This will almost certainly come across as negative, it is not intended to be so, but this thread is sorely lacking in the kind of objective, matter of fact due diligence that should be part and parcel of any attempt to secure capital for a new business venture. I've listed a number of questions below:
Assuming all off-chain operations will be managed through a company, what is the current or proposed legal entity structure, registered headquarters etc
Decentralized Mobile Application Ltd. Registered in Israel.
Equity ownership (of the legal company): who will own what?
The Gems team.
Tax and financial compliance: what is the strategy? How will revenue, profit and loss be accounted and in which jurisdictions?
Shtainmetz Aminoach & Co accounting will be dealing with these issues. Jurisdictions is Israel.
What legal jurisdictions will you operate in and do you plan to comply with all local regulations?
Israel legal jurisdictions. Yes we will comply with all local regulations. We are working very closely with our legal team (Sharir, Shiv & Co., Law Offices) to make sure that the presale and on going activity is absolutely legal. We would not risk the project
(or prison time) otherwise.
Can you confirm how many people work in the company, what their roles are, and their credentials? (Please no arguments over whether it is reasonable to expect this info, it is your prerogative to withhold, but it would be nice to have).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=758004.msg8707856#msg8707856More details will be given in the future.
The fact that messages themselves are managed through an entirely off chain architecture alarms me:
How is anonymity guaranteed?
Most social networks neither encourage nor support truly anonymous users. Consider WhatsApp. Every account must be tied to a working phone number, enforced by a requirement that the app send an SMS to your phone during registration. You cannot open a WhatsApp account without identifying yourself. The same goes for Facebook. A Facebook account by definition contains your real name, rather than an anonymous alias.
Gems, unlike other networks, allows users to choose the level of anonymity and privacy with which they feel comfortable. User data is never shared with third parties, unless the user consents. By default, a Gems account only contains an anonymous alias—a chosen username. This username does not have to reflect a user’s real identity in any way.
Users who feel comfortable sharing their real phone number with Gems can do so by connecting a phone number to their account. Their friends will be able to find them more easily, since they can rely on a phone number they already know, without having to know a username. The phone number is always kept confidential, and users who are not your explicit friends will never have access to it. It is always possible to maintain complete anonymity, if desired. Gems does not require any real-world identification in order to operate.
The same level of anonymity applies to your Gems wallet. Since every Gems account is actually a gems wallet, your wallet address will be as anonymous as you make your account.
How is encryption guaranteed?
What (if any) user information will be held by the company and how can you assure user data will be securely protected (e.g. against hacking OR a legal government demand to hand over data).
Instant messages in Gems arrive in two flavors - standard and secret. Standard messages are the default type and provide a standard level of security. Secret messages are meant for highly confidential conversations and provide an extreme level of security and privacy. App users can switch between these two flavors for every chat conversation. Making a conversation secret is very easy, and only requires tapping on the "lock" icon inside the app.
Instant messages are encrypted on two levels. The first level of encryption is relevant for both standard and secret messages. For both types, all communications between the Gems mobile app and the Gems instant messaging cloud server are encrypted - this is also referred to as client-server encryption. Communications between the two is performed over SSL in a secure tunnel (HTTPS) with 256-bit keys. This prevents third-parties from listening in. This also prevents man-in-the-middle attacks and makes sure the Gems app only communicates with the real server and not anyone impersonating it.
The second level of encryption is only relevant for secret messages. On top of the client-server encryption, secret messages also have client-client encryption. Every Gems app generates a unique random pair of 4096-bit public/private keys upon installation. The public key is propagated within the network, but the private key never leaves the device. The public/private pair is unique to a device. If the user transfers his Gems account to a new device, a new pair is created. The key pair is also expired and refreshed periodically to enhance security.
When user A sends a secret message to user B, it's encrypted using RSA 4096 with user B's public key. Once the message arrives to user B's device, it's decrypted with B's private key. Decryption can only take place on user B's device because only this device has access to the correct private key.
The benefit of client-client encryption is that it provides a zero trust environment. The encrypted message cannot even be decrypted by the Gems server infrastructure. This means that even if the Gems servers have been compromised and hacked into, secret messages are still 100% private and can only be decrypted by their rightful recipient.
