What’s happening with RightMesh and RMESH tokens now?
Recently, our CEO, John Lyotier, held an AMA with the RightMesh Wechat community specifically to answer questions raised immediately following the unpausing of RMESH tokens.
The questions, and the answers, are relevant to all our community, so we wanted to share the common ones with you here.
If you have more questions, please be sure to ask! You can reach us at info@rightmesh.io
Q: What makes you optimistic about the long-term success of the project?
A: It starts with people. We have an amazing team who believe that everything is possible. Many projects start out as 8 guys and a whitepaper. We have more than 40 people in Canada, 80 in Bangladesh, and several others in Switzerland, Singapore, and elsewhere in the world. More than 75% of the company is working on the RightMesh project and apps for the ecosystem. Whereas other projects receive contributions only with the whitepaper then never build the technology, we already know what it takes to deliver on the vision we outlined in our whitepaper.
When you have committed, passionate people behind the project, they can build anything. Find out more about our key team members here >
But what really makes me optimistic is that these people can work on a project that is technically sound and solves a real problem. So many other projects do not have a token use case and simply use an ICO for fundraising. For us, the token is essential to incentivizing the right behaviour in a mesh network and compensating participants for contributing resources, including connectivity, sensor information, storage, or other device resources.
We are not a small project, and this is not a small vision. It is also not something that can be achieved overnight. Bitcoin is 9 years old now. It has taken years for it to be seen as digital gold. Will RightMesh take as long to connect the world? Perhaps, but it is way too early to make that prediction. We have been in business for 8 years and working on this project for 4 years. We are preparing for another decade of growth. We believe if we continue to focus on the mission, it is achievable. It also helps that we have an incredible group of like-minded supporters who believe in the bigger picture of what we are trying to create.
Q: Is anyone using RightMesh right now? How many users do you expect they are going to use RMESH token by this year?
A: We have several developers building demonstration applications with RightMesh presently (both internal and a few external); however, these are not likely to be released until later this year or next year. This year is not about getting growth and density of the mesh network. We still have a lot of work to do. Building a protocol is not easy, and it is not fast. There are still a lot of unknowns and things we have to improve and make better. While we are on the Kovan test network presently, there are still a lot of things that we need to ensure that we get right prior to deploying on a mainnet.
One of the commitments I have given the team is that I will not tell them when we are must deploy on mainnet. We will deploy when the technology is ready. Doing things too early is foolish. We really like the approach that Golem took by releasing the beta version of their product on mainnet. In their words, “The decision [to release on mainnet as beta] is based on the fact that even though this new stage will expose our project to diverse risks, it is not possible (or responsible) to say a product is finalized without real users.”
We will continue to sponsor hackathons and engage with the developer community. We view developers as our customers and need to work closely with them to understand their needs for the platform and protocol.
Q: Are you going to support the price, protect the price, and drive the price higher?
A: No. This is not our role. Our job is to build the project and support the ecosystem. We will not pump the token higher to artificially support a price.
Does this mean we would never buy our own token? No, it does not mean that at all. The company may choose to buy tokens as a strategic business decision. However, the funds raised during the token generating event from community contributions will not be used for this purpose. We have a precise use of funds as communicated, and artificial token price manipulation is not what we said we would do. While this is the crypto wildwest, a lot of actions taken by other projects are morally reprehensible in our opinion.
For those who have followed the project from the beginning, you will know that we aim to be transparent in all that we do. If we say we are going to do something, we will do it. Even if doing the action may not seem in the best interest of token holders at the time. Doing the right thing is not always easy, and in fact, it is often harder than doing the easy thing because it is going to turn a quick buck.
Q: Are you speaking with Binance?
A: I met with members of the Binance Labs team when I was in New York for Consensus in May. To emphatically clarify, this does not mean we are going to be listed on Binance. Our conversation was about the potential of them coming in as a strategic contributor. They did not do so. This does not mean that we wouldn’t work with them in the future. We greatly respect what they are doing and what they have created. They are a mission-driven company, and we have a lot in common in our goals and our outlook. We want to raise the bar on being proactive in regulatory compliance (as do they), and they want to support projects that are long-term focused in areas like privacy, blockchain-based chat, and decentralized VPN. Those type of projects are closely aligned with our mission.
