Beyond Bitcoin (CNX) Hangout w/ Bytemaster Tomorrow @ 10AM EST

[mike623317]

What was the biggest take away from yesterdays mumble? Just wondering.

[triox]

I'd like clarification on the nature and purpose of Bytemaster's token.  Seeing how it may be undercutting BTS value proposition i believe shareholders deserve some clarity in the matter.

The question is: how many Brownie.PTS are held by Dan and/or Stan and/or Cryptonomex and/or CNX employees and how many will be held for the duration of future snapshots?

[00:41:14] CryptoPrometheus: Can we bring up a topic, just because it was a topic on the forum over the last couple of days and I think there was some emotion behind it. So I was wondering if you’d maybe just be able to clarify a little bit, what are the plans are going forward, if anything’s changed, if there’s going to be some more of an objective maybe for determining whether it’s going to be sort of just purely subjective than the way that you’ve stated already? Could you maybe just talk a little bit about that for us bytemaster?

[00:41:55] bytemaster: Sure, it’s impossible to do an objective measure of someone’s contribution. Particularly when not everyone has access to all information and not everyone knows the value of all actions. So you either subjugate everything to vote and get widespread approval or you have someone in charge of just deciding. So Brownie Points have been divvied up with … I try to estimate the total number of hours someone put into something and a hundred brownie points per hour is what I try to estimate it.

[00:42:33] bytemaster: But then your goal is, well how objective is the measurement of hours contributed and are all hours equal? Now are the hours of someone who just reads the form equal to so many hours as someone who writes code? And that’s all subjective.

[00:42:54] bytemaster: And is the code produced useful or is the code not. Were the comments useful or were the comments not. Different people have different opinions on those things. So there is no such thing as an objective measure. I’m trying my best to estimate the hours, I asked everyone to individually estimate how many hours they’ve contributed. Not everyone contributed an estimate of the hours, they asked me to estimate it. And I can be extremely wrong in my guesses. I can underestimate, I can overestimate, but the idea is that I think I’m right within an order of magnitude.

[00:43:32] bytemaster: And the work the people were doing was unpaid work, this is all bonus, it’s all a tip. Maybe somebody gets jealous because they didn’t get as big a tip as someone else, a jealous mindset is just not healthy for anyone. I think the idea is that everyone should be extremely grateful for the free gifts that they’re getting.

[00:43:57] bytemaster: You gave freely, you supported the community, you’re getting something back. Its more than you were expecting to get back and let’s just be grateful. Now, I’ve been very busy so I haven’t handed out brownie points recently and there’s some of you who I either missed or didn’t have an account for, I’m still going to be handing them out and I’ve got someone helping me track all that stuff to make sure things don’t fall through the cracks.

[00:44:23] bytemaster: So If you haven’t gotten any, don’t worry, there’s still more brownie points coming out the sharedrops not done. It’s probably going to be a lot more interesting people posting and making requests for brownie points now and I plan to hand them out just the same as always, freely, liberally and try to get as many different people to have a stake in this.

[00:44:58] bytemaster: If you’ve done anything, whether it’s just feedback on the forums, going to conferences, you know get out there and make a case for it and just let people know what you’ve been doing.

[00:45:13] bytemaster: It does two things, people get to see you, get to see all the people that have been out there and it’s just all around great. And of course there’s nothing wrong with buying brownie points from people. Those who sell their brownie points are cashing out into another currency. They got something someone else wants to have the brownie points for whatever they’re worth.

[00:45:36] bytemaster: But I want to reiterate that just because John is targeting brownie points as a source of contributions, the only thing he committed is to allocate 20% to those who are active in the BitShares community. Brownie points is just one measure of that, he may choose to allocate some of that 20% not to brownie points, but to other individuals who have helped him specifically. So I just want to make it clear that John did not state in the announcement that he was going to do brownie points, but the brownie points are a good measure of what we’ve been thinking represents that.

[00:46:20] bytemaster: The purpose of brownie points is just to track those who have been active and who are valuable because they give their time. BitShares represents those who are valuable because they give their capital. But not everyone has the ability to buy tons of BitShares and some just buy a little bit and give a lot.

[00:46:39] bytemaster: So I think brownie points is a good way of recognizing all of the labor which is a huge part of what makes all this successful, is the fact that the fifty people or more we have in this conference call right now is hugely driven by word of mouth and that’s what really gives all this stuff value is the community that we’re building.So we want to recognize those people that are giving this value.

