Sharing our thoughts for the next steps

Valuable concerns have been raised today and in the past days by some community members that are highly valued as they have stood out by regularly providing great input to shape the further development of SCIENTIA.

Some of these concerns are obviously shared. Two points have been made that are of particular importance:

1) The current price of one token, although rising as intended, is very high and will become higher over time until it reaches the target of 314,159 $ — this discourages many new holders.

2) The current amount in the liquidity pool is much lower than hoped for and not enough to fund Science projects and allow us to go through the regulatory hoops of establishing the SCIENTIA Trust now.

We share both concerns. So, let’s first address both, one by one.

1) We agree that this is a problem which has been intensifying over the past days as the price got higher. We could stop the negative rebase anytime. We could also revert it. However, we have announced this price target for the token from the beginning and while it would be ok to change course now, especially with consent of the community and clear communication, clearly many members of the community will not like that change of course from the original plan. However, this does not mean that we should not positive rebase to a lower price at all. Reading further on, you will find some ideas around that.

2) We agree with this one. We were obviously hoping for more here. The initial hype was great, and the community was growing, however, although we always clearly communicated the fact that this is a rebase / elastic supply token, some people seemed to have overlooked that and FUD emerged, here in the Telegram group and spreading to social media. We have spent considerable efforts making everything even clearer than it was, even introduced a button for entry into the Telegram group acknowledging that you have understood rebase tokens and highlighted the rebase / elastic supply facts in red on the homepage. I think this really differentiated us from other, less sincere rebase / elastic supply tokens. Overall, this was quite successful, the FUD has reduced quite a lot. This happened also, where it is not visible for everybody, for example when it comes to support requests regarding the rebase and not understanding it via our homepage or E-Mail. That leaves us where we are now.

Now after this analysis from our view let’s continue on a positive note. The project is still alive. Very much so. People have predicted a rugpull and other shenanigans, but all that has not happened and will not happen. So, the question is how to move forward.

These are a couple of ideas, which we would like to share with the community. We have discussed such things together in AMAs in the past, but not everybody could attend, and some people do not feel comfortable speaking in English sharing it in this form might be more helpful.

To reduce the price, which we agree with, we suggest that the token is positively rebased to 1$. This can be easily achieved through a value-neutral rebase. The number of tokens in each wallet and thus the total supply will increase while the price will reduce. The value of each wallet will not be affected by this rebase. As with the negative rebases in the past. This will have to be announced and planned, not done as a surprise. The problem is that the price chart will look like a sudden drop and some FUD will certainly happen, but through communication and education this can be overcome quickly. Especially if well announced beforehand. Remember, like with any rebase, the value of your tokens does not change. The advantage is that we will then be in a comfortable price zone for the token and go from there without rebases. The open question is whether we do this before reaching the target price of 314,159 $ or after. The first option would increase the speed of this transition process. The second option would be more in line with the original plan.

Next, we must acknowledge the fact that the liquidity pool is currently too low for phase II as intended. But we have built a large community and got a lot attention. Not always positive, but the longer we keep going and communicating the more convincing we are and the more we dry out the FUD. One of our strongest assets is time and perseverance as most projects die quickly and the longer one exists the more credibility one automatically gets. So, the question is, how can we stay true to our aims: (I) support Science and (II) return something to the SCIENTIA community.

The idea here is that, after the initial hype, and some FUD, we must show that the token does as intended: (I) support Science and (II) return something to the SCIENTIA community. To do that we have the following proposal. Currently, the “surplus” that can be generated by SCIENTIA is in the tax. So, we should use that to achieve the two goals (I) support Science and (II) return something to the SCIENTIA community.

