6 ms·

MaidSafe: A Wildly Successful Cryptocoin Debacle

24 points by mdelias 12y ago

dmix 12y ago
This article makes a lot of assumptions you've been following some MaidSafe drama online. But searching HN show that MaidSafe has rarely been mentioned here. Maybe someone could summarize?
- cryptolect 12y ago
  Apparently they made the SafeCoin IPO (safecoin being the altcoin/blockchain that powers MaidSafe) available to purchase with both MasterCoin and Bitcoin. Based on exchange rates at the time, it was possible to get more SafeCoins if you purchased with MasterCoin, than if you used Bitcoin (since MasterCoin was so cheap). Some people thought they could take advantage of the situation, and bought up MasterCoin to purchase SafeCoin. However it sounded like the IPO purchase cap for MasterCoin purchases was filled quickly, meaning a lot of people were left holding near-worthless MasterCoin. Thus began the cries of "Mastercoin pump and dump", which the IPO had (inadvertently?) caused.
  - thisiswrong 12y ago
    Correct. More info on this here: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/maidsafe-embroiled-safecoin-presale-mastercoin-pump-dump/2014/04/22 http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/maidsafe-embroiled-safec... From an outsider's perspective the 'IPO' did indeed look like a planned pump on Mastercoin: People were buying up Mastercoin to take advantage of the btc-msc arbitrage. This drove the Mastercoin price up by ~100%. Meanwhile certain people could potentially have offloaded tonnes of msc purposely bought the week before (for half the price). This may not have been intentional. But either way some people lost big money when Maidsafe stopped accepting msc for their 'IPO' - thus causing the msc price to collapse.
  - resu_nimda 12y ago
    The cryptocoin situation is an endless source of hilarity. It's so crazy. Just this wild west of speculation, massive fortunes rising and plummeting, millionaires minted overnight, all the shady characters, etc. What efforts are in progress to catalog and package these stories for posterity?
cryptolect 12y ago
MaidSafe sounds intriguing, but the one thing that gives me pause is their licensing page (http://maidsafe.net/developers-licensing http://maidsafe.net/developers-licensing), which says that any non-GPL MaidSafe codebases requires 1% revenue fee. I still dont know if that means I can or can't create my own MaidSafe application from MaidSafe compatible libraries that I've written myself, without having to pay them. I also don't know if they have some sort of central enforcement mechanism to prevent such an Application from working on the MaidSafe network. I can only hope they start releasing example code and applications soon to clear up the confusion.
- Marcelus 12y ago
  They've ditched the 1% bit.
  - GigabyteCoin 12y ago
    It's still showing up on the URL that OP linked to.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Good to see that after 8 years of working on such a distributed network, it's finally paid off for them - at least in terms of reaching this level of funding, we don't know yet how successful the network itself will be in the long term. The 3 such networks that excite me right now are Ethereum, MaidSafe and OpenLibernet, and I guess there's also BitCloud, but the last two are still mainly in whitepaper phase I believe. I don't mind that there's some overlap between them for now. Each is taking a bit of a different approach, and some things might work better on one than the other, and I'm excited to see what comes out of all of these in a few years.
- bascule 12y ago
  See also: http://cryptosphere.org/ http://cryptosphere.org/
battani 12y ago
There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the MaidSafe IPO. Exercise due diligence before sending coins over to them. More info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=579797.320 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=579797.320
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
thisiswrong 12y ago
I think one of the most overlooked aspects of Maidsafe's 'decentralized internet project' is: "(...)application developers are called Builders and the network will reward use of these applications by paying the Builders in safecoin based on the application use by users of the system. This is possible since the application developer can insert their own network immutable wallet address in their application." [1] This has huge implications for the future of application development and automatic 'crowdfunding'. [1] http://www.safecoin.io/ http://www.safecoin.io/
jere 12y ago
Having never heard of MaidSafe, the promises made in that promo video seem ridiculous and bordering on parody.
taylorbuley 12y ago
For those wondering what happened, it looks like this article was removed because the author was fishing for BTC donations somewhere in the middle of it
enscr 12y ago
Link's been removed from Techccrunch. Any other source?
- Lukeas14 12y ago
  The google cache is still up: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Atechcrunch.com%2F2014%2F04%2F24%2Fmaidsafe-a-wildly-successful-cryptocoin-debacle%2F&oq=cache%3Atechcrunch.com%2F2014%2F04%2F24%2Fmaidsafe-a-wildly-successful-cryptocoin-debacle%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2126j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Atechc...
- thisiswrong 12y ago
  http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto-crowdsale-debacle/ http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto...
wodow 12y ago
404 for http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/maidsafe-a-wildly-successful-cryptocoin-debacle http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/maidsafe-a-wildly-successfu...
minimaxir 12y ago
The article was removed because OP snuck a Bitcoin tipper into the article. https://twitter.com/alexia/status/459376944006856704 https://twitter.com/alexia/status/459376944006856704
msgilligan 12y ago
Techcrunch took the article down. It is now available here: http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto-crowdsale-debacle/ http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto...