[00:47:08] CryptoPrometheus: So just to reiterate for those that are out there that are thinking to themselves, “yeah I’ve done something valuable”, what’s the best way to get on the radar, either your radar or the radar of someone who’s been tasked with handing out brownie points? Is there a forum thread or should they contact you directly?

[00:47:31] bytemaster: The forum thread is the best way to just post on there if you didn’t receive a payout, post again. I’m going to have someone go through that thread and go through the wallet and make sure that everything’s been paid out accordingly.

[00:47:51] bytemaster: But that’s the main place where we’re going to go look for people who are trying to claim it. You can send me a private message, but I prefer you not send me a PM at this point, because ultimately I have to decide on each and every allocation of brownie points. So I’m going to have someone else aggregate and track this is what people did and this is what they have done.

[00:48:20] bytemaster: I guess another thing that we’re going to ask people to do if you’re contributing code is we’ve got a contributor license agreement based off of Apache, so before we can accept any contributions we’re going to need you to sign that document. That basically allows your code to be freely used by anyone in the BitShares community and helps keep the licensing clear.

[00:48:48] bytemaster: If we owe you brownie points for contributing code it might be contingent upon us actually getting that from you.

[00:48:58] fuzzy: This whole brownie thing, there are a lot of people who are frustrated, who are concerned you know. We have a guy on the forum called luckybit, I’m sure a lot of you are aware of who he is, but for a long time he has been talking about the gift economy. He was actually the first place where I heard the term “gift economy” and I found it very interesting and that’s why I mentioned it was an interesting social experiment to me to see where this is going to go.

[00:49:45] fuzzy: But the one thing that’s kind of a conflict that I see between the gifting economy, which I believe brownies kind of represent, and what many would call the traditional economy, is that brownies are not really legally binding agreements so the law doesn’t get in there. It’s almost like, do you remember I think it was one or two weeks ago when I was complaining about whenever I used to run a guild I could give people DKP for helping us to kill a monster, but in the game the monster couldn’t tax my entire guild with 25% of the DKP there and then use it to kill my strongest member in our team or something like that. They can’t do any of that stuff.

[00:50:33] fuzzy: So it’s almost like the way that you’ve designed up up till now, and please tell me if I’m wrong, is kind of to make sure that we don’t have to worry about any of those things. Its almost a self governance type of thing instead of reaching outside to different jurisdictions of governance. Is this more of a gifting economy type of token?

[00:50:56] bytemaster: Because people were concerned, “oh he can take them back at any time”. A lot of these things seem like disclaimers you put in there simply because it actually kind of unties some of those legal binding ties that would tie things down.

[00:51:14] bytemaster: Yes. I put lots of disclaimers in there because brownie points are not a security, they are not a promise or a commitment by me to do anything. The statement that I can take them back at anytime is more or less proof that I don’t owe you anything. Oh look I took them back now I don’t owe you anything.

[00:51:36] bytemaster: So that’s the clearest most extreme example of making sure that these things are not securities. That doesn’t mean that they can’t function as a way for people to keep track of stake and equity. I don’t have time to be petty and take it back from people and people will probably sell it before I can take it back.

[00:52:00] bytemaster: So these legal disclaimers are there to protect me, while still allowing us to get all the benefits. You can still have all the benefits of brownie points and the ability to track who’s done what’s and ability to receive sharedrops and all that without creating a legal security. And that’s the idea behind it, have the benefits without the legal constraints.

[00:52:29] bytemaster: The downside is you have to trust, you have to say well, bytemaster could issue a ton of brownie points. He could debase all the brownie points, he’s already given out and yes I can do that at the drop of a hat. But it’s not in my interest to do so because the reason I’m giving them to people is because I really am grateful for everyone’s contributions. It makes no sense to say, “Hey thank you! I’m taking it back now”.

[00:52:59] fuzzy: Wouldn’t it be safe to say that you’re also comfortable that people will trust you. I mean that your reputation is on the line here?

[00:53:07] bytemaster: To a large extent it is and to some extent it’s kind of messy. I misjudge if I piss people off, I’m taking a calculated risks, but I’m really hoping to cultivate a community of grateful positive people instead of entitled grumpy people.

[00:53:27] fuzzy: There could be the antithesis of brownies, right? Like Butterscotch coin or something like that where if you don’t like brownies, every time brownies are given out you receive the Bbutterscotch or something like that right. So now you have a demographic that disagrees philosophically with pretty much everything that this demographic does and might end up becoming a different sharedrop target.

