And as to your first statement, of course we want nothing more than the respect from the ICP community. In theory, we could raise from the Bitcoin community and launch on ICP, but it doesn’t make any sense. That would be like MinePro raising funds from the ICP community and launching on Solana. If an ecosystem community is committed and funding the project through investment its expected that it should stay within that community.
You guys are now asking for around 2mi (min) + 1mi of the neuron fund. That’s over 20 times more you got from Ethereum, from a chain with 1/30 of ETH’s MC and 1/75 of its volume.
So Rich has been mining BTC for over a decade and still needing money from crowd sources to fund his new RWA business?
RWA is the future, whether you want to admit it or not. Otherwise, blockchain as a whole will never adopt on a wide scale. As an ICP maxi you understand the whole broader vision here is to convert mainstream computing to blockchain computing. How does that happen without converting revenue baring Web2?
We can’t speak on Estate Dao as a project, because we don’t know them. But what I can say is the Real Estate RWA narrative has been tried many times to no avail. There’s so much red tape (Its a security in the USA) staffing costs, maintenance, admin/association/realtor fees, ect. Success in real estate is measured in 5-10 years or more, so it may be a very long time before it bares fruit, we hope it does.
In comparison, Bitcoin mining is the most immediate and stream lined RWA revenue source there is. Establish infrastructure/power source (which we have,) buy the miners, Install/test, hash. Its that simple. We’ll be posting an AMA with our President Richard next week, which will hopefully answer any questions here. He’s and engineer, who’s been in the Alberta energy community for over 20 years and has been Bitcoin mining longer than most. Definitely check that out.
Thanks.
1 Like
What happened to Estate Dao?
Zero liquidity, zero activity and zero revenue?
He doesn’t “need” it. He’s already mining on a large scale (which you’ll see.) Why would he purchase millions in hashrate to share it 95% with stakers for free? Hence why the project only takes a low 5% of rewards going to the team. The point of this project is to show how BTC mining tokenization on a wide scale, through ICP, can streamline and deploy RWA effectively. Heres Richards info:
Richard Sakaguchi, PEng, MBA, PMP
Richard is a successful leader in the electricity industry with over 20 years of experience in the development of new power plants. His expertise includes project management, project engineering, market analysis, commercial negotiations, regulatory and asset optimization,. He has a strong track record on multi-billion dollar power generation projects and has been directly involved in the development of over 2,000 MW of generation in North America. Richard’s professional designations include Professional Engineer, Master of Business Administration through the University of Calgary and Project Management Professional. Data center projects include a 375 MW behind the fence crypto project at an existing power station in Alberta, several smaller gas to power projects for data centers in North America and a grid-connected data center facility in Labrador.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-sakaguchi-21148126/?originalSubdomain=ca
2 Likes
So he has the expertise, money, access to real-world investors, and cheap energy not seen in any free country. Yet instead of doing it himself and taking all the profit, he’s going to share it with anonymous DAO investors scattered around the world just to prove that RWA can be deployed effectively on IC?
How generous of him!
Real-World Assets projects blend perfectly with web3. You take investors’ money in crypto (in your case, 80% of the ICP treasury), convert it (or not 
) into “real” assets that can’t be traced, which in turn will generate profits that can’t be traced either. What could possibly go wrong in a unregulated space like crypto, right?
1 Like
None of that is accurate. You haven’t read the WP and it shows. If he raises funds privately (which he has done across numerous sites and operations) the mechanics are exactly the same. He still needs to share almost all of those profits. He’s not funding the equipment himself so he would never be entitled to “taking all the profit” in any investment situation, on chain or off. When it comes to ICP and tokenizing, using MinePro as a successful Web3 case study will potentially open the doors to hundreds of projects that are looking to deploy their treasuries into viable revenue producing assets. Thats the hosting arm. Though the team only makes 5% from the rewards within this SNS, the team takes 20% of all rewards from hosting clients, and from that, 50% goes directly to the team, and the other 50% to existing stakers. Thats where the team is earning revenue. There is already 1 tokenized client getting ready to launch October 13th.
You’re also completely wrong about it not being able to be traced.
