Current plans on delegate pay?

[fuzzy]

I remember Bytemaster said in the hangout something that the people making transactions should be the ones paying for the service and not stakeholders. Ultimately this is right, but I do think that stakeholders have a certain buffer role. There are times where expenses are going to exceed income, and yet it is necessary to spend those funds. Currently we are in this situation. If we had to cover all delegate pay with TX fees, they would be so high that no one would use BTS anyway.

I may be alone with this opinion but I still think that efficient, sustainable funding through dilution is a great idea and gives us an advantage over all the other crypto projects out there. For now growth is far more important than some percent stake. And once BitShares reaches a substantial size, and tx fees get adjusted we might be able to become deflationary.

...If we will not be paid to offer these services by the blockchain, we will be forced to form alliances with entities that do not necessarily have transparency for everyday investors as a concern.  That means that even if bitshares does well in marketcap, you will likely see the old system, only 2.0  the only media you will get will be paid by big players who see little players as sheep to be sheered.  Just like Fox news and MSNBC. 

I also share the above concerns.

My feeling is that we should preserve the 100%  paid delegate option, while introducing the referral system.  Shareholders can decide long term whether there is a benefit to delegates providing development and marketing services.

More fine grained voting systems can be implemented as development resources allow.

I think it would be premature to abandon the self funding model at this stage.  In the future it may not be necessary, but at the moment even this 'miniscule' dilution is providing the ability to seed efforts across a wide range of developments.  So I advocate for a 'hybrid' model until we are grown up enough to survive and thrive in the wild.

i think this makes sense

Bitscape is a wise man...

[mike623317]

I remember Bytemaster said in the hangout something that the people making transactions should be the ones paying for the service and not stakeholders. Ultimately this is right, but I do think that stakeholders have a certain buffer role. There are times where expenses are going to exceed income, and yet it is necessary to spend those funds. Currently we are in this situation. If we had to cover all delegate pay with TX fees, they would be so high that no one would use BTS anyway.

I may be alone with this opinion but I still think that efficient, sustainable funding through dilution is a great idea and gives us an advantage over all the other crypto projects out there. For now growth is far more important than some percent stake. And once BitShares reaches a substantial size, and tx fees get adjusted we might be able to become deflationary.

...If we will not be paid to offer these services by the blockchain, we will be forced to form alliances with entities that do not necessarily have transparency for everyday investors as a concern.  That means that even if bitshares does well in marketcap, you will likely see the old system, only 2.0  the only media you will get will be paid by big players who see little players as sheep to be sheered.  Just like Fox news and MSNBC. 

I also share the above concerns.

My feeling is that we should preserve the 100%  paid delegate option, while introducing the referral system.  Shareholders can decide long term whether there is a benefit to delegates providing development and marketing services.

More fine grained voting systems can be implemented as development resources allow.

I think it would be premature to abandon the self funding model at this stage.  In the future it may not be necessary, but at the moment even this 'miniscule' dilution is providing the ability to seed efforts across a wide range of developments.  So I advocate for a 'hybrid' model until we are grown up enough to survive and thrive in the wild.

i think this makes sense

[fuzzy]

BM roughly said this on the Hangout:

-Delegates are not going to run nodes, and not be compensated for their time and resources.
-Stakeholders also want to have a viable business so they have to pay the delegates.
-So we have to raise fees to cover the cost of delegates and user acquisitions.
-So we need a business model that is sustainable from a revenue perspective. If its not sustainable, then we don't have a viable business.

Agree with you BM, what about starspirit idea.

Voting is only good for allocating trust.
It is very bad for running a business or even a project.
Such roles involve specialty skills and deep hands-on knowledge beyond the average voter's abilities.

Any solution needs to, at most, vote on who to hold accountable and then let them manage the allocated resources.

I wouldn't want to fly on a plane controlled by voting passengers.
(And I wouldn't want to own a company that worked that way either.)

Absolutely! This is why a voting system where the coding workers are delegates is now sub-optimal. The only people that should fill delegate roles are those whose mandates and delivery outcomes are transparent enough for the community to judge. Most stakeholders are not and should not need to be sitting alongside developers to have any control.

Stan, how do you envisage the delegate structure should best be utilised then? My view is something like this:

Remove the need for delegates to produce blocks and price feeds. Within the broad delegate group, there should be competitive subsets of delegates responsible for:

- managing the decentralised pool of (X=101?) block-producers
- managing the pool of price feed submitters

The "Head of Development" should be responsible for allocations amongst coders based on value produced, rather than being determined by broad stakeholder voting.

In the "company model" delegates should be more like directors or managers, who are hired and fired on how well they allocate resources, including to others, to meet expected outcomes.

If this evolves in time toward a "network economy " model, the delegates would be more like public agents that are granted budgets to implement their public mandates, by allocating these to the service providers that best meet them. An entire system of decentralised governance could be built around this.

The key is that stakeholders need to delegate accountabilities, but always hold the collective power of conferring or removing that accountability if needs are not being met.

