Dear community, we are humbled by the attention and support we have received from you so far. On our Slack, there are now around 1,400 members. We had people staying up until the early hours just to be among the first to sign up for the Streamr DATAcoin public pre-contribution period as soon as it opened on Thursday 14th September. We have never experienced anything like this before. Kudos.
Indeed, the public pre-contribution period was quickly subscribed in full. As you know, the public pre-contribution was hosted on a new platform by Bitcoin Suisse. Today we received the final data from Bitcoin Suisse, and the numbers show that the cap of 5 million Swiss francs (or equivalent) was registered in only 25 minutes!
Those who registered were placed in a queue, and the appropriate compliance checks were performed by Bitcoin Suisse in the order of registration. After acceptance, each contributor had 48 hours (excluding the weekend) to deposit their contribution with Bitcoin Suisse in order to maintain their position in the queue. The time period was there to allow participation in either crypto or fiat, and to avoid jamming the Ethereum network with a race to deposit funds.
The compliance and payment process went on for a few days, and the pre-contribution period was officially closed on Sunday September 17th at 13:17:10 UTC — as soon as 5 million CHF worth of deposits in various currencies had been received. The currency conversion rates were locked at this time.
Here’s some metrics about the process:
- 120 people made it all the way through into the public pre-contribution period.
- The average contribution was equivalent to 41,666 CHF.
- 85% of contributions were in ETH, 9 % in BTC and the rest in fiat.
- Around 1,700 people signed up on the BS platform, and 700 provided KYC materials.
- By the time the offering closed, around 250 people were through KYC successfully, 197 people had registered for the pre-contribution, and out of these 150 were approved for payment.
- 129 people sent funds, and of these 120 fit in the pre-contribution quota.
While we got frustrated feedback from the community about being held in queue and a pending state for quite a while, Bitcoin Suisse did an excellent job in managing the queues. The whole thing was over in a few working days, and only 9 people had to be refunded.
We got positive feedback for taking compliance and fund safety seriously, and for doing a good job supporting people on Slack. We got critique for the lack of visibility into the process inside Bitcoin Suisse, and for the shortage of support from their side. We will communicate all your feedback and feature suggestions to BS. Our pre-contribution was the very first project on their brand new platform, and with some further development, the platform has great potential to fill the needs of the community.
We also got criticised for the fact that ether price rallied on the day after the public pre-contribution period was closed. What happens to ETH price is, obviously, beyond our control. We hope that the positive development of ETH price is welcome news to everyone in the space.
For us, the main point of doing a pre-contribution period in the first place was to learn. We have taken this experience and your feedback to heart. We will now think hard about how to make the crowd contribution period even easier and more accessible, while still staying safe, compliant, and professional. Please stay tuned.
Here is a mini-FAQ for those who participated:
How do I know if my contribution made it in?
Bitcoin Suisse will contact you directly to let you know. This should happen very soon, if you haven’t heard from them already. (As always, please beware of scam emails).
My payment is still showing as unconfirmed in the BS platform. Should I worry?
No.
What exactly happens if i sent fiat or crypto, and didn’t make it in?
You will be refunded. BS will send you instructions.
What was the ETH/CHF conversion rate?
ETH/CHF rate was 238.44. It is calculated from the following two figures: ETH/EUR price on Kraken on Sep 17th at 13:17:10 UTC (208.00), and interbank CHF/EUR rate (0.872329) on Google.
Do those who registered but didn’t fit in get priority in the crowd contribution period?
We like the idea, but we need to make sure it is fair and feasible before we promise anything. There were 34 people pending in the register queue, plus the 9 people who contributed but didn’t fit in.
When will the crowd contribution period take place, and will it be through Bitcoin Suisse?
We will need a few weeks to think of the best way to do it, given the experiences from the pre-contribution period. Late September or early October is our target.
