Just to clarify some points made in original post:

1. we aren't writing everything from scratch; we are building on a years-long effort that was already underway to rewrite TC, and that project uses existing production-ready frameworks. We're aiming to launch a minimum viable product (MVP) for beta testing by Christmas, and we welcome security audits from those gracious enough to volunteer their time.

2. to date, we have still been unable to contact the sysadmin of the original TC. We are saddened by what has happened but cannot confirm who has posted the BTC address that most of you have seen. We do acknowledge that there were security issues with the original TC, and this is something which
we are taking seriously and changing process to ensure this does not happen again. We will not be asking for any donations until we can deliver a functioning site.

3. we are asking for help, but only from designers. We have enough devs to get things wired together, and while we are willing to launch the site with a bootstrap theme or some other shitty-looking alternative, we would much rather have it looking good from day one. Those who have pm-ed already

4. we are not planning to use most of the content in the database we do have, including torrent files. Essentially we will be starting over, but using the db to validate TC refugees.

Thank you <3