Jean Luc, first let me thank you for your response. It explains a lot of your thought process. I also find it impressive that you are willing to come here and talk to your users.
Let me be clear up front. I have almost no skin in this game. If NXT turned into something I didn't want to see I could walk away none the worse for wear.
I have a single company on the NXT Asset board and it's closely held. We could migrate to anything at any time and I doubt anyone would notice or care.
With that said, I do care about the direction of NXT because I've just watched Bitshares and Bitcoin fall to hell due to governance problems and NXT was the last bastion of stability in the sea of change. So in a way I do have SOME skin in this game.
My company builds things that run on NXT. If you break that, then my work breaks and my clients will be pissed, at me.
I'm telling you this so you can understand my perspective which is simply. Change for change sake is very bad.
Now I'm going to take a moment and post my rebuttals to your comments on a section by section basis.
I don't remember the Nxt "corporation" ever selling any shares to investors. The 21 BTC collected by BCNext are long gone (and I don't know where, since I am not BCNext). People keep speaking as if they have invested in Nxt as a business, but unless you are one of those donating to the community funds, or the Tennessee fund, buying Nxt coins from departing whales dumping on exchanges has in no way contributed any funds to be used for the Nxt development and marketing.
I think this is actually the core of the disagreement. The bulk of the users I've spoken to, do feel as though the NXT currency in the NXT system is their stake in the future of the tech and whatever organization is running things. It functions in many ways like a share, they view it like a share. From their perspective it is a share. Just because the original investors and even original CEO are long gone, that does not mean that the duty of care to investors is in any way diminished.
You need to concern yourself with protecting stakeholder value if you care about this coin. If you fail to do so you'll find it's more than a few whales who are dumping enmasse.
You might feel that this is not a corporation, but you are in a position of trust over the assets of a large group of people and that position of trust allows you to make changes. These changes can have vast repercussions to the entire NXT ecosystem. The ONLY people who are actually impacted are those who hold NXT.
If you don't feel like you owe them a duty of care, then you need to let them know that. Right now I think they would beg to differ.
Claims that this "company" has irresponsibly burned through funds and is now asking for more are as far from the reality as it can get. We have been running on good will those two years.
Jean Luc, I apologize if the way I have worded my postings makes it sound like I'm being adversarial. What I am saying here is that your ICO will likely fail because potential new investors are going to see it the way I just spun it. You can count on it.
It doesn't matter if this is the truth or not. What matters is their perception and that perception is going to be largely determined by your trackrecord with your current stakeholders.
But you don't need to do an ICO. You don't need to mint a new coin and sell it to outsiders.
You just need to care about current holders and their perception.
Then take the stand that this is a business with a viable business product, but no business plan.
If there is an ICO, it would be the first real ICO in the history of Nxt that can actually collect a meaningful round of funding for development and marketing. And without it, good will and donations will simply not be enough.
What you're saying here is that you see an ICO as the only way to raise funds and furthermore the ICO involves at a minimum dilution of existing value.
What I am saying is that if you do it, new investors are going to want to see a solid business plan. You don't have a solid business plan. You are selling a new coin in hopes that people will view it as something worthwhile. But you just said yourself that you don't feel like existing stakeholders contributed in a worthwhile fashion. However these are the very people that have chosen to keep NXT going this whole time and are likely to be the only ones interested in an ICO.
I hate the word dysfunctional, it's such a divisive term, but the truth is that your plan is dysfunctional.
Whichever direction the ICO goes you run a real risk of damaging the longterm credibility of NXT.
If it goes as you hope, then you've just alienated the bulk of existing stakeholders. You'll be sitting on a pile of cash and you'll use it to fund development efforts, but I don't see a serious plan here for how you would sustain it.
There is nothing wrong with raising funds, but do it in a way that won't alienate your current stakeholders. All they care about is the value of their NXT holdings. Form a new company, task it with attracting interest in NXT have it profit by innovating NXT based solutions for business. Launch it on the NXT blockchain. Only accept NXT in exchange for this new asset. Show us the power of what you've developed. We all know NXT is the best coin out there right now. I think we're all wondering why you don't seem to see it that way.
