[Poll]: full OMNI to ERC20 swap

I notice David you did not actually address my assertion that your free to comment and give confidence levels in anything, group, project, or anyone you like on any topic you like and no authority, tax or otherwise, can call you out on it. Unless your defaming someone your well within your rights to do that and that brings no personal liability to you. That you do not have anything you actually feel like doing that for is another discussion entirely.

All those problems such as organising KYC, Tax and legal obligations just go away when there is true decentralisation. Do the bitcoin or Ethereum, cross chain DEXs, core protocol devs of all stripes have to worry about tax consequences of their creations whether they live in the UK, Switzerland or anywhere else? No of course not. Core developers just code away happily not having to care about any of that. Many core devs are collected under the same roof and company just like at MaidSafe. When the system is decentralised those problems are pushed out to the edges and are no longer a burden weighing down on a central organiser, because there is none. We all have Maid and can send it to wherever we like whenever we like and the consequence for the action are ours only. MaidSafe can’t stop it, MaidSafe can’t be responsible for it. There is just one piece missing…

All these fears being expressed over the years about possible grave tax consequences and things have to move slow to plan for possible legal consequences year after year after year are directly related to the level of decentralisation. MaidSafe is painted into a corner with Omni because the Omni tech appears to force the transition through a centralised bottleneck that bears down the weight of hostile agencies on Maidsafe. So MaidSafe is forced to retreat and walking back on deep core principles… the transition will now be non anonymous/KYC’d for example, will that be the last retreat if things carry on like this, who knows.

If the community can solve the problem by decentralising the transition, all that crap your trying to deal with for so many years literally just goes away. The problem is MaidSafe is owning the transition, when we all should be working out how to truly decentralise it. Proposals here are aimed at trying to do exactly that and they may be sub-optimal and possibly misguided, but there has been no real debate about solving the underlying problem or even recognition of what the core problem is. We are still tied up in petty short sighted infighting like “this is to just to pump the price of Maid”, and “CEX vs DEX duh”.

The core problem is not Tax agencies, KYC and UK laws on MaidSafe, the core problem is how to decentralise the transition to the new decentralised SN, and most importantly for its future survival give it a lifeline bridge so anyone, anywhere, anytime can move value into and out in a decentralised way that does not implicate MaidSafe in anything even remotely legal and tax like… because it is truly decentralised. If we can all together find a way to do that and get a two way transition bridge to the real economy in the process absolutely everyone will be much better off for it.

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Your really don’t get it. David can’t answer those points for the reasons he stated.

We keep hearing how this or that is not a problem for David, or MaidSafe from people who will not be taking the risk they want David and MaidSafe to take.

There’s really no issue blah blah.

Saying it doesn’t make it true.

Like David, I’m glad people are exploring the issues and trying to find solutions, but it is this “don’t worry it will be fine, nothing bad will happen” flim flam that undermines the process for me. This is serious stuff. People can lose everything if this goes wrong yet concerns are dismissed with blarney.

I can’t trust a word from people who engage in this kind of steamrollering, and I know that could be unfair, but to me it indicates lack of integrity or the ability to understand what they ask of others for their own benefit.

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It is not clear but if your referring to me, and even if your not I would direct you to read my post directly above. The solution as has been demonstrated to work at large scale is for the community to attempt to decentralise the transition. Then there is no need to ask anything over and above from David or Maidsafe like the community is expecting from them now. They would be just another participant in a decentralised transition and the legal weight of it will not rest solely on their shoulders. Then each can come to their own conclusions and take responsibility for themselves for the transition. Is it even possible? That would be a good positive topic to brainstorm. Better than infighting for sure.

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This is just not true, I am sorry, but there are limits. Yes mostly I can speak of most things and do, but in financial matters it’s not true. I cannot promote the selling of shares in a linked private company. I see Elon Musk and others getting into bother for talking share prices in connected companies and so on. There are limits and while I can speak of unrelated projects and finances I do have to be careful when it relates to a company I am a Director of and the subject involves potential financial risk for stakeholders.

