The reason I mentioned investors “giving you a lot of money” was not to offend…
No offence taken. As I wrote I am thankful for you making your suspicions public. It takes effort and courage.
as a nonprofit you could just ask for donations
In the long run, Validbook Foundation will require thousands of people in its staff. It is not sustainable to support such big operations via donations.
there are many common ways for the founders to take part in the financial success of the ICOs
I am very transparent about my (as founder of Validbook) incentives to build Validbook. For myself, I feel it as mostly intrinsic - “create something great”, but it is also extrinsic - great monetary incentive. I hope I will find investors that are motivated by the same combination/proportion of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives.
It’s impossible for me to address your Validbook ICO in humane tech terms without criticising it. I’m trying to restrain myself and to be polite.
Please, do criticise as direct/blunt as you can (as I wrote I have a thick skin). If you are able to debunk Validbook idea, it will not only serve common good purpose by saving money of potential investors, but it will be help me directly, as I will not continue spend time and my resources on futile idea.
But where would that money come from?
The algorithm/math of creating and distributing Kudos in a nutshell is following:
- Kudos daily supply is 1 token per 1 living human (7.5B KDS/day in 2018; 11.3B KDS/day in 2118). See more about world human population estimation and Kudos distribution and price estimation here.
- Distribute all Kudos, between Self-Sovereign Identities (SSIs) that proved to uniquely represent human individual only. For example, if at a given day in 2018 only 1000 identities proved that they uniquely represent humans, these identities receive at that day ~7.5 million KDS each.
- Use part of the Kudos (10% from total KDS production ~37 Trillion KDS) to support development and maintenance of Validbook - the set of core global human-centric cooperation services, for example human-centric Social Networking Service.
Your argument that your own currency has value because it is limited in supply doesn’t seem to add up to me. Firstly anyone can create their own currency and limit its supply, and this is true of all cryptocurrencies. Ah but you say your currency is linked to the number of people on the Earth. Well than anybody could at any time create their own new currencies linked to the number of people on Earth.
Kudos, will be valued not only because their supply is limited, but also because of its network effect. This is true for any currency, either cryptocurrency or fiat. Anyone can fork Bitcoin, but this fork will not be valued as it will not have network effect (Bitcoin already exist). Hypothetically, anyone can proclaim a new country - “A New United States” and issue its currency “A New Dollar of US”, but it will not have the network effect (USA already exist and besides this USA goverment might have issue with you proclaiming The New USA).
Now the question is - why Validbook and Kudos will have network effect? Who will believe in Kudos at the very beginning or in other words - “how to solve chicken-egg problem?”. The answer to this is the way we distribute Kudos. The distribution is done only among those identities that proved to uniquely represent human individual only. Such distribution creates a great incentive for early adopters to join the Kudos distribution, as well as it creates the continuous incentive to participate in Kudos distribution and to support Validbook idea, and the health of Validbook community.
Well than anybody could at any time create their own new currencies linked to the number of people on Earth.
Yes, they can and they will probably do, but it will not have the network effect as Validbook will already exist.
Your Validbook idea seems very very complex which makes it very difficult to address.
It looks complex only at the first glance, but in essence it is very simple >>create money based on Self-Sovereign Identity >> distribute that money in a such way that makes them valuable >> take part of that money to develop human-centric cooperation services >> support human rights and optimize levels of cooperation in human society by making cooperation more transparent and reliable.
… you have to overcome a tremendous amount of doubt related to your use of ICOs for a nonprofit.
Yes, that’s why I ask you to challenge it as much as possible, in the hope that this will help me to alleviate these doubts, or equally important in the hope to refute Validbook idea to not spend more time and resources on it.
Also you’re proposing building a social network yet that seems unrelated.
The mission of Validbook is to improve cooperation and support human rights. To do this Validbook aims to create a set of core cooperation services, that are better than current services provided by the market or governments.
This set of core cooperation services includes: Identity Service (a service to create and manage Self-Sovereign* Identity), Statements Service (a service to create and sign digital documents - in a sense make possible self-sovereign ownership), Wallet Service (a service to have self-sovereign ownership over money), Communication Services (End-to-End encrypted communication services like - chat, email and social networking service.), Kudos (Money is a cooperation tool. Kudos, in themselves are beneficial – they can be used as global Internet money distributed in a fairer way than other cryptocurrency, support the cohesion of a global community of Self-Sovereign Identities of Humans by providing incentive to participate in this community and take care of its health).
Social Networking Service can be arguably viewed as the main tool of cooperation in the modern world (to very big extent that’s how the world knows, discovers us). Current mainstream, Social Networking Services built on Attention Based Business Model create many negative psychological, cognitive and community related issues. I think it is possible to create “better” social network. See more about issues and possible fixes, here. It is logical to include social networking service into the set of core cooperation services and focus on improving it.
*Self-Sovereign means - ultimately free. For example, Self-Sovereign Identity means that noone can delete it or sign documents under identity’s name except identity itself (the person who is represented by the identity) or its gurdians.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t build it…
Then please help me built it. As strange as it may sound, the most valuable help right now, is to critise this idea as hard as you can. Please, show me the reason why it cannot or should not be built.