[ANN] IPO of MaidSafe: Entering the Future of the Decentralized Internet

[Olano]

After today's events...  it really makes me wonder how fast the Ethereum IPO will go...   

I prefer MaidSafe to Ethereum.

What do you not like about Ethereum?

I think he is saying that Ethereum might have the same problem as maidsafe. Too expensive to flip.

[FrictionlessCoin]

What I don't understand is how people can afford to sell their coins cheaper than what they paid them for? Makes no sense to me.

It doesn't make sense to you because probably you only have in mind the people who payed for their MadeSafeCoins using BTC...  run the maths for those that payed using MSC...  that should clear up the situation for you pretty well...    

The MSC sale was problematic is so many ways.   If 1/2 of all safecoins were purchased at a 50% discount,  then the actual average purchase price is at 3151 satoshis per safecoin.   In fact, the current market price is a bit over that price now.

I would not do a crowdsale with mastercoin if the requirements was that MSC holders would get a 50% discount.   Well, let's just hope this is a temporary condition that safecoin is dependent on MSC.

[BitcoinForumator]

What I don't understand is how people can afford to sell their coins cheaper than what they paid them for? Makes no sense to me.

It doesn't make sense to you because probably you only have in mind the people who payed for their MadeSafeCoins using BTC...  run the maths for those that payed using MSC...  that should clear up the situation for you pretty well...    

The MSC sale was problematic is so many ways.   If 1/2 of all safecoins were purchased at a 50% discount,  then the actual average purchase price is at 3151 satoshis per safecoin.   In fact, the current market price is a bit over that price now.

I would not do a crowdsale with mastercoin if the requirements was that MSC holders would get a 50% discount.   Well, let's just hope this is a temporary condition that safecoin is dependent on MSC.

How many SafeCoins were bought with MSC? Not much right? The sellers don't have exactly the biggest stash...?

[BitcoinForumator]

Hopefully they run out soon. Not exactly nice looking at the tanked price right of the bat.

[Jocuserious]

I think that one of the major issues is that MSAFE is still a proxy coin that will be exchanged for Safecoin in the nearish future.  Couple that with the fact that the proxy coin is not very user friendly and is difficult for the average user and I am not surprised people are unloading at this point.

I think there will be a different story when everything is up and running.  For now...I might even just leave the few MSafe I acquired on the QT wallet and wait to even see them properly when the Mastercoin wallet catches up or until its time to exchange for Safecoiin proper.

[FrictionlessCoin]

I think that one of the major issues is that MSAFE is still a proxy coin that will be exchanged for Safecoin in the nearish future.  Couple that with the fact that the proxy coin is not very user friendly and is difficult for the average user and I am not surprised people are unloading at this point.

I think there will be a different story when everything is up and running.  For now...I might even just leave the few MSafe I acquired on the QT wallet and wait to even see them properly when the Mastercoin wallet catches up or until its time to exchange for Safecoiin proper.

Agree with you that the proxy coin that can only be traded on masterxchange is a huge negative.  It it were a proxy coin that could be traded in any alt-exchange then it would be so much better.

I probably will do the same with you.  Do nothing until it gets exchanged for the real safecoin.

[andyatcrux]

Got my maidsafecoins. 4758 of them for about .2BTC. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they gave a large bonus amount to BTC backers.

[Tuck Fheman]

I just got a 0.000055 btc deposit transaction out of nowhere? is that related to msf?

Same here. Tried to check my balance at masterchest.info and get "Server Error in '/' Application." 

This is fixed now. I can finally see muh Safecoins.

[TheMightyX]

so im trying to understand. is this supposed to be built ontop of existing infrastructure or are we suppose to build new parallel infrastructure? does it work by using mesh-nets? have they found a way to address the scalability problems with mesh nets?

By new infrastructure what do you mean? If you are referring to HTTP, yes it will run independently. You will still need an internet connection to connect to the mesh.

Can Maidsafe be used to solve the "storage problem" of Bitcoin's blockchain data down the road?

That's a damn great question.

They were discussing some potential solutions on the google groups boards.
They have probably made more advances on this area than any other project.

