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bholzer (OP)
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June 25, 2014, 07:31:06 AM
Last edit: June 25, 2014, 07:50:44 AM by bholzer |
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First of all, welcome to my SilkCoin rebuilding thread. For those of you that are not aware, SilkCoin - a PoS-only coin which had two separate PoW phases - turned out to be another altcoin grift motivated by greed. While not a victim of this particular con myself, I did take note of the impressive strength of the community surrounding it and could not sit idly by knowing I had the ability to help get this project back on track. This coin has a large, supportive community who thinks big, it is already trading on all of the major altcoin exchanges, and it has manged to achieve wide distribution despite all of the technological and management issues. This thread will be dedicated to ideas and discussion regarding my (potential) management of this first phase of the rebuilding process. I wanted to keep this thread separate from the primary thread to keep the discussion on-point. Sometimes it just makes sense to break threads up into different topics and I believe this is one of them (especially at this point when nothing is official yet).
Here is an overview of my proposed gameplan if I am elected by this community to take on the next phase of this project. There is quite a bit to read but I wanted to cover as much as possible while losing as few of you as possible - this is my idea of the best possible balance. Keep in mind that if you believe better offers are out there, I understand and support the decision of the community - feel free to look into them. As I have mentioned before, my time is limited and I choose the projects I take on very carefully. I would not be willing to accept this challenge if I was not certain enough pieces were in place to make recovery a certainty. This was not a TKO, guys - we get back up, brush ourselves off, and come back bigger and better than ever. I am offering a solution here; I believe it is an excellent solution and will get SilkCoin back to where it should be. There are a number of variables and plans can obviously be tweaked and adjusted but this is some general information on how I would like to proceed:
1. We organize a fundraiser and set a fundraiser goal (a la Kickstarter) based on the amount we determine we need in order to rebuild this coin the right way and turn it into a success. The budget details will be broken down so everybody is on the same page regarding where the funds will go and how they will be handled. If the goal is not met by the set date (we will keep the window brief, 2-3 days maximum, to ensure we move through this process quickly), all contributions will be returned to sender and we will go back to the drawing board, come up with a lower budget plan, and restart the fundraiser with a reduced goal. If we exceed the goal at any time, the entirety of the excess will go toward marketing. Everything will be transparent every step of the way; we need to establish trust and ensure all operations are visible and strict records are kept in regard to the finances. We will maintain a public ledger and if we end up with a surplus at any point we can determine how to use it via community polling. If certain development details/plans/etc have to kept secret for competition reasons, that is obviously understandable; however, anything relating to the finances must be transparent to the maximum reasonable degree. Leveraging an escrow service would likely be the best play here and we should discuss options (I have limited experience with the available escrow services).
2. I will begin development on the new clients right away. The details on the best direction to go here are still being sketched out but I will ensure everybody is happy with the decision. I will guarantee a rock-solid client built using the latest technology and code. This will happen in parallel with the following steps.
3. I will create a new, moderated thread. This thread will be used strictly for nominating the next project leader and putting up a poll allowing the community to vote on it. The project leader does not have to be a developer; we simply need somebody that can communicate with the developers, report news/progress updates/important information, and oversee the day-to-day operations of the coin. This person will be required to meet reasonable expectations and will be compensated for their effort on the on the 1st and 15th of each month (until the funds are depleted, of course - then we hope they stay on board anyway despite the lack of compensation). By spreading out the payments, we ensure nobody will simply take the money and bail on this project. No upfront funds - no exceptions. The contact information of all members of the dev team will need to be provided to me as well as the elected project leader; it does not need to be made public, however, beyond that. This information will be verified to ensure we know who we are working with. Again - think of this like a job.
4. The individual who receives the most votes in the aforementioned poll will now create a new moderated thread to help jump-start our new identity. Hopefully, this will remain the permanent home base of the new SilkCoin community (at least until an official forum is created elsewhere). The current thread is 300+ pages of nonsense, insults, misinformation, accusations, grandstanding, and posts from a developer I have zero respect for. I think everybody would agree it makes no sense to continue posting in this thread once we begin the next steps to revive this project.
5. While we will likely maintain the name "SilkCoin" and the ticker symbol "SC" we will re-brand things with a fresh, professionally designed logo, a fresh website, and a nice clean image far separated from the shady scammers that put you guys in this position. This will all be done in-house by the new development team to keep costs low - despite my high level of development skills, my logo/graphics design skills are average, at best - we will certainly be looking for an individual proficient with graphics to assist. Perhaps we could run a "logo design contest" with a SilkCoin reward to not only choose our new logo... but also to qualify potential new team members. This is open for a discussion, of course. I believe the best way to separate ourselves from the group of con artists that started this thing is to maintain the "SilkCoin" name and ticker symbol. I have been in this game a long time and it will actually be easier to ease concerns and explain the situation, if-needed, if we do not attempt to hide from our past; I truly believe we will be stronger because of it. By removing the dev(s) from the equation that misled and stole from this community we have effectively removed the cancer; some of the greatest accomplishments in this world started out as failures. We are not the team that got us into this rut - that team is gone. We are the team that will take us out of this rut and beyond.
