First off, I want to thank our amazing community for being so creative, and so overwhelmingly supportive in this time. I want to personally send a huge “Thank You!” to everyone working hard to make the Filecoin Network a reality: our team, our researchers, our engineers, our product and project managers, our designers, our lawyers, our advisors, our investors, and all our supporters worldwide. We have seen an outpouring of excitement and support in this critical time. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had the luck of connecting with hundreds of you and I’m deeply humbled and grateful for all your attention, your support, and your excitement. It is amazing for me — having dreamed of this project for years — to see this level of engagement and response. It is amazing to me to see thousands of people gearing up to mine Filecoin. Thank you!

Second, I want to personally say “I’m sorry” to all of the people frustrated by the accreditation requirements for participation. I want to make it abundantly clear here that we are under severe legal restrictions and — though we wish we could make our upcoming token sale as broad as we possibly can — we cannot offer it to everybody. We are unfortunately restricted to only sell to accredited investors (Reg. D, 506(c) offering, see the legal documents). But please note that investors from all over the world are welcome to invest. We also think the CoinList (opens new window) platform will make it much easier for investors to participate in token sales, which helps broaden the investor base some more.

Today, we have a number of interesting announcements to make:

• Filecoin page opens on CoinList!
• Two new documents: Sale Economics and How to Invest
• Advisor Sale
• Video leak and CoinList investing video

Filecoin page opens on CoinList

The Filecoin page is now open on CoinList (opens new window)! This page is the jumping off point for the Filecoin Token Sale. It includes an overview of the Network and the project, collects all the documents related to Filecoin and the token sale, and lists recent news articles. Once the token sale starts, investments will be made through this web page, and a graph of the sale progress will appear.

Two New Documents: Sale Economics and How to Invest

We are also releasing two new documents today:

Filecoin Token Economics

How to invest

• Filecoin Token Economics (opens new window) - in-depth details of the token allocations, sale pricing, vesting, and release schedules. We also collected Frequently Asked Questions into a list at the end of the document. Definitely check it out as it is likely to answer many of your questions!
• How to Invest (opens new window) - a walkthrough with instructions and screenshots on how to make the investment. This document includes CoinList screenshots, and comparisons of the various different payment methods.

This adds to the materials we previously released over the last couple of weeks:

• Filecoin Primer (opens new window) - an in-depth presentation of and discussion on the Filecoin Network, the problems it aims to solve, the technology, the team, past traction, the token, and more.
• Filecoin Technical Paper (opens new window) - a full, academic paper that presents and discusses the Filecoin protocol in detail.
• Filecoin Research Roadmap 2017 (opens new window) - a short outline of our work in 2017, including a discussion on past work and our results, future work, open problems, and more.
• Proof-of-Replication (opens new window) - a technical paper that presents some of our recent research results used in Filecoin: proofs-of-replication and proofs-of-spacetime.
• Filecoin Video (opens new window) - a short promo video that introduces the Filecoin Network, the problems it aims to solve, how it works, and how users can be part of it.

There are two more documents that will be released soon:

• SAFT - The Simple Agreement for Future Token is the investment instrument we are using in the Filecoin sale.
• PPM - The Private Placement Memorandum is an important document that accompanies most private sales of securities. This is the legal document that outlines our offering, our risk disclosures, how the investment works, and so on.

Preparing for the Sale

Reminder: the sale opens on Monday, August 7th. That is in 7 days! If you intend to participate, please start preparing for it as some preparation steps can require hours or even days to process. Here’s how you can start preparing today:

1. Register on CoinList (opens new window) for access to the sale and latest announcements.
2. Complete accredited investor and identity (KYC/AML) checks by following the instructions on CoinList. Please submit these details by Thursday, August 3 to be prioritized for review. We will do our best to review submissions before and after that date quickly, but we may not be able to complete reviews after August 3 and before the token sale opens on August 7, which may impact the lowest price you are able to get.
3. Prepare your funds in an AngelList investor account or cryptocurrency wallet. See the How to Invest document for more details.
4. Read the sale documents (opens new window) thoroughly, and email us with any questions at filecoin-sale@protocol.ai

Advisor Sale

For the last few years, we have been working with a group of tremendously valuable strategic advisors; these are individuals and organizations who have helped to build the Filecoin network, who have made strong long-term commitments for the future, and/or who present very significant future opportunities for the network. They range across professions and backgrounds: highly technical researchers, leaders of crypto networks, leaders of related startup companies, well known and relevant investors, close friends, active supporters of the project, potential large scale users, partner companies, and so on.

As is typical with many crypto network projects and token sales, we ran an advisor sale beforehand. In our case, the goals were (a) to secure these advisors’ long-term commitment to and alignment with the Filecoin Network; (b) to reward their contributions so far and/or future potential with the capability to invest early; and (c) to test, debug, and improve the entire investment flow in CoinList.

Participants in our advisor sale are vesting a minimum of 1 year, and most chose up to 3 years. This is a significant amount of time for crypto token networks. This reflects these investors’ strong commitment to the Network, and their willingness to work for it for several years.

The sale was a resounding success. We will discuss more details in an upcoming dedicated post. We did not announce the sale publicly and widely for a few reasons: (a) some unresolved legal questions, (b) security and avoiding attacks, (c) avoid giving more people the frustrating feeling of being left out of another active and ongoing sale, and (d) because we maintain much more open and frequent communication with our network of close advisors, with the people who are working with us to build this network.

Video Leak and CoinList Investing Video

Never a dull moment!

One of our advisors, Cedric Dahl, runs a YouTube channel where he speaks about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Filecoin, and other crypto networks. He did not realize that the entire Advisor Sale was not announced publicly yet, and — trying to help everyone learn about Filecoin, the token sale, and how to participate — he recorded a full video going through the advisor sale flow.

• The bad news: Unfortunately, many of the details in it were incorrect, and it was a frustrating leak that confused many in our community. It also sabotaged some of our announcements today and tomorrow, including the CoinList UI reveal.
• The good news: It was a great video! It covered the whole investment flow, discussed various important questions, helped watchers understand how CoinList and the Filecoin Sale will work, and was generally super positive about the project.

Cedric posted the video late last Friday. We saw it and asked for it to be taken down temporarily, so that we could release correct and well-timed information as planned today and tomorrow. But, to make matters more complicated (and more like a movie), the advisor in question was hacked that night... and he could no longer access his Google account. This meant he could not take the video down until the end of the weekend, after getting close to 10,000 views. Naturally, this video was very frustrating and confusing for a lot of people, as it came before any proper announcements from us. Many wondered whether or not the main sale had started, and whether they were missing it. We got lots of email about it over the weekend.

Anyway, aside from the unfortunate pre-empting of our announcements, we liked Cedric’s video very much, and we have asked him to re-cut a version with correct information. If he is able to, we will help him over the next couple of days. Either way, we will ensure there is a video going through the entire CoinList investment flow, so that everyone can quickly understand how it will all work.

More Updates

We look forward to sharing more news and updates during this coming week, including additional documents (the SAFT and PPM), some good news for people who wish to invest but do not meet accreditation status, and lots of exciting news for everyone. For the latest updates, please sign up for our mailing list (opens new window) and follow us on Twitter @MineFilecoin (opens new window).

Thank you,

Juan Benet and the Filecoin Team