Topic: [ANN] Swarm Fund 1.0 - [OFFLINE THREAD] - page 8. (Read 139876 times)

Thanks for the reply, but you're missing my point. What I'm saying is the main thing you say legally differentiates you under a DCO, from being a security, doesn't.

Also a moot point but votings very simple for common stockholders, I received several voting forms from my brokers in the post yesterday, they're laid out with tick boxes for voting decisions, which you can submit by mail, telephone or online at www.proxypush.com/IBUS. You authorize someone to give a proxy vote on your behalf, I can't understand why you think this is run through lawyers?

I'm planning a crowdsale by the end of the year and have come up with a different conclusion on how to separate myself from a security, while still giving a solid incentive to investors. I'd be interested to hear what you think, the plan may change, and as of yet I haven't received any legal advice on the matter.

I'm looking into selling vouchers for one of my products which can be redeemed with me at anytime, however I'll propose that the money raised be used for marketing my product and a portion of the proceeds from sales go into a free prize draw. Every voucher sold will represent 1 prize draw entry. Prizes issued will be my products, as well as Bitcoins up to the value of $50 (limited by law on a free prize draw).

The voucher should hold it's value, as long as the price is a fair reflection of the underlying product, while offering a premium bonds style investment that relates to a return on future profits. With a hint of sarcasm I've coined the acronym for this profit sharing structure, "DPPV" (distributed, product and prize vouchers)

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/pdf/prize%20competitions%20and%20free%20draws%20-%20the%20requirements%20of%20the%20gambling%20act%202005%20-%20december%202009.pdf

BTW anyone interested in talking about DAOs, DACs, DCOs and whatever other name people want to call these so they can claim they invented them can be discussed here:
https://allcryptotalk.com/index.php/forum/97-daos-dacs/

As far as I know it's the first forum with a DAO section.

Thanks for the info. I see the structure now and it makes more sense. A traditional company could switch to this model or a new company could use this model from the beginning with or without crowd funding. Companies spend lots of money running themselves. This may be a cheaper and easier solution for them.

I will sign up and see how it goes.

I think people mistake that that this is only about crowdfunding. There are a lot of uses for this type of technology.

In general with a new project you want:

   1) Formal statement of who is in charge
   2) Budget
   3) Stakeholder distribution to existing folks
   4) Ability to raise funds
   5) Ability to go back to stakeholders for continued input

Sometimes you don't need all of these, but we now provide all of these services in an end-to-end package. Also, our fee structure is basically free. We do a 1% distribution on the coin when it is created, and then charge a bit of a premium ~30% extra past the miners fees whenever you do a distribution or a vote.

There may be a use cased for other types of fees but in general I think this is a very low cost way to bootstrap a network and since we aren't exclusive there's also no reason not to list on our page even if you are doing a crowdfunding campaign on a platform that we don't support.  If you haven't tried yet I'd suggest creating a sample DCO through our CMS on www.swarm.fund to get a feel for the process.

Nothing has changed from the preliminary design up until now. Ideally the Swarm is able to launch as many projects as possible that exist in different categories. As noted in the original manifesto, this will be as the legal framework is established. Since it's a freely traded token, the market will decide the value of that token over time.  

It's up to each individual person to decide whether or not to purchase based on the factors described, which would include their own assessment of the market response to the projects, the value of individual project tokens received, and the general desire to be aligned with Swarm and see its network succeed.

Of course the "basic income" idea that we've described explicitly involves  "making money," or at least something of value that can be distributed throughout a network and incentivize the network to see the network succeed. My general feeling here, however, is that exclusively focusing on the "money making" aspect of it actually makes it a much less powerful idea and so I don't like to place my focus there.

The Swarm includes that but is ultimately much bigger than that.

I didn't word that very well.  How about this:

Is SWARM still designed to make money for its holders?

@fractastical ignored this question about fees. Most of these crowd funding models use pretty high fees. What they do is give coins to media outlet for promotion. It's sad... but it's kind of the only way right now to get media attention. Every media outlet in crypto uses this tactic to stay in business.

There might be a small future for this coin. If it quickly funds a bunch of projects that in turn make money for investors, then it might stay around for awhile. If it doesn't get popular fast, it will definitely be replaced by a 0 free open source solution on Ethereum.

It would be nice to know if they have investors ready to invest in SWARM projects just to make SWARM look popular.

Same basic principle applies there as applies now. You can have any type of token distribution programmatically re-distributed. This may be slightly more expensive in an ethereum context.

