In terms of audit trail companies house website (UK government run) is where accounts for every limited company are held (just search maidsafe limited). It’s all very very much in the open.
We are open to the point of taking a hurt when we need to as we did with the recent disclosure, before we took any action (which we still have not and have options, auctions, sell on exchange, private sales and many more). Here we are open disclosure traders who are selling cheap and telling everyone beforehand (a crucial error for any trader) knowing we earn expensive tokens to kill them later. No trader and very few companies would disclose so much as we currently do.
Our openness costs us a lot measured in short term thinking but I belive gains in long term security and integrity. Any more open we will need to wear always on microphones and carry gps boxes around with google map tracking.
In the middle of all of this openness we need to negotiate with technology parters and more, they see our hand a lot. Now we should show every single piece to folks so we can enter no negotiation with anything up our sleeve and with everyone knowing our position. I doubt that would work.
So trust is required and earned, I believe we earn this and have over years. There is not a single thing we have done immorally and never will while I am about. Nick or Viv would certainly not be involved in such actions either, never mind any of the team.
We simply cannot show every single hand in the game of poker that is business, it’s not clever and even now many will think we are bonkers for spilling so much so freely.
If folk can accept we do what we can within reason then it’s all good. We cannot pander to those who want 100% disclosure and those who wish we had 0% disclosure, it’s just not possible.
If a sale of public IDs goes ahead, this seems like a very good way of doing it to avoid the opportunity of people hoarding potentially valuable names.
However, I think the less time consuming & more predictable option to raise money is to borrow the MaidSafeCoin from the foundation & sell them off-exchange.
I also hope there is a decision to change the ability to register public IDs for free, which will lead to large scale squatting that could be quite damaging if few people can get relevant & useful public IDs.
Maybe all free public IDs should have a prefix/suffix, and premium IDs without the prefix/suffix require the user to pay the network SafeCoin.
Anything that is not core-coding related. At the very most one person who does all the paperwork/outreach/website/community etc. so as not to distract david with too many tasks.
The current level and model of spending is totally fine with me, once you deliver on proving the feasibility of the vision.
To me the whole issue about burning the coins seems fabricated. I too was upset at first, but if david speaks the truth and it is only a pre-sale of a previously allocated dev-portion then the net balance is zero and no-one should be very upset. It is not fun for the investors, but it is necessary and totally fine. The option is to fire anyone but david and wait an additional 2 years for MVP.
Then go do it, or get someone to help you do it, and then explain in detail how this runs without asking anything from MaidSafe, or alternatively…
Then present a detailed breakdown of the tasks MaidSafe would need to carry out, and create a compelling case for the benefits of MaidSafe carrying out those tasks in terms of estimated revenue per week, and estimated effort required and by whom inside MaidSafe.
To make those estimates of revenue credible, I suggest you show how many people you expect to buy domains at each price, and who you think is likely to do so, plotted against time from website launch, or some other scheme rather than just numbers. I suggest that because just giving revenue figures without any indication of how they are arrived at is not likely to be very convincing.
In your costings, please include all the things I listed and the others I didn’t that will I expect be realised when you get into the details.
Then maybe we can see the positives of this proposal. Right now, I can’t.
“very efficient”, “safes ages” and “more efficient” are to me all hollow expressions. Of course after two years of working at a product you become more efficient, but that alone doesn´t change the situation on a very profound basis. Back in the time of the crowdsale it was communicated that people have worked on the product for years and are now close to release. Of course, much work has been done, but given the story of the project I don´t see why people shouldn´t be sceptical with any sort of prognosis that lacks a detailed roadmap (which the team decided to drop or at least halt because there were more important issues). This isn´t about being a pessimist. Out of experience I know how projects become harder and harder to finish the longer they take and SAFE is certainly a big project. As far as I see we have a burn rate expectation, but (and yes - maybe I missed that needle as well in this haystack of a thread) no estimation how long the money is supposed to burn. 3 months? 6months? 2 years? It is absolutely possible that in one year we are facing the same situation and I´d prefer to prevent that.
As I said, originally it was expected that there was a functional network in about 6 months, so in the original fundraiser there were 2-2,5 years planned to lay out a foundation for the company that has anything to do with finishing the MVP.
Anyway, for it is not up to Maidsafe the company to decide whether the coins should be used, but a decision of the Maidsafe foundation I tried to find out who´s on the board, but I didn´t find anything on their webpage and the OSCR. The original project SAFE announcement says
Board members will be appointed from the community via polling. This board should be selected from as wide a catchment as possible and include 3rd party developers, core developers and members of other decentralised projects (e.g. Mastercoin, Invictus). The board members will be continually up for election. If the polling shows the community wish a member to be removed then the next meeting will remove that person and they should be replaced by the next in line, selected again via polls.
