Hello Everyone:
As most of you are aware, there have been development efforts on Boolberry over the course of the past 8 months. This path has been riddled with uncertainty surrounding crypto_zoidberg, his commitment, his availability and the best path forward for Boolberry.
A second external attempt to bring life back to Boolberry began with B4h4mu7 hiring a slew of developers, and cryptographers to get acclimated to the CryptoNote codebase. After several months of research and deliberation, they introduced the concept of forking the recently released Bytecoin 2.0 codebase, a new mining algorithm, whitepaper, among other improvements.
All this work and investment was done without any reliance on crypto_zoidberg being available. The support for the fork was unanimous, and really illustrated the desire of the community to have committed leadership, active development, and a clear direction forward.
Shortly after the community had signaled its support for a fork, crypto_zoidberg reached out and articulated his conundrum.
Here is an overview of what he communicated:
1. Having been the original creator of Boolberry and Wild Keccak, he expressed a strong desire to see the project achieve its full potential and regain status as one of the top privacy coins.
Original Project announcement:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.02. He explained how different things are now, where new forks / ICOs have built-in development funds, but when Boolberry was created, it was a fair launch and that in 2014, anything else was frowned upon, if not flatly rejected by the market. He described the current high demand and cost of top developers. He admittedly regrets putting such a low mining tax, of 1% (which is split among multiple contributors) and acknowledged this miscalculation as not being sufficient to attract and maintain top developers, as well as have resources for marketing, PR, exchange fees etc.
Here is a post from 2014, which illustrates that the 1% mining tax, at that time, equated to about $750 per month, which was clearly insufficient. To eliminate any debate on this topic, even at today’s rates, 1% is equal to just under $2,000 per month, which remains clearly insufficient.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg9111378#msg91113783. Importantly, he communicated his availability, as he has completed all prior obligations, and this was primarily in response to inquiring about a CryptoNote hybrid PoS / PoW project that he announced in December of 2014.
4. He described how Monero really got traction from early adopters, namely Risto Pietilla, and the support he provided not only through supporting the market as an investor, but also as a top contributor to help fund their early development and the formation of a core team.
Here is an insightful article about Risto:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/finnish-investor-plans-to-turn-estonian-castle-into-a-bitcoin-center5. He shared his vision and strategy for catapulting Boolberry back to its prior rank in the privacy coin vertical. (At one point, it was a top 30 overall market cap coin, which now requires a market cap in excess of $800,000,000.)
6. Except for having adequate funding, he has a top-notch team in place, that has a history of working together on a prior project.
7. He concluded by communicating that he and his team are ready, willing, and able but need support for fundraising and community outreach.
It didn't take much time, after having these discussions, to realize exactly where we needed to focus our efforts to be most effective in facilitating his return and empowering him and the team to show what they are capable of, and finally unlocking the tremendous value that sits before us all.
I have been working diligently to coordinate with a large group of long-time holders to help coordinate a first round of fund raising that will provide an important bridge for the project. It will afford us the focus and commitment of crypto_zoidberg and his team and give him the opportunity to earn back / restore the trust within the community.
My hope (and candidly, my expectation) is that subsequent fundraising will ensue as progress is made, milestones are met, and confidence and trust are both restored.
I want to start by giving some of the newer investors a brief overview of the history and legacy of Boolberry:
1. Boolberry was announced on April 20th, 2014 and launched on May 17th, 2014
2. During this short window, crypto_zoidberg was working at a brisk pace to implement unique features that set it apart from other forks around that same time including Monero, among others.
3. In a span of just over 3 weeks, he added the alias features, a pruning mechanism to manage bloat, and a new SHA-3 (keccak) derived PoW Algorithm called Wild Keccak, which has never been shown to have any unfair advantage as compared to CryptoNight. (see link below)
https://da-data.blogspot.com/2014/08/minting-money-with-monero-and-cpu.html4. Following the release of this new CryptoNote family of coins, there were very high expectations for Boolberry relative to its peers. According to coinmarketcap.com Boolberry on its first day of trading (June 4th, 2014) was at 185k sat, and about 3 months later on September 5th, 2014, BBR hit 120k sat. As an aside, Polinex voluntarily listed Boolberry without any request.
5. On December 9th, 2014, crypto_zoidberg announced a new CryptoNote project with hybrid PoS / PoW consensus. This has been his primary focus for the past several years, and he has fulfilled his obligations to that project, but him and his team have never stopped innovating.
6. Having shifted his focus to this new project, Boolberry was somewhat abandoned. There was a period of almost 2 years with minimal commits to the GitHub repo. Prices fell accordingly, and in September 2016 there was an announcement by 1blockologist of some “grassroots” attempt to bring Boolberry back to the limelight. After 6 months of efforts, for reasons that are conjecture at best, their efforts ceased. This transitory pique in interest followed by a lack of development, arguably precipitated multiple delisting’s, from both Polinex and Bittrex, among others.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1611499.07. As the grass roots efforts were winding down, crypto_zoidberg made a post that he would return to Boolberry in late 2017, but also highlighted the difference between buying a coin, and investing in a development team, and the need and importance for them to co-exist.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg17761651#msg17761651This brings us back to where I had started up above.
In summary, crypto_zoidberg and his team reached out and reiterated their intention and desire to return to the Boolberry project along with the challenges relative to funding as described above. After extensive conversation, there is a consensus that the best path forward is for us to join efforts in reaching out to the community for project funding that will enable a team led by crypto_zoidberg to commit on a full-time basis going forward. He will lead a team of developers, and will also have the support of a well experienced marketing / PR team to manage non-technical aspects and community outreach.
I have personally reached out to many long-time supporters and holders of Boolberry, at first, I got somewhat of a mixed initial reaction.
Some people were so enthusiastic about the prospect of his return that their support was unconditional, and others have shared their concern that he has let them down in the past with unkept promises of his return.
Even the people that were skeptical at first, have committed to be supportive after they see that he is active, certain improvements have been implemented (LMDB in particular) and the trust has been restored that this is his full-time focus as would be evidenced by the GitHub activity.
https://github.com/cryptozoidbergI have taken the initiative in leading a community effort to raise funds for this project. I think the value proposition is clear. I will keep everyone informed as progress is made. CZ will be creating a new BBR project funding address along with a viewkey on the donation address, so everyone can see contributions in real-time.
I expect the first round of funding to be completed in the next 7-10 days (at the latest), and we will be releasing the new website, roadmap, and a reveal of the team / contributors shortly thereafter. In the meantime, progress is being made each day as CZ and his team are working tirelessly, to make up for lost time, and then focus on innovation and re-establishing Boolberry as a contender to be a top privacy coin.
If anyone has any questions or comments, please feel free to comment here or send me a PM.
Additionally, I want to be clear on this important point:
Even though, I have emphasized the importance of large holders during this initial fundraising phase, we want to hear from everyone here. I do not want anyone to ever feel like they aren't a big enough holder to matter. This is a community effort, everyone matters, and we implore you all to share your thoughts and feelings regarding the aforementioned direction.
Until the new webiste is released with a new contribution address / public viewkey, please make all contributions to support our efforts to @zoidberg along with a PM if you wish to be acknowledged on the contributors page.
Thank you everyone for your presence, your interest, and we are excited to share the vision and our plans for
Boolberry in the near future. Your patience will be rewarded, as it often is.
I'll leave you with a favorite quote of mine by Wayne Gretzky: "Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is"
Cheers!!
