Author Topic: so what is the business model ?  (Read 5020 times)

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Offline wasthatawolf

the best piece of investment advice is: don't take anyone's advice, do your own research and decide for yourself

So true

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n


Which of these resources, or others, would you recommend?

YouTube Videos
A New Approach to BTC Exchanges - Charles Hoskinson
Introduction to BitShares - Daniel Larimer  (an expanded version of Charles' overview above.)
Introduction to Keyhotee - Daniel Larimer

Interviews
E57 - Protoshares and Selfish Mining - Adam Levine interviews Dan Larimer
E44 - I've Seen Better Days - Adam Levine interviews Dan Larimer
Keep One Eye on ProtoShares - Sovryn Tech Ep. 0048

Articles
DACs that Spawn DACs?  by Stan Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
DACs Revisited by Dan Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics by Stan Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
BitShares as a Distributed Autonomous Bank  by Daniel Larimer
Bookie Bob's Solution to Bitcoin Volatility by Stan Larimer
A case study of The Associated Press, DAC  by Daniel Larimer
        Also The DAC Associated Press, in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
Is Bitcoin Overpaying for Security?  by Daniel Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
Bootstrapping DACs - 1  by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine
Bootstrapping DACs - 2  by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine
Bootstrapping DACS - 3  by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine
Own your own Identity with BitShares   by Daniel Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
BitShares P2P trading platform to offer dividends on bitcoin by Danny Bradbury  in CoinDesk
Bitcoin is the new Napster   by Dan Steinhart at Casey Research

White Papers
Momentum Proof of Work White Paper by Daniel Larimer
Bitcoin Classic White Paper #1   by Satoshi Nakamoto
BitShares Classic White Paper #1   by Daniel Larimer, Charles Hoskinson and Stan Larimer

Links to articles as mentioned by Stan here: http://invictus-innovations.com/links

Offline phoenix

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phoenix - thank you! 

That explanation truly progressed my understanding.

You're welcome. I would recommend looking into the way it all works more deeply before you invest heavily in any of it. I personally think that it'll be an incredible opportunity, but the best piece of investment advice is: don't take anyone's advice, do your own research and decide for yourself 
Protoshares: Pg5EhSZEXHFjdFUzpxJbm91UtA54iUuDvt
Bitmessage: BM-NBrGi2V3BZ8REnJM7FPxUjjkQp7V5D28

Offline phoenix

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Thank you for an excellent, short, and sweet explanation.
Where can we send you a ProtoShare as a token of appreciation?


You're welcome. If you want to tip me you can send PTS to PjDesV4pDnExpfn7WnCHk95mWWfCa2ELq4.

7cc7df3f2f4d48fa64e193b6983622700606e64c5a29b13c554cbc6f4282d183

Recieved, thank you very much! :)
Protoshares: Pg5EhSZEXHFjdFUzpxJbm91UtA54iUuDvt
Bitmessage: BM-NBrGi2V3BZ8REnJM7FPxUjjkQp7V5D28

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

phoenix - thank you! 

That explanation truly progressed my understanding.

Offline bytemaster

Thank you for an excellent, short, and sweet explanation.
Where can we send you a ProtoShare as a token of appreciation?


You're welcome. If you want to tip me you can send PTS to PjDesV4pDnExpfn7WnCHk95mWWfCa2ELq4.

7cc7df3f2f4d48fa64e193b6983622700606e64c5a29b13c554cbc6f4282d183
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline phoenix

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Thank you for an excellent, short, and sweet explanation.
Where can we send you a ProtoShare as a token of appreciation?


You're welcome. If you want to tip me you can send PTS to PjDesV4pDnExpfn7WnCHk95mWWfCa2ELq4.
Protoshares: Pg5EhSZEXHFjdFUzpxJbm91UtA54iUuDvt
Bitmessage: BM-NBrGi2V3BZ8REnJM7FPxUjjkQp7V5D28

Offline Stan

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Here's my attempt at some simplified explanations. It's not as short as I would like it to be, but I think it does a fairly good job of getting the idea across, especially to people with minimal technical knowledge. Let me know if anything is inaccurate or you think there's a better way of explaining things:

DACs:
DAC stands for Distributed Autonomous Corporation. The basic idea is that some service offered by normal corporations, run by humans, can be performed using software on computers. People who want to work for a particular DAC can download this software, and then run it on their computer. The more computing power that people give to the DAC, the more reliably the DAC can perform the service it offers for its customers. If somebody wants to buy the services of a particular DAC, they can pay the DAC directly for the service using some digital currency, such as Bitcoin or shares in the DAC, and then they receive the service from the DAC, and their payment is distributed to the people who ran the software for the DAC, corresponding to the computing power they gave to the DAC.

