Could you give some examples of platforms/products that collect the kind of data that people/companies would be interested in buying, that have an opt-out option or do not collect data by default?

Question about the fundamental idea of Datum: How will the prices/value of individual data compete the incumbent data broker prices/values? Is the data people would be selling not already available through data brokers at a far lower price?

At first blush, this idea seemed awesome. Now I can make money from data of my Facebook/Echo/Gmail etc by opting into datum and reselling on datum's marketplace. But then I realized that by dong so, I don't necessarily opt out of ongoing data collection by those platforms (there's often no way to opt out). So the data is now redundant; i.e. the data is for sale in two places, and my guess is the data brokers price is a going to be pennies. If so, there's no/little incentive for me to sell it on my own.

Is the idea that this marketplace would be used far in the future when services exists where we can actually opt into and opt out of various collection services (including datum)? As far as I know, most of the major platforms that collect data wouldn't allow me to fully/significantly opt out?

Different question: Will there be an option through datum to supplement our data sets with additional demographic information, or answer other questions from the data buyer, to make it more valuable?

Thanks. Have you established yet how often PwC will audit the off-chain accounts? Will you do something like Ankorus with a reserve levels dashboard?

This looks like another interesting tokenziation platform. Looking at the whitepaper, how do we know the "guarantor" actually has the underlying (tethered) asset? Will there be 3rd party audits, like on Ankorus.org's platform (ANK)?

LAtoken and Ankorus are compared in the article below, but it looks like only Ankorus has tokenization of futures contracts.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/crypto-trading-and-traditional-assets-new-options-investors/

In comparing platforms that tokenize assets, I see LAToken has already tokenized AAPL. Will they also tokenize other financial instruments like futures and commodities, like the new platform Ankorus (ANK)?

What will the coin "reserves", which are 25% of the token supply of this project, be used for? I can't find an answer in the whitepaper. This is the only reference I can find:

Excuse me, at what time on September 5, will the contract change to enable coin transfer?

Thanks for your response. I understand what happened, but I think we disagree on where the line is drawn for being part of the community. It seems your team decided people who signed up for slack were entitled to news of a whitelist, while people who opted into your email list that promised "updates", were not (I consider news of a whitelist an important update!). A lot of people don't like slack, due to the amount of trolling/shilling/FUD and other irrelevant info posted there. That doesn't mean we aren't interested in being part of the community. Not sure why one channel received preference over another.

I signed up for email updates on your website two or three weeks ago, and haven't seen any emails, and particularly haven't seen one that references the existence of a whitelist application. I've checked all my folders. Was this particular to me, others experienced this? Is it still possible for someone on your team to reference the time I (and others?) first submitted my email address on your website, so that I/we may be whitelisted? Obviously when we signed up for updates, this is exactly the kind of information we expected to see.

Thanks, Vlad.

I guess then there's not much chance of that happening before September 5? Ledger is shipping all their back-ordered ledgers out on that date.

Vlad, when will the third batch of coupons be distributed?

Referencing AE's blog post, " In order to be included in the final coupon batch (#3)..."
https://blog.aeternity.com/ledger-nano-s-batch-2-coupons-distributed-43a1bea31d0f

1) Why were the instructions for logging in using the same credentials not written on the blog posts, or support forums? I would think email is one of the last places people would expect to see timely information during a launch. I have many tabs open, but not email.

2) I (and I'm sure others) tried using the same credentials as the reclaim portal, and they didn't work --> I received the error "user not found"; nor did entering the reclaim portal recovery phrase in the "forgot password" section or decent go. There I received there error "invalid recovery phrase".

By narrowing down the options, I also took the only choice of registering a new account using the same email address. What now?

The problem experienced by at least several users here, is that the password created on the reclaim portal doesn't work with the decentgo login. I'm certain I'm using the same password and email (pasted across multiple files), and I receive the error "user not found". Are you, or anyone else seeing otherwise?

Additionally, I don't think the database would allow a new entry with the same email address, as it did, if they were already linked.

I'm still uncertain if we're supposed to create a decentgo account using the same email (but not have the same recovery phrase as the reclaim account), or if the decentgo accounts will be created automatically for us at some time in the future, using the same credentials/recovery-phrase. The first option raises the risk of conflicting credential(s), while the second raises the possibility of not having a target account in place for the team to credit...It depends if they didn't communicate that the reclaim recovery phase wasn't important, or that they didn't communicate that decentgo accounts would be automatically generated for us, but not during the first part of this release.  

