New accounts last 24h:

[Empirical1.2]

Charging 1/10 of 1 cent for half decent land in the most revolutionary financial country in the world was an error on our part.

....

Your thought process is a bit hard to follow, so apologies if I misunderstood some of your points.

maybe everyone here had the exact same opportunity at the same time to buy this "revolutionary financial country" at the same revolutionary price.

It seems pretty fair to me and I fail to see the "error", unless the motivation is greed??

Therefore, is the issue actually, "they thought of it before I did!" or "they beat me to it!" or "mine! mine! mine!" and not price?

No they didn't think of it before I did.

I think they should at least raise the cost of registering a name to $0.1-$0.25.
It seems one of our key selling points is easy account names, but at less than $0.001 per name, you can take out 5 million names with $5000 and significantly damage that selling point on our blockchain.

So the issue is that BTS shareholders would be underpaid & BTS accounts would be far less user friendly & attractive to the average customer if squatters had scooped up millions (That was his goal) of non premium names.

If the price were higher, what would that change?
Would it simply deter these "squatters" from wasting money registering useless names no one would ever want and only target super duper premium names? (hint : yes)

No, you make a false assumption that raising the price from $0.001 is going to make non-premium names completely unattractive. In reality there is a price that is fair for customers but yet will discourage the majority of squatters. (It's also not going to make premium names worth particularly more or less imo.)

So, for those super duper premium accounts, the perceived problem of "squatting" would not have been solved by adjusting the price higher afaic-theorize.

I'd still pay for a super duper premium name at a higher rate, and then likely make more selling it later. We should charge more so "squatters" can make more and force others to pay them more to get their super duper premium names!

Unless of course the "squatter" was going to charge 250,000 BTS for account name "squatter" no matter if he paid .1 BTS or 100,000 BTS for squatters rights.

Yes believe it or not that's how markets work. His ultimate selling price will be determined not by what he paid but what the market is willing to pay.
Example... If you buy an ounce of gold for $8000 which the market values at only $1200, good luck finding buyers at $8100 just because that's closer to what you paid

So the goal with the premium names, if we were forced to also used a fixed price strategy is not to undersell them. This would lose BTS shareholders money, make our namespace less attractive and potentially give someone a monopoly over it. At the same time if you overcharge you will not even attract people that genuinely want that name specifically for themselves or their business.

I'm sure there are better strategies but my suggestion for premium names is...

We don't know what the optimal price is, so I would start with very high prices that decrease every month till we get to an optimal price.

(Also a handful of names might be extremely valuable and we want to make sure we maximise that.)

[Tuck Fheman]

Charging 1/10 of 1 cent for half decent land in the most revolutionary financial country in the world was an error on our part.

*typing out loud*

maybe everyone here had the exact same opportunity at the same time to buy this "revolutionary financial country" at the same revolutionary price.

It seems pretty fair to me and I fail to see the "error", unless the motivation is greed??

Therefore, is the issue actually, "they thought of it before I did!" or "they beat me to it!" or "mine! mine! mine!" and not price?

If the price were higher, what would that change?

Would it simply deter these "squatters" from wasting money registering useless names no one would ever want and only target super duper premium names? (hint : yes)

So, for those super duper premium accounts, the perceived problem of "squatting" would not have been solved by adjusting the price higher afaic-theorize.

I'd still pay for a super duper premium name at a higher rate, and then likely make more selling it later. We should charge more so "squatters" can make more and force others to pay them more to get their super duper premium names! Unless of course the "squatter" was going to charge 250,000 BTS for account name "squatter" no matter if he paid .1 BTS or 100,000 BTS for squatters rights.

[hadrian]

I still seem to have had new rules applied retrospectively in my case, invalidating my attempts to protect my own trademarks. Because I registered my names on the chain but didn't use the faucet. I can't un-not-use the faucet.

No rules have been changed retroactively.  The rules were set on June 8th and 17th respectively.  If your name is non premium, and was registered before June 17th.  You are just fine.

There is no guarantee that these names will be usable as domains when the domain system goes live.  I don't think that system is even completely designed yet.

@Methodise
puppies is right. Nothing was changed retroactively. See here.

[puppies]

I still seem to have had new rules applied retrospectively in my case, invalidating my attempts to protect my own trademarks. Because I registered my names on the chain but didn't use the faucet. I can't un-not-use the faucet.

No rules have been changed retroactively.  The rules were set on June 8th and 17th respectively.  If your name is non premium, and was registered before June 17th.  You are just fine.

There is no guarantee that these names will be usable as domains when the domain system goes live.  I don't think that system is even completely designed yet.

[fav]

I still seem to have had new rules applied retrospectively in my case, invalidating my attempts to protect my own trademarks. Because I registered my names on the chain but didn't use the faucet. I can't un-not-use the faucet.

when did you register your names?

[Methodise]

I still seem to have had new rules applied retrospectively in my case, invalidating my attempts to protect my own trademarks. Because I registered my names on the chain but didn't use the faucet. I can't un-not-use the faucet.