On the purchase side: We’ve already agreed to purchase the miners in 10% tranches to give the community peace of mind, even if it costs more. The miner purchases are actually done ON CHAIN with a reputable distributor. The DAO will be able to track each shipment themselves. Just to go above and beyond, we’ve also offered to use either a Dfinity team member or a DAO representative as an intermediary to facilitate the whole purchase. All equipment will be 100% insured and all certifications will be shared. We plan to fully video document the entire install process as well.
On the rewards side, We’ve partnered with Loka Mining for this exact purpose. Their decentralized pool will show reward distribution in REAL TIME. They’ll be zero custody on our end.
It’s obviously you’re not reading through the doc’s or the forum, otherwise you’d know this. Please DYOR before trying to fud us.
Thanks.
2 Likes
Explain how, technically speaking, it will done using SNS.
I’m not sure Dfinity would want to be involved in an SNS project. By suggesting that, you’re just proving how unreliable your process is.
Anyone involved in the DAO can’t be trusted to conduct an audit. That’s too simplistic.
Only if all miners are guaranteed to be using Loka Mining, which can’t be ensured.
In the end, it’s the same “trust me, bro” approach as with any RWA project.
1 Like
-
Our distributor operates directly on chain through Bitmain. The funds will be sent directly via the SNS to their operating wallet, which will be listed on the invoice that we share prior to proposal.
-
We’re not suggesting this because we lack any confidence. We don’t care about trying to preserve our “ego” here. All we’re trying to do is be flexible, and put any community concerns first.
-
I think its kind of presumptuous to assume an elected DAO representative (or multiple reps) do not have the capacity to create value as an intermediary?
-
Well, in any investment theres always some form of trust layer. Even if the project is fully decentralized, and the LP is locked, you still need to trust the network is going to operate as intended. You also need to trust that whatever swap, and bridge protocols you may use are honest and reliable (hacking risks.) And what about the product the team is building? You’re trusting that they’re actually achieving its intended roadmap behind the scenes. I don’t think establishing a partnership with Loka just to do something deceitful makes a lot of sense. I also highly doubt Richard wants to squander a reputation he’s taken 20 years to establish within the Canadian energy community, and destroy his own company in the process.
At the end of the day, you’re welcomed to vote any way you’d like. However, presuming that every project on the SNS is operating with malice is detrimental for the entire ICP ecosystem as a whole. All it will do is deter projects from building here, and people from investing, which is not why this was designed. These are the hard facts. There is almost NO projects on ICP generating actual revenues/sustainable rewards, which ultimately is what drives people to own tokens. Volume (outside of ICP) as a whole is very low. Theres a lot of building, high hopes, promises of adoption, minting/shuffling tokens, and extremely long roadmaps. So I understand the contemptuous approach. MinePro has NONE of those problems. We’re not here trying to invent new tech to change humanity, we’re here to mine Bitcoin, and we’re really good at it. We ship, launch, and begin generating revenue for holders. Thats it. We’re bringing ckBTC liquidity into ICP. We don’t need to rely on “Trust me bro.” Collectively, we’ve been mining BTC for almost 8 years and producing energy for over 20, our resumes speak for themselves.
3 Likes
Yes, ideally that last point is all that you should need to trust - but of course the idea is that the network has evolved over many stages, each of which has been reviewed, verified and scrutinised by the community. Huge effort has gone into supporting this, in terms of reproducible builds, a release/communications pipeline and tooling, etc.
The argument that because you need to trust the network, you may as well go ahead and trust the participants is flawed (and is in opposition to the point of the network).
I expect that this project has genuine intentions, and I appreciate that it must be difficult to feel such resistance from the community. But I personally think that resistance is fair and warranted.
This sounds like an interesting project to me, and I wouldn’t want to discourage innovation in this area - but in my opinion this should ideally not come at the expense of trustlessness (other than trusting a well designed and rigorous system/process).
I’ve not had time to follow this conversation closely, but I have been dipping in and out. What I personally would find useful is two things:
- An attempt from @MinePro to imagine all of the ways in which they could rug pull the SNS community if they so wanted (forget about damage to reputation - we wouldn’t need crypto if that were sufficient).
