Q: "1. Is there a way for investors to see how many BTC is already invested? As you did not define a fixed BTC price, the actual final price depends of the overall number of BTC invested. Any new investor will be interested to see what is the "current" price of the coin (which is the "number of currently invested BTC" divided by 7,000,000,000,000).. That information is important to potential investors."
A: it is there, on the top of the page: https://ico.mass.network/#/ 

Q: 2. Wouldn't it be appropriate to change the investment discount scheme to attract more early investors? I mean 20% is too little bonus for the risk of investing right now, when so much is unclear regarding the popularity of this project. With current scheme most people will tend to wait until the very end of the ICO, to see how this goes forward.
A: Correct. So it's 45% now.

Q: Any rule changes needs to be announced, because they are important, and any important changes in ICO terms [
A: Yes, should have done this. Will do.

Early believers have to be treated well. They help each dev to believe in himself more; that helps work better; that makes it better for everyone.

End of December. The roadmap is here: https://mass.network/mass-browser-extension.html

Simply put, yes, it should. However, in most cases, expectations of growth move the price earlier and stronger than actual physical events. Please also see this: https://blog.mass.network/mass-network-economic-model/

You can easily find and contact advisory board members since they are quite well known in their fields (and ask them whether we are real ). Good point about the links, though. Will add.
Only two of our team members have real life connection to Russia, so there's no reason for us to base there. Take me, for example (Alexey). I have a Russian name, live in Latvia, and (imagine we set up the facility in Russia) if I want to go to Moscow by car it will turn out to be farther than Warsaw because I have to waste few hours on the EU/Russia border.

I answered the question about escrow above in this thread: the escrow people are to be elected by Advisory Board voting once all of the members have signed up. And we're still expecting at least two important members. Should be done by the next week, though.

Great. Preparing the form and the web page about that. Will let you know.

Our advisory board is expecting a couple of new members very soon; after they are on board, we request all of them (AB members) to vote on the escrow issue. The result should be announced by the middle of the next week. Also, at that moment we will start collecting candidates' application for the project leader position (to be paid with a considerable stake of coins). The leader will be selected by investors based on the stake.

Yes, Bittrex as well. And it closes the list of top priority exchanges.

Shapeshift, Poloniex

Sure, we're developing extensions too. But the flagman product is the browser.

Of course.

We are not an ad platform. We don't try to mess with the advertising market, it is too big, too complex to try to change it from outside.
We offer the way to manage protected web surfers who otherwise (in the case of other ad-blockers) would be jut cut-off from the ad market.

Mass is a totally different idea. Please read this, it's only a 3-4minutes read. https://blog.mass.network/mass-versus-competition/

Only once. In one moment. On December 1.
Here is the model: https://blog.mass.network/mass-network-economic-model/

Thank you for the kind words.

Q: One question - why do you run as a coloured coin instead of altcoin? I know Bitcoin blockchain is very secure, but isn't running as coloured coin have drawbacks?
A: No serious drawbacks, at least nothing to prevent us from using the only stable blockchain in the world.

Q:- do you know at least one solid project currently implemented and colored coin?
A: No. There are NO solid projects in the blockchain field implemented at all, except for the bitcoin currency itself.

Q:- is it worth to overload Bitcoin chain with other solid asset, which may require tremendous amount of transactions..?
A: Lightning comes...

Q:- what about TX fee and block times on BTC chain - do you think they are suitable for asset needing huge amounts of micro-transactions..?
A: Minimal inevitable evil. What else could you do? Altcoin's overall processes cost more even if we decide to disregard the project's security.

Q: Did you consider using IOTA (or launch tangle-based new coin) to reduce (actually bring to zero) TX fees? It is also fixed supply tech, which is one of your requirements.
A: No, we didn't. It's a great concept but still a concept, though.

Q: If fixed supply requirement is what stops you from running a new altcoin chain, then this could be resolved by making the coin Proof-of-stake with zero rewards.
A: There's more what stops us from using an altcoin. Mentioned above  security is one thing. The general rejection of unneeded complexity is another.

Q: What are your plans on making the browser/extensions popular among users (will funds be used for advertizing, payed articles at emagazines etc)?
A: There'll be few large posts in the Update section of the website soon. 
 
Q: What are your plans on attracting webmasters and making them pay? The growth of the userbase will surely attract them, but... this is two-sided process - userbase will grow as soon as users get actually paid...
A: Indeed, Mass is a catalyst-economy project basing on a two-sided market. However, Mass is not a subject to a chicken-and-egg paradox that you mention. One side does not have to wait for another. Ad & tracking filtering works fine just being alone. Moreover, advertising is a very local business, so achieving critical masses for towns or counties shouldn't be a problem.

There is no physical reason to make ICOs short. Marketing ones only.

Our roadmap states we need a working proto by the end of the year so we have to start some market making at least one month prior to the deadline. That means we have to close the coin pre-sale by the beginning of December. We got that sort of reasoning only.

Not sure what you mean. Mass is not a SSP so it has little to do competing with Varta. Could you clarify your question: "Use it as who? As what type of RTB framework participant?"

Thank you!

By technical implementation - it is.

Although, saying that that does not explain any of its real properties.

Mass Coin is designed to serve the health of the advertising economy, of course, but it also suits interests of both long-term investors and middle-term speculators.

