I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to.
If someone bought 1% out of 42M tokens, and we sell only half of the tokens and destroy the other half, then that buyer will hold 2% of total coins after the destruction. So investors know how much they get. The only 'bad' part is that they can get even more.
Predicting when exactly the product will be ready is beyond my abilities. Some scammers, though, are very good in naming dates
How else can we do it better? Please tell.
If you want to talk about scamming: What exactly proofs, that you are not scamming? No date is definitely worse than miscalculating and postponing...
First: There is no need to predict precise release dates, but at least a deadline, where you can be sure, you can deliver "something". And you can set the deadline with a worst case prediction as well.
But even, if you can't make ANY estimate:
There is absolutely no need for the IPO deadline to be at release. Trading the tokens is still possible, so anyone can jump in later.
In the current constellation you have all the cards in your hand (up to 5 million dollar and then still 3%), have no need to do good, no need to hurry, no need even to deliver at all, no need to ... whatever.
We can just sit and wait. And before release our funds are locked with no (or a ridiculous) ROI.
If you ended the IPO and got your percentage, we could be sure, you have to do something and do it good, because your percentage is depending on what you do. The market can choose its own market cap. (Now you choose it more or less, because its too high for a promise).
And just to make you understand, that I really like to grant you a lot of money for your work:
I think 3% is way to less. Maintenance and marketing has to be done by you also after release. Otherwise everything will just die...
But your amount should depend on your doings, not on your promises...
I did give rough estimations several times ("few months" for tau and ~1y for end of presale and agoras ready).
Also consider that a rigid deadline for the sale, as well as finishing the product as quickly as possible, isn't necessarily good for buyers. Tau's success depends not only in doing a perfect dev before genesis, but also in the dev after genesis, which will be done by the first users (cf.
http://www.idni.org/blog/decentralized-democracy) and as more aware participants we'll have there, the more the probability to get better rules of the network to the long run (taking into account that tau will help us to "do order" among all opinions etc. as it is a platform for collaborative dev).
I did give a legal promise to deliver the promised products no matter what, so "not delivering at all" as you mentioned is not an option that I left opened.
Buyer's funds aren't locked by any means. People can liquidate on bittrex (poloniex too soon), indeed low volumes for now, but I guess it'll get more attention with time. We're working on a new website and another new videos, and obviously the crowd out there only begins to understand what it's all about, but there's still a way.
My need to "do good, hurry, deliver" etc. is way beyond even what I promised: my whole reputation as a dev is on that. I can't allow myself to publicly turn into the worst dev ever..
I have a clear incentive to give things the best possible timing. I want the network and its value to grow exactly as the buyers want.
As for proofs I'm not scamming, name it. Which additional proofs can I bring?
As for IPO deadlines, we do want people to have some kind of incentive to buy early, don't we? After Agoras will be ready, it will have the value of the real goods it offers (programmers, servers etc) and not only "value of belief" as in btc for example.
As for 3% being too little, see a few comments above, if we won't sell all coins then we'll practically have more than 3%. Of course it all has to make sense, and we'll reassess the situation in a later stage (later than when tau is ready, still before agoras is ready). Nevertheless, offering a currency with an intrinsic value of markets with skyrocketing demand and size of trillions (as two examples: code-for-money and rent hw) and offering the best alternative by far than any existing alternative, 3% might be a terribly high number.
All in all, those considerations also has to take into account the specific nature of developing tau&agoras after their first version. We develop them altogether and we'll have the code reuse and code-for-money abilities, to mention only two. Also adding/modifying rules is so much easier than with other languages. So I really think that when looking at the big picture, things aren't tuned so bad.
Will be glad for more thoughts/questions.
