Soledger Goals

[SolomonSollarsNSense]

These "REAL utility" blockchains will be the big winners going forward. With the potential that Steem has shown this year there is no doubt anymore that decked out infrastructures are not needed to make some type of impact on normal consumers (which is actually where the big money lies). And if Steem can fix the kinks in their business model don't be surprised if it shoots right back up next year. It still in beta and people forget this.

For instance Steem/SteemIt built a lightweight blockchain that was for the social network/blogging industry, PeerPlay is in the e-sports/Sports Betting/Gambling industry and my project we are in the Hollywood/CableTV/Streaming space. What space are you experimenting for? Or does it have a more broader application that could generally apply to multiple industries? Finally while I do not believe you could get the steady stream of project's needing technical help here (in the way that say Ethereum provides), I do believe there is some merit to Soledger making a play for the business model CODE/Consensys is doing.

I am liking your thinking Solomon. Lance and I have been having some thoughts along similar lines. Particularly concerning the ideas around the development of focused, application-specific chains.

So up until now, Soledger had primarily been focusing on exploring the viability and uses of a specific consensus protocol of our own design, which offers certain unique security and performance tradeoffs. Lance mentioned it briefly in his earlier post. I am not sure that our work is concrete enough to begin a public discussion with everyone yet, but I will let @Agent86 chime in if he wants to say more.

 Hopefully it is successful, and after getting back up to speed with Graphene and BitShares, there may be opportunities for Soledger to do further Graphene-based development along the lines you mentioned. Given the amount of infrastructure and exposure that continues to grow around Graphene, I can indeed see opportunities to do targeted development around BitShares, Peerplays, and/or other Graphene-based chains that are yet to be launched. Going a step farther, as an example, I know Lance has a great passion for different SmartCoin and bond mechanisms--so there may be potential for future Graphene blockchains focusing on such contracts.

You're probably aware but there also turns out to be a number of blockchain-related meetups on Meetup.com around the Chicago area. Lance and I have gone to a few and will continue to do so when it makes sense--meeting people in person is helpful to keep a finger on the pulse of things, and to keep abreast of local developments and opportunities.

Good to hear Vikram! Glad I could be of some thoughtful stimulation. I figured we might be somewhat on the same page already and It's definitely a great sign you both are thinking along these lines (business wise). As a Hollywood guy I'm always thinking how I can make people a "Star", or I try to study how others are doing it (marketing). And when I see Joseph and how they market him "making hims" is pretty easy. Just need the right developer, a project that has potential and the ability to make great quality content. The rest kind of works itself out.

Now it would behoove you to look at your introduction back into the community. Imagine if everyone treated you like that outside of this community too... (that's right cha-ching!  Its my job to think like that lol And whether you like it or not you've got the "it" factor for technical development. Use it wisely.

Okay experimentation is a focus on consensus, and besides that you both are open to other focuses and projects. Sounds good. That is all I needed to hear. Obviously we have an active project so Soledger's direction interests me personally. I was hoping some experimentation might have been along the lines of rewarding economics for long term adoption? Steems primary reason for success? If not no worries. @Agent86  has interest in bond mechanisms which is right up my alley. We are trying to use the concept of "bonds" as part of our rewarding economics for mainstream adoption. That is if we were to create a application specific blockchain. Still working out some details. Whenever you guys are ready to share your ideas though, I am all ears. But no rush.

In terms of meet ups actually I was not aware they were still happening in Chicago... I used to attend the Bitcoin specific one lead by Joshua Solomon. But I stopped because it was too Bitcoin focused and everyone came there to circle jerk about it  It got old really fast. Is there an alt-coin one?

Anyways I wholeheartedly agree face to face meet ups are the best kinds of interaction. Would love to know the blockchain meet-ups around Chicago you think are worthy to attend. If you still attend I can come to the next one and meet up with you guys. Just let me know and I will see what I can do. Cheers!

