As I understand it, to actively attract users.
Training and outreach.
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You are of course entitled to your opinion. But we (CEX.IO) are a big group with nice size userbase and an even nicer size community. Across 198 countries and territories. In the business for 7+ years. With not one but an ecosystem of products.
We’ve laid out the technical part of our work (that is quite intense) and marketing (call it evangemism, “Further Reach”) part in the document.
Obvi, there is no way to say “I will bring you 27, 357 Jills and Jones by December 31” - no one does that in the proposals. We got no crystal ball. But we’ve added a screenshot of community engagement activities that we’ve done and that are designed for virality and engagement. And the metrics are there. From here - it’s your call.
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I really respect CEX.IO and am sure it is one of the biggest one. No doubt. But, it doesn’t mean that Free TON pay for it. What you are going to do with the budget requested will give more value to CEX.IO mostly. Please clarify what this partnership will bring to Free TON and is it really worth it?
I think it is the main thing we have to see on all partnership proposal.
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I believe our proposal outlines values nicely. So no point rehashing.
Two things I want to highlight:
- Bringing our users and community to Free TON is a contribution to decentralization.
The whole notion of decentralization is based on the idea that a diverse group of users with various levels of tech experience find practical application of the protocol.
And our user base is a remarkable representation of that: verified, from all walks of life, some of which are first-time users of Bitcoin and others are institutionals. And everything in between. You got the whole range.
That’s valuable.
2. We make meaningful engagement with the protocol even for a small guy possible.
And engagement to us goes beyond buy and sell - that’s speculation. When a person becomes a driver of the protocol - that’s engagement.
Right now: only those who can set up a node and run it can participate in staking and (last time I checked here: https://ton.live/validators?section=all) you need to have min of 100K TON Crystals to participate. Ouch, that’s a lot!
What we will provide: with CEX.IO staking, everyone who holds even 1 TON Crystal will be facilitating the consensus and getting the staking rewards. More so - someone just needs to hold the coin (no running a node, nada). On my book - that’s democratizing the network (and we go further with governance - see in the proposal).
Anyone can “fly a plane loaded with money” across a country. But, as we outline - just disseminating TON Crystals without making an environment for meaningful engagement would not achieve adoption. Hence, [ deeper engagement + further reach ]. We offer both:
“Whereas deeper engagement creates the environment for the protocol users to stick around, further reach makes the users to come in the first place. One cannot be without the other.”
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I wouldn’t call a guy who “holds, trades or staks” TONs, a Free TON users. This kind of decentralization can easily be achieved by an airdrop and without any extra costs.
Giving exchanges some tokens to be distributed among their users happens everyday by very usual cryptocurrencies (and even scam ones).
I do beg, do not lower Free TON down to very usual ones, please.
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This is a very good proposal and a well thought out plan. I am in favor.
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I also think it’s great added value to the ecosystem
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So when are you guys launching? Community is really looking forward.
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On November 17th, 2020, we submitted our Free TON proposal with two stages:
- Integration was the major theme of the first stage;
- Engagement, reach and distribution initiatives are in focus of the second stage.
Our proposal passed by the governance vote on December 1, 2020! We are very grateful to be a part of this undertaking where community, technical minds, and businesses come together to be stewards of decentralization.
Stage 1 of our proposal was planned to take up around 2 months. As 2 months elapsed since the proposal was accepted, we are submitting the Stage 1 Report.
In the proposal, we’ve listed Stage 1 Acceptance criteria:
- Integrate Free TON in the Wallet;
- Integrate Free TON into CEX.IO Staking;
- Propose governance participation concept for CEX.IO-supported nodes.
Integrate Free TON into CEX.IO Wallet - DONE
Right now, both CEX.IO users and enthusiasts in the whole wide crypto universe, can become members of the Free TON ecosystem by means, familiar to them.
TON Crystals can be purchased with a credit or debit card or with a balance available on the Exchange.
In addition to the Instant Buy, users can sell TON Crystals while sale proceeds are immediately delivered to their credit or debit card! The feature, called Instant Sell, has been a lifesaver for those who found themselves with no funds on a card and a need to cover an urgent expense (think unexpected overspend on PlayStation 5 or hot date ordering lobster in the restaurant ;)).
With TON Crystals available to top up your card with funds instantly, these coins become a source to cover some essential (and not so essential) expenses in life. Pretty awesome!
Instant Buy and Instant Sell features make it extra simple to on-board and off-board into the Free TON ecosystem.
Naturally, for those with better understanding of markets, deposits, withdrawals, market orders and limit orders to buy or sell TON Crystals are also available.
All transactions can be performed both in web browsers and on mobile app.
Integrate Free TON into CEX.IO Staking - DONE
At the moment, any holder of TON Crystals can participate in staking with CEX.IO. Even if you have as little as 1 TON Crystal, you can engage with TON Crystals staking! No more need to overcome the minimal stake requirement to be able to stake TON Crystals.
Additionally, over 15K current CEX.IO users actively staking various PoS coins - can now facilitate consensus for Free TON and stake TON Crystals, too.
In Stage 2, we plan to run Staking Incentive activities, bringing more awareness to TON Crystal governance. A temporary increase of Estimated Annual Yield, available to us as an instrument, is one example of such activity.
Whether you are staking a little or a lot, the staking information with accruing rewards is available to you LIVE in your staking.cex.io dashboard. I’m typing these words and growing my 
staking rewards! Even the rhyme feels good.
Regular payouts are made straight to users’ balances, while they keep full control of their coins and can withdraw or sell them at any moment. Our algorithm will calculate staking reward precisely for the time your TON Crystals were in your possession staked at CEX.IO.
