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Topic: [ANN][IPO] Spark: New codebase for a new crypto - Fund raising [3/4] - page 3. (Read 6401 times)

legendary
Activity: 840
Merit: 1000
Quote

Here is how our escrow search went:

Step one: Finding a serious escrow that does other things than bitcoin. This was actually a very hard step, there needs to be a good index of escrows somewhere. We'd have even been ready to pay to see a detailed lists of escrows, their trust rating, and what kind of business they accept.

Step two: Having the escrow accept us. Most escrows did not want to be associated with IPOs or with people who decide to remain anonymous because they are the ones who look bad if the IPO fails or ends up being a scam. We offered a testnet wallet to prove that we were real, but all but two didn't even want it and stopped their business with us at this step.

Step three: We had only two escrow options left. One of them was not looking serious enough however. We believe that he was probably a scammer, as he was offering to do it for 0% fee and without any cost. In our eyes, this was extremely suspicious, and felt like he was just waiting for an opportunity to run away with some big money.

Step four: The escrow service we were left with is a semi-automated service. For small escrows, they have a website, but they are ready to handle big escrows like IPOs for us in exchange for 1btc in advance and a fee of 1%. We also have to keep track of investors ourselves, and tell them who to give the Sparks to. This might sound like a lot of negative things, but there is a much bigger positive with them: They were  willing to give us a real life identity and prove (through a bank payment of 0.01$) that they are the two persons they say they are.

Communication with them is not easy as they are in an asian timezone and are slow at writing english in real time chat, but when we take our time we can understand ourselves just fine. We did not even ask for the real life identity verification, they offered it themselves, and we appreciated that gesture a lot.

Okay, well. Your answer still doesn't convince me. Why should you trust some random (?) Chinese guys? I'd rather give you my money directly, than give it to an unknown (?) Chinese company.
Sorry for being sceptic, but it's money we're talking about. I'm willing to invest 1 BTC in your project, because i do believe it has big potential, but with an escrow like that? Hmm...

Do they have references? Did other people already used their services at this board? You can always send me a PM if this is too much offtopic.




sr. member
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
No Offense, I'm not trolling this one post, but to get money from Me for a IPO, you would need a website already for your coin, a working wallet for your coin, and all the details/specifications on that website, along with forums, AS WELL AS having your full identity in the public which includes your name date of birth and LINKEDIN profile or at least a list of places or projects youve done/worked on so users know your qualified and not scamming the shit out of them. That wiill show me that you're prepared to actually fully develop your coin until the end.

Not fully sure on what to think...

sr. member
Activity: 438
Merit: 250
I hope that the success of the project, participants can share the joy of success.
sr. member
Activity: 282
Merit: 250


http://i.imgur.com/bThyafc.png

Combined them into one image and smoothed out the jaggies a bit.
sr. member
Activity: 282
Merit: 250
One question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.

From this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pre-ann-spark-whole-new-codebase-for-a-whole-new-crypto-14-525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »

This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.


Yes, I saw that. It says INITIALLY. I wanted you to confirm the TOTAL lifetime amount of coins. Is the total one billion? Thank you.


Yes, with no mining, the number of coins can not go up.

However, as we mentioned on the original post, there is an annual 10% proof of stake inflation of the total amount of coins. This gives a small advantage to people who decide to have their Sparks in a wallet (even locked/cold storage) where they can hoard them or spend them in shops and e-commerces. The reason for this is that we want to encourage people to use wallets for their Sparks instead of keeping them on exchanges.

The PoS minting is done every day (about 0.028% inflation per day), and is the only way new Sparks can be introduced. It would not even be possible for us to insert more Sparks in the economy without making a hard fork, as only the cloud with the id 0 can contain new Sparks, and that cloud has already been generated and locked.


The stake generation will only start after a bit over one year, on the 1st of May 2015. Until then, the number of coins in circulation will be exactly one billion, not less not more.


Great! Thanks for clearing that up. I knew about the staking, I just wasn't clear on if the "1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially" was still accurate or if that information was based on your previous plan to release the coins in 10% increments. I understand fully now.
newbie
Activity: 8
Merit: 0
http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif




I'm going to invest. The only strange this is this sentence:

Quote
Most escrow services and private escrows turned us down, as they do not like the idea of handling this kind of business.

Why would they turn you down, but accept some random crap/clonecoins at the same time?


Here is how our escrow search went:

Step one: Finding a serious escrow that does other things than bitcoin. This was actually a very hard step, there needs to be a good index of escrows somewhere. We'd have even been ready to pay to see a detailed lists of escrows, their trust rating, and what kind of business they accept.

Step two: Having the escrow accept us. Most escrows did not want to be associated with IPOs or with people who decide to remain anonymous because they are the ones who look bad if the IPO fails or ends up being a scam. We offered a testnet wallet to prove that we were real, but all but two didn't even want it and stopped their business with us at this step.