[vikram]

I do not know how the overall Bitshares community feels but personally I think the blockchain trend of 2017 will be the "mainstream utility" movement. Blockchains that are built to fulfill a specific utility while appealing to the user-friendliness regular folks appreciate. This is what is starting to bubble up to the surface and spill over in terms of where the overall crypto communities want to move. I guess people are finally tired of sending transactions to each other back and forth and circle jerking about it being soooooo decentralized!   

These "REAL utility" blockchains will be the big winners going forward. With the potential that Steem has shown this year there is no doubt anymore that decked out infrastructures are not needed to make some type of impact on normal consumers (which is actually where the big money lies). And if Steem can fix the kinks in their business model don't be surprised if it shoots right back up next year. It still in beta and people forget this.

I mention that because you said you were experimenting along side trying to figure out the type of services Soledger can provide. If you don't feel comfortable sharing what it is you are actually experimenting with I understand. But would you mind mentioning the specific industry your experiments could appeal to? For instance Steem/SteemIt built a lightweight blockchain that was for the social network/blogging industry, PeerPlay is in the e-sports/Sports Betting/Gambling industry and my project we are in the Hollywood/CableTV/Streaming space. What space are you experimenting for? Or does it have a more broader application that could generally apply to multiple industries?

Finally while I do not believe you could get the steady stream of project's needing technical help here (in the way that say Ethereum provides), I do believe there is some merit to Soledger making a play for the business model CODE/Consensys is doing. They should not be the only ones in that space right now and the technical expertise of Joseph Lubin and his team has allowed many Ethereum projects to raise crazy amounts of money for their projects. The last being SingularDTV a worthy competitor to my project. This model of using reputation and coding expertise to funnel resources to a crypto-community is a winner in my book. It brings monetary resources to their community so their economy around the blockchain is actually built.

Graphene and other application specific blockchain business models can be your niche or selling point. They will be the winners going forward. And I believe if Soledger were to focus on helping projects like these it could be a great alternative to Consensys/CODE's Ethereum specific model. And could be a great way to funnel resources to this community and most importantly yourselves. This is of course just one service in addition to whatever else you could potentially want to do. The only real question is the one all new businesses struggle with and that is where to start... Let me know what you think of these ideas. Peace and THE CUBS WON!!!!

I am liking your thinking Solomon. Lance and I have been having some thoughts along similar lines. Particularly concerning the ideas around the development of focused, application-specific chains.

As for our current experimentation: Lance and I both have longstanding individual interests in consensus mechanisms, and it was on this basis that we had originally linked up with each other. So up until now, Soledger had primarily been focusing on exploring the viability and uses of a specific consensus protocol of our own design, which offers certain unique security and performance tradeoffs. Lance mentioned it briefly in his earlier post. I am not sure that our work is concrete enough to begin a public discussion with everyone yet, but I will let @Agent86 chime in if he wants to say more.

Now that we are reconnecting with the BitShares community however, new possibilities are already opening up. I have just posted a BitShares worker proposal (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23495.msg300188.html#msg300188) for me to handle some of the project administration tasks, as I once did with BitShares 1. Hopefully it is successful, and after getting back up to speed with Graphene and BitShares, there may be opportunities for Soledger to do further Graphene-based development along the lines you mentioned. Given the amount of infrastructure and exposure that continues to grow around Graphene, I can indeed see opportunities to do targeted development around BitShares, Peerplays, and/or other Graphene-based chains that are yet to be launched. Going a step farther, as an example, I know Lance has a great passion for different SmartCoin and bond mechanisms--so there may be potential for future Graphene blockchains focusing on such contracts.

You're probably aware but there also turns out to be a number of blockchain-related meetups on Meetup.com around the Chicago area. Lance and I have gone to a few and will continue to do so when it makes sense--meeting people in person is helpful to keep a finger on the pulse of things, and to keep abreast of local developments and opportunities.

[ebit]

 

We need to work in order.
First,The Bitshares Committee Members can make a list with requirement according to the roadmap.
Second,a company submit his plan.

