[ANN] [TRON] Positron Technologies - Upcoming Project Direction Change

[RenegadeMan]

If you want other people to pay your bills for you while you develop TRON further, you could make a NXT asset to fund your development, campaign for fundraising on kickstarter/indiegogo/cryptocurrency crowdfunding...

I don't have much sympathy for you man. Speaking as an entrepreneur, asking for funding so you can work on crypto full time-- IE take care of your personal expenses-- is not the best way to sell supporters of you and your coin on further development. Creating a lottery-staking coin for the express purpose of funding your further full-time cryptocurrency pursuits is just counterproductive and takes development time, and thus value, away from TRON. It's zero-sum.

In such a space as cryptocurrency, with anonymity and distrust or trustlessness, you have to build the value first and then convince speculators that your altcoin has value. It's more difficult every day to do it the other way around where you promise "if I get the funding I need then I'll do this".

I guess it's just very rare to find a skilled developer like yourself who's also entrepreneurial enough to bootstrap their project on their own. Two disparate, high-level skillsets. If you can't find a way to make TRON happen whether or not other people are willing to kick in, then maybe you're just not as passionate as you need to be to make it happen no matter what. Or maybe, more likely, you are more interested in the title of Full-Time Cryptocurrency Developer than you are in doing the very hard work it takes so that you can't help but be known as that.

I mean no disrespect, and I can see you're trying to come up with creative ideas to get what you want, but if you *already have* an idea with legs (TRON) at some point you need to stop looking for shortcut ideas to leverage others and do work yourself. Get a second job completely unrelated to crypto. Take on some freelance coding work. Find an angel and convince them to float you while you dev. You're already spending time on TRON, and it's not enough, so you need to take some additional personal risk and put some of your own skin in the game besides your time (which if you love cryptocurrency you would be doing anyway). If you're not willing to take on that risk personally, ask yourself if you really believe in your project's potential regardless of its value, or if you're just trying to find ways for others to pay you for the programming hours you put in.

Mmm...well written post notsofast.

Cryptowest I'm a little stunned by the deterioration of this project from the grand optimism and enthusiasm it had just a month or so ago. I've exited and sold all my Tron (and lost about half what I've put in; so pretty disappointed) but I just can't see you're comprehending what needs to be done to give the project a sense of purpose and future potential.

The last few posts indicates to me you're clutching at all sorts of temporary adjunct ideas that aren't directly related to seeing Tron increase in value and shore up its future. And now you're talking about making another coin to help fund you! (With an ICO no less!!! Arrgghh ICOs are disastrous!) You have all these stakeholders here who've now probably lost a fair bit of BTC on Tron and you're wanting more put in, but it's not specific as to what it will do and achieve. Man-oh-man, this sounds like desperation. None of this is giving anyone any confidence. I think you need to be asking the question what is Tron for? If it's not becoming clear it's something that people want to use (even if it's just on gambling sites) then there's really no point to it. Masternodes won't fix this issue; they'll just give a temporary spike but potentially cause a whole lot of heart ache when you miss the deadline again (which you're almost certain to do; it's been the only consistent thing so far; stating a date/time, missing it then needing to apologise). Honestly, like many I gave you the benefit of the doubt but clearly you're over committing on your time and resources again and again. It's confidence sapping (for Tron holders as well as for you)

I think you need to have a really big think about what it is you're doing here because there doesn't appear to be even the most rudimentary strategy and business plan that will stack up and make Tron increase in value. I can't see how it's going to recover to anything like the pricing it reached unless the project has a clearly defined purpose, the road map directly ties in to that purpose and there's consistent delivery and achievement of milestones.

I appreciate that you really put yourself out there with the doxing but I have been worried from the beginning about your seeming inability to focus on Tron specifically. Shortly after you revealed your identity you started talking about helping another completely unrelated coin by getting involved with that dev and asking people to look at it (I almost sold all my Tron then as that had red flags for me....wish I had; I''d be in a far better position as Tron was probably around 40K or more around that time).

I think you're a good guy but you're terribly naive posting so much rhetoric and expression of difficulty about how people you've engaged have gone MIA and you have no money, etc. I understand it (we've all been there....or are there) but once you start putting this stuff into the public domain you've just pulled the rug out from under yourself as you're not expressing confidence about what you're doing. It's a vicious spiral that's almost impossible to stop once it starts.

