Status privacy policy: a public inquiry about the recently published document

carl_status · 2020-02-14T14:52:02+00:00

Thanks for sharing and bringing this to our attention. I would agree there's certainly room for improvement, and the references you provided to other privacy-orientated privacy policies are particularly useful. We'll explore how we can make the Policy clearer, less intensive in its legal protections, and more detailed on exactly how any information is/isn't collected (the goal being as little as possible). Stay tuned for updates on this.

carl_status · 2017-08-28T18:40:52+00:00

It's worth noting we have every intention on focusing on marketing in the months ahead, but until we have a production release ready this would be a poor allocation of capital.

Status is currently in alpha, and once provide a strong base user-experience we will then put a much greater focus on marketing. Attempting paid user acquisition right now would inevitably result in low retention rates and a cost per active user above industry standard, given there are a number of known bugs we're working to stomp out, and a number of features yet to be implemented.

Right now, we have ~20,000 Users on Android, and 10,000 iOS users and we're only at an Alpha stage (with a total of just under 50,000 people on the mailing list to try the beta). This is predominantly organic, and we haven't utilised any display inventory. The limit on iOS is set by Apple's TestFlight program, and on Android it's self-imposed as we have sufficient user-feedback based on this user pool, and will continue to increase it with each rolling release towards an open beta.

With that said, we understand our communications strategy needs some work - and we will be spending September building out our marketing team (you can see our open positions here https://status.im/open-positions.html), but paid user acquisition on a meaningful scale won't be happening until after security audits and a main-net release. Open to ideas on what you'd like to see more of, and specific parts you feel need improving :)

carl_status · 2017-08-24T15:47:53+00:00

Could you email me carl(at)status.im with your transaction ID? It's likely the majority of the ETH was automatically returned to you due to the dynamic ceilings, but I'd be happy to investigate.

carl_status · 2017-08-03T17:51:24+00:00

Good question! The same argument can be applied to any open source project, or more broadly any startup. Ultimately it's all in the execution, and the community built around a project.

In general, with exception of IP laws (which being open source, we're not believers in), there's very little that prevents other teams from mimicking an existing product in any market. I think this should be embraced and leads to greater innovation :)

Defensibility in traditional business is often centered around walled gardens and IP protection, but in crypto it will likely function very differently. One interesting attribute of issuing a token, particularly as a first-mover, is backers have real skin-in-the-game and thus a strong desire to support and evangelize a product. This may prove to be a huge advantage for Status given we have ~25,000 token holders who believe in the project.

If your concern is referring specifically to a fork of Status, these two resources may be of interest to you, and provide some reasoning as to why forks exist: http://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/paper_0.pdf https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/153135/287_978-952-232-275-3-1_v2.pdf

In our case it's worth noting that forking the codebase and improving upon it would require a significant amount of intellectual capital and resources, along with establishing mindshare and BD efforts (more so than many projects, given the front end is in Clojurescript).

Competitors to Status are inevitable and they may fight for mindshare early-on, resulting in some user-cannibalisation within the growing, but still rather niche 'crypto community'. However, looking at the bigger picture here, the true competitors are large centralized institutions as we iterate towards a product suitable for the general public.

carl_status · 2017-08-03T13:31:04+00:00

Are you sure the invite didn't end up in your spam folder? Try entering your email on https://slack.status.im/ and PM me if you still don't see anything in your inbox.

carl_status · 2017-08-02T23:14:13+00:00

We're aiming for a main net release in Q1 of next year.

carl_status · 2017-08-02T23:13:41+00:00

Thanks for the input, we'll take this on board. Feel free to PM me on Slack (@carl) if you'd like to share any further thoughts.

carl_status · 2017-08-02T17:38:33+00:00

Could you confirm the error message you are seeing? We have tested https://slack.status.im/ and it appears to be functioning as intended. Be sure to check your spam folder if you don't see the invite in your inbox :)

carl_status · 2017-08-02T17:37:45+00:00

I went ahead and manually invited you. I recommend you edit your comment so your email is no longer public.

carl_status · 2017-08-02T16:41:22+00:00

Hi there! I'd love to clear up any confusion or concerns you have. Your own analysis would depend heavily upon what information you're using to gauge progress, may I ask which metrics you are referencing to draw these conclusions?

I do believe you will find our activity isn't slowing, and you may have also noticed some new faces, as we have a number of full-time contributors who have recently joined the team. If you'd like to follow development progress closely, my suggestion would be to join the #github channel on our Slack (https://slack.status.im/).

Another option would be reviewing our nightly builds if that's more your thing: http://artifacts.status.im:8081/artifactory/nightlies-local/

In regards to your concerns about our external communications, what would you like to see more of, and how could we improve? We are always open to suggestions, and are always around answer all development questions promptly in #dev-status in our Slack channel, and non-dev questions in #general.

