We’re excited to announce that tokens have been successfully distributed today, June the 18th 2018. The $DAG token is live (See the contract on Etherscan here) and available for use in our community portal Orion. This marks the end of an intense sprint of development, token economics, marketing and channel development across our global community of supporters. There are a lot of misconceptions about token distribution and the significance for blockchain businesses. We want to address some recurring questions from the community here and provide insight into the business decisions we’ve made. Unlike a lot of projects, we’re builders and haven’t wasted resources on generating fomo around promises that we cannot deliver. We’re interested in delivering products and continuing to build the Constellation network and community. The distribution of $DAG today allows us to do just that. There are also legal and regulatory reasons as to why we’ve operated in a certain way and we want to make those clear, we have a long-term vision and adhering to these rules protects that vision. Please read on for further clarity on our positioning:
There will always be community members and investors who are out for a quick flip. However, we are focused firmly on building a viable and scalable network that can scale to billions of users. We are single-mindedly focused on that vision ahead of anything else. This is the distinguishing factor between a mature company and “project” that will not endure in the space. To support that, as founders we have a 4-year lockup on our own tokens. It takes copious amounts of resources, time and dedication to build a completely new blockchain from the ground up. We cannot get distracted with catching the ‘right moment’ in a time-cycle that can last for weeks, months or even years - when is the 'right moment'?
The right moment is a one that fits with the long-term business goals of The Foundation. One which aligns with the release of our incentivized community portal Orion from which token holders can stake $DAG and earn bounties for contributing to the success and growth of the Constellation network. In addition, our upcoming release of our permissioned testnet that has cross-chain compatibility with our DAG ERC-20 token. Allowing validators (miners) to earn monthly rewards in $DAG for contributing bandwidth and resources to the testnet. This means that without the release of the token we cannot continue to build the community or test and develop the Constellation network under real-world technical and economic conditions.
We asked investors and members of our community how they feel about token distribution in this market cycle. The answer we got was mixed, with some favoring a release and some wanting hold back. We took into account the growth of the network, functionality of the live token and a breadth of community input when making this final decision.
Forward momentum and development require sticking to timelines. In normal tech companies, you move at speed in an agile way and have no end of roadblocks as you develop with well-established technology. In the blockchain space, you are not only moving fast but with new untested technology. In the case of Constellation we are building new technology that has never been seen before from the ground up. We are not a fork or copy/paste project and we must focus on building a new network without distraction. Timelines are essential to creating a company culture that delivers consistently. As many of you know we postponed token distribution from March to June once. That decision was not taken lightly and we cannot pull back further on an already demanding roadmap.
Exchanges
We’ve reiterated this many times across all our channels but we are not in a position to discuss exchange listings. If and when $DAG starts trading the community will know and spread the word, any nonpublic information has to be protected. We would like to share as much as possible but there are strict legal guidelines we must adhere to.
Finally...What has the brief history of crypto taught us?
Each larger bear cycle in the crypto market has enabled new strong players to emerge. In the downturn of 2013/2014 it was Ethereum that launched into a bear market. We will be seeing new players strongly emerge from this bear cycle as well. Crypto has come to stay and Constellation is at the forefront of building the new internet of connected devices that fairly rewards users and builds a global community of users. We are here to stay and are going only one way - forward!
The journey for us so far has been a humbling experience and we’re excited for the future and thankful to be building it with you. Without you, the community none of this would be possible and for that, we thank you for your continued support. If you have any questions please dive into our Telegram and we’ll answer asap.
Kind regards,
Brendan Playford
CEO Constellation Labs
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