Some questions:
1. Who ran the ICO?
2. How are the funds stored on BTER? Wallet, escrow account, something else?
3. What individual or group owns the ICO wallet/account? Who can release funds?
4. Who makes the determination that criteria have been met to allow distribution of funds from the ICO account?
5. When funds are released, which individuals receive those funds and how much does each individual receive?
6. Where is the documentation regarding how the funds are being spent to further the bitbay project?
7. If today's software release triggered a distribution of ICO funds, what new functions are available in the new wallet?
8. What individual is accountable for the finances of the project and can we see ledgers?
9. If bitbay drops to zero value today, who gets to keep the ICO money?
10. I didn't see an accountant listed among the project members. Who is doing the accounting? Will there be an audit?
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):
Questions concerning BitBay and its use of HALO technology:
Q: Please explain how the escrow system will protect buyers & sellers in BitBay transactions.
A: The system is the revolutionary double deposit escrow. Both Buyer and Seller place deposits into a shared account. There is no need for an escrow agent. The deposits serve as the incentive to perform. Therefore theft and deception is impossible in these escrows. If those actions occur, the parties will not agree, the escrow will expire and they both lose. BitBay takes the profit out of theft.
Q: How does BitBay differ from OpenBazaar? How is OpenBazaar “pseudo centralized”?
A: David is of the opinion that uTorrent may be correlated to other things in order to reveal the ip addresses of the parties involved in a contract. Its unclear whether or not OpenBazaar will truly be secure. Tor itself has a known security vulnerability on exit nodes.
Open Bazaar uses arbiters which are horribly inefficient and dangerous. As an example, eBay arbiters are never able to tell who is telling the truth when someone gets scammed. Also, a botnet could easily generate 100’s of arbiter accounts and collude with themselves, stealing escrows. So OpenBazaar’s system is much more vulnerable than eBay. I hope they will one day add double escrow as an option.
BitBay uses decentralized escrow, there are no arbiter judges or human error involved. Just two parties with a completely unbreakable agreement. It is the most perfect form of escrow in existence.
Q: What is the development schedule (roadmap)?
A: First, we release the smart contracting wallet. This has almost all of Halo’s features which makes it the most advanced cryptocurrency wallet in the world. Next, we release decentralized markets. One will go through a server to qualify for the whitelist and the other will be a Bitmessage system with a trust building whitelisting system. This will be a decentralized market for all contracts. Next, Halo will release their NightTrader microtrading engine. More exotic contracts will debut once checklocktimeverify is added. Then we work on Hedging. The roadmap is about 2-3 months, putting markets and hedging releases out in the first quarter of 2015. After the hedging fork, you will see everything polished and after market testing the product, improvements will be made to make the code more efficient and bring it to the api level.
Q: Please explain how pegging will work. I watched the whiteboard videos and don’t understand.
A: For properly holding a price to a coin such as in NuBits, you need to control some factors of the coin. First you have a rule to control the total supply. Supply will be increased and decreased using new rules about how much of an input you have to spend and how much you must freeze. We will allow a certain number of coins to be liquid and a certain amount of coins will have to wait to enter the market. So you will have a certain percentage of your coins available at one time. Then a large buy wall is set below to total supply. So if there is 100 coins available, then a 100 dollar buy wall is set. This also depends on how quickly we want to see our target price. We may not want to hit a dollar too fast. It may be more profitable for everyone to allow the price to grow towards our target. Most likely we can increase a certain percentage every day and watch how to market reacts. If anyone sells into the wall not only do they have to wait for their coins to become liquid again, they also must wait for us to resell the coins at a higher price. This is why NuBits always ranges from 99 cents to 1.01 dollars. Selling or buying too far outside of the margin allows for the people who buy at those prices to profit instantly. The system at first will be centralized since we will need to find optimal supply lines. After we see how the market behaves, we could allow for voting on the total supply.
Q: What needs to happen between the release of the marketplace in Q1 2015 and the beginning of pegging in order for pegging to be successful - both organizationally, and on the tech side?
A: BitBay should be as organized as possible. David will lead a team that is being set up in order to work full time on the code and the marketing. There will be human resources and a good amount of project managers. On the tech side, the elements to implement these features are already here and practical.
Q: Are there any mechanisms to rid the BitBay marketplace of things like guns, abusive pornagraphy, hitmen, etc?
A: Those things will not be possible in the main markets even though they are in fact decentralized. This is for two reasons. First in order to get into a white listed market, you need to prove your worth by doing deals in the Halo market. Next, once in the decentralized market, special moderator versions of Halo will be given out to help oversee what is seen in a decentralized market. Users can also flag posts and when a certain number of flags is reached, the orders become invisible. Whitelists allow for trust systems. So anyone running a decentralized market has total control over who is able to post to it.
Q: If everything is visible in the blockchain, does that also mean that all BitBay marketplace activity can be traced, or just by the individuals who were involved in the transaction?
A: The only thing visible in the BitBay blockchain is the double deposit contract which reveals absolutely nothing about the parties. Everything is encrypted so there is no way to trace anything. Bitmessage is anonymous E-mail. Other systems such as Tox and torrent based systems are also worth considering. The messages are always encrypted on both ends twice. Once by Bitmessage itself and again by Halo.
Q: In a more general sense, is it possible to be completely anonymous in this system? If so, how?
