Hi Hhampuz,

I've been traveling during the past week and I didn't have access to any device to solve WW issues or support inquiries and no one else form the team has the credentials, sorry about that. First of all I want to reassure you that no one will lose a single satoshi because of Whirlwind and anyone still having funds on it will get them back, you have my word on that. Tomorrow everything will be taken care of, just so you know the DAI are still in escrow with minerjones.

Furthermore since you already paused the campaign I wanted to discuss a separate matter with you first before making it public on the forum and would like to get your input, maybe another opinion would be helpful in this case.

As you know we've worked a lot on the current product and we are in the process of making some updates. To date sadly we basically had no results and we believe this is mostly because we didn't choose to target the "usual" audiences for this type of platform, and since we are not planning to do that in the future it's become very hard to still believe in the chances of this getting off the ground. At the same time with our technical skills we could build pretty much anything, so we're not sure if it makes much sense to continue on this venture.

In case we do decide to shut down we will keep the platform up for a while and give everyone time to withdraw as long as they still have their private keys, so no worries about that.

What's your opinion on the above and what do you think the communities opinion would be regarding if we should continue or not?

Available to discuss here by mail until tomorrow so waiting for your response if you're online.

Regards

Heyo, and thank you for the reply!

No worries at all, I figured it was something like this (some others started talking about exit scam but it didn't make much sense to me).

I hear you on the dilemma. I also respect the integrity move of not pursuing bad actors for easy money. And you are likely correct in assuming that if it has not taken off yet it might just be too early for such a product (the blind bearer certificates) - which I think will be very much in play further down the line. If it were me I'd probably pull the plug now, save down what can be saved of the system that is obviously working as intended, and perhaps work on it and finetune it as time goes without going all in on it.

If you bring this up on bitcointalk you will likely hear a mixed bag of opinions, most that want to be in the campaign or currently are will likely try and sway you into continuing as that would secure their "bag" by wearing the Signature while others, from competitive services, may discredit your efforts by saying it is not needed. Then you'll also always have the enthusiasts who generally like the product but for whatever reason are yet to try it out or use it regularly, unfortunate as it may be.

So my honest opinion, shut it down, even if just for some time while you try your hand at something else. You guys working on this are obviously good at what you do as I've seen this being built, expanded and fine-tuned over the last few months and I'm incredibly impressed by it all. Even though it may suck after so much effort, and money, has been put into it it might be just in time. 

Again I appreciate this email, I'll let everyone know in the thread as well that you're alive and well and things will be taken care of in the coming days and then a broader discussion or announcement can be made regarding the future. I can pay everyone for the campaign tomorrow and then just put it on hold indefinitely even if a final decision is yet to be made - let's just stay in touch.

Whenever you have time to pop in on bitcointalk a lot of users would appreciate that too. 

If all we wanted to 'exit scam' we could've done it for magnitues of times more than the current state with way less effort. In fact if you count the minerjones escrow I am not even sure there is any 'damage' because truth is there are just not many deposits happening.

If the bitcoin protocol supported some extra OPcodes we could've made Whirlwind decentralized from the beginning and that would've been way easier for everyone, but sadly it doesn't so here we are trying to do this in a centralized manner and it's pretty clear that it's hard to make it work. The only possible 2 ways to do it currently are 1: create a federation (basically x trusted parties) to co-sign, but this is definitely not realistic
2. create a separate blockchain and a coin for it and run the validation that way. this is certainly possible and it's the best way but I'm not sure how keen bitcoiners would be to participate in this because they would probably see it as any other shitcoin

Also another fact is that no matter how much we believe in the fact that we are not doing anything illegal by providing this service, we live in a crazy world and under some circumstances there is always the risk that this can go very badly. Very small, sure, but it's still there and will always be if we grow decently large.

Also I'm not sure I understood correctly, you're saying to pull the plug on the campaign and keep the service running, or close it down altogether?

I will go on bitcointalk as soon as I get to my destination.