Also confused. In an attempt to confirm that the only thing mapping the reclaim account to decentgo is our email address (and thus the confusion about the necessity of the original recovery phrase), I tired a number of alternatives, below. None of them worked. So by deduction, it seems the accounts will be associated and credited by a common email address alone. It would be reassuring if someone from Decent could confirm this, as after reading of the blog posts and instructions, this doesn't seem to be explained anywhere.

Other attempts to associate the reclaim account to decentgo, for reference (none worked):

- attempt to log in with the same email and password created on the reclaim portal ---> "user not found"  (double checked, it's accurate)
- attempt to log in using "forgot password", then "enter recovery phrase" ---> "Wrong Recovery Phrase" (double checked, it's accurate)
- using "sign up", to create a new account, then looking for something like "import account from recovery phrase" --->don't see any options to import an account
- checked the, "ICO participants section" of the support portal: https://decent.ladesk.com, where I was told "You will find all the necessary information", but the only section there is "ICO Reclaim Portal Instructional Guide"; I don't see anything about how to connect the reclaim account to decentgo.

 
Dan, thanks for the response. It's encouraging that the team is at least willing to consider and reply to dissenting opinions.


It may be useful to be more specific about the "everyone" you mention, and what I believe Vlad called "community". For the scope of this discussion, allow me to segment that into "investors" and "programmers".  

You mention those that "profit" by building something with their energy and time. The word "profit" here is ambiguous; what I think you mean is to make a living, and not to profit from the Aeternity token. If so, then I believe who you're referring to here are programmers and founders. In this case, will Aeternity like most other crypto projects not offer faucets and test nets? And even when the programmer's projects go live, will the gas/fees not be adjusted to always be of nominal expense? If so, then I don't see how "getting AE tokens" would be relevant to this group, ever. Furthermore, this coin will be available on exchanges long before the vast majority of programmers and founders discover it, let alone build a dapp on it. Correct me if I'm not understanding.

Your comment about ROI makes me think that you don't understand that the investors, not the programmers, are the ones sitting with their finger on the mouse at the dawn of the crowd sale. We are of course looking for a ROI, albeit not necessarily a quick one, because this is our job. We are not necessarily interested in building anything with Aeternity, but we have every reason to hope that others will. Many of us also have the best interest of the crypto ecosystem in mind. Too many people losing money attracts negative attention. We are providing the value of equity for your project, and taking a substantial risk in doing so. If there were no ROI, there would be no investors, and no runway for your work (Not every investor is in for a quick turnaround either). If you agree with that statement, and value the investment part of your community, then it follows that you'd be eager to recognize our interests too. This includes at the very least allowing us to understand what we're paying for our contribution, and reducing the risk we incur, where possible - especially to the new investors, of which there are now many in this space.

For the sake of other forum members, I'm going to "cap" my reply here, unless you specifically request more of me.

One hallmark of a strong leader is the willingness to reevaluate decisions given new information, and keep ego out of the equation. Several people here have made well-reasoned arguments for a cap, and against the idea that an unbounded crowd sale is "good for the community". I think most people would appreciate hearing a reasoned rebuttal, addressing the new points.

Otherwise, given the sale hasn't occurred yet, and modifying a line of the contract for a cap should be simple -- the head-in-the-sand response of "we've already decided" -- appears to be an emotional response. Indications of emotion-based decision making will not bode well for the project.

 
That doesn't change the argument, only the time frame. For that argument to be true, only a few people would have the idea to jump in at the last minute, making only a nominal impact on the total amount raised. The problem is that an unbounded raise will lead a significant number the total investors to adopt this "last minute" strategy. In this situation the cap could jump by $20M in the last 10 seconds. People hit refresh to find out the value of their investment went down by half. Again, if the concern is truly for the community, then the team would not allow its most vulnerable members -- those with little to no investing experience, and without the ability to have their investments tied up for two years, until the market recovers -- to be placed at risk.

