Background: No, this is not my first time participating in an ICO. My first one was STORJ a few weeks ago. I’m pretty disappointed in it and I’m hoping this token sale goes well for me since I really believe in Status. Follow me on Instagram (@ghiliweld) where I give a behind the scenes look to all my followers on my trading and other moves. If you like this post please consider tipping me in ETH, I really appreciate it and it helps me write these articles. Thank you My address: 0xD9f3465E42B5F0eC627A156FB158b32Bc828CBBb

Hey guys, it’s your boi Ghili, back again but this time I’m participating in Status’s ICO. If you don’t know what Status I suggest you read up on it. Here’s their: website, whitepaper and announcement. Status is basically a cross between a mobile browser that can access the Ethereum network and a chat app like Messenger. It’s meant to make the Ethereum network more usable for the average smartphone user, and in my opinion it’s the first app that’ll make Ethereum mainstream.

In the next two weeks I will be giving y’all a behind the scenes look as I prepare for the Status ICO and I’ll also be sharing my tactics that I will use to get in during the token sale.

Here’s where I’m at right now:

I have 2 ETH meaning I will get about 20,000 SNT if I get in. I’ve created a wallet on MyEtherWallet.com I’m also in the Status Slack room (if any of the team members see this please give me some SGT).

If you have any questions on how to get involved in an ICO if you’re a newbie hit me up anytime, I’d be glad to answer any questions.

06/06/2017

JARRAÐ HOPΞ wrote a new blog yesterday that really clarifies how the distribution works. I really like how they’re focusing on the distribution of SNT, which I found is somewhat of an afterthought in most ICOs.

08/06/2017

Hey guys, in the past 2 days a lot has happened:

Yours truly is eligible to receive some SGT now (thanks Carl Bennetts). The Status Genesis Token (SGT)is a second token created by the Status team that is meant for community members and people who want to see Status succeed. Because whales can control almost the entire supply of a specific coin they want but they can’t control SGT since it’s awarded manually by the Status team. I don’t know all the details just yet but I know SGT will be redeemable for SNT and I have a feeling SGT will have more voting power in the governance system to ensure that Status’s main interest are upheld and the whales are kept in check. The Status team officially rolled out a contribution website where you’ll get everything you need to be able to contribute. Instructions are coming soon. Carl told me that the contribution address would be posted on the site about a day before the sale so make sure you check it out on June 16. The sale starts at 14:00 GMT, so I’ll have to be up before 10 in the morning since I live in Montreal. Great… The team also uploaded this amazing video explaining what Status is if you still don’t understand.

09/06/2017

JARRAÐ HOPΞ hooks me up with some SGT. This will be redeemable for SNT after the ICO.

16/06/2017

Wow, okay! A lot of great things happened today and yesterday. Here’s a short recap:

The sale terms and condition were released today. While everything in there is pretty standard something that stood out for me was how to the dynamic ceiling would work. Basically, if you send your contribution but the transaction doesn’t go through because the ceiling was filled, they’ll send back your ETH (minus the gas fee) and you get to try again. What worries me about this is if the network is too congested, you might not get your ETH back before the next ceilings are revealed and I’m worried I might not get in after all. I’m not sure if this is a plausible outcome, please correct if I’m wrong because I hope I am. Other than that, the fact they kept reiterating that Status has a chance of failing and that nothing is guaranteed kinda gave me cold feet. The date of the token sale was changed twice in the same day. At first it as going to be on June 21 which wouldn’t have worked out for me (Ugh, exams…) but it was quickly changed to JUNE 20 AT 2 PM GMT which is next Tuesday which is perfect for me. Status published a two blog posts yesterday and some video guides:

Here are some highlights:

There is NO priority for SGT holders after all (fuck).

priority for SGT holders after all (fuck). The recommended gas limit is 200,000 and there will be a maximum gas price of 50 Gwei .

and there will be a . US citizens cannot participate in the token sale (Ha!). But frankly, this rule is going to be taken as seriously as the law against jaywalking.

You get 10,000 SNT per ETH

I’m glad they released a My Ether Wallet tutorial but I wish they would’ve made an advanced guide like Jorge Izquierdo and Luis Cuende did with Aragon. I’m interested in using the signed transaction on MEW and the broadcasting it on Etherscan. Of course this all depends on if I’ll be able to prepare the transaction beforehand.

Something I found odd though was a discrepancy in their announcements. They wrote in their sale terms that the SNT tokens will be held for 20 days before being released to the contributors but it’s written that the tokens will be held for a week everywhere else. I hit them up on Twitter asking them to clarify this and they haven’t responded yet but I will come back to let y’all know when they do. In doubt, it’s always better to refer to the official sale terms and plan around that. Most likely, the tokens will be released in a week but could be held for up to 20 days if some problems arise.

