The Ellcrys team and members of our community have noticed the poor performance of our ongoing Pre-Sale event. Quite frankly, we are not raising enough funds required to build out the protocol and all the flagship/companion services.
Although, we have raised over $300,000, but this is still not close to the the soft cap. of $1,000,000 or the hard cap. of $30,000,000. Read our recent article about funding requirement/benchmark here to understand how this figures came about.
Our team has chosen to delay the ICO and instead intensify development efforts towards the release of a working product.
Before we discuss the details of the ICO postponement, these are the obvious reasons why the Pre-Sale is under-performing:
1. Great Idea, But no working product
While we have an interesting, potentially world changing project, it is just not enough for the majority of people who have shown interest. We have built centralized components that show commitment and dedication to the project but they are still not enough.
2. Timeline
One concern is the time it will take to get the platform up and running. Some members of our community do not find the wait time encouraging. The reason for this is largely because of the unclear technological requirements for building the platform. We are committed to building a functioning and secure platform; To do this, we must be realistic with time and not rush development.
3. Weak Marketing
ICOs are becoming very popular and competitive. As a result, projects must do a lot to communicate their propositions to potential investors. While we did our best with the budget available to us, it was insufficient. We were unable to compete with well funded projects. Shortly after the start of the pre-sale, We made a decision to stop spending and save the marketing budget for development. A project like Ellcrys needs organic interest and to do so, we need to focus more on the release of a working product and communicate our goals better.
4. Others
Other concerns include token supply, price and market cap. We are still studying these concerns and will make necessary corrections before the ICO.
ICO Postponement
In light of this poor performance, we cannot for the interest of the project and contributors proceed immediately to ICO. We believe the outcome will not be different from the Pre-Sale as the conditions remains unchanged.
The consequence of this decision are as follows:
- Automatic postponement of token distribution and by extension exchange listing. Distributed tokens will continue to exists safely on the contribution web app.
- Bounty and airdrop participant must register on the contribution web app to receive their tokens. Bounty campaign ends on March 1st, 2018. Airdrop campaign ends on Feb 19th, 2018.
- Given the unexpected amount of tokens distributed during the private/pre-sale, bounty allocations will be readjusted based on the number of tokens sold in the Pre-Sale. See details here.
- Contributors who deposited below the minimum spend will be pardoned. They will receive ELL allocations.
New ICO & distribution dates will be announced soon. It is important to understand that these dates will largely depend on development progress — This means we must get to a point in the development stage where developers can test and interact with the platform.
The Way Forward
The most important activity now is to double our efforts to build the platform, grow a developer community and begin to engage substantially with them. To attract developers, we must begin to show demos, educate and engage with developer communities. It is only through this means, we can create developer interest and in turn confidence.
We have raised sufficient funds to build the platform to an extent good enough for people to get a sense of our vision. When we are close to this point, the ICO date will be announced.
We will be publishing weekly/monthly updates to keep community members informed of our activities and progress.
Why a No Refund Policy
Several contributors have asked for a refund of their contribution even though we made it clear in the token agreement that there will be no refunds. The reason for this is not because of a dubious intent to keep contributions in the event of a token sale failure (raised < soft. cap) . It is because we had been bootstrapping the project. Recently, We have been forced to depend on token sale proceeds almost immediately.
Under this condition, processing refunds will mean early contributors whose contributions were immediately invested into the project will have no chance of getting a refund while the new contributors get refunded. An unfair situation.
Lastly, the Ellcrys project started in 2014 under a different name and [naive] concept but has since evolved. We are not going to stop working because of the outcome of the Pre-Sale. The vision of Ellcrys will live and thrive.
Apology & Bonus
We understand some of our contributors have expectations about when their tokens will be distributed and listed on exchanges. For these contributors, the decision to postpone the ICO might be seen as a disappointment. We are deeply sorry for the unmet expectations and assure you that this was done for the benefit of Ellcrys, contributors and supporters. All contributors will receive additional 5% of their total contributions — An “Early Contributor Bonus”.
Please feel free to ask any questions or share your concerns: hello[at]ellcrys.co