The drawback of secret messages is that they cannot appear in push notifications. Since push notifications are encrypted by Apple's/Google's infrastructure, they don't conform to zero trust policy. When a secret message is sent from user A to user B, the push notification user B receives contains the text "You've received a secret message from A" instead of showing the actual content of the message.
How will core dev (or for that matter, all residual company operations) be sustained once IPO and dev bounty funds are exhausted?
Our goal is to use the funds to deliver the following milestones:
1. Release initial mobile app for iOS. App will support instant messaging, push notifications, new user registration and login, contact directory and display the GEMS wallet. Release server backend which supports both the cloud instant messaging and counterparty integration.
2. Finish implementation of the full end-to-end compensation model. Includes user activity detection, pairing of inviters and invitees, airdrop calculation and GEMS distribution. Implement initial fraudulent user activity detection algorithms. Implement money transfer.
3. Release mobile app for Android. App will support instant messaging, push notifications, new user registration and login, contact directory and display the GEMS wallet. Release server backend which supports both the cloud instant messaging and counterparty integration.
4. Implement advertising platform and finalize the advertising and monetization model. Implement a web platform which will allow advertisers to purchase network ad real-estate with GEMS. Implement ad display in both mobile apps with content analysis to improve ad targeting. Implement paid unsolicited message infrastructure.
The client side software will be open sourced and maintained by the dev team in accordance with the preferences of the users. The community is welcome to contribute to the development of the software.
We will supply the "tool" but the key to Gems network successful growth will be the crypto community.
Please explain roughly the scale of incentive value being offered to users, for instance would typical levels of messaging activity (say 10 messages / day) combined with opt-in adverts yield reward Gems worth >$5 per week, or <$.000001 per week. Just a rough estimate.
We can "throw" numbers around, but they will probably won't be accurate because the final gems/btc pre-sale price will be determined by the community in a price discovery mechanism. Exact details will be given ahead of time. (very similar method to other crowdfunding).
How will you attract users who may not interested in the ethics of the platform, or the prospect of making money from their social media participation, and who are demonstrably prepared to accept targeted ads in return for access to a platform rich in features and existing social connections, even in the knowledge that their messages are accessible to various snooping agencies. Like it or not, these are the users of today.
we have done a lot of focus groups concerning Gems and the results were much better than we expected.
please also read our response here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=758004.msg9183382;topicseen#msg9183382I don't like Facebook much, but with it I can see who is online, I can message a group of connections, add people to existing chats, I can see who has read my messages, and when they were read, I can post multiple media formats and I get push notifications when things of relevance happen - those are probably the features useful to me. Does/will Gems have these features? When it comes to mass adoption, it is ALL about user experience, and you need to be better than the best to stand a chance.
Yes, Gems will have these features. Exactly because of the reasons you mentioned above we won’t be using the blockchain network for messaging (at list not in the beginning). we are using azure notification hub for the texting and bitcoin blockchain to reward gems. Meaning the shared success model is decentralized.
Note that every user can chose to be totally anonymous and to have all of his text messages encrypted and self-destructed.
In the future we are thinking about using public key cryptography. Encrypting messages from a user, to someone else using the recipients public key, that way its tied to the gem asset and nobody can spy on it.
All that said, the value redistribution model is where I think the industry is headed, however even this does not guarantee long term viability for Gems, because fundamentally gems appears to be a centralized messaging app which just happens to reward users, a model any of today's biggest competitors could embrace at any point.
They could, but why should they? they are enjoying huge profits. If today's biggest competitors embrace this model we will be very happy.
(this argument can be said about bitcoin also. banks and governments can adopt blockchain technology if they wanted to with their own coin, or lower the current fees to be more competitive but why should they?).
Have you considered developing a protocol for social messaging which bakes messaging, advertising, and reward distribution directly into the protocol? I understand you see the linkage with the bitcoin blockchain as a priority, but this also limits the capabilities you can offer. Have you considered integration with other (or additional) blockchains better suited to the capabilities your core product requires (maidsafe, Storj, ethereum etc).
Yes we have considered, the problem none of them are functional right now.
Everything that can be decentralized, will be decentralized - Blockchain technology is the future
