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.
I know there is a lot of criticism going on about the sell, but you weren't the only one caught by surprised. I bought mastercoin to buy safecoin, came home 3 hours after the sell started only to find out I couldn't even use my mastercoins. hahahaha. Your explanations have been good enough for me. All things considered, I think you did a good job and look forward to see what will come of this in the future. I have been following this launch and think that all things being considered, you have been trying hard to be transparent and fair.
That being said, if mastercoin ever tries to be sold at a price different than their market price ever again, I will dump and trash talk it again and again. We all learnt once, no need to repeat this mistake going forward. And on Maidsafe's part, it would be cool if Maidsafe made some back up plans for things going forward too. Like say for instance, "We think that this is going to happen, but just in case _______ happens, what are we going to do?" I think that is a pretty reasonable request and one that the community would be happy if Maidsafe went through with. Maidsafe doesn't have to be perfect and can't catch everything making a whole new platform from the ground up and going live in a way nobody has before, so some glitches are expected, but hopefully with some back up plans things can be monitored and acted upon when they come up in a way that inspires confidence.