I thought we were targetting businesses and not charities... we have to figure out what "persona" we wan't to be perceived as to the world.
If you want my opinion on the best strategic personas to adopt I would say NGO, non-profit, cooperative, or social enterprise. In the United States I would say if you're an American then you should not start a corporation. Start an NGO, non-profit, cooperative or social enterprise.
An example is the COG Cooperative. Study the COG Cooperative because I think strategically they are the best structure for American organizations in this space if you're trying to avoid regulation. In fact it was so effective that they got on Apple's IOS before everyone else with their Pheeva wallet. So they are an excellent case study on the right way to do it.
COG Cooperative
The freedom of bitcoin. The power of a network.
Social good through financial freedom.
COG is a cooperative that provides members with the best applications and services in the Bitcoin marketplace. COG members receive free access to world class Bitcoin applications, revenue sharing, and exclusive discounts with partner merchants.
http://cogcoop.com/I suggest we form a Bitshares Cooperative ASAP using the same successful techniques used by the Cog Cooperative. Then use that Bitshares Cooperative in a similar fashion as the Cog Cooperative where the members of the Bitshares Cooperative are verified "trusted" users of Bitshares X. US Citizens should be encouraged to join this Bitshares Cooperative which could then solve some of the problems we are talking about here.
We need a legal persona and I think a Bitshares Cooperative is the best way to do it.
A cooperative is a business owned by its members and operated for the benefit of all involved. Join COG to become part of a network focused on providing social good through financial freedom, and earn bitcoin while doing so.
^ Isn't that exactly what Bitshares is trying to do? So why don't we form a Bitshares Cooperative and do exactly what they are doing? Then let everyone who has shares in Bitshares SuperDAC join the Bitshares Cooperative? The Bitshares Cooperative would simply mirror the blockchain decisions by shareholders but this would provide a legal entity to interact with which isn't Invictus.
I agree on wording and language to avoid regulation but really the larger problem as long as the company is active is having centralization points of failure... like you said if we are able to have algorithmic methods and processes to recieve inputs into DACs and provide outputs(monetized outputs or other subjective outputs somehow measured).. we will essentially be mostly there.. and I think Turing completeness would help in that regard... the problem I have with a charity or gift environment is that it wouldn't attract those that are strictly looking to invest in ideas and innovation
That is not true. It attracted all of us. We all donated either our computation resources (mining PTS) or gifted Invictus Innovations through AGS. If it worked for us then it could continue working and there is no reason to see ourselves as investors unless you want to invite the SEC to interfere.
I think also if you position yourself as a charity you can get more support from governments, non-profits, educational institutions, etc.
and those who can develop but don't have the time or capability in developing for free just to build a rep.. the rep should help attract more investors in your future endaevors but should not hinder new dev's from trying to enter the system to develop new DACs and ideas. The rep system would be an incentive system to keep dev's around for longer rather than one and done.
There are no investors. While having a good reputation will make it more likely that people will value your presence and reward your contributions it does not guarantee anything. So you have to use what I'll call algorithmic psychological conditioning. There isn't a better word for what I'm trying to describe but that word seems to fit well, and the outcome is that the community is culturally conditioned to adopt certain ritual gifting/giving. It's not all that different than the social consensus we have now only more formalized and encouraged within the source code in the same way tipping miners is voluntary but encouraged.
THe prediction market of investors (donators) choosing the right DAC proposals and people to invest (donate) in will depend on their needs, and may open up other forms of interesting technology advances for bts that we can't foresee right now. It would not only help grow the system and those who hold bts or invest in the ecosystem but help provide valuable utility to anyone who wishes to use the system for low cost and high benefit even if its fora short amount of time. However we word it.. we have to keep in mind that essentially we are targeting a restructing of the way we do business.. and if we are saying lets think of business as charity sure.. but it would be alot harder for people to flip that switch rather than what is proposed here...
As I said earlier you have to weigh risk vs benefit. Do you want to open yourself up to regulatory scrutiny or do you want to promote innovation? In the United States you risk regulatory scrutiny if you do things in the wrong way. I only get annoyed when I see the community or developers give up on the goals or the innovations when they have the option to simply do things differently.
How many times do we hear that developers have to ban all US investors? If they just ban all investors from their platform then it solves the problem. No investors allowed and you can accept every gift from anyone as a donation. If you want Americans to be able to innovate without the BS nationalist politics interfering then this is the only way it can be done because the alternative is to just price in black swan events which has a high cost (perhaps $100,000 per delegate just to price in the risk of an SEC crackdown and fine).
I think we can draw some similarities.. however the rep system is pretty short and simple and I was hoping that you would compare the proposal with your proposal from the use case perspective as it would take alot longer for me to break your proposal down from its true intentions and translate it to what this proposal's true intentions are.
