I just wanted to come back to say congratulations to MZC for the wonderful news that AP has finally left the team.
Is this official?
Yes there was a statement from him and tweet by @mazacoin
Here is some suggestions to get this coin back on track. They need to create a new sign of life in the project. Someone needs to come on board, round up everyone together who contributes and figure out the base path of what everyone can do and what needs to be done including Payu. This whole lead developer title and "Master Coin Maker" if stupid.
1) Establish a new image. The website has to go. It is awful and looks like a joke. There was community submitted designs and translations I was emailed and pushed to get in place after I spoke to the MZC community in the IRC chat answering questions and getting some take aways from the people. I am sure we can round up some ideas and get something up quicker with more information, interactive pages with content and merge it with MazaTalk to land a unified coin site and community around. This is also a time to update the coins logo while keeping the traditional element in it, but there was also some coin icons that provided a more modern look and now is a time to rebrand the coin while keeping tradition.
2) As I said, regroup with who is on the team. Figure out what people are capable of and come up with a list of tasks to accomplish. There is some major client fixes required, a testing team needed to run the testnet and make sure the forked chain will be accepted and run right and a laundry list of about 100 things that need to be addressed. Figure out what those items are, assign priorities, and determine what can be done and when. Pretty much SCRUM the dev's and contributors.
3) Setup a community again. The IRC chats were rocking in the past but limited with info and updates. There is devs but it is time to expand outside of that and provide a unified team that meets the goals above. Running a coin is like running a startup or any project. There is all tasks and should not be in the face of just one person making all the calls and wearing all the hats. There will never be daily updates but there needs to be community leaders and devs.
4) Do not hype changes and bullshit. Get together and form the plan of above and launch the new website, roadmap, and project face in full steam. The trust is gone. Some people think Payu is full of it and the novelty died off. There needs to be something new and while yes, there was a lot that Payu did, he needs to meet with the whole team and stay in touch to also be part of the roadmap from the dev side but also the work he does. He is the one fighting the battle in the public, he needs to also understand that people are going to ask questions. Again, not daily updates but a communication release and a state of the coin and how much of the road map is progressing is huge.
5) Follow the roadmap. Be transparent. Admit when something isn't going right and stay ahead of the FUDers. There will always be trolls but feeding them questionable posts and information, they will rip it apart. Stay consistent on changes, make corrections when needed, and rebrand the project to what it should be and keep the mission of Payu going forward.
Just my 2 cents. Take it as you wish.
So Boxxa, you want to come back onto the team? I definitely agree, I cannot do this alone and I need the help of others in the community and am more than willing to leverage the help of others as a dev team. We currently have someone working on an Android wallet which of course if we are going to fork the coin might as well wait until after the fork to release. It would be nice to give the website a more professional look to it so we can get it accepted by more tribes as well.
I also like the IRC room but it has become dead since the coin started to crash. I am still in the IRC room and would like to see it more active. While I'm not active in there 24/7 I try to stay logged in to follow any communication that may come through.
Right now the first goal I have is getting a testnet setup for Mazacoin so we can test the coming block reward change and diff adjustment. I am pushing for an early July fork.
Personally I am still torn on the Merge Mining idea, while I like the added hashrate and security it would bring to the blockchain, I don't like that there will be a lot of miners that just see it as another coin to dump for more BTC as they are mainly mining BTC. Adoption of the coin in transactions outside of exchanges and on the reservation would help the value and possibly stop some of this dumping though. I am still open to suggestions on this but it is not one of my top priorities at this time.
So, that being said, if you have something you would like to contribute to the team, drop me a line, either here, or IRC, and we'll go from there.