24 points by mdelias 12y ago

dmix 12y ago

This article makes a lot of assumptions you've been following some MaidSafe drama online. But searching HN show that MaidSafe has rarely been mentioned here. Maybe someone could summarize?

cryptolect 12y ago
Apparently they made the SafeCoin IPO (safecoin being the altcoin/blockchain that powers MaidSafe) available to purchase with both MasterCoin and Bitcoin. Based on exchange rates at the time, it was possible to get more SafeCoins if you purchased with MasterCoin, than if you used Bitcoin (since MasterCoin was so cheap). Some people thought they could take advantage of the situation, and bought up MasterCoin to purchase SafeCoin. However it sounded like the IPO purchase cap for MasterCoin purchases was filled quickly, meaning a lot of people were left holding near-worthless MasterCoin. Thus began the cries of "Mastercoin pump and dump", which the IPO had (inadvertently?) caused.
- thisiswrong 12y ago
  Correct. More info on this here: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/maidsafe-embroiled-safecoin-presale-mastercoin-pump-dump/2014/04/22 http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/maidsafe-embroiled-safec... From an outsider's perspective the 'IPO' did indeed look like a planned pump on Mastercoin: People were buying up Mastercoin to take advantage of the btc-msc arbitrage. This drove the Mastercoin price up by ~100%. Meanwhile certain people could potentially have offloaded tonnes of msc purposely bought the week before (for half the price). This may not have been intentional. But either way some people lost big money when Maidsafe stopped accepting msc for their 'IPO' - thus causing the msc price to collapse.
- resu_nimda 12y ago
  The cryptocoin situation is an endless source of hilarity. It's so crazy. Just this wild west of speculation, massive fortunes rising and plummeting, millionaires minted overnight, all the shady characters, etc. What efforts are in progress to catalog and package these stories for posterity?

cryptolect 12y ago

MaidSafe sounds intriguing, but the one thing that gives me pause is their licensing page (http://maidsafe.net/developers-licensing http://maidsafe.net/developers-licensing), which says that any non-GPL MaidSafe codebases requires 1% revenue fee. I still dont know if that means I can or can't create my own MaidSafe application from MaidSafe compatible libraries that I've written myself, without having to pay them. I also don't know if they have some sort of central enforcement mechanism to prevent such an Application from working on the MaidSafe network. I can only hope they start releasing example code and applications soon to clear up the confusion.

Marcelus 12y ago
They've ditched the 1% bit.
- GigabyteCoin 12y ago
  It's still showing up on the URL that OP linked to.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Good to see that after 8 years of working on such a distributed network, it's finally paid off for them - at least in terms of reaching this level of funding, we don't know yet how successful the network itself will be in the long term. The 3 such networks that excite me right now are Ethereum, MaidSafe and OpenLibernet, and I guess there's also BitCloud, but the last two are still mainly in whitepaper phase I believe. I don't mind that there's some overlap between them for now. Each is taking a bit of a different approach, and some things might work better on one than the other, and I'm excited to see what comes out of all of these in a few years.

bascule 12y ago
See also: http://cryptosphere.org/ http://cryptosphere.org/

battani 12y ago

There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the MaidSafe IPO. Exercise due diligence before sending coins over to them. More info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=579797.320 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=579797.320

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

thisiswrong 12y ago

I think one of the most overlooked aspects of Maidsafe's 'decentralized internet project' is: "(...)application developers are called Builders and the network will reward use of these applications by paying the Builders in safecoin based on the application use by users of the system. This is possible since the application developer can insert their own network immutable wallet address in their application." [1] This has huge implications for the future of application development and automatic 'crowdfunding'. [1] http://www.safecoin.io/ http://www.safecoin.io/

jere 12y ago

Having never heard of MaidSafe, the promises made in that promo video seem ridiculous and bordering on parody.

taylorbuley 12y ago

For those wondering what happened, it looks like this article was removed because the author was fishing for BTC donations somewhere in the middle of it

enscr 12y ago

Link's been removed from Techccrunch. Any other source?

Lukeas14 12y ago
The google cache is still up: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Atechcrunch.com%2F2014%2F04%2F24%2Fmaidsafe-a-wildly-successful-cryptocoin-debacle%2F&oq=cache%3Atechcrunch.com%2F2014%2F04%2F24%2Fmaidsafe-a-wildly-successful-cryptocoin-debacle%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2126j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Atechc...
thisiswrong 12y ago
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto-crowdsale-debacle/ http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto...

wodow 12y ago

404 for http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/maidsafe-a-wildly-successful-cryptocoin-debacle http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/maidsafe-a-wildly-successfu...

minimaxir 12y ago

The article was removed because OP snuck a Bitcoin tipper into the article. https://twitter.com/alexia/status/459376944006856704 https://twitter.com/alexia/status/459376944006856704

msgilligan 12y ago

Techcrunch took the article down. It is now available here: http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto-crowdsale-debacle/ http://letstalkbitcoin.com/maidsafe-wildly-successful-crypto...