- A rigorous summary of counter-measures to mitigate those dangers (and which cannot be bypassed, even if you wanted to). Not just ideas (like possibly going above and beyond, and getting a DFINITY team member to check your work). Measures that have been planned, designed, and will actually be used to migitate the dangers that the community have been expressing.
If at the end of the day, if it does just come down to trusting that MinePro would not want to damage their reputation, I will not personally be investing. I would plan to reject the SNS proposal (at least that’s my current thinking). Nevertheless, I’d respect what you’re trying to do.
1 Like
Just to be clear, when I said trust the network, I didn’t mean ICP at all. We believe ICP is the most solid chain in Web3 as far as infrastructure is concerned, thats why we want to launch here, I was speaking to Web3 as a whole. Theres always some level of trust layer when it comes to an investment of any kind, that was the point I was making.
On this SNS we’ve seen completely undoxed projects raise MILLIONS for basic utility applications that we know cost 10-15k to build at best. They may not request to disburse 80% of the ICP (at least right away) but why do they need that much to build what 1 full stack dev can do on his own? Even if they only withdraw 800k worth of ICP a quarter, its still going out the door, and will all be gone eventually. Then what? Is there revenues? Is there volume? Are there any assets? So far, none at all.
Do you understand how these type of arguments can be made for any project with intent to launch on this SNS? We were 100% upfront with our plan in our first intro post. We didn’t tuck it within the back of our whitepaper like we’ve seen others do. The money isn’t going to “salaries” or “dev costs” or “marketing” its going towards actual, tangible, physical, ASSETS that will produce revenue almost immediately. The team has already discussed the purchase plan internally and we’ve come to the agreement that we could care less how long it takes to deploy the equipment.
In our SNS sale proposal we’ll only request that 10% of the raised ICP is withdrawn, with additional purchases to be made over the course of 2 years. We’ll leave it up to the SNS to decide the pace of how we proceed. If they’d like to go quicker then fine, If not, and Bitcoin goes to 150k or more in this bull run then so be it.
Im going to comply with your exercise because frankly I think its a good idea and every SNS should do it.
Potential risks and counter measures:
RISK 1) This first risk to the SNS would be in the initial 10% ICP used to purchase the first batch of miners, this includes shipping logistics.
**COUNTER MEASURES 1) The purchase will be with a reputable distributor who’s doxed and wallet is public. This vendor has references from some of the largest mining conglomerates in the world including Bitfarms. The funds will go to this party directly, so there shouldn’t need to be any custody from MinePro. Before shipping, they are immediately insured fully through Navigator Risk, all documents are shared with the DAO. They are then shipped via air to our site. If the plane crashes or the shipment is highjacked then we are fully covered no matter what.
RISK 2) Next would be if the miners were simply taken offline and stolen.
COUNTER MEASURE 2) Since the pools are decentralized, the second that happens, Loka mining would know, which would trigger an immediate notification that the miners are offline. Anyone should be able to go within Loka Mining’s portal and monitor the hashing independently from us. Rewards would cease immediately to the staking pool. Theres a number of things that can happen from there.
A) The site will be independently monitored 24/7 for security. Anything that happens on site will have video backup and trigger an alarm in real time. This location is in the tundra of Alberta, its not the type of place people just drive by. Its also not easy to steal equipment thats literally bolted to a rack. Not saying it isn’t possible, but it would take probably 3 hours or more to crudely cut out all of the equipment, which isn’t practical. If a robbery were to occur, then its smaller server equipment thats much more likely to be stolen. If they are able to bypass an alarm then they would either be highly sophisticated, or be an inside job. Every person that has access to the site is ID’d and coded, so it would be near impossible to hide where and with whom the compromise occurred. We would immediately contact the authorities and make an insurance claim.
B)The DAO can immediately have the serial numbers blacklisted through Bitmain. That will make any future mining difficult considering most regulated utility jurisdictions require submittal of equipment ID’s which are then independently inspected by a utility authority. They could also try to ship them to another country, but that would be extremely difficult too as all shipping manifests require serial number and inspection. Its simply to much power generation to try and mine off grid without compliance, so their only option would be to sell them on the black market which we cant imagine is easy. If these unlikely instances were to occur, again, we’re fully insured.