I want to reiterate some of the warning they gave on their blog posts too:

Don’t send your ETH from an exchange or the Jaxx Wallet, you will lose your money.

Don’t send your ETH to any address you see posted online unless it’s from the official site or Twitter. Be careful when clicking links that seem legit or familiar, sometimes the letters are changed in a way that makes it seem like it’s the real one but it’s not. One strategy I will use to counteract this is bookmarking the official blog, site and Twitter page before the sale like that I will always know I’m sending to the right site.

18/06/2017

Less than 2 days left until the ICO, here’s a few updates I thought I should share.

I talked with the Status team and community members and it turns out there was a small mistake in the sale terms regarding the lockup period. The tokens will be locked up within the smart contract for a period of 7 days and not 20. The sale terms published was what appeared to be a draft, so if you want the final version it would be wise to consult it 24 hours before the sale unless they pull a Bancor and change it in the middle of the sale in which case I can’t help you fam.

The second point is something that has come to my attention this morning on Reddit. As I was browsing r/statusim and r/ethtader I found posts of people claiming they were scammed by people offering “early access” to the token sale to people in the Status community.

Here are the posts in question:

Shit, I should start scamming people too if they’re gonna send over their ETH that easily, smh.

Actual picture of the scammers as we speak

Listen up, YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. Nobody wants to give you “early access” just because. Y’all gotta be careful out here, in crypto you’re on your own, there’s nobody to run to if you get scammed. Do some research before sending money to an address or checking out a website. Copying a website’s source code is so easy I could do it in 5 minutes (which I have) and I’m not even a dev. The scammers used the domain contribute-status.im. The real domain is contribute.status.im, notice the dot before status. Maybe if they had read my post earlier they would’ve bookmarked the official website beforehand, like that they would know they were being led somewhere else.

I hope those who got scammed are alright because the scammers got quite a payday. Looking at etherscan, it appears they made off with almost $70K. Don’t be greedy looking for a good deal because it’s almost too easy to get finessed in the crypto space.

That’s it for now. I’ll see y’all in my next update.

20/06/2017

It’s almost time, we’re only a few hours away from the start of the token sale. Here’s a recap on everything you need to know:

This is the contract address:

0x55d34b686aa8C04921397c5807DB9ECEdba00a4c The start block: #3903900 The recommended gas limit is 200,000 and the max gas price is 50 Gwei. If you send a transaction and it fails and bounces back, you have to wait 100 blocks before sending from the same wallet. Do NOT send from an exchange. I recommend using My Ether Wallet.

What I will be doing to prepare for the token sale is using MEW and entering all the parameters, but instead of sending the transaction I will copy the signed transaction and broadcast it on Etherscan when the sale starts, that way I’m not wasting any time. Hopefully it works out and my transaction doesn’t bounce. I’m still considering whether I should wait for the first ceiling to be reached or not. If I wait for the whales to get in I might have a better chance latter but the team hasn’t been very clear on how the new ceilings would be announced so I’m worried I would miss the new ceilings.

I tried sending the transaction multiple times but it doesn’t appear to be going through, it says ‘unable to locate tx’. I hoped on Reddit to see what was the hold up and several people had the same issue but some of them had the message change to pending so I guess I’ll have to wait. Going forward I’m definitely not participating in an ICO unless I’m running my own node or my address is white-listed by the company. Smh…

After a few hours of digging and refreshing Reddit +100 times/min, I finally found a way to get in. One contributor would spam several transaction but changed the gas limit every time (current gas limit + 1=new gas limit). After 5 tries my transaction finally went through.

Since I contributed 2 ETH I received 20,000 SNT. I also received 1,000 SGT and I’m still waiting for the end of the ICO to find out how many SNTs that will get me.

All in all, the beginning of the sale was hell but after a few hours, once the whales had gotten through, the rest seems to be going smoothly and the dynamic ceiling system seems to be working well. The reason there was chaos is probably cause the Status ICO was so highly anticipated. One thing JARRAÐ HOPΞ and Carl Bennetts could’ve done is have a few people doing damage control on the official Twitter account and subreddit, because there were a lot of frustrated people asking question that went unanswered for hours. I was on the subreddits during the whole day and could’ve done so if I was given a sizable amount of SGT. I might consider offering my services during the 0x ICO. And while allowing the whales and other large white-listed groups go first was smart, they shouldn’t have gone at the start of block #3903900. They could have done it the day before or found another similar solution because the fact that all of these transaction went through at the same time and only the white-listed addresses went first was what made the network incredibly congested.

P.S.: If you plan on participating in an ICO in the near future block out your whole day, especially if it was as highly anticipated as the Status ICO.