 

I'm aware of the stated reasoning and I don't buy it.

[svk]

I never had a certificate I think but this is a fresh install anyway so no. I've tried some other usernames though and it still gives me an error: wrong server password for unregistered account

hmm well do you use the correct server password?

Code: [Select]

w0rldCh@NG3rsUN!t3

I was but finally worked now with a different username again.. Guess someone had been using the ones I tried..

[JA]

I never had a certificate I think but this is a fresh install anyway so no. I've tried some other usernames though and it still gives me an error: wrong server password for unregistered account

hmm well do you use the correct server password?

Code: [Select]

w0rldCh@NG3rsUN!t3

[Tuck Fheman]

Doesn't explain WHY he left.  Only the HOW.  For what reason did Toast leave?

Sorry, I thought the answer was, "he is working full-time at Google", which I thought explained why he left, perhaps not.

[svk]

I never had a certificate I think but this is a fresh install anyway so I guess same username but different certificate. I've tried some other usernames though and it still gives me an error: wrong server password for unregistered account

[JA]

I can't connect to the server, I get "invalid username" and "Server connection rejected: Wrong certificate or password.", any ideas?

did you try to connect with your previously registered username but with a different certificate?

[svk]

I can't connect to the server, I get "invalid username" and "Server connection rejected: Wrong certificate or password.", any ideas?

[topcandle]

Why did Toast leave?  And why did you say there was a chance he would come back into the fold?

[00:09:09] fuzzy: I’m looking through our questions right now and Intmaster’s asking you bm, “What is toast doing? Is toast working with you guys at all anymore? Do you guys talk to him at all?”.

[00:09:22] bytemaster: I talk to toast from time to time. He’s working with Peertracks to some extent. But he is working full-time at Google and has been for the past several months. So his time to work on this stuff is his spare time.

Doesn't explain WHY he left.  Only the HOW.  For what reason did Toast leave? 

[luckybit]

Q1: To Bytemaster: Have you had a chance to look at the "EarnBitshares" proposal and if you did what do you think?

Q2: To Bytemaster: Several researchers now believe Ethereum took the wrong direction on "Turing completeness". Is it possible that you might reverse your choice on "Turing completeness" for smart contracts in light of the fact that Turing completeness is undecideable logic, and as a result not verifiable?

Some background for readers

Turing complete means that your software could run on a computer with infinite resources. Turing incomplete means that your software can run on a computer with finite resources, but for all practical purposes there is no possibility of building a computer which computes with infinite resources, so there doesn't seem to be a real practical benefit to Turing completeness, while at the same time there are security costs due to the undecideability.

Decideable smart contracts have major security benefits when you want to outsource computation. A decideable smart contract allows for verifiable computing, a kind of computing where programs are formally proven, and are guaranteed to be correct. This kind of computing allows the outsourcing of computation, and it resolves the security issues around smart contracts.

Decidability will be a key feature for future blockchain technologies.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_complete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_computing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agda_(programming_language)
https://eprint.iacr.org/2009/547.pdf

[Tuck Fheman]

I'd like clarification on the nature and purpose of Bytemaster's token.  Seeing how it may be undercutting BTS value proposition i believe shareholders deserve some clarity in the matter.

The question is: how many Brownie.PTS are held by Dan and/or Stan and/or Cryptonomex and/or CNX employees and how many will be held for the duration of future snapshots?

[00:41:14] CryptoPrometheus: Can we bring up a topic, just because it was a topic on the forum over the last couple of days and I think there was some emotion behind it. So I was wondering if you’d maybe just be able to clarify a little bit, what are the plans are going forward, if anything’s changed, if there’s going to be some more of an objective maybe for determining whether it’s going to be sort of just purely subjective than the way that you’ve stated already? Could you maybe just talk a little bit about that for us bytemaster?

[00:41:55] bytemaster: Sure, it’s impossible to do an objective measure of someone’s contribution. Particularly when not everyone has access to all information and not everyone knows the value of all actions. So you either subjugate everything to vote and get widespread approval or you have someone in charge of just deciding. So Brownie Points have been divvied up with … I try to estimate the total number of hours someone put into something and a hundred brownie points per hour is what I try to estimate it.

[00:42:33] bytemaster: But then your goal is, well how objective is the measurement of hours contributed and are all hours equal? Now are the hours of someone who just reads the form equal to so many hours as someone who writes code? And that’s all subjective.

