Thanks Ben, but can you elaborate on where the synergies are regarding voting?

For example here is a dis-synergy: When BitShares has prediction markets people will start to use it for things like predicting when the president kicks the bucket. How will that go down well with Californian voting officials who are employing that same blockchain for voting services?

Blockchains are basically about anarchy (at least till now).

That made me laugh.....perhaps the president will have to develop thicker skin.  Predictions aren't personal are they?

The synergy is in the fact that all these use cases rely on the core invention....secure transactions and record keeping without trusting a centralized authority.  My point is this, if millions of people decide to  utilize the BitShares blockchain because they trust it enough to do voting......surely they will come to use it for banking, trading, markets etc. 

More reliable voting would be closer to representative democracy than we have now.

Are the principals on which BitShares were founded still relevant and being adhered to?  More so than ever.
Are the technological innovations represented by BitShares still relevant to the market?  More so than ever.
Is there a need to continue to innovate and evolve?  More so than ever.
Are the developers and community members (including BM) working their asses off to develop BitShares and prepare for the networking to come?  More so than ever.
Is any investor owed anything by this project in the short term?  Absolutely not and it is utterly ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

When BitShares is ready, the tiny group of parties within crypto that would like BitShares to fail will be irrelevant.

Hard work, patience and resolve.
 

By saying you've lost faith in BitShares you are meaning you've lost faith in the community, the dozens of hardworking people that are trying to make BitShares a success.
People that spend hours, days and weeks in the last months to build and promote the most promising Blockchain project since Bitcoin.

Lets go back to work...

This 

In addition, I'd like to say that despite the few mistakes around communication finesse, i've never been more proud to be part of BitShares nor more positive about the outcome of the vision and hard work of very many people in this community.  We need patience and resolve.

I love this web wallet.  So clean with excellent use of branding and colour to create a strong BitShares identity. 

Quote from: Ben Mason on February 24, 2015, 12:08:40 pm

What is it about centralization that must be avoided at all costs?  The primary threat is that bad actors are a certainty and they will exploit any weakness in a system to accumulate influence over time and subvert the purpose of the system, like cancer. 

If a degree of centralization can be achieved without providing the means for bad actors to accomplish more than a transitory effect then great.  If not, the compromise is absolutely not worth it.

From what I understand of Ripple, it is the antithesis of efforts to decentralize power.

Ben, its unfortunate that bad actors are a given, and some of these will desire to find any means to cement their power once they have a taste of it. History is inarguable here. Its valuable to find ways in which decentralised networks can make effective group decisions without the need for high levels of organisational structure, to reduce the bad actor risk.

Despite this, I feel there need to be effective mechanisms to cast out such actors once identified, rather than avoiding their possibility by discouraging organisational structures altogether. The desire for group endeavour around common goals is too strong, and its results too powerful, for organisational structures of some form to be resisted by any society for long. I believe it's not even a conscious choice we will make in the end - its just a natural tendency that all networks (including brains) will evolve to make use of structure for better results, and ultimately survival. In my mind, the alternative is every person participating in every decision ever made that may affect them in some way, which would overwhelm society and mire it in a low order of productive capacity. I suspect this is ineffective idealism. The model of a decentralised network that allows more powerful organisational structures, while promoting maximum security to stakeholders, will simply gain competitive dominance in my view. That's why I think its useful to consider what the system will look like in the future, and to build the right tools toward it.

I agree with what you are saying starspirit.  Once DPOS scales and each delegate role has thousands of individuals working for it, we will need additional layers of organisation.  It's possible that stakeholders may defer their voting rights over delegates to trusted parties which would be a move towards centralization.  That would be fine as long as the second that any party (in any layer) acted against the system, they are identified and action is taken against them.  The loss of trust should be considered by all participants as the most painful cost and thereby incentivized against actions that would cause it's loss.  We need an effective immune system so the most important thing is that we are constantly exposed to trusted information in the context of our expectations derived from the open source rules of the system.

This really is an excellent piece of work and looks fantastic.  The newsletter clearly represents the tip of an iceberg of productivity and the coalescence of multiple strands of networking and hard work.  The impression it gives is of a cohesive network of talent becoming fully mobilized and accelerating towards our community's objectives.

 

thanks graffenwalder

bts id: benjojo

thanx Rune & Riverhead!  Sounds awesome.....