I'd encourage you to really take time out...think carefully about what it is you're trying to achieve with Tron....how it can be commercially viable and what resources you need to execute. If you can't get that all clear in your mind, there's no point coming on here and blurting out all sorts of bizarre out-of-left-field ideas that don't have any specific relationship to core features/capabilities of Tron and this project's objectives as it just makes you look like you don't know what you're doing.

I hope you can find your way. I've lost a few BTC on this. I'm not upset about it (but don't have BTC to be throwing around either) as I knew the risks when I thought I'd have a go at it. The Dynamic PoS staking was a lot of fun, but the project's on its knees now because I don't think you really know what it is and what purpose it serves.

[cryptowest]

Thanks for the post. I have a direction and a vision, and I'm exploring side options. This project was originally funded by an angel investor, who ended up losing money and backing out about a month ago. He wanted someone to create and abandon a series of coins for him and didn't like that I doxed myself. That took a lot of wind out of my sails and the project, as that was a source of most of the funding for extra help. That and the terrible market is caused a lot of the optimism to die. Without that, the project has floundered a bit as I've tried to decide the best steps to take. I think the best thing for TRON is full time focused work and if people are just giving away money (60 btc for the dev to rent hookers and a boat!) to silly ICOs with no point, perhaps they'll be willing to support someone who wants to give back to the cryptocurrency community. Asking for donations doesnt work, there is only a tiny amount there. People want to be given something in exchange I think. I'm not asking TRON community to buy any crowdfund, i just wanted to run the idea through the forum and get some ideas. I've gotten about 20 warm and positive receptions and 3 negative receptions so far, and I'm listening to all of it.

I'll be back to discuss things more after some rest, thanks all.

[cryptowest]

Maybe I can do a thing at the personal crowdfunding website at http://www.gofundme.com/ but I think this would get nearly 0 interest. People want something back for their donation in crypto, even if its just magic internet money to have fun with.

It's a really hard decision. About 75% of the responses ive gotten in PM and chats and everywhere have been positive, but 25% have been negative and those negative points make a LOT of sense.

This short conversation from the developers room says it well enough, I need some rest. Any more feedback is appreciated.

anon: Personally I don't like at all the idea of new "stupid" ICO coin
anon: it's unprofessional and makes You look like a scammer
anon: these 50/60 btc ICOS are f a k e
anon: theres no crazy babes putting so much into these scams
anon: like notsofast said try to seek professional and legit funding
anon: it is possible
anon: it might just require more effort
cryptowest: i have to pay bills so i have to get a regular job/career after this week if i dont figure out something else short term
cryptowest: i joked about how id end up driving lambos or eating ramen off TRON in the early times, and the latter came true
cryptowest: just trying to figure something out
cryptowest: alt markets are too shitty to find more funding… the guy who contributed most of the initial funds has backed out at a loss
cryptowest: im listening to all of it tho… its about 75% positive and 25% negative, but the negatives all make a lot of sense
cryptowest: fact is, I fucked up my financial situation investing way too heavily into TRON because i was so optimistic about it, and had friends and a lawyer invest too...
cryptowest: and my phone is ringing 20 times a day with bill collectors now
cryptowest: so ive been mostly working IRL webdev contracting or fixing computers and the like
cryptowest: anyway meh… its a tough choice
cryptowest: i dont like it either, its like begging
cryptowest: but if i cant figure something else im going to have to start dedicating myself more to an IRL career and perhaps later on some tech device kickstarter ideas ive been cooking up, and work on TRON also
cryptowest: even if i only raise 4 or 5 btc and burn the rest of the ICO coins i can sell some computer gear on ebay and be able to focus on TRON fulltime the entire month
cryptowest: not looking to do some scammy shit but there are some ppl who are willing to donate a litlte but they want something in return like a coin to play with
cryptowest: about 15-20 committed to donating to the crowdfund… its a hard choice.
cryptowest: ima goto sleep its 10:30 AM and ive been working on these MN all night
cryptowest: ill catch up on the convo here later
cryptowest: thanks again for the support

[lambdaE]

If you want other people to pay your bills for you while you develop TRON further, you could make a NXT asset to fund your development, campaign for fundraising on kickstarter/indiegogo/cryptocurrency crowdfunding...

