Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
You don't do a great job in your posting describing the current state of ENS. The de-facto "official" registrar is maintained by trusted Ethereum community members. Nick Johnson et al have released smart contract code making it easy for anyone to host their own registrars, but unless there is community support (from wallets, exchanges, etc.) to use those registrars to resolve the names then it's pointless.
It's way to early to consider an implementation of the ENS interface as official.
Secondly, we're the only ENS that allow the registrations of name except .eth and .test. So we're not even offering the same service.
Ours implementation is more extensive service.
Secondly, on my site simpleens.github.io users can already use their simpleENS names to send ETH to friends and family.
In fact, we would argue that using simpleENS is the easiest way to send ETH (requires the click of a single button).
So wallet integration is a non-issue.
We will build our own decentralized ETH exchanges (similar to etherDelta). Allowing the use of simpleENS names.
We should be able to convince larger exchanges to integrate simpleENS names, particularly for the use of names with TLDs other than .eth.
Since ENS only uses .eth names, there's no reason for Bitfinex not to implement simpleENS names with different TLDs (e.g. .smith) .
We have decided to retain ownership of the .eth TLD on simpleENS, if there is a collision problem we will negotiate a solution.
The distributed name exchange idea is a good one as well as the collateralized lending, and code for both of these have already been published and shared with the community on reddit and github. I haven't looked deep into simpleENS to determine originality.
You can check on reddit when we first made the announcement.
As far as we know we were the first ones to deploy a decentralized name exchange.
All of our code is original.
In order for this to really gain momentum it would be great if you could outline your communications thus far and marketing plan with existing services in the Ethereum ecosystem. i.e. have you already gained any support from major exchanges and wallets? If not, I believe a 20k ETH is extremely premature and quite excessive. What will you do with monies raised if you do not hit a minimum target?
Support with exchanges didn't come automatically for ETH Foundation's ENS. It came with adoption of it's ENS.
Our core plan is to market the fact that we allow the registration of other TLDs than .eth and .test
Also that registering a name on simpleENS requires to interaction with complex auction contracts.
Check that a name is available then buy it.
Note that ETH Foundation's ENS is unfamiliar even in the general ETH community.
So we will prepare and launch a carefully considered, monitored and extensive online campaign, precisely targeting all potential ETH users.
This will unfortunately be expensive. From the raw data analysis to the ad properties we will have to purchase.
We've already built a functional DAPP. This was to show the community that we are committed and compentent.
But becoming the dominant ENS service will be costly. So it will require a large investment.
Our goal is for >50% of ETH users to be using simpleENS. Nothing less.
If we do not meet our target. We will still support and market simpleENS.
Our growth will however be slower, and the chance of failure is greater.
We have an opportunity to become the premier ENS provider now. This opportunity may not last.
Let me know if you have other questions