It’s not shackles or some black magic, but there are serious issues for many folk at stake here and we/I need to be both well informed and careful to ensure we look after all stakeholders. That does mean taking advice, looking for professional opinions, getting opinions from regulators and more. It’s a serious business and not an area to wander blindly into. I cannot defend our position with authorities based on a forum members opinion, no offence and I am not side stepping here, quite the opposite. I am stating we will do what we can with as much knowledge and professional opinion we can. Anything less then I would expect stakeholders to be rightly up in arms. So again, this is not me saying do nothing it is me saying what we do will be at least legal. That means at least UK legal, but likely also may require different handling for folk dependent on jurisdiction, we just don’t know yet, but we will.

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The above is an example of what I’m referring to, along with earlier flim flam from different people dismissing concerns.

I’m not engaging in infighting, I’ve raised concerns and here I’m explaining why I have a hard time reading posts from people that repeatedly ignore the points myself and others make.

You seem unable to listen and understand other points of view, even if you are capable of coming up with useful ideas. We had an earlier discussion that fitted that description.

I’m tired of this.

Sure I agree with that and even drew that very distinction on the proposal thread. That is not the kind of comments other project leaders like Vitalik make about the range of projects built on top of the stacks they are core developers for. Core devs make comments in their personal opinion like: “The work this team does looks promising”, “this team know what they are doing and are good people”, “that looks like a terrible solution”… and it helps disseminate unofficial liability free signals to the wider decentralised community and helps focus attention on common goals as the core devs see it. Everyone is free to ignore them as happens a lot too.
I was not and never was suggesting comments like “Buy Maid moonboys!” I am surprised that was your take-away.
That this signalling mechanism is unavailable to you [Edit: or the MaidSafe team] is unfortunate and raises so many questions for after SN launch. For another thread, perhaps.

Sure no problem non taken thanks for the reply and your patience, we are all on the same side here. Not everyone sees that poking at the holes no matter how sacredly held close (especially those) helps build a stronger base.

I take the rest of your comment about gravity of legal obligations to stakeholders to suggest that any attempt to fully decentralise the Maid->SN Token transition method is not desirable and not something to be aimed for? When I say that what I really I mean: If the community (that includes MaidSafe core devs) came up with a way to fully decentralise the transition process and it was voted for in a definitive way (say for example on-chain in a manner along the outlines @mav suggested above), would MaidSafe still block the process for example if a legally connected minority objected? I am reading it as MaidSafe has the legal obligation to remain central to the transition and is obliged to do KYC. No decentralisation proposal has a chance to derail that obligation. Is my take-away correct?

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That is a very wrong take!

decentralised, block?

I outlined 2 options, you have chosen only 1 and have misunderstood it and applied it to a different argument here. We have no such legal obligation and decentralised removes the need to even consider that a thing.

It feels a wee bit like the gap is so wide and this is a great example of how even a simple statement can be misunderstood. Imagine that level of misunderstanding with millions at risk?

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I understand both krnelson’s push for a swift transition to an erc20 token, as well as your preocupation to go along with this without any legal consultation.

Maybe getting into contact with Changelly as Savage proposed will help you to get into contact with the right persons, so you can make the right legal decision.

I just want to say that with a potential delisting from Bittrex on the horizon and so-so results with P2PB2B till now, I do believe it is important that Maidsafe acts as quick as possible.

That is all I want to add to it.

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I missed that news how soon is this going to potentially be upon us?

People have said that ever since it was listed on global

Until there is something from them its just a statement of the future, eg when MAID is being exchanged for the token or other news that delisting will occur

Bittrex has announced no plans to delist.
Some people are concerned that it may happen in the future but there is no word from Bittrex suggesting so.

I think Andre is simply trying to be proactive “incase of a potential delisting” at some point in the future.

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Some people endlessly yelling ‘erc-20’.

I think they dont want to listen other’s voice.

I start to see these kinds of act like a trolling.

USDT is no longer dependent on Omni nowadays and Binance has told they will stop support of the omni protocol.

The logical reason why exchanges have been supporting the slow and long sync process of omni, most likely was because of tether USD using the protocol.

So it is not that i think it might happen somewhere in the future, like everyone always thought, i think the chance of a Bittrex delisting is bigger than ever before.

