Dear IoTeX Community,
We feel extremely fortunate to have you as our long-term supporters, and hope you are excited to see what the future holds for IoTeX. Looking forward, we know that for IoTeX to succeed, we must not only deliver on our technical roadmap but also re-align specific components of our project to best sync with our roadmap and ensure the longevity of our IoTeX. Based on this vision, today we are announcing an update to our token distribution schedule to extend the token lock-up period for IoTeX team, IoTeX Foundation, and our private sale investors by six months.
Since we issued the IOTX token in late May, we have learned a great deal regarding the role of our token in the broader IoTeX ecosystem. The IOTX token will play a crucial role in the IoTeX Mainnet — it will be used as “gas” for the blockchain, root/subchain management, network-wide governance, and more. However, today we are still in the Testnet development phase and the current ERC-20 token lacks real utility outside of the secondary trading market. Furthermore, we fundamentally believe that the majority of IoTeX tokens should be distributed as a native token (not ERC-20), which will best incentivize the development of IoT DApps and token ecosystems on the IoTeX Mainnet. Taking these considerations into account, we believe the most effective approach to guarantee a thriving IoTeX Mainnet is to align our token distribution schedule with the public launch of the IoTeX Mainnet in Q1 2019.
We did not make this decision alone — we are lucky to have the support of our community, who have provided valuable feedback to us every step of the way. Over this past month, we have also discussed several potential options with our private sale investors, IoTeX core team, and advisors, who are most affected by this decision due to the extended lockup of their tokens. We are proud to have their overwhelming support, which reaffirms their long-term belief in our project, and are even more motivated than ever to deliver on our vision.
The updated token distribution schedule is as follows:
- The distribution of IoTeX Ecosystem (30% of total) and Community Rewards Program (6% of total) tokens will not change . From these two buckets, ~ 2% of total tokens will be distributed each quarter, including in August 2018 and November 2018.
- The distribution of the remaining IoTeX Foundation, IoTeX team and private sale investor tokens will resume after Mainnet launch in February 2019:
- IoTeX Foundation (25% of total): The first distribution of IoTeX Foundation tokens (~2% of total) was issued in May 2018. The remaining 11 token distributions (~2% each) will occur quarterly starting in February 2019.
- Team (15% of total):To date, no team tokens have been distributed. All team members’ tokens have a four-year vesting period, with the first token distribution six months after they join (i.e., six-month cliff). Based on these new changes, the first distribution of team tokens will be in February 2019, regardless of whether a team member is eligible to receive their team tokens earlier.
- Private sale (24% of total): The first distribution of private sale tokens (6% of total) was issued in May 2018. The remaining three token distributions (6% each) will now occur in February 2019, May 2019, and November 2019.
We hope you understand that this update to the token distribution schedule is strictly meant to uphold the long-term vision of the IoTeX project. We truly value the passion you have shown us to date, and ask for your continued support — together we will build IoTeX to its fullest potential.
Sincerely,
Raullen, Qevan, and Jing
Co-Founders of IoTeX
For a detailed Token Release Schedule, please check IoTeX official website.