The Dev won't look dodgy because the money will be used for the benefit of the coin. It won't benefit those who just want free coins of course. But a larger adoption through marketing (and we have seen what a simple reddit advertisement can do) will be good for the existing coin holders.
so basically you want to turn Byteball to ICO?2% donation should be enough for marketing the coin if you want an ICO then that something different Tonych was clear in the white paper he want to distribute Byteball to as many people as possible and that's why he hold the airdrop to give time for cashback program and other distributions method not to give time for an ICOUmm no. You cannot deny that many people got airdrops just for "free money" without caring at all about the platform. Selling bytes on the open market to get money for marketing has the *same* distribution benefit as Whale #35 dumping it. However in the former case the money is used for a benefit to the ecosystem and further gains users who buy bytes and use the platform, but in the later some random person just got private spending money. And there is no moral high ground of the latter. If everyone keeps Byteball quiet, the holdings of bytes will become more concentrated. Which is the opposite of the stated goal of wide distribution.
While directly distributing bytes to many was a great bootstrap, it is not a panacea... how is auroracoin doing lately? Someone will be much more interested in a platform if they decide to buy into it with a financial stake and learn about it, than if they just get "free money".