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Here’s a bit of game theory to consider…

These are two valid burn addresses I generated:

1MaidSafeCoinErcGooooooooooojnoRWm
1MaidSafeCoinKeepingZzzzzzzzzcrQdn

No matter what is decided for the eventual claim process for the ‘real’ network token (whether it’s burn or snapshot), and no matter who is responsible for designing or administering it (maidsafe or community multisig or some automation), there must always be some mechanism that allows the new token sender to ‘take one step back’ from an omni burn address and cater to those constituents. If burned funds were ignored it would be seen as needlessly unfair or bad design and would seriously undermine the project. We don’t need to ask to burn, we can just do it and it forces the outcome. The claim process can’t really afford to ignore it.

There’s also no good reason to ignore burn addresses since it’s mathematically certain what is a burn addresses is (any address containing MaidSafeCoin would take 11M years to brute force the private key). So it would be a really bad move for the claiming process to ignore special treatment required for burn addresses. No reason to have only two either, anyone can create their own burn address (so long as it contains MaidSafeCoin at the start it’s obviously a burn address).

Burn now does not eliminate snapshot later, so it doesn’t lock anything in. We still have all the options available that we did before the burn.

Traders who burn will lose the option to trade their omni, but they have already ‘lost’ it anyway because the CEX situation is so bad.

People who voted for erc20: if you want erc20 and dex, why not send your maidsafecoin to 1MaidSafeCoinErcGooooooooooojnoRWm right now? I’m sure there are good reasons, let’s hear them and better understand the risks we face. The more people do it the bigger the potential liquidity pool and the greater the chance of successful income from staking, right? It’s a bit of a game of chicken isn’t it… But if your omni funds are not being traded on a CEX because it’s risky, why not burn them and ‘put them to work’ in support of the erc20 campaign?

Worth noting there are 2171 unique input addresses to the bittrex cold storage wallet (from this data) with about 29M maidsafecoin voting to support CEX (from omniexplorer). As far as I know bittrex does not allow creating new deposit addresses, so this is probably 2171 unique accounts. 132 voters in the poll seems a bit weak compared to this…

So, can an Erc20 burn address get more attention than a CEX address? Nothing to lose right? The game theory seems to suggest burn is the best strategy. Will we see it?

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Perhaps but I will make my case and I am happy to hear your counterpoints as I still may misunderstand despite its “simplicity”. Here is what you wrote:

I will quickly interject that this is not a fair assumption for “two camps”. Camp2 change with emphasis better reflects what has been discussed (I have never mentioned “anonymity” as a motivation).

  1. Those that wish to KYC etc. and we can get insurance and regulated bodies to help with that.
  2. Those that wish for a decentralised transition from the Omni decentralised network to the SN [if technically possible]

but lets assume Safe network core tenent “wish anonymity” is equivalent to decentralised transition for the sake of argument.

After that you dive into how complicated it is for Camp2:

  • “2 solutions”,
  • “latter is dangerous if a named body / person takes responsibility and something goes wrong.” [Stating your personal preference for Camp 1]
  • “i.e. doing this is a task that requires care and 2 way trust, but the trust is hard when one side is named and known and the other anonymous” [More points for Camp1]
  • “Then some previously anonymous folk are the ones who will shout “Ok class action suit”.” [More evidence for Camp1 preference as the best solution]

The misunderstanding here likely comes down to decentralised governance and how all the examples we have to draw on work in decentralised systems. You cite two groups, yet with all probability one will be a minority to the other given a governance vote of majority of stakeholders. I honestly claim zero knowledge of which would win. The point I am making and it can’t be stressed enough: A definitive decentralised vote (Governance) system resolves the conflict and then there will be one path forward and MaidSafe/Core Devs/Secondary devs, everyone have their community mandate. No governance system is perfect of course but how otherwise do you we know what the answer is without a vote from the decentralised stakeholders, a governance component? There are 17K Maid addresses and unknown amount of decentralised holders <= to that. How can we tell what they collectively think is the best way forward if they are not polled and the result of that vote acted upon by core devs, secondary devs, everyone? What legal liabilities is MaidSafe aiming for here or are we centralised right now (despite all the Maid holders being on a decentralised network), and this will all somehow go away on SN launch, suddenly it will become not centralised despite little material change: Yes Decentralised Maid holders become Decentralised SN Token holders but no governance voting system in place (it has never been discussed)?
So imagine that a governance system vote is called and Camp2 a “decentralised transition” from a decentralised Omni network to a decentralised Safe Network is voted for, is technically possible, despite all your MaidSafe the companies misgivings and fears. These kinds of votes are going on all the time out there in this space they work to take projects forward that have no head. Are we aiming for decentralised governance or are we a decentralised project with a centralised development team that wears legal consequences for actions it chooses, alone?

