I don't like private profits being made from something that should be a core feature of bitshares.
I understand and appreciate that @onceuponatime has taken on risk and reduced sell pressure on BTS get Stealth asset implemented but I think this feature would be better as just a standard feature .
I'd like to see @onceuponatime to sell this feature to bitshares and delete the Stealth asset.
He could sell it for whatever he paid +25% to cover costs and make a profit. This could be done as a worker proposal.
I've never thought Fee Backed Assets for core bitshares functions made any sense whatsoever.
Well, the community had a chance to fund it and would up relying on private investment. To lobby after the fact to change the rules is very damaging to the possibility of further such investment. It's really the same bad rep we get when someone starts a worker project and then gets voted out before they can finish it. I, for one, will have no part in trying to pressure Onceup to give up what he took the ultimate personal risk to make possible.
I think we need to figure out some community rules for how FBA features could potentially be given back to BTS holders in the future for any new FBA we wish to approve.
For example, perhaps if more than 90% of a FBA holders vote to hand back control of their feature to BTS, that gives the community permission to:
1) choose some "fair" price of the FBA based on the recent market price history of the FBA trading on the DEX; and,
2) with the permission of the majority of BTS holders, hard fork the DAC to pay all FBA holders (other than the committee account) at the previously mentioned price (using sufficient funds accumulated in the committee account), destroy the FBA, and allow control of the FBA's feature to be given fully to the DAC.
If all FBA investors know these rules ahead of time, it becomes appropriate for BTS holders to optionally support the following procedure to gain control over the FBA feature:
1) BTS holders vote for workers that pay the committee account for the sole purpose of using those funds to buy the FBA over time at "reasonable" prices.
The worker would have to include some kind of information of what maximum price the committee would be authorized to pay for the FBA, although the committee would try to be smart about the orders they place to try to get good deals even if that delays acquiring the FBA. BTS holders could always stop voting for existing workers and vote new workers to change the price limits on the orders they are willing to authorize the committee to make.
2) As the committee accumulates the FBA they buy, they would also be accumulating the fees from the usage of the FBA's feature. It would be the committee's responsibility to either use these fees to buy more of the FBA or instead send those fees to the BTS reserve pool depending on what the currently active worker authorized them to do.
3) If the committee ends up accumulate more than 90% of the FBA supply, they would lock in the "fair" settling price at that time. They would then move onto the second stage which is to continue raising enough funds from workers to pay off the remaining less than 10% of holders at the "fair" price. The worker voted by BTS holders to pay them would also act as support from BTS stakeholders to do the hard fork later when possible.
4) Finally, when enough funds have been accumulated for this purpose in the committee account, everyone would update to a new client which would trigger the hard forking mechanism described above to pay the remaining less than 10% the "fair" price using the funds in the committee account, and then destroy the FBA so that the feature ends up fully in the control of BTS holders.
If everyone investing in new FBA assets understands these rules (that more than 90%, or whatever threshold we think is appropriate, of FBA holders can, with the agreement of the majority of BTS holders, force them out of their position at a price that is not determined by them but is nevertheless hopefully not too unreasonable) then BTS holders get a fair mechanism to potentially take control over features that they weren't able/willing to fund back when the feature was considered necessary to have. In fact, if we could get
@onceuponatime to agree to a rule like this prior to selling any STEALTH, then we have a mechanism to potentially allow BTS holders to get back control over stealth features.
I think this is very important because I agree with
@JonnyBitcoin that stealth is a core feature of BitShares and I very much dislike the idea of BTS holders not having sovereignty over their core features. I preferred funding stealth GUI features with workers rather than the FBA for this reason. Now if we ever want to change the way stealth operations work or interact with the rest of system (the rate-limited free transaction feature or funding the referral program are perfect examples) it is no longer just the decision of BTS holders. It now requires complicated (and less likely to succeed) negotiations between BTS holders and STEALTH holders. This rigidity can prevent us from making the smart decisions to most effectively grow BitShares.
At the same time, not having a way to practically use stealth features could likely have also hindered BitShares adoption. And the fact is that due to the anti-dilution camp, if it wasn't for
@onceuponatime we likely wouldn't have a practical way to use stealth for the foreseeable future. So I am thankful for that. I just want to make sure we have some mechanism that is fair to all parties involved which allows us to go back to the better way of managing these features (controlled solely by the BTS holders) in the future when hopefully BTS holders are more willing to dilute.