Zen Protocol: Adam's take on team's mission, vision, ethics and answers to some recent FAQs (Telegram: 28/07/18)

Adam:
I may be a bit bad with communications. I am of the belief that now is not the time to campaign, now is the time for action. However, as a young and inexperienced leader, I will say that I have often underestimated the importance of the “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” - and I need to do a better job explaining myself.

There are multiple facets to my rationale of not caring about exchanges, spanning from the legal, technicals, and marketing aspects, yet it serves no one’s interest that I discuss those facets in this quorum.

However, since you asked “what’s the harm” I will provide my angle to the subject:

Since the project was started before the word ICO existed, things were different. The expectations were different, no one expected anything with regards to exchanges.

The team is composed of people with a certain moral fabric. I was not able to galvanize the team to make a quick buck, I galvanized them to make the world a better place.

Hard and expensive decisions were made along the way to maintain that moral fibre. Let me share a few examples which happened along the way:

  1. Disposing of anyone who had different intentions than doing the right thing. (EG someone who wanted to exit scam or steal).
  2. Waiting to advertise/test the waters until I felt comfortable that the team we built was capable of executing on all of the promises/ vision we made.
  3. In the December 2017 sale, people bought the exclusive right to use our closed source software (which was later open sourced in a refactored version - currently downloadable at our website).
    We waited until said software actually existed prior to selling it.
  4. We did not partake in any ‘sleazy’ sale tactics such as fake faces on the website, taking advantage and/or creation of FOMO, and to the best of our ability verifying that everyone knew what they were getting into.
  5. Everything in the process was “oragnic”/natural. There were no underwriters, “community building services”, or other more egregious practices.
  6. If for any reason the sale/Genesis did not occur the founders/company would have paid for all of the expenses incurred out of pocket, and the purchasers would receive a 100% money back.

Most of the events mentioned above where events which occured prior to the sale, in the past 6 months post-sale have seen decent progress (but it can always be better).

Despite the difficulties, we have gotten to where we are, and we did it the right way. I hear we are outperforming teams with 10X money and people.

However:
I get the feeling as if it is expected of me to partake in short-term tricks to raise the price.
To that I (and I believe I speak on behalf of the entire team) I simply say "No thank you, we want to focus on creating real economic value, not the whims of the market.

Satisfying to the “when exchange” mentality would not only be adverse to the team morale as well as my own, but it would place us in an adverse situtaion, deciding between the interests of the people with a short term horizon vs a long term horizon.

If exchanges come to us, that is fine, but in the limited resources we have, we need to dedicate them to ensure the highest probability of long term success.

I hope you can understand.
Time bears fruit, lets work as a communituy together to make this a great project. Not great in the fact it surpasses Ethereum (and it may) but great in the fact that it provides real economic utility to the world, which previously did not exist.

We are hiring 1 marketing/BizDev guy.
A developer
community manager around the world in the major places.
Someone with experience managing a bounty program (for developers) and experience with managing a treasury (a la Dash).

Please PM Adam.