Decentralized funding of SAFE pods through the value increase of MaidSafeCoin on exchanges

Autonomi Network Token
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Your ambition and motivation is more valuable than any coin that could be produced. Everything about MaidSafe speaks to the dreamer and working outside the box. Experts are only people who tell you how it can not be done. Imagine if David Irvine listened to those people who said it couldn’t be done and he should do it how it has always been done.

It seems like your expectations are realistic and it is not about the money. I hear your words with regard to investing into human value rather than just being driven by what looks best on paper.

I have been thinking also about this topic. I have already had many offers from “big money” types to support my idea on how to use Project SAFE, but at this point I don’t think I will need it. I think if I am able to build something out of the box the biggest success would be to look back and see it could be done from the ground and stay firmly rooted in the ground…if that makes sense. Maybe we could be lucky and inspire other dreamers to invest in their ideas and see the huge impact one person can have when they connect with many.

I have been slowly amassing as much MAID as I can. At least 10% of what I have at the SafeCoin launch will be given to friends and family to get them connected with project safe; they will have to make a wallet for me to send it too. I am hoping it is a similar response too what happens when I have given friends/family private torrent invites in the past. It always seems like the ones where given a good upload credit with the invite always seemed to make use of the site and contribute, where the ones that just got the invite and no upload credit just destroyed their ratio and ultimately gave up.

The other approach to investing in SAFE is I plan on going to sites like freelancer.com/odesk.com and hiring people to do the coding parts I can not do to make the app for Project SAFE. They will be given a percentage of any Safe Coin return and be paid in whatever currency they want now. I think that is a win win for everyone. The coder gets paid, they will be educated about safe, see how much better of an environment SAFE is for developers and hopefully they will see the true value of their skill when they start getting a percentage of the Safe Coin return.

Either way I plan to continue to donate to your crowd funding projects. I think incorporating a way for me to donate/back/support with MAID would be a step in the right direction. I have donated BTC every time and sending it to the one address and getting an email is fine, but it does bother me that I am donating to a worthy out of the box cause, but the default option for me to support is the old fashioned insecure credit cards.

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@erick Well, I would say we have seen very positive results from about three month’s of intensive community outreach and raising awareness in the SF area. Many thanks to @dallyshalla @ioptio.

Its exciting to see when MaidSafe will be into launching and marketing. It feels like those war movies where the team of few hold off the enemy with the scarce resource at hand, and finally at the end the calvary arrives and saves the day. Its so dramatic and epic for those moments, and I think we will soon see an explosion in the interest of MaidSafe in the near future.

Looking forward to victory day.

Culex

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Thanks for the hints @dallyshalla, I actually now have a “business model” for the initiative that could leverage the outreach you and @frabrunelle is doing.

So I will be personally and publicly selling MaidSafeCoins to new comers by selling them at a 20% markup compared to market rate. I’ll explicitly state to the buyer which community project half of the markup will support. Initially I’ll use the markup to fund our lecture series and eventually I’ll add the option for the buyer to choose amongst different community initiatives to support. That will make the whole thing more personal and direct for new comers than buying from anonymous people on exchanges and it will serve to show them community activities at the same time so that should be good for outreach and increase confidence in the project success. If you guys help steer new people in my direction that should work pretty well and the growth of the fund from new comers will be independent from the daily trading volumes.

@MrAnderson As part of our crowd-funding efforts we also accept MaidSafeCoins and I’ll make sure that my part goes towards that fund. If it works well, other investors could chime in and send us funds to add to the pool as donations (Maybe we could split the markup eventually but that is more complicated than what I am willing to manage now. Maybe someone else could do it?).

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Uhmmm… Doesn’t that make you an exchange and money transfer service?
If you lived in a free country I wouldn’t say this, but perhaps you should discuss that idea with your lawyer.

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I am thinking through it and had another variation on the idea. Taking into account @janitor comment, I think it could steer away the initiative away from a general money exchange and transfer service while still providing the community service of raising awareness about both the SAFE project, fund related community initiatives, and grow the number of enthusiasts, and establish a positive feedback loop in increasing the confidence in the community which eventually should increase the value of MaidSafeCoins. Let me know what you think.

So the idea is to create a community investment fund in MaidSafeCoins at an address publicly linked to some community member in order to establish public accountability for management of funds (initially me). These MaidSafeCoins will be sold to newcomers interested in the project. The proceed of the sale in BTC will go directly and entirely to a community project. The choice of the project to support is left to the buyer. The list of projects is democratically decided by the community. Current holders of MaidSafeCoins are invited to donate MaidSafeCoins to the fund. All transactions are public but neither MaidSafeCoin donators or buyers need to reveal their identity.

What is in it for everyone?