Step three: We had only two escrow options left. One of them was not looking serious enough however. We believe that he was probably a scammer, as he was offering to do it for 0% fee and without any cost. In our eyes, this was extremely suspicious, and felt like he was just waiting for an opportunity to run away with some big money.

Step four: The escrow service we were left with is a semi-automated service. For small escrows, they have a website, but they are ready to handle big escrows like IPOs for us in exchange for 1btc in advance and a fee of 1%. We also have to keep track of investors ourselves, and tell them who to give the Sparks to. This might sound like a lot of negative things, but there is a much bigger positive with them: They were  willing to give us a real life identity and prove (through a bank payment of 0.01$) that they are the two persons they say they are.

Communication with them is not easy as they are in an asian timezone and are slow at writing english in real time chat, but when we take our time we can understand ourselves just fine. We did not even ask for the real life identity verification, they offered it themselves, and we appreciated that gesture a lot.




It seems like cryptocurrencies that are not established yet and IPOs have gained an association with scams, and when looking for an escrow you are caught in the middle of this. In their eyes, you are just like the rest, a scammer trying to make quick money. Even after offering to give them a working version of our wallet on testnet, they mostly refused and dismissed us as they do not want to be attached to something that is not big like bitcoin.




http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif




One question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.

From this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pre-ann-spark-whole-new-codebase-for-a-whole-new-crypto-14-525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »

This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.


Yes, I saw that. It says INITIALLY. I wanted you to confirm the TOTAL lifetime amount of coins. Is the total one billion? Thank you.


Yes, with no mining, the number of coins can not go up.

However, as we mentioned on the original post, there is an annual 10% proof of stake inflation of the total amount of coins. This gives a small advantage to people who decide to have their Sparks in a wallet (even locked/cold storage) where they can hoard them or spend them in shops and e-commerces. The reason for this is that we want to encourage people to use wallets for their Sparks instead of keeping them on exchanges.

The PoS minting is done every day (about 0.028% inflation per day), and is the only way new Sparks can be introduced. It would not even be possible for us to insert more Sparks in the economy without making a hard fork, as only the cloud with the id 0 can contain new Sparks, and that cloud has already been generated and locked.


The stake generation will only start after a bit over one year, on the 1st of May 2015. Until then, the number of coins in circulation will be exactly one billion, not less not more.



http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif
sr. member
Activity: 282
Merit: 250
One question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.

From this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pre-ann-spark-whole-new-codebase-for-a-whole-new-crypto-14-525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »

This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.


Yes, I saw that. It says INITIALLY. I wanted you to confirm the TOTAL lifetime amount of coins. Is the total one billion? Thank you.
legendary
Activity: 840
Merit: 1000
I'm going to invest. The only strange this is this sentence:

Quote
Most escrow services and private escrows turned us down, as they do not like the idea of handling this kind of business.

Why would they turn you down, but accept some random crap/clonecoins at the same time?
newbie
Activity: 8
Merit: 0
http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif



can we have a video/screenshot/code snippet??

We wanted to keep everything private until release / have everything be a full surprise, but it is obvious that this is not how trust is generated. Bad/naive thinking on our part. We are better developers than social engineers or communication specialists, we'll try to improve on that.


Here is a screenshot of the Windows build of the Spark wallet. We went for a minimalistic style due to being graphically impaired, but the wallet can easily be skinned over / redesigned once we're past release and people offer us better looking graphics:

http://i.imgur.com/Lg6Djwy.png


No point in giving a screenshot of our minimalistic wallet (sparkyd), as text in command line is not exactly what I'd call exciting. We'll add this screenshot to the main post.



As for the code snippet, we had a hard time finding a bit of code that fits the following requirements:
1) Does not expose any of our core working methods before release
2) Is not totally worthless, like a whole file of exception codes or config

We went with the class that handles remote calls:

Code:
# Remote call to another Spark client or node
class Remote(object):
    def __init__(self, cloudid, cloud=None, ident=None, ssf=None, maxwait=15, *args, **kwargs):
        if cloud is None: cloud = 'default'
        if ident is None: ident = ''
        if isinstance(cloudid, six.text_type): cloudid = cloudid.encode('utf-8')
        if isinstance(ident, six.text_type): ident = ident.encode('utf-8')
        if isinstance(cloud, six.text_type): cloud = cloud.encode('utf-8')
        if isinstance(ssf, six.text_type): ssf = ssf.encode('utf-8')
        super(Proxy, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.neutralizer = 0
        self.cloudid = cloudid
        self.ssf = ssf
        self.cloud = cloud
        self.ident = ident
        self.maxwait = maxwait

    def __getattr__(self, name):
        if self.ssf is not None:
            name = '.'.join([self.ssf, name])
        return self.__class__(self.cloudid, self.cloud, self.ident, name, self.maxwait)

