Topic: Sia - Siafund Redemption Deadline: June 1st, 2015 - page 6. (Read 68779 times)

This is a wise decision, I think. Based on the price and demand relation, it may bring more revenue to Siafund than a higher price. On top of that, as a company, you always can build your own infrasture to mine Siacoins to make more revenue since you pay low fees.

Looking forward to the beta.

I should not have suggested this change, and I especially should not have put this change into the whitepaper without discussion first. James is worried that he was not contacted, however the truth is that everyone should have been contacted before such a proposal made it into a document as important as the whitepaper.

We value the initial money you gave us during the crowd sale. As our initial funders, you are the reason we were able to work on Sia full time. You took a big risk on us, giving us cryptoassets (a mix of Nxt and Bitcoin) valuing approximately $100,000 at the end of the fund. We were later able to use this to leverage a large VC seed round, and secure a long runway for the first stage of building Sia. You deserve better.

I've changed the whitepaper to reflect the original agreement, 10,000 sianotes total at 0.00039% each. I do not believe that I will be changing either of these numbers again.

If you are looking to sell large volume of sianotes, I am willing to consider putting up a buy wall on the exchange. The price chosen would be maintained for 2 weeks, giving everyone who wants to bail an equal shot at getting out. There would be no limit on the number of sianotes that could be sold. We've already got a buy order for 43 sianotes at 2000 each, I can increase this to whatever is necessary. This also gives other people a chance to beat my buy wall (pricing at 2001 for example) if they have confidence in the sianote.

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We're making good progress on the closed beta software. Closed beta in the next week or two seems fully reasonable. Open beta by the end of the year also seems reasonable. When we switch to open beta, we will open-source our codebase.

Thanks to everyone. I owe all of you guys for getting this far.

Thats how i am seeing it, and was always going to rear its ugly head at some stage, i guess.

Interests have decidedly diverged, me thinks.

Typically the early investors are rewarded, that is, if you want to continue to get investor support. I remember originally you raised the price right during the fund raising process, without any real warning. Now this dilution. I see a pattern here.

Also it is disingenuous to say that dropping from 10% would hurt the sianote holders in the case where it was raised in the first place. I would not mind a floating rate, with a floor of 3.9%, but with a reasonable cap. A big part of my assessment was the market penetration that 3.9% would achieve (versus 10%+) and the sianotes representing a percentage of the revenues (not profits). For you to not understand how DRAMATICALLY going from 3.9% to 10% AND issuing 15,000 more sianotes affects current sianote holders, it is quite disturbing. Let me summarize my assessment: "The overall revenues will drop dramatically due to the higher fees, but the percentage of the much smaller revenues will be the same". Now tell me how that is even remotely fair to sianote holders, the ones that financed the earliest days and should be rewarded, not squeezed.

So, maybe the VC investor is pressuring you to squeeze the sianote holders? Things are now setup where the interests of the sianote holders are not aligned with this company. So we always have to be on the lookout for terms changing on a moments notice?

I believe I have the largest independent stake and I was not contacted about any of this ahead of time. I will be looking to divest as I do not have time to be making sure that the terms arent changing (again).

James

You were never promised a portion of NebulousLabs revenue, only of Sia host revenue. You were promised a portion of host income from storage, to the tune of 0.00039%, which is a number that hasn't been adjusted and will never be adjusted. This number has not been diluted. The creation of more sianotes can only happen in the event that we raise the overall fee. Additionally, any changes to the fee directly change the number of sianotes in circulation. If we decide to switch to a 2% fee, the number of sianotes in circulation would be reduced from 10k to just over 5k, of which the initial investors would still hold ~1200.


If we were to increase the sianote volume by another 50,000 (to say, 75,000 total), the total fee would be to the tune of 29.25%, which leaves only 71.75% remaining for hosts. If 10% was a scary fee, ~30% would almost certainly discourage people from being hosts on our system. At those margins, why not just fork Sia and use a network with 0 fees? Even at 10% this is a risk (though we do feel currently that our software will be sufficiently optimized, and that the network effect will amount to a greater than 10% boost). (Even at 3.9% this is a risk).


