Quote from: bswinner on March 30, 2017, 06:56:56 PM

Quote from: Elevated on March 30, 2017, 07:10:47 AM

Quote

Hey, I asked our founder Yanislav to provide you with a reply, but he is quite busy with the campaign, so I will do it.

First of all, thank you for the reply. We really appreciate your comments and find them quite relevant.

Let me address your points.

We decided to have no volume cap so that anyone willing can participate. We believe that if more people have AE the value of the underlying system will increase. No cap was also Ethereum's approach and that was quite successful.

The name "Friends, Family and Real Innovators" might not be the best choice of words, but this is how we imagine the first people supporting us. I believe Yanislav, being quite sentimental at times, tried to express "closeness" with the first contribution campaign participants.

We definitely see your "over-bought" point. However, organizing a campaign such as this one will always be a balancing act. We are building a public blockchain and we want as many people as possible to use it. This point is further stressed by Yanislav's idea to distribute 1% of AE tokens, created during the backing campaign, to most (technical limits apply) BTC and ETH users by "attaching" ownership to public addresses.

Again, thank you for the comments and thank you for the good words in the end. We appreciate both.

Vlad

Vlad, thanks for your reply. We both desire greater community benefit, including accessibility, and I think there are a few more points to consider:

Quote

We believe that if more people have AE the value of the underlying system will increase.

I think the focus is too much on "our family now", at the expense of the larger segment "our eventual family (e.g. two years out)". The vast majority of people, including weekend crypto enthusiasts and the later stage adopters, will find out about AE well after the crowdsale. If the crowdsale cap is low, them the opening market cap for the coin will be congruent with a very early stage startup. That congruence will be more likely to attract attention (and investment) as it will be seen as an investment that makes sense. The project and price are then more likely to grow as a function of the merits of the project, and demonstrations of what's being produced - items that will justify a higher market cap. The sustainable returns will create positive community attention and media attention, which will fulfill your goal of getting more people involved.

Conversely, if an unbounded sale raises $50M for example, for an immature product, I think you're likely to see a panic sell as soon as AE tokens are on the market, as people realize they've paid too much, and don't want to wait two to three years for a $50M market cap to make sense. An immediate large drop in your market cap makes for bad news, and will likely further deter investment and raise questions about the team's decision making. Additionally, the people that are losing money in that situation include your earlier adopters. An event like that would taint the project from the start, and impede your growth.

Quote

No cap was also Ethereum's approach and that was quite successful.

I don't believe this is an appropriate comparison. The Ethereum crowdsale was 2.5 years ago, when the cumulative market cap for Crypto was around $ 7B. It's now worth 3.5x more, at ~ $25 B. This has attracted many more investors, and as I mentioned earlier, even mainstreem VCs are now on the field. Moreover, the market is extremely bullish now. I think an uncapped crowdsale now is likely to raise more than Ethereum did.

The second point on the Ethereum crowdsale is that a good outcome doesn't necessarily equal a good decision.

Quote

The name "Friends, Family and Real Innovators" might not be the best choice of words, but this is how we imagine the first people supporting us.

I think it's excellent to be close to your users, and I think this point deserves more consideration: If the team indeed has the best interests of their "friends, family and innovators" in mind, I believe an important action would be to minimize the risk of them paying too much for tokens, and potentially losing money if they need to sell tokens in the first year or two, by not capping the sale at a level appropriate to the business needs of the project. To have an uncapped sale is to allow your friends and family to contribute their hard-earned savings, blindly -- they will have no idea of the worst-case price of their tokens at the time of contribution. In other words, an unbounded sale allows the risk of extreme dilution if a new entrant VC decides to flood you with Eth, at the expense of all the backers.

For both the benefit of your project, and the protection of your backers, I encourage you to reconsider putting a cap on the project that is aligned with your business needs, and will protect your backers from an over-bought token.

I agree. The risk of being overbought with subsequent price crash and/or stagnation is high. This poses a threat to the success of the coin by putting at risk the very community that will, in many ways determine the success of the coin.

Further, I almost wonder if it could backfire. Certainly, a limitless crowdsale could dissuade large scale investment from VCs and the like. It's hard to imagine that a VC would invest without having at least some idea of their ownership stake. Obviously, any investment in a crypto crowdsale is risky - I understand that. But having no cap increases uncertainty around ownership stake and the required holding period to receive any return on investment. That does not seem healthy to me.

Would it be possible to at least consider a cap on phase 2 based on the results of phase 1?

Guys, thank you for the comments and thank you for having æternity's best interest in mind. I have forwarded all your points and considerations to Yanislav. To me personally, they make sense, but the final decision rests. He consulted a number of people in order to reach this decision and I believe that his mind is already made up. Let's see.

After consultation: We are not that into getting big VCs in. Anyone can contribute at the last hours/minutes of Phase 2 (for example), when he has more information about how the contribution campaign went.

Regards,
Vlad