Author Topic: We need more delegates for marketing  (Read 6995 times)

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Offline gamey

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you are right!

i compared it to company shares to get rid of the inflation monster.

from your point of view you are absolutly right, it is really tough and cost you 1000 USD without any guarantee to get elected. I would also like to see chinese delegates, but it seems no one is trying to get a position.

The problem is slightly worse because although there is no guarantee of being voted in, one could reasonably assume they'd be voted in eventually.  However thats not a very good way to plan ones time.  What do you do for the 2+ months it takes you to be voted in?
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Offline monsterer

My 2p - in my experience, marketing using paid advertising is incredibly inefficient; much better to write some technical articles, get up-voted  on reddit and have traffic arrive virally and organically.

For example: I run a blog on which the last two articles have been about algorithmic trading. If I were to write a decent article (very well written, thorough, with performance metrics, graphs, images and free source code) about a trading algorithm running on the bitshares decentralised exchange I'm quite sure it would be popular enough to feature highly on reddit.

This kind of thing is very cheap and effective marketing. At the moment, I am busy enough that I don't have the spare time to put this together, otherwise I would but that doesn't mean someone else can't take the same idea, or the methodology and put it into action.
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Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

It has been talked about before, but a solution to this would be to have slates stored on-chain, have slates be linked to user accounts, and let users delegate their voting power to a given user account's slate. (Basically an implementation of RDPOS.)

This way, a 'hiring manager' would not even need to be a delegate, just someone who owns a user account that has a slate. He could run for being a delegate as well, of course.

This may lead to something that can be labeled as centralization (everyone just gives their votes to bytemaster), however it is centralization that is approved in a decentralized way, and is easily reversible unlike the locked-in centralization in Bitcoin due to mining.

Ways to help minimize the centralization that occurs:

1. Allow a percentage of your voting power to vote for a particular slate
2. The ability to give your voting power to more than one slate
3. Slates can contain slates
4. The ability to maintain a percentage of your voting power manually

What this means:

Let's say I trust bytemaster, so I give you 40% of my voting power (40 votes). I also love what hpenvy is doing, and I know his votes will be up-to-date with the latest onramp and bizdev developments, so I give him 40% of my voting power as well (40 votes). The remaining 20% (21 votes) I keep to myself and use to vote for my own delegates.

Now, let's look at bytemaster's slate. Since he is very informed of the delegate campaigns overall, he has manually selected 60 delegates to vote for (60% of voting power). Since he cannot keep up with all the marketing efforts, he gives 10% of his votes to MethodX, 10% of his votes to hpenvy. He has left 20% of his voting power unused.

I could go on and describe hpenvy's slate, MethodX's slate, etc, however I think you get the picture here.


There are clearly things that need to be worked out with this model:
1. How to distribute votes among a subset of a user's slate (if I vote for 1% of bytemaster's slate, who in his slate gets the lucky single vote?)
2. How to handle recursive slates (bytemaster gives 20% of his slate to hpenvy, and hpenvy gives 20% of his slate to bytemaster)
3. How to handle incomplete slates (if I give 20% of my voting power to someone with only 10 delegates selected, do they get 2 votes or all 10?)
4. Blockchain bloat, processing overhead?

I do think though, that with some thought that these things can be worked out reasonably. Input appreciated.

I like where this thought process is heading.

Offline fluxer555

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It has been talked about before, but a solution to this would be to have slates stored on-chain, have slates be linked to user accounts, and let users delegate their voting power to a given user account's slate. (Basically an implementation of RDPOS.)

This way, a 'hiring manager' would not even need to be a delegate, just someone who owns a user account that has a slate. He could run for being a delegate as well, of course.

This may lead to something that can be labeled as centralization (everyone just gives their votes to bytemaster), however it is centralization that is approved in a decentralized way, and is easily reversible unlike the locked-in centralization in Bitcoin due to mining.

Ways to help minimize the centralization that occurs:

1. Allow a percentage of your voting power to vote for a particular slate
2. The ability to give your voting power to more than one slate
3. Slates can contain slates
4. The ability to maintain a percentage of your voting power manually

What this means:

Let's say I trust bytemaster, so I give you 40% of my voting power (40 votes). I also love what hpenvy is doing, and I know his votes will be up-to-date with the latest onramp and bizdev developments, so I give him 40% of my voting power as well (40 votes). The remaining 20% (21 votes) I keep to myself and use to vote for my own delegates.

