BitShares Forum
Other => Graveyard => Muse/SoundDAC => Topic started by: CryptoPrometheus on January 26, 2016, 03:00:25 am
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@cob,
Some people on this forum have begun to question your ability to execute. While I do not yet count myself among them, I have a growing concern with your lack of professionalism, casual dismissal of the valid grievances of MUSE shareholders, and apparent unwillingness to provide a greater level of transparency. I understand that what you are attempting to build must be very difficult, but if you were to spend some time finding ways to improve communications with MUSE shareholders, then I think a little effort would go a long way.
As a Peertracks crowdfund investor, I would like to bring to your attention some concerns I have about the way you have conducted your fiduciary responsibilities to your shareholders. To be clear, I am aware that you are not legally bound to any duties as such, but nevertheless I hope the contents of this letter can provide you some insight and feedback that you will choose to take to heart.
I do not possess any “insider” information that would give me a reason to doubt the project, but I also do not have much solid evidence to the contrary. Therefore, I believe that my evaluation is likely similar to what others who are “outside the loop” have found.
Here’s my assessment:
From October 6 thu. December 5, 2014, you raised 1,436 BTC, ostensibly towards the development of a Music promotion/sales/peer-2-peer platform based on the DPOS software protocol.
I assume that you immediately converted those funds to a stable fiat currency, rather than holding the BTC and speculating with the funds that investors entrusted to you. Between the two crowdfund dates, Bitcoin never fell below $350, so even if you only managed to get $300 per BTC, that would still put your grand total over $430,000.
http://www1.agsexplorer.com/
From December 2014 to present, you have averaged less than 1 official update to the Bitshares community (your largest crowdfund donor pool) per month, usually 3-4 paragraphs each, in which you have repeatedly claimed that 90% of your plans must remain under lock and key, as they are so amazing that they would immediately be stolen by the competition.
During this same period, you published 4 different websites, IMO all rather unprofessional looking, but nevertheless full of big promises. Setting aside the numerous spelling and grammatical errors, none of them seemed to leave the reader without much sense of what Peertracks actually is. In fact 13 months after the completion of your crowdfund, you have yet to deliver a business plan, timeline, milestones, strategy, budget, marketing materials, or much real evidence that you have done anything besides talk. (I personally believe that you have done more than talk, but nevertheless I am finding little empirical evidence to support this.) I'm not a coder, but AFIK releasing a clone of the Bitshares light client and labeling it "MUSE" is does not require more than a few days effort.
Last Thursday, you dropped a bombshell of an update. Please correct me if I misunderstood, but you stated that you must raise more money or you will not be able to continue development? I thought it was rather strange that you chose to spend 1/3 of the update justifying how your admittedly bad decision to outsource developers "actually worked out in your favor" because of labor market forces beyond your control. This does not inspire much confidence in you ability to make sound business decisions.
What I mean is - if you are trying to prevent a loss in confidence, then why would you spend 3 paragraphs highlighting your error, and then attempt to cover your tracks by basically saying “don’t worry guys... due to a fortuitous accident, we didn’t mess up as badly we should have”. I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m just trying to highlight that you guys should really consider hiring a PR manager.
More to the point - my number one question is - How have you spent the rest of our money? I know that nobody likes to be micromanaged, but since you have taken funds from a public crowd sale - I believe we have the right to know. Even if you round to the nearest $1000, I would find that more satisfactory than nothing.
Frankly, your inconsistent and cryptic communication over these last 12 months would never fly if you were a publicly traded stock. At this stage, you would be hard pressed to raise a 2nd round of capital from any investor who did his due diligence. Of course you could always try your luck with a naive and unsuspecting “kickstarter” crowd, which is apparently what you are now considering.
To be perfectly clear, I am not at all accusing you of foul play, but I am trying to highlight the fact that a few short paragraphs of hype and promises does not satisfy your responsibilities to the people who have been waiting patiently for over a year. I have extended “benefit of the doubt” up to this point, and have chosen to watch and wait patiently. I have not overlooked the obvious roadblocks that you have faced, least among them the bumpy upgrade to DPOS 2.0. I have been a huge supporter in my own circles, and several of my friends and family members have invested in Peertracks. I say this to disclose that perhaps my feelings or opinions are not entirely unbiased.
I very much want this project to succeed, and so I hope that my feedback will useful to you. I also hope you will honor your responsibility and address some of the recent feedback of other concerned shareholders, rather than the “ignore and push on forward” method that I have seen you adopt in the past.
Thanks for your time,
Michael
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cool
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That's fair game. The latest communication was clearly underwhelming for many stakeholders. I understand the reasons for keeping the product/service somewhat secretive, but here's the key: the longer it remains secretive, the more people will expect from it.
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That's fair game. The latest communication was clearly underwhelming for many stakeholders. I understand the reasons for keeping the product/service somewhat secretive, but here's the key: the longer it remains secretive, the more people will expect from it.
What secrecy man ? You are making things up. They have absolutely nothing to hide, nothing....
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I feel like a MULE for investing in MUSE :-[
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Name the guys still remaining on your team! Is Eddie still there? How do you run business without funds currently?
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I think that it's not his fault. Instead of platform that was supposed to be a tool for building a distributed autonomous corporation, DAC, Bytemaster built a monster. It is difficult even to import the private key in that monster. Bitshare can succeed only if it proves that it is possible to build something on it. Currently it is not so. Failure of MUSE is failure of Bitshares! To be honest I invested in Bitshares mainly because of Bitshare music (MUSE) I liked the idea.
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Imo bitshares gui is better and easier than any bitcoin wallet out there, its just not that speculative for many , thats all.
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https://youtu.be/mP82XmUNgNM
(http://i.imgur.com/lH9BTGV.png)
It's seems that those tough question to Vitalik returned to Larimer's head like a boomerang.
(http://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Feral-Kid-Boomerang-05192015.jpg)
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It's seems that those tough question to Vitalik returned to Larimer's head like a boomerang.
If you listen this video you should know that Vitalik doesn't address this questions yet, soon Vitalik will move Ethereum to POS (with Casper, which works more or less as DPOS) and when we will see if it's address bytemaster questions.
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I agree, the risk of Muse has been great.
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If you listen this video you should know that Vitalik doesn't address this questions yet, soon Vitalik will move Ethereum to POS (with Casper, which works more or less as DPOS) and when we will see if it's address bytemaster questions.
That moment will be the final victory and the end of Bitcoin. There are really no need to burn all that energy if you can find better solution.
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If you listen this video you should know that Vitalik doesn't address this questions yet, soon Vitalik will move Ethereum to POS (with Casper, which works more or less as DPOS) and when we will see if it's address bytemaster questions.
That moment will be the final victory and the end of Bitcoin. There are really no need to burn all that energy if you can find better solution.
Time will show :)
I'm bit more skeptical about it.
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I addressed some of the same concerns in the last update by Cob. I think the OP is critical for stakeholders.
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I reached out to cob. Perhaps we can get him to come chat with us for an hour and tell of the journey thus far and plans going forward. I suspect much of it was probably on legal fees...
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What if cob opens another thread without addressing any of our questions?
I mean isn't that ignorant?
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I literally just created another thread to get a clear and concise Q list.
Then I see these last 2 posts!
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21185.0.html