Like many people, I have been looking at a lot of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) lately and have been amazed at how many of these are getting funded and how much for.
It seems like there is a general culture of build a team and build some buzz and then launch with next to no product. The Ethereum based ERC20 makes this really simple - hence the reason it has become the standard.
But for a community focused blockchain application, is this a good way to launch? - I think not. Why do you want a bunch of people owning the dapp who are mainly in it to make money. Surely it is better to just reward your most active users and to use activity as the key basis for distributing tokens.
Steem has a model which does reward user activity but the initial distribution was criticised as giving far to much to a small group of 'whales'.
What I am proposing is a new approach which takes the learnings from the EOS Token distribution, adds on a couple of ideas I have been formulating related to reducing long term release, and applies it to user activity.
75% would be a user fund which would be given to users but only 1% (of the remaining fund) would be released per week. This would have a half life of approximately 69 weeks so would be still have considerable incentives to build up a user base for 2 to 3 years.
Users would be rewarded for initial sign up (with proof of non duplicated identity) , referrals and participating in the dapps activities and contests.
To fund the development and promotion of the dapp, 20% would be offered to registered active users who donate.
This could also be released at 1% (of the remaining fund) per week as per the EOS distribution model of giving tokens based upon the proportion of contribution made.
- Then 5% could be reserved for a user set up foundation or similar body to support community projects or good causes.
This approach should mean that a lot more people could get a chance become stake-holding members of the community and will also give a development team a chance of continuing funding to build up the distributed application.