I disagree. A fresh set of brains in the community can provide a lot of useful input and new ideas. Why shouldn't a company come up with a plan that hasn't found its way into the Committee's roadmap yet?

IMO most knowledge and new ideas about things like a bond market or a new kind of SmartCoins have left with BM. This is exactly what we need.

(FTR, at this time I don't see the benefit of a new consensus mechanism or a separate implementation of the BitShares protocol.)

[SolomonSollarsNSense]

Do you guys still work on/with the graphene code base or have you picked something else for your company?

Just to venture a limb here guys. I sort of imagine Soledger wants to do something similar to what star developer of Ethereum Joseph Lubin is doing with his Consensys/CODE project. Where they are either helping their original project (Bitshares) and or other projects that can afford their services to achieve their blockchain goals. They certainly have the technical expertise.

Unlike Ethereum they could help with graphene based projects? I agree though clarification would be stellar.

Soledger is still very young so we are still exploring options and don't want to take anything off the table just yet. This is also why things are still a bit vague, but already the feedback we are getting from some of you is helping clarify things.

But once I am at that point I think we can talk in more concrete terms about what pieces of Graphene could be fixed or upgraded, or even whether it could be used as a base for other interesting systems alongside BitShares itself (like Peerplays is doing).

We are also doing some internal prototyping and experimentation of some of our own ideas (some of which @Agent86 mentioned earlier) that are independent from Graphene/BitShares for which we are using the Golang programming language, so hopefully we will have something interesting to share with regards to that in the future -- still experimenting for now though so no timelines yet.

Thanks for the reply Vikram. I think it is a smart move to keep options open. I don't know if you know but it seems DPOS is really taking off with many other communities and its cool to know we started it here. Projects like Steem, LISK, Tendermint/Cosmos, and now Ark which was just announced (with a huge list of whose who in the crypto world) have taken to its configuration and are making their own flavors with slight tweaks. There are others I just cannot think of them right now.

I do not know how the overall Bitshares community feels but personally I think the blockchain trend of 2017 will be the "mainstream utility" movement. Blockchains that are built to fulfill a specific utility while appealing to the user-friendliness regular folks appreciate. This is what is starting to bubble up to the surface and spill over in terms of where the overall crypto communities want to move. I guess people are finally tired of sending transactions to each other back and forth and circle jerking about it being soooooo decentralized!   

These "REAL utility" blockchains will be the big winners going forward. With the potential that Steem has shown this year there is no doubt anymore that decked out infrastructures are not needed to make some type of impact on normal consumers (which is actually where the big money lies). And if Steem can fix the kinks in their business model don't be surprised if it shoots right back up next year. It still in beta and people forget this.

I mention that because you said you were experimenting along side trying to figure out the type of services Soledger can provide. If you don't feel comfortable sharing what it is you are actually experimenting with I understand. But would you mind mentioning the specific industry your experiments could appeal to? For instance Steem/SteemIt built a lightweight blockchain that was for the social network/blogging industry, PeerPlay is in the e-sports/Sports Betting/Gambling industry and my project we are in the Hollywood/CableTV/Streaming space. What space are you experimenting for? Or does it have a more broader application that could generally apply to multiple industries?

Finally while I do not believe you could get the steady stream of project's needing technical help here (in the way that say Ethereum provides), I do believe there is some merit to Soledger making a play for the business model CODE/Consensys is doing. They should not be the only ones in that space right now and the technical expertise of Joseph Lubin and his team has allowed many Ethereum projects to raise crazy amounts of money for their projects. The last being SingularDTV a worthy competitor to my project. This model of using reputation and coding expertise to funnel resources to a crypto-community is a winner in my book. It brings monetary resources to their community so their economy around the blockchain is actually built.

It is really a shame that many Ethereum projects will go no where. No shade, but I just do not think Ethereum's economics will work long term for majority of PROFITABLE businesses. Crypto or otherwise. Imagine Steem's economics on Ethereum... yeah not gonna happen.

