Author Topic: Angel funds being given away by I3 - no transparency, input, or explanation?  (Read 22946 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline bytemaster

I have given Valentine, Nathan, Vikram, and Toast each 30K PTS so they have a vested (literally) interest in seeing BTS grow.

We are very much into "no contracts" and "trust based" allocation of resources.   Each of these guys has proven their loyalty to the project and the greater cause and their passion is undeniable. 

You want independent developers making decisions and I have selected these guys as an independent team that I want to have financial independence.

They will be taking paid delegate positions, but I am limiting it to one delegate each which at 30K/year is only 20% of what they could be making and takes nothing into consideration for the extra risks in this industry.   

In other words, giving them the funds makes things more secure and further decentralizes the process.
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline toast

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4001
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: nikolai
Also to be clear, our salaries are all ending.

This is being replaced by paid delegates, and the distribution of remaining I3 funds?


You and other developers are critical to the future of bitshares and it is important that you guys dont run out of money and have to go back to working on other projects for a salary.  I for one greatly appreciate the risk you are currently taking, and I hope you will be massively rewarded for it in the future. :)

I don't want to say too much without Dan giving an official answer, but the idea is:

* All core devs stop taking a salary
* All core devs get *one* paid delegate
* All core devs get a bunch of BTS (half via BTSX and half vesting via PTS)
* The rest of the remaining AGS funds are earmarked for stuff like emergency legal defense.

Our task is:  Take this chunk of BTS and grow its value. If you can grow BTS to the point where your delegate can sustain your full-time job (so like 4x market cap sustained), good job, keep the rest. If not, you burn through it to survive until either the project dies or doesn't need you anymore.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2014, 10:59:27 pm by toast »
Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.


Offline Ander

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3506
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: Ander
Also to be clear, our salaries are all ending.

This is being replaced by paid delegates, and the distribution of remaining I3 funds?


You and other developers are critical to the future of bitshares and it is important that you guys dont run out of money and have to go back to working on other projects for a salary.  I for one greatly appreciate the risk you are currently taking, and I hope you will be massively rewarded for it in the future. :)
https://metaexchange.info | Bitcoin<->Altcoin exchange | Instant | Safe | Low spreads

Offline toast

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4001
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: nikolai
Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.

Offline toast

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4001
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: nikolai
Quote
assets entrusted to I3 for purposes of development and marketing

This is them spending it on development. Contract negotiation is a reality... Maybe you disagree with these particular expenditures. I've disagreed with lots of Dan's in the past.

I'll let Dan explain the details when he gets around to it. In the meantime, consider these two facts that have been brought up a few times:

* I gave up $150k / year at Google to work for a fraction of that salary at enormous risk. The other devs are at least as skilled as I am.
* We are the only people on earth capable of delivering on BTS. If we left right now BTS would die, while we could make a viable competitor.

If you think we aren't actors you want to make into vested interests well in excess of what we could buy from working another job, I suggest you lay out what you would need try to build something without us. I guess your alternate PTS is trying to do this, so far all the people actually building this thing seem to just blow it off.
Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.

Offline GaltReport

These are good questions.  I think I recall BM saying in a post somewhere that more details on this would be forthcoming.  Can't find it now but that's my memory.  I'm sure inquiring minds want to know.

Offline alphaBar

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 321
    • View Profile
Over the past couple of weeks I've been requesting an accounting of the assets entrusted to I3 for purposes of development and marketing. Just before the November 5th snapshot, and after repeatedly ignoring my private and public questions, I3 began to divide the funds into 30,000 PTS amounts held in separate addresses:
https://www.coinplorer.com/PTS/Addresses/PaNGELmZgzRQCKeEKM6ifgTqNkC4ceiAWw

Here was my initial post, which received little attention and no reply from Dan or Stan:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10908

I put together a divestiture proposal for the Angel fund which has also been repeatedly ignored by I3:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10701.0

The only response regarding the divestiture proposal was that the funds would simply be "granted" to the devs, so we don't have to worry about distribution being centralized. Really? These funds were donated to I3 with the distinct purpose of being used for marketing and development. Now the solution is to simply give them away and hope that they will be used wisely? What happened to accountability? What company just "grants" millions of dollars of its shareholder assets to third parties without any way to hold them accountable for use of those funds?

The fact that very few people on this forum even care about this is the worst part. If I3 cannot make these types of important decisions with transparency and community input, how in the world do we expect to gain the trust of investors outside of this community? Do we think that nobody will ask these questions? Or that we can simply ignore them and they will go away? What kind of unsophisticated investor are we trying to court who wouldn't care about this? Very frustrated by it all...