[SKY] Skycoin Launch Announcement

In the OP

"We will not do a Nxt or Mastercoin style IPO because we believe they are unfair and discourages new users."

I think you might want to reconsider. Nxt/Mastercoin exodus IPOs went very well, and by and large the coins have done okay. As long as the IPO date has a long enough lead time (3 months seems more than reasonable) and is well publicized, it's not unfair. As has to happen with cryptocoins, old money gets shaken out on price lulls and when things aren't going well, and then new money gets its shot.

The point is to raise enough funds so that developers can focus their energies full time on making the coin a success.

One concern with an exodus style IPO is anonymity of whoever owns the exodus address. With mastercoin, the founder was a well known public person. I'm not sure the case with nxtcoin, but I think there was some preexisting reputation. Skycoin seems to be more of a blank slate, albeit with some github repos.

The desire seems to be to challenge bitcoin on its own turf by moving fast; and a generous policy for developer bounties plays a key role here.

I think either the skycoin founders should reveal their identities, or we need trustees.

This is bitcoin however, so we can be creative with trusts.

A multisig exodus with some m of the key holders keeping the main founders honest might be a way to protect against scams in this case, while still protecting founder anonymity. This could be enhanced with voting and multiple stages.

Assume an m of n board of trustees, with the trustees public trusted figures in bitcoin. The trustees only ratify votes, and have no policy role other than controlling disbursement according to a transparent policy that is fixed before the exodus. Voting would be done by proof of ownership of exodus keys, with weighting by percent of ownership. There could also be more than one exodus round.

A simple rule for voting would be that there will be no-confidence votes at regular intervals for 24 months. Any no confidence vote would return all undispursed funds to investors. Otherwise, there is partial disbursement to an address that is controlled fully by founder team (with no m of n trust).

Time 0: Rules for the exodus, voting.
wait a while for word of the exodus to spread.
Time 1: First exodus, 50% of coin sold. 5% disbursed to founders for bounty fund
Time 2: First no confidence vote. (Recurs regularly on some schedule)
Time 3: Second exodus, 25% of coins sold.
...
regular 5% disbursals to founders)
Time n: All coins sold, all funds disbursed to founders for bounty fund.

If at any time investors are dis-satisfied with progress, or disagree with how bounties are being distributed, a no confidence vote happens and btc goes back to investors.

Seems fair enough to me, and founders can stay anonymous.