He consulted a number of people in order to reach this decision and I believe that his mind is already made up.
One hallmark of a strong leader is the willingness to reevaluate decisions given new information, and keep ego out of the equation. Several people here have made well-reasoned arguments for a cap, and against the idea that an unbounded crowd sale is "good for the community". I think most people would appreciate hearing a reasoned rebuttal, addressing the new points.
Otherwise, given the sale hasn't occurred yet, and modifying a line of the contract for a cap should be simple -- the head-in-the-sand response of "we've already decided" -- appears to be an emotional response. Indications of emotion-based decision making will not bode well for the project.
Anyone can contribute at the last hours/minutes of Phase 2 (for example), when he has more information about how the contribution campaign went.
That doesn't change the argument, only the time frame. For that argument to be true, only a few people would have the idea to jump in at the last minute, making only a nominal impact on the total amount raised. The problem is that an unbounded raise will lead a significant number the total investors to adopt this "last minute" strategy. In this situation the cap could jump by $20M in the last 10 seconds. People hit refresh to find out the value of their investment went down by half. Again, if the concern is truly for the community, then the team would not allow its most vulnerable members -- those with little to no investing experience, and without the ability to have their investments tied up for two years, until the market recovers -- to be placed at risk.
Hy Elevated,
your arguments are valid and true for investors looking for a fast and calculable ROI. In that case our campaign might not be the most attractive model.
However the primary objective of the campaign is not to make money fast, but to build something everyone on the world can profit from if they put energy, time and their mind into it. Sound out of the norm and emotional? Well change usually comes from outside the norm and our current economic-value system excluded emotions completely and created a framework of infinite growth on a finite planet.
We want to change that.
The missing cap should show the reflection of how willingly the world is to build something like this together.
How come you are so sure the price will spiral down?
There is a lot happening before the mainnet launch and we will continue to constantly grow communication and feedback with the community once the backing campaigns.
Honestly it will just get started then, since the æternity open source foundation will emerge out of the incubator phase between the 1st and 2nd backing campaign and from there many more projects will spawn that will keep exposure and interest high. Hence it's not unlikely that the speculative value of the coin will rise.
Furthermore I want to state that we are not primarily creating a coin, we want to build software that can help change the world to a sustainable piece of land, everyone can enjoy if they take responsibility for their selfs.
Cheers,
Dan
Dan, thanks for the response. It's encouraging that the team is at least willing to consider and reply to dissenting opinions.
but to build something everyone on the world can profit from if they put energy, time and their mind into it.
It may be useful to be more specific about the "everyone" you mention, and what I believe Vlad called "community". For the scope of this discussion, allow me to segment that into "investors" and "programmers".
You mention those that "profit" by building something with their energy and time. The word "profit" here is ambiguous; what I think you mean is to make a living, and not to profit from the Aeternity token. If so, then I believe who you're referring to here are programmers and founders. In this case, will Aeternity like most other crypto projects not offer faucets and test nets? And even when the programmer's projects go live, will the gas/fees not be adjusted to always be of nominal expense? If so, then I don't see how "getting AE tokens" would be relevant to this group, ever. Furthermore, this coin will be available on exchanges long before the vast majority of programmers and founders discover it, let alone build a dapp on it. Correct me if I'm not understanding.
Your comment about ROI makes me think that you don't understand that the investors, not the programmers, are the ones sitting with their finger on the mouse at the dawn of the crowd sale. We are of course looking for a ROI, albeit not necessarily a quick one, because this is our job. We are not necessarily interested in building anything with Aeternity, but we have every reason to hope that others will. Many of us also have the best interest of the crypto ecosystem in mind. Too many people losing money attracts negative attention. We are providing the value of equity for your project, and taking a substantial risk in doing so. If there were no ROI, there would be no investors, and no runway for your work (Not every investor is in for a quick turnaround either). If you agree with that statement, and value the investment part of your community, then it follows that you'd be eager to recognize our interests too. This includes at the very least allowing us to understand what we're paying for our contribution, and reducing the risk we incur, where possible - especially to the new investors, of which there are now many in this space.
For the sake of other forum members, I'm going to "cap" my reply here, unless you specifically request more of me.