Now, let's look at bytemaster's slate. Since he is very informed of the delegate campaigns overall, he has manually selected 60 delegates to vote for (60% of voting power). Since he cannot keep up with all the marketing efforts, he gives 10% of his votes to MethodX, 10% of his votes to hpenvy. He has left 20% of his voting power unused.

I could go on and describe hpenvy's slate, MethodX's slate, etc, however I think you get the picture here.


There are clearly things that need to be worked out with this model:
1. How to distribute votes among a subset of a user's slate (if I vote for 1% of bytemaster's slate, who in his slate gets the lucky single vote?)
2. How to handle recursive slates (bytemaster gives 20% of his slate to hpenvy, and hpenvy gives 20% of his slate to bytemaster)
3. How to handle incomplete slates (if I give 20% of my voting power to someone with only 10 delegates selected, do they get 2 votes or all 10?)
4. Blockchain bloat, processing overhead?

I do think though, that with some thought that these things can be worked out reasonably. Input appreciated.

Offline James212

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Other: I think BTS is in need of general guiding business plan for 1 year definitely for the Western business. I think the development side is in the bag, we have rockstars but where do we want to be in one year and how are we going to get there in terms of marketing, business development, customer service, presence in key markets, BitAsset utility etc.

 +5%

BTS badly needs business strategists and public relations/investor relations (nullstreet?).  There is a gapping hole in these areas as critical and concerning as the hole I was warning about in Marketing as early as late summer.  We have to many market / (community) disruptions due to poor communication, and the business approach seems more philosophical than strategic or tactical. 
« Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 06:08:12 pm by James212 »
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Offline Shentist

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We are paying our employees with company shares :D

This is how most startups pay their employees, at least in part, with shares in the company.
Certain types of employees look for jobs where they can trade their ability to tolerate risk for the chance to make it big.

Whether the shares are held in reserve by the company or created just in time, the result is functionally equivalent.

What is the standard term startups use for this? 

"Working for equity."

Historically very common and accepted.
Just new to crypto industry thinking.



An observation: while I agree the metaphor is appropriate, in practice - it doesn't seem to be applicable in the same way.

  • For a startup, does every member of the VC team interview every new candidate for each open position?
  • How about for a publicly held company - does every shareholder need to vote, in order to approve hiring someone?

What we're seeing is a high barrier to entry for delegates that is playing out in a way of preventing well-intending individuals to properly allocate their time and resources to add value to the ecosystem.  While this friction may be intentional to secure the network, it's not doing us any favors in incentivizing the work needed to tell the world about a network that needs to be secured.

Catch my drift?

you are right!

i compared it to company shares to get rid of the inflation monster.

from your point of view you are absolutly right, it is really tough and cost you 1000 USD without any guarantee to get elected. I would also like to see chinese delegates, but it seems no one is trying to get a position.

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

We are paying our employees with company shares :D

This is how most startups pay their employees, at least in part, with shares in the company.
Certain types of employees look for jobs where they can trade their ability to tolerate risk for the chance to make it big.

Whether the shares are held in reserve by the company or created just in time, the result is functionally equivalent.

What is the standard term startups use for this? 

"Working for equity."

Historically very common and accepted.
Just new to crypto industry thinking.



An observation: while I agree the metaphor is appropriate, in practice - it doesn't seem to be applicable in the same way.

  • For a startup, does every member of the VC team interview every new candidate for each open position?
  • How about for a publicly held company - does every shareholder need to vote, in order to approve hiring someone?

What we're seeing is a high barrier to entry for delegates that is playing out in a way of preventing well-intending individuals to properly allocate their time and resources to add value to the ecosystem.  While this friction may be intentional to secure the network, it's not doing us any favors in incentivizing the work needed to tell the world about a network that needs to be secured.

Catch my drift?

Offline Empirical1.1

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I'm thinking about running a delegate as well, but it really is tough to convince other people to join in on it, especially during this time since 1) december all the way to new year is always hectic for people; balancing work, buying gifts with meeting family and friends for a celebratory time, 2) it is lightning cold, at least here in the upper hemisphere, which makes people retreat into their safe nests both psychologically and physically, 3) the whole crypto scene is in a depression with the anticipated rise of Bitcoin not yet materializing.

Given all this I expect that we will mostly see only true believes and associates now who can prepare the ground. It would not be unexpected if we would have to wait until rites of spring before full bloom arrives. There really is much work to do, even in just preparing all the information and structuring the highways of the new ecosystem, so I fully agree that we should give everyone eager at this stage a chance to prove themselves.

