Author Topic: You should read this  (Read 22904 times)

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Offline luckybit

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Key test:

What will a suggested target group need to do to benefit from an air drop?

If the answer is, "Sell them to raise money for their Good Cause"
then you can pretty well see that giving to them is counter-productive.

If the answer is, "Use the shares to try out the DAC's services"
or "save the shares and become interested in growing their value"
then you are onto something!

In this case they have to know what crypto assets are to know that immediately selling them isn't the way to go. But I think the way to make a crypto endowment work is to do it like AGS. They cannot sell it because its illiquid and are forced to receive dividends to that address.

Of course they'll sell whatever dividends but they'll still be a stakeholder.

The one and most important key element of the strategy I propose is, to have the Bitshares community show it's appreciation for the thought leaders, trend setters, benefactors, volunteers, journalists, from in the decentralization community (and also the social entrepreneurship community).

The airdrop should be seen as a show of appreciation for community services of certain individuals. For organizations who have a good cause, it has to be explained to them that it's a stock and not something like Bitcoin which most cash out immediately through Bitpay. I am convinced that there are enough technologically sophisticated charities and social entrepreneurs who will see the long term value of holding their stake.

« Last Edit: April 13, 2014, 01:05:44 am by luckybit »
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Offline Stan

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Key test:

What will a suggested target group need to do to benefit from an air drop?

If the answer is, "Sell them to raise money for their Good Cause"
then you can pretty well see that giving to them is counter-productive.

If the answer is, "Use the shares to try out the DAC's services"
or "save the shares and become interested in growing their value"
then you are onto something!
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline luckybit

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It appears that the majority here are finally in favor of Bitshares having a “faucet” just like every other crypto in history.  How long did that take? (and you guys wonder why it is taking Dan so long to construct his “consensus machine” when you can barely reach consensus on one of the basic laws of crypto).

Next order of business:

DECIDE ON A BUDGET (this should be the easy part).  Don’t spend 2 weeks arguing about how much money we should spend, then spend 5 minutes deciding who to drop the Bitshares on.  No, spend 5 minutes agreeing on a fair amount of money to spend on our faucet, so we can spend the rest of the time planning the most effective way to spend this budget.  If we can't come to a consensus and have to resort to donations then so be it.  Please just decide who gets what and how much, then you can discuss the "how to distribute" (the fun part).

Luckybit has seized the sword from the stone and is the new champion of this thread.  I encourage everyone to follow his lead here because his ideas are tactical and well thought out (think contingency planning, you are setting rules for a game).  I’m going back to fighting dragons for a while.  I’ll leave you with this:

The more attention to detail that you put into the target parameters for your airdrop, the more positive media attention you will receive.   This is because you will be able to claim first mover advantage on any new air-dropping ideas that involve the inclusion/exclusion of certain groups based on:

WHAT BITSHARES CAN DO FOR THEM/or why we don’t think that they are a part of our target audience

This is important:

You will be determining how much or how little media attention you will receive.  If you create a complex set of rules for the drop, then your media attention will be greater (because people will want to understand the fine print to see if or how they can qualify).  But remember that the labor on the developers who will be distributing the coins will be greater the more complicated the rule set is.



I think the budget shouldn't be set in stone. Let it be a percentage of profit which goes into airdrop marketing. Treat it as a marketing expense internally and justify it as a marketing expense.

If it has to be part of the budget then take it from the marketing budget. Since none of us knows how much a Bitshare is worth it's not possible to come up with a budget right now. We can say how much an AGS might be worth though and how much it might cost to do an airdrop initiative.

I think it would be relatively cheap unless you want to do it right (with live CDs, magazine, fully functioning Bitshares network, and videos explaining what DACs are and how they can benefit the social entrepreneur).

I think it's going to take a while to do. I think the video would have to be at least as good as what are bitshares. I think the liveCD should be something secure that you can give out to people who may not take security seriously but who want to have a wallet up and running quickly from which to insert the private key to redeem the airdropped crypto equity. The live CD could contain the videos and all of that.

The magazine could contain editorials from some of us, from Stan, maybe some popular quotes of ours from our discussions so people can see the motivation behind it all and be encouraged to join the conversation.

Quote
gamey has brought up a good point as to the conflict of interest stories that can arise if we pick and choose charities. 

