There is another thread for the same groupbuy in german language at: [Gruppenkauf] Avalon ASIC Chips (SebastianJu)

New development regarding Refund:


Explaination refund process: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187660.msg3057388#msg3057388

List with refundrequests: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187660.msg3066468#msg3066468

Status updates:

2013-07-07: Batch 6 ordered through zefir (our part: 6000 chips) - Status "Chips ordered"
2013-06-13: Batch 5 ordered - Status "Chips ordered" | Batch 6 starts
2013-06-09: Batch 1, 2, 3 and 4 changed their status from "Chips ordered" to "Sample-chip-shipped"
2013-06-04: Batch 2, 3 and 4 changed their status from "Processing" to "Chips ordered"
2013-05-27: Batch 4 ordered - Status "Processing" | Batch 5 starts
2013-05-23: Batch 3 ordered - Status "Processing" | Batch 4 starts
2013-05-23: Batch 2 changed their status from "On hold" to "Processing"
2013-05-21: Batch 1 changed their status from "Processing" to "Chips ordered"
2013-05-18: Batch 2 ordered - Status "On hold" | Batch 3 starts
2013-05-11: Batch 1 ordered - Status "Processing" | Batch 2 starts
2013-05-02: First payments roll in because zefirs group buy has stopped now.
2013-04-25: Creation of Group Buy with Batch 1

1. Why a new Group Buy?
Unfortunately zefir stops his group buy at the end of April. I wasnt able to convince him to run the offer for an unlimited/at least longer time. His group buy ran under [ANN] Avalon ASIC chip distribution and i think this shouldnt die. Giving the opportunity to order chips in small quantities to miners with smaller BTC-Wallets too.

2. Whats new?
Ill make some changes to the original groupbuy. Buyers will be able to buy chips in 1 chip steps. Not all miner-technologies that will be developed in the near future will need exactly 10 chips for a miner board.
The shipping fee will be lower.
I live not far from burnin, so shipping will be fast and cheap. And shipping to burnin will cost less because the fee can be split among all users that send their chips to burnin.
There are some more miner-developers. I now created a list out of them i know about. Im sure until the chips arrive there will be some more developers that are able to turn chips into miners.    
List of Avalon-Asic-Miner-Developers

3. Remainder
Only send payments from an address you control (i.e. you can sign with it). If you send from MtGox or other exchanges, you risk loosing your funds since you can't prove you sent them. If you bought chips pay attention that your address is in the list that shows the payments with the correct amount of chips. If something looks wrong you need to proof that youre the owner of that address. You have to be able to sign a message with your sending address to proof that youre the owner off that address: How to sign/verify messages?.
The wallet Multibit cant sign messages. In case you did an error there it should be possible to import your addresses into a wallet that can sign messages and then sign a message with your sending address.

4. Order Status

Last updated: May 31 - 21:49 UTC (Nothing changed till that time, ill get an email alert if something changes there.)

5. Refunds
Your orders are binding after your funds have been used to pay for a batch. Before that (while coins are piling up for the next batch), you can demand for a refund and will get it paid back in full.
In case avalon stops selling of chips all collected bitcoins will be transferred back to the sender.

6. Where you from?
Im located in germany, not far from burnin. Burnin is a developer of a Miner who will create miners out of avalon chips. Your avalon chips could be integrated in his design if you dont want to create your own miner.
There are some more miner-developers. I now created a list out of them i know about. Im sure until the chips arrive there will be some more developers that are able to turn chips into miners.    
List of Avalon-Asic-Miner-Developers

7. Who are you?
Im a german member of this community since nearly 2 years. Im living not far from burnin, a developer of a miner board. If you want proof of my identity i can provide you with my id.

8. What to do with the chips?
Its up to you. You can receive it to your home and create your own miner. Check out the DIY-Thread for this.
Or you can let me send it to burnin, a creator of a Miner that works with the chips and is willing to create the miners for you. His thread is here: [Work in progess] Burnins Avalon Chip to mining board service
He thinks about a miner with 10 chips for an assembly price of 80€ and a miner with 20 chips for 100€. (price isnt fully set yet)
Of course you can ask me to send it to any other location, miner producer, your own address or similar.
I created a thread with miner-developers that want to create miners from Avalon asics. The list is incomplete yet but i hope developers will add themselves as soon as they have an offer. List of Avalon-Asic-Miner-Developers

9. The chip details from Avalon homepage:
The relevant information about the chips is available from Avalon here.

10. Pricing
A: I am asking for a 9.9% surplus for my nerves (risk compensation). the 10k chips totaled to 782.1BTC, which results to a resale price of 0.086BTC / chip.

B: Like zefir i have to get a fee for shipping the chips too. Zefir takes $20 processing fee per shipping, regardless of how many chips ordered. I will need only $10 as a fiat based component to cover expenses, including package hardware for shipping, custom handling fees and, if needed cost for outsourcing if time is of essence. On top there is the shipping cost needed to ship your package to the location you want it at. You can chose the type of shipment when there is a choice to choose between security and higher price. This fee is not per order but per shipment. I think thats fair and even better than the original offer.

