However, I am surprised that people are buying that >$1m worth of QRL needed to be cashed out to support the project for 3 months. It doesn't add up in the slightest. We also still have very limited details on the type of company or foundation setup. The best way to handle internal accusations like this is to come clean on all the accusations, the good and the bad. Leaving it to fester will be an open sore that could get infected.
Here is a piece from the just released statement ( here:
https://medium.com/@theQRL/qrl-testnet-a412ea34135d ) that I think gets to the heart of this issue:
I will briefly touch upon one point which the community has raised, namely trading of QRL by team members. We obtained our pre-sale Bitcoin and Ethereum in a private raise using very clear terms just two months ago. Our mainnet launch is penciled just two/three months away. Since our pre-sale we have in just ~60 days had to professionalize the team, look for additional talent in a crowded space, personally deploy ERC20 tokens to hundreds of people (with associated tech support) and continue to develop our codebase at breakneck speed to hit our targets.
Our roadmap offers no margin for delay whatsoever because we want the QRL to be the first truly post-quantum secure blockchain in the world. But we have to do it properly. Up to now the entire project from inception (hosting, VPS, AWS, salaries, travel costs, legal, licensing, third party services etc) have been covered entirely by myself. Our plan remains to set up a legal Foundation entity and use the funds from the pre-sale to facilitate the project but securing the optimum jurisdiction and form for this body is complex and time-consuming. Our roadmap does now allow for such delays and so I have paid for everything myself on an interim basis. After the pre-sale participants petitioned us to issue ERC20 tokens I made the decision to sell a portion of my own personal coins to cover costs, especially as these will grow with every new team member recruited going forward.
I recognize that selling these coins could be interpreted as ‘lead dev doesn’t have confidence in the project’ but that is categorically not the case. I would like to offer my apology to those who feel we should have gone about this differently and give my word that no further coins will be sold before the vesting period ends.
No other core team members have received their allocation. Transparency and openness is very important and we will therefore publish the addresses of all core team members when they receive their Quanta at mainnet launch. Additionally, the Foundation address is custodian to the 65% of team funds allocated for ongoing development.
