I read about the IPO but I cannot find the details of how the IPO will be technically conducted and how transparency will be enforced.
There is an obvious loopback attack that can be prevented by BTC investment transparency and the lock of the BTC funds during the IPO. The "attack" is simple: people but ETH with BTC, and these BTC go to a automatically generated Bitcoin address. Then the founders use these BTC to buy more ETH, several times, multiplying their investment.
I know this will be prevented and I'd like to know how.
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Yes it is an important issue. We have been debating both sides internally.
Leaving all the BTC untouched until the end of the sale would make it clear that we weren't doing any "churning."
On the other hand, using a well-defined amount of the BTC revenue before the end of the sale to pay some bills would be nice.
We have been getting by paying our own expenses and internally funding so far, and we may choose to continue doing so until the end of the sale.
Either way, before the sale starts we will make clear which of these options we choose.
Ether is a necessary element -- a fuel -- for operating the computational "appliance" we are building. Without the requirement of payment of ether for every computational step and storage operation of the system, infinite loops or excessive storage demands could bog down the system and effectively destroy it.
People can download the software appliance and run it on their computers and it will do certain basic things like perhaps showing them a catalog of available apps. If they want more functionality, like running a DApp or uploading and testing DApps that they have written, they will have to feed fuel into the machine.
Under Swiss law, where Ethereum Switzerland GmbH is based, the product we are selling is classified as a software product. And we are conducting a pre-sale for this product since we are not yet able to manufacture it.
People who are interested in acquiring it to build and upload DApps or to pay for their usage of DApps are enabled in the pre-sale to buy ETH for BTC and lock in their supply of it at a known price. These sales will help us to fund the continued construction of the software platform (the computational appliance) that requires ETH and that will continually create ETH starting at the moment the genesis block is released. Once the initial batch of ETH is created in the genesis block and ready for delivery, people who have purchased some in the pre-sale will be able to claim their product.