Propose governance participation concept for CEX.IO-supported nodes - see below:
Finally, our proposal included offering a concept of how we envision handling our duties to facilitate consensus, given we may become a custodian of a significant amount of TON Crystals from our users.
Being an ecosystem with numerous products allowing people to interact with the cryptocurrency economy, CEX.IO has enormous power of guiding its users to the world of open finance. And we understand that with power comes responsibility (cliche but so true!).
As a participant with potentially sizable staking weight on Free TON, we recognize how important it is to make governance decisions that reflect what’s best for the network. A reasonable question: how does one determine what is best for a network?
Our take is that, by choosing a node to stake with, a delegator assumes that a node would hold his/her best interests in key governance decisions. And it is an ethical responsibility for those who run nodes to live up to that expectation if the node wants to keep delegators’ support.
At the same time, in the life of a network, there might be governance decisions that are not simply “right” or “wrong”. And making an effort to understand what’s best for the network in these scenarios is crucial.
One way to achieve this understanding would be to consult with current delegators on this matter. We think this approach is merited in many cases and further promotes decentralisation.
How we envision this:
Imagine a hypothetical (for illustration only) scenario where Free TON would consider splitting coins in two. Well, there might be advantages and disadvantages of this idea. Some would voraciously support it, while others would think it is outright crazy.
If a validators’ list consists of a limited number of actors, individual responsibility of each to make a decision where there is no single right answer - is huge. Having this decision represent the voices of delegators becomes important.
As a group with close relationships with our users, we at CEX.IO envision a process where we ask our current delegators of their opinion on a governance matter in a form of internal vote. It can start as simple as “fill out this form to vote on this matter”. The result of this vote, in turn, will inform how we vote as a node.
Coming back to the hypothetical example, if the majority of the users who stake TON Crystals with us thought that the split is crazy - it would be our responsibility to have our vote being informed by that choice and the choice itself documented.
Those who follow the cryptocurrency industry closely may recall the cases with other networks where validators with a lot of power concentrated in their hands made decisions that ended up upsetting the coin holders. We can learn from these cases.
We think making an effort to find out what the beneficial owner wants, small guy or big guy, - a practice standard in traditional finance - is the right thing to do for a decentralized network too.
Stage 1 completion and Stage 2 ask
This progress report is a deliverable that marks the end of Stage 1 we described in the proposal. Hence, we make a request to release the following portions of coins:
60,000 TON Crystals for on Stage 1 delivery;
700,000 TON Crystals for Stage 2 of the proposal.
We are excited to move on to Stage 2, that will drive deeper engagement and further reach of the Free TON network!
Total amount to be paid: 760,000 TON
Address: 0:825365116977587ad12569134cc2fe60070b7edb51cdae7ec938f9ff173ab690
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UPDATE: As was explained to me in one of the replies, integration is live since Feb 1st. Indeed, depositing works, will try staking, exchanging, etc.
= = = = == original post:
Can you please help me understand the integration part?
My understanding is that - at least currently -a user of your wallet can neither send their TON crystals in nor send them out, only buy something you call “TON crystals” from you and sell back to you, right? Much like Revolut/Paypal say it’s “crypto” while in fact, it’s just their internal accounting because you can only get “bitcoins” from them and sell it back to them.
Same way - if there are no TON crystals involved, there’s no real “staking” of tokens in a sense of DePools. You’re just paying rewards to users for storing something (not TON crystals - there’s no way to send TON crystals in) in users’ wallets, right?
So what does that have to do with integration?
Hello. Great job. Got a lot of questions from people how to do it. The possibility of buying from the card is a very good opportunity.
Question - when will the withdrawal be available?
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A user on our wallet CAN send TON Crystals out and CAN receive them from elsewhere - this is what is described in the report.
The users send the coins and not the “proxy” derivative.
If we talk about trading on the exchange, because we are a centralized exchange - obvi - every transaction of buy and sell is not a blockchain transaction. And just because changing users’ balances is indeed accounting, the real coins corresponding to users’ balances are mostly in cold storage.
Similarly, the TON Crystals are staked - people either bought it on the platform or deposited it via a blockchain transaction.
So -it is integration, whichever way you look at it.
Withdrawal is available. I think you might look at the mobile app (where currently only Deposit button is visible) - on web browser withdrawals are available (see one of the screenshots). In the app, as changes go through the app store, may take a bit longer to get this change.
Thank you for your response! I see some changes have been made recently. I will look into it and report back.
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Yup. We’ve posted the report today because these things have been just taken to production for the world to use.
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Well, I see that the first stage is completely completed.
I support the second tranche
Sending tokens to the exchange works perfectly
I sent a trial of 1 crystal from the WEB version of the wallet. MEMO phrase specified in the comment. Everything went fine (waiting 3 minutes)
You can trade TON Crystal on the CEX exchange. Now I noticed that the TON / BTC / USDT trading pairs work in the mobile version. Not available on the WEB. I hope this is a temporary effect and the CEX developers will solve this problem.
It is possible to withdraw funds in the WEB version.
The commission is 1 TON Crystal. Since I have only 1 crystal on my account, it was not possible to check the functionality of the output. If someone checked - write a review.
.The purchase of TON Crystal for fiat is currently not available.
In the WEB and mobile versions of the app, in the purchase tab. I couldn’t find a TON for fiat. Perhaps this is a temporary effect.
@SagittariusAStar please explain why the purchase for fiat is not available? When will TON / BTC / USDT trading be available in the web version ?
I did purchase TON Crystals with fiat yesterday - the screenshots are from my phone. Please double-check there.
