As a follow up to this thread -
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6522.0 - the current PTS chain is insecure and inefficient due to a low hashrate, high inflation, and other problems (low block production due to difficulty). Based on the poll, it appears that the community overwhelmingly supports upgrading PTS to a standalone DPOS blockchain.
I propose performing the upgrade on Wednesday, September 3, 2014 (I believe performing the snapshot at block 68387 would fall on this date, please confirm). Here are the reasons why I believe this is a good date:
* Two snapshots are occurring on August 21 and this will postdate those snapshots.
* This gives plenty of time for exchanges and partners to perform the upgrade.
* The date falls in the middle of the week and on no major Chinese or US holiday.
This would also obviate the need to implement a difficulty patch in the current client. In addition to support from the user “testz” (who has been tasked with maintenance of PTS), we will need the following:
1) At least one developer who can fork and rebrand the DPOS client for PTS.
2) Stan or others who can reach out to communicate with exchanges and partners (mainly bter and cryptsy).
I firmly believe that we need to set a date for the upgrade now, or it will never happen. We can already see the perverse incentives and consequences of mining creeping in. I believe Dan and the Invictus team should support the community consensus on this issue and cooperate to make this happen. I'm afraid that anything else would be a failure for PTS, and would reflect very poorly upon Invictus and the I3 community as a whole.