If Quark wants to outlive the buzz, and explore its true potential, negative feedback must be addressed with respect, transparency and professionalism. For what is worth, this is the ONLY way of showing the crypto-community and potential investors that Quark is actually a crypto-currency worth of their time and money.
But before I lead you into the interesting bit, here's a quick disclaimer:
I'm not a dev. I'm not a miner. I wasn't involved with Quark creation, neither with its launch. My interest in the coin lies in the fact that (1) I'm an investor, (2) I'm actively promoting
Quark logo design contest, and (3) I'm an active advocate of crypto-currencies. I strongly believe crypto-currencies to be the future of money.
If you are an investor, please bear in mind this thread is merely a reflection of my own investigation, and consequently, reflects my personal opinions. You SHOULD NOT use it as an investment decision making document. Always keep in mind that there is considerable risk in crypto-currency, and you should never invest what you are not prepared to lose.
Now, back to the main point:
There has been some strong disagreements in between members of the crypto-community in regards to the distribution of Quarks. Essentially, some people have been
attacking Quark for believing it to be a pre-mined coin while others have been
defending the coin by justifying its distribution was very similar to Bitcoin, with no pre-mining.
I believe the very meaning of pre-mining is in question here, and all of this FUD may even be just a case of misinterpretation of the word.
A pre-mined crypto-currency is a currency that had its coins mined before being released to the general public, and while I wasn't aware of Quarks back when it was launched, anyone can read
Quark's announcement thread and use the block explorer to inspect
the first Quark block. If you do that, you'll see that mining of Quarks started exactly in the same day of the public announcement. The only conclusion I take from this quick analysis is that Quark wasn't pre-mined at all.
The mining of Quark only started after launch, not before, and for that reason calling Quark a pre-mined coin is essentially a semantic error; one that I'm also guilty.
One interesting point here. The use of the pre-mine argument is the most used reasoning to justify the FUD on Quark. If you do your own investigation, you'll find many people are bashing this specific point, but nothing much else. If not for this controversial issue, I wonder, would Quark be an absolute winner with all of the crypto-community?
Now, on the other hand...
If you continue on reading the same announcement thread, you'll also notice that many miners are reporting difficulties in mining the coin. Some miners are praising the results of their mining, but it seems that the majority is calling the launch of Quark a terrible release. In turn that gives the appearance that something shady is going on. I must reinforce the keyword "appearance" because I cannot tell if there were other miners who were successful but did not mind reporting their results.
Many of Quarks' supporters have been using this argument: —Would it be the case that miners who were unsuccessful in mining Quarks are just FUDing the coin for being frustrated with their own negative results? I don't exclude this possibility, but at the same time, I think is more productive to analyse the founder, not the miners.
So what potential conclusions one can take from this situation?
1. There's a chance that the founder has intentionally prevented miners from successfully mining the coin with the goal of building a larger pot for himself. As a matter of fact, that is actually suggested in the announcement thread by user
orogen. (Highly speculative, but possible)
2. Is this a case of lack of professionalism? Maybe the founder lacks the communication skills needed to launch Quark in a way that satisfy the needs of the crypto-community. Who knows, perhaps he lacks the skills to build the tools that miners need to mine the coin appropriately. (Possible, but I don't expected that to be it.)
3. Another possibility is that Quark was launched by a developer with very limited resources and time, and while he possibly wanted to do his best, he was also expecting the crypto-community to chip in and contribute to make this a successful launch. Isn't that the spirit of open source? (I find no reason this to be true, but still highly possible.)
Which conclusion is the correct one? The short answer is, quite obviously, I don't know, but... —Does it matter?
Consider taking a pragmatic approach to this issue, the fact is that independently of how the launch came to be, Quark has already reached a huge audience. There is humongous support for this coin, and you know what, this is not a bad coin at all. I particularly like the blazing fast confirmations and the implementation of multiple, and random, algorithms.
Even if the coin founder built a bigger pot for himself after launching Quark, how would that differ from Bitcoin? Read this:
Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin Fortune 100 Million. The fact that Satoshi had mined Bitcoin is widely accepted by the large crypto-community as the price Bitcoin users paid for the developer innovation. Shouldn't we think the same of Quark's founder? After all, without his initiative, Quark would not exist today. Period.
My Conclusions About Quark
I wouldn't be surprised to see QRK 3rd place in market cap in a just a few months from now, and end up being valued at $0.5 per coin. Why? It seems to me that the market doesn't care how Quark was launched, and the market don't give a blip if the founder has a large wallet. Investors are looking at Quark as a good investment choice, and they will invest.
On a related reasoning... many who invest in crypto-currencies never actually bother asking questions before choosing a coin to invest. (Actually, I wonder if anyone will care about reading this extremely long and potentially boring thread.) If people invest in non-innovative coins that are nothing more than clones such as Feathercoin, Terracoin and Dogecoin? Yes, Dogecoin! Why would they not invest in a coin like QRK that is actually innovating with 9 different algorithms? I don't think I need to explain it any further.
Now, when it comes to my own decisions: I will continue to invest in the coin in the short term, and I will continue to give my support to Quark logo design campaign until it reaches its conclusion. I don't see any reason to stop believing in the potential of Quark in the upcoming months, but the long term, well, that's another story.
Talking About the Future of Quark
In my own view, Quark was designed in such way that it has the potential to take LTC market cap position, especially if Btc38 decides to adopt the coin, and when that time comes, again, it wouldn't be a surprise if Quarks value reach $2.5 each. I invite you to visit ##quark IRC on Freenode to see how many people are currently working to accomplish that.
Will this future become reality? Well, here's where things should get a bit more serious, and I get back to the title of my thread. We should address negative feedback with respect, transparency and professionalism. Simply shunning those who have been FUDdding Quark with ironic responses, and a blatant showcase of disrespect, is not going to cut it anymore.
The irony is that all of this FUD only helped Quark to reach even larger audiences. I guess is really true that there's no such thing as bad PR, it seems that, thanks to the attention this coins has been getting, now you can buy and sell Quarks in four alt-crypto exchanges: Cryptsy, Bter, Coin-e and now on Vircurex too.
Finally, here's where I come to leave my public recommendation to the development team: —Do you want to see Quark become a success in the long term? Then pay attention to negative feedback, investigate the reasoning behind these claims, address them attentively, and keep on pushing for more transparency. Why not releasing an official roadmap on what's coming for Quark in the upcoming months? I'm confident that would be highly appreciated by many.
Borrowing a quote from our friendly neighborhood spider man: "With great power, comes great responsibility."
