BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rune on October 30, 2014, 10:30:21 pm
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Until BTS' market cap has swallowed all other crypto currencies the pay a BTS delegate can offer is still not competitive. I think the way we will take bitcoins market cap is by headhunting all their developers, it will cause so much controversy and attention in the community that they will be unable to avoid researching and finally understanding us. In fact, I think simply annoucing to the industry that we're going to hire all the good developers in the space, will render them unable to ignore us. If they understand the economics involved, and understand we will always be able to pay a higher fair market rate for a good developer (since we will get their skills applied fully to improve the blockchain, AND we will gain publicity from the move), then they will understand the inevitability of our dominance.
IMO it is plausible to get the entire crypto market cap in 3 months if we all work together in this mass decentralized headhunting of top talent. Every holder of coins will intuitively know that their coins aren't worth more than the developers currently maintaining and improving them. If they see the talent siphoning off, their demand will follow. Or even better, they will rage on whine publicly on forums about us, causing us to gain even more attention.
However we cannot really begin this if top developers have to make due with 50 BTS per block. I like the 50 BTS cap, but I think it is vital we can offer a competitive pay to _anyone_ who shows interest (and is worth it), and we should be ready to offer even, say, Gavin 20% more than his current salary if he joins us. Imagine what would happen to our market cap if Gavin publicly announced he would step down from the BF and join bitshares as a delegate. Even if we had to pay him something outrageous like 80k per month it would still be an insanely good investment, and if it later turned out he simply wasn't that good a developer we could vote him out again. The DAC should be able to do anything that it determines is profitable.
But before we can get started with it, we/I need the forums blessing that we/I can go offer developers more than 2,5k in salary without causing a shitstorm here if they sign up for more than two delegates (the pay I "offer" will just be an example in my opening spiel when trying to headhunt them). In fact even if I don't get the "blessing" I will still do it, but then I'll just have the shitstorm happen now rather than in the delegate-developers application thread. Once people see the massive market cap increase some celebrity developer signing up would cause, I think all the concerns about multiple delegates will disappear. In fact just the effect of them signing up might on its own be enough to render the need for several delegates unnecessary. Still we need to be prepared to be flexible.
I personally plan to target Amir Taaki first, as I think out of all people he's probably the one who deserves to work directly for the blockchain the most. Also he's currently being slapped in the face with the hard reality that bitcoin development isn't sustainable on a daily basis, and will understand the value proposition of BTS quickly.
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At 2 cents a share, a 100% paid delegate makes ~$30k USD a year. As Rune said, this isn't enough to poach someone.
If the market cap went up a lot, one delegate would be plenty, but for now, we could potentially see a developer that we wanted create multiple delegates, and voters who wanted to hire them would vote for all their delegates.
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We could pay them the same amount with much less dilution if we wait a few months. I'm comfortable holding out for that..
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Until BTS' market cap has swallowed all other crypto currencies the pay a BTS delegate can offer is still not competitive. I think the way we will take bitcoins market cap is by headhunting all their developers, it will cause so much controversy and attention in the community that they will be unable to avoid researching and finally understanding us. In fact, I think simply annoucing to the industry that we're going to hire all the good developers in the space, will render them unable to ignore us. If they understand the economics involved, and understand we will always be able to pay a higher fair market rate for a good developer (since we will get their skills applied fully to improve the blockchain, AND we will gain publicity from the move), then they will understand the inevitability of our dominance.
IMO it is plausible to get the entire crypto market cap in 3 months if we all work together in this mass decentralized headhunting of top talent. Every holder of coins will intuitively know that their coins aren't worth more than the developers currently maintaining and improving them. If they see the talent siphoning off, their demand will follow. Or even better, they will rage on whine publicly on forums about us, causing us to gain even more attention.
However we cannot really begin this if top developers have to make due with 50 BTS per block. I like the 50 BTS cap, but I think it is vital we can offer a competitive pay to _anyone_ who shows interest (and is worth it), and we should be ready to offer even, say, Gavin 20% more than his current salary if he joins us. Imagine what would happen to our market cap if Gavin publicly announced he would step down from the BF and join bitshares as a delegate. Even if we had to pay him something outrageous like 80k per month it would still be an insanely good investment, and if it later turned out he simply wasn't that good a developer we could vote him out again. The DAC should be able to do anything that it determines is profitable.
But before we can get started with it, we/I need the forums blessing that we/I can go offer developers more than 2,5k in salary without causing a shitstorm here if they sign up for more than two delegates (the pay I "offer" will just be an example in my opening spiel when trying to headhunt them). In fact even if I don't get the "blessing" I will still do it, but then I'll just have the shitstorm happen now rather than in the delegate-developers application thread. Once people see the massive market cap increase some celebrity developer signing up would cause, I think all the concerns about multiple delegates will disappear. In fact just the effect of them signing up might on its own be enough to render the need for several delegates unnecessary. Still we need to be prepared to be flexible.
I personally plan to target Amir Taaki first, as I think out of all people he's probably the one who deserves to work directly for the blockchain the most. Also he's currently being slapped in the face with the hard reality that bitcoin development isn't sustainable on a daily basis, and will understand the value proposition of BTS quickly.
I disagree. Why promote centralization for no good reason?
If delegates are paid for by dilution then there is plenty of incentive for developers.
What about non-developers? They are important too.
Some of the promises you're making are unrealistic. Bitshares is not going to get the entire crypto market cap in 3 months. Paying developers more than everyone else without it being tied to their reputation for achieving results is stupid in my opinion.
