RE: Shedding some light on the EOS Token Purchase Agreement
Will it be John Doe and his cousin who fork the EOS software 3 weeks after the code is released, when they have zero branding, zero market awareness...
You're making a lot of assumptions, as the author of this post did. There are many more possibilities. Let me give one example (again out of many more possibilities): block.one undergoes some sort of startup drama and stumbles. A new startup with many millions of dollars to spend on marketing, branding, future development, and support (and perhaps including some former team members from block.one) decides to launch its own chain using a different distribution strategy.
Another possibility: despite the apparent intent of the ICO, the initial distribution is viewed as corrupted or ineffective somehow, perhaps too concentrated in the hands of a few whales. In that case, I could see even block.one but certainly others pursuing a different course with a broader distribution that the ICO. That could turn out to be a good outcome, for the long term success of the EOS technology (but not necessarily ICO investors)
Another possibility: Due to some peculiarity in the distribution process over the course of a year, some major investors feel their share was unfairly diluted, so these investors (again with significant resources behind them) decide to launch a chain with a different initial distribution.
There is not even any reason to necessarily assume that block.one itself would only support the one ICO chain. They have no obligation to do that, have not said they will do that, and could decide to remain neutral and support all chains, or even focus their efforts on a different one that (then) appears better positioned for the future. Or they could be paid to support other chains with different initial distributions (with none of that money going to ICO investors), just as Steemit was paid to support Golos (STEEM investors did receive a 10% airdrop of Golos in that instance, but there was no obligation to do so; STEEM investors could have gotten nothing at all).
These are only a few possible outcomes. None of the credible possibilities include any sort of 'John Doe and his cousin'. That is misleadingly dismissive of credible launch efforts. (However, in the history of coins there are cases such as Litecoin or Monero where essentially some 'John Doe' did launch and alternate chain that due to better distribution or perceived social contract, displaced the chain favored by the original developers.
The trust component is in whether they will do what they said they will do
They said they will do nothing at all. Read the terms again if you think otherwise. There is no trust at involved there.
Startup drama is possible, but it's possible with any project. This would apply to all ICO's and would not be particular to EOS.
The other two possibilities aren't likely enough to consider. Even with the stock market there are odd things like you mentioned in those two possibilities. The entire management of a company could all die within a month, for example. All possible, but we don't consider those because it isn't likely. To view the initial project as bad, there would have to be an alternate community which gains more traction than the main community... but the main community is holding the funds, the marketing, the names, ect. ect. So while this is possible, it is not likely enough to think about. For the last example, it is unlikely, also it would require those investors to form a consensus among themselves rather than dispute one another, thus causing their movement to fizzle to nothing. Furthermore, they are going to have to convince non-investors to run their Genesis block... and why would anyone do that when no one has heard of them? Meaning, they would begin behind the curve in the marketing world, and have to market themselves to crypto people as the real solution all the while they do not control websites like eos.io or the main EOS github. Very unlikely.
In the world of investing there are a 101 possibilities of things that could happen. It is true they can happen, but rather it is the predictable risks we should think about. To avoid the oddball left-field catastrophe, investors protect against those slim odds by diversifying holdings. So when something very strange does happen, it doesn't matter too much because of diversification of risk.
No they are not. Block.one is. Block.one has no obligation to use those assets to the benefit of 'the main community'. A year is a long time. If you don't think that the developer team may fragment and have diverging views how to launch the platform, change its view on the best way to launch the platform in a year, diverge with at least some significant component of the community, or finally that other important marketplace changes may occur over the course of a year then you haven't been around much.
I'm not claiming that the ICO is a bad investment. It may be a good investment. But it presents a significant risks that do not apply to many other ICOs where there is no such split between the tokens investors are buying and the tokens actually used by the platform. This is not just 'anything can happen'. It complicates things greatly. In practice, it may make no difference, but that can't be assured, and you are being unrealistic to dismiss the issue and especially to do so with simplistic single cases such as 'Average Joe and his cousin' which do not at all represent the universe of reasonably plausible outcomes.
This is complete nonsense and exactly the kind of maximalist "there can be only one" rhetoric that has disproven again and again. Divergent views and diverse platforms do not lead directly to a movement fizzling to nothing. You are too dismissive of the possibility of many varied outcomes, some good for ICO investors, some not, but the latter is not at all equivalent to 'the movement fizzling to nothing'. It is very possible that ICO investors could be left in the dust and EOS or some variant thereof could still spawn a very successful movement.
One last time, you presume that no one has heard of them. They could in fact be extremely well-known investors, or could have sufficient resources to make themselves well-known, and as for why anyone would support their chain: 1) perhaps their idea of a distribution is more favorable to newcomers, who didn't participate in the ICO, 2) just look at the 1000s of chains that already exist, dozens of which are reasonably successful (and a significant fraction, including of the successful ones, are fork chains). It seems getting participants to support a chain is readily achievable in practice.
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