    def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if args and kwargs:
            raise ValueError(u"Should and can not encode both parameters")
        if self.ssf is None:
            raise ValueError(u"Must specify")

        self.neutralizer = (self.neutralizer+1) & 0xffffffff
        hash_ = sha1(b''.join([self.cloudid, self.ssf, self.cloud, Lint(self.neutralizer).serialize(4), time.ctime(), Lint(randrange(2**32)).serialize(4)])).digest()
        id_ = Lint.deserialize(StringIO(hash_[:4]), 4)

        sparkinfo = dumps(id_, self.ssf, kwargs or args)
        headers = {'Content-Type' : 'application/json'}
        reply = requests.post(self.cloudid, auth=(self.cloud, self.ident), data=sparkinfo, maxwait=self.maxwait)
        if reply.status_code >= 500:
            reply.raise_for_status()
        response = loads(reply.content)

        if 'id' not in response or response['id'] != id_:
            raise ResponseError(u"Unexpected reply")
        if ('error' in response and response['error'] is not None and
            'result' in response and response['result'] is not None):
            raise ResponseError(u"Can't have a response and an error at once")

        if 'error' in response and response['error'] is not None:
            raise Fault('code' in response['error'] and response['error']['code'] or -1, 'message' in response['error'] and response['error']['message'] or '', 'description' in response['error'] and response['error']['description'] or None)
        elif 'result' in response:
            return response['result']
        else:
            raise ResponseError(u"Must have at least a response or an error")




http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif




How can we make sure that the BTC address is btc-asia's address? Can the escrow make any public announcement of the whole operation?

Also. [email protected]? hotmail, really? There is a website btc-asia.com, is it their website? Why the hotmail then?

They try to distance themselves from direct involvement in any operations they are in. This was a major contention point between us and them, but we have just asked them to post something on their website if possible regarding the Spark IPO.

A specific email inbox for the Spark IPO is meant to be opened by them, but we're waiting for confirmation that it's operational. I added it to the main post, awaiting confirmation from them now. Timezones and family life make communication between us difficult, we will do our best. We will delete this email address until they confirm it is working.




http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif




you say you will not delete criticism yet you deleted my post. If you delete it again i will report you and leave you a nice negative trust.

This was a misunderstanding, we thought that your gif was some form of advertisement, like the others we removed from the thread (namely « crypto tower », « crypto calendar », and some mining pool). You can keep your post and gif if it's just a scam accusation: as we said in the main post, we're ready to live with those. They come with the territory.




http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif



One question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.

From this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pre-ann-spark-whole-new-codebase-for-a-whole-new-crypto-14-525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »

This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.



http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif     http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif
newbie
Activity: 13
Merit: 0
If you invest 1btc out of a total of 100btc invested, you will indeed get 1% of all Sparks
member
Activity: 107
Merit: 10
member
Activity: 62
Merit: 10
I am very optimistic about this coin
full member
Activity: 131
Merit: 100
sr. member
Activity: 282
Merit: 250
Here is an announcement thread for the btc-asia.com service posted on June 18th, 2013 by the member "ninjaboon": https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-btc-asiacom-secure-bitcoin-escrows-237121. After doing a bit of investigating, things look good enough to me regarding the escrow.

This coin sounds interesting and seems innovative. I am glad that they have decided to distribute all of the coins at once instead of releasing them 10% at a time. I also like that they addressed the question of how much they will invest in the IPO themselves. The long investment period of 20 days and the fact that there is no minimum investment offers anybody who is interested a fair chance to obtain some Spark. I personally feel that this distribution method is superior to mining.

One question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.
member
Activity: 73
Merit: 10
Who knows more info about the btc-asia company ?
Same question here,any link?
sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 250
ok... just noticed the address has been changed in the OP. It is now [email protected]
full member
Activity: 128
Merit: 100
yes. i think the escrow needs to confirm that they are indeed involved.  

for all we know right now, that you be your private btc wallet address... and when finally questioned your escrow may say they had nothing to do with spark.
and it better be pretty damn good proof.
full member
Activity: 128
Merit: 100
yes. i think the escrow needs to confirm that they are indeed involved.  

for all we know right now, that you be your private btc wallet address... and when finally questioned your escrow may say they had nothing to do with spark.
legendary
Activity: 1428
Merit: 1001
getmonero.org
69.5 BTC






you say you will not delete criticism yet you deleted my post. If you delete it again i will report you and leave you a nice negative trust.
sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 250
How can we make sure that the BTC address is btc-asia's address? Can the escrow make any public announcement of the whole operation?

Also. [email protected]? hotmail, really? There is a website btc-asia.com, is it their website? Why the hotmail then?

Good point.... why not the email listed on the website ([email protected]) or some other email id make for this exclusively ([email protected] ?) or even something from the parent company @bitcoinmalaysia.com. Seems like a good idea and a little too thought out and detailed for me to call scam.... maybe they just overlooked details like these.
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