Yes, this is true, except that it creates huge problems if we decide (as msin is suggesting) that a 10% fee is too high. If we state that we've settled at a 10% fee, the income from each sianote becomes 0.001%, which dramatically changes how one would price the sianote. If we suddenly then decide that a 10% fee is too high and will negatively affect our ability to get hosts, and that we need to drop it back to 5%, what happens? Do we bring the sianote back down to 0.0005%, which dramatically lowers the expected value (still higher than the initial, but only half of what the expected return was through the recent round of trading)? Or do we leave the sianote at 0.001% and take the full 5% hit ourselves, reducing us from 90% of total fees to 80% of total fees? That's equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot.


An important thing to realize here is that we are not raising money. Increasing the total number of fees does not impact our revenue until we actually do have a product. We have absolutely no intention of selling more sianotes in the near future, almost certainly not until well after the 1.0 has been released.


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The value of the sianote is not derived from scarcity, it's not a currency. NebulousLabs will own the vast majority of sianotes at launch, and has no plans to distribute them. We initially sold portions of our sianotes to raise money so that we could work on Sia full time. The value of the sianote is derived from the revenue it brings in when someone uses the Sia network.  When we talk about changing the total number of sianotes, we're talking exclusively about raising the fee that we can take, without changing the fee that the crowd funders can take.

I realize this seems unfair, and can seem like we are just printing money for ourselves. We are increasing our own expected revenue without changing the crowd funders expected revenue. But realize that the crowd funders are also not the people paying for the increase in fees. The people who will be paying for the increased fees will be the people using our network to host and rent storage. This comes at a direct cost to them, but we believe that with increased revenue, we'll be able to hire more developers and maintain a better software stack. There are very hard problems that accompany a system like Sia, and having more people to work on them means a better overall system, which benefits everyone. We believe that we can grow faster if we have more people working for us full time, and I emphasize that faster growth is good for everyone, (us, the crowd funders, and the people using Sia!)

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It has become clear to me that people have been pricing the sianote differently. I have to go now (it's thanksgiving weekend), so I'll write about pricing later today. Some people look at the 0.00039% at the primary indicator of the expected future value of the sianote, and others have looked at the fact that it's 1 out of only 10,000 in circulation as the primary indicator of the future value of the sianote, and feel that increasing the number of sianotes directly dilutes the value of the sianote. I will explore these concepts in greater detail at some point in the near future, and then after that we can continue discussion a potential raise in fees.

I will also say that nothing has been set in stone right now. I will hold fast to the 0.00039% per sianote under all circumstances, as I feel that this is the more important number. Given all of the pressure I'm receiving, I may also have to keep the 10,000 total sianotes number, which I feel is not in the best total interest of the company and it's crowd funders, but I do not want to cheat anybody. I do not believe that raising the total fee is cheating anybody, but clearly there is disagreement. Without a much greater level of support demonstrated from you guys, I will not feel comfortable raising the number of sianotes. Otherwise I will leave everything at the originally agreed upon 0.00039% per sianote, and 10,000 total sianotes.

Agree with recent comments...it is a very bad idea for Sia to create the additional assets and dilute early investors' position. Justification is weak and long term effects to investors will be a killer imo...(of course from your point of view, short term would be great for Sia team...and this comes across only as greed).

Please produce a product before even considering raising more money.

My understanding was that there were 10,000 sianotes and each represented 0.01% of revenues. Only 15% of these were put on the market. Now, it turns out there are 25,000 sianotes?

This means that each sianote is actually 0.004% of revenues, which means a 60% dilution. This is quite distressing and I do not feel is right at all. If you want to go to 10% fees, then the sianotes should be getting a higher percentage to maintain the proportion. Since such a small percentage is floating, Sia would still get 9% of revenues versus 9.5% of revenues.

