Founders message in Discord from CEO and Founder Scott Morrison:
Founders update
It’s been a while since I’ve done a formal founders update, subsequently there’s quite a bit to cover but I’ll do my best to keep it relevant and concise. I may miss a topic that you wanted covered, so I will be opening a pure AMA channel in the discord with one channel for asking/discussing and one with my responses.
You all enjoy a very open and transparent team here with Halo. We are active in the community and include you in many of our project discussions and we intend to maintain this relationship with our community. That being said, please respect that there are limitations to some areas of discussions these cover legal, business and sometimes personal issues.
Over the last few months you have seen the departure of some of our team members. Some of these were natural departures, contracts finishing and job offers. There has also been a reduction due to budgetary restraints.
We have sustained a longer than anticipated downward market and have not yet achieved the market awareness that we had anticipated. With the number of products we have delivered the project has used up the major portion of funds. This has required us to make the hard decisions scaling our work force to remain viable and deliver on our promises.
The legal, licensing and tax elements for a project of this scope have amounted to a lot more than anticipated as the regulatory climate for crypto has evolved and it has always been Halo’s position that we will be compliant and legal.
Exchange listings have been a hot topic and something that we have to be extremely careful with, We have made applications to several exchanges but this is not as straightforward as you may think, some are incredibly expensive and outside of our budget, with others we have legal restraints imposed, so are unable to discuss. Then there are the issues of volume, can you trust the numbers, exit scams, are halo clients going to lose their funds? We have been caught out with LA Token, and had a close shave with Coinbene, We are in discussions with others and are working towards a solution, but we will never be able to please everyone.
Marketing, this has been our weakness since we started this project. Our focus was always on delivering a solid product with a belief that a good project did not have to do the massive flagrant shilling and price manipulation. We have in the past brought on four different teams/individuals to assist on the marketing front they have either completely failed at producing a deliverable, or were ineffectual. We have yet to find an effective partner for the marketing position and until we are successful in finding that right fit we are still managing marketing in house. We have had existing and new community members with various marketing backgrounds (GlobalBrand,Social Media etc) reach out to me . They have helped us put together a package of press releases and coverage from some of the most popular crypto sites that would not have been obtainable for us otherwise.
The launch of the Centralised Exchange will give us a unique opportunity to showcase Halo and all its other products. We will be launching a 2 Tier Affiliate program and other promotional tools through a longer term marketing blitz that will encompass brand and product awareness and in general promoting what we have already delivered on to the crypto community.
Utility this is another question the community has posed, With the launch of the Central Exchange, Halo will start to have some added utility, holding Halo will bring reduced trading fees and reduced funding fees. The main utility behind Halo has always been as a transport layer of value between the projects, to distribute the service fees to the masternode holders. But in creating our chain we created a phenomenal coin. We will continue to research and develop more ways to utilize it and incentivize those who hold and use it.
We have not forgotten the DEX either! There are plans to promote the DEX to work in tandem with the CEX. While the future of DEX’s in general remain in the air, most failing to see adoption, there is a very practical use for them though in the fact they are a Peer to Peer exchange layer that has a number of applications outside of just the actual exchange you use, and we will work on developing those uses with our upcoming partners.
We are working on several comprehensive policy documents to define the Decentralized and Centralized listing requirements and formal listing request procedures. We will have further information documents on how easy it is to do business with Halo, how our ICO and IEO listings work.
Moving Forwards
We are still sustainable (through our scaling and consolidating efforts)
We are still developing our core products to deliver
We are focusing on the centralized exchange development with all hands working towards it.
We will deliver on the CEX (centralized exchange)
We will deliver on Masternode V2 (Payments in other coins, increased speed of dapp)
We will deliver on Texas Hold’em
We will deliver on the Casino
We are working towards backfilling essential personal
We have new projects coming on board that are partnering with Halo and giving us more exposure.
We are developing a marketing strategy for the new launches .
The new website is in development and it will give an updated view of the HALO project and showcase all our products.
We are in active discussions with several exchanges but as mentioned not all information can be disclosed.
