Hi, I have some questions.
Who controls the 100m BitSeeds that were originally for the foundation? If they are with you now how did you come to control them (and not the original thread)? If you do control them would you consider burning some? A premine of 100m for a coin with a current supply of 6m seems frankly insane.
What is distribution like? You said in the op in September that a fully functioning block explorer with a rich list would be coming shortly. Is it available now?
Sorry if the information is elsewhere and i missed it. Thanks.
Hi Orson, I'm happy to answer questions. Most of what you're asking is elsewhere in the thread but I can't blame you for not wanting to read through pages of posts since I've done that before with other coins.
The custodial funds are still owned by the foundation and the project is still being run by Gabe Aaronovitch, who started the project and forged the relationship with the Rainforest Foundation. The difference is that the original dev that was hired to do the tech work decided, for reasons I still don't understand, to attempt to destroy the project.
I was not a part of the project originally, but had offered to volunteer some of my time on the project before the dev went AWOL and tried to "burn the forest down" so to speak. Gabe and I ended up talking on the phone a bit as I tried to help out, and I ended up officially part of the project and now basically am the public face of it. I posted this new thread a while back because we don't have access to the account used to create the first thread anymore - I think the account was handled by the original dev but I'd have to double check that with Gabe.
The private keys for all project funds were retained by Gabe and we've moved the funds to new wallets to secure them from any potential sabotage from the first dev, and to stake some smaller ones in rotation to keep the network working as smoothly as possible until we get mining back with our new codebase.
The size of the custodial account was decided upon before the project originally launched in April 2014 in discussions with the RF and it is only used to stake and generate (staked) funding for the project and the RF, so burning part of those funds is not too likely as it would lower the planned funding for the Rainforest Foundation's mission.
We will be having an Iquidus explorer which will include a rich list starting with the relaunch with the new codebase. We had planned this for September but unfortunately this was based on the work we were expecting from a replacement dev we hired who... let's just say he didn't produce the promised results, so we fired him.
Since the tale end of last year, we are now working with Luke Williams, the guy who created the Iquidus explorer we were (and still are) planning to use. He's a developer with 10 years of experience and is one of the core devs for Jumbucks. We are waiting right now for him to finish up the prep work for the 2.0 relaunch which should be happening very soon.
You'll be able to check the distribution more completely then (I've been wanting to see a rich list myself for some time now) but in the mean time you can check the distribution tab on the XSEED market page on Bittrex to see everything being held on the exchange.
Let me know if you have any other questions and thanks for your interest.
It's a nice idea with the rainforest charity, but isn't the SHA256 mining itself bad for the environment?
Good question, but compared to what? To not mining, or to other POW algorithms?
If you compare SHA256 to other mining algos, it's one of the more efficient ones in widespread use, and has the most developed ASICs which means much lower power usage per hash than say Scrypt ASICs, and certainly lower than most or all GPU mining. Being the same algo as Bitcoin also means that hardware like the 21.co miners will be compatible and it will enjoy the largest base of future small, low-powered efficient mining hardware.
There's also the question of the power source for the mining device - if it's solar, for example, running the device adds no direct environmental cost.
Ultimately, a major part of the reason for the selection of SHA-256 is it's a requirement of our payment processor coin.co who will be giving merchants the ability to accept payments in BitSeeds while receiving a charitable tax deduction.
Hope that makes sense, and let me know if you have any other questions or feedback.