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Offline yellowecho


Leads to question if we really need a leadership for bitshares .. who is strat. leader of nxt?

The Bitshares software ecosystem, once launched, does not need a CEO, nor is Daniel it's CEO.

Daniel is the CEO of Invictus Innovations, which is a virginia based real life corporate entity that has investors and is the trustee of funds invested via angelshares.  There will always be a CEO of Invictus, but it wasn't always and doesn't always need to be Daniel whose skills seem better suited for other roles.

In this mumble session, at about 56 minutes:
**corrected link** http://beyondbitcoin.libsyn.com/hangout-051014-dan-larimer

... Daniel makes the point that Charles Hoskinson's work style was to be on phone, talking to people, selling-the-vision all day, everyday.

Daniel said he had never seen anyone do that kind of job as well as Charles.

So here's a bold move with salutary consequences: Hire back Charles Hoskinson as the CEO of I3.

Bring him in with you, and let him do what he does best.

If I3 did something like that... Charles and his team at the front end, and Daniel and his teams at the backend, this organization would fly.

From my very limited knowledge of Charles and I3, it seems that I3 and the Bitshares ecosystem are ingrained in a political philosophy that Charles is less passionate about.. so I don't foresee him coming back to I3 (especially now that there's Ethereum the works).


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Offline liondani

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Daniel said he had never seen anyone do that kind of job as well as Charles.

+ 5 for Daniel


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Offline werneo

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Leads to question if we really need a leadership for bitshares .. who is strat. leader of nxt?

The Bitshares software ecosystem, once launched, does not need a CEO, nor is Daniel it's CEO.

Daniel is the CEO of Invictus Innovations, which is a virginia based real life corporate entity that has investors and is the trustee of funds invested via angelshares.  There will always be a CEO of Invictus, but it wasn't always and doesn't always need to be Daniel whose skills seem better suited for other roles.

In this mumble session, at about 56 minutes:
**corrected link** http://beyondbitcoin.libsyn.com/hangout-051014-dan-larimer

... Daniel makes the point that Charles Hoskinson's work style was to be on phone, talking to people, selling-the-vision all day, everyday.

Daniel said he had never seen anyone do that kind of job as well as Charles.

So here's a bold move with salutary consequences: Hire back Charles Hoskinson as the CEO of I3.

Bring him in with you, and let him do what he does best.

If I3 did something like that... Charles and his team at the front end, and Daniel and his teams at the backend, this organization would fly.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2014, 02:38:27 am by werneo »

Offline CLains

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Thoughts surrounding the products matured organically. The dictum for now is "hype precedes value" - specs and launches serve as hype material. Recognize it.


Offline JoeyD

I do not agree with the notion that it would have been better to release bitsharesX on old technology and then slowly try to catch up with all the better, faster newer stuff like Ripple, Nxt and others, while simultaneously having to support, bugfix and upgrade the old crud. I do not see how that would have been faster, cheaper or easier let alone better for the bitshares reputation.

Developing a blockchain toolkit that can at the very least compete with the newest technologies out there and then building stuff on top of that, is a sound strategy even if several of the DACs fail. Why should you not at least aim to compete with the best and fastest solutions?

Btw, why would making a pow-blockchain version of the bitsharesX-concept be faster? Listening to the uploaded dev-hangout podcast did not leave me with the impression that a pow-version was easier or faster to develop than a dpos-one. Even simply implementing a bitcoin core full node with new code has not been particularly fast by any metric, so why would it magically be any different for bitshares? Just looking at the alt-coins forked of the bitcoin clones and how they lack any real profound alterations or upgrades, to me suggests that it is not the best base for a DAC-toolkit.

Offline solaaire

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As far as I see, Dan has made one major strategic decision so far: to defer the development of bitshares (btsx) in favor of creating a new consensus system (DPOS).

 ...

here is a question i have: i see the value in upgrading PTS to DPOS, but what advantages does DPOS provide for future projects like LOTTO, DNS, and ME? Blockchain sustainability for sure... but if that is all, then perhaps most of these projects could have been launched on regular blockchains and then upgraded to DPOS at a later time. But perhaps developing DPOS will give critical insight to developers that will greatly improve their future projects. Who knows? Not this guy.

