Angel funds being given away by I3 - no transparency, input, or explanation?

[onceuponatime]

Isn't the idea of voting for a delegate, what would incentivize good contributions going forward? I mean if a delegate doesn't perform they're out.

Yes, and what about the 6 or 7 figure sum that was literally just given away? We just eat the loss and move on? Why not implement simple accountability??? If only we had a trustless mechanism for doing this...

Why are you calling it a loss?

I think you should sleep on it and wait until tomorrow to post further.

[Rune]

The funds were donated to BM. Technically it might have been I3 or whatever, but in the end people gave their money to BM as gifts to do whatever he wanted with - because he indicated he wanted to use it for realizing his grand DAC vision. As far as I've seen they were literally gifts to him and he could pocket it all and there'd be no legal recourse. Now he is giving these funds on in ways he thinks are the most beneficial for realizing his DAC vision etc. We BTS owners do not have a say in how they're used, because the money was never an investment. They were given based on trust (blind trust, in fact), and since theres been no indication of a breach of trust so far, I don't see a reason to complain - or at least feel like there's been a breach of trust.

Personally I still think the rational thing to do would be to buy BTS for all the funds and then burn them, and then just have core developers make 4 delegates to pay their salary. And no, temporarily having 80 delegates would not be insecure. If 81 is insecure then 101 is insecure. In fact, we could have only 25 people all running 4 delegates and our system would still be vastly more decentralized than bitcoin, with the added bonus that we are a 100x smaller target.

Anyway, splitting up and handing out the remaining funds seem like a fair way to handle decentralizing development, if temporary multi-delegates really are such taboo.

[zerosum]

I just do not get why?

The guy first obviously did not donated anything to AGS, which is just fine. It is his choice.

Then started arguing that he must get more for keeping his PTS in his pocket as the people who actually gave their money in the form of a donations.
Now comes and says he has to set the rules for the funds that  not only do not belong to him now, but were never ever his, even before donating them.

Utter nonsense and arrogance.

[alphaBar]

I donated because I trusted the people to whom I was donating sufficiently to risk my donation.  So far I'm very pleased with what they've accomplished with it, and it seems like they're on track to continue that.  I think they've also been and continue to be very transparent.

It's regrettable if no one else would be able to use the toolkit at all, but it's to be expected that the team that developed it thus far would have a considerable head start in its use.  If the entire team were abducted by aliens, I suspect the toolkit would be used by others, but it might be years before another team gathered comparable network effect and community to what the current team has now.

Why would you insist on giving away the funds when you could very easily implement some oversight and accountability. Do we prefer blind trust over accountability? It would be trivially simple to implement some oversight with multi-sig.

Trusting a few people to act independently is much more efficient than forming a multisig oversight committee, if the independent actors are actually worthy of trust.  This isn't blind trust.  Some of us have been around here for quite a while now and have reason to trust these people.  If I required or even wanted such oversight, why would I have donated before it was there?  Do you really think people just assumed it would be added in later, even though they didn't trust the people who would have to add it?  O.o

Efficiency? That's the reason? So there is too much overhead associated with simply signing a transaction now? This is a non-argument. Mutli-sig oversight was an absolute no-brainer. Look, I trust Dan too. I don't know much about the other developers and I believe in actually using the systems we are building for their intended purpose. Mark Karpeles, Alex Green, and Danny Brewster were more prominent than these guys and they had no problem ruining their reputation for financial gain. Trust when there is no alternative. Any developer worth his salt would understand the value in doing this (not saying our guys don't).

[Troglodactyl]

I donated because I trusted the people to whom I was donating sufficiently to risk my donation.  So far I'm very pleased with what they've accomplished with it, and it seems like they're on track to continue that.  I think they've also been and continue to be very transparent.

It's regrettable if no one else would be able to use the toolkit at all, but it's to be expected that the team that developed it thus far would have a considerable head start in its use.  If the entire team were abducted by aliens, I suspect the toolkit would be used by others, but it might be years before another team gathered comparable network effect and community to what the current team has now.

Why would you insist on giving away the funds when you could very easily implement some oversight and accountability. Do we prefer blind trust over accountability? It would be trivially simple to implement some oversight with multi-sig.

