Dzimbeck, the wild west days of alts are long past. I have no hard feelings, actually quite the opposite...I am refreshed to see the people who are still around from those days. Your dedication to your project is admirable. It's great to see you are still working on Bitbay. I've been watching the project from the beginning (I own a small chunk of coins...😝). The Halo projects were revolutionary and before their time, they were like the first "smart contracts" in crypto. We could have made a great team back in those days...
I have had no involvement with SDC for a couple years, nor do I own any coins. I have nothing to do with the team other than I believe Ryno is an honest person and (like you) dedicated to his project. I agree with your take on the "shadow" branding, but as I said, I have no involvement in the decisions.
You are right we could have made a great team. However I am not anonymous and as you have seen I've had my fair share of problems with govt trolls. So its a good thing I didn't do darknet centric markets. Although in theory the markets are anonymous and such, we are branding to a larger audience. I was interviewed by Vice.com and told them the same thing. I'm not going to end up like the reddit guy or piratebay guys and definitely not like Ross Ulbright. I'm fighting for peoples freedoms but if I don't watch my ass then I won't be able to keep fighting and my story would have ended before it started. If I chose that path I would have not been able to keep coding at this pace.
Granted, I'm not obligated to moderate markets. Just like the inventor of uTorrent can't possilby control what torrents are traded. But uTorrent was wise to not brand for anything except filesharing. In the case of Halo, it does this as well. We aren't branding anything except DDE and decentralization as a whole, we are simply doing everything in our power to protect peoples right to privacy and protect them from deception. I'm not sure if that will ever get compromised however we are trying to promote good ideas in the hopes that other projects will see those ideas and be inspired to use them in their own projects. It was a shame to see SYS and OpenBazaar choose escrow models even when their own users asked for a DDE/mutually assured destruction model.
This is why I've always been fond of SDC for remaining true to the idea of decentralization and doing the right thing and choosing two party escrow.
Anyways, keep in touch... don't be a stranger. Email me sometime and perhaps we can catch up.