The other major strategic decision was to re-architect the bts x code to make it easier to make the rest of the other DACs, which is the other half of the major delay. So we get the rest of the DACs faster and the $$ advantage of DPOS will be multiplied by however many DACs would have launched in between the non-DPOS release and the upgrade.

awesome, thanks for filling in some of the gaps toast

Offline JoeyD

I was always under the impression that AGS was a Kickstarter like fundraiser to get some technology off the ground and developed, I also don't understand why people saw it as a speculation tool, nor that it would give them decision-making rights. If the community would be in charge of decision making on technical subjects I would not have donated anything at all and that is not because I have blind faith or other such bunk, but because I'm a vehement disbeliever in the viability of design by committee.

Unfortunately the spreading of panic and public outcries might help set a trend and scare future projects away from going this route. Unrealistic expectations and inexperience with the risks, failures and delays that are usual in completely new and experimental ideas and technology plus the enormous amount of miscommunication trying to interact with a crowd, makes crowdfunding look like more hassle than it's worth. Especially when compared to going with VCs who have more funds, the experience, extra know-how and contacts and less personalities to interact with. I know a lot of companies that have done their own Kickstarter who are consequently no longer interested in doing another one.

What I expect some other projects (outside of bitshares) will be doing, or are in fact already doing, is getting behind the scenes VC-funding and only doing a public crowdsourcing-look-a-like as part of their marketing when distributing their coins as a ready to market product. I really hope I'm wrong about this, because I'd like to see decentralized fund-raisers get more traction.

Offline amencon

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If DPOS fails we can always use POW with miner rewards paid from dividends as was the very initial plan back when BTS X was just "bitshares"

That's actually exactly the point, we could have started with that and would have had the product long since out for testing, ideation and expansion.  Do you think it was better to do it in the order performed?

Where we are now, yes, though I'll admit that a priori there was no way of knowing if it was a good decision. But also I don't expect to be able to sell you on "the delays due to architecture improvements will pay dividends in the long run!" so I will shut up and go back to work.
Yup I don't think anything more will resolved through discussion at this point.  Finish it and let a successful DPOS system be your at least partial vindication for any deviation from the original sales pitch.

Of course even then I don't think it will definitively answer which course of action would have been "better", but with a working new platform released I don't think many will care much.  Then the focus will be on marketing and other DACs.

Happy coding Toast.

Offline bitmeat

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Leads to question if we really need a leadership for bitshares .. who is strat. leader of nxt?

The Bitshares software ecosystem, once launched, does not need a CEO, nor is Daniel it's CEO.

Daniel is the CEO of Invictus Innovations, which is a virginia based real life corporate entity that has investors and is the trustee of funds invested via angelshares.  There will always be a CEO of Invictus, but it wasn't always and doesn't always need to be Daniel whose skills seem better suited for other roles.

Right, that's why I said it is also my preference to see strategic leadership, however the way Dan works (and most developers are like that Dan is no exception) is that he does iterations of trial and error which is very agile and can produce amazing results. However in an agile environment you can't really force it "strategically" as much, since the only way to advance is through the projects natural progression.

Also why if I was running this project I would make sure people like Dan can cooperate and compete at the same time and just have fun in the lab. While their result is being used in a more strategic manner.

In fact I can still do that, since everything all these coins and developers invent is open source. I'm in a wait and see mode at the moment.

Offline toast

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As far as I see, Dan has made one major strategic decision so far: to defer the development of bitshares (btsx) in favor of creating a new consensus system (DPOS).

 ...

here is a question i have: i see the value in upgrading PTS to DPOS, but what advantages does DPOS provide for future projects like LOTTO, DNS, and ME? Blockchain sustainability for sure... but if that is all, then perhaps most of these projects could have been launched on regular blockchains and then upgraded to DPOS at a later time. But perhaps developing DPOS will give critical insight to developers that will greatly improve their future projects. Who knows? Not this guy.

The other major strategic decision was to re-architect the bts x code to make it easier to make the rest of the other DACs, which is the other half of the major delay. So we get the rest of the DACs faster and the $$ advantage of DPOS will be multiplied by however many DACs would have launched in between the non-DPOS release and the upgrade.
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Offline solaaire

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As far as I see, Dan has made one major strategic decision so far: to defer the development of bitshares (btsx) in favor of creating a new consensus system (DPOS).