I think by modifying our proposal, and providing sufficient safety measures, we’ve mitigated risk as much as possible for this SNS. We’re also open to any suggestion we may have missed.
4 Likes
Thanks @MinePro, that was helpful.
Another thing I’m unclear about (sorry if I’ve missed it, there’s a lot to read) is what @MinePro gets from the IC (other than SNS swap funding). The problem statement is about the cost of energy. This isn’t a problem that’s solved by using IC tech.
I’m not really sure what this means. If the operation is running off-chain, how is this bringing a solution to the IC? What is the IC doing in this equation? Why not just spawn a startup and/or raise funds on some crowdfunding platform? Please excuse my ignorance.
1 Like
Well internally we’ve all been invested in ICP for years. But obviously that’s not enough reason to choose this ecosystem above all. Here are some of the reasons:
-
Decentralization - There are some pools that claim to be automated and decentralized. We’ve reviewed many but found only 1 viable pool and it was on the BTC network. There’s no way we could’ve launched on BTC as there’s too many issues to list (speed, cost ect.) So had we chose an EVM chain we would’ve have the ridiculously annoying task of bridging to an EVM chain literally everyday to disperse rewards which would’ve been a nightmare. So that was out. Enter Loka Mining. Loka is launching one of the first fully decentralized pools in Web3 that has the ability to disperse the rewards without any custody from us, directly into ckBTC. It solves our custody, speed, and cost issues in 1 solution. And it’s only on ICP. Same thing applies for Bitfinity.
-
Adoption Potential - In this space you need to take some risks. We believe in long term future of ICP but it’s still risky as volume is low. The SNS gives us the opportunity to raise the capital which funds the operation in the ICP ecosystem, building a strong community in the process. We could be 1 of many DeFi rewards projects on an EVM or we can be the biggest and highest paying here. We believe once this begins paying out, people will 100% take advantage of the rewards bridging users to ICP. There’s a saying in DeFi “if you pay, users will stay” that’s why projects like Aave and Lido have billions in TVL.
As to your other question, every potential hosting client we onboard will be required to use our infrastructure that’s built on ICP. That includes migrating their communities. We charge 20% of their rewards. Half gets split to the team, the other goes directly to the SNS staking pool. ICP allows this entire scaling plan to be seamless with little to no management from us. Considering the bullish sentiment about the future of Bitcoin, we have a surplus of clients looking to mine and 1 already onboarded whom we’ll share soon.
Hope this helps.
4 Likes
Thanks @MinePro, this does help get a sense of things.
As far a decentralised rewards distribution goes, my feeling is that this is only as reliable as the weakest part of the pipeline. Given that the assets generating the rewards are off-chain, I’m still not clear on what this on-chain reward distribution is really providing. For example, you can buy ordinary shares in bitcoin mining farms and receive dividends. What’s the on-chain reward distribution doing that’s needed and important?
As far as using the SNS to bootstrap a community (around harvesting rewards from off-chain assets), I’m not sure an SNS raise is necessarily the best approach, particularly given the early stage that MinePro is at and the risks and hurdles that need to be overcome.
Have you considered going the ICVC route. Your project sounds like exactly the sort of project that ICVC is intended for. ICVC are a new and exciting venture capitalist outfit on the IC, with a whopping treasury, a DAO composed of discerning and engaged investors, and a rigorous fund raising process. You may want to reach out to @Isaac_ICVC to explore this route.
This is what I’d personally prefer to see over an SNS raise at this stage, but take my opinion with a grain of salt. 
2 Likes
Meet our President Richard Sakaguchi
1 Like
You are clearly overthinking a bit.
Software has to run on something? So they chose ICP. It’s that simple. We should be thankful for that.
SNS is to attract investment for equipment and stuff. It’s that simple.
Why they should go to another VC and sell tokens cheap to them and make deals if they already had 650k from private investors and they can just launch their token to attract more investment?