It's not about being popular with every charity. It's about being popular with the charities which promote social entrepreneurship and which are technologically inclined. A lot of charities won't be supported because those charities aren't strategically interesting at the time.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't choose charities which have strategic significance for the industry you're trying to grow and community you're trying to build. If the Bitshares community is supporting social entrepreneurs then a lot of people aren't going to like that, and if it supports the greater decentralization community a lot of people aren't going to like that either, and if it supports communities around other emerging technologies maybe they won't like that either.

But those are the sort of strategic alliances you build. It's not just about looking popular but about building lasting alliances with other disruptive decentralization communities forming around other cool technologies. It's also about getting in touch with other communities of passionate people who want to make a better world but who don't have the technological equipment to do so.

I mentioned building a faucet months ago by the way. If you want to do it the way I mentioned then reward marketing, don't just give free stuff. Tell people to put Bitshares.org in their signature for example. Do it on a person to person basis on forums, and use Facebook for people not on forums to get people to forward or share different stuff with their friends to earn Bitshares. You can use the airdrop in a way to encourage viral adoption and do it through a giveaway as Mastercoin has done.

But I don't think a faucet will be good enough anymore. Competition has increased since then and it's going to require monthly airdrops, magazines, blog postings, videos, a whole campaign. The first few months there might not be much adoption but over time as the airdrops become more targeted and campaign more polished this will change.

The magazine for example, just giving a free copy to the right charities could go very far in increasing adoption. If they get shares along with the magazine they might buy a subscription. You could even make the magazine company itself a DAC and give shares to the early readers of it in proportion to how early they subscribe.

So subscribe today and you win x shares in the magazine DAC which produced the magazine. Then offer shares to people who write editorials for the magazine, I am sure you can find people on this forum willing to do that.

Quote
You will be determining how much or how little media attention you will receive.  If you create a complex set of rules for the drop, then your media attention will be greater (because people will want to understand the fine print to see if or how they can qualify).  But remember that the labor on the developers who will be distributing the coins will be greater the more complicated the rule set is.

I think you should reward randomly. It should be seen as a gift in response for the service and impact that journalist or individual has had on growing the mindshare for the concepts. This means it doesn't matter whether they just have a blog with a very well written article or they are on a network with a lot of reach. The point is to airdrop to people who truly understand and explain the concepts.

So as a community we should look at past articles to find the articles written by people who actually have a deep understanding of core concepts in this space like the difference between a DAC and a DAO. Articles which do a good job explaining it are written by journalists, we then look at how many other articles the journalist wrote and give a stake to that journalist.

A lot of journalists for example are behind Ethereum and don't really believe in Bitshares. But they are doing a great job explaining Ethereum and the concepts which at the foundation are shared by Bitshares. These journalists in my opinion are more important than some people at Russia Today who barely understand the difference between Bitcoin 1.0 and Bitcoin 2.0 and who don't know the impact these new concepts could have on crowd funding, capitalism, social entrepreneurship, and more.

Let it be somewhat random. The criteria for reward should be known, but a way to choose journalists should ultimately be decided in my opinion letting each member of this thread and others involved with the airdrop compile a list of great articles and then each of us pick our favorite journalist. Then each of our favorites should be guaranteed to receive in the airdrop.

We don't need a vote as that would be more complicated than it's worth. I think we can all agree that Adam Levine and Vitalik Buterin have written very important articles at critical times. But there may be some other people who aren't even aware that they were describing some of the concepts we discuss here and those people should be contacted and given the airdrop as well. For these people it would be almost accidental that they thought up similar ideas on their blog or they just were researching the same subject matter but in my opinion it should go like this:

1. If you can prove you spent a lot of time researching and communicating about decentralized autonomous corporations or compatible concepts then you should be given a stake if the quality of your communication shows a level of understanding.

2. If you can prove you've spent a lot of time on any project in the decentralization community which furthers the ends of the Bitshares community. This would mean the vast majority of altcoin developers, contributors, writers, blogs, exchange owners and pool operators.

3. If you are known not to be hostile to altcoins, or to the vision for the future that the Bitshares community has. The vision being that most people on this forum think DACs should be legal and not banned, and that crowd funding is for the greater good. People who don't support the idea of the DAC (or who push regulation over innovation) probably aren't going to want shares anyway.