This is totally against the sianote purchasers and breaks trust.

James

P.S. If this precedent is allowed, what is to prevent another 50,000 sianotes from just being created?

As stated in Taeks post : It's not the 1/10000 that counts or adds value, it's the 0.00039%.

That's the number you should be interested in and that number is not changing. That is what you bough and what you have guaranteed.

Hey put the fees to a price you feel that is best for the project. I will agree with it.
BUT there are 10000 shares, you just cannot print 15000 more. Are you the FED or what?
Honestly don´t do that, it looks like a huge scam. Do you really want to ruin your reputation now.
I have never said a bad word about Sia, not even when you told us that the original project can´t be realised.
But you sold us 15% of 10000 shares. That´s what it is, not changeable at all.
Your behavior is not acceptable.

Yes we are, we feel that the price was at a point that was unjustifiably low. By no means are we encouraging anyone to sell their coins.

We didn't put up a buy wall at the moment of the crash because we didn't want to see a crazy panic sell, and also because it was news that I had presented that caused the crash, felt dishonest. But then the price sat at a very low level for over a month and we felt that it was worth buying back some of our notes and driving the price back up. We feel that we've got enough cash to get through at least the beta, and we've only managed to buy 17 notes at our asking price of 2000. We were never planning on buying more than around 60, because that's all the money we're willing to spend propping the price up.

But it seems to be all the money that's needed. We are feeling optimistic and you guys should be feeling optimistic too.

In hindsight, I should have been more transparent about putting the buy wall in place. If I had said 1 week in advance that I was throwing up a buy wall (up to ~60 notes) at 2000 nxt each, you guys probably would have pushed the price above that all by yourselves.



The sianote directly derives its value from the volume of money being spent on storage through the Sia network, because the fees provide a payout in siacoins to the holders of the sianote. If we decided to make the fee 0%, but still keep 10,000 sianotes and give out the ~1200 that we sold in the crowd sale, that would be insulting to everyone. It's not the 1/10000 that counts or adds value, it's the 0.00039%.

Plus, as msin is suggesting, 10% might be too high, and we may need to lower the price back down to 5%, 3.9%, or even something lower like 2%. All of these price changes should not affect the crowdfund holders, because I've always stated that they will be getting 0.00039% per sianote, and that's the number that's most important when trying to put a financial price on a sianote.

I don´t agree at all.

You sold only 15% of all Sianotes.
During the IPO you increased the price cause it was selling out fast.
And now, you just increase the amout by 150% without compensating the stakeholders.
But you are buying back shares for 2000 at NXT ae, way below IPO price.

Are you kiding me? Looks for me just as pure greed.


We bought 1/10000 per share not 1/25000. Your 0,00039% is just Math and not the agreement. The aggreement is 10000 shares in total.
Are you really want to play us that bad?

One Sianote could be interpreted by people as either 0.00039% of the value of this project or 0.01% of the sianotes and there might be some relationship between these two opinions originally. Anyway, I should trust the devs and devs know better than everyone else regarding what are the best things to do for this project. All I am hoping is that all the decision will be made based on the best interests of this project and the spirit of honoring the social contracts. The bottom line is that the investors can gain only when the project successes.

I'm not sure where I stand on this but lets not make quick opinions on this. It has been explained David feels Nebulous will likely need more income to make Sia successful. I guess I default on letting the guys who started this whole thing run the whole thing. But I do agree that in order to gain adoption the fee needs to be as low as it can be. Its sort of a catch 22. Sia needs low fees to attract wary new decentralized cloud storage customers. But too low a fee might not provide enough income to hire more people. Of course nobody here is for reducing sianote investors' slice so it is a tricky problem.

My advice fwiw to Taek is listen to what we have to say but don't change the numbers to something just to please us. Compromise as much as you can confidently. Sia succeeding big time is all that matters.