Protoshares:
Every DAC that Invictus Innovations plans on creating will have shares. The purpose of these shares is two-fold: they determine who gets to receive the payments given to a particular DAC (just like a major corporation would divide its profits among its shareholders), and they also function as a form of payment to the DAC. In other words, the DACs that Invictus Innovations will release will take shares in themselves as payment, and then re-distribute those shares among the remaining shareholders. Protoshares are a digital currency that turns into shares in all DACs created by Invictus Innovations. They are “mined” by running special mining software on your computer, and each time a DAC is released by Invictus Innovations, you will get one share in that DAC for every Protoshare you own. One advantage to using Protoshares to create the shares for the DACs before their release is that Invictus Innovations is able to determine valuable people expect shares in a particular DAC to be, since people know that every Protoshare they buy will effectively buy them a share in future DACs. In order to tell how much an individual DAC is valued by the market, Invictus Innovations will simply fork the current Protoshares, and say that the particular fork corresponds to a particular DAC. (Forking is essentially cloning something so that you can manipulate /change the clone, without affecting the original.)

Now, let’s take an upcoming DAC, and explain what problem it fixes, and how it solves that problem:

DAC name:
Bitshares
Problems it addresses:

Let’s say I want to trade digital currencies. In order to do it I need to log onto an online exchange, and then give them my email & password. Then, I send them my bitcoins, and start to trade. There are many things that could go wrong here: 1) they might sell my personal information, 2) they might take my coins and vanish, 3) If hackers compromise the exchange I could lose my bitcoins, 4) if I want to trade multiple currencies that aren’t all offered on one exchange, it’s very hard to manage all the different accounts and transferring the funds between them.

How Bitshares fixes this problem:
1)   I don’t give my personal info to anyone. I simply download the client, and then I can start trading, the only account I need is the Bitshares address that my computer can generate automatically
2)   As long as there are still people mining on the Bitshares blockchain, the DAC will continue to live. Also, Bitshares never actually takes your funds, it simply allows two people to trade with each other, knowing that the DAC will ensure that both sides send their funds to each other at the same time, thus your funds never actually leave your control, they’re simply traded for different funds (i.e., Bitshares for BitUSD
3)   There is no centralized server for hackers to attack. In order for them to actually steal your funds they would have to derive your private key (Which basically means doing a bunch of math that would take centuries to on a supercomputer, so you’re safe) and submit a false transaction using that key. Then they could steal your funds (remember, this is only a problem if they have access to a supercomputer more powerful than every supercomputer currently know). They could also try to block any transactions you submit by performing a 51% attack, where they gain 51% of the computing power in the DAC, and then do the work of verifying only some transactions so quickly that everyone else that’s trying to do work is unable to keep up with them, so only the people performing the 51% attack decide which transactions the DAC performs. Remember, in order to do this they need more computing power than everyone else combined, which is a LOT.
4)   No one Bitshares blockchain will cover every asset that you may want to trade. However, all Bitshares blockchains will trade the original Bitshares, which will make the exchange of funds between them much simpler.

I think this does an OK job of explaining things, I'd be happy to answer any questions you still have.

phoenix

Thank you for an excellent, short, and sweet explanation.
Where can we send you a ProtoShare as a token of appreciation?

