Thanks everyone for the bday wishes!

Everyone keep on staking, we're still figuring everything out. Sorry if this has been taking long then expected, but finding a competent dev that see's the vision and wants to join us hasn't been an easy thing. We do have some awesome prospects that Worth and I are going to be speaking with this weekend.

Hey everyone sorry for not posting more, but last week was my bday so I went on vaca for that and the 4th. I'm back now and we're still actively looking for a dev. Tomorrow I am meeting with a few devs in person to speak about this.

The network should be running now, because we got all the wallets and passwords back from Bryce. We moved all the funds into addresses he doesnt have access to. We need more people staking to keep the network up, so Worth will be posting here a giveaway we're planning for this or next week.

We just need to keep the network going, while we transition everything over.

Yes we are in the process of trying that. The thing is I think the coins were moved out of the multisig wallet when we had to stake them after mining stopped working. Bryce has not been cooperating at all for the past 2-3 weeks. Last week he told me that he'd provide the private keys and then the next day said he wouldn't for "security" reasons.

If we cant get the network moving then we'll just replace all the coins using a different method. I've been told that if the new coin is built with sha256 like the old one we will be able to just swap the wallets out. I'm still confirming this while speaking with different developers.

The premine is the community's. I have already stated that we were planning on giving back 1mil of the 100mil every year. The 1mil will be divided up by the % of your wallet compared to the outstanding amount (not including the RF wallet).

Yes, we obviously do not want to punish our early adopters. We will be coming up with a mining schedule that should not decrease the value of your existing BitSeeds. We also will be releasing a lot more content/ideas that should theoretically raise the price of BitSeeds for everyone. 

We are currently working on a few ways. One way we discussed is you'd email us with your public key. We'd then reply to that email with a specific # of BitSeeds and our public key. You'd then send that specific amount to us and we'd be able to confirm that you are in fact the holder of that wallet. You'd then supply the new public key for the new BitSeeds and we'd reimburse the exact amount you had in your old wallet.

If anyone has a better way, please let us know.

Here is how Bryce ended up working with us..

This project started in end of April 2014, when I came up with the concept. I approached Rainforest Fdtn (RF) about it on May 2nd. Our first call was over 3 hours long, because they had never even heard of Bitcoin. So for months we discussed and outlined the way this project would work.

I started looking for a dev in June, by attending Bitcoin meetups in NY. That is where I met Coin.co and pitched them on the idea which they loved and wanted to be a part of it also. I also met a dev there that was interested in the project and we started discussing details for about a month. He ended up not being what we were looking for so we parted ways, but around that time (end of July 2014), I met a dev by the name of Joseph who had gotten a job working at Blocktech.

Joseph introduced me to Devon Read the CEO of Blocktech on 8/8/14 through email. We started discussing the project and he seemed very enthusiastic and offered to have Blocktech build the coin for us.

We spoke for about a month on the coin specifics etc. The original coin specifics were VERY different. The premine was only supposed to be 12.5mil (1.25% of total coins), 5% interest PoS. RF was under a sell schedule that looked like.. at $1.50 they could sell 2% of their premine at $3 another 2% etc. If they went through their entire sell schedule they would yield around 1.5bil which was needed for the planting of the 1bil trees.

Devon Read introduced me to Bryce Weiner in the beginning of September 2014 and said that he'd be taking over the project. Bryce really understood the concept and our vision at first, and he was very excited to be a part of this. So it went that contracts were done up and we started to get to work.

From Sept to Dec we focused on logo, motto, colors, site plan, designs etc. Bryce assured me that the coin would not take longer than a few weeks to build and test, so whenever we were ready with everything he could have it done as soon as we needed it.

When we cycled back to Bryce in Dec he had already left Blocktech, but told me that they parted ways but were amicable and that he was still very interested in doing the coin. It wasnt until Jan/Feb that we became aware of Bryce's negative google results. But by this time we were all invested in the project and he assured us that what was written was not true about him. I have to say at this time Bryce was definitely helping in sculpting the idea of the coin and ways to get it out there. He never came off as malicious or evil as some people have pointed him out to be. We just chalked it up to people hating in the forums, because they lost money and Bryce was the only one that was "named" to those specific coins.

Around the same time (February) our front end dev had personal issues and had to leave the project. I searched for a new dev and found one (March) that is a friend of mine and has done front end dev work on some of my past projects. At this time Bryce came up with a new coin structure (the one we went with), and told us that these were much better coin features. He assured us that the 10% interest and the large premine would benefit RF because they would make BitSeeds that they can pass off to donors every year. Oh also the large premine was actually going to be given back to the community in the form of 1mil coins every year.

We came up with the concept of gifting BitSeeds to donors. This way we wouldn't have to sell BitSeeds into the market and lower the price for everyone else. The type of donors RF gets is usually very affluent people who instead of receiving a tote bag for their donation would appreciate getting BitSeeds that they would be able to spend at participating merchants.

