Quote from: montyf on September 16, 2017, 02:18:53 PM

I've been stalking this forum for a while, and decided to register to get the community's thoughts on an idea.

First some background. For the sake of full transparency: I am the head of tech at a KYC company in South Africa, and we're busy building an attestation service onto the blockchain which is launching pretty soon.

However, this idea is not part of that company and I am not representing them here. Instead, I am going to be embarking (shortly) on a personal project that I am trying to get funded (I've personally funded about 15% of it so far).

So the idea: I am a very keen DIYer, always looking to build things, and my latest personal project is to build a sports-fishing boat. The cost of such a project is vast, and I will be pulling in extra labour if I can get some additional funding to establish a business for some unemployed friends/family.

First a few assumptions...

1. About 900 man-hours will be used to construct the boat. This equates to 54,000 minutes (you'll see why this is important)
2. Equipment/tools purchases of R30,000.00 is still needed.
3. The total materials cost is quantifiable - and is currently estimated at R366,000.00
4. Payment to suppliers must be in a fiat currency
5. Payment to labourers can be in crypto currency
6. Each employee will be a contractor, therefore responsible for their own taxes
7. The company will be split into two after the boat is completed: half will run a fishing charter out of cape town, and the other half (if viable) will build similar fishing boats to order.
8. I am personally invested in this project and if it fails then I make a significant personal loss.
9. South African currency is ZAR and median minimum wage in the construction industry for the necessary skill level is = R40.47 per hour (about US$3.07 at current exchange rate).
10. For this project (and as I believe strongly that the minimum wage in South Africa is a joke), I am aiming to pay R65.00 per man-hour of work performed (equivalent of US$4.93 at current exchange rate).
11. I intend employing 4 people.

Obviously, given the restrictions of an ICO, (can't put up equity in exchange for tokens being the most pertinent) shares in the venture/business cannot be distributed.

However, what if I were to establish an ICO that works more or less as follows:

Time is valuable, and effectively, the value backing the token would be time and materials cost as raw inputs.

1. So, to pay for labour, issue 54,000 tokens
2. Issue 396,000 tokens to cover the materials and equipment costs
4. Issue 50,000 tokens for bounties, bonuses, etc.
3. Issue a further 100,000 tokens to cover any unforeseen costs.

This equates to 600,000 total tokens. Given the base valuation of one token to one minute of work correlation (roughly), tokens will be disbursed as follows:

1. 50,000 tokens will be made available in escrow (released only once funded) for distribution either on a discounted pre-sale, bonus or bounties - in return for marketing, technical work, dev, etc.
2. 396,000 tokens will be made available on a token sale at R1.00 per token (US$0.07 at current exchange rate). Obviously this will be held in Escrow, and returned unless fully funded.
3. Once funded (396,000 tokens), the token will be listed on an exchange.
4. 54,000 will be held in escrow to pay for labour. Labour will be paid weekly over the full build period from these tokens. The contractors will be free to exchange these on the exchange on a supply/demand basis.
5. The 100,000 held for unforeseen costs will not be unloaded unless there is an absolute emergency or specific requirement to do so. In order to make use of this emergency fund, the community (backers purchasing tokens in the ICO) will be asked to vote on this action.

Important notes:

I will not draw a wage from this project, so none of the tokens issued will be allocated to me. I am not seeking to get rich from this.
All backers will need to pass the necessary KYC and sanctions screening.
All accounts, payments and receipts will be made available for scrutiny.
All wages paid will be viewable on the blockchain.
If the 100,000 tokens for unforeseen/emergency costs is not used when the build completes, it will be allocated to the contractors and backers as a bonus.
The build progress will be fully documented. Feel free to ask me any questions about the boat or build process

Ok then, go ahead and rip the idea apart

If you guys think this is a really shit idea, then so be it.

You can easily fund and do this without tokens and it has nothing to do with blockchain. No one would buy these tokens, as there is no network effect.