If anything of what I'll say is objectively wrong, please do correct me.
I'm going to continue to get caught up on everything here and sift through the additional PMs I have received. As has been mentioned, I have never requested any funds be sent my way nor have I chosen to mislead anybody in any way. MEGAman and JudgeCrypto each voluntarily sent me 0.5 BTC which I will gladly return to them in the event that I cannot pull my weight here.
I'm fine with that if they are, haven't heard anything from those 2 guys in a while now, though.
The bottom line is that I am extremely busy (I am a very hands-on co-founder of an Internet startup with tens of thousands of customers) and, unfortunately, that has to take priority over everything else. Beyond that, I have my own coin which I have been neglecting a bit due to the work I've been putting into SilkCoin. I was pulled away for travel for several days and I did pass along some info to MEGAman to report in the thread on my behalf (unfortunately, his update wasn't very complete). As soon as I returned, I made a post here announcing my return and my intention to fulfill my promise to deliver an all-new client. I have dedicated over 12 hours just to the development of the new client - keep in mind that nobody has successfully built a PoS coin on the latest Bitcoin Core source (at least not to my knowldege). After catching up on over 50 PMs (many of them with an angry/violent tone) and reading through the thread to get caught up I saw that there is a repaired client in-place and a team had been assembled in my absence. I figured you guys had it under control and could hold down the fort while I took my time to finish the new client (the emergency before was to get something out and get the exchanges back online - now that it has been handled by other members of the community, the urgency is somewhat lessened). I understand members of the crypto community tend to have short attention spans and need to continue to see progress - I'm doing what I can. As I mentioned in my "return" note, this is a holiday weekend (I live in the United States - July 4th is Independence Day here) and I wanted to spend it with my family.
There would be no problem with any of this if it was properly communicated so the community would know what to expect and need not worry. How long does it take to log in and post a short update or a change of plans? A minute? The problem is nobody knew what you were up to for several days which sometimes feels like an eternity in crypto world, so when our investment depends on it many of us will naturally assume the worst. The longer that goes on the more people will do the same thing in the light of given information or, more precisely, lack thereof. You see that a few posts back even one of the lead team members had no idea if you were still working on anything at all and that only confirmed my suspicions. That shouldn't have happened and you could have prevented it.
I have a number of obligations (hence the reason I only ever intended to lead this takeover temporarily) and it's absolutely important to me to get this thing up and rolling. I attached my name to this project for no other reason than wanting to help save this (primarily) awesome community. The hatred that continues to be sent in my direction is both ridiculous and irritating. I have put a lot of time and energy into reading all of your messages, getting this comeback rolling, and writing code for the new client and I have asked for nothing in return.
That's all nice and well, if it is indeed true. But with nothing other than words to show for it and back that up, some folks will naturally not wet their panties over it.
Yes - I deleted an inflammatory post in the Murraycoin thread by "psychocoin" which accused me of being a liar/etc. The post had nothing to do with Murraycoin and was the first thing I saw when I returned from my trip. Negative attitudes and jerks certainly cast a dark shadow over the altcoin world but they aren't going away and sometimes the best way to handle them is to just ignore them and push forward. I left town for 4 days and returned to an entire inbox full of hate mail; this is crazy.
Alright, it wasn't entirely best manners to do what I did, but it was still a valid concern and your response to it in the form of deletion without a word of explanation to let me know my accusations were wrong... well, it wasn't helping your case either and I think that anyone in my place would then have assumed the same thing I did.
Now I'm working on determining the best way to assist the team and trying to get a feel on the direction the community wants to go with this. If it doesn't make sense for me to be on board or if it's decided I'm not a good fit that's fine - I'm not looking to get in the way here.
Well, I presume the Trello board is the central team clubhouse, so the first thing you would wanna do is join that and use it to possibly establish direct lines of communication with the core members. Or do that through the forums. As long as you want to collaborate and let everyone know what to expect (like I said - clear communication is key). And it is through your contributions and collaborations with the team that even the skeptical minds could be convinced of your true intentions. Then, I'm sure everyone would be happy to have you aboard.
All I know is that people like "psychocoin" do nothing but incite panic, kill motivation, and just create a toxic environment where the optimism and enthusiasm begins to vaporize. It's important to keep things on-point, productive, and keep making progress.
As a stakeholder myself, I am not exactly motivated to be the cause of what you describe. I stand by what I said, because those were all rationally formed concerns that, in my opinion, needed to be brought to attention. I, too, was one of those who bought more SILK the instant I finished reading your rebuilding proposal and then went on to promote awareness of it at every chance. So, perhaps you wanna ask yourself if anything you did could have been the reason the events unfolded this way in the first place.
I intend to follow through on everything I promised and, like I said, if that doesn't work out for whatever reason I will certainly return the funds I received to the two individuals that voluntarily sent them to me. I cannot stress enough that I never asked for anything here - my intentions were (and still are) 100% genuine, for what it's worth.
For what it's worth, that is good to hear. I apologize for appearing rude and demanding but you gotta understand that this is a world where trust is far easier compromised than earned and intention holds little weight without fulfillment of promises as evidence backing it. Certain things are expected from people who take on commitments like the ones you did. If those expectations are not met - people won't be pleased. And some people are less patient and forgiving than others and their concerns are just as valid when all they demand is reasonable.
I still applaud what you voluntarily did to start things off. It is noble not to ask for anything in return, but that by itself doesn't excuse everything that could follow. Your actions or lack thereof will affect people's financial status - this is a significant responsibility and the reason why certain things are expected. You cannot expect that those people will just shrug it off if you disappear without notice and it doesn't matter if it's for a day, two or a month. In a way it is like paying for a newspaper subscription and then having the newspaper to just stop being delivered, without an explanation, after money has been spent. Nobody would allow that to go on and after complaining the cause of the problem would be held accountable. Sure, this analogy is far from perfect but it makes little difference to an investor if the money they lose is collected by the dev personally or the same amount is simply just lost due to the market consequences of the dev's actions. I hope you get what I'm saying.
A key concern for me has always been
transparency and I'll be proposing a lot of things in a post soon that concern ways it could be improved, so let's talk about that. I think it's not even a problem that you have a day job and some commitments higher in priority than volunteering for SILK, but you gotta be fully transparent in what you do, because every time that no announcement of taking time off is made by the lead developer, it is then assumed by everyone (and validly so) that the developer is continuing to actively work on what he said he would. If it turns out not to have been so, then it's a misunderstanding that could have easily been avoided through simple transparency. This should also be kept in mind by the entire team.
I would still like you to address some concerns that remain not addressed:
- Unless you have convincing reasons not to, could you prove your previously proclaimed stake in the coin? I'm sure you understand why that is important. A link to the relevant address(es) in block explorer is probably the easiest way and you could prove ownership of them by saying you will move a certain amount of coins from address xxx to it (or from it) and then making that happen in an hour or two.
- Are you saying that your supposed circumstances effectively excuse your part in the community's valid expectations of accountability (such as regular communication) not being met?
- How does it make sense to inform MEGAman about your circumstances and not the community directly?
If I think of any more before you respond, I'll edit them in. No hard feelings, by the way!
[EDIT: Corrected grammar in a few places, please don't quote the entire post as it clutters the page]