There are many more projects on our roadmap for 2019 and we will progress to those once the Casino and the CEX are delivered. We don’t want to over promise and under deliver. There is too much of that in the crypto sphere at the moment.
Over the coming weeks we will give more comprehensive details on the above information, more in depth answers, these will include details of future promotions, and announcements for the finalization of partnerships,
Halo is positioning itself to be a solid platform, a product and a project that can be trusted, with a sound reputation. We will never waiver from this core DNA or compromise our integrity regardless of opportunities that arise. It is who we are.
From my heart I know this is not an easy message to read, as it was not easy to type. Even though Halo is still blazing forward I truly wish it was with the recognition it deserves.
There is an AMA channel in Discord and here are a few of the questions asked:
Q:Are the team expecting to finish CEX and Casino/Holdem in Q2 or later?
A:"Still for Q2, These are three individual teams working on the projects. Casino is a separate project from Texas Hold'em."
Q:Will there be a listing fee to get on CEX? That might be a marketing budget boost for the whole platform for a little while
A:Yes, the CEX will require a listing fee. We also plan to hold community voting contests on the platform where they will purchase Halo to vote for their favorite projects to get listed. I plan to have these held monthly. It will be an easier way for coins to get recognized and another use for Halo.
Q:If there is one thing that I would like to see is a simple page what you´re working on and in what order
A:Thats pretty simple, CEX Casino and Texas Hold'em atm from individual teams.
Q:how will coins get listed on the dex will there be a howto on the main page
A: Yes, we are creating the google doc for them to submit for listing, along with what we require (smart contract info, chain info etc)
Q:What has been the biggest mistake so far on this project?
A: Honestly, the marketing. We fell short on delivering a clear message with our products. We delivered them, but not the follow up. We felt that the with delivery we would see more organic growth and marketshare. Something that we are working hard to rectify now.
Q:Will the CEX launch in Q2 be the full public launch after testing is completed ?
A: Yes, we will have a few rounds of testing, bot trading to simulate volume (paper trading, no real btc etc), plus inviting beta testers to get human feedback
Q:Not expecting a very specific answer (just give a ballpark answer if you can). But how much revenue would the CEX need to generate in order to keep halo afloat for 1 year?
A:With our reduction in expenses (moving from AWS being one of the largest), that number is about 2.5m a day in trading volume, which would generate enough revenue to not only stay afloat but grow.
Q:How many actual team members are at Halo now? 4, 5, 20, 30?
Will you be posting jobs publicly for talent acquisition?
A: We have approximately 12 team members with contractors included. This includes 4 core team members, and eight contractors. Though the contractors may fluctuate as it is two separate teams and they operate their own companies. That is just their current members working on the projects.
Yes, as we can define what it is we need to fill, plus make budget for them we will post publicly as we have for most positions.
Q:Why do you think adoption has been far less than anticipated? What strategies can be actioned cheaply with a lean budget in mind? Particularly to avoid the CEX release resulting in a similar situation to the DEX?
A: DEX is nearly a completely different beast then a CEX. It's actually harder to compare them. Even binance dex proves that (230 BNB volume)
Q:So what projects are the contractors working on? CEX? Or games?
And as a follow up question to that, how many of your core team members are left on block & chain? It seems that whole team has left and the projects launched are just floating there.
Are you looking to do another round of funding since all of the current funds have been spent?
A:Contractors are working on Casino titles, another team on Texas Hold'em.
BnC has no core team members left on full time staff. We have capacity to contract them back for certain necessities. The projects are not just floating, they are mostly complete. Dragons breeding and battle races I expect to have in q3.
We do have an equity round open and we are in talks with a few strategic partners who have an expressed interest.
Q:Is downward pressure caused by selling MN fees on the DEX also?
A:No, I actually do not sell into buy orders on the dex, we have liquidity provided on the sell side though but never bottom orders or any type of wall that would hurt the price
If you have any questions, post them here and I'll get them answered, or join discord or TG here:
https://discord.gg/PmveA6A https://t.me/haloplatform