I don't have much sympathy for you man. Speaking as an entrepreneur, asking for funding so you can work on crypto full time-- IE take care of your personal expenses-- is not the best way to sell supporters of you and your coin on further development. Creating a lottery-staking coin for the express purpose of funding your further full-time cryptocurrency pursuits is just counterproductive and takes development time, and thus value, away from TRON. It's zero-sum.

In such a space as cryptocurrency, with anonymity and distrust or trustlessness, you have to build the value first and then convince speculators that your altcoin has value. It's more difficult every day to do it the other way around where you promise "if I get the funding I need then I'll do this".

I guess it's just very rare to find a skilled developer like yourself who's also entrepreneurial enough to bootstrap their project on their own. Two disparate, high-level skillsets. If you can't find a way to make TRON happen whether or not other people are willing to kick in, then maybe you're just not as passionate as you need to be to make it happen no matter what. Or maybe, more likely, you are more interested in the title of Full-Time Cryptocurrency Developer than you are in doing the very hard work it takes so that you can't help but be known as that.

I mean no disrespect, and I can see you're trying to come up with creative ideas to get what you want, but if you *already have* an idea with legs (TRON) at some point you need to stop looking for shortcut ideas to leverage others and do work yourself. Get a second job completely unrelated to crypto. Take on some freelance coding work. Find an angel and convince them to float you while you dev. You're already spending time on TRON, and it's not enough, so you need to take some additional personal risk and put some of your own skin in the game besides your time (which if you love cryptocurrency you would be doing anyway). If you're not willing to take on that risk personally, ask yourself if you really believe in your project's potential regardless of its value, or if you're just trying to find ways for others to pay you for the programming hours you put in.

You deserve an award for this post. I think I'm going to make a new account tonight for giving out forum awards. It'll be fun and this post can get the first award.
See you guys later.

[fartbags]

Got a question for anyone who has TRON coins or likes crypto.

I'm thinking about doing a "westcoin" where its a small ICO and a mining phase after, to support myself so I can stay dedicated to crypto. I dont want to go get a real job again. I could make it fund itself through a gambling sort of staking where users can choose to stake and can win or lose their money 50% of the time in the stake blocks. If they lost, it'd go straight to a dev fund that would be 100% used for bounties, so the coin would be mostly self sufficient i'd hope. and i could use it as a testbed, im doing to stick counterparty tech in there so i can test colored coins.  

The amount won or burnt would have to be perfect.. enough that people want to take the risk of staking but not so much that it inflates the money supply too badly. Since the dev account gets 50% of the coins, a higher stake would be OK and the community could regularly decide what to do with the funds - to fund a new bounty, or to burn them, or just leave them in the fund. We could work something out with multisig so I don't have to be trusted so much with that, thats ok with me.

I'd do an ICO maybe 50 or 60 btc, and I'd be happy if i only got like 4 or 5, then burn all the rest of the coins to make the value go up, and go into the short mining phase. I'm seeing if trex will list it for me, waiting to hear back. I don't want it to look too egotistical so I'm going to use sad pepe for the logo.

https://40.media.tumblr.com/c261969b41e5033b5312625b6ac88237/tumblr_nozk536fZc1tfbd61o1_400.jpg

I had this idea because of that stupid Boats and Bitches coin that just raised 60 btc so the devs could go hire hookers and rent a boat.  

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1079548.0

I could use money like that to frugally live on, and I wouldn't even mind being transparent about what it was being used for. I could make it funny and fun.

Maybe if I raise over X amount I can promise to strap a gopro to my shoulder and use some of the funds go on a bender in Vegas with my fiancee, since that seemed to work well for boats and bitches.

haha. but really, I could use the money to work on TRON full time and people would have something to play with and trade in the market instead of just donating money. I'd stay transparent with the funds and I don't have any expensive vices so I don't mind being being transparent.

With the self-funding staking method, I can continue to focus on TRON and the TRON community doesn't have to worry i'll be putting too much effort in the other project.

