The Snips AIR Token Sale
This is part 6 of our token sale announcement series. To learn more, join our Telegram group!
Catch up on all our posts about the Snips AIR Token Sale: https://medium.com/snips-ai/token-sale/home
Our token sale is designed to be as fair and inclusive as possible, which means:
enabling as many people as possible to participate, even if they don’t currently hold cryptocurrencies
making the purchasing process as seamless as possible, even for non tech-savvy buyers
prioritizing those that want to help build Snips, such as our developer community, evangelists and future users
protecting against “pump and dump” schemes that would be detrimental to the economy that we are creating long term
You should only consider participating in our token sale if you believe in Privacy as much as we do and are not afraid of holding onto your tokens during the time we are building the very product you are backing!
Token distribution
The Snips AIR token is the native token of the AIR network. The total initial supply is 10,000,000,000 tokens, not including future inflation. This large supply was designed to lower the cognitive load for consumers during everyday usage, as fractional prices tend to be harder to grasp.
The AIR tokens is used to govern and interact with the Snips AIR network and Snips AIR consumer products. As such, it is classified as a utility token, and does not give any rights as to Snips SAS (the company producing the tokens) or any of its subsidiaries.
The AIR tokens, whether purchased through the token sale, earned via our bounty programs, or acquired through any other means has multiple utilities:
governance of the network (voting for block producers, software updates, ..)
app store (purchasing apps, curation, app publication, reviewing, …)
machine learning (processing data, training models, contributing data, ..)
data generation (producing data, purchasing data, …)
Like any product feature, the tokenomics presented in the various documentations will be iterated on over time, and are not designed to guarantee any kind of return. They were built to maximize the product value over time and ensure active participation from the self-governed Snips AIR community.
The initial AIR tokens will be distributed as follows, with each pool having different release schedules.
Token Sale
Snips is selling 48% of the AIR token supply in its initial token sale. Tokens can be purchased using Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethers (ETH), EOS (EOS) or Euros (EUR). Other cryptocurrencies might be accepted later during the process.
Token Price and Vesting
Tokens will be sold through multiple sales until the AIR MainNet is launched. The first sale is for 10% of the token supply (1B AIR tokens), at a price of €0.026, with a 100% bonus. The bonus tokens are released monthly over 10 months.
Soft cap / Hard cap
The minimum amount of AIR tokens that needs to be distributed from the token sale pool to reach the soft cap is 1B tokens (€13M).
Funds from tokens purchased in Euros are kept in escrow until the soft cap is reached, using a specific french escrow account called CARPA. However if the soft cap is not reached by February 1st 2019, the funds will be returned.
If the soft cap is reached, the token sale will continue until the AIR MainNet is launched, with whatever tokens not being sold transferred to the onboarding pool. This ensures maximal distribution of the token supply, which is a very important factor in the success of a decentralized consumer product.
Token Distribution
Although the AIR network is an application-specific blockchain and thus will have a native token, we will be using intermediary tokens to launch features ahead of the MainNet. This is an important part of building a successful consumer product, as it enables us to offer immediate token utility, while prototyping and improving the product and tokenomics ahead of our consumer device launch.
The AIR token is already in production today as an off-chain token in our developer app store. Developers who published an app are earning tokens from the bounty pool, each time someone downloads their app (see further down). Furthermore, they can also spend their tokens by tipping other developers for their apps, creating a dynamic ecosystem.
The ERC20 token distribution will debut at the earliest in October 2018, and at the latest when the soft cap is reached, if this happens after October and before the softcap deadline. Once this happens, the off-chain tokens used today will be swapped for this ERC20 one, and included as part of the smart contract. The smart contract used to distribute the tokens will be made public ahead of time and will be audited to ensure maximal robustness.
Finally, once our MainNet is launched, we will swap the ERC20 token for the native one, with a 1:1 correspondence.
Purchasing AIR Tokens
AIR tokens are available for purchase exclusively through our official website token.snips.ai. Please beware of scams and always verify the address and SSL certificate when making a purchase to avoid losing your funds.
On the token sale page, a button “Request Tokens” is displayed in the first section. The process requires the completion of 3 steps, which is initially done manually over email, but will eventually be automated via our website:
Requesting a token allocation by entering your details, choosing an amount and a currency to purchase tokens in.
Completing the KYC/AML process via our partner company. This only takes a few minutes.
Making the payment following the instructions for your choice of currency.
Once you have successfully completed these steps, a Snips team member will review your purchase request and validate it, or request additional information if needed.
The token sale is open to anyone anywhere, with the exception of China. We reserve the right to restrict other geographies as regulations evolve however, in which case funds will be returned in full.
The token sale proceeds will be used to build and launch our new consumer product, Snips AIR, as well as grow our enterprise business. Our thesis is that the more active and successful our consumer ecosystem, the more enterprise licenses we can sell, and thus, the more revenue we can generate. And since the more devices integrate Snips, the more Snips AIR becomes valuable, there is a virtuous cycle between our consumer and enterprise offerings.
The amount of tokens sold through the token sale will determine how quickly and aggressively we can take on centralized assistants. Over the next 24 months, we plan to aggressively ramp up our marketing, product and sales operation to make our technology available globally. Our planned cost and team structure would look as follows at scale:
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