The Future of SundaeSwap

One of the things that has been central to our vision for SundaeSwap is bringing ethics and trust to the table. Our community is just as important to us, and the input and insights you have given us over the last few days has led us to take a hard look at our launch plans, and has prompted us to make some changes.

The first thing we are announcing is that we will delay the ISO — the updated timeline will be shared on June 1st. We and our community became incredibly excited about the opportunity that the ISO provides: It’s an excellent vehicle to involve our community and disperse SUNDAE tokens responsibly. That energy and momentum, along with our enthusiasm to hit the road running and our confidence in the infrastructure we’ve built, carried us into trying to execute on this idea at a blistering pace.

Two important areas that we’ve received feedback on are the amount of detail we’ve shared on the business model our stake pool will fund, and our choice to bring in a third-party stake pool operator. To that second concern, we want to clarify that we were (and still are, should we decide to change the operations back) prepared to launch the stake pool ourselves (and even had one running on the test-net before we announced the ISO, under the ticker SNS). When that third party approached us, we saw it as a great opportunity to offload the small operational burden, and invite a reliable stake pool operator from the community into the process as a watchdog and whistleblower. We had overlooked an alternative angle that some respected members in the Cardano community highlighted, and it shined a spotlight on some issues that we had been wrestling with in the leadership team as well.

This brings us to the first point of concern mentioned above. There is confusion around how the proceeds from the ISO will be used, and we don’t have the foundational materials in place to explain the project you were getting involved in. With the respect we hold for the sources of these criticisms, we ultimately made the decision to take a step back, tighten our belts, get our ducks in a row, and re-approach the ISO from more solid footing.

We’re pairing today’s announcement with some exciting news over the next week:

• AMA with the Founders
  Tomorrow, May 25th, at 6pm PT / 9pm ET, we’ll run an “Ask Me Anything” style event with our community. If you want to be involved, head over to our discord (https://discord.gg/Rm9VCc8W9j) where our co-founders will be answering questions from the chat. Keep an eye on our twitter (@SundaeSwap) for more information.
• Expanded Leadership Team
  The response to SundaeSwap has been amazing. We’ve been working hard to expand our team to bring the right skills to bear. We’re proud to be able to announce new additions to the leadership team this week on our website. We hope you’ll be as excited as we are.
• Technical Papers
  To round us off, we’ll be releasing a series of whitepapers exploring different technical aspects of the platform we are building, with the first one coming within the next week.

We’re deeply committed and incredibly excited about the concept of an ISO and the opportunity it provides for community engagement in a responsible way. We’re taking time to incorporate your feedback and will have an exact timeline for you on June 1st.

We know that many of you are excited about the ISO model. Ultimately, any change in plans comes with disappointment. However, we feel that this path is the healthiest for our community. As we approach the updated date for the ISO, we believe that a more solid foundation will make it all the more trustworthy and exciting, and something that everyone can feel good about.