I am glad we can find common ground this I can relate to, but then your next statement dives right back into deep misunderstanding (for me, or for you?):

Stakeholders right now have decentralised MaidSafeCoin on a decentralised omni network that have signed no legal binding documents and MaidSafe has no control over and so at least as far as MaidSafeCoin is concerned, no legal obligation to. Maid is not a security. In a decentralised system there is no centralised idea like “responsible for loss”, “named parties”. Each can only come to their own conclusions and take responsibility for themselves with no legal recourse possible in a decentralised system. The only way these things your talking about can be applied if your aiming for a centralised MaidSafe controlled transition system!

If (and it is a big if) a decentralised transition method is possible, then all those centralised legal constructs your talking about do not and cannot be applied, do not even make sense. What am I missing here? Which leads to…

This project is small on most measures compared to other decentralised projects which have vast amounts of value locked up to hundred of thousands of stakeholders. Those projects are behind us (not even a testnet and just transition tokens) and in front of us (Ethereum with 400billion a month sloshing about). The stakeholders of these decentralised projects are many and varied and there are core devs running most of the show, just like us. Why are they not having any of the legal and tax problems MaidSafe is struggling with? What are we missing?

You recently referred to us above as “the kids” in a good way. Here is another analogy in the same spirit with no offence meant: Many here are like the parents with kids. Practical by necessity working, living and breathing in the wider decentralised space beyond this projects boundries. The comments coming out of MaidSafe are walking the centralised walk. It is like a smart engineer granddad that has a massive amount of knowledge and real world experience… but the world has changed. All decentralised project development teams do not operate, talk, or have the legal and tax problems your mentioning… unless they are centralised.

Yes absolutely. One word from you or a couple of “core devs” could block a lot of things as regularly happens in the decentralised network space. You made your position on Camp 2 crystal clear above for example. Blocked by policy.

Now I was surprised before when your and Jims take away from my highlighting your “core dev” ability to signal decentralised communities in a liability free way was contorted and twisted to mean the opposite by citing comments on financial pumps mean liability so no comments/signalling is possible at all. Perhaps this post will be similarly misconstrued but I will stand by to reply to any doubts or logical problems with it as best I can. As one of the many Maid holders I am obviously also a stakeholder. There has been no attempt to poll the Maid holders in any decentralised governance like way that I am aware of, and no system in place to do it anyway. Maidsafe has been leaning towards the decision to take “Camp 1” “Those that wish to KYC etc” for quite some time now. It is talked about like it is a foregone conclusion at this point. As long as Maid stakeholders cannot put it to a governance system like vote this is a paternal “whats best for us” decision that has been made on stakeholders behalf. That said I or any other Maid stakeholder has no right to demand anything, neither legal or moral. MaidSafeCoin comes with no legal obligations by MaidSafe or David to the holders of this coin. Further the Safe Network project has been built by the sheer will and determination of David and the team, hands bloody and raw. Nobody has any moral right to claim anything more from them anyway they are free to make all the centralised decision about big things like KYC transitions as they like. As a stakeholders represented by the MaidSafeCoin held, there is no moral right to claim a vote on anything and I totally get that.

All this post is, is an attempt to turn to the decentralised path. Every other decentralised project out there we can look to has shown us that it makes all these legal problems go away. If your not a decentralised project then well I agree, legal, tax KYC it is all a big problem for MaidSafe the company making centralised decisions in a centralised way.

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Great post @mav clear no nonsense thinking.

Main risk I see to jumping to the burn now is that there has been no real discussion of the technical possibility for a decentralised transition MaidSafeCoin->SN Token or not. Apart from a couple of us throwing up some ERC20 ideas and being called greedy price pumpers, there has been not real brainstorming on the feasibility of this or if there are other solutions to the problem. If it is not feasible then the KYC centralised and managed by MaidSafe transition is the only possible outcome anyway. I do not beleive it, but it has a high chance especially if MaidSafe core devs are disinterested and committed to the KYC centralised transition.