Further, voluntary funding models should be strongly considered to complement anything else we do.

[/b]

What is unsustainable about the current path?  There are already so many people working on meager delegate pay for basically nothing anyway so at this point I'm pretty sure the delegates in place will likely remain at just about any price point. 

Why not just vote in 101 delegates to pay for the marketing proposal?  Vote the delegates who are doing work that doesn't fit into the "bringing new users" category out of power.  Simple as that.  If this idea is one we should go with, I'm sure we can get consensus on it.  If not, then we know that people don't want it.
If they don't vote and font get what they want, then ...it's their fault.

[canucklehead]

BM roughly said this on the Hangout:

-Delegates are not going to run nodes, and not be compensated for their time and resources.
-Stakeholders also want to have a viable business so they have to pay the delegates.
-So we have to raise fees to cover the cost of delegates and user acquisitions.
-So we need a business model that is sustainable from a revenue perspective. If its not sustainable, then we don't have a viable business.

Agree with you BM, what about starspirit idea.

Voting is only good for allocating trust.
It is very bad for running a business or even a project.
Such roles involve specialty skills and deep hands-on knowledge beyond the average voter's abilities.

Any solution needs to, at most, vote on who to hold accountable and then let them manage the allocated resources.

I wouldn't want to fly on a plane controlled by voting passengers.
(And I wouldn't want to own a company that worked that way either.)

Absolutely! This is why a voting system where the coding workers are delegates is now sub-optimal. The only people that should fill delegate roles are those whose mandates and delivery outcomes are transparent enough for the community to judge. Most stakeholders are not and should not need to be sitting alongside developers to have any control.

Stan, how do you envisage the delegate structure should best be utilised then? My view is something like this:

Remove the need for delegates to produce blocks and price feeds. Within the broad delegate group, there should be competitive subsets of delegates responsible for:

- managing the decentralised pool of (X=101?) block-producers
- managing the pool of price feed submitters

The "Head of Development" should be responsible for allocations amongst coders based on value produced, rather than being determined by broad stakeholder voting.

In the "company model" delegates should be more like directors or managers, who are hired and fired on how well they allocate resources, including to others, to meet expected outcomes.

If this evolves in time toward a "network economy " model, the delegates would be more like public agents that are granted budgets to implement their public mandates, by allocating these to the service providers that best meet them. An entire system of decentralised governance could be built around this.

The key is that stakeholders need to delegate accountabilities, but always hold the collective power of conferring or removing that accountability if needs are not being met.

Further, voluntary funding models should be strongly considered to complement anything else we do.

[/b]

[starspirit]

Voting is only good for allocating trust.
It is very bad for running a business or even a project.
Such roles involve specialty skills and deep hands-on knowledge beyond the average voter's abilities.

Any solution needs to, at most, vote on who to hold accountable and then let them manage the allocated resources.

I wouldn't want to fly on a plane controlled by voting passengers.
(And I wouldn't want to own a company that worked that way either.)

Absolutely! This is why a voting system where the coding workers are delegates is now sub-optimal. The only people that should fill delegate roles are those whose mandates and delivery outcomes are transparent enough for the community to judge. Most stakeholders are not and should not need to be sitting alongside developers to have any control.

Stan, how do you envisage the delegate structure should best be utilised then? My view is something like this:

Remove the need for delegates to produce blocks and price feeds. Within the broad delegate group, there should be competitive subsets of delegates responsible for:

- managing the decentralised pool of (X=101?) block-producers
- managing the pool of price feed submitters

The "Head of Development" should be responsible for allocations amongst coders based on value produced, rather than being determined by broad stakeholder voting.

In the "company model" delegates should be more like directors or managers, who are hired and fired on how well they allocate resources, including to others, to meet expected outcomes.

If this evolves in time toward a "network economy " model, the delegates would be more like public agents that are granted budgets to implement their public mandates, by allocating these to the service providers that best meet them. An entire system of decentralised governance could be built around this.

The key is that stakeholders need to delegate accountabilities, but always hold the collective power of conferring or removing that accountability if needs are not being met.

Further, voluntary funding models should be strongly considered to complement anything else we do.

[rgcrypto]

1. There is no relation between pay and actual value being delivered.

In a certain way there is. Shareholders are the judges and accordingly adjust payrate.
And imo there is no way overall value to the ecosystem can be mathematically measured. In particular referrals are an insufficient metric as stated earlier. Hence the best way to adjust payrate according to performance is by a panel of judges that are incentivized to be honest, which is what we currently have.

2. Democratic vote is not a good system to know what to invest in...governments are reknown for being terrible investors.

This is a vote per share system, that has nothing to do with democracy.

You have good points and let me correct my statement.

1. Right now, rather than having the market being the judge about what brings value to our ecosystem, we have to go through politics.
Imagine Apple having all of it's shareholders decide what projects should be funded rather than having the market being the judge on that matter. It would go out of business within a year because a bunch of project would be started then interupted because of a new fad happening on the market place.

