When our team originally conceived of the Autobid contract, we realized that one of the things that excites us the most is that we might be able to play a small part in helping to inspire a new wave of projects that are increasingly interested in a more fair and equitable distribution of risk between the team and the community. This seemed even more important when we considered that buying tokens represents the very first exposure many people have to cryptocurrency (and/or investing in general), and sadly enough, we have seen a number of outright scams dressed up as exciting…

The Autobid contract that we have developed as our token distribution mechanism offers many clear benefits from the users’ perspectives, but there are a few interesting advantages that have to do with the economic properties/implications of the model which might not be so obvious at first glance. Taking a brief moment to examine the subject and highlight some of these benefits can hopefully help demonstrate even more reasons why the Autobid model makes sense as a next-generation token sale approach.

Risk-Free Arbitrage

For as long as the Autobid contract remains active, it provides an opportunity for anyone to arbitrage between…

We’re very excited to be using an Autobid contract to distribute our PHI tokens, but since it is a new approach, we recognize that there are going to be quite a few questions that people have regarding it. Here are a few of our answers.

Q: What are the advantages of the Autobid model?
A: It shifts risk away from the users via a money-back guarantee, provides considerable incentive for the team to deliver on the project promises, gives users the opportunity to experiment with the tokens and project without strongly committing any funds to it, allows community-driven token-signaling to begin…

Update: The Autobid contract has expired.

It’s time to face reality: the traditional ICO model isn’t perfect.

Even though the standard ICO approach can be very useful for fundraising (which is great because it can help teams bootstrap new projects in crypto), and it can help with distributing projects’ tokens to interested communities of users or investors (allowing these networks to start off on the right foot), there are some unfortunate drawbacks and shortcomings to the approach, too.

Many tokens that were distributed via ICOs end up declining in value after the initial distribution takes place, leaving some users disappointed and upset with the market performance…

We spent a lot of time thinking about how we could make the most people happy with our Delphi Systems token auction and distribution, and we were proud of what we came up with. When we announced our plans, it seemed like our young community was happy with them, so we merrily proceeded

However, it seems like the market is telling us, “This isn’t what we want.” So far, we’ve only seen 18 distinct participants, who have collectively contributed less than what was raised in the first minute of the original Fair Auction. While there are a number of potential…

Here at Delphi Systems, we’re building distributed oracle technologies.

But rather than trying to build an oracle consensus network (like what Augur is doing) we have decided to focus on providing an oracle development framework and marketplace. So anyone will be able to offer their services as an oracle with Delphi, and our tools are designed to help them do so (and to help users connect with them once they do).

There’s a problem here, though. If anyone can deploy or participate as an oracle, how can users tell which oracles are honest and reliable, and which ones are not…

UPDATE: Delphi has decided to use an Autobid contract as a next-generation token-distribution mechanism. The excerpts from this page which are no longer true or relevant have been removed or replaced, to minimize confusion.

Q: How many tokens are being distributed?
A: There will only ever be 30 million PHI tokens. We are auctioning 20 million of these to the community via the Autobid contract.

Q: How can I get some of those bounty rewards?
A: Read more about our new Bounty Program here, or simply help Delphi in some way and let us know via our bounty submission page, and we’ll make sure you’re fairly rewarded.

Q: Is there a soft cap?
A: No. Our team is primarily motivated by passion, and we intend to tackle The Oracle Problem regardless of the outcome of…

At Delphi, we are trying to do things a little differently than most other companies and projects in the space. From both philosophical and practical standpoints, we feel that there are many good reasons to take special care when it comes to disclosing information about the various contributors and members of our team.

As we said in The Oracle Wars section of our Master Plan article:

The next battleground for decentralization will undoubtedly be around oracles (after all, control of the oracle amounts to control of the entire contract, when execution depends on external data in any way). In other…