[puppies]

It is not a democracy, that would be 1 vote 1 person.   It is a share-o-cracy, 1 vote 1 share.   

In theory anything is possible when it is just a matter of consensus.   But in practice the least controversial approach to consensus is to establish property rights and then NEVER violate them. 

It comes down to a constitution with checks and balances designed to protect property rights.   Rules don't need to change constantly and the less often they change the stronger the consensus.    In my opinion, all new innovation should never change the property rights of old innovations.

Very important distinction between democracy, and voting based upon stake.  I also agree wholeheartedly that BitShares should not change the rules often. 

The question of property rights brings up an interesting idea.  If 90% of users fork the blockchain, and write the balances of the other 10% out of the blockchain, have they violated the property rights of the 10%.  All they have done is change the code that is running on their computers.  The 10% are still free to run their own old code.  I don't think classic ideas of property rights apply.  Exercising my valid property rights on my property should never violate someone elses property. 

Rather than property rights, I consider it a promise from the network.  Of course violating this promise would be a terrible idea.  As far as I can tell, all cryptos derive their value (market cap) directly from this promise from the network.  I am just not sure that my ownership of my BTS which is on the distributed blockchain can be derived from first principles.  At least not in the same way that my ownership of the laptop I am typing on can be.

[bytemaster]

It is not a democracy, that would be 1 vote 1 person.   It is a share-o-cracy, 1 vote 1 share.   

In theory anything is possible when it is just a matter of consensus.   But in practice the least controversial approach to consensus is to establish property rights and then NEVER violate them. 

It comes down to a constitution with checks and balances designed to protect property rights.   Rules don't need to change constantly and the less often they change the stronger the consensus.    In my opinion, all new innovation should never change the property rights of old innovations.

[maqifrnswa]

This is a democracy.  It is a democracy with hard coded rules that we can vote to change.  If all the Narwhals go extinct, and all the narwhal names go unused we can deal with that in the future.  You know, for when we really need the name molecatcher.  I see no need to mess with the narwhals expected business model at this point.

It brings up a very important point though.  Registered names are by definition a scarce resource as they can only be used by one person at a time.  When we register a name we are effectively staking a claim to them.  Common law for claims of previously unowned property required both enclosure, and development.  Otherwise the property went back to its original unowned state.  The blockchain securely encloses this scarce resource for us, but does not enforce development.  What means of enforcing development would the community find palatable?

One model that springs to mind is that of a black hole.  They are supposedly constantly losing mass due to hawking radiation.  For a more massive black hole that is not really an issue, as it will take billions of years to waste away.  For a micro black hole this become an issue though.  If it evaporates too much it will vanish.  Could we do something similar with names.  Require a certain balance, to be parked on names that is burned as a fee at a certain time increment  Perhaps just enforce a certain minimum fee burned within a time frame.  If an account name does not have the fee it is purged from the blockchain.  This would dramatically reduce squatting.

Perhaps the answer is to split account names from domain names.  Require that domain names are linked to actual ip addresses.  This could be as simple as requiring domain name owner keys to broadcast signed transactions to the network every month or so.  Adding a small amount of work and cost to maintaining a name.  We could try to go farther and require the mapped IP to be provably under the control of the owner key of the domain.  Perhaps embedding this signed message into the page itself.  Then we would want to limit the number of domains that could be assigned to a single IP. 

While there is no reason to believe that the large aquatic animal is lying to us, I think we should disabuse ourselves of the notion that if we lay claim to something we can own it forever without putting forth any further effort.  If all it takes is laying a claim, then I own the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and all its moons.  In fact I own the Sun, and I need all of you to stop taking advantage of my property.

  this is my concern, well articulated. Has nothing to do with narwhal, he can keep names or not, whatever, but this is the problem I see with the system thanks to narwhal illustrating it.

[arhag]

@arhag : does you get an info under your profile tab, that i was mentioned you here with @mentions plugin?

Nice! I did.

[cass]

@arhag : does you get an info under your profile tab, that i was mentioned you here with @mentions plugin?

[arhag]

- Now we have only one step in pricing (8 characters). Maybe there should be more? Short names would be very expensive and with every character price goes cheaper?

That is already possible with Graphene. You can charge a different fee depending on the number of characters in the name up to 8 characters (after that it is non-premium and the cost is fixed).

- Is auction possible? If you want to register a name, you would have to wait for a period (like 24 h or a week) and during that time everybody else could see what name you are going to register and make a bigger offer for it if they see it valuable. This would propably optimise the income that Bitshares gets from name selling.