We cannot change the liquidity pool addition as this is hard coded in the smart contract. We also cannot change the total tax as this is hard coded. But we can change what we use it for. So, we propose the following: 3.14% goes to the liquidity pool as it used to. The rest of the tax is changed to go into 3 buckets: 2.09% go to Research funding. Once a month, we will have a vote in the community on who we fund and the community can suggest options as well, for example through the website. 2.09% goes into a buyback. This is basically directly returning to the holders. And the final 2.09% go to marketing / development to support the project further. This way we will slowly accomplish our goals and “print” evidence of it over time and stay true to our goals. Every month research funding will be provided. The sums will be small first, they will go to research funders that accept cryptocurrency, and later, if the project grows more, we will revitalize the idea of the Trust. Furthermore, the community will benefit constantly through the buyback. It will be slow, gentle, over time, but SCIENTIA is not for speculation. This way, we will stay true to our goals and give us time to grow the token and community at a reasonable price per token. We will also show month for month that we do a) support research and b) return to the community. The hope would be that, after some people initially leave the community and sell their token — those that never understood the idea anyway, we will stabilize and slowly but steadily grow token holders over time. This will benefit everybody and, importantly, SCIENTIA’s purpose. This thinking is very much in line with those in the community, who suggest reducing the pace a bit and first deliver some results, which we agree with. We will advertise and communicate these results prominently and thus built trust and grow over time. Slower than we did in the beginning, but after the initial hype and putting us on stage, and the following FUD cycle, all normal in crypto, this seems just right.

Furthermore, while adding to the liquidity pool is good, the pool “only” needs to grow in line with total market cap of the token. Now, we cover > 77% of total market cap with the liquidity pool. While great and a hallmark sign of a stable token, this is not needed and, in a way, “dead funds”. While this pool is not enough to start the Trust soon, it very much belongs to the community in our view. So, we propose to withdraw a small amount, 1%, of liquidity each month. As with any liquidity pool withdrawal, this will not affect the price or market cap. Instead, the SCIENTIA will be burned — another return to the community and the BNB of the withdrawal will be split again threefold 1/3 goes into a buyback, 1/3 goes to research funding and 1/3 goes to marketing and development. If the token and its usage grow over time, which we all hope and work for, then this will allow to keep the liquidity pool still growing, while using the value currently stored in there that is not needed for the purpose of SCIENTIA. The majority of it, the SCIENTIA in the liquidity token and 1/3 of the BNB, so 4/6 or 2/3 of the 1% liquidity withdrawal, will return to the holder community over time.

At the same time, the Trust is still the goal if the project grows bigger and bigger and we would like to lock-in all token holders who walked this way together so far to be first-in-line for it, once it is possible to build it. Therefore, we suggest a simple system to keep people with us in the community and reward those who walked with us so far. We will airdrop one access token to everybody holding at a specific, announced date in the near-term future, for example when we enact the changes described above, we will then airdrop another token in let’s say 3 months and the third token at 314 days after launch, the original end date of Phase I. If you have all 3 tokens, you are eligible for the Trust once we can build it. This also is in line with our original plan to reward holders who wait for 314 days.

Apart from the single rebase to 1 $ there is another possibility. We do not operate in monthly cycles of funding research, but in “rebase cycles”. This means that we stay a negative rebase token with a periodic positive rebase. This would mean the following: We will do a positive rebase down to a small price again, let us say 0.00001 $ per token. Then we would re-enact the negative rebasing until a target price of 1 $ is achieved (avoiding the perils of to high per token price that we experienced lately). At this point we would distribute the research funding (as with the monthly cycle, we will just think in rebase cycles). The buyback for the benefit of holders stays the same. Also, at the end of a rebase cycle, we will distribute 1% of the liquidity, as described above, mainly to the holders. This would make SCIENTIA a token with totally novel, previously unseen Tokenomics. One could call it a “cycling rebase token”. These previously unseen Tokenomics could be exciting for those parts of the Crypto community that are not immediately drawn to the Science funding part and grab their attention. The “cycling rebase token” idea would not affect the distribution for the purposes of SCIENTIA set out above at all. We quite like this “Twist” and the novel Tokenomics, but it is a bit riskier. However, maybe being a bit riskier is a good idea at this stage. Especially on this idea, we would love community feedback.

To finish with, let’s say that we very much think that we are still in the early stages of this project, less than 3 months old since the first steps, and adjusting course does not mean giving up. Far from it. We think that these changes will allow us to continue moving SCIENTIA towards its intended goals of (I) supporting Science and (II) returning something to the SCIENTIA community. As many in the community have suggested, the way forward, in our view, is now to become less hype and FUD — like the beginning of most crypto projects — but to stay true to our goals and demonstrate that we can return to the SCIENTIA community by slowly growing the token and fund research. First in small steps, by providing funding through established organizations we will work with, but this will, over time, prove that SCIENTIA can deliver and push it to the next stage.