A lot of people fit into these three categories. These are the only three I could think of but I'm sure there are some more fundamentals that we all agree on and that the majority of the decentralization community agrees on. I don't think the majority of us want to hurt the little guy or reward botnet operators, thieves and scammers, so anyone shown to have done those things should probably be excluded.

« Last Edit: April 13, 2014, 12:53:04 am by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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I never suggested which charities so where do you get the idea of using the words traditional?

You suggested churches numerous times.  Typical churches are the definition of traditional.

The "airdrops" that you are now suggesting require spending fiat and are basically just a standard marketing approach.  You suggest buying brochures/cds and send them out and hope for customers.  That doesn't really fit with this model.

Bitshares needs mindshare because there is a competitor that is doing a great job at snatching it up.  Thats what airdrops do.  Typical marketing campaigns are expensive and probably not near as effective.

When I said churches I actually mean spiritual establishments. This could mean temples, mosques, churches, think of it like a faith based initiative.

People of faith are highly motivated and working toward some high ideal. It doesn't matter which faith as long as it's compatible with some of the ideals of the Bitshares community.

If the church for example wants evolve it's institution into a decentralized autonomous religious DAC what is wrong with that? No one says it has to be a traditional religion, it could be a new age religion or any spirituality as long as it's recognized legally as a church and they do stuff to help their community and the world as a whole.

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Offline fuzzy

@fuznuts: I agree with the pivotal role of the people and community and the need of sustaining and building that community.

One of the reasons I see why everyone needs  Bitcoin to remain is that it is also the defacto proof of concept and longevity for all blockchain ideas. Only a select few will be guided by technical merits, the vast majority won't give a damn about technical details they just want to know if it can be used and trusted and won't simply disappear.


 Should Bitcoin be replaced by an arbitrary other version, than that will be a massive blow to the credibility of all crypto-currencies in the eyes of the general public and possibly an insurmountable one, provided there are no catastrophic failures in the legacy systems.
I don't think Bitcoin is sacred. I don't think it should be replaced by a clone or something inferior but if something superior replaces it then the masses will not mind. Yahoo and Excite were replaced by Google. Apple OS was replaced by Windows 95. Compuserve and AOL were replaced by Comcast and TimeWarner.

Technological innovation requires that outdated technology get replaced. Brand loyalty is actually irrational and should not be encouraged if the underlying technology is inferior. Most of us have Bitcoin wallets but we know Bitshares is superior technology just by looking at the source code. It's just a matter of convincing everyone else that it's superior and then a matter of getting the right people to use it.

Strategic marketing and strategic alliances is what I want everyone to focus on. Not just randomly dropping samples to entire networks, but to actually have an incentive distribution strategy behind what you're doing.

Reward the people in the community who count. Reward the charities that count. Actively look for communities who could benefit from Bitshares and offer to give some to them. Don't just offer to give it but provide an instruction kit or secure live CD so that it's easy to set up.

But don't preach to the choir. Look to grow the size of the social network by bringing new people into crypto who don't know about Bitcoin or who know about it but who think it's too volatile to be a currency. Not everyone who doesn't believe in Bitcoin is anti crypto or anti technology, as many people have pointed out that Bitcoin is centralized, unfair, and has problems associated with it.

These are people who might appreciate the concept of decentralized autonomous charity, social entrepreneurs who don't accept Bitcoin but who might accept BitUSD if it works. These people have to be taught how to operate DACs and how to use the new technologies which come from our community.

This is going to require we approach them with live cds, blogs, magazines, along with monthly airdrops. So I support the airdrop idea but it has to be part of a much larger grassroots campaign, strategically planned, and with a focus on helping charities benefit from this new decentralization technology as well as helping social entrepreneurs.

You'll get Wall Street once you have a community of passionate people. Get the common man/woman first. Who are some of the best men/women who could benefit the most? Which ones have done something to help push these concepts even without knowing about Bitshares? Look up some book authors and send some of them an airdrop. A lot of authors have been writing books which inspire us and they have many readers.