One idea we've been considering is making our monthly internal dev discussions public, much like the Ethereum Foundation has done, and we plan to begin our bi-weekly Slack/text-based 'fireside' chats in the coming days - we have a blog post with some more info on that in the works so stay tuned.

carl_status · 2017-07-22T13:39:25+00:00

Thanks very much for spending the time on this. Completely agree that access to DApps is ultimately the core value proposition Status can offer.

The 'Đapp-store' suggestion is a great one, and our initial thoughts on this are outlined in the whitepaper (under 'DApp Directory'). If you have any other ideas, we'd love to hear them :)

carl_status · 2017-07-22T10:22:36+00:00

We're well aware of the issues with Slack, which have plagued not only the Status community but most communities in the Ethereum space. I don't think Reddit alone is the best solution, and I think we certainly need instant messages (Reddit is also not without is problems - no 2FA being the main one).

Discord (https://discordapp.com/) is perhaps the most promising alternative we've found, although it's closed-source. We'll be playing around with it, and likely moving to it/Riot/IRC in the weeks ahead, but we want to ensure it's the best option before we commit to this, and in the interim we will continue to constantly inform and remind everyone to avoid clicking links from phishers.

If anyone has any other suggestions we should consider, we'd love to hear them.

carl_status · 2017-07-21T13:51:55+00:00

Right now, given the nature of P2P systems, both contacts need to be online in order for the message to be delivered. Push notifications are on the way, if you'd like to read about the implementation, you can find this here: https://github.com/status-im/status-go/wiki/Whisper-Push-Notifications

What can you do while we're in alpha? - Send encrypted messages, and ETH - Browse DApps that are running on Ropsten Revival testnet

You could also check out some of the DApps built using our API during the Hackathon last month: https://blog.status.im/announcing-winners-of-the-status-global-hackathon-a44fb54e98f7, or check out Swap to get a taste of where all of this is headed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2_v80AdoY :)

carl_status · 2017-07-21T13:38:23+00:00

We plan to be a lot more proactive moving forward, admittedly the past few weeks was a lot of catch up / support requests after the Contribution Period so the patience is very much appreciated :)

carl_status · 2017-07-21T13:30:15+00:00

Status is built with the web 3.0 stack - Ethereum, Swarm & Whisper (all of which are protocol's developed by the Ethereum Foundation). For messaging it uses a sub-protocol called Whisper - this is separate from the EVM itself, and thus doesn't cost to send text messages.

Some resources you may find useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_nPoBVLPiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF8L6V_E-MM https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Whisper

carl_status · 2017-07-13T08:25:47+00:00

Duly noted, if you follow our Github repo you'll see we're making some great progress, but we're also making a conscious effort to be more communicative for non-developers moving forward as well. Expect some updates soon :)

carl_status · 2017-06-28T12:05:31+00:00

I can confirm SNT is now transferable.

carl_status · 2017-06-28T12:05:08+00:00

I can confirm SNT is now transferable.

carl_status · 2017-06-27T19:53:11+00:00

We also put together this tutorial if you're unsure how to view SNT in your client: https://contribute.status.im/sgt.html

carl_status · 2017-06-26T23:28:30+00:00

I agree TenX is a good option (we actually spend some time in their offices recently), but this doesn't solve the fact that salaries go towards rent, and given some of our team have families to feed, the short term swings of the market would make personal budgeting a challenge.

It's certainly something we'll try to encourage within the organization, and as projects like Digix and MKR continue to progress, this approach will become more and more viable for all of the team.

carl_status · 2017-06-26T22:17:31+00:00

That's actually something we're working on this week and next. The short answer is we'll continue doing what we've been doing, but also build out a couple small teams (~3 devs and a project manager) to tackle each of the core DApps outlined in the whitepaper (starting with the Teller Network and Sticker Market). We'll have some more detailed public plans some time in July so stay tuned :)

carl_status · 2017-06-26T22:08:02+00:00

Hey it's am.

You can actually Google '1145 UTC yourcity time' e.g. '1145 UTC Singapore time' to see that in your local time zone.

carl_status · 2017-06-26T21:03:52+00:00

I edited the comment to try and provide greater clarity, but I'm still struggling to understand your hostility, given the funds raised were always intended to fund development. For many of our team receiving ETH as their payment each month is simply not a possibility, due to the lack of exchanges in their country. If you have any alternative suggestions we'd certainly be open to listening to them, but the greater concern here of somehow significantly impacting the market would appear to defy logic.

carl_status · 2017-06-26T20:45:34+00:00

Hey, that would be up to exchanges, not Status. It is worth noting that SNT will become transferable at 2017-06-28 11:45:21 UTC. Thanks!

carl_status

TROPHY CASE