Vlad, thanks for your reply. We both desire greater community benefit, including accessibility, and I think there are a few more points to consider:


I think the focus is too much on "our family now", at the expense of the larger segment "our eventual family (e.g. two years out)". The vast majority of people, including weekend crypto enthusiasts and the later stage adopters, will find out about AE well after the crowdsale. If the crowdsale cap is low, them the opening market cap for the coin will be congruent with a very early stage startup. That congruence will be more likely to attract attention (and investment) as it will be seen as an investment that makes sense. The project and price are then more likely to grow as a function of the merits of the project, and demonstrations of what's being produced - items that will justify a higher market cap.  The sustainable returns will create positive community attention and media attention, which will fulfill your goal of getting more people involved.

Conversely, if an unbounded sale raises $50M for example, for an immature product, I think you're likely to see a panic sell as soon as AE tokens are on the market, as people realize they've paid too much, and don't want to wait two to three years for a $50M market cap to make sense. An immediate large drop in your market cap makes for bad news, and will likely further deter investment and raise questions about the team's decision making. Additionally, the people that are losing money in that situation include your earlier adopters. An event like that would taint the project from the start, and impede your growth.


I don't believe this is an appropriate comparison. The Ethereum crowdsale was 2.5 years ago, when the cumulative market cap for Crypto was around $ 7B. It's now worth 3.5x more, at ~ $25 B. This has attracted many more investors, and as I mentioned earlier, even mainstreem VCs are now on the field. Moreover, the market is extremely bullish now. I think an uncapped crowdsale now is likely to raise more than Ethereum did.

The second point on the Ethereum crowdsale is that a good outcome doesn't necessarily equal a good decision.


I think it's excellent to be close to your users, and I think this point deserves more consideration: If the team indeed has the best interests of their "friends, family and innovators" in mind, I believe an important action would be to minimize the risk of them paying too much for tokens, and potentially losing money if they need to sell tokens in the first year or two, by not capping the sale at a level appropriate to the business needs of the project. To have an uncapped sale is to allow your friends and family to contribute their hard-earned savings, blindly -- they will have no idea of the worst-case price of their tokens at the time of contribution. In other words, an unbounded sale allows the risk of extreme dilution if a new entrant VC decides to flood you with Eth, at the expense of all the backers.

For both the benefit of your project, and the protection of your backers, I encourage you to reconsider putting a cap on the project that is aligned with your business needs, and will protect your backers from an over-bought token.  

To quote Daniel Zakrisson, in his article "ICO 2.0 — what is the ideal ICO?"


As someone who has contributed to a number of projects in this space, this is my 2c:

I agree with Daniel Zakrisson, as I think most investors would, that it's important to set a cap based on what you actually think you need for your business. The absence of a cap raises questions about the venture's credibility. If you're simply willing to "take what you can get" (either too low OR too high), then is shows a lack of due diligence in understanding "business-based" resources required to make the project a success.

If you raise too much, you're diluting the value of the project out the gate, and setting the bar unnecessarily high for the project to gain value. The adage heard often in business holds true here: "under commit and over deliver". If you raise significantly more than other projects in this space, you will be viewed as having made a very large implicit commitment to the community. The bar will be set very high, which is not a good place to be in the early stages of your development.

In the long run, a low/reasonable raise, followed by exceptional execution, is more likely to earn investor trust; this is likely to cause your project to rise in value more quickly, and be worth more in the long run.

I would think the highest appropriate cap would match the max raised in Ethereum's ICO (~$18M USD). Many investors are going to valuate this project against Ethereum anyway due to the similarities of the project and Yani's relationship with Vitalik. I think a more attractive cap for investors, and a safer raise in terms of justification of resources required, would be $7.5M to $10M.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_funded_crowdfunding_projects

Another reason I would say a cap is a must now is that (more) VC's (e.g. Blockchain Capital) have very recently begun backing crypto projects. As one of the first projects that I imagine will be both available and attractive to the new VC's, your project is very likely to be over-bought if uncapped, and susceptible to the problems mentioned above.

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/initial-coin-offering-stock-thats-not-stock/

Lastly, I don't understand the point of a "Friends, Family and Real Innovators" contribution period, unless there is some way to validate those individuals. If anyone can invest during that period, then it seems to be misnamed, and the question of a cap is as relevant here, as it is to the whole project.

I'm extremely excited about your project, and look forward to April 3rd!