- Since the biggest cost (and barrier to entry) is the die. We will instruct the fab to release the die to "public domain". That means, any company can place an order from the fab without having to invest in any NREs. This will lead to a healthier competition.
By instructing the fab I understand that this will be your obligation to do so, being specified in a contract of some sort.
You see, trust is very hard to earn and stuff like "we will do x and y" means nothing if it isn't clearly stated in some form of legal binding contract.
I am interested in this project, I think it's fair and good to the community to have access to cheap hardware in order to have a more diverse ecosystem. Right now the markups are huge because there is a huge demand for these products, they are scarce and everyone, from Avalon to Bitfury, CoinCraft, CoinTerra, CoinWhatever has to make the choice of selling this chip at a higher price or mine for themselves (personally I would mine for myself - too much hassle) yet neither of them, so eager to "help the community" has come up front and said "we will make our chip public domain".
There are kickstarter projects that raised more than 2 million yet we buy custom made hardware because we are looking for the same thing: ROI in 4-5 weeks and a fairly fat profit 6-9 months down the road. Greed is natural. Fortunately, technology limits that.
Also you will only get one shot at this so you know... you have to make it count.
I will be watching this thread.