Did that take place? Maybe @nicklambert can comment on this if you find some time.
EDIT: I doublechecked the forum and didn´t find anything about the election of the foundational board. Again, i might have missed somthing and it was probably posted somewhere else.
disclaimer: I am assuming that we all care deeply about the success of the SAFE Network – much more than keeping the price of some virtual currency stable in the short-term.
That sounded reasonable to me to and I was … well… shocked to learn they raised way less than anticipated and were able to run on that. It is quite impressive to run a 17 ppl software company on 65k£/month including expenses – that is some dedication.
But I’d like to remind especially those that come to the forum with newly created accounts and claim super knowledge about this and the fact that we wouldn’t be in this situation had the sale gone fine and raised the necessary funds.
I am concerned about this, too. The last crowd sale did – in the end – not raise the funds needed. Now the proposed solution is “another crowdsale” (I am hugely simplifying of course, I read the entire thread!). In some way we are in a similar situation, but actually we in are in the very same situation, the last crowd sale just postponed the problem a little down the line. And I’d like to make sure we aren’t just pushing it off again. If the crowdsale is only able to raise 1.3Mio again, this is still short of the originally anticipated 8Mio isn’t it?
Moreover (and now I have to get into the details), the way this deal is structured it puts a much harder toll on Maidsafe (the company) in mid-term, when they have to pay back these funds. I understand that is “fair”, but it is pointless if that means the company has to pay back a dept that they should rather invest in ensuring the system can grow at that critical time. I also believe that the system is going to grow but I am not sure I am trusting that it will be self-funded enough by that time that those debts can be paid back without taking a hit. And the core team has taken enough hits already (see above), this isn’t “fair” IMHO.
There are many good ideas here, from direct donations, patreons and kickstarters, over EU Fund raising and cooperating with the DAO, all the way to selling assets (DNS Names in that case). None of them – as it has been pointed out – will be able to raise sufficient funds in the short time frame. And more over not without significant work from the core team itself – who we’d rather have focus on the development. So something that is as much work as a kickstarter would for sure delay a release further rather than speed up the process. Which is very much against what we want here.
That is why I am in favor of selling those coins. However, I am concerned that we will still be lacking funds mid-term and we need to find a solution to this. I think a few good ones have been mentioned that can be very helpful especially in mid-term, but need structure and a proper approach to work (like patreon, kickstarter, Domain (pre)-Sales). And that is something we as the community should step and with help directly!
So, let me ask you, @dirvine directly: what is the purpose of the Maidsafe Foundation (is it this one?) regarding the SAFE Network. It is, right now, – legally – in possession of the coins in question, am I right? And its goal is nurture and grow the network? Which would include raising funds to further push its development, right? How is that foundation structured? Does it have the possibility to have a donation-based open membership that could/vote on issues (1 vote per member)?
Like for example, if the majority of this forum would join that foundation as members and would give monthly membership fees to raise short-term and continuous funds (like 25€/month?), then those members could decide to use that money to fund development of the network by MaidSafe the company, could they not? And they could also decide to agree on the usage of coins (in a majority voting) and they could simply decide to sell them directly to raise funds for development or agree to a plan as you discussed it. But then later, they could also agree to not call in that debt if the community believes that is not in the interest of growth yet.
Right now, all these decisions of whether something is “fair” or “potentially shady” is left with you and you are doing tough and very fair calls, but you put the company in a disadvantaged position that the community might not want you to be in just because it is “fair” but rather take that hit and take responsibility for that decision – especially towards the outside and future members and contributors. I for once would also not see anything “shady” in the foundation being the entity who can “sell” or “lease” DNSNames on the official SAFE Network to continuously raise funds for growth and development.
Or in another way: how can we join that foundation, donate now, and come together and build solutions to solve the mid-term funding issues?
The maidsafe foundation is a separate legal entity registered as a charity in Scottish law and regulated by OSCR. They accepted responsibility to become a conduit for crowdsale coins as a conduit separate from the company. The trustees there have a focus on Education and Innovation, not crypto currency, although they stand to make significant income from those coins for their charitable objects (Education innovation).
They would unlikely accept donations to build software as they keep apart from that. I am not a trustee of the foundation and have no part in their meetings etc… They have spent most time in fab labs / school events and hosting the Chernobyl Children a few times so far, but they have no income really. As MaidSafe becomes successful the foundation will benefit and then direct funds toward the objects it has.