Edit: I also vaguely recommend you were investigating governance, something I outline the importance of above. Votes to do burns and make decisions on the outcome traditionally start with governance vote like decisions. It lessens the risk. Imagine you did burn and no matter what the result the core devs ignore it? That kind of risk governance attempts to solve for.

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Can we clarify this? My understanding is:

Community (forum members is probably the only source, maybe reddit too, maybe telegram?)

Omni maidsafecoin holders

Developers (github is probably the only reliable source for these people)

Exchanges (hitbtc, bittrex, the companies and their accountholders)

Legal and administrative (maidsafe co, maidsafe foundation, bamboogarden fund, any others?)

Business (maidsafe shareholders, any others?)

Any others?

The vote on the forum is not definitive. Neither is a vote from the omni blockchain. Neither is a shareholder resolution. Or a reddit upvote party. How do we even begin to weight the inputs? It’s really complex to get consensus on this sort of stuff.

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My understanding is that the problem for the authorities comes from the possibility of tokens moving from and to fiat money. If the direction is one-way, I don’t think there will be a problem, because anyone can create a token.

The problem with this is visible - the MaidSafe company must recognize my token / any private token so that the tokens do not have to be exchanged later through me. Ie who has my ERC20 token can get Safe Token directly from MaidSafe.

Another plus of this is that I will not have to secure the OMNI tokens and I will be able to burn them as you suggest.


Privacy. Security. Freedom

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Perhaps it will It will help to measure from the target: the end result is a decentralised Safe Network When the SN is launched, in theory it is supposed to have no one owner and be decentralised. So that rules out “maidsafe shareholders” as stakeholders on the end result Safe Network since there is no legal shareholder register for them built into it. The same goes for Legal and representative, business. MaidSafe has shareholders for example sure, but that does not mean they have some special claim on a decentralised network after it is launched built into the code, can it?

Forum/reddit posters/telegram users are not stakeholders that is just a communication medium for the real stakeholders to debate so those are both No IMO. If not then I’ll get cracking registering some more accounts.

Exchanges specifically CEXs provide their service for a fee. Does that mean they get a seat at the stakeholder table in the BIP and EIP process? Not ever seen this so sounds like a big no to me.

Core devs are huge stakeholders and hold enormous influence… they are building it, will probably be maintaining it alongside a lots of non core developers. Outside of this project developers have the power to and usually do “pre-mine” awarding themselves a decent share of the tokens directly representing their large stake in the process, when they create the token.

What if by “look after all stakeholders” it means there is a pecking order. Those that want KYC transition are actually stock shareholders, Legal, administrative and business? While MaidSafeCoin holders the ones whose token is actually going to undergo the transition don’t even need to be asked. It is possible Maid holders could not really complain from a moral or legal standpoint as I mentioned before. There are no rights for a Maid holder just the same as any other decentralised project token.

Outside of MaidSafe/this project it is not at all complicated. Hundreds of thousands of people, billions of dollars, just ticking along nicely in a purely decentralised fashion. Core devs with their companies and all the other large and varied stakeholders harmoniously getting along and a fork here and there when they don’t. Skin in in the game is represented by tokens/coins governed by a consensus algorithm, there is no other method that can be sufficiently decentralised for it to work.

Here we are talking very specifically about transition of the MaidSafeCoin to the decentralised Safe Network. MaidSafeCoin is on a decentralised network held by many different participants around the world much of them in one or more of the above stakeholder categories listed.

Help me understand why this is not the only measure of a stakeholder that matters when we look at the target? Why is this project so different to the others in the decentralised space in that all these centralised legal and tax concerns have crept in, when nothing even close to this exists elsewhere in other decentralised projects that have a lot more “value” at stake for the stakeholders.

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I agree and would have no issue stating that would be an act working against the spirit of the agreement of 2014. So I would say burned tokens in this way cannot be ignored, those addresses who did burn are entitled to a 1:1 swap with the real token.

We would need to outline the mechanism for proof of address ownership though, but that’s a smaller problem.

Same here the proof of where/how to allocate the erc20 or whatever would need to be laid out.

Overall a neat idea I think and perhaps a good step 1? (I suspect this payout from SNT or erc20 then can be automatic and decentralised too, taking away a lot of potential issues)

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