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 phoenix

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Here's my attempt at some simplified explanations. It's not as short as I would like it to be, but I think it does a fairly good job of getting the idea across, especially to people with minimal technical knowledge. Let me know if anything is inaccurate or you think there's a better way of explaining things:

DACs:
DAC stands for Distributed Autonomous Corporation. The basic idea is that some service offered by normal corporations, run by humans, can be performed using software on computers. People who want to work for a particular DAC can download this software, and then run it on their computer. The more computing power that people give to the DAC, the more reliably the DAC can perform the service it offers for its customers. If somebody wants to buy the services of a particular DAC, they can pay the DAC directly for the service using some digital currency, such as Bitcoin or shares in the DAC, and then they receive the service from the DAC, and their payment is distributed to the people who ran the software for the DAC, corresponding to the computing power they gave to the DAC.

Protoshares:
Every DAC that Invictus Innovations plans on creating will have shares. The purpose of these shares is two-fold: they determine who gets to receive the payments given to a particular DAC (just like a major corporation would divide its profits among its shareholders), and they also function as a form of payment to the DAC. In other words, the DACs that Invictus Innovations will release will take shares in themselves as payment, and then re-distribute those shares among the remaining shareholders. Protoshares are a digital currency that turns into shares in all DACs created by Invictus Innovations. They are “mined” by running special mining software on your computer, and each time a DAC is released by Invictus Innovations, you will get one share in that DAC for every Protoshare you own. One advantage to using Protoshares to create the shares for the DACs before their release is that Invictus Innovations is able to determine valuable people expect shares in a particular DAC to be, since people know that every Protoshare they buy will effectively buy them a share in future DACs. In order to tell how much an individual DAC is valued by the market, Invictus Innovations will simply fork the current Protoshares, and say that the particular fork corresponds to a particular DAC. (Forking is essentially cloning something so that you can manipulate /change the clone, without affecting the original.)

Now, let’s take an upcoming DAC, and explain what problem it fixes, and how it solves that problem:

DAC name:
Bitshares
Problems it addresses:

Let’s say I want to trade digital currencies. In order to do it I need to log onto an online exchange, and then give them my email & password. Then, I send them my bitcoins, and start to trade. There are many things that could go wrong here: 1) they might sell my personal information, 2) they might take my coins and vanish, 3) If hackers compromise the exchange I could lose my bitcoins, 4) if I want to trade multiple currencies that aren’t all offered on one exchange, it’s very hard to manage all the different accounts and transferring the funds between them.

How Bitshares fixes this problem:
1)   I don’t give my personal info to anyone. I simply download the client, and then I can start trading, the only account I need is the Bitshares address that my computer can generate automatically
2)   As long as there are still people mining on the Bitshares blockchain, the DAC will continue to live. Also, Bitshares never actually takes your funds, it simply allows two people to trade with each other, knowing that the DAC will ensure that both sides send their funds to each other at the same time, thus your funds never actually leave your control, they’re simply traded for different funds (i.e., Bitshares for BitUSD
3)   There is no centralized server for hackers to attack. In order for them to actually steal your funds they would have to derive your private key (Which basically means doing a bunch of math that would take centuries to on a supercomputer, so you’re safe) and submit a false transaction using that key. Then they could steal your funds (remember, this is only a problem if they have access to a supercomputer more powerful than every supercomputer currently know). They could also try to block any transactions you submit by performing a 51% attack, where they gain 51% of the computing power in the DAC, and then do the work of verifying only some transactions so quickly that everyone else that’s trying to do work is unable to keep up with them, so only the people performing the 51% attack decide which transactions the DAC performs. Remember, in order to do this they need more computing power than everyone else combined, which is a LOT.
4)   No one Bitshares blockchain will cover every asset that you may want to trade. However, all Bitshares blockchains will trade the original Bitshares, which will make the exchange of funds between them much simpler.

I think this does an OK job of explaining things, I'd be happy to answer any questions you still have.
Protoshares: Pg5EhSZEXHFjdFUzpxJbm91UtA54iUuDvt
Bitmessage: BM-NBrGi2V3BZ8REnJM7FPxUjjkQp7V5D28

Offline Stan

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Over the past few days I've read exhaustively about protoshares, keyhotee, bitshares, domainshares, nameshares, etc etc. I've seen the videos, i've heard the podcasts, i've mined some proto... and while it all seems pretty cool, I do have a few concerns.

