I found this little gem today.....
(From
this article on "The CoinFront")
Note to altcoin devs: Stop reading now if you don’t care if your coin is still around a year from now.
Stop reading if your primary goal is to make as many Bitcoins as you can for yourself. Stop reading if you spend more time figuring out how to manipulate the market than you spend figuring out how to encourage real-world use of your coin. Stop reading if you have no idea if your wallet will break if you fork it – and you don’t really care.
For the rest of you, read on. You don’t want your coin to fail – and it doesn’t need to. But you need to pay attention.
Imagine this. You’re a software developer. You found an open-source version of a popular software product, a mobile application that lets a user take pictures and share them. So you modify the code slightly, test it with a few friends, upload it to an online store and make a few announcements in forums and chat rooms. You tweet about it and manage to get your venture listed as a penny stock. There’s a quick run-up in the price of your stock. And then it crashes.
Why did it crash?
Well, you never did market research to find out if anyone wanted a new photo app with your features. Your hacked-together code has numerous bugs. You have no business experience, and no idea how to get financial backing for your company. And most of all, you decided to create a program that’s no different than many other established programs, and you have no plan for growing it.
That fictitious scenario is a perfect depiction of the altcoin environment today. And that’s why most, if not all, altcoins will fail.
Altcoin Development Lacks Rigor
I’m a software developer and always curious about how other developers do things.
When a new coin is released with an intriguing new feature, I start digging in the code.
And what do I usually see? Quite frankly, a patched together mess. I find code cut and pasted from other coins – without anyone even taking the time to rename things – which suggests sloppiness, but often foretells bugs.
A few weeks ago I looked into how one coin was adjusting some coin parameters. I found a variable called xcoin_adjustment, but further in the code, the same variable was referred to as ycoin_adjustment (insert the name of two similar coins).
That particular parameter adjustment will never work. And I find issues like this in almost every codebase I investigate. Coins that modify how transactions are sent and recorded have code that seems to drop off into space. Is the transaction recorded in the blockchain correctly? Will this lead to issues down the road? Who knows?
Serious developers – developers that want supportable, modifiable and extensible code – are rigorous in their work. Companies that hire these developers insist on this rigor – after all, the products they are selling must be solid. Why do we accept less in the cryptocurrency world?
Altcoins Need to Focus on the Market – And that Market is not Crypto
When a new coin is launched, ask anyone in crypto about it and they will tell you what algorithm is used, how many coins there will be, whether it’s a proof-of-work coin, or proof-of-stake, or a hybrid.
They may talk about a cool new wallet feature, or a faucet or dice game, or their fancy website or some mobile app they are developing to fund future projects.
All this is great. And the general public cares nothing about any of it.
The public doesn’t care whether you have a keychain with your logo on it. They don’t care if your algorithm is eco-friendly, or if there are 15 million or 100 million coins. In fact, the public doesn’t even know about you, because you have done nothing to get their interest. Before you ever create your coin, you need to figure out how you will distinguish yourself to the world outside of crypto.
How does your coin differ from Bitcoin? Is it faster? Well, a lot of coins are, but that’s not enough. Can your coin be used in an online service to reduce paypal and credit card fees? That would interest the public. Can it be used – easily – for streamlined and inexpensive international money transfers? Huge.
As an investor I want to know your plans up front. I’m not putting my money into your coin unless you can tell me why it will have value. And I want to know you have the team to realize those plans, which leads to….
Altcoin Teams Need a Business Focus
I was recently asked to join a team developing a new coin (yes, another one). I spent some time talking to the team – a coin developer, an application developer and a Marketing/PR person. 75% of our discussion revolved around how the coin itself would be developed; the rest of the time we talked about how it would be publicized.
Missing from the discussion – and the information I was unable to determine – was any talk about how this “company” would be managed, who was able to meet with financial executives, who could work out partnerships with payment processors or who could represent the coin at conferences – in short, who was capable of providing business leadership for the coin.
I passed on this opportunity. If I am going to commit to a new venture, I want to know that I have a leader with vision and a leader that is capable of guiding our whole team forward.
If your coin doesn’t have this leadership, it will fail.
But It Doesn't Have To Be This Way!
Guys, we really need to get our act together. We are building products and asking people to invest their money in them. We need to make sure people can trust in those products today, and use them tomorrow.
Take the time to build your coin correctly. Test it. Document it. Test it again. Don’t rush your launch – get it right first.
If you have your coin already, step back and review your code. Don’t wait for the world to find out you screwed up. Admit your problems, then fix it, update it, fork it – whatever it takes to have a solid product.
Take the time to build a plan that takes your coin outside of crypto. Figure out how it can improve the world of cryptocurrency, how it can do something better than any other coin or how it can stretch boundaries and chart new territory.
We have some of the best minds working in crypto – use them!
And finally, realize that this isn’t a game. Make sure you have the right people on your team. Recognize the talents you have today and fill in those gaps. This is serious business; you need the right people involved.
Don’t skimp and then watch your coin die. Doing this right will take a lot of hard work. If you aren’t prepared to do that, then prepare to fail.
We do have a solid, well tested coin.
We do have the Devs to maintain it.
With a maximum of 90 billion coins, we have enough to make large-scale international trade a reasonable goal.
The only thing we lack is the marketing talent to take us to the next level - I'm sure it's out there, maybe even reading these words right now
There's no panic - chill back & enjoy your summers
Then, if you feel you have the time & talent to contribute to our advance, we'd like to hear from you. You know how.
*ZeitCom is an equal opportunity 'employer'*
So is that a non-announcement about an end of the summer announcement? 