[mr_random]

How many SafeCoins were bought with MSC? Not much right? The sellers don't have exactly the biggest stash...?

I am not aware of the exact figure...  but somehow I am convinced that the majority of those selling these past couple of days are within that group...  maybe this below might help you come up with an exact figure...    

This is what we have done, it reduces the back office steps, ensures BTC backers are looked after and not squeezed out. MSC backers got in at almost equal footing as BTC (almost 50% / 50%) and we all win. The BTC goes ahead and the MSC people got in fast and made their purchase.

In my opinion they should award extra safecoin to the Bitcoin backers to compensate. I honestly wouldn't have bought the safecoins if I knew a huge chunk of people were buying them for cheaper, due to the scenario that is playing out now.

I'm not worried long term as I believe strongly the price will go up a lot. But still, doesn't seem fair to me.

[Bimmerhead]

Not sure what you mean by "fair".  I'm pretty sure you weren't forced by the government or anyone else to engage in a safecoin purchase.

Your decision to buy shouldn't depend on what other people are getting in at.  It should depend on whether or not this is a sensible financial transaction for you.

Just because some people got into bitcoin at 5 cents is it somehow unfair (or a poor investment) to buy now at $450?

[jubalix]

How many SafeCoins were bought with MSC? Not much right? The sellers don't have exactly the biggest stash...?

I am not aware of the exact figure...  but somehow I am convinced that the majority of those selling these past couple of days are within that group...  maybe this below might help you come up with an exact figure...    

This is what we have done, it reduces the back office steps, ensures BTC backers are looked after and not squeezed out. MSC backers got in at almost equal footing as BTC (almost 50% / 50%) and we all win. The BTC goes ahead and the MSC people got in fast and made their purchase.

In my opinion they should award extra safecoin to the Bitcoin backers to compensate. I honestly wouldn't have bought the safecoins if I knew a huge chunk of people were buying them for cheaper, due to the scenario that is playing out now.

I'm not worried long term as I believe strongly the price will go up a lot. But still, doesn't seem fair to me.

Your are completely right.

The out of market valuation they gave to MSC at the time, means they should now give the reciprocal of that to BTC holders.

That's the only way to clear this mess up. They went against the market and garnered themself a scamed tag.

What we are seeing here are MSC holders unwinding thier MS coins back to BTC so this is the reverse of the run up in MSC.


By giving out the MS to BTC holders is the only way to clear 90% of this up

[dirvine]

How many SafeCoins were bought with MSC? Not much right? The sellers don't have exactly the biggest stash...?

I am not aware of the exact figure...  but somehow I am convinced that the majority of those selling these past couple of days are within that group...  maybe this below might help you come up with an exact figure...    

This is what we have done, it reduces the back office steps, ensures BTC backers are looked after and not squeezed out. MSC backers got in at almost equal footing as BTC (almost 50% / 50%) and we all win. The BTC goes ahead and the MSC people got in fast and made their purchase.

In my opinion they should award extra safecoin to the Bitcoin backers to compensate. I honestly wouldn't have bought the safecoins if I knew a huge chunk of people were buying them for cheaper, due to the scenario that is playing out now.

I'm not worried long term as I believe strongly the price will go up a lot. But still, doesn't seem fair to me.

Do not worry we gave everyone the 40% discount. This was the step we had to take, to be fair. I figured that BTC holders were running the risk of being pushed out, also they ran the risk of all the bonus going to MSC holders. It was something we should have catered for better and a mistake in hindsight. We know now the Maser protocol rules way more than we did 2 weeks ago. It is a great system and we pushed it to the limits, those developers are amazing, but we slaughtered them with the speed of this.  

So we ended up with a super fast sale where the project got way too many MSC. We figured we may get 25% or so MSC and that was great as they had provided this system for us to be able to do the crowd sale and the devs there worked like mad to do it. As MSC is not as liquid as BTC we did want only a small amount, but this was us supporting the Mastercoin project as they supported us. I believe supporting each other is good. The 25% figure was something we could hope to see build value and liquidity over time, so great.