We came up with a great idea for merchants. As you all know CC companies take about 3% from every transaction online and if you accept Bitcoin you don't pay those fees. Well what we decided to do with BitSeeds, is take 1.25% from every transaction and put that amount in the merchants charity wallet. That wallet is restricted for 1 year. During this time the wallet is being vested (just like if your compnay pays out bonuses in stock). At the end of the 1 year the merchant can request to sell that amount in that wallet and that amount gets donated to a charity and that charity then writes a tax receipt for write off purposes to the merchant. (For example shoeking.com accepts BitSeeds, someone makes a purchase for $100, the merchant gets $98.75 and the remaining $1.25 stays as BitSeeds and gets transferred to shoeking.com charity wallet. At the end of the 1 year shoeking.com requests to sell the wallet. We sell the wallet and donate the amount, which should now be more then $1.25 because its been a year and we expect the price of the coin to go up with time. We donate the amount to a charity the merchant requests or one from our list of participating charities. The charity that received the amount lets say $2.50 worth (if the coin doubled in the year) would then write a tax receipt so shoeking.com could write off $2.50 for charity. Besides that the merchant would receive backlinks from us and RF and a badge that says they are a participating merchant helping the environment and our plant a billion initiative.

Our site was done in April and so was the new coin Bryce had envisioned. We finished our PR and started sending it out. Coindesk.com did the first writeup and that night (4/17/15) we launched. The next day is when we got the extreme hashrate and the coins difficulty settings didn't adjust the way they should of and so we had the issue that we were dealing with here.

About 2 weeks ago I asked Bryce if he knew anyone for social media. He answered the next day that he knew someone, but that didn't pan out. The following day Bryce was saying things that I won't mention, because it doesn't have to do with BitSeeds, but let's just say that that day is when I started looking for a new dev. My conversations with Bryce over the past 2 weeks were like speaking with a different person. Not the same jovial guy that has worked and helped on this project for the past 9 months. He has been rude and very belittling. I stopped feeling comfortable with him being the main dev and that is when I wrote that post that he is no longer associated with this project.

I have asked him multiple times over the past few weeks to provide me with the private keys needed for this project and he has not obliged. I now feel that he is holding this coin hostage. Whenever we find a new dev our plan is to have him write a new coin for us and reimburse all the wallets with new coins. With this new coin we'd be able to have mining again with difficulty settings that actually adjust when they're supposed to. Many of you have expressed positive posts because we have ended our relationship with Bryce, and we hope you understand why we believe we need a new coin not written by him. This project right now is in its infancy and these types of changes are better suited now then later. I have already spoken to a few devs that are all giving us their ideas on how to rebuild this coin.

If any of you have any ideas or suggestions, like I said before we will reward you with BitSeeds if we implement your ideas. Worth's instructional videos and our giveaways are ready to go and are just waiting on a new codebase to be launched. We appreciate your patience and support in this transition.

Thanks,
Gabe

I have been from the beginning as transparent as possible and that will continue throughout this project. As soon as I have more information for you guys I will post it. I dont want to bad talk Bryce, because there is just no need to. We had to part ways and we hope he finds another project to work on.

I have been talking with a few devs over the past couple of days and we're trying to figure the best way to move on from this. The community wants mining and we're figuring out how to deliver on that. We have many giveback programs coming and also Worth's instructional videos (which I've seen, they are awesome and educational). This project was built with the community in mind from the beginning and we'd love your ideas on how we can make it better. Any idea given by a community member that we implement will be rewarded. Looking forward to all your ideas and suggestions!

It seems as if Bryce has taken down the explorer and richlist. While we search and interview for replacement devs, would anyone in the community be willing to help out?

We are actively looking for altcoin devs and if anyone knows 1 or is 1 please email gabe@bitseeds.org

If you bought into this because of just Bryce then I would suggest cashing out if you can, since he will no longer be a part of this project. My statement is just hindsight. I would have done many things different if I was able to redo everything, but I'm sure that true about any project.

Bryce Weiner is no longer associated with this project. We are in the middle of hiring a new developer. I will be posting a statement in the following days outlining what happened on our reddit.com/bitseeds. Bryce Weiner has access to the "BitSeedsFoundation" handle on BCT, just to let everyone know. As soon as we transition we will start the instructional video giveaways and more. Like any project, I wish I knew when I started this, what I know now.

Thanks for your support,
Gabe

I apologize for the radio silence, but we are in the middle of an employee transition. Also BCT hasnt given me any reasons on why they banned my original acct, so I don'y feel that comfortable using this forum as the main source of info on BitSeeds. Not only do we have these instructional videos coming out, but we will also be in-fluxing a large amount of BitSeeds back into the community.

If anyone knows or is an altcoin dev that would be interested in working part/full time please email gabe@bitseeds.org

Just wanted to let everyone know that for no reason and absolutely out of nowhere my account 'GabeBitSeeds' has been banned from BTC. This happened after they got hacked and made me change my pw. Upon changing it I was banned and cannot get back in. I have emailed them a few times now asking why, but have not received any responses. After googling banned from bitcointalk I have read many posts about other people being banned for no reason as well, some accounts were even hacked and are still being used, but not by the original owner. Just in case 'GabeBitSeeds' starts posting that is not me. If I ever get my account back I will tell everyone on twitter first using the @bitseeds handle. Until then I will not be using bitcointalk anymore since these weird issues have made me uneasy. Any questions can be sent to @bitseeds on twitter or sent to our reddit page reddit.com/r/bitseeds.