1) I'm just not understanding what the value is in holding protoshares, which to my understanding (and correct me if i'm wrong here) is the same as dividend paying stock in Invictus Innovations. Sure, I played along... and now I have a few protoshares, but truth is, I'm not even sure why: Who are the customers of this DAC? what is the revenue forecast? what is the product we are selling besides our own stock?! I'm reading a whole lot about the supposed dividends, but i'm not even clear on where the revenue is coming from.

2) Why are dividends paid out from transaction fees and not from profits? AP DAC example aside.. lets say we have online casino DAC that has revenues of 50BTC and needs to pay it out in full as a dividend. How does this possibly relate to revenues that shareholders should receive from transaction fees ? What happens if there is low transaction volume but high dividend payout? High transaction fees? 

3) Launching one project, even for a big company, is a hard enough task. How can Invictus possibly develop, manage, execute, market and support allllll these innovations/projects? open source and "the community" ? I would be (pleasantly) surprised to see all the projects executed successfully. Its ambitious, I will give you that...

Thanks,
A concerned protoshare holder

There are a number of key threads in this forum that can give you a lot of these answers.  Try these:

BitShares Forum »Development »ProtoShares »What is ProtoShares?

BitShares Forum »Development »ProtoShares »The Intrinsic Value of Protoshares (Update from Bytemaster)

BitShares Forum »Development »Keyhotee »Connecting Keyhotee and Protoshares

Ok that was the long answer.  Now for some very short answers:

1.  Holding ProtoShares is not holding stock in Invictus but it does give your rights to revenue streams from every DAC we release into the wild.  You wind up owning shares in our DACs not shares in Invictus.
2.  Each DAC has its own business model.  BitShares is a family of exchanges that let you do typical trading operations on between classes of crypto assets.  Our first lets you trade exposure to various common currencies.
3.  Each trade has a transaction fee which is split among all BitShareholders in the form of dividends, just like any corporation splits its profits with its shareholdes.  To the extent the Bitshares has value in the marketplace, you can convert your dividends into other crypto or fiat currencies.
4.  Customers are anyone who would like to save or trade without leaving crypto-space and incurring various costs associated with travel between "free space" and "fiat space".
5.  It will cost you a little of your stock as a fee to make a transaction and you get more stock when others pay similar fees.  Value is generated inside the DAC from the services it performs which people are willing to pay some of their hard earned or purchased shares to obtain. 
6.  DACs are by definition crypto currencies backed by the services they perform.  Even Bitcoin is a DAC performing the service of efficient money transmission.
7.  Transaction fees are the profits -- for services performed of value to its customers.
8.  As long as you are inside the DAC, the currency of the land is that DACs shares.  The more valuable the services it performs, the more desirable it is to hold that currency in order to obtain those services.
9.  Dividends are small if profits are small and large if profits are large. Each DAC publishes its distribution rules, which  distribute some of the transaction fees to the shareholders (owners) and the rest to miners (workers).
10.  There are several components that drive the market assessment of the expected value ProtoShares:
  • An assessment of the predicted value of the idea/business model of the services it will provide
  • An assessment of the developer(s) ability to implement the idea.
  • An assessment of the likelihood that the developer (or somebody else) will honor the social contract
  • The summation of the above expected value across all DACs currently in the pipeline.

Its up to the developers to convince the market that the above factors sum to great value.  To the extent that they do convince the collective community of experts, ProtoShares will increase in value and so will each DAC according to its established value proposition in the arena of ideas.

Look at what Invictus has accomplished since the Fourth of July.  Watch to see if we accomplish what we promise to do every step of the way.  Watch any competitors that join in the fray.  Then decide whether you want to buy or sell.

I'm in the same boat at evisu1.

I think the technical concepts could be explained in simpler language to gain broader evangelism for what is happening...  is it possible to use a metaphor? 

Would you be able to walk us through a "hypothetical DAC"? i.e. industry, how the entrepreneurs get involved; is this a platform for web tech companies only?  Say for example, I have an idea for a 'decentralized autonomous strawberry farm'; is it technically feasible for a 'physical goods' company to be a DAC?

I'd challenge Invictus Innovations to tell a story explaining DACs, protoshares, bitshares, et al; simply enough that a 5th grader could understand.

