1. There will probably not be a community vote on the premine topic
2. Coinexchange listing was a discussion held internally with the volunteer group, it was decided that the fee was too high and that funds were to be used for other things such as legal incorporation. In defense of the team, a coinexchange listing in this market would perhaps not have been particularly beneficial as I have witnessed first hand coins such as GBX and DSR deflate precipitously post top listing on hitbtc and coinexchange without fundamental cause or changes in development. But the fact of the matter remains that strategic financial decisions during that period were not communicated properly outside discord forum and it is something that may color future capitalization initiatives such as the coming premine swap. According to team, most of the funds are intact or atleast $30 000 remain which is to be used to further development and renumeration which is good news.
3. From my recollection there was brief discussion on the topic of high roi upgrade of the chain to mirror masternode ecosystem developments during the period of Q1 2018 (such as bitcoin green). A member on discord mentioned that similar upgrades performed by other previously low roi coins had not been beneficial for them. I believe that the new algo will remain low roi in comparison to 1000%+ roi of the Q1 batch and that this high roi development track was abandoned after debate on the forum. FORCE current roi is around 50% which is probably also unsustainable when compared to stock market dividends and DASH. But it is atleast realistic short to mid term without necessarily inducing a price collapse since even triple figure roi coins remain market stable after 6 months of trading (BWK).
4. There is no possibility of voting fraud on Bitfineon since a masternode is priced at nearly $1000 and is required to cast a vote.
5. Now for the remaining risks:
a. Preliminary feedback indicates that there will be no concrete technological presentation or working demo as a justification for the premine swap. There may be a publication of a private github which could be a significant value addition.
b. There may be systemic risk introduced with government regulation of privacy coins after premine funding which could possibly introduce significant hurdles as team is no longer operating under guise of anonymity. It will be very easy to identify and suppress development of existing team under this scenario. However, I believe that privacy coins ecosystem is not yet relevant enough to be of interest to regulating entities, but it has been mentioned intermittently by regulators so it is a concrete possibility.
c. A legal incorporation does in no way or form protect participants from any kind of fund erosion or circumvention to deplete premine funds using a myriad of established and nefarious methods particularly witnessed in biotech during its early days in the 00's. It does not qualify as criminal activity but for all intents and purposes it achieves similar outcome on investor bottom line. "Consulting" fees, regulatory compliance/fees/fines as mentioned, mergers, restructuring, perpetual dilution and other unknown obstacles and expenses that may arise post funding and so on, particularly in blockchain that is a completely untested space riddled with these issues specifically concerning premines, ICO's and the things that everyone is tragically familiar with by now.
d. Force team presently receive 10% of stake rewards and it may be justified to keep future project funding segmented in this way rather than handing over a lump sum of unknown magnitude but possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars at once, until there is a verifiable proof of concept, working demo or any kind of proprietary assets. At the very least, there must be a surgical cost breakdown so participants will know exactly where funds will go and if it is over or under estimated projections, this is basic economics that any serious firm would require so there is no reason for private participants not to request from team to produce this type of public cost estimation prior to premine funding, and not at the last minute without elaborate community debate that is properly communicated to stakeholders on relevant public forums.
6. Team requested that this analysis be a little softer in its approach so I would emphasize that feedback from core devs is excellent and that it's not an experienced communications department so expectations should be kept realistic. The risk profile I submit in this summarized analysis in essence only relates to the topic of the premine which is a potential red flag for my own part after having been active in this space since early 2016.