2.You are correct it is not a democratic vote, my bad. It is still important to point out that voting is far from being the optimal way to allocate resources.

[Stan]

Voting is only good for allocating trust.
It is very bad for running a business or even a project.
Such roles involve specialty skills and deep hands-on knowledge beyond the average voter's abilities.

Any solution needs to, at most, vote on who to hold accountable and then let them manage the allocated resources.

I wouldn't want to fly on a plane controlled by voting passengers.
(And I wouldn't want to own a company that worked that way either.)

[Frodo]

1. There is no relation between pay and actual value being delivered.

In a certain way there is. Shareholders are the judges and accordingly adjust payrate.
And imo there is no way overall value to the ecosystem can be mathematically measured. In particular referrals are an insufficient metric as stated earlier. Hence the best way to adjust payrate according to performance is by a panel of judges that are incentivized to be honest, which is what we currently have.

2. Democratic vote is not a good system to know what to invest in...governments are reknown for being terrible investors.

This is a vote per share system, that has nothing to do with democracy.

[fuzzy]

Here what I dont like about how 100% delegates dilution model:

1. There is no relation between pay and actual value being delivered.

2. Democratic vote is not a good system to know what to invest in...governments are reknown for being terrible investors.

3. Having your business on the choping block depending on the trends of the day creates a lot of uncertainty and will get worse as the market cap introduce more competition.

I think the blockchain should support core devs to make it as neutral as possible as well as delegates. For the devs to be paid in equity is a great incentive.

Overall, I am for blockchain neutrality.

Bitshares should provide the platform on which entrepreneurs are incentivized in direct proportion to their contribution rather than through tge political means.

In a perfect world I agree. Except it will never work that way.  We can't ignore the human element and if we do, we might find ourselves talking about how important it is to drop the earth's population to a "sustainable" 500 million :/

[rgcrypto]

Here what I dont like about how 100% delegates dilution model:

1. There is no relation between pay and actual value being delivered.

2. Democratic vote is not a good system to know what to invest in...governments are reknown for being terrible investors.

3. Having your business on the choping block depending on the trends of the day creates a lot of uncertainty and will get worse as the market cap introduce more competition.

I think the blockchain should support core devs to make it as neutral as possible as well as delegates. For the devs to be paid in equity is a great incentive.

Overall, I am for blockchain neutrality.

Bitshares should provide the platform on which entrepreneurs are incentivized in direct proportion to their contribution rather than through their ability to smooth talk to the community.

PS: I wouldnt start downvoting the 100% delegate UNTIL we have something to replace it.

[donkeypong]

Bytemaster: or would the system be better of if we found an alternative to fund and sustain the network without doing the dilution?"[/size]

Yes, I think it could be better. Done correctly and with community support, it could be a very positive change. Money needs to be directed where needed in this ecosystem. Once it's built, developers will continue to need paychecks for maintenance, but we also need to direct resources toward growing BitShares.

[CLains]

delegate pay, referral system, devs seeking funding from entrepeneurs, bitAssets AND bitAssets 3.0 can all co-exist.

[Empirical1.2]

The general gist of this sounds very good.

Marketers would be fairly rewarded for the BTS users they actually bring in.

Moonstone for example (& a wide range of other competitive third parties) could potentially earn large sums via a fee sharing model so would be incentivised to develop and market a wide range of BTS supporting products and services.

Delegate pay is a non-problem compared to the vested funds being released from the "merger". I think the community would much rather see that side being addressed.  (I haven't listened to the session yet)

Dan/Stan can't really alter/cancel the merger as it's viewed as part of a commitment/obligation that they have made to PTS & AGS holders of which they are also large holders.

However shareholders can potentially choose to change it.  It would be interesting to see what some of the most supported Chinese delegates think of the merger.

[fuzzy]

Delegate pay is a non-problem compared to the vested funds being released from the "merger". I think the community would much rather see that side being addressed.  (I haven't listened to the session yet)

It is obscene the deal bts holders receive in terms of value for their dollar with the current delegates.  In fact our delegate alone pays for a website devoted to bitshares and 3rd parties providing services for us. It has a team of 5 spanning across the globe. It gives us enough funding to pay for everything and 3 dollars per hour (probably much less) in terms of time spent. 

I could understand the complaints if we were half bitcoins marketcap, but at current prices it is laughable.

The merger was PRECISELY the problem.  In fact I'd be willing to say we lost a core dev over it.  What is the take away?  Every time a decision is made without the consent of the bts holders, bad things happen.

That is why we have these hangouts and I am glad BM asks these questions instead of simply doing something without input.  In terms of lessons learned, that is a lesson I'm glad we have learned.

[jsidhu]

Many devs aren't even sellimg infact im trying to short bitusd at these prices.. If 10% of devs I know aren't sellimg that's 10% less of potential dilution of a small pct of the ask side of the cny book.. It's a non problem imo.. I think price is being kept down on cny side somehow thru exchange hack or so,ething... Once it's allowed to rise it will be like the previous rise but bigger