The Gems Token Sale is 1/30 [Update: The Gems Token Sale has been cancelled]
By: Rory O'Reilly
Tags: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Gems Protocol, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

The Gems Token Sale is 1/30 [Update: The Gems Token Sale has been cancelled]

Everything you need to know about the Gems Token Sale

Editor’s note: This blog post has been updated to reflect that the Gems Token Sale was cancelled.

If you have not contributed to the Gems Ecosystem and have not submitted an application on how you will utilize the GEM Token, you will not be eligible to participate in the Gems Token Sale.

Gems has been incredibly fortunate to have the support of a tremendous community, with over 35,000 submissions for the Gems Community Program, over 50,000 members in the Gems Telegram, and over 1,500,000 micro-tasks completed on the Gems Alpha.

With potential workers and requesters looking to buy GEM tokens, it is crucial to have a fair, efficient distribution mechanism. After careful consideration and evaluation of multiple models and possible trade-offs, we can confidently say that we believe the Gems Token Sale will be efficient, implement equal participation, and provides transparency for GEM token holders.

Pre-Sale/Whitelist + Contributor Tiers

Over the past few weeks, we’ve received so many thoughtful Gems Community Program applications and so much help processing them.

To show our appreciation, we created Gems Pre-Sale/Whitelist tiers determined by the GCP applications and by participation in the review of those applications on the Gems Alpha:

Tier 1 (Sapphire) Contributors — those who absolutely wowed us, blew us away, had us calling our family to tell them about you — will receive a 20% bonus. Less than 1% of applicants achieved this. You will have 1 hour to receive this bonus.

Tier 2 (Emerald) Contributors will receive a 15% bonus. Roughly 10% of applicants achieved this. You will have 2 hours to receive this bonus.

Tier 3 (Ruby) Contributors will receive a 10% bonus. This bonus will decrease every second. Roughly every 2 hours the bonus will go down 1%.

If you submitted a GCP application or reviewed them on the Alpha, you should have received an email with your whitelist status and contributor tier.

If you believe you did not receive an email in error, or are on the wrong tier, please use this form.

The Gems Token Sale will be the first sale of GEM Tokens to date — no GEM Tokens have been sold prior to the Gems Token Sale. Those who buy GEM tokens should buy them because of their utility and nature to be used on the Gems Network.

KYC/AML

KYC/AML will be released within the coming days. You will receive an email when you are able to fill out KYC/AML. Rest assured that the Gems Telegram Announcements group will also announce that KYC/AML is available to be filled out.

If you are a citizen or resident (tax or otherwise) of any country, state, or territory where the purchase of the GEM Token or similar crypto token is prohibited, you are not eligible to purchase GEM Tokens through the token sale.

Gems Token Sale

We structured the Gems Token Sale with efficiency, equality, and fairness in mind. The goal of the Gems Token Sale, a modified spend-all second-price token sale, is to allow everyone who has who will be users of the platform and are whitelisted to participate.

The Gems Token Auction will begin on January 30th, 2018 with a start time to be determined, and will work as follows:

Price Function: The effective hard cap starts very high and decreases over time. The total amount of Gems tokens up for sale is 2,000,000,000. Contribution Phase: During the contribution phase, contributors send ETH to the Gems contract; meanwhile, the effective hard cap is reduced every second. Gems Token Sale Conclusion: The Gems Token Sale ends once the total amount of ETH sent to the contract is equivalent to the effective cap. Token Distribution: After the Gems Token Sale is concluded, there will be a short period of time for the Gems Team to review the sale. This is to ensure everything went smoothly. After this period, the tokens will be transferred to the recipients and can be freely used. The remaining tokens (6,000,000,000) from the initially minted supply will be held by Gems in a multi-sig wallet. Company tokens will be used to subsidize requesters (onboard them to the platform), encourage new workers to the platform, and will be used for long term expenditures.

If you prefer a visual, please enjoy these:

The Gems Token Sale ensures that all participants have a chance to participate fairly

For a more graphical representation of the sale:

Offering a fixed amount of GEM tokens during the Gems Token Sale guarantees that that the sale will run for a duration that allows all participants to equally have the opportunity to participate.

Like Raiden and Polkadot, the initial cap starts out at a number that won’t be reached, and degrades over time to a minimum (15M). It first degrades rapidly, and then levels off.

The degradation formula is:

600 * (30b — 15m)/(time in seconds) + 15m

Security

Before the Gems Token Sale begins, the Gems Token Sale contract will undergo at least 2 independent security audits to ensure that it is safe and secure for everyone involved.

To Summarize…

Please make sure you’re whitelisted in order to participate. You should have received an email with your whitelist status and contributor tier. Remember to submit your KYC/AML information after you receive the email notifying you that KYC/AML is available. The Gems Token Sale will begin on January 30th, 2018 at a time to be determined.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you’ll build on Gems. Whether you’re a worker or requester, thank you everyone for your continued support — we would not be here without you.

Can’t get enough of Gems? Find us everywhere!

I’d like to thank Sol Kim and Peter for their contributions to the writing of this piece. Alex for creating the Gems illustration, and Saya and Austin for creating the Gems Token Sale illustrations. Thank you to Evans, T, ChessMaster, and Harvey for reading through this piece.