I would like to just clarify some points that have been raised by various members here, not to stir things up or make an already volatile situation more so, but hopefully to try and explain a few things.
For a start, to our knowledge there was no algorithm exploit, simply the fact that someone was using a huge amount of cloud services and as such gained a large amount of the hashrate. We were aware of this kind of thing for a while, yes, but we had to discuss what we thought was better for the community in the way we were going to try and tackle this problem. It was decided that rather than ban ip's that we knew had large amounts of hashing power, we could change the mining algorithm to enable a much more universal way of mining ARO. Although this did alter from the original ethos of ARO being a CPU only coin, we had to do something that kept with decentralisation, so a complete re-write of the code was implemented and worked on for weeks, including testing for weeks. When the hard fork did not go entirely as planned, which we have apologised for, we worked extremely hard to get the issues sorted. We understood that it was frustrating for some members but within approximately 24 hours, most issues were resolved. What we have noticed with the new algorithm is that cloud mining is not as profitable, and the general consensus is that most of the community is happy they can put their GPU's to work on a coin that is worthwhile. We were never going to be able to keep everyone 100% happy with such a change to the original system, but by and large the community has stuck with us and have welcomed the new mining algorithm.
On the subject of exchanges, OctaEx was very unfortunate. We did not rush in to get listed on them, we looked at the site first off, did several weeks of testing withdrawals and deposits, in an effort to make sure it was a reliable and easy to use exchange. Unfortunately a few months after we were listed on OctaEx, they did in fact do an exit scam. This is unfortunate, and I know a lot of people lost money because of this. What is apparent though is that the Dev team cannot be held accountable for this, it is sad to say but it does happen in the crypto scene, as I am sure everyone is aware. It's not something we could have foreseen, and the very fact OctaEx was used was because so many people were asking for an exchange yet we simply did not have the funds to get onto a bigger one. Donations from the community helped to list OctaEx, and by and large, for the time OctaEx was operating people were happy they had somewhere to sell their ARO.
With Mercatox, yes it is not a huge exchange, again, but a solution was required to enable trading to start taking place again. So far they have been very good, until the hard fork. They have had technical issues with their node, something which again was out of our control, and we have been working with them to try and get it sorted. It has not been 2 months that the wallet has been in maintenance, as the hard fork happened only one month ago. The problems with Mercatox have been resolved to our knowledge and hopefully the wallet will be open again in the next few days.
As for a bigger exchange, there is currently a donation process for us to be able to be listed on a bigger, more widely known exchange, so that at the very least ARO can be given some liquidity and start moving again.
I do sympathise with everyone that has either lost money or been caused inconvenience but it is a fact of crypto that these things do happen, and sometimes they are literally out of the control of the Devs. It doesn't matter how much has been invested by the development team, the marketing team, the community, we simply cannot predict these things are going to happen. I know a lot of time is given by the development team, with no income from ARO itself, even if you count transaction fees, as even if I send 1 million ARO, the fee is only ever going to be 10 ARO maximum. I myself give a hell of a lot of time to members, without any earnings myself, but it is what I do, it is my role within the ARO team.
So far the community have been outstanding in their support of ARO, and whilst there have been bumps along the way, the core community have stuck by us and continued being one of the best there is out there.
Overlode, i will start off by saying i have nothing but respect. You probably the only one in my opinion out of most of this so called marketing admin that deserves to be called that cos u always been really helpful but i will love to expand on some ideas from your post.
First of all the admin had previously stated that Octaex choose to list Aro out of their own accordance and the dev team had not decision in the listing. So are we to believe that it was otherwise? cos even a member of the marketing team SLPTOME went as far a ridiculing members that lost money to the exchange and stated that it was there fault for using a site that wasn't established.
Secondly, you stated that the admin was aware of an individual abusing the cloud service and destroying the coin's value for awhile, and it took awhile of discussion before a decisive plan was implemented. Would it be fair to state that if the dev team actually invested their own personally funds into the coin when it maintained a stable price at 1000sat, that they wouldn't have waited around for months to let the individual abusing the cloud service decimate the price to the low 200, while accumulating enough coin to shoot to the top of the leaderboard before putting a plan into action?
With mercatox, is it safe to say you guys have stated that trading will commence in the next few days several times, in the respective weeks? and is it fair for me to post a statement that since inception that this coin has only dealt with less than reliable exchanges? Also was it fair to receive a condescending reply from SLPTOME? and finally do i have the right to give a far more condescending reply to an ignorant member?
I have stated several times that i have no problem with the tech but am not into the stay positive thru a hailstorm kumbaya bullshit espoused on the discord forum, especially when i have legit concerns that are all fact. When i slander the coin, then i will gladly accept a ban on discord but since my main account was banned for stating a plain facts and defending myself from another ignorant member, then i have no problem dishing the dirty topics in a public forum. Which keep in mind that thru the octaex bs, issues with algo, and the mercatox delay, i never came on this thread and spoke ill about this coin. However, if a project is created under the guise of it been a DECENTRALIZED, then am banned for clearly stating a proven fact/defending myself from comments made by one of the admins then i have a problem with that.