Im 100 percent with lucky on this, if we take paying journalists out of the equation.  I do not want to give to bitcoin holders because it IS largely centralized and controlled already by mining cartels.  Not saying I am against its existence, but I dknt want to contribute to it being the one crypto to rule them all.  On that note, the knly reason I  still volunteer my lot for an air drop on them is for the little guy, who will likely end up not reaaly understading what BTS is meant to do anyway.  Give the tech to people who will appreciate it and see it as a tool jn their toolbox.  Dont give free samples of flour to people who dont know it is used to make bread.  Giving free air drops of lotto dac shares to bitcoiners, however, is a different story.  Be Intelligent, thoughtfulnand make the drops fit the demograohic who will bring the most to the space...and more importantly have loyalty to the brand while building on top of it. 

The social entreprenuer idea is great as well...though a bit tough to choose who will get it without being seen in a negative light. 

Of course a tip to adam and the ltb network for promoting us thus far might be warranted as well, seeing as most of us never would have even known about PTS without his tireless efforts.

Srry for misspelling, sending from my device

The analogy between carpet bombing and surgical strikes is a perfectly apt one.


Oh, and finally, lets try not to get overheated in this...keeping our heads on straight and searching for the viable and nonviable from each member speaking up on this is the best way to move forward productively
« Last Edit: April 13, 2014, 12:04:02 am by fuznuts »
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Offline gamey

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I never suggested which charities so where do you get the idea of using the words traditional?

You suggested churches numerous times.  Typical churches are the definition of traditional.

The "airdrops" that you are now suggesting require spending fiat and are basically just a standard marketing approach.  You suggest buying brochures/cds and send them out and hope for customers.  That doesn't really fit with this model.

Bitshares needs mindshare because there is a competitor that is doing a great job at snatching it up.  Thats what airdrops do.  Typical marketing campaigns are expensive and probably not near as effective.
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Offline luckybit

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I never suggested which charities so where do you get the idea of using the words traditional?

A charitable organization could be an NGO with a traditional legal foundation but which is unaware that it can become a DAC because the people working for it never heard of any of this and don't have a stake in upgrading to better more sustainable ways of doing things.

I want to help those who are trying to do things with money rather than just help people to get rich. People are going to get rich but if you don't have any plans to do anything why should it matter?

Let's say for instance you have a renewable energy promoting organization or charity and they are looking to the government, or to private donors to fund research. Bitshares comes along and approaches just as another donor but offers education, offers to make their organization into a DAC, and offers to help their organization become more effective.

3I could handle some of this, but the materials, the blogs, and the actual airdrop has to be something the community supports.

Another, how about if it's a charity which has the goal of promoting the use of technology in underprivileged communities? Or perhaps to promote something like women starting social entrepreneurship businesses.

Social entrepreneurs don't even know this technology exists. The vast majority of social entrepreneurs would love to be able to start a decentralized autonomous social corporation but they don't know it's technologically possible to do so. As a result they started a traditional corporation thinking that is the only way to do it.

Why not approach the social entrepreneurship space, target women or any under represented minorities in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Give those who have started a social entrepreneurship business an airdrop, with educational materials, some crypto-equity stake, a live CD and magazine subscription.

When they look at the education material they'll find a link to this forum and to our discussions, to the main sites to see videos, and can be brought into the community fold as stakeholders like the rest of us.

What is important is they wont just be in it to day trade. These people are social entrepreneurs, volunteers in charity organizations, or people who already have ideals and who just don't know that a better technology exists.


« Last Edit: April 12, 2014, 10:18:30 pm by luckybit »
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Offline gamey

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What you are suggesting are traditional donations to traditional charities.  I'd suggest starting a thread on just that subject and pursue that idea there.  You've co-opted the term airdrop where it was not previously used.

Charity is for when you've made money.  Not when you're trying to make money.   You are more concerned with punishing and rewarding people in the world than you are about growing Bitshares.
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Offline luckybit

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Luckybit,
Making decisions because you want to punish and reward certain people is not what a business is usually in business for.  That is not why I support Bitshares at least.
Social entrepreneurs are seeking to solve some social problem while making a profit. That is in my opinion what Bitshares is and what we are doing, we are social entrepreneurs and that is what makes us different from Wall Street 2.0.

If it were just about making a profit then why not just centralize it and pull the ladder up so none of the little guys can participate? This has to be about something greater than merely making a profit or you will not have a passionate community.