Without actual data, its hard to do any real analysis. If NXT is an indication of the future, it would appear at least some of the market wants to move away from mining. if this trend continues, which i believe it will (again, no real data), then developing DPOS appears to be a good move.

on the other hand, sticking with the original bitshares plan wouldve gotten the flagship product to market much faster, which could have been huge! But honestly, btsx seems pretty damn complicated. even if the software made it to market quickly, would invictus have had the capability to effectively demonstrate the products value to the market? it is hard to say, but im leaning towards no

here is a question i have: i see the value in upgrading PTS to DPOS, but what advantages does DPOS provide for future projects like LOTTO, DNS, and ME? Blockchain sustainability for sure... but if that is all, then perhaps most of these projects could have been launched on regular blockchains and then upgraded to DPOS at a later time. But perhaps developing DPOS will give critical insight to developers that will greatly improve their future projects. Who knows? Not this guy.

As it stands, bitshares is having a hard time gaining trust/traction. Whether it was intended or not, i think releasing better versions of products that people are already familiar with (dpos, lotto, dns, etc) could go a long way in creating trust and increasing the user base before the big experiment is released.

i agree with jae, i think at this point in the game Dan's technical insight is critical for the role of CEO. as the landscape grows, CTO might be a better position for him, simply because he seems to enjoy software/systems development more than organizational development.

Offline toast

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A CEO is a leader, Daniel is a developer and the only reason he is the person with all the pieces in his head is because he's making it up as he goes and the plan keeps changing.  Have I mis-stated the situation?

We have a consistent disagreement about whether "the plans keep changing" is a good or bad thing. I have no life and can keep up all the way down to the nitty-gritty details, and also I've had a chance to interact a bunch with the core team in person, so I could see how this might not be the common opinion.

I invested in AGS under the belief that it would be spent to develop the bitshares ecosystem as is judged best by Stan and Dan. I wouldn't trust anyone else to constrain their decisions, if a CEO had come in and said "actually no, Dan, you must develop BTS as was planned originally" I would have been very unhappy. In fact any time work is delegated away from these two I have been unhappy with the results.

You brought up a good point:
The Bitshares software ecosystem, once launched, does not need a CEO, nor is Daniel it's CEO.

I think eventually there should be AGS-style fundraisers for many different "labs", who each can independently promise yet another 10% shares of their own DACs to their donators. Maybe this should have happened from the start so people could split their donations to go to whichever leader they thought would do best. I'd still be 90%+ in AGS because I'm all about the theory and I think we have only seen good news on that front from I3. Truthcoin is the only other group I would have invested in.

You have a point about this forum being reduced to a bunch of loyalists. So where's the AGS competition? When MSC couldn't get their shit together, XCP appeared. People who "got it" all the way *and* disagreed with MSC existed, so an alternative appeared.

Really the only source of conflict here is from people who thought AGS spending would be determined by "the community" instead of by I3. Perhaps the biggest leadership mistake was doing anything to suggest this was the case ("to develop bts ecosystem!" should be "to develop bts ecosystem as determined by Dan and Stan!", and such).

If there is demand for different leadership, someone should step up and offer an alternative to AGS. Heck, I plan to do so once we get the core tech and first few DACs out. Why haven't we seen this yet? I think it's because people don't want it enough.
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Offline jae208

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I think that Dan's technical skill gives him great insight as CEO. Unless we can get Larry Page on board I don't know of anyone that would be better at the job.  ;D
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Offline AdamBLevine

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Leads to question if we really need a leadership for bitshares .. who is strat. leader of nxt?

The Bitshares software ecosystem, once launched, does not need a CEO, nor is Daniel it's CEO.

Daniel is the CEO of Invictus Innovations, which is a virginia based real life corporate entity that has investors and is the trustee of funds invested via angelshares.  There will always be a CEO of Invictus, but it wasn't always and doesn't always need to be Daniel whose skills seem better suited for other roles.
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Offline xeroc

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Leads to question if we really need a leadership for bitshares .. who is strat. leader of nxt?