I would make it so everyone who participates in the ICO gets a chance to win a little prize, just a Sapphire Radeon 290X gpu, but still cool to win a $400 card if you only donate $1 to the crowdfund. If I raisde over X amount I could give away something like an i7 laptop too.

I expect a good amount of softcore FUD and trolling in the thread but I think it could be fun. Nobody wants to see more devs leaving alts or unable to donate fulltime efforts. I would be transparent about how i was spending the money and use it only for neccesity not bullshit. I have all the bullshit I need, too much computer stuff. The money would be used to support myself while I work on TRON fulltime and use some of the money for TRON also. Thoughts?


Masternodes Update

Masternodes will be completed in 3 days or June 26th, 2015.  The directors have agreed that 10,000 TRON should be the MN cost. There will be only 30 to 50 masternodes total, we're still deciding on that exact # and if you have any feedback pls take a moment to post it.

Thanks!

This seems perfectly fine. I would rather see you stick to working on TRON only though.

I would suggest a hard fork with an added premine. This would be similar to diluting stock shares.



I don't see anything wrong with diluting shares if it means you can work fulltime on the coin and bring it into the $100,000,000+ marketcap level.

Of course you have to be 100% transparent if you are going to premine coins.




It sounds like there's two choices:

- Continue as is and never get any working updates for another 2 years.

- Dilute shares and get working updates as soon as possible. (I would chose this one)

[charlieSeen]

I think some of the tron supporters would find SIGU a great addion to their portafolio https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1028433.0 give it a shot.

[starblocks]

If you want other people to pay your bills for you while you develop TRON further, you could make a NXT asset to fund your development, campaign for fundraising on kickstarter/indiegogo/cryptocurrency crowdfunding...

I don't have much sympathy for you man. Speaking as an entrepreneur, asking for funding so you can work on crypto full time-- IE take care of your personal expenses-- is not the best way to sell supporters of you and your coin on further development. Creating a lottery-staking coin for the express purpose of funding your further full-time cryptocurrency pursuits is just counterproductive and takes development time, and thus value, away from TRON. It's zero-sum.

In such a space as cryptocurrency, with anonymity and distrust or trustlessness, you have to build the value first and then convince speculators that your altcoin has value. It's more difficult every day to do it the other way around where you promise "if I get the funding I need then I'll do this".

I guess it's just very rare to find a skilled developer like yourself who's also entrepreneurial enough to bootstrap their project on their own. Two disparate, high-level skillsets. If you can't find a way to make TRON happen whether or not other people are willing to kick in, then maybe you're just not as passionate as you need to be to make it happen no matter what. Or maybe, more likely, you are more interested in the title of Full-Time Cryptocurrency Developer than you are in doing the very hard work it takes so that you can't help but be known as that.

I mean no disrespect, and I can see you're trying to come up with creative ideas to get what you want, but if you *already have* an idea with legs (TRON) at some point you need to stop looking for shortcut ideas to leverage others and do work yourself. Get a second job completely unrelated to crypto. Take on some freelance coding work. Find an angel and convince them to float you while you dev. You're already spending time on TRON, and it's not enough, so you need to take some additional personal risk and put some of your own skin in the game besides your time (which if you love cryptocurrency you would be doing anyway). If you're not willing to take on that risk personally, ask yourself if you really believe in your project's potential regardless of its value, or if you're just trying to find ways for others to pay you for the programming hours you put in.

There are tons of other way better projects out there with hard working devs putting in the effort for no yet foreseeable $$$

[miningfool]

I'm gonna put on my business hat here and reiterate a few things I posted about pages back, and offer up my opinion FWIW.

West, I think you need to put on the CEO hat and brainstorm a little more.  TRON was/is a cool idea IMO.  I understand when you started you had the backing of an "angel" and so it gave you the confidence to put out some bold ideas, but then the angel backed out and so you are left with bold ideas but no funding.

The idea of TRON as I understand it is to be a crypto technology incubator in the "alt" world.  #altsareback and "save the alts" and all that.  So, project #1 is TRON.  

A couple of suggestions.  The first is to go out and do some research and survey the websites of old school private equity, incubators, and accelerators and get an understanding of how they traditionally operate, because my impression is that you don't fully get the operating model - that's not a dig, I'm just pointing out that you can arm yourself with a little more information.  Then, I would brainstorm a couple of products and/or services that TRON can "incubate" and take to market.

