Hello everyone,
It saddens me that I'm here posting this reply. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Michael Wagner, founder of the Tokes Platform. I would have preferred for Rob and I to navigate this conversation privately, but as the Incent team has announced a 'discontinuation of support' for our ICO distribution, I'm compelled to provide a response.
For some background, the terms of our MOA included a 5BTC deposit up front, 5BTC closing payment, and 2% of total funds raised as a share of revenue. In return, we were to receive a functional investment management backend portal along with a component of technical support for our users. We made payments on the initial deposit, as well as an interim payment based on funds raised (~1.8BTC). If you were a participant in our ICO, you can attest to the fact that the execution of distribution of tokes proceeds left a lot to be desired, and in fact was never officially completed. Our ICO closed on January 15th, and our investors are still waiting on distributions to be processed by their team.
For additional context, this is the email message I sent to Rob and Peter following our call earlier in the evening. Please note that this went out at 8:05PM PST, and the 'discontinuation of support' post was released in the early hours of the morning, without having any additional communication with me.
From: Michael Wagner [mailto:michael@tokesplatform.org]
Sent: Monday, March 6, 2017 8:05 PM
To: 'Rob Wilson' <
rob@bitscan.co>
Cc: 'Peter Godbolt' <
peter@incentloyalty.com>; gabriel@tokesplatform.org; jon@tokesplatform.org; 'Minh Tran' <
minh@tokesplatform.org>
Subject: RE: bounties etc.
Rob,
Following up from our call, a few of the areas we see as being inadequate performance, in no particular order:
• Email support system never worked (i.e. password resets and other contact requests)
• Referral system and bonuses were non-functional
• Numerous API outages and incorrect reporting for both Waves and BTC
• Site outages on several occasions, notably on the day of our promotional sale
• Incorrect time periods being reported for phases of ICO – countdown timer hitting zero then counting upwards
• Incorrect reporting amount for distribution, causing numerous man-hours spent manually calculating accurate amounts to demonstrate to participants
• Long delay between time in which we approved initial token release and actual distribution (somewhere around 2 weeks)
• Long delay on distribution of approved bounty spreadsheet
• Incomplete backend reporting functionality (fields missing data)
• Communication dropping off for 1-2 weeks at a time, despite emails, at the most critical time of our ICO distribution
• Incent bonuses did not go out
The rest of my team might have additional items to add… As I said on the phone, I’d really like for us to come to some terms amiably. I do think there is some opportunity for us to generate value for and with each other in the future. I can be flexible with some form of payment via tokes. I hope you’ll take these items under consideration, along with the revenue you generated relative to both service provided and total funds raised by the ICO. I’ll be available for a follow-up call after you’ve thought this over.
Best,
Michael Wagner
Founder
Tokes Platform / Cannabis Revolution
While I made an appeal to them regarding the payment amount to them proportional to funds raised, this is not about us 'not raising enough money'. This is about inadequate execution of their side of the agreement.
An earlier attempt to communicate with Incent at the beginning of February:
From: Michael Wagner [mailto:michael@tokesplatform.org]
Sent: Monday, February 6, 2017 12:23 PM
To: 'Peter Godbolt' <
peter@bitscan.co>; 'Rob Wilson' <
rob@bitscan.co>
Cc: gabriel@tokesplatform.org;
jon@tokesplatform.orgSubject: ICO and Bounty Distributions
Gentleman,
Hope all finds you well following the weekend. As we near completion on the Tokes ICO, I just wanted to follow up on a few final details…
1. Jon has completed the reconciliation for bounty distributions and prepared a spreadsheet with waves wallet addresses and their respective payouts, which I’ve attached. Please let me know if you still plan on adding these payouts to the remaining distributions or if we should process manually.
2. Remaining investor distributions…not surprisingly, a few members of the community are getting a bit restless about receiving their tokes. I understand that you’re being methodical with the distro, but just wanted to get an idea of when all members with withdrawal addresses will receive their full payouts?
3. Tokes Reserve Address: given that the majority of ICO payments have gone out, you should be able to process the tokes reserve distribution. You can retain some units as necessary to ensure complete distro, but ~95% of the reserve can be sent to: 3P5WW7ebPaZF5NXDm1ZZYmrbgFm784tsRPw
4. Per my communications with Fran, we’ve released escrow including the 2% payment due to Incent. I can pull transaction details if needed, but you should have received that payment late last week.
5. Incent bonus: several members have inquired about the 1% incent bonus to be paid to ICO investors. I assume those will be going out along with the final tokes distributions, or should we be preparing for a different scenario?
6. Customer testament: I’m sure you’re eager to further promote the ICO technology. Per our earlier conversation, I’m happy to write up a customer statement for you, pending completion on the remaining items above.
I think that just about covers everything from our end. Looking forward to getting everything wrapped up from an ICO perspective, and potentially continuing the conversation regarding POS development. I’ve loosely discussed this with Peter, but we might have an opportunity to jointly develop a mobile app and point-of-sale system, as our projects have some overlapping interest in that technology. In any case, look forward to hearing back.
Best,
Michael
In essence, we paid for a product we thought was robust and complete from individuals we felt were professional. What we received was complete garbage. It would be irresponsible from both a company perspective, and in considering the impact on our investors, for me to relegate additional funds from our operating capital to pay a non-performing contract. I would caution anyone considering the use of Incent ICO technology to strongly reconsider the other options currently available in the ecosystem. If the Tokes team did anything wrong, it was engaging with Incent on this feature.
Given the fact that we are terminating our relationship with Incent, I don't feel that the Incent ANN thread is the most appropriate channel to continue this conversation. If you were a Tokes investor, or have interest in our project, I encourage you to join us in slack (you can register at:
https://tokes-slack.herokuapp.com/ and join us at
http://tokesplatform.slack.com).
For those who invested in Tokes Platform, know that we will be making you whole through the issuance of a new asset on Waves, with the name Tokes, but under a new asset ID. Any exchange listings will be based on that new asset ID. The members in our slack channel have requested that the initial 1% Incent bonus that was offered be replaced with a 1% Tokes bonus, which we will honor. Feel free to reach me direct at
michael@tokesplatform.org. Bear in mind that we might be inundated with emails initially, so please bear with me on response time. I'll begin processing the replacement asset today.
