receive early-access and help shape the future of the platform.
For more information about Ehab, please visit ehab.co and download the project whitepaper.
The Whitelist is now open to please register on the site to make sure you can access the 50% bonus. If investing more than 1 ETH you will be included in the private sale with a 55% bonus.
Will this platform be the solution to the crisis in the housing sector? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Ehab
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