A foundation /community/group as described could do this, but we have a few things to announce that will help us all and are currently being finalised. You can see the huge number of people wishing to help and it’s great, but we do need to formalise, agree and present complete solutions.
Our current difficulty is resource based and this is being addressed. The sale or otherwise of coins is only a small part of the ongoing business as you would expect. There are two big issues to solve (generally) and these are
Ability to scale in a productive manner.
Funding such scale
This has been the focus continually for a long time and we have made a lot of progress on point 1, but are only at the beginning of point executing plans of part 2. These will change continually as markets change and any remaining technical risk. Reducing the risk is a hugely important part of this.
So we have Viv and the Engineers working their pants off, reducing the risk and iterating through tests/releases. That is extremely important.
Nick is doing incredibly difficult work in altering and managing finances at hand and investigating any potential funding, focussed on pros and cons of each option (control, security, time etc.).
I then work on ongoing designs and plans for the the technical progress, community engagement and partnership opportunities (from a capability perspective) as well as the company direction. So I am between Nick and Viv and we talk every day about these particular issues.
At the moment though we do need heads down and execute what we believe will be beneficial to progress, this announcement is a part of a larger plan and that plan will change, I am 100% sure of that
Looking forward (and I am sure do many others here) to read what you have up your sleeves. You are asking for patience and you have our trust on this, but we are very impatient and want to help . And as we have no idea what you are discussing internally whenever we have an idea, we can’t help ourselfes and blast it out here – maybe you haven’t thought of that yet.
So, the only thing I can emphasis again is that there is a big community you can count on and plenty of capable people, who’d love to help in whatever matter they can. But we’ll wait. Excited like a kid at Christmas. Sitting on their hands. But waiting patiently .
Yes, we are very grateful for this, for sure. We just balance between doing and talking to allow us to produce some plans and announce them. It’s a good problem really, but I tend to keep on the forum updates to allow Nick and Viv to get things done. Some negotiations for seemingly simple things takes way way longer than expected.
It’s all good, but never fast enough, for me as well (I am a huge optimist but lack patience for progress). A few things we have in pipeline will engage many more community members to help in the resource side of many parts of the project. This will be a big help and I am excited by that one, as well as a couple of other things we hope to get done in next week or so.
This is so critical and so not front and center. The distractions are not working in your favor. Engaging the likes of @benjaminbollen and his pettiness are a complete waste of your skill and energy. If there ever was a reason Maidsafe will fail its because the noise was more important than the prize. David needs to delegate the task of dealing with the noise to a capable and trusting person or persons until such time as the waters have calmed and focus on one thing only. Delivery.
Proving and releasing the Safenet will bring all the top-shelf investors and crack developers knocking on the doors in Troon. IMO this is the solution to the problem.
There we have it, for those who care to read David’s words, what MaidSafe need right now is a little patience and less hassling or half baked suggestions.
They need…
At the moment though we do need heads down and execute what we believe will be beneficial to progress, this announcement is a part of a larger plan and that plan will change, I am 100% sure of that
And…
A few things we have in pipeline will engage many more community members to help in the resource side of many parts of the project. This will be a big help and I am excited by that one, as well as a couple of other things we hope to get done in next week or so.
It is fine to have ideas, but they are not solutions unless you can turn them into a plan, resource them and get them done.
It is clear that David believes MaidSafe can do this and that he is spending time here keeping the community on board (time that he could be spending elsewhere if we’d allow that), while other members of the team get on and get those resources in place.
I suggest that we hold the fear and suspicion, ignore the pop up FUD accounts and the market manipulators (who will be back stronger, having learned from their failure), and review this in another month. Hopefully by then MaidSafe themselves will be able to set our minds at rest!
Personally I trust David and Nick on this. I know that’s a risk, even trustable people can mess up, but that is my choice and my responsibility.
I also trust that when they need and can make use of our help, they will ask for it… and when they do I’m sure this community will eagerly take on those tasks and help out.
how can a loan be theft? in the us many companies take out shareholder loans. its common practice and every start up company has cash flow problems. After what happened with the crowdsale, the core team should be rewarded and it is the logical thing to do. The people who disagree with this are shorting maid imo. Its the best option for the shareholders long term, but there too many people wanting short terms gains, (not going to mention any names) even if it means core development grinds to a halt. Im glad maidsafe decided this rather than vc backing.
We have two very senior advisors who were FD’s of very large companies (skype/Sun) so we are probably covered for now A CFO will be in place when cash starts flowing, after a product exists proper
– maybe you haven’t thought of that yet.
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