The way I see it there are three significant economic models for names (there are infinite variations of course, but these are the three that are most important in my opinion):

• Pay a fee to register a name where the fee price is determined by an algorithm and not by the market (the algorithm could be as simple as a fixed fee, or it can charge different prices based on character length like Graphene does today), and then you fully own that name forever with no other costs (maybe a very small fixed "I'm still alive" fee every year).
• Use an auction to determine the initial price of a new name (or a name that has since been lost due to the owner not paying the small fixed "I'm still alive" fee), but after the name is sold, the owner gets to fully own that name forever with no other costs (other than the small fixed "I'm still alive" fee).
• Use a leasing model. The "owner" of a name does not truly own it. They initially use an auction to buy a limited time lease to control the name and the right to extend the lease without disruption. However, each time they get the opportunity to re-extend the lease, they need to pay a fee for the extension that is determined by market forces. An auction system could allow the blockchain to know what the market value of the lease extension would be, and it would require the current lease owner to pay some fraction (perhaps 100%) of that price before their lease expires to extend their lease or else they forfeit the lease to the highest bidder at the end of their lease.

We can implement any subset (including all three) of these economic models. However, each of them require their own namespace. This means the same name can exist in all three economic models and they are disambiguated by the namespace they belong in.

My thoughts are that we should have at most two namespaces (one for domain names and potentially one for account names). I think economic model 1 or 2 is appropriate for account names (if we even have any) and economic model 2 or 3 is appropriate for domain names. Domain names could also have a "default account" parameter that points to an account ID. Therefore, even if we get rid of account names, domain names could still be used as a sort of account name for those who choose to pay the cost of maintaining them (the rest of the people wouldn't bother with account names which as I have discussed elsewhere aren't actually necessary).

My first preference is to have account names follow economic model 1 (despite the squatting potential) and domain names follow economic model 3. My second preference is to have account names follow economic model 2 and domain names follow economic model 3. My third preference is the get rid of account names and only have domain names following economic model 3. My fourth preference is to get rid of account names and only have domain names following economic model 2.

One other possibility is to mix economic models in the same namespace depending on how an algorithm classifies the name. For example, we could have domain names follow economic model 3, but account names would either follow economic model 1 or 2 depending on the length of the name. An account name that is 10 characters or longer could follow economic model 1, but account names that are less than 10 characters long would follow economic model 2.

[Samupaha]

People respond to incentives. If you create an incentive for squatting, you'll get squatting. It is that simple. I'm a little surprised that we had to wait for several days to first squatter to come.

My two ideas on this:

- Now we have only one step in pricing (8 characters). Maybe there should be more? Short names would be very expensive and with every character price goes cheaper?

- Is auction possible? If you want to register a name, you would have to wait for a period (like 24 h or a week) and during that time everybody else could see what name you are going to register and make a bigger offer for it if they see it valuable. This would propably optimise the income that Bitshares gets from name selling.

[puppies]

This is a democracy.  It is a democracy with hard coded rules that we can vote to change.  If all the Narwhals go extinct, and all the narwhal names go unused we can deal with that in the future.  You know, for when we really need the name molecatcher.  I see no need to mess with the narwhals expected business model at this point.

It brings up a very important point though.  Registered names are by definition a scarce resource as they can only be used by one person at a time.  When we register a name we are effectively staking a claim to them.  Common law for claims of previously unowned property required both enclosure, and development.  Otherwise the property went back to its original unowned state.  The blockchain securely encloses this scarce resource for us, but does not enforce development.  What means of enforcing development would the community find palatable?

One model that springs to mind is that of a black hole.  They are supposedly constantly losing mass due to hawking radiation.  For a more massive black hole that is not really an issue, as it will take billions of years to waste away.  For a micro black hole this become an issue though.  If it evaporates too much it will vanish.  Could we do something similar with names.  Require a certain balance, to be parked on names that is burned as a fee at a certain time increment  Perhaps just enforce a certain minimum fee burned within a time frame.  If an account name does not have the fee it is purged from the blockchain.  This would dramatically reduce squatting.

Perhaps the answer is to split account names from domain names.  Require that domain names are linked to actual ip addresses.  This could be as simple as requiring domain name owner keys to broadcast signed transactions to the network every month or so.  Adding a small amount of work and cost to maintaining a name.  We could try to go farther and require the mapped IP to be provably under the control of the owner key of the domain.  Perhaps embedding this signed message into the page itself.  Then we would want to limit the number of domains that could be assigned to a single IP. 

While there is no reason to believe that the large aquatic animal is lying to us, I think we should disabuse ourselves of the notion that if we lay claim to something we can own it forever without putting forth any further effort.  If all it takes is laying a claim, then I own the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and all its moons.  In fact I own the Sun, and I need all of you to stop taking advantage of my property.

[fav]

I'd say that many of us have been doing what we can to make the sytem better for everyone,  often at considrable personal cost in time, money, attention. Conversely, I think Narwhal is trying to make the system worse for everyone else for a personal gain for himself.  I don't get any feeling at all that he is trying to enhance our project. Quite the contrary.

Is it wrong? Not legally I guess.

Well, the blockchain doesn't care about individuals. it's based on a certain ruleset, everyone can work with this as they see fit. forking to reverse this would mean we're no better than ripple and the negative PR and shitstorm would hurt us all long term.

BitShares is for traders - personal gain is simply natural in this environment.