What more is it to tell? That's about it. Someone were asking about the history in Lisk chat, so I made a post about it here.

I'm not asking to see this data myself on purpose, I don't want to obsess over something I can't change. But based on the last info I heard those who wanted refunds were pretty few so far. We'll all see final numbers in a few days.

There are some crazy theories and assumptions based on faulty or just too little information about not only ARK but the Lisk communities inner workings, so I decided to give a quick overview of how the ARK team has formed and why. I tried to make it as factual as possible, correct me if you see a factual mistake.

At the very beginning of Lisk when the ICO just begun and people   started to gather in Lisk Chat, malreynolds organized a group of people called Trusted Delegates. The TDs original goal was to find trustworthy Lisk supporters to run the Lisk delegate nodes. The initial the main effort was to exlude sockpuppets, people trying to run multiple delegates. For this reason the initial TD members were those with history on BCT and/or meaningful continuous involvement in Lisk chat. The group formed and as these things go, it got more organized, rules and guildelines were made, members supported each other, some members become inactive while others joined, a community was forged (pun intended).

And what an active community it was and still is. The private channel had many times the activity of all of the public channels combined, because it was such a good group of people that we all fealt comfortable talking in there even on subject that belonged to the public channels. Max, Oliver, Joel, isabella and fixcrypt were also in the channel for many months. They only decided to exclude themselves later on when we started concentrating on voting power because they felt -and rightly so- that discussion about our voting strategies should not include them.

This group stayed strong long after forging delays were announced throught the closing of the private channels in Lisk chat (our fault, sorry, we should have been more active in public channels), and remained very active, rebranded to GDT (Global Delegate Team).

The beginning of ARK were just some off and on brainstorming session on a remote slack channel (#sharktank, I think), that slowly grown by then (again) including fixcrypt who just parted ways from Lisk. Anyone from GDT was welcome to participate and many did. A new Slack was created with open invitations to all GDT members and those who joined now known as the ARK Crew, I think it was almost 50 members. Discussion continued and the most active from these group, those who at the time had the interest and the time to actively work on a new project became the Ark Founding Team that has 25 members.

So we didn't built such a big team from nothing, but formed from an already select and battle tested larger group. We didn't even assign former roles to each other we just contributed wherever we felt we could make the most of our abilities. We weren't all large holders who wanted to take over, or replace Lisk. We just had an idea in our daily interactions and we had the will, the time and energy to make it into a reality.

Today GDT is still by far the largest and best organized group in the Lisk community and still supports Lisk and includes most of the people who long time supporters, made tools for Lisk, run it's testnet and mainnet delegates.
ARK members are still GDT members (amongst the most active members in fact), we are just sub group with a side project. Others has other involvement outside of Lisk, ours just more noticable being a Lisk fork and because of fixcrypt as a developer.

So any claims that ARK tries to overtake, replace, etc Lisk is just silly. Harming Lisk would be harming ourselves. Of course if you ask various members the exact interpretation of this statement may vary because we have different views on Lisk after 8 months of involvement, but that's just shows that ARK as a group has no agenda for or against Lisk. Individual members...you will have to ask them personally.

No it doesn't.

Then ARK will keep you in return.

In all seriousness thank you everyone who already let us know their decision, and I urge those who didn't to do so. For those who are undecided let us know, maybe we can provide additional answers.

No it's not possible to change it later, at least not on the TEC site.

I wouldn't worry about that. For one there are few pools in. For other if pool voters consistently sell their payout while other forgers won't, the pools will be pushed out in time.
The delegate game is complex, weight is like chips in poker, very important.

I would also like this opportunity to make it clear again what this means, for those less experienced with TEC or ICO, or just didn't had the time to think it over.

This is the price based on the distribution calculations, and if the distribution would be different this price would be different. So if someone sees that his ARK amount decreased it doesn't mean that they lost something. If their amount wouldn't have decreased then the price would be less and their ARK coins would still have the same value, just a different amount.

May I ask, how was it not clear?
The bonuses were stated, the incoming amounts recorded. Anyone is able to check based on public data if our calculations are correct.
It's outside of our control how much funds are sent during various bonus periods, the only thing we can do is calculate based on the numbers.

But again, the amount of ARK (and any change of it) shown in your TEC account is meaningless. If you put in 1 BTC your amount initially worth 1 BTC no matter if you get 10000 ARK or 20000 ARK.

If you are experienced with ICOs you should know that your bonus adjusted amount can change in either directions, because it's not only based on your bonus but according to everyones. It's possible for your amount to decrease because the 120% bonus investments were many.

