As was pointed out before, there is an inconsistency between the funding and receiving side. Buyers are putting money in in order to buy the currency (ehrm I mean donate to foundation), while the receiving side of the money is a loosely connected company (the DLS) receiving an investment and its founders getting a cash reward. So, in fact, total misalignment.
There is a simple remedy I have not seen proposed anywhere yet.
Put a cap on the money, but not on the whole ICO. Cap the money the DLS and founders will get. The DLS should know quite well what investment they need to run the business and that should be the cap.
Any money raised above the cap would become backing assets of Tezos, like in a DAO, under control of the shareholders.
As a result:
1) DLS and founders will not be over-financed by some ridiculous amount of money, they will get some ideal amount of $.
2) The ICO money will go where it should go by the buyers intention - into the currency.
3) Being backed by solid assets, Tezos will start much stronger and will have a real value.
4) Tezos will have its own funds for development. It will not be solely dependant on a technically totally unrelated DLS.
5) Investors will be incomparably more confident to invest when good part of the invested money will stay stored in Tezos.
This structure of the ICO would benefit everybody over the current model. Except for the founders who are looking at their uncapped cash. But I believe they would, in the end, benefit too.
Thoughts?
Tezos team - if you don't like this option, can you please explain why?
The founders probably want to make more and more money so I assume this idea will be completely ignored, they might pretend that they never read it. 😂
But I hope they see it and decide to implement it, this seems like a great idea.