Trusting a few people to act independently is much more efficient than forming a multisig oversight committee, if the independent actors are actually worthy of trust.  This isn't blind trust.  Some of us have been around here for quite a while now and have reason to trust these people.  If I required or even wanted such oversight, why would I have donated before it was there?  Do you really think people just assumed it would be added in later, even though they didn't trust the people who would have to add it?  O.o

[alphaBar]

Isn't the idea of voting for a delegate, what would incentivize good contributions going forward? I mean if a delegate doesn't perform they're out.

Yes, and what about the 6 or 7 figure sum that was literally just given away? We just eat the loss and move on? Why not implement simple accountability??? If only we had a trustless mechanism for doing this...

[bitmeat]

Isn't the idea of voting for a delegate, what would incentivize good contributions going forward? I mean if a delegate doesn't perform they're out.

[alphaBar]

Ok, so you think reputation is enough. I disagree. But for the sake of argument explain to me how this entire system would not be radically improved by using multi-sigature oversight of one or more third parties?

And then we have countless debates on who this third party should be.  Using Toast as an example..  In CS I doubt you'd ever come across someone as accomplished academically in any normal developer circles.  (And this comes from someone who has a BSCS at a decent school but pretty much believes 'it just means I'm not a retard')  So I think his reputation is actually quite valuable, especially since crypto isn't going away.

Personally, I am just happy the guy is working for Bitshares.  I don't want some him reporting to some dipshit, I'd rather he just use his passion to move the project forward. 

If there is a problem with incentives being screwed up, I'd look elsewhere.  I wish I had their job for the utter-coolness of it all. 

So..  No. I don't think layering rules of multi-sig accounts and all this would really help anything along.  It might just as well do the opposite. Part of the reason I don't work full time is because I've never worked with developers/under managers that I felt were as smart or smarter than me. Which is all I ask. So if I was to take your system and apply it to me, I wouldn't be surprised if the consequences aren't negative.

Simple. Let the devs oversee themselves with multi-sig. If one guy tries to literally walk away with the money, the other devs lock him out of his unvested shares.

[alphaBar]

I donated because I trusted the people to whom I was donating sufficiently to risk my donation.  So far I'm very pleased with what they've accomplished with it, and it seems like they're on track to continue that.  I think they've also been and continue to be very transparent.

It's regrettable if no one else would be able to use the toolkit at all, but it's to be expected that the team that developed it thus far would have a considerable head start in its use.  If the entire team were abducted by aliens, I suspect the toolkit would be used by others, but it might be years before another team gathered comparable network effect and community to what the current team has now.

Why would you insist on giving away the funds when you could very easily implement some oversight and accountability. Do we prefer blind trust over accountability? It would be trivially simple to implement some oversight with multi-sig.

[gamey]

Ok, so you think reputation is enough. I disagree. But for the sake of argument explain to me how this entire system would not be radically improved by using multi-sigature oversight of one or more third parties?

And then we have countless debates on who this third party should be.  Using Toast as an example..  In CS I doubt you'd ever come across someone as accomplished academically in any normal developer circles.  (And this comes from someone who has a BSCS at a decent school but pretty much believes 'it just means I'm not a retard')  So I think his reputation is actually quite valuable, especially since crypto isn't going away.

Personally, I am just happy the guy is working for Bitshares.  I don't want some him reporting to some dipshit. I'd rather he just use his passion to move the project forward. 

If there is a problem with incentives being screwed up, I'd look elsewhere.  I wish I had their job for the utter-coolness of it all. 

So..  No. I don't think layering rules of multi-sig accounts and all this would really help anything along.  It might just as well do the opposite. Part of the reason I don't work full time is because I've never worked with developers/under managers that I felt were as smart or smarter than me. Which is all I ask. So if I was to take your system and apply it to me (assuming I had same level of employ-ability as the people in question etc), I wouldn't be surprised if the consequences aren't negative.

[cass]

2) You keep comparing your Google salary to the amount of money you are being granted for work on BTS. This is so utterly and fundamentally flawed it hurts me to have to explain it, but here goes: Your entire BTS grant is paid to you up-front with no performance evaluation, expectation, roadmap, milestones, or other provable/non-provable/binding/non-binding expectation of any kind. Even your vesting PTS does nothing to incentivize any actual work - you will receive the funds regardless of whether you perform or not.

This is very incorrect.  From Toast's standpoint, his comparison is totally valid.  You've just stated that he can still be paid and do little.  You make this statement while ignoring all the stuff he'd lose if he just took the money and split.  His public reputation which over his career would be worth far more than this goofy grant.

absolutely ... pity to see these kind of discussions here …
From my point of view ... all devs have done an incredible job last months ... there were no time for other things meanwhile... 

