Marketing plan for Bitshares 2.1

[Erlich Bachman]

You are correct. It might sound like a cheap ploy to get attention, and I was against changing the name to 2.1 for the stealth release, because honestly the stealth feature was included in the official 2.0 release, but the fact is that the "rate limiting" or "free transactions" feature is indeed a brand new feature, and one that is unique to all blockchains, and, frankly, our community will indeed develop 3,4,&5.0 feature sets because that's our strength. we adapt well and fork well.

"BitShares" is the brand. We should not get married to "2.0"

But of course we should milk the 2.0 moniker for all it's worth in the meantime.

[Samupaha]

2.0 to 2.1

When rate limited free transactions feature is implemented, we should change the version number to 2.1 because it really is a major change on how Bitshares works.

In cryptoworld people love new things, whether you like it or not. Change of version number is easy way to signal that we are doing new things here and get people's attention.

It's also easy way to get Bytemaster to interviews.
- "Hey, we made a big change! You should interview Dan about it!"
- "Oh, cool! Thanks for the tip, we will!"

Website update

We need to completely check the website and update it where necessary. Especially the technology page doesn't reflect the current status of development. We need descriptions and/or tutorials for:

- Stealth transfers (explanation that satisfies cryptoexperts and tutorial that newbies can understand)
- Referral program (seriously, how you think people start utilizing this feature if nobody knows how to use it?)
- Fee backed assets (explanation for developers and businesses how they can use this feature to make money)

Blog on the website hasn't been updated for a long time. This is bad because it gives the impression that the whole project is dead. @Akado you have been active and also did some time ago the weekly hot topics update, could you take some responsibility to write something in there? Weekly hot topics and updates is a good format. Of course other people can help too, we could collect all relevant topics and news into a googledoc and publish it regularly.

Intellectual framework: Bitshares as a DAC

DAC point of view differentiates us from other cryptocurrencies. We should emphasize it. BTS is not a currency, it's a share.

I'm not sure how well this will be recieved, but I want to try and see what happens. I think it has a lot of potential, but it's always possible that people just don't get it.

We need early adopters

Especially we need high quality early adopters. People who really get excited about how Bitshares can change the world. I've been thinking mostly libertarian groups and communities. They are already align with our thinking, we just have to convince them that Bitshares is a worthwhile project.

We can also try to get people onboard from other cryptocommunities. There are lots of failing projects, which means there are lots of people willing to change their focus on something better. A good persuasion technique is to point out some real or potential problems and tell how Bitshares has solved them, and let other people realize that their project is inferior compared to Bitshares. Do not tell directly that to people (it will create negative reaction), it's much better to let them understand it themselves.

Another potential group: cryptocompanies. I'd like to see more companies as witnesses, because it's good to have witnesses that are not dependent on one person. We should have at least some witnesses that are maintained by reputable companies. It shouldn't be too difficult to advertize this: "hey, you can make some money by this running software and updating it regularly". Once they do that, we have good chances that they will get more involved in Bitshares.

Timeline

When rate limited free transactions feature is coming out? Most of marketing efforts should come right after that. Stealth is coming out very soon, so we should start with that but not with full speed.

Focus will be on rate limited free transactions, stealth transfers and fee backed assets.

Stealth is out in a month, right? We'll start by making some noise about it. Can we get free transactions feature ready and tested in two months? As far as I understood, implementation is almost ready. After it comes out, everybody should be ready to do whatever they can.

I know that it's probably impossible to get marketing worker proposal approved so we have to do this with our own money and time. So please think of ways that are as effective as possible so that we can get most bang for the buck and not have to spend too much time in stuff that really doesn't matter.

And remember, all communication is marketing! When newbies find this forum, please be polite for them and for everybody else.