Presently, many projects are being charged exorbitant listing fees to be included on certain exchanges. While we are not opposed to paying fees in some instances, we will only do so if we believe the return can be justified. Using one third of raised contributions on a Binance listing cannot be justified. However, they also support projects through community listings and community voting. This is a more likely path for us to pursue than paying millions of dollars to be listed.
Q: Are you speaking with other exchanges?
A: Yes. If we are approached by an exchange to list our tokens, we will respond and have conversations with them. However, we will not disclose which exchanges as this just creates rumours and speculation. If there are factual elements to report, we will follow our Effective Disclosure policy and communicate this to the community.
As the RightMesh community, you are allowed, on your own accord, to engage and have conversations with Exchanges. We will not endorse or promote this action. If we become aware of an exchange that has listed the RMESH token, we will take steps to ensure they have accurate information. Case in point, if you search for RMESH on Etherscan, you will find 4 tokens with the same name. Three of them are outright scams and were listed to try and deceive contributors. We will make every effort to protect our community from those who are trying to scam them.
Q: Can you provide an explanation for the token price slump?
A: There are a lot of potential reasons. My assumption is the biggest reason is the ETH price difference between the public pre-allocation period and today’s ETH price. The public pre-allocation period was at $937 ETH USD. Today, the ETH price is ~$400.
I also believe that people are motivated by self interest. Over the first two days, there was a clear effort from bots and others to push down the price.
Q: Are you going to come to China?
A: No, I am not personally going to visit, and this is a real shame as I have always wanted to visit more than just the airports. However, with RightMesh we are creating a secure, off-grid connectivity platform allowing for end-to-end encryption. I have reason to believe that the authorities in China would not like such a platform. We are about disrupting the middleman, including ISPs and centralized authorities who want to control communications.
When we first made the decision to go all in 4 years ago to pursue this project, we knew we would make sacrifices, in part because we knew that various groups (like governments and telecom companies) would not like what we are attempting to do. We also knew, however, that we have a moral imperative to pursue the project. Any other choice would mean compromising our values and not doing all that we can to make the world a better place.
From the sentiment in the channel, some people don’t understand that this is our mission. We have never hid from this, and we will never cease from trying to do the right thing.
Q: Do you have any partnerships lined up?
A: Multiple partnership conversations are ongoing. This is part of running a business. And we have full-time people engaged in our partnership strategy. As answered earlier, we have an Effective Disclosure policy, and as partnerships are formalized, we will make announcements through that channel.
I can speak towards the type of partnerships that we are interested in, however.
First, we are interested in partnering with development companies and applications that have unique use cases for mesh technologies. We are not building RightMesh in a vacuum without speaking to potential customer and partners.
Second, we are interested in partnering with educational institutions that will put us in touch and help us build out aspects of the technology. We can magnify and advance our development efforts by working with institutions and super smart academics.
Thirdly, we are interested in partnering with those who can bring us future distribution. This includes those who have access to a large number of users. This includes launchers and handset companies. We need to work on these partnerships now as the sales/partnership cycles are several months to years.
Q: Is your team qualified to make this project a success?
A: As noted, we are not just 8 guys and a whitepaper. I believe we are unique in the industry in that we have a very diverse team consisting of technical, marketing, and financial operations. We continually are recognized for creating a workplace culture that people want to work at. This allows us to recruit and retain some of the top talent in the world.
Every project needs a blend of skillsets to succeed. While we have a great start, I also know that we need more talent at all levels and in all departments. We will particularly need more engineers and are actively recruiting. We will also need more business people who understand channel development and regional markets.
Our track record of building a successful, revenue producing business shows that we know how to launch and scale a company.
As I stated earlier, “We are not a small project, and this is not a small vision. It is also not something that can be achieved overnight. Bitcoin is 9 years old now. It has taken years for it to be seen as digital gold. Will RightMesh take as long to connect the world? Perhaps, but it is way too early to make that prediction. We have been in business for 8 years and working on this project for 4 years. We are preparing for another decade of growth. We believe if we continue to focus on the mission, it is achievable.”
If you have more questions you would like answered, please join the conversation on our Telegram Channel.