I would suggest you do a token sale of something like the TRON Venture Fund I to raise a pool of working capital to incubate one of the product ideas.

There was recent news from the SEC that clarifies things under the JOBS Act that makes some of this no longer a non-starter.  The only left-fielder then is FinCEN compliance.  I haven't looked but maybe there is a platform to do this through that offers that compliance.  If not... there you go, there is a service idea for you.  Build a crypto funding platform with compliance processes built in.  I just gave you a multi-million dollar idea.  Ideas are nothing without execution though.  Set up a port of counterparty on the TRON blockchain, float the TRON Venture Fund I token to raise capital to build crypto funding platform with compliance services.  You might break out compliance services into its own monetizable service.  Pluggable compliance for alt coins that is generalized and can do transaction identification and tracking etc., and then you can simply add alts to the system like an exchange.  Figure out a way to pay dividends on the services revenue to the asset holders, that is legally compliant.  People often wave their hand and say you can't do this, but I think you can if you do it right.  You already have counsel that can help you map a path.''

Don't give up yet.  You have a really good idea here but the crypto market is in a bad way right now.  That's because we are now in the phase of seeking viable business models and the pure speculators are dwindling.  Put on your CEO hat, turn on the visionary thinking, and try to envision where the crypto market will be in 6 months, 1 year, 18 months.  Build what everybody is going want then, now.

I would do the above, write a brief business plan, figure out a revenue model that can work even if it starts out unprofitable but can scale.  Use TRON Venture Fund I to seed building an MVP and then take the prototype and go shop for a new angel.

Disclaimer: That idea above is non-exclusive, and frankly I'm probably going to do it if you don't act on it, and 10 other people probably are too.  

[miningfool]

Was going a little more research into it and read about Koinify pivoting away from the dapp funding model due to lack of growth opportunities, and moving to something broader.  So perhaps brainstorm the idea I posted in the last post a bit more and figure out how it can serve a broader market.  This is the big challenge in the crypto space right now.  You either need a warchest to go deep and bet on the market developing and coming to you as adoption grows, or an alternative mix of revenue streams to make the enterprise self-sustainable.  Figuring out what can generate revenue separate from pure price speculation is hard.

Another idea expanding on the above might be to build a end-to-end platform for integrating virtual currency in games.  Have a methodology and a set of APIs and pre-built code and infrastructure so XYZ game company can easily on-ramp.  Have pre-built storefront code they can use for selling virtual items, virtual item exchange for users, etc., pre-bake the whole thing and make it a Happy Meal / I'll take the #6 Game Currency value meal please, hooked in with the compliance platform so you have AML/KYC etc.

Picks and shovels.  I don't know that anyone has uncovered a "unicorn" in the crypto world yet.

[AtoM60]

give a work purse, or send to bittrex my TRON I you your DAT file

[Starin]

I just don't understand one thing, and I have pm'ed this to cryptowest too.
I know there are lots of TRON holders and investors but I haven't seen any community activity. You just ask dev to do everything. And blame him when he can't deliver, like you are paying sallary to him.

You guys have been moaning about website. A simple website is soo easy to make. Even if a community member can't perform the job you can pay a small amount for at least a landing page, which will be useful for marketing. I couldn't see any real community members marketing the coin aswell, just empty hypes. There isn't even a single faucet to get some interest on to TRON.

You just expect everything to happen while you seat back and enjoy the free money.

Anyway... You know my thoughts on this matter very well cryptowest, I hope you find some funds for your project.

[fartbags]

The idea of TRON as I understand it is to be a crypto technology incubator in the "alt" world.  

ALTs don't need help from traditional incubators. They also don't need private ARCH style "CEO rooms".

ALTs are these brand new things that are going to blow up huge. You trade BTC for them. Groups of people from all over the world make these open source things. You should definitely be buying ALTs and NOT investing in some traditional incubator or "private CEO room".

[lambdaE]

Is tron a good purchase now?
Or should I wait till it drops somemore.

[fartbags]

Is tron a good purchase now?
Or should I wait till it drops somemore.

