Ara Community Announcement, 2021 March 29

👋 Hi there! This is our community announcement from March 2021, when the world found ARA on Uniswap, we met some new frens, and began planning liquidity mining; It’s correct but history. You probably want to read about the full plan for Liquidity Mining ARA, here 😁

[Note: The Ara core team made this announcement in our Telegram and Discord channels on the night of 2021 March 29 in American time zones. I’m posting it here in Medium so you can get to it without having to scroll up a lot. Edits from the original include: (1) Linking account mentions to work outside Telegram and Discord; (2) Changing ‘5 days’ ago, which is an error, to ‘2.5 days’ ago, which is correct; and (3) and adding an important note that the draft schedule of 8 weeks and 200 weeks does not begin in a week. We will make further announcements about the schedule when we’ve figured out more details, including, when it will begin. Thanks!]

Hello everyone.

There have been a lot of questions today, and thank you for those. Members of the core team and I have been trying to answer moment to moment, but also, we’ve spent the day meeting with each other and members of the wider community, discussing how to best respond, and planning how to best move forward.

In everything we do in this community, it’s our goal to be as transparent as possible. There’s stuff outside our control that limits this some times, and about some things. But please know that if there’s something that isn’t answered, or answered right away, that’s likely (although unfortunately) the reason why.

I have been working on Ara for 2 years. Tony, Joe, Eric, Brooklyn and others have been working on it even longer. We shipped version 1.0 of the Ara File Manager in December 2019. In January of this year, ARA got a Uniswap pool. And then, just 5 days ago, a larger community found us, which is great. So if you got here now, that’s awesome, you’re awesome, and welcome. 😍

As many of you have found us in the last few days, I’ve heard from many of you that you’re surprised by two things: That we’ve been at this for so long. And, that this project is actually real: A team of real people; A GitHub of real code; A software stack you can integrate; A desktop app you can install and run. A community that includes content and platform partners, indie and major.

Building real stuff takes time. We’re all in this for the long haul. I want you to come along as we do that — through many months, through lots of software development and testing, as we build something together that gets the world a significant step closer to our shared vision for a more decentralized Web.

We’re making useful software tools that solve real problems content creators and their fans face from centralized platforms today. We’re excited to work with the open source communities around Ethereum and Dat/Hypercore Protocol (which we are and have been a part), podcasters, videographers, other artists and their fan communities, as well as people who use the ARA token with the sites and apps that are a part of everything that’s Ara (and the people who are most interested in that).

So while the ARA token is just one part of Ara, a lot of you who found us because of ARA’s activity on Uniswap, and want to know those specifics. The simple truth is this: We were unprepared for the level of activity and interest the project has seen in the last 2.5 days when ARA on Uniswap really started to happen. So our delay in answering even simple questions about this so far is because we’ve been racing behind the scenes to put together a first draft of a great plan for the project that contains those answers.

1 billion ARA exist. So far, only about 4% of them have been swapped into the pool. Right now, the pool contains 0.7% of the billion total — the rest of the 4% have moved out through the pool into the world.

4% of ARA out into the world is great — but it also isn’t nearly enough for ARA to get started for real. We’re concerned that immediate exuberance (well-founded exuberance! and welcome exuberance!) around this great project could very quickly result in numbers that make no sense, to anyone, and are difficult or even impossible to work with. And that if this happened, that it could actually hurt the project.

Fortunately, we’ve got great help to chart a path for Ara forward. We met Tyler @LordTylerWard way back at the start when Ara was just an idea at Token Factory. (And Tyler, a huge thank you already for spending the time you’ve spent in the last few days with Tony, Eric, me and others helping us pencil together this map.) I’m very glad that Tyler, with his expertise from BarnBridge, is advising us.

So while none of this is final, here’s what an early draft of that map looks like:

Around 25% of the 1 billion ARA has already been distributed to members of the core team. Tyler tells us this is quite standard for projects.

It’s our goal to get 30% of the 1 billion ARA out into the world, to do this in a transparent and structured way, and also, to do it pretty quickly. DeFi has tools to help projects do this that didn’t exist even a few months ago. Eric, our lead blockchain dev, is looking at BarnBridge’s smart contracts around yield farming. Setting things up for ARA may be as simple as forking BarnBridge contracts (they are already tested and proven) and adding in presets for ARA.

We’re considering a schedule like this:

• Over 8 weeks, distribute 10%
• Simultaneously, over 200 weeks, distribute 20% (totaling 30% of 1 billion)

[Note that this draft schedule of 8 weeks and 200 weeks does not begin in a week. We will make further announcements about the schedule when we’ve figured out more details, including, when it will begin. Thanks!]

These simultaneous schedules (fast and slow) reflects the reality that we’ve already been building Ara for a few years, and plan on building for more.

45% remains with this plan, and we’ll keep that as a treasury, and use it for activities that help the ecosystem, the network and its users. This reserve we may also not end up using at all.

I hope this answers many of the questions many of you have had today. Our Telegram and Discord chats are all about Q&A, so keep them coming — Tony, Brooklyn, I and other members of the core team are here to help.

Thanks everyone! -Kevin, on behalf of the core team