I suggest it be about social entrepreneurship and community, and while every DAC should be profitable it should not exclusively seek to make a short term profit at the expense of losing the industry vision we have for the future.

If you want a world of DACs, and I want a world of DACs, and we share these concepts, then we bring in social entrepreneurs, charities, and others who want a similar future but who each have different social causes, the social causes do the marketing rather than the technology. The technology is just a tool to achieve the social ends with the greatest efficiency and security.

Profit for the sake of profit only attracts criminals, greedy scam artists, and the sort of people you see surrounding Bitcoin right now. While there are social entrepreneurs in Bitcoin, most of what you see right now are just Wall Street tycoons chomping at the bit trying to buy cheap Bitcoins. As a result you see a lot of price manipulation, day trading, and miners, but not as much innovation and progress.

The idea of the DAC is actually more powerful for the social entrepreneur than the idea of the cryptocurrency.
Giving shares to people with bitcoin wallets does not centralize power of protoshares.   It would be the opposite.   More people having shares = less centralization.
Bitcoin wallets don't represent more people. How many people own that MtGox wallet with 200,000 stolen Bitcoins? I don't want to reward that wallet.

Who decides what charities ? 

In my opinion the community should decide and discuss it. But I think any charity which promotes social entrepreneurship or which is trying to do something which would benefit all of humanity is a good example. There are too many to list them all right now but they aren't hard to find if you really are into that.
You want to support people who lost to mt gox ?  Those same people that supported centralization that you complain about elsewhere ?   Who is going to look at these claims?
If you want to support Bitcoin users and achieve a marketing win then that is a good strategic option to take. Find the victims of scams, contact them individually and offer to help them out. There are plenty of threads on Bitcointalk where you see victims of scams.

What about Zenithcoin? People on here were talking about how it was built on a scam? Why not approach some of the victims of that and offer them an airdrop.

Dropping on blockchains is a reasonably fair process that removes all these 100s of human decisions that you are suggesting.
I think it's unreasonable and stupid to drop on entire blockchains. I think reward the people who care the most about the community, the concepts, the long term vision, but not the people who just want a quick profit. How do you accomplish this by rewarding entire blockchains of people?

I'm not against rewarding Gridcoin as a blockchain. That is the type of coin we should give to. There are other coins we can list which have similar visions or which seek to benefit the world.
Which church?  Which charitiy?  Does that charity deserve it ? etc etc..  that is not the job of Bitshares and I would hate to see time wasted on that.
Marketing is about finding and forming strategic alliances with other communities. The church is a large charitable community. They care about issues such as poverty and while it might seem like an off the wall idea, it's the sort of idea which could be brilliant for precisely that reason.

 Personally, I don't even like churches and would want to make sure the church has a well managed charity before I'd even consider supporting a donation to a church. 
Since you don't know which churches, how can you know you don't like the church before the community selects one? What if that church is a church which embraces these sorts of technology? Think outside of the box here.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2014, 08:25:44 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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Giving to journalists, either systematically or at random, doesn't seem like a good idea at all to me. It opens the door to huge perceived conflicts of interest. Can you imagine the controversy that would ensue if people found out that bitshares "paid" journalists to write favorable stories about DACs? It would be just too easy for detractors or competitors to accuse bitshares of bribing the press.
Anyone pushing the same idea, who understands the potential, should be systematically incentivized to support Bitshares as a community, social network, and technology. The easiest way to do that is to give back to journalists who contributed ideas to this space. This should include people like Adam Levine, but should go far beyond journalists in the Bitcoin community to include blog posters and individuals who write for magazines and who are associated with large offices.

Anyone who can grasp the concept and who wants a better world should be given a stake in my opinion. That is the foundation demographic of the entire crypto-equity and DAC industry. Identify those who support decentralization, who understand what a crypto-equity is, and who know what potential a world of DACs can have.
With respect to giving to charities, I agree with the previous poster: get rich first, then consider donating plenty to charities later. I think Ripple tried donating to charitable causes, and this probably didn't spread adoption much (although their situation was different--they donated perhaps to offset criticisms about the 90+% "premining").
I disagree. I think you should give to all the stakeholders in the beginning and form a community first. You're not going to get rich if you have no community. The network effect is basically just an artifect of community support and Bitcoin as a community is quite small compared to some of the charitable organizations.

