Question with chameleon side chain, I will be able easy create a Uber service for my local area on my private blockchain.? As IOC as the company how does your company make profit, is it from selling plugins? or do you hold coins? or percentage of fees?
Hi,
Thanks for your questions.
When the project was started 20 months ago in 2014 (yes, 2014!) we were learning as we develop. Thats the nature of breaking new grounds in this kind of development. Falling down and getting back up. In a startup phase you just go with the flow and do everything in a way you see fit. If i may say, we succeeded greatly this first phase. If you look at all those scams, big ass ICO's and never delivering something usable, we have done a good job. An outstanding job.
As development progresses and the approach is more professional and outlasting other initiatives, the business side, financial side and organizational side becomes more important. This is the phase we are entering now.
Our aim on this stage is to become an official non-profit organization.
We are currently working out the details of the I/O Digital Foundation.
In this way external parties can donate development money to the foundation and we secure a good corporate structure and official guidance through the decisions we need to make as a team. Creating a foundation is also very important for the Blockchain software development what we do and our aim to create a full Blockchain eco system. We have some extra ideas on this as well. Details are currently only known by the team.
We have plans to create a business side of I/O Digital as well and make ourselves payable from that business somehow. Details are discussed in the team as we speak. My personal ultimate goal is to get sufficient funding to make the full team payable and quit my day job. Then i can go full time on I/O Digital. This is also what is applicable for the rest of the team. We have some announcement for that part in a few weeks as well.
So, how to make money: Probably when we have external funding in the foundation we could pay ourselves a little management fee. Next to the foundation we will have a company representing "blockchain development" and companies paying us to help them with spinnig up their own Blockchain and connecting it to the Blockchain of I/O Digital. We will be the technical company for their Blockchain. Also when there are things to be changed in that chain they can knock on our doors. Payed services. We have some more ideas and possibilities like our own Blockchain patents. We are currently working on that as well.
We don't earn any money on what we do with the project. Not a penny. We havent had any ICO or pre-sale. We have our own privately bought I/O Coins. All bought on exchanges and are staking them. No intention from the team to sell those coins. We only spend money from our own pockets to develop, design, internet sites, printing, everything!. For more then 18 months already!!
We spend every free hour on the project and even take days off from our day job to go to meetings like the Fintech Awards and have meetings with investors and interested businesses. If you see how much time we privately spend on the project and how much we could have earned when these hours would commercially be sold, then you would be astonished. Last but not least all the spare time that we could have spend with our families. (don't tell my wife). We have working days for over 14-16 hours a day each. This is because we love what we do!
This is also why we greatly appreciate all that is done and provided for by the community. How small or big, unpaid help is really appreciated and eventually part of the big picture. Thanks for helping us out in every way you can!
About your own sidechain:So, if you are creating a sidechain for example and want to connect it to the I/O Digital main Blockchain and use services of the I/O Blockchain to store data for example, then for every kb stored you pay fees. Fees in I/O Coin. So you need to buy I/O Coin and send those to the network to pay for your storage. These fees are distributed amongst the stakers. Not the team!! (but we are staking as well, so we get a tiny bit)
I hope this explanation shines a bit of light on what we are facing, how we are dealing with things and our future ideas.
Your advices or ideas are more then welcome.
One thing is for sure:
we are here to stay and we are happy that you guys are around to support usRichard
