Author Topic: Should we kill the DACronym?  (Read 18663 times)

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Offline Ander

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I dont think anyone out there has a negative connotation attached to the words 'deentralized application'.  But some do to 'corporation'. 

Still, bitshares has been using DAC so long that it even managed to spread to other crypto communities.
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Offline lord_potatoe

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Off the top of my head too -

I think the 'Bitshares is to corporation as Bitcoin is to currency' is going to be a helpful paradigm for the press to explain Bitshares when the time comes. Keep DAC.

The last thing we want is for the press to say BitShares is a corporation.

Translation: you want to change up all the language used in BitShares because you realized you might get in trouble with the feds for using language like corporation, shares, interest, investment, securities etc and you are scared. Seems like a cop out to me, you should have just stayed anonymous man. All you are doing is just confusing people even more.

Offline hadrian

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Great feedback everyone...  I don't see any clear solution, but perhaps we can find a different word for the "A" ..

Decentralized Automated C*   - I think Automated better describes things than autonomous.

I agree with your reasoning in favor of 'Automated'.
Similarly we could consider 'Distributed' as a replacement for 'Decentralized'.
But does 'Distributed Automatic C*' sound worse than 'Decentralized Automatic C*'?
« Last Edit: November 10, 2014, 07:18:23 pm by hadrian »
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Offline teenagecheese

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Decentralized Blockchain Application Platform (DBAP).

...probably will just be referred to as a BAP in common usage, decentralized being a specific descriptor of the general concept of a BAP

Offline bobmaloney

BTW, Bitshares is...Bitshares.

I don't know if we need a more descriptive explanation for use by the broader population.

For business pitches, I would guess that describing it as a "Blockchain-based platform for decentralized applications" might be sufficient.
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Offline bobmaloney

Bitshares is a life style  8)
C for Church?  :o

This is similar to what continues to bother me about using the term "community".

 Although those of us here can see it and understand it in the proper perspective, I can easily imagine those hostile to the Bitshares concept attempting to define and frame it as having Amway type exclusivity.

Define our be defined.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
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Offline CLains

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I would also say that I agree wholeheartedly with BM's original suggestion relative to normal people who just want to use bitUSD and BTS as a bank.

Offline matt608

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We should not worry about this by presupposing a monopoly on naming and description. If we are targeting normal users, DAC would be entirely out of place. When we describe to investors why it is profitable to invest, DAC is perfectly adequate.

The technology we are building has too many facets and too many use cases that it is possible to capture them all succinctly. When we describe it we have to evoke specific use cases, because we cannot expect the people we are educating to creatively deduce all these things.

We misrepresent the technology a little bit in each instance to oversimplify, to promote a certain feel, or to bring to mind certain use cases. Our challenge is to set up a framework that we can easily and effectively navigate to draw in different demographics.

Google does lots of things, but it's still just a company. 

Offline CLains

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We should not worry about this by presupposing a monopoly on naming and description. If we are targeting normal users, DAC would be entirely out of place. When we describe to investors why it is profitable to invest, DAC is perfectly adequate.

The technology we are building has too many facets and too many use cases that it is possible to capture them all succinctly. When we describe it we have to evoke specific use cases, because we cannot expect the people we are educating to creatively deduce all these things.

We misrepresent the technology a little bit in each instance to oversimplify, to promote a certain feel, or to bring to mind certain use cases. Our challenge is to set up a framework that we can easily and effectively navigate to draw in different demographics.

Offline matt608

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+5% for Decentralized Application Platform (DAP).

Brings new meaning to "I'm a dapper Dan man!"  :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hni4OIJXG4 (skip 35 secs)



Self-aware blockchain?
Conscious blockchain?

Those could grab headlines in pop-sci blogs or just be something that bitshares "has".
« Last Edit: November 10, 2014, 05:09:49 pm by matt608 »

Offline bytemaster

Great feedback everyone...  I don't see any clear solution, but perhaps we can find a different word for the "A" ..

Decentralized Automated C*   - I think Automated better describes things than autonomous. 
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Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline GaltReport

 +5% for Decentralized Application Platform (DAP).