You have huge passionate communities around renewable energy, animal welfare, anti-poverty, healthcare, where there are millions of people looking for a more efficient way of solving their problems. Typically these millions of people (it could be billions), expect that only the government can do it.

This is because social entrepreneurs in the private sector don't receive any support or love. These are the people who will bring Bitshares to the mainstream and make it useful in the real world. A social entrepreneur isn't just trying to make a profit but they are trying to solve a social problem at the same time. Decentralized autonomous corporations and decentralized autonomous charities allow social entrepreneurs to finally do what they always wanted to do but no one is marketing the technology to them for them to even know it.

They should be the people you airdrop to both to educate them as to their options but also to make them stakeholders in the future technologies which will benefit their careers.
Let's keep sight of what the main purpose of an airdrop would be: to raise awareness, build a loyal following, encourage people to try out the technology, and attract investors and developers to this nascent industry. What would be the best way of accomplishing this?
An airdrop should also be used to provide incentives for people to care about the crypto-industry as a whole, to promote the concepts, to reward desirable behavior from the participants in the community.

Journalists who really get it and write good articles could be anonymously tipped with an airdrop. It would be random, but that would encourage journalists to really do their research and write better articles. Bloggers for example might write about this and not really know about the airdrop campaign. The generosity could turn the blogger who was writing about many different technologies into a supporter of Bitshares. Show that the Bitshares community is generous with random acts of kindness, but be strategic about those acts of kindness.
I submit that the best way would be to target current crypto-currency holders, the vast majority of whom have not yet encountered the new breed of crypto-equities.

I don't agree. The current crypto-currency holders are really just a small amount of people. Maybe just a few million at the most and the amount you'll rich might only be 100,000. You could reach far more people by going to untapped social networks and getting the new people.

If you just want a pump and dump then going to current crypto-holders might work. Or if you want to secure your standing in the current crypto-community (if you want to compete with Ethereum or against Bitcoin). But I don't think the competition should be what drives your expansion. The majority of social entrepreneurs and majority of common people don't know what Bitcoin is or they heard about it and think it's a ponzi scheme because the CEO of Bitcoin just lost everyone's money.

If you want to grow the industry you have to form strategic alliances which are not traditional and which are creative. I think for example the stuff with Bitshares music could have a much greater impact if it were to catch on. I think the lotto and charity concepts would have a much greater impact if they catch on.

I don't say you must exclude Bitcoin and Litecoin, but that these demographics should not be given the highest priority. They are making a lot of money, they have a lot of mining power and political influence in the space, but the potential size and market cap of Bitshares is large enough that it does not need permission from Bitcoin early adopters to find a niche.

Just as Apple found it's niche and never became popular with business offices. IBM found it's niche, Microsoft found their niche. I suggest that we make social entrepreneurs the niche of Bitshares and don't worry about Wall Street until you have the social entrepreneurs as your base.

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Offline gamey

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Luckybit,

Making decisions because you want to punish and reward certain people is not what a business is usually in business for.  That is not why I support Bitshares at least.

Giving shares to people with bitcoin wallets does not centralize power of protoshares.   It would be the opposite.   More people having shares = less centralization.

Who decides what charities ? 

You want to support people who lost to mt gox ?  Those same people that supported centralization that you complain about elsewhere ?   Who is going to look at these claims?

Dropping on blockchains is a reasonably fair process that removes all these 100s of human decisions that you are suggesting.

Which church?  Which charitiy?  Does that charity deserve it ? etc etc..  that is not the job of Bitshares and I would hate to see time wasted on that.  Personally, I don't even like churches and would want to make sure the church has a well managed charity before I'd even consider supporting a donation to a church.  Who does all that work ?   Churches are not people who have any interest in crypto.  You need to give them enough for it to matter as a genuine donation. 

The only upside would be mainstream press perhaps.  Even then Bitshares would have to push for that coverage I suspect.

You have to crawl before you can walk.  DOnating larger sums to luddites who will likely sell if they do anything doesn't seem "strategic".  Churches are not in the business of managing investments.  THey're not going to give you a shout-out for your donation.  Whats the point ?

If you want to give out charity, lets get a nice sizeable market where our investments have appreciated. 

