Have we passed a centralization tipping point?

[Stan]

You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done.

                        -- Kenny Rogers

[fluxer555]

jsidhu, I know you were an excited supporter of the idea, but I have come to realize that the burning mechanism is economically flawed. There are ideas in that proposal worth salvaging, and I will get around to it, but I think this is more important. I'm actually almost done...

[jsidhu]

The bts owned by i3 is less than 100m.   

Thank you. If this is genuine, this makes me feel much better about all this. I can more easily stand behind funding your development team knowing you  collectively have less than 5%.

This conversation has derailed, however. The main purpose of this thread was about VOTING POWER. It does not make sense for I3 to use AGS stake, or any stake deriving from AGS stake, to vote. This stake should not even be included in the voting total (denominator). We donated for shares in future DACs and developments, not for centralizing voting toward I3.

This has given me an idea... I will be posting a new proposal soon.

Have you finished your previous proposal regarding how bts gets infused as dacs are merged and people invest in dacs and devs to raise funds? I think you were onto something i suggest finalize that first and lets get it out there see what bm et all thinks of it

[speedy]

I keep thinking to myself that I should just code up a localbitcoins site that acts as the escrow 3rd party. I could do it in about a month in my spare time. But then I question whether this is needed given that i3 has secret plans for a fiat on-ramp anyway.

That sounds very useful!

Yeah having to go via BTC to get BTS sucks.

[James212]

You seem to struggle putting yourself in the devs shoes.   You own a stake but sit back and do nothing, a dev likely owns a smaller stake than you that they bought with their own money just like you. 

The smart think for a dev to do is work somewhere else, earn money and buy more stake. 

You are asking devs to give up $100,000 per year they could be earning at google to grow their $25,000 stake in BTS that they bought with their own money.

Then you realize that they have to sell their stake to put food on the table while you get to keep your stake and do nothing.

I think Amir Taaki is the best example of what a massive injustice the  "expectations of free work" that bitcoin stakeholders have to their developers, is. He's a guy who has refused to give up on his core principles and work for what he considers the betterment of bitcoin users ONLY, with no special interests. And in return he is given nothing.

He has to beg for scraps, squat on random peoples couches and be known as a fringey lunatic by the community. This is the guy who was behind libbitcoin, the first independent implementation of the bitcoin client that is now used at the core of dark wallet, openbazaar and some other big wallet projects. No wonder he's being weird, he's had to eat shit while idiots (like me) were able to buy in before the big bubbles and just sit back and rake in tonnes of money for doing nothing.

Man I'm so looking forward to when we can hire Amir and pay him a rock star salary, because he really deserves that.

    I'm with you all the way on that one brother! :-)

[matt608]

I keep thinking to myself that I should just code up a localbitcoins site that acts as the escrow 3rd party. I could do it in about a month in my spare time. But then I question whether this is needed given that i3 has secret plans for a fiat on-ramp anyway.

That sounds very useful! 

[James212]

You seem to struggle putting yourself in the devs shoes.   You own a stake but sit back and do nothing, a dev likely owns a smaller stake than you that they bought with their own money just like you. 

The smart think for a dev to do is work somewhere else, earn money and buy more stake. 

You are asking devs to give up $100,000 per year they could be earning at google to grow their $25,000 stake in BTS that they bought with their own money.

Then you realize that they have to sell their stake to put food on the table while you get to keep your stake and do nothing.

End result you get a share in the growth they produced, but they pay 100% of the cost.   Wealth transfer from dev to you.

 

[gamey]

With inflation and our voter turnout levels, it is likely good to have a benevolent large stake-holder.  I suppose one could say their faith in Dan has been lost after changing of social consensus etc.  If you do not take this view, and think it was all ultimately for the better then one should be happy that they have such a large stake.  The fact is that the pot of money that has been created via share creation will need to be defended.

Yip I do not take that view, I'm happy there are large benevolent voting stakes but I'd still like limits & I'm also concerned with how the market may view things. On a personal level I actually get more concerned seeing BTC38 etc. having a 10%+ stake, even though I'm sure they're lovely people.

I think the threat of the Vote DAC made BTSX realise the need for compromise, merging & dilution. However PTS & AGS weren't put in that situation. I think if BTSX had added dilution and started merging and competing, PTS & AGS may have realised like BTSX did, their models were not competitive & that the deal to bring them in and give them nearly 10% in BTS(X) again, was actually very generous and a way for BM to include all supporting parties in his vision. Having said that PTS & AGS don't have tools for consensus so any significant change was going to be tough. I'm looking forward to moving on with some certainty myself.

 

I never said anything about no limits.  I didn't go into defining what large is, but as you pointed out exchanges might very well surpass I3.

Yes, BTC38 having 10% should concern you far more.  And that 10% needs equally large %s to defend with.

btw ..
One could also claim that the "very generous" amount paid to PTS/AGS just barely covered the large value in competing DACs that would have been diversified from PTS/AGS holder's point of view.  I don't know.  I'm wishy on the subject, so I'll take that as the proposal being done fairly.

However, I didn't really think we needed to bring that up in this thread.

[speedy]

I think that for Bytemaster or any other of the devs to have to sell their stake would be the last thing any of us want. If we have to issue new shares to pay for devs then Im happy with that. Hopefully AGS wont run out too soon right?