Looks like we could use some help here.  Is there anyone who would like to take a crack at boiling down everything we've published in this forum, our web site, and the http://invictus-innovations.com/links/ below into a couple of paragraphs you could write home to Mom? 

Which of these resources, or others, would you recommend?

YouTube Videos
A New Approach to BTC Exchanges - Charles Hoskinson
Introduction to BitShares - Daniel Larimer  (an expanded version of Charles' overview above.)
Introduction to Keyhotee - Daniel Larimer

Interviews
E57 - Protoshares and Selfish Mining - Adam Levine interviews Dan Larimer
E44 - I've Seen Better Days - Adam Levine interviews Dan Larimer
Keep One Eye on ProtoShares - Sovryn Tech Ep. 0048

Articles
DACs that Spawn DACs?  by Stan Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
DACs Revisited by Dan Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics by Stan Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
BitShares as a Distributed Autonomous Bank  by Daniel Larimer
Bookie Bob's Solution to Bitcoin Volatility by Stan Larimer
A case study of The Associated Press, DAC  by Daniel Larimer
        Also The DAC Associated Press, in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
Is Bitcoin Overpaying for Security?  by Daniel Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
Bootstrapping DACs - 1  by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine
Bootstrapping DACs - 2  by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine
Bootstrapping DACS - 3  by Vitalik Buterin in Bitcoin Magazine
Own your own Identity with BitShares   by Daniel Larimer in LetsTalkBitcoin.com
BitShares P2P trading platform to offer dividends on bitcoin by Danny Bradbury  in CoinDesk
Bitcoin is the new Napster   by Dan Steinhart at Casey Research

White Papers
Momentum Proof of Work White Paper by Daniel Larimer
Bitcoin Classic White Paper #1   by Satoshi Nakamoto
BitShares Classic White Paper #1   by Daniel Larimer, Charles Hoskinson and Stan Larimer

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 G1ng3rBr34dM4n

I'd challenge Invictus Innovations to tell a story explaining DACs, protoshares, bitshares, et al; simply enough that a 5th grader could understand.

In the meantime, I've assigned myself some homework on catching up on all the articles and videos on DACs.  ;)

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

Over the past few days I've read exhaustively about protoshares, keyhotee, bitshares, domainshares, nameshares, etc etc. I've seen the videos, i've heard the podcasts, i've mined some proto... and while it all seems pretty cool, I do have a few concerns.

1) I'm just not understanding what the value is in holding protoshares, which to my understanding (and correct me if i'm wrong here) is the same as dividend paying stock in Invictus Innovations. Sure, I played along... and now I have a few protoshares, but truth is, I'm not even sure why: Who are the customers of this DAC? what is the revenue forecast? what is the product we are selling besides our own stock?! I'm reading a whole lot about the supposed dividends, but i'm not even clear on where the revenue is coming from.

2) Why are dividends paid out from transaction fees and not from profits? AP DAC example aside.. lets say we have online casino DAC that has revenues of 50BTC and needs to pay it out in full as a dividend. How does this possibly relate to revenues that shareholders should receive from transaction fees ? What happens if there is low transaction volume but high dividend payout? High transaction fees? 

3) Launching one project, even for a big company, is a hard enough task. How can Invictus possibly develop, manage, execute, market and support allllll these innovations/projects? open source and "the community" ? I would be (pleasantly) surprised to see all the projects executed successfully. Its ambitious, I will give you that...

Thanks,
A concerned protoshare holder

There are a number of key threads in this forum that can give you a lot of these answers.  Try these:

BitShares Forum »Development »ProtoShares »What is ProtoShares?