[Troglodactyl]

I donated because I trusted the people to whom I was donating sufficiently to risk my donation.  So far I'm very pleased with what they've accomplished with it, and it seems like they're on track to continue that.  I think they've also been and continue to be very transparent.

It's regrettable if no one else would be able to use the toolkit at all, but it's to be expected that the team that developed it thus far would have a considerable head start in its use.  If the entire team were abducted by aliens, I suspect the toolkit would be used by others, but it might be years before another team gathered comparable network effect and community to what the current team has now.

[alphaBar]

2) You keep comparing your Google salary to the amount of money you are being granted for work on BTS. This is so utterly and fundamentally flawed it hurts me to have to explain it, but here goes: Your entire BTS grant is paid to you up-front with no performance evaluation, expectation, roadmap, milestones, or other provable/non-provable/binding/non-binding expectation of any kind. Even your vesting PTS does nothing to incentivize any actual work - you will receive the funds regardless of whether you perform or not.

This is very incorrect.  From Toast's standpoint, his comparison is totally valid.  You've just stated that he can still be paid and do little.  You make this statement while ignoring all the stuff he'd lose if he just took the money and split.  His public reputation which over his career would be worth far more than this goofy grant.

Alphabar, it is talk like this that makes me not care to support your PTS project.  Your reasoning is quite flawed.

Ok, so you think reputation is enough. I disagree. But for the sake of argument explain to me how this entire system would not be radically improved by using multi-signature oversight of one or more third parties?

Edit: Also, do you support the way this was handled, behind the scenes without discussion or explanation (while ignoring my repeated questions)? It would have been trivially easy to implement some minimum oversight and accountability.

[carpet ride]

assets entrusted to I3 for purposes of development and marketing

This is them spending it on development. Contract negotiation is a reality... Maybe you disagree with these particular expenditures. I've disagreed with lots of Dan's in the past.

I'll let Dan explain the details when he gets around to it. In the meantime, consider these two facts that have been brought up a few times:

* I gave up $150k / year at Google to work for a fraction of that salary at enormous risk. The other devs are at least as skilled as I am.
* We are the only people on earth capable of delivering on BTS. If we left right now BTS would die, while we could make a viable competitor.

If you think we aren't actors you want to make into vested interests well in excess of what we could buy from working another job, I suggest you lay out what you would need try to build something without us. I guess your alternate PTS is trying to do this, so far all the people actually building this thing seem to just blow it off.

Hey toast, thanks for the reply and no thanks for the hostility. Here's why I made the post, most of which you did not address:

1) I've been asking for this information for weeks with no response - there was no community input or explanation.
2) You keep comparing your Google salary to the amount of money you are being granted for work on BTS. This is so utterly and fundamentally flawed it hurts me to have to explain it, but here goes: Your entire BTS grant is paid to you up-front with no performance evaluation, expectation, roadmap, milestones, or other provable/non-provable/binding/non-binding expectation of any kind. Even your vesting PTS does nothing to incentivize any actual work - you will receive the funds regardless of whether you perform or not.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but I've been around the block a few times. There are at least a dozen different ways this could have been implemented with some accountability baked in (multi-sig oversight for example). Less importantly, there at least a dozen different ways this could have been communicated, explained, and discussed openly before "granting" donated funds with no strings attached and me finding out about it through the blockchain despite asking openly for weeks.

Edit: Here's a likely scenario. I'm a dev. I take a few hundred thousand dollars and continue to work on BTS occasionally, but also take a full-time paid position as a Google engineer. No expectations, no accountability, no recourse of any kind.

Trust, no contracts, donations; don't you read anything here?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[gamey]

2) You keep comparing your Google salary to the amount of money you are being granted for work on BTS. This is so utterly and fundamentally flawed it hurts me to have to explain it, but here goes: Your entire BTS grant is paid to you up-front with no performance evaluation, expectation, roadmap, milestones, or other provable/non-provable/binding/non-binding expectation of any kind. Even your vesting PTS does nothing to incentivize any actual work - you will receive the funds regardless of whether you perform or not.

This is very incorrect.  From Toast's standpoint, his comparison is totally valid.  You've just stated that he can still be paid and do little.  You make this statement while ignoring all the stuff he'd lose if he just took the money and split.  His public reputation which over his career would be worth far more than this goofy grant.

Alphabar, it is talk like this that makes me not care to support your PTS project.  Your reasoning is quite flawed.