Graphene and other application specific blockchain business models can be your niche or selling point. They will be the winners going forward. And I believe if Soledger were to focus on helping projects like these it could be a great alternative to Consensys/CODE's Ethereum specific model. And could be a great way to funnel resources to this community and most importantly yourselves. This is of course just one service in addition to whatever else you could potentially want to do. The only real question is the one all new businesses struggle with and that is where to start... Let me know what you think of these ideas. Peace and THE CUBS WON!!!!

[pc]

We need to work in order.
First,The Bitshares Committee Members can make a list with requirement according to the roadmap.
Second,a company submit his plan.

I disagree. A fresh set of brains in the community can provide a lot of useful input and new ideas. Why shouldn't a company come up with a plan that hasn't found its way into the Committee's roadmap yet?

IMO most knowledge and new ideas about things like a bond market or a new kind of SmartCoins have left with BM. This is exactly what we need.

(FTR, at this time I don't see the benefit of a new consensus mechanism or a separate implementation of the BitShares protocol.)

[ebit]

We need to work in order.
First,The Bitshares Committee Members can make a list with requirement according to the roadmap.
Second,a company submit his plan.

[vikram]

Do you guys still work on/with the graphene code base or have you picked something else for your company?

Just to venture a limb here guys. I sort of imagine Soledger wants to do something similar to what star developer of Ethereum Joseph Lubin is doing with his Consensys/CODE project. Where they are either helping their original project (Bitshares) and or other projects that can afford their services to achieve their blockchain goals. They certainly have the technical expertise.

Unlike Ethereum they could help with graphene based projects? I agree though clarification would be stellar.

Soledger is still very young so we are still exploring options and don't want to take anything off the table just yet. This is also why things are still a bit vague, but already the feedback we are getting from some of you is helping clarify things.

As I mentioned in my other thread (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23474.0.html), we are definitely willing to do some simple tasks for BitShares that I know we have the capacity to tackle even though we are just getting back into the loop with the community. Aside from that, I think it will take a bit of time to really re-familiarize myself with the details of Graphene and its status per the issue trackers -- but once I am at that point I think we can talk in more concrete terms about what pieces of Graphene could be fixed or upgraded, or even whether it could be used as a base for other interesting systems alongside BitShares itself (like Peerplays is doing).

We are also doing some internal prototyping and experimentation of some of our own ideas (some of which @Agent86 mentioned earlier) that are independent from Graphene/BitShares for which we are using the Golang programming language, so hopefully we will have something interesting to share with regards to that in the future -- still experimenting for now though so no timelines yet.

[Agent86]

Your decision about "opportunity cost" was made when you decided to form a new business instead of working on "well paying careers with clear paths for advancement".  Those are called "sunk costs" and you don't need to tell us about them.

If you are already calling into question the decisions you have made, you will find succeeding difficult.

Somehow agreed.

Hi blahblah7up,
When I mentioned opportunity cost, I was speaking about everyone in the community who invests time and energy on building our ecosystem who might otherwise invest in careers and other endeavors.  I think it's nice to acknowledge it.  I also think the discussion is relevant and important to consider when thinking about how to attract or retain talent.

My personal situation is that I still have a full time job as a application scientist for a biotech company and it's a very good, rewarding job.  I'd love to have more time in the day and it's always a balance how to make the most impact.  I think Vikram is super talented and I'm humbled he started a company with me but I'm also aware that he's young and it's risky and I want him to spend his time in a worthwhile way.

[Agent86]

Vikram and I have ideas about what is useful and compelling and worth working on.

Looking forward to hearing these ideas.

Hi Chronos:

I can mention a few things I feel are interesting:

For BitAssets, I think pegging via forced settlement is not ideal as a small group control the exchange rate and it could prevent BitAssets from tracking close enough to be treated interchangeably.  I prefer maintaining parity using the feed to restrict shorting.

I think a bond market that creates a dollar denominated investment vehicle with trustworthy defined returns protected by a margin call mechanism could be REALLY popular and a way to bring a lot of people into the system.