BitShares Forum »Development »ProtoShares »The Intrinsic Value of Protoshares (Update from Bytemaster)

BitShares Forum »Development »Keyhotee »Connecting Keyhotee and Protoshares

Ok that was the long answer.  Now for some very short answers:

1.  Holding ProtoShares is not holding stock in Invictus but it does give your rights to revenue streams from every DAC we release into the wild.  You wind up owning shares in our DACs not shares in Invictus.
2.  Each DAC has its own business model.  BitShares is a family of exchanges that let you do typical trading operations on between classes of crypto assets.  Our first lets you trade exposure to various common currencies.
3.  Each trade has a transaction fee which is split among all BitShareholders in the form of dividends, just like any corporation splits its profits with its shareholdes.  To the extent the Bitshares has value in the marketplace, you can convert your dividends into other crypto or fiat currencies.
4.  Customers are anyone who would like to save or trade without leaving crypto-space and incurring various costs associated with travel between "free space" and "fiat space".
5.  It will cost you a little of your stock as a fee to make a transaction and you get more stock when others pay similar fees.  Value is generated inside the DAC from the services it performs which people are willing to pay some of their hard earned or purchased shares to obtain. 
6.  DACs are by definition crypto currencies backed by the services they perform.  Even Bitcoin is a DAC performing the service of efficient money transmission.
7.  Transaction fees are the profits -- for services performed of value to its customers.
8.  As long as you are inside the DAC, the currency of the land is that DACs shares.  The more valuable the services it performs, the more desirable it is to hold that currency in order to obtain those services.
9.  Dividends are small if profits are small and large if profits are large. Each DAC publishes its distribution rules, which  distribute some of the transaction fees to the shareholders (owners) and the rest to miners (workers).
10.  There are several components that drive the market assessment of the expected value ProtoShares:
  • An assessment of the predicted value of the idea/business model of the services it will provide
  • An assessment of the developer(s) ability to implement the idea.
  • An assessment of the likelihood that the developer (or somebody else) will honor the social contract
  • The summation of the above expected value across all DACs currently in the pipeline.

Its up to the developers to convince the market that the above factors sum to great value.  To the extent that they do convince the collective community of experts, ProtoShares will increase in value and so will each DAC according to its established value proposition in the arena of ideas.

Look at what Invictus has accomplished since the Fourth of July.  Watch to see if we accomplish what we promise to do every step of the way.  Watch any competitors that join in the fray.  Then decide whether you want to buy or sell.

I'm in the same boat at evisu1.

I think the technical concepts could be explained in simpler language to gain broader evangelism for what is happening...  is it possible to use a metaphor? 

Would you be able to walk us through a "hypothetical DAC"? i.e. industry, how the entrepreneurs get involved; is this a platform for web tech companies only?  Say for example, I have an idea for a 'decentralized autonomous strawberry farm'; is it technically feasible for a 'physical goods' company to be a DAC?

I'd challenge Invictus Innovations to tell a story explaining DACs, protoshares, bitshares, et al; simply enough that a 5th grader could understand.




Offline Stan

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Over the past few days I've read exhaustively about protoshares, keyhotee, bitshares, domainshares, nameshares, etc etc. I've seen the videos, i've heard the podcasts, i've mined some proto... and while it all seems pretty cool, I do have a few concerns.

1) I'm just not understanding what the value is in holding protoshares, which to my understanding (and correct me if i'm wrong here) is the same as dividend paying stock in Invictus Innovations. Sure, I played along... and now I have a few protoshares, but truth is, I'm not even sure why: Who are the customers of this DAC? what is the revenue forecast? what is the product we are selling besides our own stock?! I'm reading a whole lot about the supposed dividends, but i'm not even clear on where the revenue is coming from.

2) Why are dividends paid out from transaction fees and not from profits? AP DAC example aside.. lets say we have online casino DAC that has revenues of 50BTC and needs to pay it out in full as a dividend. How does this possibly relate to revenues that shareholders should receive from transaction fees ? What happens if there is low transaction volume but high dividend payout? High transaction fees? 

3) Launching one project, even for a big company, is a hard enough task. How can Invictus possibly develop, manage, execute, market and support allllll these innovations/projects? open source and "the community" ? I would be (pleasantly) surprised to see all the projects executed successfully. Its ambitious, I will give you that...

Thanks,
A concerned protoshare holder

There are a number of key threads in this forum that can give you a lot of these answers.  Try these:

BitShares Forum »Development »ProtoShares »What is ProtoShares?