[00:42:54] bytemaster: And is the code produced useful or is the code not. Were the comments useful or were the comments not. Different people have different opinions on those things. So there is no such thing as an objective measure. I’m trying my best to estimate the hours, I asked everyone to individually estimate how many hours they’ve contributed. Not everyone contributed an estimate of the hours, they asked me to estimate it. And I can be extremely wrong in my guesses. I can underestimate, I can overestimate, but the idea is that I think I’m right within an order of magnitude.

[00:43:32] bytemaster: And the work the people were doing was unpaid work, this is all bonus, it’s all a tip. Maybe somebody gets jealous because they didn’t get as big a tip as someone else, a jealous mindset is just not healthy for anyone. I think the idea is that everyone should be extremely grateful for the free gifts that they’re getting.

[00:43:57] bytemaster: You gave freely, you supported the community, you’re getting something back. Its more than you were expecting to get back and let’s just be grateful. Now, I’ve been very busy so I haven’t handed out brownie points recently and there’s some of you who I either missed or didn’t have an account for, I’m still going to be handing them out and I’ve got someone helping me track all that stuff to make sure things don’t fall through the cracks.

[00:44:23] bytemaster: So If you haven’t gotten any, don’t worry, there’s still more brownie points coming out the sharedrops not done. It’s probably going to be a lot more interesting people posting and making requests for brownie points now and I plan to hand them out just the same as always, freely, liberally and try to get as many different people to have a stake in this.

[00:44:58] bytemaster: If you’ve done anything, whether it’s just feedback on the forums, going to conferences, you know get out there and make a case for it and just let people know what you’ve been doing.

[00:45:13] bytemaster: It does two things, people get to see you, get to see all the people that have been out there and it’s just all around great. And of course there’s nothing wrong with buying brownie points from people. Those who sell their brownie points are cashing out into another currency. They got something someone else wants to have the brownie points for whatever they’re worth.

[00:45:36] bytemaster: But I want to reiterate that just because John is targeting brownie points as a source of contributions, the only thing he committed is to allocate 20% to those who are active in the BitShares community. Brownie points is just one measure of that, he may choose to allocate some of that 20% not to brownie points, but to other individuals who have helped him specifically. So I just want to make it clear that John did not state in the announcement that he was going to do brownie points, but the brownie points are a good measure of what we’ve been thinking represents that.

[00:46:20] bytemaster: The purpose of brownie points is just to track those who have been active and who are valuable because they give their time. BitShares represents those who are valuable because they give their capital. But not everyone has the ability to buy tons of BitShares and some just buy a little bit and give a lot.

[00:46:39] bytemaster: So I think brownie points is a good way of recognizing all of the labor which is a huge part of what makes all this successful, is the fact that the fifty people or more we have in this conference call right now is hugely driven by word of mouth and that’s what really gives all this stuff value is the community that we’re building.So we want to recognize those people that are giving this value.

[00:47:08] CryptoPrometheus: So just to reiterate for those that are out there that are thinking to themselves, “yeah I’ve done something valuable”, what’s the best way to get on the radar, either your radar or the radar of someone who’s been tasked with handing out brownie points? Is there a forum thread or should they contact you directly?

[00:47:31] bytemaster: The forum thread is the best way to just post on there if you didn’t receive a payout, post again. I’m going to have someone go through that thread and go through the wallet and make sure that everything’s been paid out accordingly.

[00:47:51] bytemaster: But that’s the main place where we’re going to go look for people who are trying to claim it. You can send me a private message, but I prefer you not send me a PM at this point, because ultimately I have to decide on each and every allocation of brownie points. So I’m going to have someone else aggregate and track this is what people did and this is what they have done.

[00:48:20] bytemaster: I guess another thing that we’re going to ask people to do if you’re contributing code is we’ve got a contributor license agreement based off of Apache, so before we can accept any contributions we’re going to need you to sign that document. That basically allows your code to be freely used by anyone in the BitShares community and helps keep the licensing clear.

[00:48:48] bytemaster: If we owe you brownie points for contributing code it might be contingent upon us actually getting that from you.

[00:48:58] fuzzy: This whole brownie thing, there are a lot of people who are frustrated, who are concerned you know. We have a guy on the forum called luckybit, I’m sure a lot of you are aware of who he is, but for a long time he has been talking about the gift economy. He was actually the first place where I heard the term “gift economy” and I found it very interesting and that’s why I mentioned it was an interesting social experiment to me to see where this is going to go.