C: In the case that the shipment from avalon is stopped by customs and a fee has to be paid to get the chips back, all buyers of the batch pay the needed fee to free the batches according to the amount of chips a buyer owns in the batches. No additional fee is taken for this.

D: If you are willing to ship to a miner developer like burnin the shipping fee will be split through all buyers that want their chips sent to him. This should lead to a very low shipment cost.

E: The fiat fee will be paid once the chips arrive and i got your target address. It doesnt have to be paid in fiat, Bitcoin is fine too. Its only calculated in fiat to be independent from bitcoin exchange price.

11. Reservation
No reservations. If you pay and give me the details youre in. Reservations wouldnt be fair against the others. And as long as its possible to order chips there will be a new batch created everytime. The blockchain is the indisputable proof of your payment.

12. Ordering
A: A lead time of 10+ weeks in the current sentiment takes ages. We can right now observe the dramatic exchange rate fluctuations, and we might also see some of the competing ASIC manufacturers succeed and flood the market with cheaper solutions. Before you order, please do your risk analysis.

B: If you still want to buy and are fine with the above pricing model, then you will have to participate in the risk and pay your order upfront. If you understood the risk-factors you should clearly understand why I can't afford to charge you in 10 weeks.

C: There is one common payment address per batch. The actual address is: 1Aq1Kt6LBPgXxzq86DPwoZHAM83iAKb9H3 Only send from an address you can sign a message with. Otherwise a dispute cant be won. How to sign/verify messages?.
Why verify messages? In case another person claims that your payment is his payment you have to be able to prove that the address you sent from is yours.
Make sure you copied the correct address before clicking on send. Compare first, last and some middle digits of the copied address to prevent errors.
If one wants to test verification of messages, here is the data needed to verify that the above address is connected to my forums username (its my donation jar in my signature): DAS IST NICHT DIE GRUPPENKAUFADRESSE!
Fast Check at: Verify Message

13. To buy
A:

• select your number of chips N in steps of 1, starting from one, with no maximum chips
• send the total amount (C = N * 0.086) to the given address
• post or PM (if you want to stay anonymous) me your order in the following format:
  Quote
  <forum nick>; <N>; <C>; <sending address>
  ensure the sending address is under your control, so you can sign with it in case of disputes. How to sign/verify messages?.
  if your wallet application does not let you select the sending address and sends from multiple, please post only one of them (and keep the address for a while)
  
• Sign your username as message (see point 13B). Its still time to verify until the chips are delivered but its good to have it done in the meantime.

B: SIGNING/VERIFYING

• Copy the sending address from which you sent with to the group buy. If you mean that the sending address doesnt look like yours its probably a change address. This address is yours of course when you sent bitcoins with it. If you dont know the address then go to the transaction, where you sent bitcoins to the group buy, and check the details. There is a transaction-id. Copy this t-id and put it into the form field at blockchain.info. Then you can see the sending address(es) you sent the bitcoins with.
• Choose "sign messages" in your wallet.
• Copy the sending address in the field at the top where the address has to be.
• Put your forums username in the message field. (If possible use only your username and not more signs or words to prevent errors while sending the info via pm or while verifying.)
  
• Click at sign.
• The signatur IS NOT stored in bitcoin network (blockchain) and isn't automatically transmitted to me. The signation only creates data, the signature, that is the long string at the bottom that ends to =. In order i can verify the sending address you need to send me the signature. See next point.
• Create a pm and set up two code tags. Like this here:

Example-Code-Tag (Created with BBCode, that is the number sign on top of PMs or Posts while creating them):

• The code tags are important so that while sending the pm no wrong signs come to it that could make the message or the signature faulty.
• In the first codetag put in the signed message, for example your username. IMPORTANT: Upper- and Lowercase does matter. You have to verify the exact same text you used for signing.
• In the second codetag put in the created signature. Please be careful to copy all signs of the signature. For example use ctrl+A to mark all signs, then ctrl+C to copy them.
• Go to Verify signed messages via website and put in your username (your message) and your signature into the fields. To be sure all is copied correctly first go in the field with the mouse, click ctrl+A to mark all the old text, then click ctrl+V to overwrite all marked text. Klick "Verify Message" and see that the sending address comes out that you signed the message with.
• If that happened successfully send the pm.
• As soon as i verified the signature and message and got the correct sending address out of it you will be verified.
• Who is using armory knows that the result of signing is different. Its a block of text. Simply send me that block. I can verify it.
• Here a video tutorial to sign with the normal Wallet: Bitcoin-QT signing (Thanks to Foofighter)
• Here a video tutorial to sign with a Onlinewallet: blockchain.info wallet signing (Thanks to Foofighter)

C: The buying window opens now and doesnt have an end as of now.

