I support Arthur's decision, which is also why I initiated Atompus. Official donation campaigns might encounter some issues, which NFT minting could potentially avoid.
Update Regarding Community Donations:
We have decided to refund all donations received. We do not actually require funds for development, and it was a mistake to request donations. We have not spent any donation funds, and we will return all of it. We will soon open up a form where donators can submit details of their transactions to receive back their donated bitcoins. We thank you all for your support. We explain our reasoning behind this decision below.
The Atomicals Virtual Machine (AVM) smart contract software and documentation will be released for free as we have stated before - the work has been entirely self funded from start to finish. We are excited to release it because we believe it is a novel approach to bringing smart contract capabilities to Bitcoin and opens up new possibilities.
More info:
We stated that donators will get in return the opportunity put their name and message into the open source copyright notice of the AVM software documentation. We also stated that donations are made with no other expectations and did not represent any investment of any kind and we would *never* issue any token for any donation contributions. It was purely a voluntary contribution and we would put the donator’s name and message into the copyright notice - nothing else. Since we are refunding all the donations, instead will open up a submission form to anyone and everyone who wants to have their name and message immortalized in the software license!
The reality is we do not actually need any donated funds because the software is stable and will not need long term development beyond the occasional maintenance update that can easily be done by anyone in the future as required. We are almost ready to release a beta of the core AVM interpreter code and we will release it to the community for free without having used any external funding of any kind. We are very proud of the research and work we have done, and excited to share in depth soon.
In the coming days we will share the link to a form to submit details to claim donations back anytime within the next year. We also commit to not move any unclaimed donations for a minimum of 5 years. At no point will any donations be used for supporting Atomicals development or any projects related to Atomicals, Bitcoin or any other blockchain projects. We will do our best to directly send back the funds to the sender address where it came from if it seems like it’s not an exchange address and it's clear the source. We ask for your patience and help to provide accurate information in the case where more verification is required.
We will also share a separate submission form where you have the opportunity to submit your name and message to be included in the “Thank you” section of the copyright notice of the open source software license. It is open to anyone and everyone - It is as our way of showing appreciation to all of you.
We apologize for the confusion and our hasty decision to ask for donations without working out the ramifications and before it full assessment. We will finish our work the right way for ourselves and we thank you for your patience while we work through the next steps. We are so blessed and grateful to all of you. 🙏