What happened shocked everyone, we had to act fast. So we purchased all msafe for BTC backers up front rather than manually converting on each purchase. This allowed everyone the same deal, even though our 0.2 figure for MSC was also clearly wrong in hindsight. This is a brand new space, there will be more mistakes by other projects, we need to support and help as well as critique when necessary. We learn by understanding our own mistakes and we progress by helping others.

I think it's amazing we were seen as some kind of pump and dump (not by you). We ended up with less liquidity when we need it to get the community developer teams up and running. The Master Protocol guys certainly did not want us to end up with a huge portion of MSC either as that is not great for them. So we made a mistake we never seen the rush come, but we paid for it by sacrificing approx $2-3.5 million in liquidity, but it was a stance we felt was fair on the community, our own concerns were secondary at that time. This does not count the fact the whole thing went for the 40% bonus rate, we (when I say we I mean the community not MaidSafe, it's the community that gets most of the funds we raised if we get it right) paid the price for our mistake in that way for sure. We can partially repay the wider community and we will by holding a meeting with all parties on Monday evening to figure out the mistakes, the good parts and how others can benefit, this will all be made public and hide nothing (as usual).

Why would we want loads of MSC and less BTC, people need to ask themselves this question, all our staff went full in BTC so it would make no sense at all.

The sale was amazing, we have several thousand buyers who are now part of making this all happen and now we have to work very hard to make sure they are all rewarded with a new Internet and an incredible currency. It's a humbling thing to see that level of support for a project, as a community we need to be very honest critical and brave. The huge majority are of the same opinion and that's amazing. We do need to clear up the messaging and everyone is very welcome to watch our meetings, read our emails (they are public at the dev list) and hopefully meet us at a show soon. Nothing like a meeting in person I think.

so thanks for your support and we will not let you down.

[mr_random]

Thanks for the message dirvine. I know it's a message to the wider community and not just a response to me. I need to do some calculations before I comment further.

Not sure what you mean by "fair".  I'm pretty sure you weren't forced by the government or anyone else to engage in a safecoin purchase.

Your decision to buy shouldn't depend on what other people are getting in at.  It should depend on whether or not this is a sensible financial transaction for you.

Just because some people got into bitcoin at 5 cents is it somehow unfair (or a poor investment) to buy now at $450?

If people are buying bitcoin at 5 cents right now whilst others are buying them $450, then obviously that is a problem. Well, I say obviously...

And according to you, something can only be unfair if it involves coercion?  I'm not even replying to that.

[dirvine]

Thanks for the message dirvine. I know it's a message to the wider community and not just a response to me. I need to do some calculations before I comment further.

Not sure what you mean by "fair".  I'm pretty sure you weren't forced by the government or anyone else to engage in a safecoin purchase.

Your decision to buy shouldn't depend on what other people are getting in at.  It should depend on whether or not this is a sensible financial transaction for you.

Just because some people got into bitcoin at 5 cents is it somehow unfair (or a poor investment) to buy now at $450?

If people are buying bitcoin at 5 cents right now whilst others are buying them $450, then obviously that is a problem. Well, I say obviously...

And according to you, something can only be unfair if it involves coercion?  I'm not even replying to that.

You are more than welcome. If you read the papers and hear the Interviews. This was not about raising money for MaidSafe the company as much as for the community. The intention is that we build teams of developers in as many geographies as possible and get as many participants as we could.  This is hugely important to me and makes weird business sense. We raised money to create competitors, but being open source is not enough, there has to be a dissemination of the knowledge of the code for the SAFE network to be as successful as it can be. There is a commitment to pay 3 years of the current core team and this is to ensure the knowledge xfer can happen. After then we are exactly as valuable as any other core team or app developer on the network. This is key to the success I feel and is true decentralisation.

Anyhow the point was that this is to fuel the network and it will, maybe a little less financially but still a huge amount of supporters. We really thought only very few people knew of us and figured we would burn a lot of the 10% back for farmers and builders. Many of the processes the Master Protocol guys had set up were to roll out over the 30 days. We were all totally caught on the hop and that is why it was the best day for us all and the most scary thing I have ever seen. 