BitShares Forum »Development »ProtoShares »The Intrinsic Value of Protoshares (Update from Bytemaster)

BitShares Forum »Development »Keyhotee »Connecting Keyhotee and Protoshares

Ok that was the long answer.  Now for some very short answers:

1.  Holding ProtoShares is not holding stock in Invictus but it does give your rights to revenue streams from every DAC we release into the wild.  You wind up owning shares in our DACs not shares in Invictus.
2.  Each DAC has its own business model.  BitShares is a family of exchanges that let you do typical trading operations on between classes of crypto assets.  Our first lets you trade exposure to various common currencies.
3.  Each trade has a transaction fee which is split among all BitShareholders in the form of dividends, just like any corporation splits its profits with its shareholdes.  To the extent the Bitshares has value in the marketplace, you can convert your dividends into other crypto or fiat currencies.
4.  Customers are anyone who would like to save or trade without leaving crypto-space and incurring various costs associated with travel between "free space" and "fiat space".
5.  It will cost you a little of your stock as a fee to make a transaction and you get more stock when others pay similar fees.  Value is generated inside the DAC from the services it performs which people are willing to pay some of their hard earned or purchased shares to obtain. 
6.  DACs are by definition crypto currencies backed by the services they perform.  Even Bitcoin is a DAC performing the service of efficient money transmission.
7.  Transaction fees are the profits -- for services performed of value to its customers.
8.  As long as you are inside the DAC, the currency of the land is that DACs shares.  The more valuable the services it performs, the more desirable it is to hold that currency in order to obtain those services.
9.  Dividends are small if profits are small and large if profits are large. Each DAC publishes its distribution rules, which  distribute some of the transaction fees to the shareholders (owners) and the rest to miners (workers).
10.  There are several components that drive the market assessment of the expected value ProtoShares:
  • An assessment of the predicted value of the idea/business model of the services it will provide
  • An assessment of the developer(s) ability to implement the idea.
  • An assessment of the likelihood that the developer (or somebody else) will honor the social contract
  • The summation of the above expected value across all DACs currently in the pipeline.

Its up to the developers to convince the market that the above factors sum to great value.  To the extent that they do convince the collective community of experts, ProtoShares will increase in value and so will each DAC according to its established value proposition in the arena of ideas.

Look at what Invictus has accomplished since the Fourth of July.  Watch to see if we accomplish what we promise to do every step of the way.  Watch any competitors that join in the fray.  Then decide whether you want to buy or sell.
 
« Last Edit: November 16, 2013, 03:55:14 am by Stan »
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 bytemaster

ProtoShares are not stock in Invictus Innovations, Inc.    They get you part of the 'pre-mine' in every BitShares, DAC that Invictus launches and there will be many of them all based upon the same code, but each trading in different asset classes.

Invictus will work on one project at a time and work our way down the roadmap.  We will offer bounties that get others involved and help us do work in parallel.   Now that there are 1000's of stakeholders in ProtoShares there is a lot of community motivation to see this thing work. 

We realized this would take a long time which is why we released ProtoShares first. 

Stay tuned for some more big announcements in the weeks ahead.
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline evisu1

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Over the past few days I've read exhaustively about protoshares, keyhotee, bitshares, domainshares, nameshares, etc etc. I've seen the videos, i've heard the podcasts, i've mined some proto... and while it all seems pretty cool, I do have a few concerns.

1) I'm just not understanding what the value is in holding protoshares, which to my understanding (and correct me if i'm wrong here) is the same as dividend paying stock in Invictus Innovations. Sure, I played along... and now I have a few protoshares, but truth is, I'm not even sure why: Who are the customers of this DAC? what is the revenue forecast? what is the product we are selling besides our own stock?! I'm reading a whole lot about the supposed dividends, but i'm not even clear on where the revenue is coming from.

2) Why are dividends paid out from transaction fees and not from profits? AP DAC example aside.. lets say we have online casino DAC that has revenues of 50BTC and needs to pay it out in full as a dividend. How does this possibly relate to revenues that shareholders should receive from transaction fees ? What happens if there is low transaction volume but high dividend payout? High transaction fees? 

3) Launching one project, even for a big company, is a hard enough task. How can Invictus possibly develop, manage, execute, market and support allllll these innovations/projects? open source and "the community" ? I would be (pleasantly) surprised to see all the projects executed successfully. Its ambitious, I will give you that...

Thanks,
A concerned protoshare holder