A Love Letter to Our Viola.AI Community

This letter was originally sent out on 20 March 2018, 7:00AM SGT (UTC+8) via email to registered members and posted on the Telegram Official Account and Announcement Channel.

Dearest Viola.AI Community Members,

How are you? Hope you are well.

We are writing to you to give you an update on our project thus far, and also to share with you our thoughts and feelings, and of course to be transparent and truthful as we always have been.

Current Situation

As you know, we have just started our Public Sale 6 days ago on the 14th of March. The entire Viola.AI team (Christina, Freddie, Li Yhee, Martti, Mohan, Zam, Jamie and Violet) whom I am sure you are familiar with through your communication with us through Telegram and emails, has been working relentlessly towards this major milestone and we have all been very excited, counting down to the launch date.

Having whitelisted a significant number of users, we were confident that we would have a strong start to our public sale. Our advisors have also confirmed with us that based on their past experiences with other ICOs, this is a good number and usually, approximately 50–70% of whitelisted users (who pass KYC) would participate in the public sale. The rationale behind it is that since they have already made the effort to join the whitelist and also upload their personal documents, this shows that they have a keen interest in the project.

To our dismay, at about the same time that we launched our Public Sale, it was also the time that the entire cryptocurrency market (including ETH and BTC) fell to its bottom and has continued to tank. We suspected that this could have cast a shadow over our Public Sale and that could be the reason that instead of the expected 50–70% conversion of the whitelisted users, we had a much lower conversion rate in the critical first week.

We did a survey with our community members who have completed the KYC to find out what went wrong. Have they lost trust in our project? Or was it something else that has contributed to them not participating in the Public Sale? A whopping 73% of the users who completed the survey responded that the reason they have not participated is due to the current bad market conditions.

Our Proposed Solution

We sat down as a team, and we decided that we could just simply trudge on, keep our fingers crossed, and hope for the best. Or we could take the risk of potentially alienating many of our community members by suggesting an alternative.

Just like how we have always believed in the power of the people and the power of decentralisation as you have witnessed from the way we have run our project; we have decided to reach out to you and ask for your feedback as Viola.AI belongs to you, as much as it belongs to us.

Our proposed solution is to pause the Public Sale, and to relaunch when market conditions improve, no later than June 2018.

Community members who have bought in the Public Sale can either:

(A) Hold on to your Public Sale contribution and have that amount converted to Pre-Sale status and receive 35% bonus tokens (instead of the 20% or lower bonus tokens that you are currently entitled to). You will also have the more favourable exchange rate, as we would always issue the tokens at the higher exchange of ETH/BTC, be it at the time of contribution or the time of issuance.

OR

(B) Request for a refund, and lose out on receiving 35% bonus tokens and more importantly, the opportunity of supporting a project that would restore trust and transparency in the love industry.

We have not forgotten about our pre-sale and private sale contributors. To reward our pre-sale and private sale supporters who have been so patient with us:

- All our pre-sale contributors will receive 5% more bonus tokens.

- Our private sale contributors will receive 40% bonus tokens (instead of the 30–35% range of bonus that you are entitled to.)

For the Viola.AI team, our goal has always been the same from day 1 — to build the best product to the best of our capability, and to deliver on our promises to our community.

This has not been an easy decision to reach and to share this proposal with our supporters. Honestly, there has been a lot of fear and trepidation of the potential backlash that we would receive. At the same time, we feel that we are not doing right by our community supporters if we do not offer every possible option to the current situation.

We truly believe in the vision and mission of Viola.AI and the good it would do when it comes to completion.

We know that you too believe in our vision and mission and that is the reason you have decided to support Viola.AI in the first place.

We know you have high expectations for Viola.AI and this is why we are coming to you with our proposal.

We believe we are still in the early stages of the project and we want to do our best to give it the best chance of success for the benefit of all stakeholders.

In the 2 months leading up to the relaunch of the Public Sale, these are our plans to strengthen our campaign:

• Work on our MVP, beta-test it to time it with the relaunch so that supporters would have a “look-and-feel” of the product
• Further define and communicate to the public our vision, mission and strategy as well as value preposition and blockchain use cases
• Increase frequency and intensity of roadshows to reach out to more supporters
• Identify and work with relevant partners that would strengthen the value proposition of Viola.AI
• Double down on marketing efforts to grow the existing community and the whitelist

We are positive and confident that with the pausing and relaunching of the Public Sale at a later date when market conditions are better, we are giving Viola.AI the campaign that she deserves and the best chance she has to succeed.

These are our thoughts, and we want to hear your thoughts.

The Next Step

To address any questions you might have with regards to these latest developments, we are running 2 sessions of AMAs tomorrow at 9am and 11pm (Singapore Time, UTC + 8).

(By the time you read this, we have concluded our 2 AMAs — you can watch the full videos in Viola.AI Facebook Page)

We strongly encourage you to join us, and we are looking forward to engage with you and to hear your feedback.

Thank you so much for taking time to read this, and we look forward to your continuous support to help us change the world, one relationship at a time.

Love,
Jamie and Violet, on behalf of the Viola.AI Team