It seems to me that Swarm 1.0 got to a stage in 2014 / early 2015 when they realised that having to actively seek start-up projects for their crowdfunding platform was a dead end. They were trying to build a business around trying to assist start ups in the hope that somewhere down the line these guys would make a profit and be worth something....this is clearly a long drawn out process and is not good for valuations or a good business model. It seems a lot like the chicken and egg dilemma. You have a new fundraising platform .....and there are no projects worth investing into on it..... So you get very few investors visiting the platform / website.... this dilemma is what I feel eventually drove Swarm back into stealth mode between 2015 and 2017. Despite the irregular communications however there was still work going on behind the scenes, which anyone that followed Joel could see as he was still talking at conferences and using the title "Founder, Swarm".
During this stealth period the team grew and diversified significantly. Many working groups that included regulators, Stanford / MIT academics and industry professionals were notched up and a unique DAO-like framework that involves full control of the foundation by the token holders has now begun to be built. Their Github is testament to this.
With their new Token Offering in September Swarm Fund is returning and their chicken and egg dilemma it seems has been resolved. Swarm Fund will not have to wait for projects to come to them. During their stealth period Swarm Fund established a handful of fund partnerships which are waiting to accept capital now. So.... a large proportion of the Token Sale capital will be deployed immediately into EXISTING & PROFITABLE PARTNER FUNDS across a variety of otherwise exclusive verticals (Distressed Real Estate, SaaS / Tech and Renewables to name a few). So in a nutshell (not an eggshell).... the capital raised over and above the Token Sale software dev cap will be begin to be put to work immediately via their deployment into these existing businesses. Swarm won't give up the identity of these existing parter funds at the moment, however any seriously interested investors can sign an NDA and one of the founders will be happy to discuss it over a web conference call.
Any profits generated via the sub-funds are redistributed via a software licence fee that is either paid into a Swarm Token Pool for reinvestment or distributed amongst token holders as a bonus, in a stake-weighted manner. It is the Swarm Token holders stake-weighted vote that decides which of the above happens.
Plus, given that all tokens have full, rather than limited, voting rights (i.e. the investor has to do some work to receive any gains from the foundation), this also means they are not counted as Securities by the SEC referenced Howey Test.
Joel recently wrote a pretty decent Medium post on their blog about all this
: https://medium.com/@Swarm/the-problem-with-icos-c64f67dd8c04
Oh.... a note on the Swarm 1.0 tokens for redemption. There are a bunch tied up in Poloniex at the moment and many people are trying to make contact with them to get them released. I was lucky enough to move mine back to Counterparty wallet before the wallets were blocked but I'm trying to help out by launching a Thunderclap campaign to do a massive social media hit. Anyone interested should get in touch with me (@MrCheek) via the Telegram group: https://t.me/swarmfund
I hope I've been able to clear a few things up here! It took me a while to get the full picture but I'm now up to speed and keen to hear everyone's thoughts.
Cheers!