Offline pseudoscops

I vote for keeping DAC and for Cooperative to replace the C in DAC. I think there is also merit to being able to be flexible with the C (Company, Community, Cooperative, Cabal), but being flexible with the C makes marketing more difficult and might actually confuse newcomers.

Decentralized application just makes me think of some new take on peer to peer tech, which to some extent is the truth. It just doesn't sound as compelling. If I didn't know better and I was new to BitShares, or even Blockchain technology, it might make me just think 'Meh. That doesn't sound interesting or revolutionary.'  Digital Autonomous Corporation does sound interesting and revolutionary, perhaps even more so than Cooperative. But I understand the need to perhaps move away from the Corporation metaphor and it could be argued that Cooperative is more accurate any way.

On the subject of Autonomous, well I think Autonomous is exactly what BitShares is and is striving to be. Being autonomous is not the same thing as being unmanned:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/autonomy

I've said it in previous posts, if we have to move away from the Company metaphor, and there are some benefits to doing so, then Digital Autonomous Cooperative would be top of my list.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cooperative

Cooperative speaks to me of both people and economic activity and cooperation. It makes me think of an entity that does something useful and is actually productive too. A single cooperative often produces more than one product - traditionally it might have been wine, olives, cheese and/or wheat, in more recent times a cooperative may look like any other more centrally orchestrated big brand producing more than one good or service too (e.g. the John Lewis Partnership or The Cooperative here in the UK). The idea that people who join a Cooperative can just branch out and start cooperating to sell strawberries alongside their olives, wine and wheat is appealing and fits with how I at least see the SuperDAC evolving over time. Swap out these crops for X, DNS, VOTE, etc and you can see where I'm going with this metaphor. If there's enough interest in 'growing' a new product then members of the cooperative will organise together an make it happen.

Digital Autonomous Cooperative is still intriguing enough and accessible enough for the average non-geek to want to go and find out more. Also most people understand what a cooperative is and that it has some economic component that aims to distribute wealth in an fairer more even handed way. This is why I much prefer it to Community which I see as a more nebulous and less accurate description.

I agree with some of the other commenters that DAC has started to enter the lexicon and as such I think it would be a real shame to kill the term from a marketing point of view. The marketing capital that has undoubtedly built up surrounding the term, or at least the acronym, is important and hard won. I'm in favor of trying to keep the term DAC in some form if we can.

Blockchain and decentralized application - these are not terms that are going to resonate with your Average Joe IMHO. With my geek hat on I can see why they might appeal though.

Offline Frodo

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Personally I have nothing against the "DACronym", but I can see that it might be too specific to appeal to everybody.
So here is my try:

self-sustaining blockchain infrastructure

IMO blockchain infrastructure is general enough to apply to pretty much every possible application, including banking as financial infrastructure. I am not so sure about self-sustaining, might suggest too much independence from the outside world just like autonomous. But still,  all incentive driving development, voting etc. is provided by itself.

Offline luckybit

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Lets face it, "DAC" with "C" standing for company is the best metaphor out there.  Taking the "company" out of the DAC is taking out the profit motive which turns the spaceship into a space-lounge.  It's the Millenium Falcon pretending to be an asteroid to avoid the detection of the imperial star destroyers.  And C3P0 can tell you the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are very low.

The question is, does calling Bishares a DAC (company) present such danger to itself that calling it something else is necessary?  I'm all for using a combination of alternative metaphors when giving a more detailed explanation, such as "community" or "platform" etc but the key description that makes the most sense to me and grabs the most attention is decentralized autonomous company.

Calling it a "platform" or "business platform" has advantages when attracting businesses to run as delegates.  Rather than talking about the toolkit as a platform, BTS itself is a platform and it's beneficial for BTS if entrepreneurs are aware that they could 'run their business' using BTS bitassets and fund it with BTS dilution if they can get elected as a delegate.

You could call it a Decentralized Autonomous Cooperative and it would be just as good to me. It really depends on your audience but I see no reason to move away from the DAC acronym itself when we can simply reframe the same acronym for different audiences.
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