“Are you with us?”: Contentos milestones, development plans, and FAQ answers

Contentos CEO and cofounder Mick Tsai urges holistic vision to ecosystem growth

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

Dear COSers,

We started Contentos about a year and a half ago, in March 2018. Back then, BTC was worth USD$10K and ETH was still over USD$600. We saw many blockchain projects raise ambitious goals only to disappear later due to numerous reasons. A common one is due to unsatisfactory low token value which in turn made it difficult for their community support it. This reason created a negative feedback loop for teams as well — maintaining an upward price point for a token consumes precious resources and maintaining this uptrend could become impossibly costly to maintain. This would eventually cause issues for the people and project behind the token, and worst-case scenario, the project (and price) would then collapse.

We at Contentos decided to focus instead on the core of our project — technology and product development. We believe that the ultimate value comes from a truly capable and smart product, relevant to millions of users’ day-to-day lives (instead of simply pushing COS to any exchange). Developing a product deemed valuable by as many people as possible is business 101; it’s a basic principle in economics employed throughout history and is still 100% true in our current blockchain era.

This is why we continue building our blockchain and constantly improve our products.

Just before the fourth quarter of 2018, we integrated the COS token into Cheez app. Instantly, this token integration gained global attention, especially in Vietnam, which will later become one of the leading countries with COS token holders, and is still true to this day.

Then on the 27th of March 2019, testnet v0.1 was released. It was quickly followed by the integration of top, high-quality DApps into our ecosystem — PhotoGrid, COS.TV, COS2048, and WalkCoin. At the time of writing, our testnet has just been upgraded to its fourth phase, “Mars,” which went live on 29th July 2019.

While most projects in testnet, or even some who have already launched their mainnet, struggle just to retain some daily active users as well as integrate DApps and retain transaction volumes — every day, we have over 7k daily on-chain active users and over 60k verifiable daily on-chain transactions. Perhaps it’s a small feat compared to bigger, more established systems like Ethereum, EOS, or Tron. But for an early-stage project still on testnet, the result we’ve achieved thus far is still a remarkable achievement — a goal we want to uphold for future builds and releases.

With all of that said, let’s now talk about our listing journey. It was clear to us right from the beginning that we’d like to work with top-tier exchanges. Not just because of the great liquidity they provide, but the value proposition of top exchanges align with our team’s beliefs and priorities. That’s why right from the get-go, we decided to work with Binance.

Even though this has been a long and tough road, the Binance listing team thoroughly checked every aspect of Contentos. It took months of engagement and countless meetings to qualify for listing on Binance. Which is why on the 2nd of August 2019, we knew our long wait and efforts paid off when Binance announced COS will be listed on their exchange. The listing is yet another chapter we can add to our achievements thus far, which includes amazing milestones such as launching our testnet and integrating our first DApp. It’s not the end, in fact, it’s merely a start to another great chapter ahead of us all.

While these milestones are all notable, we also understand that getting COS listed and traded publicly meant more responsibility for the whole Contentos team. We remain steadfast in our goal to build a truly valuable and indispensable product on top of the Contentos mainnet to create a healthy and strong demand for COS within the Contentos content ecosystem. This would allow us to ensure a sustainable, healthy token value, which will eventually reflect on the token price. Regardless of market conditions, especially during short-term price fluctuations — we will carry on upholding our goals.

As the co-founder of Contentos and as a believer in cryptos and blockchain, I can understand the frustrations felt by some COS holders regarding the token price after getting listed on Binance on the 3rd of August 2019. It is not uncommon for crypto holders to expect 10x token performance ASAP, though realistically, given the current market climate, these expectations can be challenging to meet. So, please, allow me to explain some major points from my end that would hopefully answer your questions.

1. What is the circulating supply of COS token?

Based on disclosed documents, the currently planned circulation is 13.1% of the total 10B COS tokens. Details are as follows:

Token Release Plan

Token Release Plan

2. A noticeable amount of tokens were unlocked, right after getting listed on Binance, why?

Based on the agreement between private sales investors and Contentos, tokens need to be distributed to investors before any official crypto exchange listing. Originally, COS needs to be distributed after getting listed on Binance DEX. However, considering that Binance DEX is a relatively new initiative from Binance, after discussing with all investors, extending the lockup period on their shares for an additional month was agreed upon. To honor the agreement, Contentos unlocked the stipulated tokens right before getting listed in Binance on 3rd of August 2019. Our investors have been of great support to Contentos for more than a year, which requires patience and effort from both sides. I am grateful for their help and guidance establishing Contentos, and most of them still hold every single COS distributed to them. I also have confidence that much stronger support will be provided to Contentos from all of them in the future.

