Hey guys,
As many of you know, I’ve been following Reddcoin almost from its beginning, first as a regular member of the community, and more recently as a part of the development team. I’ve spearheaded our efforts to build out a wiki page with information about Reddcoin, organized a week long treasure hunt, and done my best to be a positive voice in the community. My “BigReddThoughts” posts on the subreddit were often posts that encouraged conversation, debate, and community.
Towards the end of last summer, Laudney asked if I would like to be a part of the official development team. He and I had developed a mutual trust of sorts from many various interactions over the prior six or so months. One of my conditions of being on the team was that I would be allowed to voice my concerns and opinions amongst the team, and that they would not always be popular or positive. But, they would always be with best interest of this project at heart. His immediate response was “of course,” basically telling me that my own outspokenness was one of the primary reasons he wanted me on the team. Not that I am outspoken on the message boards. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not, though back in March through maybe June I probably was a bit more involved. But privately, I would have many conversations with Laudney and the other mods long before I ever became a part of the team, primarily whenever I saw something troubling with the community that I thought should be given consideration.
The other reason Laudney said he wanted me on the team was that I have a pretty good attention to detail, almost to a fault, and have often caught small mistakes or issues before they have been noticed by anyone else. Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m not a “developer” or “programmer” by any means, though I am decent at coding. By trade my background is in scientific computing and engineering, and everything I have done with Reddcoin has been more from sheer determination than from being an expert at any given topic related to crypto. But I am skilled enough to know that this team has some pretty excellent individuals on it, whom I have grown to consider friends, and who I would hire for just about any job relating to software development, finance, or cryptocurrencies if I were looking to assemble a team.
Recently there have been a lot of questions about the team, the project, and alleged past misconduct. I wanted to write this bulletin to try to address these questions, specifically relating to progress and allegations.
Here’s what I know:
(1) As I already said, Reddcoin’s development team is very high quality. Our lead developer is nothing short of a money expert, and our founder is a highly successful entrepreneur. The development team consists of some of the finest developers I have ever met. Every member is extremely intelligent, to the point where some make my pursuit of a PhD in engineering seem ho hum.
The flip side of that, however, is that everyone on the team is also highly valued in their day job. You don’t become an excellent developer without having many demands on your time, especially when you are the bread winner in the family. At times, each of us can say that we have both (a) devoted way more time than be probably should have to this project in a given week, and (b) devoted way less time than we wanted to in another given week. Short of being able to hire a team to work full time on this project (something that Reddcoin LTD was established to enable sometime down the road if things go well), the entire development of Reddcoin relies of volunteer hours of the team, and the ebbs and flows of our outside lives that come with it. But I can promise you, everyone takes this project seriously and is committed to it.
(2) Development is going, though sometimes not as fast as we might wish. Relating to Social X, internal testing and development are underway on the browser wallet, and we are working as fast as possible to get the extension out of beta. HD core wallets are being worked on. Since Redd-ID is really the last step in the Social X project, this is the least well developed, but is in the works.
Keep in mind, when the project was announced back in August, it was announced with an extended timeline because of the many components involved. First was enabling Electrum for Reddcoin. Check. Next was the next gen tip platform. We’ve already had a taste of this. Next was integrating HD keys into the Qt wallet so that Qt/Electrum/Browser/Mobile/etc could all use the same keys. This is nearing completion. Mobile wallets are a major target, and @lionzeye just mentioned the plans for an Android wallet the other day. I personally am working on a few things that will help the community better be able to integrate Reddcore/Reddsight API into their own projects. And last of all, Redd-ID, which is beginning to come into focus.
There is still a lot to be done to make this coin the success we want it to be. But that work is being done.
(3) As I mentioned, I’ve been around this community a long time. I discovered Reddcoin about a week after the IPCO ended, and have stuck with it ever since. I’ve seen many people come and go. People I would call marketers, pumpers, whales. I’ve seen some fine developers get involved, then leave for one reason or another. Especially here, I’ve come to learn that some personalities just don’t mesh well in a work environment. I remember all of the faucets, scam casinos, real casinos that went broke none-the-less, reddit bots and plugins, alternative sub-reddits, etc. I can very clearly recall past “Top Contributors!” on the subreddit posting things that ultimately caused a lot of people in other crypto-communities to grow tired of Reddcoin. “2% of Reddcoin left until PoSV!” “1% of Reddcoin left until PoSV!” Etc. I remember thinking at the time that I loved their enthusiasm, but also cringed at some of their actions. I can remember Reddcoin at its low of 2/3 satoshi, and being afraid to buy because it looked really bad, with multipools and 51% attacks. I remember the great hard fork of March 2014. I also remember checking reddit one last time before bed sometime last spring, and seeing a 2 minute old post from laudney explaining PoSV, and linking to a whitepaper. After staying up an extra hour that night to read the paper, devour its content, and think about what it meant, I remember going to bed thinking “I want to be more involved in this project”.
What I mean to say is, I remember almost everything that has ever happened in the history of this project, and have probably read almost every word ever written about its development. And I can say, without a doubt, that there have absolutely been members of this community with malicious intents, seeing Reddcoin (particularly after the announcement of PoSV) as a pump-and-dump in the making. I have no doubt that individuals or even groups of individuals have conspired in the past to make Reddcoin seem like a can’t miss buy. Every cryptocurrency has endured such groups. It’s sadly the nature of the business right now. But I also have no doubt that this team is as straight as they come. Many have been so quiet about this topic because they really have no interest in addressing a topic that they feel simply doesn’t need to be addressed.
And so I’ve taken the time to pen this letter because I want you all to understand that this team is dedicated, wants to see this project through, and needs your support to make that happen. We don’t want to have to put out fires that don’t even need to be started. We want to spend that time working on the project.
Thanks,
Mike / BRM