6. I will continue to oversee things and contribute my time to core development and project development as-needed over the following few weeks. At that time, once we have the right people in place to keep things going, I will step aside and hand the keys over to the individual we elected. I will remain available in a consultation capacity and will assist with any technical issues as-needed. I won't completely cut ties with you guys but will not step aside until I have completed what I set out to do and am 100% confident the rest of the team can take it from there. Again, I will still be around - I simply will not be involved in the day-to-day operation of SilkCoin. I am here to clean this thing up, get everything back on its feet, get the right people in place, and start pushing this thing forward until it has some momentum and it heading in the right direction. I wish I had to the time to say I can stay in that position forever but I simply do not at this time. Regardless, I'm not going anywhere - I will certainly provide input and assist as-needed well beyond my initial stint.
Notes/concepts/etc:
The coins you have will remain your coins (or at least you will get the same quantity); the coins specs will remain exactly the same. If, for any reason, we need to create a fresh coin with fresh specifications there would be a 1:1 trade-out, of course. I would see the process through and ensure there are no issues. Hopefully, we will be able to skip that step and stick with the existing blockchain. I will go into more details about the next steps in the development process when it's time to cross that bridge. The new client will be built on the latest Bitcoin Core master source (currently 0.9.2.1) and as-such will contain all of the new features, security updates, and enhancements in the latest code. The Qt clients for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit versions), Mac OSX (64-bit only), and Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) will be released in a timely manner. I will also create the GitHub account and host the source code there publicly. I do not expect any funds before I deliver on this first major hurdle.
Looking forward, I will provide realistic timelines the finish the plans you guys have been misled by the devs on (the eco-system/etc). I will also propose some new ideas or, possible, similar-yet-alternative concepts to what has already been presented in interest of efficiency. We can put together a list of features with estimated timelines and let the community vote on the order the features will be implemented/released. While I likely won't be around to finish the majority of these, I intend to have a good start and get the future devs up-to-speed and ready to go. I also intend to interview everyone personally, via phone if possible, before we "hire" them for anything. Again, payments will be on the 1st and 15th of every month taken out of the funds we raise. If somebody does not fulfill their duties, they do not get paid. Everything remains in escrow or in the control of a trusted senior member(s) on this forum that everybody agrees upon.
We run this like a business and we do this by the book. No shady behavior and no slacking. If somebody isn't pulling their weight they risk losing their position. I want to pump up marketing and SEO efforts - something I am very familiar with and many coins fail at - we need to attract new people to continue building momentum and building this community. It will also be the job of this community to band together again attract new people on this forum by maintaining positive attitudes, providing accurate information, and keeping things on-point. Love it or hate it this forum is a huge part of any coin's marketing. We will need a new Twitter feed which we can make official, a new Reddit page we have control over - if the dev(s) do not turn these items over to use we will need to step up and create them. We need Reddit tip bots, paper wallet generators - all of the stuff that helps get the word out. I intend to get the ball rolling on all of this right away. The purpose of the moderated thread is to keep things on-point. There are many people here who bought SC at a high price and sold at a low price... and it's human nature that some of them will hope this rebirth fails to avoid the mental anguish that comes with buying or selling at the right time; if you guys give me the opportunity to take this thing over I personally guarantee we will not fail. We will come back stronger and more focused; we will have eliminated doubt because this team will be hand-assembled by the community. In the end, the top coins will always be driven by their community. Many development projects need to be community built and maintained. If secrecy is important on certain projects, teams can be assembled and members of the private project can digitally sign non-compete agreements. There should be no point where people are left wondering what is going on.
We can make this happen and I am excited about the potential opportunity to manage the first phases of this rebuilding process; I will ensure you guys are on solid ground and beyond before I step aside and, as I said, will remain available as a consultant as long as needed. I can't promise you this will make everybody multi-millionaires - I can't even promise everybody will make back their losses - those are for the market to decide and it's up to all of us to demonstrate the value we have here. All I can promise is that we have the best possible coin built on the latest technology, a great team hard-picked by the community, and a solid gameplan going forward with a core theme of honesty, transparency, and teamwork. Also, the community needs to bounce back in a big way and get behind this - we need that enthusiasm back. Even if you lost money - buy back a small piece if you can afford to do it - it will help motivate you to get involved. I would never encourage spending money you can't afford to lose but I believe we can set the bar for comebacks here, guys. I have some new ideas not yet mentioned I intend to bring to the table as well. Put me in and we will not fail - we will prevail.
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