All 10% got purchased and that is great, even better is the amount of people, a huge amount of small purchasers was my goal and we reached that for sure. So all the staff in maidsafe were in with all their BTC as well as what seems like thousands of others, so a huge success, yes, lessons for others, absolutely. Tired, well yea you would not believe how much.

[middlepath]

Why was Safecoin offered at a 50% discount when priced in Mastercoin compared to Bitcoin? Before the announcement, Mastercoin was just below 0.1 BTC. Surely it is not hard to see that once the IPO pricing for Safecoin was announced, Mastercoin will jump up to 0.2. Was this an attempt by the MC ppl to pump up the price/value of Mastercoin? It just does not make sense. Let's see If Maidsafe or Mastercoin foundation can give a clear & honest answer to this question.

[Jocuserious]

Just wanted to say major props to the Maidsafe team.  I especially appreciate the mind toward community and am looking forward to seeing what you guys can do. 

[dirvine]

Why was Maidsafe offered at a 50% discount when priced in Mastercoin compared to Bitcoin? Before the announcement, Mastercoin was just below 0.1 BTC. Surely it is not hard to see that once the IPO pricing for Safecoin was announced, Mastercoin will jump up to 0.2. Was this an attempt by the MC ppl to pump up the price/value of Mastercoin? It just does not make sense. Let's see If Maidsafe or Mastercoin foundation can give a clear & honest answer to this question.

It was thought by us all that as people seen MSC actually being used for the first time as the utility it was designed for that the price would climb quickly. So we thought it may be a bargain initially (if at all) and very quickly not be. So a balance early in sale, I told everyone when asked this was a BTC sale really, it needed MSC to run as that is how the protocol works. For a BTC sale we did have to set prices or have a dutch auction, then we wondered how to set prices each tx as there may be wild fluctuations and people thought it better to know exactly how  much msafe they ere buying for their purchase.

I never realised the speculative nature of purchasers would be so damaging or would even work. I honestly believed that people would see MP as increasing it's value as it proved itself. In the short time the sale ran it never had that chance. People were using it primarily as a route to cheaper msafe. I cannot blame them for that, but we thought only a few tx and the price would be probably past 0.2 quickly.

It seems many used MSC as a mechanism to purchase cheaply and the liquidity of it was less than we thought. David Johnston of BitAngels and JR Willets posted comment as well. You can get soem info  http://www.reddit.com/r/mastercoin/comments/23o60n/maidsafe_has_pulled_the_msc_payment_address/cgz6ag2 with links to David Johnstone who helped those MSC holders who felt left out. This all sounds bad for MSC holders and no way do I want that to be the case. I think MSC has a long way to go as many other projects have. I was very impressed by the MSC devs and team, very decent people, it's a shame to see some of the allegations they had to face. I hope it does increase in value as the MaidSafe foundation is holding a lot of it now.

We are having a public discussion to see what can be learned, obviously algorithms need to improve, guessing currency rates has to be better (can you ever get that right) and much more. It should be a great meeting for the projects that follow us.

I don't know how clear this is but it is honest for sure. tl;dr we got sidelined by a massive influx of support and had not set up for that speed of incoming MSC. The price was probably wrong, but hindsight exaggerates that for sure.    

[edit some typos and bad grammar as usual, clarified MaidSafe foundation]

[dirvine]

Just wanted to say major props to the Maidsafe team.  I especially appreciate the mind toward community and am looking forward to seeing what you guys can do. 

Thanks for that. The folks in the office will appreciate that. Many worked all nighters several days in a row to get this done. We are all still in shock I think. The community spirit is amazing though, its looking very much a project with a ton of support and backing. Lot of hard work and not over yet. Thanks again though, we will try and live up to your expectations for sure.

[Jocuserious]

No worries and I mean it wholeheartedly.  I think a lot of the dialogue and criticism (which is putting it mildly in some cases) in this thread is overlapped by the very many people who are here for speculative means only and have not afforded themselves the luxury of familiarizing themselves with the available information on the people, intentions and product of Maidsafe.

So yeah...go kick ass and take names (not literally of course).  Decentralized internet sounds pretty useful...