It's interesting how little people have scrutinized Paykey. I didn't watch the Buffalo presentation until yesterday, because I heard the judges were ignorant...

Let's look at a few of their "stupid questions":

Paykey's existence is completely dependent on being approved in the app stores. But Apple/Google have their own payment systems, and would have a strong incentive to deny PK. How do you guarantee app store approval?

Paykey's success would rely upon partnerships with a multitude of banks. But who's going to give Daniel the time of day? He's not Zuckerburg. You need influence, connections and past accomplishments to be heard, and those partnerships would take years to form, regardless.

Paykey is just too late. We already have plenty of solutions for mobile/social payments, with huge brands like Apple Pay and Snapcash that people already trust. So what if PK is cross platform? When have users ever flocked to the solution that's best for them?

Paykey could work if it was implemented into an already popular keyboard, like SwiftKey. That is, a great keyboard app that gains a useful feature. Not the horse before the cart, as what PK proposes to do.

Consider: There's failure to get inside the app store; failure to partner with banks; and failure to get traction with users.

At least we know GG/AE can actually exist. Sure, it might never become popular, but that's besides the point. There was a commitment to build GG, and it was adequately funded.

Please Daniel, get back to the original plan. PK is a shot-in-the-dark product that doesn't benefit gemz, and none of us agreed to it.

I doubt there's any legal recourse for crowdfunders to take, and even if there were, the amount of money at stake probably wouldn't be worth it.

The best way out of this mess is to sell your coins, and advise others to actually scrutinize the Paykey announcement. If you've been evangelizing GG as hard as I have, then it's your responsibility to at least talk to the people you've influenced.

I know the cheerleaders here are worried that public criticism could affect gemz's price. But they really shouldn't be concerned. If we're completely wrong and these false fears drops the price of gemz, then we've just created a great opportunity for them to buy cheap coins.

The market always finds the truth.

I decided to get rid of my pre-sale gemz soon after the Magma announcement, because I feared the crowdfunded money would just be used to payback VC's. This is a very common move.

Since most of the milestone money hasn't been touched, I suspect it's serving as collateral. They could likely unlock the rest of it at any time, by releasing some rush products.

Unlike token holders, the other investors are exposed to minimal risk as they wait for their share of the fiat/btc stream, or whatever other unannounced schemes Daniel might have going.

There was an expectation that milestones would help fund development, and development would follow the company's roadmap. The spirit of this agreement has clearly been violated.

But as Daniel has repeated pointed out, he has every right to pull off this deception.

Thanks for the direct answers, but you’ve confirmed my worst fears:

In 2014 you promised to build a product that would give gemz value. But a year later you've developed a different product that actually undermines its value.

So yes, you haven’t touched the bulk of the crowdsourced funds because you haven’t delivered on your promises; the money could be locked up indefinitely as you pursue other opportunities.

I’m sure your entitled to break the roadmap however you see fit, but nobody would have given you a dime had they known you were building a fiat/btc revenue stream.

So I’ll ask again:

When did Paykey’s development start?

Are they the same developers who are working on GG?

All year I've been beta testing both platforms. Development has taken longer than I'd imagined, considering the app is built off of Telegram, and there are two teams working on this well-funded project.

I figured Daniel is probably just being fiscally conservative, and the result has been a slower pace of development.

Then we learn Paykey has been in development all along, consuming the company's resources so that it can ship before most of GG's standout features are even finished.

But nobody wants another Telegram app, or another basic wallet, or another altcoin. GG's merit is all about the final milestone -- the attention economy its supposed to launch.

People bought and hold gemz, and collect airdrops, in the hopes that the token will climb in value. Its value is ultimately tied to the success of the attention economy; thus, any deviation from achieving the AE is a huge concern.  

There's seemingly no direct relation between Paykey's success and an increased value for gemz. I am completely disinterested in Paykey, regardless. It has little to do with the project I funded. And with GG's dismal download count and tiny active user base, why would anyone be confident in Daniel's next scheme?

Here are my questions:

Was Paykey's secret development funded, in any amount, by money collected from the gemz sale?

Will Paykey provide the company with any potential revenue sources that are independent of the gemz token?

Will creating this new revenue source make the company any less financially reliant on gemz holding a value?

For clarity, please give a binary yes or no answer. You can add any additional comments afterwards.

Thank you.

Daniel, your points don't actually answer anyone's questions.

I used to think you simply had bad communication. But after Paykey dropped, I'm seeing a pattern of deception.

You have every opportunity to prove me wrong.

    

After chatting with Daniel and reviewing his answers today, my understanding of recent events have boiled down to this:

Daniel has the freedom to spend the crowd funded money on anything he wants. Incredulously, he spent it on divorcing his company from gemz.

In doing so, he removed the only safety net investors had that the company wouldn't abandon its own token.

Without a commitment to gemz, GG has now been demoted to a side project. Its new role is to be the test platform for future products like paykey.