+1 the original number needs to be maintained. Neither increased or decreased.

Noted. The beta should give us a much better idea of what a reasonable value is. 10% is not a value that has been set in stone.

I think raising the fee to that amount is a mistake, it's too high.  I would say 5% max. 

I respect your decision to stick to this, however you have to acknowledge that the plan and prospect of the service has changes drastically since this percentage been set. The increase of the fee to 10% reflects this.
How about instead of increasing the percentage of the individual sianotes value, you give additional sianotes to holders? For every sianote you transfer an additional of 0.2-1 sianotes for the holders?

Sounds good to me. I think it is fine to stick to that original number becasue the investors still have the same value for their investment. I believe you guys will make sure that the project will be competitive.

It more than doubles our income while still having only a 10% overhead for users. Typical could storage overhead is closer to 40%, and that's the number I've been told many times that I should be charging, which seems completely absurd to me. Most people don't believe that we'll have enough money for development, let alone marketing. Typical cloud storage operations apparently are very expensive and have many more costs than just the hardware. We'll have to see how that works for Sia, but 10% seems like it'll bring in enough cash to me.

In terms of scaring away users, I'm pretty confident that our host-picking algorithms and erasure coding will put us substantially more than 10% cheaper than everyone else, including decentralized competitors like Storj, MaidSAFE, and Filecoin. You may be paying a 10% fee to use the network, but even with the fee it's going to be the most attractive option for both hosts and clients. (clients will need less redundancy, which means they are paying hosts more per raw TB, but less overall, and getting the same or even a greater level of security). We are planning on leaving ourselves room to reduce this number if it prevents us from being competitive in the marketplace.



We are trying to maximize the value of each siafund. We believe that by making the fee 10%, we'll be able to hire more developers in a way that gives us a stronger edge than we would have from increased users due to a reduced fee. If Nebulous has twice the money, we can hire twice the developers and end up with a much stronger product. We believe that this stronger product will be the dominant factor in the number of users that we have, and that the 10% fee will be negligible, especially when compared against a 50% savings over the competition.

Meaning, we believe that by giving ourselves more income, we believe we'll also be able to boost the value of each of your siafunds (by being able to grow faster and have a stronger product) even though the percent of the fee you are receiving is the same. The percent is the same, but we think that the total volume of usage will be higher.

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Most importantly though, I feel very obligated to stick to the 0.00039% value that I've repeated many times. I've encouraged everyone to make decisions around that number and not any other number. Changing that number means we're altering what we told people to expect when they were making their investment decisions. People who chose not to buy may have decided to buy in the event that each sianote would actually be worth more than 0.00039%.  Furthermore, if we create a precedent for changing this value, you lose the security of knowing that it won't decrease. If we decide later that a 10% fee is actually bad (because Storj, for example, ends up being 10% cheaper) and we need to reduce it, do we also drop how much a sianote is worth? How will that affect people who have been investing in the sianote?

I realize that changing the total fee is a big move, but I am trying to do the right thing. If it ends up being a major source of contention, and you guys feel universally that you are being cheated because we raised our fee without including you, all that will happen is we reduce the fee back to the original 3.9%. I feel that this would hurt Sia overall because it affects the number of people that we can hire, that affects the quality of the product. But I would much rather set the total fee at 3.9% than set a precedent of adjusting the income provided by the sianote, even if the first adjustment was upwards. I don't  think that I would ever feel comfortable adjusting the number down from a previous amount (if I did decide to set it at 0.001%, I would never lower it), and that would back us into a corner if we suddenly realized that the fee was too high, because either we have to fully take the hit ourselves (to isolate our crowdfunders) or we have to lower the value of the sianote back down from 0.001%, which would violate expectations that we had set.

I'm willing to work with you guys on this, but I'm very nervous about straying from the 0.00039% value that I've repeated so many times. I don't think it would be right to adjust those expectations.