Creating a business like you describe around Nxt 1.x might be possible, but we can't abandon the work on 2.0 if we want to remain competitive.
It's not only possible, to my mind it's the only possible.
However work on 2.0 is not the same thing as an ICO. These are different things.
If you're doing 2.0 to raise new funds then you are doing 2.0 for the wrong reasons.
More importantly you are breaking the social contract between NXT and the existing stakeholders.
Go ahead and raise funds for a 2.0, but don't do a 2.0 to raise funds, do you see the difference?
One of the polls Damelon started is actually about whether 2.0 should be created at all. While the IPO votes are split, there is almost unanimous agreement that 2.0 should happen. You are now suggesting to scrap that and stay on 1.x?
I suggest you put the whole thing into a whitepaper and then put it to a poll of the stakeholders, let them vote by stake.
If the majority of holders are on board for a 2.0 then do it.
But don't do an ICO with a new coin to fund it.
Just raise the funds from the community and do it with NXT.
1.x is showing its architectural limitations, such as having to use NXT for fees everywhere, and not being able use other units of value for trading. Still, it is being maintained actively (as you may have noticed today), and will be, with the work on 2.0 in the background.
Personally I see the use of NXT for fees everywhere as a plus, not a minus. NXT is the unit of account on the NXT blockchain network. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm personally very glad you are actively maintaining it. I think you are a gifted and talented programmer.
1.x has not failed technologically. You admit that it is a solid product which just works. What it has failed to do is to find adoption, due to the complete lack of marketing for most of those past two years, both to end users and to businesses. So I am not sure what you can achieve by trying to change the development process around it, while there is little evidence that it is the development model that is wrong. All features that have been built for 1.x were always announced and discussed months in advance on this forum. And they actually work as designed. But anyone is free to build on top of 1.x, the client that the core devs produce is just the reference software. If there is funding, to hire actual UI experts, an alternative client - optimized for specific use cases, could be built, without any need for involving the core devs in that or asking for their approval.
Ok here is where things are going to get confusing so bear with me for a moment.
If 1.x has not failed, then there is no need for a 2.x period. I like 1.x. I think you guys have done a great job and I'm wondering why you don't think so.
Take it now and sell it. Build great stuff around it. Attract lots of business. Promise to do that and I can promise you that NXT will be at EUR parity in a years time.
There is the software and there is a coin. Spin a 2.0 software, nothing wrong with that. But if that 2.0 software is going to impact stakeholders by way of becoming the default reference client, then you need to get those stakeholder's approval for those changes, because it changes at a fundamental level what an NXT is.
The idea of moving to stakeholder approved development is a direct response to two things.
Firstly you claim that stakeholders have contributed little to nothing. This forces them to contribute. If they want to see a change then they vote a change in or out and it gets paid for.
Secondly, it is not fair at all that you, Riker and the rest of the team are doing this sans any compensation.
You said earlier that you want to seek external funding in order to fund future development. Pay on delivery is an option you haven't considered before. It's something absolutely unique in the crypto world. The devs are paid for development work as long as they deliver features that existing stakeholders want to see. Basically you're working for the stakeholders and it's the stakeholders who take responsibility for the future direction of the tech that powers their assets. In the meantime you are paid whatever you feel your time is worth.
The options you laid out are ICO or private investment. You then specifically stated that if it was private investment then the private investors would direct the future of the coin. I think that sets a dangerous precedent, but at least you're honest about it.
I turned this on it's head. Existing investors should direct the future of the coin. This includes but is not limited to determining if there are future investors and also what if any future changes need to be made. The stakeholders are the only ones with anything at risk here. The value of their holdings needs to be considered in every development decision.
My advice stands. Forget building a 2.0 for the purposes of an ICO. Get rid of the ICO idea. Spin a new business into the NXT Assets market. Task that business with onboarding other businesses into the NXT world and building customized solutions on top of what you've got. Then use the funding from that to fund 2.0 so that 2.0 becomes more of what users want and need and not just a feature dump.
I have no business telling you your business, but this is what I would do. Take it for what it's worth. You have whales fixing to dump and those same whales will very likely not be buying into a new point oh ICO.
So at least for the moment,
I vote 2 point no!
Viva la evolución!
