Dear Pre-ICO/Crowdfunding participant,
Together we had a lot of ups and downs, and we finally came to a conclusion about the project.
The intent of this letter is to bring you up to speed on some things that happened in the past (that you are not aware of), and the things that will happen in the future.
The biggest change is that we are closing the project down for good.
For those of you that are waiting for bounties, that means there will be none.
For those of you that contributed, we are trying to provide a solution, so please read further.
1) The hack of the presale smart contract
One thing that you are not aware of happened sometime in June. As you probably heard through the media, there was that big hack (due to the bug in solidity) that affected a majority of the projects. Yes, it also affected you and us. Approximately 64 ETH were lost in the attack. The funds that were lost were locked in the smart contract that only the presale participant could retrieve (but some did not, despite the numerous calls). Blockchain remembers everything so last five transactions is the proof of this hack.
Which funds were lost?
As many may remember the participants were presented with the two options:
1) To transfer the funds from presale smart contract to pro-rata smart contract.
2) To get out the funds and transfer them back to participant's own wallet.
Some of the people have not reacted, neither retrieved the ETH from the presale smart contract, so they left the funds in the presale smart contract until the Solidity hack happened. Unfortunately, those funds are lost.
2) The presale funds.
Out of 315.5 ETH, around 251.5 ETH were transferred to the pro-rata smart contract. The rest (approx. 64 ETH of that was, as previously said, hacked). Those funds (which was around $45.000 at that time) were used for the preparations of the ICO.
What happened with presale funds? All of the presale funds were used for:
· Legal matters (~$11k),
· KYC and AML for ICO (~$10k),
· Designers (~$6k),
· Marketing (~$60k – animation, cointelegraph, google addwords, facebook, bitcointalk...),
· Developers (~$13k),
· Etc.
You can probably see, this is way more than we received in the presale. Both founders invested a significant amount of their own funds to bring the project up the ICO, and no one of the team members and advisors was paid even a single dollar from those funds.
3) The ICO
Everybody that participated in the crowdfunding of the project knows what happened at the ICO. We were late with the contract (approx. 2 hours) and most of the investors (who planned to contribute over 1 million dollars) from the whitelist, left. We had two options, to close the project or to bring it to the end of the ICO and then see what happens. We decided to stop taking the contributions and offer the refunds to those who wanted out.
There were also people from the presale that wanted out, and as said before, those funds were long gone (used for the project and ICO). So the founders gave more than $30k each to pay back the people who wanted out.
4) Services to Companies
We had some promising deals with few companies (even one country) as potential founders and future users of our services, but after unsuccessful ICO all those deals through the series of unfortunate events closed and/or terminated. We are really devastated, but the truth is, nothing can be done without the money for development.
5) Pressure from the Community
After the ICO termination, we daily received dozens (hundreds at the beginning) of e-mails that needed to be answered. A similar situation was on different communication channels. Some bounty hunters were particularly troublesome, who, in spite of their time, did not invest anything else. (On the other hand, some other bounty hunters did amazing work which is deeply appreciated). Instead of focusing on the development of the product and services of the project, we used energy, time and resources to deal with the community that was otherwise needed. In the end, the pressure was too high, and we knew, we must do something about it!
6) The proposition
Now we are here. We are looking at the funds, and the company has an amount of 72,1526 ETH left on the account. The people who stayed in, have contributed 108,99 ETH.
We only see one option here. We want to give you back proportionally to your contribution. That comes to 66.2% of your initial contribution.
We are doing this because 72 ETH is just not enough to build the product that we want. The founders also lost all of their private investments doing this project. We can use the funds until the end, and bankrupt the company ..... but if we go and use the funds that were left, your whole contribution is lost.
All of you who participated in Pre-ICO and/or Crowdfunding and choose the option Bonus will be refunded (66.2% of your initial contribution). Ethers will be refunded 48 hours after receiving this message and send to the address from which the initial contribution came. If someone wants to change the receiving ETH address, let us know by identifying him/her-self before the 48 hours expiration time.
7) The future
The core team members have put an enormous amount of energy and money into the project. Some of the core team members even left their jobs in September to work fully on the project. Therefore the only viable option is, as mentioned many times in the past, that we will re-group and re-brand the project. We will continue with the development of application and service, and try to raise needed funds by other means (VC funds, sponsors, etc.).
If you have an answer, suggestion or you just want to know some more details, please do not hesitate and write an e-mail to us. For the future correspondence, please always put your personal data and ETH address for your identity.
Least but not last, if you allow, we will let you know about our progress in the future.
LEGAL NOTICE
As one of the users participating in the NTRY Tokens crowdsale and/or acquiring NTRY Tokens, you were acquainted with the Terms and Conditions for users participating in the NTRY Tokens crowdsale and/or acquiring NTRY Tokens, made available on the NTRY Website.
Under the article 5, you were made aware of potential risks, including the risk of theft and hacking (sub-section 5.2., paragraph d.) and the risk of premature closing of the project (sub-section 5.2., paragraph n.).
Notary undertook all available measures to restitute any losses incurred due to the manifestation of the risks, and shall reimburse the users to the extent possible.
Notary and its affiliates and their respective officers, employees or agents shall not be liable to you or anyone else for any damages or losses of any kind, including, but not limited to, direct, consequential, incidental, special or indirect damages (including but not limited to loss of profits, trading losses or damages that result from use or loss), incurred due to your participation in the NTRY Token Crowdsale.
Best regards,
Notary Team
NTRY solutions Ltd.