Paying people to write articles about Bitshares is a good idea.   It just needs someone to reach out and find those people to write the articles.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2014, 07:53:16 pm by gamey »
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Your heart is in the right place. Sorry, but mine isn't. I think the whole point of air-dropping is to get this thing going in a hurry (a jump-start, if you will). Dumping to foundations, etc. is unlikely to have the same effect. We need people who will spend, invest more, and start using the Bitshares ecosystem. I would argue that we need to find the fastest route to making this the #1 or #2 crypto (by market cap) and that is dropping to people who are more profit-minded and knowledgeable about cryptos. In other words, the holders and users of bitcoin or alt coins. Charities are just going to sell it first chance they get, if indeed they know what to do with it. I say get rich first, then give it away to charities.

This depends on which sort of charity you give it to. If you give it to charities who don't understand technology then of course they'll sell it. Some charities understand technology as well as any of us and already accept Bitcoin. Find the charities which accept Bitcoin endowment and aren't immediately cashing that out, those are the charities you should target.

There are actually plenty of people doing things which involve extremely high technology but which is public funded. I also think the idea to help people who lost to MtGox is a good idea.

It's also a good idea to give to journalists who write good stories explaining DACs or Bitcoin 2.0 technology. Award people for doing good for the community even if they do good by accident or as part of their job. If they have a Bitcoin address and are a journalist who has been writing good stories about the Bitcoin 2.0 community even if they are writing about Ethereum, they still believe the same general concepts and want a better future. Support them and be random about it.


Giving to journalists, either systematically or at random, doesn't seem like a good idea at all to me. It opens the door to huge perceived conflicts of interest. Can you imagine the controversy that would ensue if people found out that bitshares "paid" journalists to write favorable stories about DACs? It would be just too easy for detractors or competitors to accuse bitshares of bribing the press.

With respect to giving to charities, I agree with the previous poster: get rich first, then consider donating plenty to charities later. I think Ripple tried donating to charitable causes, and this probably didn't spread adoption much (although their situation was different--they donated perhaps to offset criticisms about the 90+% "premining").

Let's keep sight of what the main purpose of an airdrop would be: to raise awareness, build a loyal following, encourage people to try out the technology, and attract investors and developers to this nascent industry. What would be the best way of accomplishing this? I submit that the best way would be to target current crypto-currency holders, the vast majority of whom have not yet encountered the new breed of crypto-equities.

Offline luckybit

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@fuznuts: I agree with the pivotal role of the people and community and the need of sustaining and building that community.

One of the reasons I see why everyone needs  Bitcoin to remain is that it is also the defacto proof of concept and longevity for all blockchain ideas. Only a select few will be guided by technical merits, the vast majority won't give a damn about technical details they just want to know if it can be used and trusted and won't simply disappear.


 Should Bitcoin be replaced by an arbitrary other version, than that will be a massive blow to the credibility of all crypto-currencies in the eyes of the general public and possibly an insurmountable one, provided there are no catastrophic failures in the legacy systems.
I don't think Bitcoin is sacred. I don't think it should be replaced by a clone or something inferior but if something superior replaces it then the masses will not mind. Yahoo and Excite were replaced by Google. Apple OS was replaced by Windows 95. Compuserve and AOL were replaced by Comcast and TimeWarner.

Technological innovation requires that outdated technology get replaced. Brand loyalty is actually irrational and should not be encouraged if the underlying technology is inferior. Most of us have Bitcoin wallets but we know Bitshares is superior technology just by looking at the source code. It's just a matter of convincing everyone else that it's superior and then a matter of getting the right people to use it.

Strategic marketing and strategic alliances is what I want everyone to focus on. Not just randomly dropping samples to entire networks, but to actually have an incentive distribution strategy behind what you're doing.

Reward the people in the community who count. Reward the charities that count. Actively look for communities who could benefit from Bitshares and offer to give some to them. Don't just offer to give it but provide an instruction kit or secure live CD so that it's easy to set up.

But don't preach to the choir. Look to grow the size of the social network by bringing new people into crypto who don't know about Bitcoin or who know about it but who think it's too volatile to be a currency. Not everyone who doesn't believe in Bitcoin is anti crypto or anti technology, as many people have pointed out that Bitcoin is centralized, unfair, and has problems associated with it.