I'm honestly not always the best at explaining ideas. I think someone like Stan can look it over and explain it better than I can. What I am good at is understanding concepts and the language. I know also cite my sources and the COG Cooperative is an example of the right way to do it while the corporate model is the wrong way. Bitshares Music Foundation is a good way to do things while a Invictus Innovations Inc was the wrong way. COG Cooperative in my opinion is the best way because you can actually distribute shares through the cooperative legally, distribute gifts or profit sharing legally.
Just to clarify, I'm not a lawyer so check with your lawyer but I believe it can be done legally this way.
So in short:
1) Harder to flip the switch in the minds of the business world from a business oriented (investor/developer) sort of world to a charity gift environment (give/take) credit based world. We have to figure out what we want to be perceived as. What's our niche.
The Gates Foundation is a charity. I don't think there is a lack of money in the charity world. It's just a different kind of marketing that goes into charity. I think charity is actually a better way to do it because you get tax breaks for your donations. Also the decentralized autonomous social corporation can actually have values built into a constitution while a pure decentralized autonomous corporation only has to profit for shareholders. A lot of DAC developers are interested in decentralization for philosophical reasons, and they also might have a social mission which matters to them as much as making a profit does.
2) get the idea of working for "free" in a charity and it would turn people off who simply can't afford to work for free... even to try to build a reputation.
None of us here would be turned off by the opportunity to be in that environment. You work for free but your reputation itself has value. So you work to earn reputation points which have value. How is it different than saying that DAC developers now work as volunteers on these DACs and if the DACs become a success they often become millionaires? Enough DAC developers become millionaires working for free and everyone will want to work for free.
So the idea that people working at anything are working for free is not true. If you work for reputation then reputation itself is an asset which could be later exchanged for whatever you need. For example if you're a developer with reputation then the DAC could pay you in BitUSD as long as your reputation is good enough that you can remain a delegate.
What I am saying is that the prediction market of DAC proposal approvals through voting would negate the "bad actor" effect of bad dev's doing one-offs to try to propose and run off with dev funds... in this proposal those funds get burned anyway because they are not merged in and the DAC is not used or providing profits. The rep system precluding payments like what you are suggesting would stop bad actors but it would also stop good actors and that is more important.
Prediction markets as you're defining it could open you up to a black swan regulatory event. I'm not totally against taking risks but if you're someone who wants to accomplish the same level of innovation without having to take that risk then there are other ways.
I think prediction markets are in the grey area but at any time the authorities could put it in the black area and now you'd have to shut your entire DAC down. I think if you have the DACs set up in such a way that the DAC can take a different form in different jurisdictions then it can be truly global.
Bitshares X in the United States might have to be done different to how it could be done in another country. The point is you don't want US authorities to influence global innovation just like you don't want Chinese or Russian authorities to stop innovation in the US.
In the end you can't stop scams.. and an equilibrium will be achieved whereas some people willw ant to hold bts due to scams and others will get "good" at choosing the right dev's and hit the lottery as they end up being tech innovations and the devshares become worth alot as they get merged in or operate as a sole DAC.
You could say that the entire altcoin industry is a prediction market if you want to look at it like that. But why use the words prediction market? Why go there? On some level you will have greedy people who will donate just because they think they'll get something back but you should tell these people that it's charity and that there is no guarantee they'll get anything back. If anyone gets anything back it's because other people were honorable and not because they are owed anything.
Investors who want to do it properly will have the SEC to protect them from scams but if you're donating then there are processes to protect you from fraud even in charities. So use those processes and advance them with algorithmic mechanisms.
As time goes by... the prediction markets will get better and more people will become trusting and good at filtering out those who are bad... bad actors will have to get more creative and good actors will benefit from being able to develop to earn.
Rather than calling it a prediction market why not just call it a prediction algorithm? Change your language if you don't want to confuse regulators.
Both proposals offer this.. and the voting process integrates reputation based on what they have contributed so as a dev it pays to do good work and stick around. As you get vetted you will get funding easier... if you screw up.. funds are burned before any DAC is merged anyways... so no harm to BTS as a whole... but that is the risk you take to "invest" in the bleeding edge.
On this we agree. Our goals are similar here and we just have to adopt language which is better for US citizens. In some countries you can set it up so there are "investors" and the like but if what you said in other threads on this forum is true and the SEC is psychotic enough to persecute the entire altcoin industry then perhaps it's just easier for Americans to ban all investors from all the critical platforms. If platforms in other countries want to set it up where they accept investors then they can but in the United States you'll have to accept that you cannot be an investor and all of your transactions to support your cause are donations to charity.
This doesn't mean you don't have any rights or that the smart contracts cannot enforce things so that you're likely to be made whole, it simply means that no organization or person owes you anything directly.