However I'd like to point out that while your ARK amount may have changed, the total value of it didn't, they are what they always were, only the numbers are corrected.

This is the reason that I'm always against showing approximate coin distibution during ongoing fundraising, it provides no useful information for participants, yet when it's adjusted people always feel that they are losing money, when it's not the case.

I agree, however we are planning accordingly. For one as the minimum treashold wasn't reached and some will ask for refund, there will be ARK left over that can be used to obtain additional funding at a later date. We also have some other ideas, that we are yet to discuss in public. For example we specifically created the TEC backend so it can be easily lendable to other projects who need backend for fundraising. We will also be available for escrow for these projects if they request it. There already had been some inquiry on this front.

So, while it's very important to have a good foundation and we obtain as much funding from TEC as possible, we try our best so the project doesn't solely depend on it. As cannabanana said we are a large team of experienced crpyto enthusiasts, we know what to look for, and it also allows us to do this while not effecting development speed and direction negatively, as we have separate people for development, fundrasing efforts, public relations, investor group contacts, etc.
We know it will be an ongoing effort not only to develop but to fund that development, and we are getting ready for the challenge.

I'm aware of the limited effect the bonus has, that is why I only mentioned it in parentheses.
Altough the effect is slightly greater than you stated, I think the first day lisk was around 5 mill.

We are very much avoiding making any too tight time commitements (we are all longtime Liskers, so have some experience with such things), but just between us, something drastic should happen for us no to meet the febr 1 deadline.

As a matter of fact the goal is not to even come close to it, but have the code ready sooner, we'll see how it goes.

I'm very curious what will happen. Especially how many people would want Lisk refunds, as the median Lisk price for TEC is 0.00022047 BTC, which is a lot higher than the current 0.000178 Lisk price. (not to mention the added lisk bonuses of course)

I would like to urge everyone to log in at the TEC site and let us know their intention as soon as possible. Either keep it in or ask for refund, the decision is theirs, but it would be good to let us know. We have plans to make, timelines to draw up, milestones to assign, and this would be helpful data.
It's quick and easy, two clicks and you are done. https://tec.ark.io/dashboard

If you select the option it will ask for a returning address. This is necessary as a lot of people usually send from exchanges.

Distribution is something that can be done nothing about right now. The first phase for it was TEC, that ended, the next one will be when the main net launches. Until then the distribution won't change.
By the way, with 1724 participans the initial distribution is far from bad, I would say well above avarage for similar projects.

No we are not planning on it. ARK as a project has no intentions of getting involve with Lisk affairs (other then normal partnership between similar projects), and while the ARK team members as individuals are part of the lisk community and many of them delegates, we are not planning to use those funds for ARK.

I disagree there are many incentives to stay in. For one Lisk refunds really don't make sense. The avarage median price of the TECs duration is above 0.00022, that is much better than the current lisk price, and that's beside the additional Lisk bonuses. Simply put the ARK most people will get for their Lisk in ARK worth much more than the same amount of lisk currently does on the open market.

Even besides that there are other reasons to stay in. It's up to individuals to assess the risk/reward ratio, but this may very well be the cheapest opportunity to buy ARK. I know everyone always says that, but in this case it's more probable than in most others.
It's always possible to the price to crash after ARK gets to exchanges, but as it will have a low initial market cap it is much less likely than with other overbought projects. Every project that's price crashed hard after launch had either been a very big ICO success or other reasons contributed, like huge bounties. We were very carful to assign reasonable bonuties, so there will probably be much less effect from the bounty dumping crowed than with other projects.

Simply put, a large part of a team is experienced crpyto people with years in the sence and seen and participated in many ICOs, so we made our best effort to don't make mistakes seen in the past.
Of course there are always new mistakes to be made, so nothing is guranteed. Again, it will be up to individuals to decide to ask for refund or not.

If there are too much refund requests then we must have done something seriously wrong. Because if nothing else from an traders point of view it's worth the moderate risk of leaving funds where they are just so the project can have a succesful start and by that giving them the opportunity to see a new coin hit the exchanges.

There are many people and many motivations in crpyto scene, we'll see how things develop.

Because distribution requires a main net. However it's not responsible behavior to launch the main net without making sure that the code is ready and stable, the ARK network is functional and usable. We are well on the way. Main net is coming, and while we can't (won't) give exact date for it, it may very well be much sooner than feburary. But this is a decision based on development progress, not PR.

I don't think that all of the bonuses an errant transactions have been worked out yet. It's a complicated process and we want to make sure that we do it right. (This is the reason for the slight delay in the releated announcement.)
However you don't have to worry, even if this amount changes, the value remains the same.