Sadly, GG without a functioning AE makes it worthless to users. Boasting that the team has met various milestones, and even over delivered with surprises like the giftstore, ring hollow.

GG remains just a telegram skin with various buggy and incomplete features. No wonder it has failed to attract any interest.

Daniel, is there a compelling argument why anyone should still be holding gemz?

I'd love to hear it.

The Magma investment was the first major warning sign.

Daniel waited until after the crowd sale was complete before announcing that he accepted VC money. Magma of course passed on the coin sale and bought a direct stake in the company. VC don’t care what gemz are worth, and their investment wasn't made to give gemz value.

This was clearly a sneaky move, especially after all the talk of transparency and accountability with GG using Konify, milestones, etc.

The way GG was marketed was that the token would exclusively fund the attention economy, and the company would live or die on the network's success (perhaps through making a commission on transactions).

In other words, everyone’s interests would be aligned: We’d all want the broad adoption of GG so that the token would retain a high value.

Well, a year later we have the surprise announcement that “AE can’t be rolled out (at) this stage”, but we’ve developed a new revenue stream for the company that’s completely independent of GG/gemz/AE.

And we did it with your money.

It's not just money and milestones. It's finding out, after a year's wait, that the team has secretly ditched their roadmap to develop something completely different.

They should of delivered all their milestones, including a functioning AE, before starting to work on Paykey. That would be the most honest course of action.

At the very least, when Daniel had his change of heart about GG, he should of said something. I would of respected that.

I'm beginning to feel the GG team have done something quite dishonest.

It seems as though they've developed an entirely new app, that's independent of their original product, in stealth, with crowdfunded money.

Paykey is not on the GG roadmap — it is a separate service that functions independent of the GG messenger, the gemz token, and the promised attention economy. Also, its revenue model is not dependent on gemz retaining a value.

It’s taken many months to skin Telegram and integrate a wallet, but now we know that all efforts weren’t directed at these milestones.
The development of Paykey has likely diverted funds and development time that would have been put towards reaching the original GG goals sooner and with better results. I believe it violates the spirit of the roadmap.

As of today, the GG app still has a lot of bugs in its basic functions. Also, the airdrop is only in beta and there's no pre-sale perk or attention economy in sight. It’s a hard sell to refer this app even to close friends, and we’re approaching the 1-year mark.

There’s no debate that the company's focus has radically changed. Take a look at the Getgems mission statement: it no longer mentions the messaging app, gemz token, or attention economy. It simply describes the functions of Paykey.

http://www.magmavc.com/portfolio/portfolio-companies.html

Has Daniel misappropriated investor funds?

Since Paykey is not an added feature of GG, but an independent product with a different revenue model, why is it using the crowdsourced money? Is it not a separate project, that necessitates its own funding and development team?

Daniel, I would like to know the date when Paykey’s development started and the resources consumed in its creation. Did you hire additional workers, or were existing ones pulled from GG to work on Paykey?

Thank you!

Maybe a future version could say "global search" or something. I recently discussed this issue with a new GetGems user, and they insisted that I must know their sms number to add them!

Thanks for the response.

How do i add somebody by just knowing their username? This is something that's puzzled me for a while...

Thanks for the heads up!

For the second time, I tried GetGems on my android phone and a friend's OnePlus One.

After about a week, I see 100+mb of data usage on each device, despite very little time spent using the app. Also, the OPO showed high battery usage. So unfortunately it's got to be uninstalled again...

Then I looked on my Nexus 7 2013, and the app has used 285mb in the past month, and 247mb of that is background usage. Again, I've barely used the app on my Nexus.

It's hard to believe the data use is from emoji/gifs/media. And I don't want to restrict the app in any way from it's default settings. Maybe some of the data use is from the app updates?

Anyone else out there with this issue?

Now that the iOS app is out (looks great on my ipad btw), are all non-referred signups being counted for pre-sale perk airdrops?

Excellent update! I'm excited by what's ahead.

Is the app more disciplined with data usage?

Thanks for checking.

I sent a few images, and maybe a dozen or more gifs in total.
So it's definitely not from my (intentional) usage.

My Nexus 7 has getgems under the same gems account. But it only shows 70mb of data usage in the past month. That still seems kind of high, but maybe it's from the app updating a few times?

As a security precaution I'm going to uninstall getgems until I figure this out...

Is anyone else experiencing high data usage by getgems app?

A friend of mine has blown through 500mb over the last month, and they are (understandably) upset and uninstalling the app.

I've used 230mb over the last 30 days. Most of that is foreground usage, although I barely use the app.

EDIT: Actually, I've used 230mb for just the last week. From Feb 7 - Mar 7 it shows 476mb of data use.

What about using getgems for paid chat sessions?

Like how Skype is increasingly being used for paid consultations with doctors, coaches, etc.

Paid chat as an easy, built-in feature (and marketed that way) might lure these professionals to the app.

Forgive me if this idea has already been discussed, but I recently read this article and it got me thinking about getgems:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/style/strippers-go-undercover-on-snapchat.html?_r=0