Bytemaster I know you get a lot of flack from people on the forums. I personally feel like Im one of the slackers here who gets to keep my stake without doing much. I am often wondering how I could contribute more to the ecosystem, so I think you could ask the community for help more often if you ever have any subtasks that need doing.

For example I keep talking about the escrow transactions for fiat -> BitUSD. Thats because I keep thinking to myself that I should just code up a localbitcoins site that acts as the escrow 3rd party. I could do it in about a month in my spare time. But then I question whether this is needed given that i3 has secret plans for a fiat on-ramp anyway.

[Empirical1.1]

With inflation and our voter turnout levels, it is likely good to have a benevolent large stake-holder.  I suppose one could say their faith in Dan has been lost after changing of social consensus etc.  If you do not take this view, and think it was all ultimately for the better then one should be happy that they have such a large stake.  The fact is that the pot of money that has been created via share creation will need to be defended.

Yip I do not take that view, I'm happy there are large benevolent voting stakes but I'd still like limits & I'm also concerned with how the market may view things. On a personal level I actually get more concerned seeing BTC38 etc. having a 10%+ stake, even though I'm sure they're lovely people.

I think the threat of the Vote DAC made BTSX realise the need for compromise, merging & dilution. However PTS & AGS weren't put in that situation. I think if BTSX had added dilution and started merging and competing, PTS & AGS may have realised like BTSX did, their models were not competitive & that the deal to bring them in and give them nearly 10% in BTS(X) again, was actually very generous and a way for BM to include all supporting parties in his vision. Having said that PTS & AGS don't have tools for consensus so any significant change was going to be tough. I'm looking forward to moving on with some certainty myself.

 

[valtr]

I suppose you value developers time a 0 then?    Are they supposed to transfer value of their time and opportunity cost to everyone else for free. 

Suppose developers went on strike you would want to hire new devs right?  Who should pay for it?  Doesn't the market cap grow as a result of developer effort?

It's complex. Do you consider time spent as "capital"? Also, if the developer owns shares already, then he can be compensated through profit/appreciation. If you went on strike it would not be in your benefit, as a shareholder. I'm all for compensating the work, however I think it may be unnecessary to throw loads more cash at the devs, at least at this point in the game. I think I3 has plenty of cash, and if they start spending it as if they had more funds, then all the shareholders could see that they're capable of results, and will give them more.

It would make sense for you to stop working only if you sold all your shares, or you felt that the amount of shares you own are not enough, both of which I think are not true.

Please correct me if I am misinterpreting what you are suggesting.....
Is it your argument that the developers spend their time and effort to improve the bitshares ecosystem simply because it is in their interest as shareholders? That they should work for free because their efforts would result in an increase in price of the shares they already own?

Edit: And of course increase in the price in the shares you own as well.....?
[/quote]
That is it. If I have shares in a company, I am looking for profit, but I do not wonder that employees get salary.
I wish to be a programmer. I am not, so others have to do it and I must admit that not for free.
Anyway there will be voting of shareholders built in.

[gamey]

With inflation and our voter turnout levels, it is likely good to have a benevolent large stake-holder.  I suppose one could say their faith in Dan has been lost after changing of social consensus etc.  If you do not take this view, and think it was all ultimately for the better then one should be happy that they have such a large stake.  The fact is that the pot of money that has been created via share creation will need to be defended.

[bytemaster]

The bts owned by i3 is less than 100m.   

Thank you. If this is genuine, this makes me feel much better about all this. I can more easily stand behind funding your development team knowing you  collectively have less than 5%.

This conversation has derailed, however. The main purpose of this thread was about VOTING POWER. It does not make sense for I3 to use AGS stake, or any stake deriving from AGS stake, to vote. This stake should not even be included in the voting total (denominator). We donated for shares in future DACs and developments, not for centralizing voting toward I3.

This has given me an idea... I will be posting a new proposal soon.

All shares have a right to vote and trusting us with funds is also trusting us to vote reasonably.   As we pay devs funds will be distributed further.

[Empirical1.1]

I had similar panic concerns fluxer

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9539.msg124040#msg124040

To be the winner right now though is all about getting the best talent & marketing. Good devs are clearly worth their weight in gold. I think dilution is the best solution for BitShares. There has also been some limits placed on the dilution.

I do worry that if the market views BitShares as partly centralised already, then I think our valuation is going to be significantly handicapped as a result even in the short term so it's also something I've been keen to address by encouraging more voting as well as not keeping too much BTSX on the big exchanges.

[Rune]

Man I'm so looking forward to when we can hire Amir and pay him a rock star salary, because he really deserves that.

BAM!! .. write him a mail so he can prepare for that!

I have a much more ambitious plan in the works . But I want to wait until BTS is implemented and delegates are ready. Timing is very important and newcomers who will have to get their head around DPOS, market pegging, inflation (gasp!) and all the other highly advanced functions of BTS, shouldn't also have the confusion of the merger to deal with IMO, as at that point it might simply become too much to swallow in one go and they will turn around on their heels and leave. I think this effect is what's currently causing the price dip, even when anyone who would actually spend enough time out understand the system can conclude that the game is basically over BTS has won because we will get all the developers.