Unburnt/unswapped ENG token future use?

Hi there,

I would appreciate some better transparency from the team @ Secret Network.

Now that the ENG price has crashed, it has come to my attention that we needed to burn and convert our ENG tokens to a SCRT token. But this feature is now closed and you seem to be unwilling to open it again.
I hold a large number of ENG tokens, but wasn’t aware this so called “voluntary” swap needed to be done and seemingly was actually essential to avoid what appears to now be a substantial loss. Since Secret and Enigma have unrelated names it is not clear how these projects are really related.
However, it now seems that the Secret Network is Enigma, just rebranded.
The original people are even involved, like Tor Bair.

Based on this, my questions are:

  1. What will become of all the unburnt ENG tokens like mine?
  2. Will the unburnt ENG tokens ever turn into a real Enigma project and give the ENG token value and utility or are all our unburnt ENG tokens completely useless and worthless from here on in?

At this stage it feels like something very fudgy and unethical is happening here, hence getting some straight-up answers would be appreciated.

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I’m very sorry to hear you are still holding a substantial amount of ENG.

To clarify the relation between the Secret and Enigma monikers, you might find this announcement from Feb 2020 informative https://blog.enigma.co/the-enigma-mainnet-has-launched-3bd0d40fe80d

As mentioned in that announcement, for legal reasons, Enigma was unable to facilitate a swap, or even really be able to comment on a swap.

Through decentralized autonomous governance, the initial validators of Secret Network voted that they would facilitate a community-led swap for a limited time, and after months of discussion, planning, and development the swap went live in July 2020.

In regards to your questions, there is nothing stopping some other autonomous organization from deciding that they want to bring ENG holders into their community by creating some kind of swap of their own, but it appears unlikely that the Secret Network community will vote to do this a second time for SN.

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As @baedrik alluded, reopening the swap on SCRT would require a vote.

I’d be fine with it, not really sure why it was necessary to close, but seems unlikely to be a popular measure.

If the ENG tokens were from the ICO participation, there was talk about an eventual refund at one point. However I’m not associated with Enigma, so can’t speak to the status or likelihood, and I suspect they won’t speak on it either.

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I appreciate those who took the time to answer my questions and clarify things.

Obviously, I was hoping that our trust in Enigma was not misplaced and that the ENG token integrity was still intact, however from the responses it is becoming clear that is not the case - and this is pretty devastating.

While I understand that the Secret Network is a community, it is clear now that this project is essentially Enigma rebranded with the same stakeholders, therefore all ENG stakeholders should have been treated honestly and fairly and be given the rightful opportunity to swap their tokens. Especially because the team would’ve known that the ENG token would have no other future utility or value.

Therefore, any people who still hold ENG tokens have clearly been robbed and betrayed. I don’t really want to sound too dramatic here, but I just don’t think there is any other way to see it.

What I really can’t understand is why the swap even needed to be closed.
moonstash has indicated that it is technically possible to open it, which is great and I think would also imply that it was not actually necessary to close it.
moonstash has also indicated that it would be contentious to open it again. But in my opinion, it should have been contentious to close it - due to the many ENG holders that would be impacted.
EOS provides a way to swap tokens even after the initial close so I am sure the Secret Network can find a similar fair and honest solution.
If the swap can be reopened then great, but perhaps another way is allocating the future inflation SCRT tokens for this purpose.

I would therefore encourage and urge the Enigma founders, which are now involved in Secret, as well as the community overall to do the right and fair thing and allow ENG token holders to convert their tokens.

I am sure there are plenty of others like me, who placed their enthusiasm and trust and who believed in this project right from the start and who are now being side-lined and will suffer huge and unfair losses otherwise.

I understand that opening the swap again may not be a popular solution for those who have already had a chance to swap (I have read some of your other replies moonstash and can see that you are also unfortunately against reopening the swap and worried the price of SCRT will be affected), but surely it is the just and honest thing to do. I hope you can understand that it is devastating to be left in the lurch like this and there are likely many others like me. Perhaps you can try to put yourself in our position.

To be honest, the fact that the Secret Network chose to have a vote to close the swap feels very unnecessary, dishonest and self-serving by those who knew the implications.
And people like myself had no idea that the vote was even being held, so how can we vote otherwise?
I can only guess that the idea behind closing the swap was that it would reduce the SCRT supply by taking it from other token holders, thus increasing the value, right?

But allowing remaining ENG token holders and hodlers to participate is the only fair and honest path forward.
Please also appreciate that we are in a global pandemic here - people have had plenty of other things to worry about and personally, having my ENG tokens turned worthless is the last thing I thought would happen.

Hence, I would appreciate it if the community can propose a solution for this - one that gives all ENG token holders a fair chance to continue to be part of this project.

Voting for inclusion will result in a much better and stronger community, one based on trust and fairness.

If a vote is needed to reopen the swap, then such a vote should be open to voting for many months, since it will likely take time for other ENG token holders to realise their current predicament and be able to join in for a fair and balanced vote.
However now that the ENG price has crashed, they are likely to become aware of this sooner than later.

Apologies that this got so long, but my hope is that the Secret Network abides by Governance and especially by fairness, because what is happening here is exactly the type of thing that gives cryptocurrencies (which are amazing) a bad reputation.

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Despite what it may seem, whatever the reasons for closing were, the driving factors were certainly not about dilution. The swap had a very high uptake.

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Thank you. I appreciate the continued replies and discussion on this topic.

moonstash, you have indicated that I should focus on the options I have available.

Since Enigma has not and is not providing any transparency as you say, that is what I am trying to explore here - to try and get some answers not only for myself but for other ENG holders like myself who have been caught up in this and gave their support and put their faith and hard-earned money into the Enigma project.

At this stage the only option available to us ENG holders seems to be to appeal to the goodwill of the community of the Secret Network to have another vote to reopen the swap (since this is technically possible as you say) and request that the vote be conducted fairly and continue long enough to give unswapped ENG holders an opportunity to partake in the vote, since it would otherwise be a biased vote. If the vote succeeds, then hopefully the swap can also reopen long enough to give everyone a fair chance to swap and continue to be part of project.

Is that correct or can you give some other options to us that might be available?

Further, what was the reason the swap needed to be closed and who proposed it?

And why was it then extended, but only for a few days?

uxt, I read another comment on this forum that only 25% of ENG holders participated in the swap. If true, that is not a very high uptake at all - and implies that many of us were not aware of this and should have had longer to swap.

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I too am currently a fairly big bag holder of ENG and missed the swap ironically by only a day while doing some late spring cleaning of my various ALT bags . It sucks to be in this position now and missed out similarly with the ICN to ICX swap . Not everyone is watching the movements of all the various projects but it has been a costly lesson to pay more attention or try to keep up with this fast ever changing space .