It's partially a matter of rights, partially a matter of technology. The reality is that 'common stock' in a classic context is secured via the existing legal system instead of the blockchain, which means that any sort of voting needs to be run through lawyers. This makes it extremely expensive to run a stock holder vote, etc., which ultimately leads to less involvement from stockholders. Also, as I'm sure you know you only have the possibility of having public stock holders once you are on a public market (i.e. post-IPO)

So the difference may not be so much a difference in intent, but a difference in result due to better technology. New technology allows better and more granular control from more participants.

I feel like answering this question would involve giving investment advice, which I'm not particular well suited for. I'm more of a product developer who is trying to build the best product I know how to. If you want to get investment advice, check out places like http://cyber.fund/ or the market analysis that happens on our forum.

At least 1% of the coins from new projects will go to SWARM-holders. Swarm is holding SWARM (the coin) themselves. So when successful projects launch on the platform, and these coins get distributed it's great for Swarm as well. Imagine if the new Maidsafe or new Ethereum or some other great projects would launch using Swarm, some of these coins would go out to the SWARM-holders. There is a little fee involved in creating a DCO and creating coins, at least some have to be payed for the Bitcoin-transaction. I don't know the exact costs, maybe @fractastical can answer that question.   

I'm confused about how SWARM will make money? Will they be taking a fee?

They're making an Ethereum app which sounds amazing but Ethereum apps don't make money. I don't see anyone using an Ethereum app that isn't open source and decentralized?

The PDF you wrote in conjunction with Jerry Britto, if I've interpreted it correctly, seems to imply that a DCO would fail the Howey test because of the power you give to "members" in voting decisions, therefore the investment isn't reliant on the sole efforts of a third party. I'm struggling to understand how this is any different to a common stockholder?

fractastical, should an investor buy SWARM if he is looking to generate income and/or capital gains for himself and his family?

Here and available to answer outstanding questions.

Contrary to what's in the press, I don't see any "pivot" in what we've been doing. Our grueling legal research indicated that it was only possible to legally do crowdfunding in the US with the DCO model that we created, so it's essential that people fill out the correct parameters up front before they start crowdfunding. This importantly includes rights that the token holders have.

 A lightbulb went off in my head late last year when I met with the CEO of Seedrs through some of my contacts with Techstars and he told him that, with two lawyers working on it full time, it took them 18 months of full-time work to get legal approval for their equity crowdfunding site. This was the first equity crowdfunding site legally launched and remains the no. 2 in the world.

So I thought the slow and steady route was the most appropriate for long term success. Unfortunately there's not a lot of exciting things to promote along the way. Well, until now that we have our basic income program / coin distribution program ready to go.



More details on the new launch here. 












 

I bought them as well The DCO-model is great for projects and companies that want to raise funds and make money for the investors. No doubt about it. You'll see
-hopefully a lot- projects that do exactly that. A lot of projects applied for funding over the last months. Most are about making money. But the point made in the article
is that not all projects have to be about that. The DCO-model is great for non-profit organisations as well. SWARM-holders got LOVENEST-coins some days ago, that's a project
about a community house. So far no money involved. But you'll see other projects as well that want to make money. I agree with you if you say that that point wasn't exactly clear in the article.

We bought SWARM as investors.  Bait and switch?

I wonder if this idea would be possible with the new SWARM governance stuff:
#420ajf https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/annpre-launchicodao-the-420-alliance-joint-force-store-967364



I guess it all comes down to whether SWARM/ethereum can communicate with other blockchains.

from Coindesk...

"Swarm is pivoting toward decentralized governance, a decision that finds the project shifting away from its original focus on distributed crowdfunding.

The move follows the release of a research paper commissioned jointly with DATA's Constance Choi and Harvard Berkman Center research fellow Primavera de Fillippi that suggested distributed collaborative organizations (DCOs), which utilize cryptographic tokens to denote membership in a decentralized organization, are among the 'crypto 2.0 models' that are unlikely to attract negative attention from US regulators.
The subject has been fiercely debated in recent months, following rumors the US Securities and Exchange Commission was seeking to crack down on projects that sell cryptographic tokens."

Swarm Targets Blockchain Governance in Platform Pivot

Coins are coming in. Here's the link to the "Swarm Example Wallet" in the block explorer. That wallet started with 1000 SWARM some weeks ago. New coins are coming in. Probably more in the coming weeks as well. Read about it in the online version of the latest newsletter.