A: Yes of course. There is no third parties, no escrow agents, no servers and no record of your contract. The contract is peer to peer so only you hold a copy of the agreement. In the future, we will consider complete Zero knowledge in BitBay.
Q: Please explain how the multicoin wallet works. Does it make any difference which coin i use?
A: Halo is the only multicoin wallet in existence currently. BitHalo uses online APIs to check the blockchain such as Electrum, Blockchain.info and Biteasy. BlackHalo uses Blackcoins daemon as BitBay uses BitBays daemon. Any coin used in NightTraders microtrader automatically downloads the daemon and uses it to trade coins under Halo.
The difference in the coin is only the difference in what community you love and want to be a part of. David’s idea is to unite the ideology behind coins and make them come together as one beautiful community. If you are a Dogecoin fan, use DogeHalo. BitBay fan, use BayHalo and so forth. All under the hood of the complete Halo suite.
Q: Since the wallet focuses on smart contracts, isn’t it safe to say BitBay could easily challenge the worldwide freelance job middlemen such as O-Desk, 99 Designs, Fiver & the like?
A: Of course. When you have a system that is superior, cheaper, international, and immune to the issues of theft. You can use our new system that is highly powerful and expansive. There is no reason not to use it. Especially in the case of O-Desk where employees are unresponsive and slow. Now you can force them to hit quotas. There is currently nothing like this anywhere in the world.
Q: Can you please explain mesh networks? How is this different from Internet of Things?
A: The goal of mesh networks was a cyberpunks dream since the beginning of the internet. To give free internet to the world. Did you know, that most cell phone companies disable tethering of internet to force people to use paid systems?! In fact, there is enough routers and phones in the world to give the entire planet free internet and phones! But, its up to the people to make that choice. We can help them by offering Bay as an incentive and giving them the correct cell phone hardware, devices and things to route their internet in a mesh.
Any further development of hardware is not yet announced. However, staking devices, devices that sign transactions, and multisignature software and time locks implemented into hardware has a bright future. Once our road map is complete, we can explore more avenues if our endeavors are successful.
Q: What are the clear and unique differences between BayHalo, BlackHalo, and BitHalo. What will one coin have that others will not?
A: BlackHalo has NightTrader which is a decentralized cross platform exchange. BitBay has hedging and hardware for price stability making it a more attractive choice for markets. BitBay will also have special locking contracts and David hopes to convince Blackcoin to accept lock times as well. So they both have their pros and cons. BitHalo is a media darling and its success helps draw attention to the entire suite.
Q: Do you have a whitepaper to explain your technology?
A: BitHalo has a whitepaper at their main site BitHalo.org. NightTraders whitepaper is not released to keep the concept and method protected. The hedging process will indeed have a whitepaper. David is still in the process of finding the optimal strategies before release of the paper.
Questions concerning BitBay’s direction & evolution:
Q: What is David Zimbeck’s role in BitBay and is he a lead developer for the project ‘long-term’? Where / when in the roadmap does your current agreement with David end?
A: Yes, David is lead programmer for the BitBay marketplace and also HALO technology. He will be with the project long-term and the ultimate goal is to make this a career for everyone on the team. There may be other programmers who are outsourced to complete tasks faster and also to bring about other tools, such as: Multipools, Mobile Wallets, Trade Charts, Block Explorers, Price Converters, etc.
Q: How will BAY be using ICO investment funds? Will there be any public accountability or updates?
A: The BitBay team will not receive all of the investment funds out the gate. As stated during the ICO period, only a fraction of the community investment will be available to the team for immediate use. The rest of the funds will get released by bter exchange as we hit our development milestones. Here is a breakdown of how ICO funds will be released to the project:
- 33% of dev fund at completion of ICO / delivery of initial wallet. (This threshold has been met.)
- 33% of dev fund at btc at delivery of wallet with integrated smart contracts (Dec. 5th, 2014)
- 33% of dev fund at delivery of our decentralized marketplace (1st quarter 2015)
- Remaining balance of funds after 60 days of stable marketplace performance. At this time the BitBay team will also be releasing their Phase 2 road map.
Q: For the marketplace to be successful, it needs to gain a critical mass of users. What is the plan to achieve this?
A: We have already had agreements with some of the top vendors of Alibaba who are ready to help push our goal of achieving critical mass. Not only are they waiting on the sidelines, but there have been many other companies from eBay as well as real world (brick and mortar) businesses who have contacted us with interest. These connections, coupled with our technology and large-scale marketing techniques will help to push our viability into the spotlight.
Q: Can you please explain the Alibaba connection?
A: Several of our team members have direct connections with some of the top selling product vendors on Alibaba. These sellers have already agreed to create a storefront on our service. Because of the Non-Disclosure Agreements made, our team is not allowed to discuss many details of those partnerships until the NDA is lifted. By that time, BitBay will already see many companies signed on and using our service.
Q: How much of the ICO is set off for marketing? What are the main uses of these funds so far, and what will be the main uses in the coming months?
A: Marketing funds will be used from our development pool on an ‘as needed’ basis. So far, we’ve been able to reach this point by using only approximately 20 bitcoin from the initial investment period. As we enter the stages of our decentralized market release, there will be a lot more focus on marketing to potential buyers and sellers. Also we have plans to ask some big venture capital firms to support us later down the line.