There are 3 valid solutions to remedy community confidence in reference to coming premine swap:
1. Community voting
2. Don't make a premine swap, keep it at 10-15% of stake rewards with a lesser lump sum
3. Produce some kind of tech validation, demo or anything remotely tangible (update: a private github may be made public, which will potentially add alot of value)
In absence of any or all of these remedies Force should be considered a very high risk project going forward which is obvious for those who are already on board, but much lower than last year. As have been stated before, it is still 1/20 valuation of peers that came online at the same time in late 2017 due to being a community takeover and no top exchange inclusion, and the tech is top tier if not the best wallet at the moment, it certainly was for the majority of 2018. It is unknown what will happen to the original chain after swap, but if a handfull individuals control all outstanding supply it is safe to assume that it will become completely defunct. In case of community division, there is also the risk of forking, or splitting into 2 separate brands. The team and chain is still way ahead of 95% of ecosystem peers that don't even have WP's or active devs. Market cap of sub $1.5M is vastly undervalued barring premine risk. It is a difficult fundraising environment when most alts are down 90% or more, and those who do choose to join should not expect recovery or significant progress for a minimum of 2 years.
1. On the premine, we need a reasonable amount of development funds to make the Force Network a reality. 10% of staking is not enough at this point in time. We are going to create enough extra coins on the new chain to pay people for past work, and developers for new work. We plan on selling them as slow as possible over time at auctions as we need funds. We need to take enough coins so that we don't have to do it again later, and thus a community vote on the amount of coins does not make sense here.
We will be releasing a brand new blockchain and wallet to go alongside the swap. This blockchain will have many new features that are laid out in the WP to enable the cryptocurrency side to meet the FN requirements for anonymity, key transfer, etc. This is a concrete technical achievement with a combination of features never before seen.
Premine funds will directly pay for the development, marketing, and improvement of the Force Network technology. Our goal is to provide much more value to the project than any coins we use for development. After all, a working product is best for everyone.
2. "According to team, most of the funds are intact or atleast $30 000 remain" Nobody on the team said this. Most of the funds raised have been spent on development, marketing, translations, and incorporation. Money gets spent quick when paying developers and lawyers. I am an experienced developer and am also doing as much as I can in between writing articles, marketing, answering questions, etc. but my work alone is not enough for such a large-scale project, hence point #1.
3. We cannot comment on ROI due to very strict legal regulations on the subject. Our intent is not to provide any sort of ROI, but to incentivize users to secure our network with staking, and share their network connections as a hop/master node.
4. I'm not sure why this was even a question, of course we're not rigging votes, and it's great news that so many ALQO holders are excited about Force.
Onto your new concerns:
a) We will have a brand new blockchain to show off with many new features. See 1) above.
b) We chose to incorporate in Malta due to their very friendly cryptocurrency regulations. It is very unlikely they will "ban" privacy coins. Other bans do not affect us, and there's no real mechanism for enforcement. In fact, the way Force is designed, we'll be much more resistant to any potential ban than any other privacy coins, as you will not be able to tell from an outside perspective that you are even using the Force Network.
c) We are legally obligated to act in the best interest of the Force Network as members of it's executive team thanks to incorporation. Maybe there are slimy ways to get around that, but we would face real world legal trouble. We are not interested in 'stealing' tokens. We are interested in building the best anonymous, decentralized network possible. We will continue to demonstrate our resolve by continuing to deliver against our roadmap. Perhaps incorporation by itself isn't enough to convince you, but our accessibility, technical achievements, and continued releases should. We've been working hard for many months.
In addition, we have one of the most technical and complete whitepapers in the space, that clearly lays out how our tech will work.
d) No cryptocurrency project I've ever seen does public cost breakdowns like what you're asking for. It seems unrealistic. If we had a "working demo" we wouldn't need funds to develop one.
Without our continued work, development, and releases, the Force token as it is doesn't do much. We ask the community to keep supporting our efforts so we can make the Force Network a reality.
6. I appreciate the softer approach, we're all trying to make this work.
The new chain will be made open source before the swap and is a very concrete example of development and progress.
As addressed in the points above, your solutions are not the best for the Force Network. We are working hard to build community trust, deliver against our roadmap, and develop a really exciting new technology. The premine will allow us to continue adding value to the Force Network through development, marketing, and paying volunteers for all of their past hard work (that they've been doing for free). With funds we can also ramp up marketing, exchanges, etc, which should allow the premine funds to last even longer (and less will ultimately need to be sold).
- Michael, CTO of the Force Network
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