MaidSafeCoin donators

  1. Invest in community projects directly in MaidSafeCoins
  2. Grow the community and the number of potential traders on exchanges
  3. Increase the confidence in the community and the market value of MaidSafeCoins

For example, let’s say a big holder (>100,000$) decides to invest 1% (>1000$) in the fund and the average value of MaidSafeCoins over a month increases by 5%, that would generate a 3.95% return on investment (ex: (100,000 - 1,000) * 0.05 = 3,950$). That also works collectively for all MaidSafeCoin holders: if they were all to invest 1%, regardless of the amount they hold and see an increase of 5% in the value of MaidSafeCoins, everyone wins. Obviously, given the lack of liquidity of the market that gain cannot be realized on a short term. However, if it introduces a more steady and consistent growth in the value of MaidSafeCoins it makes the investment less risky than the all or nothing bet of waiting for the network to launch. So far, we have seen a factor of 4X between the lowest and highest value of MaidSafeCoins. If a positive feedback loop can be introduced through community investments and @dallyshalla is right in his analysis of the undervaluation of MaidSafeCoins by a factor of 30-50x (I would like to see the analysis behind these numbers…) then there is ample room for growth.

Maybe we could do an initial crowd-funding round for the donation round and only go forward if at least 30% of MaidSafeCoin addresses donate 0.01% of their holdings to the fund. That would avoid the initial perverse incentive of taking a wait and see approach to profit from others investing in the community without having to do it oneself. The initial amount of the fund should be small enough to be almost negligible if everything go wrong while still being big enough to support initiative that could have a significant impact on the community.

Community innovators

  1. Get official endorsement from the community
  2. Get exposure to new comers
  3. Obtain funds for initiative

Community members

  1. Have a stake in the direction of the community by choosing which projects should be supported

We would have to decide how to grant voting rights to community members. Maybe grant it to forum members that obtained the ‘Regular’ badge? We would also have to decide on a platform for voting, maybe Loomio would be adequate? It would be good if we could tie the identity on Loomio to the identity on the forum in order to ensure that both are the same person.

Newcomers (MaidSafeCoin buyers)

  1. Buy first coins from a reputable source
  2. Support a community project at the same time

How could that work?

Donations to the Fund

Kickstarter-style initial funding round where the funds are returned if less than X% of addresses do not send at least Y% within a time period. For example, if less than 50% of addresses do not provide 0.01% of their holdings to the fund, everyone gets reimbursed.

Subsequent rounds would see the % of addresses and % of holdings contributed adjusted from community feedback.

Vetting of projects

Every month, regular community members that obtained the ‘Regular’ badge on the forum can propose to add or remove projects from the vetted list during a one week period. If at least 2 other members support the proposition, the week after, members have one week to vote for or against the change. A majority wins.

To be added, a project must have a BTC address that has been shown to be under the control of one of the project members to receive funds, a public website that explains the project, and the current realizations.

Buying MaidSafeCoins from the Fund

To buy MaidSafeCoins, a buyer opens a trade by posting on a special page in the forum (or any other platform) a trade order, with the current exchange rate MaidSafeCoins/BTC, the amount of MaidSafeCoins being bought, and the corresponding value in BTC, as well as the project supported.

He then sends the exact amount of BTC to one of the vetted project and produce a transaction for that amount on block chain.info or something else.

Once the transaction has been verified by the fund manager, the corresponding MaidSafeCoins are sent to the sender BTC address. The fund manager produces a post on the forum that shows both the BTC transaction to one of the projects, and the corresponding MaidSafeCoins transaction to the buyer.

Comments

We are truly in Bitcoin land with this proposal. The fact that every transaction can be verified by anyone in the community, both for MaidSafeCoins and Bitcoins, allows anyone to ensure that people handling money act in the community interest and according to the rules defined above. Its exciting to see it possible and I have not seen anyone else do something like it before!

Since the destination of the funds is not arbitrary anymore and is limited to community vetted projects, I don’t think the service qualifies as a money exchange service anymore since funds cannot be routed through the service in arbitrary ways.

The amount of resources that can be made available to the community this way is potentially huge depending on the willingness of investors to use the process to increase their investment value. The amount of available resources becomes proportional to the market capitalization of MaidSafeCoins.

It might have a net effect of distributing the coins more broadly in the community and decrease the % everyone holds, so if seen purely from a MaidSafeCoin perspective, an investor could have the impression that it is a net loss. However, since MaidSafeCoins are highly speculative and have no intrinsic value (contrary to the SafeCoins that are going to be used by the network), it is their value in USD that is important and as long as it grows faster than the % contributed to the fund that should be a net win.

Let me know what you think. If that proposition turns out to be popular enough I’ll try to clarify it further, test how it could be implemented, and come back with a more official version. I think it should be more fun and have more impact than me trying my teeth at day trading ;-).

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