Hello everyone! I would like to start by saying that I am currently in touch with the IOST team and will be receiving funds within the next few days to cover the payments that have been missed over the past 4 weeks (in addition to this final round). On behalf of the IOST team, I would like to sincerely apologize for this delay. While I am sure many of you blame IOST for this, that blame is entirely mine, as I will explain below.
Before getting into that, I understand that many of you may have left the campaign for other opportunities during this time period. I would like to assure these people, as well as those still in the campaign, that they will receive full payment for the weeks they have been active. Additionally, the IOST team will be adding a 5% bonus to all payments as additional compensation for this delay.
With that out of the way, I would like to personally apologize for my lack of communication during this time period. I am sure you are all probably wondering where I have been. Am I dead, or, even worse, am I scammer? Fortunately, I am neither, however, I don’t blame you if you wish I was the former at this point. You deserved better, and I am sorry for failing you as your campaign manager.
As Cinazhang mentioned, the reason for my absence is that I have been in China for the past few weeks. This is a country I have never visited before, and although I was aware of the fact that internet access would be restricted, I improperly prepared myself for how severe these restrictions would be. I only bought one VPN before coming, and it has not worked since I got here. While I knew Telegram and Google would be blocked, I honestly did not expect Bitcointalk to be blocked as well. This was extremely naive of me, considering the government’s attitude towards crypto.
Under this assumption, I did not inform anyone at IOST I was traveling to China before I did so. This was another stupid decision on my part. As mentioned before, Telegram is also blocked in China. Telegram has also been my primary means of communication with the IOST team throughout these past few months. In light of this, it wasn’t until a few days ago that they actually knew why I was out of contact, and it wasn’t until today that I was able to find a website that was not blocked through which to download a working VPN.
I say this because I would like to distinguish between myself and the IOST team. The reason I agreed to help out with this project is because I personally knew someone working with IOST. I had no relation with IOST prior to this campaign, and I am unlikely to afterwards. I offered to work on this because it is a project I think deserves more attention, and because I have been involved in this community for 5 years now. No doubt my reputation has probably been ruined after this, however, it saddens me to think that my failure should extend towards IOST. All I ask is that you direct your (deserved) negativity towards me and not towards this project.
Finally, I would like to say that I can not in good faith receive full payment for my mistakes over the past few weeks. While the IOST team has graciously offered as much, I will also be adding another 5% bonus to these payments from my own payment as a token of my apology, meaning all payments will be 10% above the amount stated in the original post. I know this can’t make things right, but I hope it goes a bit to express how sorry I am for the way I have handled things.
-Mad Z
We are with you and IOST team til the end. We believe in you and this project MadZ that's why we stayed. Glad to have you back!