2 days ago I was going to take a small position on Maidsafe, suddenly, they screwed things up with the IPO trough MSC and I decided not to buy in. Nevertheless, the idea is really interesting, maybe I would give them a second chance.
NXT is really promising for me. I think in this forum there is a non reasonable hate towards NXT: If the price goes up, they blame the initial distribution, if the price goes down they say NXT is dead. This is totally stupid. The IMPORTANT point is the tons of developments the devs of NXT are carry on at the moment and you can check at their forum. In 3-4 months time and if the devs continue the good work, NXT could make a killing in cryptoworld.
Finally, I should read more about Ethereum to make a wise decision.
Maidsafe didn't really screw up. They had more interest then they expected and the found a fair way to compensate people for the irregularities. The "I bought MSC and now I'm screwed" crowd has a small case, but they shouldn't take it too badly. MSC is just getting started and they are better off getting in now then in a years time.
I hadn't been fond of NXT as I'm more of a Mastercoin guy, but I'm going to give it a look along with Ethereum.
It's not just "I bought MSC and now I'm screwed". People who have invested in maidsafe are partial to maidsafe now. What dev have done is destroying the base of virtual community----trust. I really think the project is innovative. But if all of us just care about technique but not morality, this place gonna be full of scam.
We got caught on the hop, systems were still being developed and tested and we were to introduce things through the 30 days as it developed. It finished even before we could tell what was happening nearly. Amazing and great to see support, but the most frightening thing in my life so far (and I took to rough seas as a volunteer lifeboat helmsman to save people in danger, so this is no exaggeration on how scary this was).
What we did was allow BTC funders to participate, MSC was all purchased by us. BitAngels offered and paid out MSAFE to MSC holder who were aggrieved and could prove they had MSC. I think what was achieved was the fairest mechanism possible and we did the whole sale for 40% discount for everyone. I cannot see that as greed or erosion of trust. It was a difficult and fast decision which rightly alarmed everyone. We did do a release as soon as we could to explain it all, but no action would have meant all early BTC funders were locked out and that would have been the unfair part.
Looking back, yes I would have done it different, so would the Master Protocol guys. It was a tsunami we never seen (yes possibly we should have) coming and we had to action in the benefit of the masses and we did. There is a public meet tonight with many of the parties involved to do a 'warts and all' walk through to improve any upcoming crowd sales. This should help out anyone following us in the leading edge process we took part in. On that point we managed the situation by sticking together and focussing on the community first, then the projects last.
So yes mistakes happened and will be learned from, but lack of morality is not very fair for anyone involved as far as I could tell anyway.