These are people who might appreciate the concept of decentralized autonomous charity, social entrepreneurs who don't accept Bitcoin but who might accept BitUSD if it works. These people have to be taught how to operate DACs and how to use the new technologies which come from our community.

This is going to require we approach them with live cds, blogs, magazines, along with monthly airdrops. So I support the airdrop idea but it has to be part of a much larger grassroots campaign, strategically planned, and with a focus on helping charities benefit from this new decentralization technology as well as helping social entrepreneurs.

You'll get Wall Street once you have a community of passionate people. Get the common man/woman first. Who are some of the best men/women who could benefit the most? Which ones have done something to help push these concepts even without knowing about Bitshares? Look up some book authors and send some of them an airdrop. A lot of authors have been writing books which inspire us and they have many readers.


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Offline luckybit

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Your heart is in the right place. Sorry, but mine isn't. I think the whole point of air-dropping is to get this thing going in a hurry (a jump-start, if you will). Dumping to foundations, etc. is unlikely to have the same effect. We need people who will spend, invest more, and start using the Bitshares ecosystem. I would argue that we need to find the fastest route to making this the #1 or #2 crypto (by market cap) and that is dropping to people who are more profit-minded and knowledgeable about cryptos. In other words, the holders and users of bitcoin or alt coins. Charities are just going to sell it first chance they get, if indeed they know what to do with it. I say get rich first, then give it away to charities.

This depends on which sort of charity you give it to. If you give it to charities who don't understand technology then of course they'll sell it. Some charities understand technology as well as any of us and already accept Bitcoin. Find the charities which accept Bitcoin endowment and aren't immediately cashing that out, those are the charities you should target. Be strategic and deterministic about how you airdrop.

There are actually plenty of people doing things which involve extremely high technology but which is public funded. I also think the idea to help people who lost to MtGox is a good idea.

It's also a good idea to give to journalists who write good stories explaining DACs or Bitcoin 2.0 technology. Award people for doing good for the community even if they do good by accident or as part of their job. If they have a Bitcoin address and are a journalist who has been writing good stories about the Bitcoin 2.0 community even if they are writing about Ethereum, they still believe the same general concepts and want a better future. Support them and be random about it.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2014, 07:45:10 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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Luckybit, where we disagree is that you ignore that btc holders are very very rarely btc devs and don't necessarily have any opinion on altcoins.  They are just crypto-currency enthusiasts. These are the people you want to come check out protoshares and see what their airdropped shares are about.

You are far too fixated on some imaginary conflict with all bitcoin users.  It just isn't like that.  They're not mostly thieves.  You have painted this whole picture of bitcoin being some evil cabal.  It is rubbish.  It has nothing to do with any culture.  It is true that the dishonest aren't going to be attracted to small cap coins as targets, but has nothing to do with the culture.

No the problem is you don't know who owns these addresses. Saying you want to give a gift to owners of random addresses isn't as strategic. Strategic is giving a gift to people who donated to certain charities and institutions which are critically important.

If you donated Bitcoins and your address is listed somewhere then maybe you should get rewarded for making donations to charity by receiving some crypto-equity. If you're a holder of Gridcoin, if you mine with BOINC, if you've got a Facebook account and you're willing to prove you're the owner of a Bitcoin address as an individual then you should receive the reward.

But just blindly airdropping to all BTC addresses is going to further centralization of power in a way which is unpredictable because no one really knows who owns those addresses or which addresses are controlled by thieves/criminals and which are honest. I don't want to reward the thieves who have been hacking exchanges and making Bitcoin look bad. I also don't want to reward developers who don't think altcoins should exist.

Strategic alliances, smart marketing. It's like a heat seeking missile rather than just dropping bombs on cities.

I suggest you look at the different groups of technologists who are likely to be able to understand what a decentralized autonomous corporation is and what it can do. These groups don't have to be politically oriented, but they have to at least understand the technology and care.

Gridcoin is a good example of such a group. As a community they understand the technology and are trying to do something good with it. I would vote to reward holders of Gridcoin. I would also vote to reward individuals using BOINC to cure diseases. There are schools, churches, and many different demographics that you could airdrop to. Why not give to students studying artificial intelligence, cryptography or computer science?

Be clever.

« Last Edit: April 12, 2014, 07:43:47 pm by luckybit »
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