The reason I am sharing this with you, is my hope that this example of all that is wrong, will never repeat elsewhere. This community, this crypto world we operate and spend time in, is one I care about and work in, and benefit from, as such, I would hate for things to go south due to a backward attitude by some.
Po.et is a great concept, a really solid example of how to utilize blockchain technology to address a real world need : “a universal ledger designed to track ownership and attribution for the world's digital creative assets” . I went through the white paper with ease, found the whole thing very logical and understandable. Was love at first site really. As result, I promoted the project all over the place, and made people aware of the ICO and all its details, and created awareness with all I know.
Here are the facts and events regarding the ICO that took place and completed yesterday:
Prior to the ICO going live, people were directed to sign up, and were provided an invite code by a return email. The ICO’s launch was set to 8:08am EST (2pm Italy time). Po.et decided to utilize a system created by Zerion, previously used for the Waves ICO.
Within seconds after the ICO launched, the system failed and a huge bottleneck created, that caused:
The invite codes provided received an invalid response.
Those who managed to get through found a page without any options to buy tokens, unable to go ahead and click “purchase”.
Those who managed to create an order and click “purchase”, received an error regarding the invoice creation and no order would go through.
After about an hour or so and hundreds of people complaining on both their slack and telegram channels, the team decided to pause the ICO and rescheduled it to 8:08pm EST (2am Italy time!).
During this “pause” it was revealed after the team was asked by myself and many others, how many coins were actually available for the later relaunch. The cap was $10 million US, and already at that point, 68% was sold : 28% to ICOAGE white-list, 28% going to Token Capital white-list, and 12% gone using the official po.et portal run by Zerion. Which means, only 3.2 million USD was left to be purchased at the later hour.
////// POINT: : The 56% white list pre-assigned allocation, was not something that I knew about, or recall being mentioned before the ICO. I was active on the po.et slack for a few weeks, and would have remembered. I asked a few others who also spent time on this project, and they do not recall this being mentioned. ////// end
Official release by the team regarding events until this moment: https://blog.po.et/quick-update-on-the-po-et-token-sale-183242681c90
////// POINT: It is unclear to me why Zerion and po.et were not ready for the thousands of server requests, when they knew in advance EXCACTLY how many people would be attending the ICO, as only those who had invite codes were able to attend! With that prior information, they could have come up with a pretty good estimate on how many requests would take place. ////// end
A few hours prior to the re-launch, it was revealed in the telegram channel by a member of the po.et team, that an off the book sale took place for the amount of $200,000 (!!!) to one seller. When confronted with this information, the reasoning given was that they found it in the best interest of the project to enable this sale, as this individual promised them that they would be listed on an exchange in return.
Here is one of the responses given by the team : https://ibb.co/dzq2Uv
Waiting up till 2am was not easy, but as the team assured everyone time after time that the issues that happened were fixed and that everyone would be given an opportunity, I decided to wait for 2am.
////// POINT : As US Citizens were exempt from participating in the ICO, it is unclear why po.et decided to relaunch the ICO at an hour that an overwhelming majority of those attending the ICO were supposed to be sleeping! Most people ended up with 2 hours sleep or so before having to wake up for work today as a result of this ICO. The relaunch should have taken place the next day, today, at the same original hour 8:08am EST, which would have given po.et and Zerion enough time to really solve the issues. ////// end
At exactly 8:08pm EST (2am Italy time!) the ICO relaunched.
Within seconds after the ICO re-launched, the system failed and a huge bottleneck created, that caused:
The invite codes provided received an invalid response.
Those who managed to get through found a page without any options to buy tokens, unable to go ahead and click “purchase”.
Those who managed to create an order and click “purchase”, received an error regarding the invoice creation and no order would go through.
Yes, I just copied the text from the original launch time, why? AS THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN! I kid you not! 12 hours later, after numerous promises and announcement by team members of po.et the same thing happened again, and again, both slack and telegram channels filled with frustrated, angry and very disappointed potential investors who all ended up with NOTHING, myself included.
During this outcry, the team continued to release statements that they are doing all they can to solve things, and again, they paused the ICO, and came back with an updated version from Zerion, which again solved nothing.
While all this was going on, Elliot Feeny of the po.et team (role unknown), and Jeremy Kandah, one of po.et’s core team members, their “chief coin officer”, were busy spreading this unnecessary chatter instead of providing real support to hundreds of angry investors: http://imgur.com/a/fvNCk
To summarize things:
Technical events that took place could have been mostly prevented had the team and those they assigned prepared themselves. Sending out invite codes prior, is a great idea, that was utilized badly and ended up being the Achilles heel of the ICO. The teams (po.et and Zerion) were given a second chance 12 hours later, to completely fail again on the exact same points.
ICO re-launch set at an illogical time (2-4AM in the morning for most of those who participated).
White-lists assigned 56% of allocation prior to ICO, a fact that was not properly communicated to the community on slack or telegram.
An off the book deal of $200,000 (2% of all tokens!) to one person takes place during the ICO.
Zerion's system is clearly incapable to manage an ICO at this level.
The attitude from the team during this event was unprofessional, childish, disrespectful, rude and uncalled for. Many, including myself, ended up with no tokens, Many including myself, ended up with 1-2 hours sleep last night, and many, including myself wasted time and even money (money was allocated prior, which could have been used for daily trading!) on what ended up being the worst ICO ever, at least as far as I am concerned.
So, though po.et is as I said, a great concept, that in the right hands has huge potential to become a game-changer, is currently lead by team that in my opinion lacks real skills to push it through, and I base my conclusions on decisions made prior to his ICO and during this ICO, all of which have been detailed here.
In hope, that those reading this, and who have control on future ICO’s will learn from this catastrophe, and better respect their community, the same community that in the end of the day is the one promoting and investing in their projects.