We've played with using Golang for development and I think it has the potential to make development more efficient and make the code more easily accessible and auditable.  I would propose we could make a Golang implementation of BitShares but I think it would be too much to take on without help.

Vikram and I discussed using a widest chain metric for consensus where the widest chain is acknowledged by the greatest percentage of witnesses and/or stake rather than using longest chain.  For example, the consensus chain for BitShares is the longest chain (most valid blocks, combined with using checkpoints) but in our opinion two signatures from the same witness doesn't lend more credibility to a chain than one signature from that witness.  There's some non obvious complexity in terms of implementation but I think could provide efficiency benefits such as using transient commitments instead of adding empty blocks to a blockchain which is nice to keep the blockchain size down and it also may allow less reliance on checkpoints/more robust consensus.  I think it's also possible to implement a true transactions as proof of stake metric that isn't prohibitively expensive to track.

I've been a fan of the idea that expecting stakeholders to be responsible for certain things like voting for witnesses and proving they are alive and haven't lost their private keys once a year is useful.  I think this can reduce the amount of stale/forgotten stake owned by people with little or no interest and keep a stake voting community more lean and active.  Although penalizing stale stake is probably the kind of thing that shouldn't be added to BitShares because it's a fundamental change to the social agreement.

[SolomonSollarsNSense]

Just to venture a limb here guys. I sort of imagine Soledger wants to do something similar to what star developer of Ethereum Joseph Lubin is doing with his Consensys/CODE project. Where they are either helping their original project (Bitshares) and or other projects that can afford their services to achieve their blockchain goals. They certainly have the technical expertise.

Unlike Ethereum they could help with graphene based projects? I agree though clarification would be stellar.

[abit]

Your decision about "opportunity cost" was made when you decided to form a new business instead of working on "well paying careers with clear paths for advancement".  Those are called "sunk costs" and you don't need to tell us about them.

If you are already calling into question the decisions you have made, you will find succeeding difficult.

Somehow agreed.

I didn't see what/where are the goals except in the title.

[blahblah7up]

Your decision about "opportunity cost" was made when you decided to form a new business instead of working on "well paying careers with clear paths for advancement".  Those are called "sunk costs" and you don't need to tell us about them.

If you are already calling into question the decisions you have made, you will find succeeding difficult.

[xeroc]

Good news!

Do you guys still work on/with the graphene code base or have you picked something else for your company?

[Chronos]

Vikram and I have ideas about what is useful and compelling and worth working on.

Looking forward to hearing these ideas.

[Agent86]

Hi Everyone,

I am writing to provide some more information and context about Soledger Inc. and our goals (prompted by this post https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23474.0.html and follow up questions).

Vikram and I were both heavily involved in the BitShares community and it's where our passion for blockchain technology took root.

Some of the visions and goals discussed on this forum are extremely compelling.  So much so that despite setbacks there are a large number of community members that have remained engaged and following the forum in the hope of finding a way to bring the potential to life.

Most of us would agree the BitShares ecosystem is not yet all it could be.  More than anything, Vikram and I would like to see cool and compelling systems developed and brought to life and to be a part of that.  And as far as we are concerned, the BitShares community speaks our language.  This community comprises the people who are most likely to understand, appreciate, and enjoy the types of things Vikram and I would like to be a part of building.  In addition to being the people most likely to be able to offer useful support and constructive criticism.

When I talk of "our community" it's obviously hard to define. The community is far from unified; different people have different opinions on what's important, what's interesting, and have different goals.  It can't be entirely defined by the current allocation of BitShares stake as I think there are talented community members that may have sold for valid reasons.  But that doesn't mean they lost sight of the vision or have nothing to contribute.

Vikram and I have ideas about what is useful and compelling and worth working on.  But building such systems is also a huge undertaking and requires multiple people to risk time and mental energy at a significant opportunity cost.  Time that could be spent working on well paying careers with clear paths for advancement.  Broadly, our hope is to work in conjunction and as part of a sophisticated and understanding community.

https://www.soledger.com