The one-time issuance principle guarantees the growth of value as long as the ecosystem doesn’t stagnate. Unlike the most of  the “app coins”, Mass Coin has an application in its core that is in high demand.
Advertising affects everyone and involves a lot of money. Tracking is becoming a really big issue, not only in advertising but elsewhere, on different occasions.

Stage 1: Initial Coin Offering

There are two stages involved in Mass Coin’s distribution: one to be distributed immediately after the ICO period and the rest to be distributed during an indefinitely long time, with distribution tempo ever decreasing. ICO goes until December 1, whatever is accumulated until then — gets distributed among the participants. The larger part goes to immediate distribution. There are several reasons for this.
The system will need immediate liquidity (more market makers) after the product launch by the end of the year, thus many potential independent sellers of the currency are needed: someone will have to sell coins to advertisers.

Another reason is that examples of other systems indicate the opposite balance (majority to be distributed over a long time after the ICO) doesn’t lead to system stability. At least it is far from being enough to make the system any better.

Considering that in real life the majority of money is owned by the large stakeholders such as banks and states, it is going to work. When people say the current global money system is decadent, they forget to add that no other system has proven to be viable yet. The current balance of money in the world is the result of a long, evolutionary process. As any evolution, it shows results that might seem strange in design but at least they are viable by definition.

Stage 2: Continuous Distribution

The remaining 30% will go towards continuous distribution. Anyone who runs Application, as well as the webmasters of Websites will be able to receive money every day, according to the involvement measures. These measures include:
Visiting specific sites (growing number in the partner list);
Time spent online visiting many sites (staying long at one site doesn’t count);
Completing surveys, answering questions about yourself and your preferences, helping to clarify your advertisement-oriented profile;
Assisting the system by discovering and reporting botnets and other abuses;
Referring other people, bringing them to the system.
Gaining Tags.
Along the way, the measures of the difficulty of distribution will increase for each parameter. However, the value of money will go up too, and also, users can customize a lot of things in Application’s UI, maximizing one type of participation in continuous distribution or another.

What makes mass different from Brave?
Shrt answer: we don't replace someone elses ads with ours (which is illegal in most places).

Long answer:
Two things deffer us: (1) conflict of interests cleverly managed; (2) Mass money is not just for paying consumers.

A massive adoption of any software that incorporates filtering of ads and user data tracking in any form inevitably generates a conflict of interests. The size of the problem for advertisers is already huge and growing.
 
The main distinction of Mass from its rivals is in the way it handles this inescapable conflict of interests adblocking creates. Let’s look at the participating contractors. There is a handful of business segments with hundreds of large multinational companies. The real-time bidding framework in the online advertising business is remarkably complex. There are dozens of linkage points where money/services flows have a long history of evolving relations.

Up to date, many ad-blocking businesses has been choosing the simplest path—just ignoring the existing ecosystem. They would cut off some portion of an audience from the regular marketplace, seize attention, and impose their only rules. Rules may vary from one extreme of ignoring the advertisement world totally and relying on user donations to an extreme of unlawfully replacing existing ads with their own ones. Somewhere in between these extremes, other adblocking businesses follow a less marginal trail and practice a spot cooperation with certain ad networks. We consider that as a vague and deficient strategy.

RTB space is very complex. These are the numerous partakers in the morally questionable business of exploiting user data. Digital advertising industry is busy, lucrative, and muddy place. Can an outsider possibly build new junctions on all the business borders you see in this picture? We strongly doubt! Thus, this obvious hopelessness results in a commonly taken defamiliarization approach in the adblocking business.

We at Mass Network also admit that an adblocking business can not manage to install its agents into all important interconnecting points in the RTB world. Think of it as of jungle inhabited by many species interlocked into a complex food chain. Consumer’s attention is the food and ad inventory is the oxygen for those living in this pyramid. All known attempts of meddling the ecosystem lead to an ecological catastrophe. Presenting alien powerful species to an ecosystem and plotting it into any spot in the food chain inevitably disbalances the entire biota like rabbits did in Australia.

Mass found quite a sane solution to this problem. We do not ignore the jungle; we do not introduce new species to the jungle; we stay in the jungle but package food into various plastics and supply various oxygen-dependent ferments that can dissolve our plastics using strict chemical laws. Plastic in this analogy is Mass data protection. Ferments are the Mass Coin proprietary blockchain-based currency that is to be presented to a number of independent market makers operating on several cryptocurrency exchanges.

Mass Money make a difference!

While our competitors use the “we’re paying our consumers” attribute as purely a marketing trick—which is a good and fair thing to do too—Mass introduces the money aspect in a much more comprehensive, scientific way. Mass money is not just to please a consumer with micropayments for browsing; it is meant to serve as a circulation system for all participants, including dozens of business segments in the RTB framework. Mass money allows protected-by-Mass consumers to participate in the existing advertising framework to any extent they wish with any customization they are willing to apply.

Of course, any advertising world player from any business segment would need to buy some mass coins to include mass-protected consumers into the revenue. But that is the minimum inconvenience. And, getting back to where we started from, it is the admen’s problem that adblocker eat up their revenue. That’s them who let the situation to such a poor condition that someone from the cryptocurrency world has to come and fix it. 

 

Thank you. You are welcome to join the discussion on the economic issues here: http://blog.mass.network/mass-network-economic-model/