You will only get lies here. For the real advice, you have to join the ARCH style private CEO slack group. It's where people discuss things like price and who owns how much of the coin.

I would recommend just ignoring coins that have these private slack groups. No need to get in on this coin when there's so many other coins to support.

[cryptowest]

Is tron a good purchase now?
Or should I wait till it drops somemore.

You will only get lies here. For the real advice, you have to join the ARCH style private CEO slack group. It's where people discuss things like price and who owns how much of the coin.

I would recommend just ignoring coins that have these private slack groups. No need to get in on this coin when there's so many other coins to support.

Lol, theres no talk like that in the Director room... if there was, and people acted on it, they might be comitting a felony. Slack is not a very private platform and we are in the US, not Portugal. Most of the discussion is on direction and specifications and sharing of ideas. Also, the barrier to entry is low, and there's only one level of 6,720 coins for access, no tiers.

Anyway, the point of posting all of that was to judge the response and whether or not its a good idea. Of course the negative voices are a lot louder, I expected that, but theyre also saying things that make more sense than "yea do it!" ... So I will figure something else out. It was worth a try to judge the response. I still think the project would be successful in the short term, but it's not good for TRON. But crypto people want devs that don't eat or profit on their own projects and just make them rich, and I will never be that person. Perhaps I will try some sort of formal "gofundme" or donation request, but the fact is, anyone who's offered support wants something in return, even if that is just a joke coin to trade. It's a tough choice.

[mitchr4]

West, I think the more you get done, i.e website, nodes, startups the more people will trust you. A new "funding coin" once you've set up an infrastructure is a much better idea that trying to do it now. I know you're out of cash, but honestly I think that approach will help tron, and won't taint your reputation. If you call for a coin to fund you, people are going to think less of you.

If you develop and check things off the list of promises the price will rise.

[cryptowest]

West, I think the more you get done, i.e website, nodes, startups the more people will trust you. A new "funding coin" once you've set up an infrastructure is a much better idea that trying to do it now. I know you're out of cash, but honestly I think that approach will help tron, and won't taint your reputation. If you call for a coin to fund you, people are going to think less of you.

If you develop and check things off the list of promises the price will rise.

Yeah, but checking things off the list doesnt pay the bills. And getting a job will likely involve me moving to a larger city near more companies in the technology field (im out on mountain peaks), which will take more money. I'm probably not going to do it, but even if an ICO raised me only 5 btc from people who want to help me out but want a shitcoin to whale around with, it would be enough of a bump (included to my IRL webdev contracts and pc repair crap) then I can work on TRON full time for at least a month, which I would love, and I could buy more TRON to make my work on it feel more rewarding, get a bunch more done and caught up. If I can pull everything together I personally believe TRON can be successful even in the short term.

I like a lot of the new people I've met while working on TRON, and I don't want to alienate them or piss them off. I really don't give a shit about the trolls anymore, but the TRON supporters are cool. That's why I'm here discussing it instead of just impulsively launching something, and I appreciate all the replies.

[cryptovault8]

Is tron a good purchase now?
Or should I wait till it drops somemore.

don't listen to fartbags.  for now $TRON is as good as a purchase as it has ever been. It's nowhere near a powerhouse, but it's not like some of the other alt coins that are worth fractions of a fraction of a cent. Imo buy when they dip under 3¢. Sell at 3.9+ This has been the current trend but that could change any day now. All in all, it's really doing alright for what it is right now... basically a penny stock. you make nice gas money and if you fail at a risk it won't depress you the fuck out.

[tlav]

even if an ICO raised me only 5 btc from people who want to help me out but want a shitcoin to whale around with, it would be enough of a bump (included to my IRL webdev contracts and pc repair crap) then I can work on TRON full time for at least a month, which I would love, and I could buy more TRON to make my work on it feel more rewarding, get a bunch more done and caught up. If I can pull everything together I personally believe TRON can be successful even in the short term.

There are already tons of shitcoins on the market, I think you're overestimating the demand for another one.

[fartbags]

Try to hard fork the coin and add in a development fund. Every block adds 0.1 TRON into your wallet.

The people could then chose which client they use. It would be nice to see the result. Will miners support your dev work (new client) or will they demand you work for free (old client)!