D: If there is more demand than the actual batch can hold, then the additional bitcoins move to the next batch, to order an additional 10k chip, given they are in stock. The coins moved to the next batch can be refunded of course if the buyer doesnt want to wait for the next batch.

14. Confirmation of order
No personal confirmation will be given. If you want to check wait for the next list with orders and search your address. If somethings not right inform me. But the list is the confirmation.

15. Who should buy and who should not
A: Please note that this chip distribution is meant for DIY folks and for users that know where to let the chips be assembled into a miner. That is, if you want to build your own mining boards, either from scratch or based on the reference design Avalon announced to release in May. Of course you can let the chips be forwarded to a developer of your choice.  (burnin, allten, or whoever decides to work on a ASIC product). Even though they will have some chips to sell their miners you can give them your chips to let them implement in a miner.
There are some more miner-developers. I now created a list out of them i know about. Im sure until the chips arrive there will be some more developers that are able to turn chips into miners.    
List of Avalon-Asic-Miner-Developers

B: You can order chips either if you plan to develop your own mining board, or want to buy a ready-to-mine assembled from other developers / manufacturers. In the latter case, with your order you secure the chips from the current batch and decide where to send them for assembly when they arrive.

16. Escrow
I did not offer escrow for 2 reasons: as soon as the payments fill up to 782.1 BTC, I'll order another batch. No idea how long the chips will be in stock, but I would like to act fast.
The second reason is that i dont see how an escrow could provide higher security here. I worked with john as an escrow in the past though.

17. Shipment
A: The chips will be forwarded to your desired address as soon as I receive them and you paid the fiat component mentioned above.
Example:

Batch 1 Order 95 20 Chips to burnin 30 Chips to <your address>
or
Batch 2 Order 102 3 Chips dont ship
Batch 3 Order 105 27 Chips + Batch 2 Order 102 3 Chips to burnin
or
Batch 2 Order 107 40 Chips I will come to pick up.

Simple write me so that i know where your chips should be going to. Of course you have to have the sending address verified for the order.

I will put a list to the shipments to the assembler. This list contains the batchnumber, the ordernumber, the sending address and the amount of chips that are shipped from this order.

B: Orders of >=1000 chips are sent first. All chips, regardless of the amount, will be sent as fast as possible and help will be hired to make this happen.

18. Communication
I live in Germany (Timezone). Ill try to communicate as fast as possible. Of course i dont have time everytime. Please be patient when im not around for some time.

Thank you!
Sebastian

Batch 1 Orderstatus: Click
Batch 2 Orderstatus: Click
Batch 3 Orderstatus: Click
Batch 4 Orderstatus: Click
Batch 5 Orderstatus: Click

Batch 6 Orderstatus:

The timeline for shipping is, according to avalon: "the lead time on the chips is 9 to 10 weeks." That means after a batch is paid it will take this time until the chips would be able to send out to the address you chose.
Zefir observed that avalon is waiting some days until it buys a new batch of chips at the foundry. Collecting several orders of 10k chips. So as soon as the BTC needed to buy the batch are ready ill order. The same way zefir is doing it since batch 2.
I suggest using zefirs group buy as long as possible. For further orders this group buy is offered.

Fair warning: I understand 10% is good compensation, but if you have a day job, reconsider it, as you will be overwhelmed with orders and managing and shipping will be a nightmare. Also since you have allowed 1 chip increment, good luck with that.

Also remember, people will pay you 10%, but then bitch for slightest mistake that may happen unknowingly. So again, best of luck.

However, if you do not have a day job / you are a student - this is the ultimate job you can have. Congrats for that.

Have you already bought and pay for the chips yourself?     or you are just collecting funds to buy the chip?

Remember zsfir bought the chip himself and re-sell to the members.

I was also considering to organize a group buy with some friends, but I found we would have a "competitive disadvantage" due to import taxes.
Will you buy the chips as a private person? I assume you will have to pay 19 % import taxes to Germany...
Thus chip price will be ~0.094 BTC (excl. shipping, assembly, pcb)...

as far as I know there will be no import fees from customs - import tax for sure 19%, but no fees
I'm working in a company who imports led tubes and other things from china, which have low fees.
I couldn't find fees concerning chips.

Looks like zefirs group buy ended now. Feel free to use this groupbuy now. Its the same groupbuy like in german subforum to collect more orders.

Avalon added a new paragraph to the description that says that samplechips are sent out 4 weeks after ordering. Its unknown how many chips that will be. I suggest that the chips are sent out to the buyers that ordered the biggest amount of chips. If one doesnt need such chip because he doesnt create his own device then the next biggest buyer can get this chip. Everyone gets only one chip so that as many as possible can get one.

Is this acceptable or do you have other suggestions to handle this?

how many had bought in the group buy?

Like i describe in first post, if someone orders he has to send me a pm or write a forum post about it. Otherwise i dont know who to contact.