For my own part I am thinking that IF I run a delegate with a few tech friends I could easily borrow money from some "investor," use that funding to pay for registration, pay and various initiatives, and then lock the delegate income until certain milestones are reached (i.e. market cap or vesting periods). In fact, we could even use 100% of the pay to double in by shorting bitUSD, i.e. maximally "betting on BitShares" while effectively raising the market cap. How does that plan sound?

I would probably vote for it. If you did run a delegate, I think the more specific you can be the better and the sooner you can show something for your efforts the better too. I think people want to see something measurable as soon as possible vs. diluting and waiting a long time.

Which unfortunately is how it works out with some of the advertising & why it would have been great if nullstreet had been given some intial BTS vs. the trickle down marketing they're trying to make work atm.

Offline onceuponatime

I'm thinking about running a delegate as well, but it really is tough to convince other people to join in on it, especially during this time since 1) december all the way to new year is always hectic for people; balancing work, buying gifts with meeting family and friends for a celebratory time, 2) it is lightning cold, at least here in the upper hemisphere, which makes people retreat into their safe nests both psychologically and physically, 3) the whole crypto scene is in a depression with the anticipated rise of Bitcoin not yet materializing.

Given all this I expect that we will mostly see only true believes and associates now who can prepare the ground. It would not be unexpected if we would have to wait until rites of spring before full bloom arrives. There really is much work to do, even in just preparing all the information and structuring the highways of the new ecosystem, so I fully agree that we should give everyone eager at this stage a chance to prove themselves.

For my own part I am thinking that IF I run a delegate with a few tech friends I could easily borrow money from some "investor," use that funding to pay for registration, pay and various initiatives, and then lock the delegate income until certain milestones are reached (i.e. market cap or vesting periods). In fact, we could even use 100% of the pay to double in by shorting bitUSD, i.e. maximally "betting on BitShares" while effectively raising the market cap. How does that plan sound?

That plan sounds good. I might be interested in being an "investor".

Offline gamey

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I suspect we could get this off the ground fairly easily even if it requires waiting a couple months for voting.

The main issues to me are...

Who holds the funds without multisig ?  Who holds funds with multisig capability?

How do we determine what to pay from a community fund ?  It needs to not be one person and hopefully someone from China is involved. It would be fairly easy to vote on who to pay.. but who wants to volunteer to be one of the uhh "Community Fund Council". 

It will be a largely thankless job that will likely receive as many negative comments as positive when people see someone being paid something they do not agree with.
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Offline Stan

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We are paying our employees with company shares :D

This is how most startups pay their employees, at least in part, with shares in the company.
Certain types of employees look for jobs where they can trade their ability to tolerate risk for the chance to make it big.

Whether the shares are held in reserve by the company or created just in time, the result is functionally equivalent.

What is the standard term startups use for this? 

"Working for equity."

Historically very common and accepted.
Just new to crypto industry thinking.

(Of course this is just a metaphor used for tutorial purposes. 
You can describe BitShares tokens in many different ways. 
Be careful to use one that is legal in your jurisdiction.)

Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline CLains

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I'm thinking about running a delegate as well, but it really is tough to convince other people to join in on it, especially during this time since 1) december all the way to new year is always hectic for people; balancing work, buying gifts with meeting family and friends for a celebratory time, 2) it is lightning cold, at least here in the upper hemisphere, which makes people retreat into their safe nests both psychologically and physically, 3) the whole crypto scene is in a depression with the anticipated rise of Bitcoin not yet materializing.

Given all this I expect that we will mostly see only true believes and associates now who can prepare the ground. It would not be unexpected if we would have to wait until rites of spring before full bloom arrives. There really is much work to do, even in just preparing all the information and structuring the highways of the new ecosystem, so I fully agree that we should give everyone eager at this stage a chance to prove themselves.

For my own part I am thinking that IF I run a delegate with a few tech friends I could easily borrow money from some "investor," use that funding to pay for registration, pay and various initiatives, and then lock the delegate income until certain milestones are reached (i.e. market cap or vesting periods). In fact, we could even use 100% of the pay to double in by shorting bitUSD, i.e. maximally "betting on BitShares" while effectively raising the market cap. How does that plan sound?
« Last Edit: December 28, 2014, 11:18:04 pm by CLains »

Offline Empirical1.1

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At current usd price levels, 1 marketer would need about 5 100% delegates to do anything meaningful right out of the gate.