3. Why hasn’t the true potential of this project reflecting on the current price of COS?

Reasons affecting token price usually varies. Despite the overall market sentiment, as the owner of Contentos, I can only say that this is an opportunity for us to truly live up to our initial goal of making Contentos relevant for more people. It appears that the amazing support from our community for our mission and values is being tested, which, for the time being, resulted in a short-term tapering off the value of COS. Later I will explain some solutions to this temporary setback.

4. Is COS a SCAM? What will you do next?

A scam won’t take more than a year. A scam won’t spend millions of dollars to build a fully functional, open-source blockchain, a GitHub with constant commits and a regular monthly update reported on our official website (contentos.io). In the past year, four live, working DApps which serves over 7,000 daily active on-chain users and can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store or Android’s Play Store anytime if you want (ie., PhotoGrid). A scam also won’t take the long and arduous time to work with the world’s number 1 crypto exchange for listing. If you happen to know any scams that have done this, then walk away, and please let me know. We will keep building and releasing products as we have done so in the past, regardless of unfounded opinions. Time will tell.

What’s next?

In the next two months, we will focus on these three things:

1. Everything is on track — the Contentos mainnet launch will be on-time, as scheduled on the 25th of September 2019. We expect to see v0.5 testnet upgrade by the end of August, then the mainnet launch will follow. Once the mainnet is launched, the official content ecosystem reward (A.K.A. “content creation mining”) will start with the very first block generated from the mainnet. That day will be the start of a new era in the global content-creation industry. Also, please take note that all rewards distributed to creators, block producers, and DApp developers from the mainnet will be “VEST,” not the COS token. VEST is essential in the Contentos ecosystem. VEST and COS have a 1:1 relationship. You need VEST to participate in any governance, to vote for block producers, or even in upvoting or gifting votes to your favorite content creators. If you’d like to convert VEST to COS, it will require 13 weeks for it to be gradually and proportionally converted to COS. However, if you decide to convert COS to VEST, the conversion will be instant. So you can think of it this way: all VEST mined from the content ecosystem reward has a “lockup” period by default, which also means the existing COS is very valuable since it can be traded anytime!

2. The mainnet requires 21 block producers. In the coming weeks, we will announce the block-producer election program along with some new mechanisms that will allow community members to become part of some block producers — allowing more people to enjoy the rewards from being a block producer. To be eligible, COS staking is required. More details will be announced in a timely manner. We want all COS holders, big or small, to enjoy the benefits of being part of the Contentos ecosystem in multiple ways, including being a block producer!

3. DApps and users will be expanded. The Contentos and PhotoGrid teams recently launched a pioneer testing for “content creation mining” to all Photogrid users based in Brazil, which has almost one million daily active users. From the 22nd of July and presently, we already see some content creators earning over 100 COS by simply sharing one photo. The key is to collect as many valid likes from other community users as possible, which is a kind of a “mini” version of the future of Contentos’ mainnet content ecosystem reward system (the official mainnet version will naturally take more things into consideration, not just the number of likes). We will soon allow more countries to access and have more content creators and audiences to obtain COS with high-quality content production on a global scale. Similarly, COS.TV is another key focus of our growth. COS.TV now is integrated in the testnet. And later in the month, COS.TV will provide a way for creators to upload videos with a similar pioneer testing on content creation mining will be launched as well. For the last quarter of this year, we will focus on liveme.com and Cheez refactors. We will make sure COS is being distributed to high-quality content creators, and positive community contributors and supporters!

Getting listed on Binance is an important milestone for the Contentos team that serves to strengthen our resolve for continuous improvements and innovations for the long-term. Price fluctuations are temporary, and my goal is to always make sure content creators, community contributors, and loyal long-term believers get the most value from Contentos and COS. Are you with me?