Why the hell would the dev sell QRL instead of the ETH/BTC he raised for the project? This is absolutely absurd unless he believes Ether has a better future prospect than his own tokens. The money raised during the ICO was supposed to be used for development. The fact that he is not using them is what's more alarming.
/ SOAPBOX TIME /
Let's assume the best here, that the founder/developer has every intention of bringing the project to fruition. And add in some realities: This was his idea, he's a bright person. But even very, very smart people struggle greatly with rapidly-growing "startup" company formation, it's the real killer of most new companies, regardless of how good an idea or how competent the founding people involved are. It doesn't mean it's a "scam", just that lessons are being learned on the job.
Company formation takes experience -- usually hard-earned since you don't have the resources to hire someone that's already done it -- and mistakes are made. For instance, not defining roles well (lead developer retains password authority for all accounts and delegates use permissions down from there, basic inheritance), not giving percentages of the company for commodity jobs (for instance, social media manager as there are millions of highly qualified people available to do this, almost all willing to work remotely as self-employed-and-taxed individuals) that can be easily and inexpensively acquired. Starting your company, it's hard to resist rewarding people that work for you in the early days with obscenely huge percentages that would cost the typical investor huge sums to match.
Two key areas oft overlooked: An arbitration clause for all disputes, and setting terms for time-based vesting of shares. And that time should be over a year -- either a year of development work before the ICO, or a year of service to vest 20%. Then 30% after two, and the potential to final 50% after three years of continual service. Nobody but the founding devs get a (small percentage) lump at the ICO if it's a first round of funding. That said, what the devs (and any angel investors) do with their vested shares is entirely fair game.
Publicly setting time-lines for vesting and having a third-party trustee administer share allocation would alleviate much of the ICO/crypto community's fears of scams.
There's always hugely egotistical people that want large percentages of startups even though they came on board after formation and didn't contribute to what is, after the fact, an obviously good idea. It's like being friends with the guy who invented the wheel -- you're lumping 50 kilos on your back, and she comes rolling by with twice that weight on a lovely wheeled cart and you're like "well duh, I could've done that". But you didn't, did you? The wheel wasn't obvious until some creative thinker did the hard part of dreaming it up. The core team needs to know how to protect themselves (and their investors' funds) before hiring. Know that you need to resist being "nice guys" and handing out obscene percentages to valued friends and employees -- it's a disservice to the both the brilliance of the idea and the hard-earned money investors give you. Grasping that once you take money, it's not your company anymore, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement for you and your new partners, whose individual importance is clearly defined with ownership percentages. As in investor, seeing that nearly a half million shares were give out for a few months of low fiat currency value work doesn't make me very happy.
Which brings us to setting non-competed and termination clauses -- another overlooked area, and a glaring flaw in new companies. In this case, "social media manager" job title is to spew the company line. Violating that is grounds for termination, loss of access to passwords for social media accounts, and forfeiture of non-vested shares. Failure to do that cost a lot of people a lot of value. Hopefully short-term.
Note that staffing firms and many companies set disputes resolution as an arbiter of their choosing, and your expense. Which is pretty lame, ICO companies can and should treat people better.
Lastly, global company formation is complicated, and a PITA. Still assuming QRL intends to deliver on their promises, it's very magnanimous of the dev to sell his personal shares to fund ongoing costs verses touching the ICO funds, which he shouldn't until the company or foundation is set up to control them.
/* ENDS SOAPBOX */
Apologies for the lengthy diatribe. If you assumed I learned all the above the hard way, that I lost a lot of relative value with the posting of a seemingly (hopefully!) ego-driven and useless view, and that I like this project and want to see it carry on, you were correct. ;-)
If you assumed I know or have ever spoken to anyone on the QRL team, you're wrong. I haven't. Just a chick who is alarmed at how fast passwords can currently be cracked on a couple of Tesla cards and thought this project would be a lot of fun to follow and invest in...
GTFO hungry dog !