At $2k per month, what, you buy one ad on reddit that would last less than a day if based on views. It's a joke to think any marketing would get done by a delegate at these price levels or even double. This is why I withdrew my intentions as a marketing delegate awhile back. It's just not realistic. And for the community to expect anything in the meantime is absurd.  I would suggest I3 should be kicking out some BTS for marketing supplements since AGS has been used up, but at current levels that reserve would get exhausted rather fast.

I think it's time we all except that BTS is going to have to reach the masses the old fashioned way: word of mouth. I don't think it is unreasonable to think we will likely take the same path and time as Bitcoin took to get to where it is now. Just hope no one rides our technological coat tails and surpasses us with AGS style crowd funds that go purely into marketing the same product with a different name.

Its why I have cooled on the idea of running a BTCtalk sig campaign. Matt said he could spare 10% of a delegate pay, but I calculated its hardly enough to make a dent. I might still start it up later, but currently promoting by bumping threads and getting discussion going seems to be better.

Sadly, we don't have the money to go in swinging and grab attention. AGS funds could've been used but its gone now and we have to move on.

Yeah it's a critical time to just have $10k a month to direct at marketing and trying to wing it on $2k now that we've got dilution doesn't make sense. Ironically we'll probably see more with $2k a month than we did with $20k.

I already vote for Matt, I think the Argentina thing may have worked against him, I know at first I felt he wasn't ideal for Argentina. But we need more marketing delegates and he has good ideas, initiative and interacts well.

I would vote for

1. A crypto-advertising specific delegate. He gets the costs for adverts from Coindesk, CMC etc. and designs a 3 month advertising campaign based on his funds. I'd like to know in 3 weeks we'll seen an advert on here and then an advert on here etc.

2. A customer service delegate - We shouldn't dismiss how tricky using the product is for a first timer. I know we have the newbies section but actual having a customer service site where there's live help for a few hours a day would really help it seem like a business. 

3. Method to have a full personal salary delegate.

4. More 'pot of funds delegates' - delegates who essentially help create a 'marketing budget' that can use their funds by consensus towards a host of marketing activities and who are voted out if they direct them badly.

Edit: 5.  I'd probably vote for HPEnvy in some capacity too.

Other: I think BTS is in need of general guiding business plan for 1 year definitely for the Western business. I think the development side is in the bag, we have rockstars but where do we want to be in one year and how are we going to get there in terms of marketing, business development, customer service, presence in key markets, BitAsset utility etc.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 01:52:18 am by Empirical1.1 »

sumantso

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Regarding the other issues, please try to pitch to BM the benefit of separation of employees and block producers. I would like to see a page in my wallet which shows the various projects and the amount they are asking, and at the top I will see a bar showing how much money I have to spend (like a game). I can then allot it to the various projects/individuals accordingly and even tip volunteers (like, say, Fuzzy). I can either do it manually or click on recommended lists provided by other members.




I think we'd all like separate employees and block producers at this point.  The problem is that it is a major change.  And we're not talking about strictly from the code's viewpoint.  It will make the wallet even more difficult and time consuming to manage.  :(


There would be default recommendations. All those too lazy to look into it can use one of those. The recommendation can be done by using a weighted average of published recommendations, the weight being how much they are being used.

Lets say Fuzzy and Empirical publish two recommendations. 10 voters do manually, 10 voters use Fuzzy's recommendation, 5 Empirical's and another 5 doesn't do anything. Those last 5 will have a default recommendation which is 0.67*Fuzzy's + 0.33*Empirical's recommendation.

I think the process can be simplified for an easy use and also be made 'fun' - there's something exciting in seeing the progress of work being done. The main issue is whether they are even considering it.

Offline gamey

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Regarding the other issues, please try to pitch to BM the benefit of separation of employees and block producers. I would like to see a page in my wallet which shows the various projects and the amount they are asking, and at the top I will see a bar showing how much money I have to spend (like a game). I can then allot it to the various projects/individuals accordingly and even tip volunteers (like, say, Fuzzy). I can either do it manually or click on recommended lists provided by other members.



I think we'd all like separate employees and block producers at this point.  The problem is that it is a major change.  And we're not talking about strictly from the code's viewpoint.  It will make the wallet even more difficult and time consuming to manage.  :(
I speak for myself and only myself.