[00:49:45] fuzzy: But the one thing that’s kind of a conflict that I see between the gifting economy, which I believe brownies kind of represent, and what many would call the traditional economy, is that brownies are not really legally binding agreements so the law doesn’t get in there. It’s almost like, do you remember I think it was one or two weeks ago when I was complaining about whenever I used to run a guild I could give people DKP for helping us to kill a monster, but in the game the monster couldn’t tax my entire guild with 25% of the DKP there and then use it to kill my strongest member in our team or something like that. They can’t do any of that stuff.

[00:50:33] fuzzy: So it’s almost like the way that you’ve designed up up till now, and please tell me if I’m wrong, is kind of to make sure that we don’t have to worry about any of those things. Its almost a self governance type of thing instead of reaching outside to different jurisdictions of governance. Is this more of a gifting economy type of token?

[00:50:56] bytemaster: Because people were concerned, “oh he can take them back at any time”. A lot of these things seem like disclaimers you put in there simply because it actually kind of unties some of those legal binding ties that would tie things down.

[00:51:14] bytemaster: Yes. I put lots of disclaimers in there because brownie points are not a security, they are not a promise or a commitment by me to do anything. The statement that I can take them back at anytime is more or less proof that I don’t owe you anything. Oh look I took them back now I don’t owe you anything.

[00:51:36] bytemaster: So that’s the clearest most extreme example of making sure that these things are not securities. That doesn’t mean that they can’t function as a way for people to keep track of stake and equity. I don’t have time to be petty and take it back from people and people will probably sell it before I can take it back.

[00:52:00] bytemaster: So these legal disclaimers are there to protect me, while still allowing us to get all the benefits. You can still have all the benefits of brownie points and the ability to track who’s done what’s and ability to receive sharedrops and all that without creating a legal security. And that’s the idea behind it, have the benefits without the legal constraints.

[00:52:29] bytemaster: The downside is you have to trust, you have to say well, bytemaster could issue a ton of brownie points. He could debase all the brownie points, he’s already given out and yes I can do that at the drop of a hat. But it’s not in my interest to do so because the reason I’m giving them to people is because I really am grateful for everyone’s contributions. It makes no sense to say, “Hey thank you! I’m taking it back now”.

[00:52:59] fuzzy: Wouldn’t it be safe to say that you’re also comfortable that people will trust you. I mean that your reputation is on the line here?

[00:53:07] bytemaster: To a large extent it is and to some extent it’s kind of messy. I misjudge if I piss people off, I’m taking a calculated risks, but I’m really hoping to cultivate a community of grateful positive people instead of entitled grumpy people.

[00:53:27] fuzzy: There could be the antithesis of brownies, right? Like Butterscotch coin or something like that where if you don’t like brownies, every time brownies are given out you receive the Bbutterscotch or something like that right. So now you have a demographic that disagrees philosophically with pretty much everything that this demographic does and might end up becoming a different sharedrop target.

 

[Tuck Fheman]

Why did Toast leave?  And why did you say there was a chance he would come back into the fold?

[00:09:09] fuzzy: I’m looking through our questions right now and Intmaster’s asking you bm, “What is toast doing? Is toast working with you guys at all anymore? Do you guys talk to him at all?”.

[00:09:22] bytemaster: I talk to toast from time to time. He’s working with Peertracks to some extent. But he is working full-time at Google and has been for the past several months. So his time to work on this stuff is his spare time.

[topcandle]

Why did Toast leave?  And why did you say there was a chance he would come back into the fold?

[donkeypong]

I'd like clarification on the nature and purpose of Bytemaster's token.  Seeing how it may be undercutting BTS value proposition i believe shareholders deserve some clarity in the matter.

The question is: how many Brownie.PTS are held by Dan and/or Stan and/or Cryptonomex and/or CNX employees and how many will be held for the duration of future snapshots?

It's a dictatorial coin; he really doesn't have to reveal anything. Love, hate, or leave it. I, too, would rather they just used BTS for everything, but it doesn't bother me much either way.

[clayop]

I'd like clarification on the nature and purpose of Bytemaster's token.  Seeing how it may be undercutting BTS value proposition i believe shareholders deserve some clarity in the matter.

The question is: how many Brownie.PTS are held by Dan and/or Stan and/or Cryptonomex and/or CNX employees and how many will be held for the duration of future snapshots?