Here is my opinion on how it should be done:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10745.msg141289#msg141289
Let me try to simplify it into core concept points.
1) Algorithmic hiring via smart contracts: This means the shareholders define a "policy" and this "policy" has an objective which must be met in order for an entity matching the "attributes" to receive the "automatic votes" to be made a delegate.
2) Attributes: This includes the criteria that the policy is looking for. So if the criteria is referrals as part of a marketing smart contract then the contract will only say the attributes are met when and if they surpass a certain amount of referrals to win the votes as a reward.
3) Hired: This is what occurs whenever the attributes are reached and the terms of the contract are met. This means any random person could refer a bunch of people and the moment they pass the threshold within a specific time period (or unlimited time period) then they are approved by the contract. Once this happens the contract gives them all the automatic votes necessary to make them into a delegate.
I hope these concept points are enough to make it understood what I mean. The result of these ideas should be a system where we give out votes to smart contracts instead of delegates. The smart contracts would then give out votes to whichever delegates match our criteria and automatically fire those delegates by removing votes when they don't meet the terms of the contract.
I think we should use algorithmic hiring. Reputation for achieving results can and should be taken into account by the algorithm if you want to do it that way but a new developer with no community trust or experience should not be given more pay than anyone else with no community trust or experience.
In the area where I do agree with you is that we should focus on attracting intellectual capital. I think the best way to do that in the algorithmic method is to create a smart contract which defines as a policy to acquire intellectual capital for projects. Once this policy objective is set then the smart contract could have a list of attributes it looks for such as community reputation, trust level, degrees of separation, project contribution success rate, or whatever else we would want to quantify. Any entity, whether corporation, cooperative, individual or team who meets these attributes would be automatically hired by the smart contract via automatically voting in their delegate.
A project requires more than just programmers. I agree that we will need around 100 full time programmers to really accomplish all of our dreams but we need more than that. We need people who do marketing, we need people who do communications, we need people who handle usability, who make GUI images, artwork and logos, we need people who create the culture, who define the culture, who blog and who refer new people. The way to do this in my opinion is to have algorithmic hiring in place so that anyone who has the right attributes receives my votes which can result in them getting hired.
From there the smart contract will expect a certain threshold of success and if they fail to meet that minimum level of success they are fired so someone else can have a chance. So if it is referrals then we expect them to constantly bring new people in so that they can remain as a delegate. We can give them extra points for bringing in very socially connected people so who they bring in can matter, but it's multi-level referral marketing which can be measured for success or failure.
What I don't want is human beings deciding stuff on a whim based on whomever can trick them into a vote. It should be algorithmic so that human beings can define their priorities in advance and give their votes to their pre-defined priorities (not to specific individuals). This would make coercion more difficult, and help to make it so anyone can have a chance to get a job without collusion interfering.
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but a new developer with no community trust or experience should not be given more pay than anyone else with no community trust or experience.
Agreed. I doubt that anyone the community didnt trust would be elected, especially to multiple paid delegates.
Delegates will have to earn our votes.
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The OP's idea is definitely worth considering. Perhaps someone more astute than myself could come up with a pros and cons T-chart.
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I disagree. Why promote centralization for no good reason?
If delegates are paid for by dilution then there is plenty of incentive for developers.
What about non-developers? They are important too.
I agree that we should avoid centralisation, however in this case it is for a VERY good reason = getting the top talent, which is the most important thing for a company in the tech industry. Also it is the only way we can directly SHOW the bitcoiners why BTS is superior. Telling them won't work, they'll just go into their normal /r/bitcoin denial routine.
"waiting a few months" for the market cap to go up so we can hire people with a single delegate is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. The thing that will most likely cause our market cap to explode in the first place will be that we're getting the top talent. If we can't starting getting the top talent instantly, we can't grow our market cap exponentially within a few months.
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A recent topic of discussion around the office is that usually when people leave good jobs and take lower pay and higher risk, they are compensated with leveraged rewards (equity).
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I agree that we should avoid centralisation, however in this case it is for a VERY good reason = getting the top talent, which is the most important thing for a company in the tech industry.
This is one of the few reasons why I strongly support a separation between delegates that run the consensus engine and workers who get paid to further the interests of the DAC. Mixing the two leads to many problems. The only problem is that implementing the separate workers concept requires more code to be written (also it requires stakeholders to come to a consensus on the BitUSD salary of each worker as a collective).
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but a new developer with no community trust or experience should not be given more pay than anyone else with no community trust or experience.
Agreed. I doubt that anyone the community didnt trust would be elected, especially to multiple paid delegates.
Delegates will have to earn our votes.
Absolutely, but wouldn't you say Amir Taaki has already earned your vote? What about jgarzik, gmaxwell, ptodd, mike hearn, luke-jr, Satoshi, etc. etc.? These are all people who helped invent the very idea of the blockchain, our system is built on their efforts and thus they have already proven themselves valuable to our community in my opinion.
Overall, I don't really think it makes sense to discern between the different crypto communities when it comes to hiring people. Skills in one crypto can easily be transfered to another anywhere in the industry, and it is easy to determine whether someone is a top developer or not. Top developers in our community should be allowed a fair market rate for their skills as well, of course, but they won't need it anytime soon due to the AGS funds.
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Pay them to do WHAT? Just cause they are a "top developer". Do you have a project plan? Work breakdown structure?, milestones?, roadmap? You seem to just want to "hire" people and give money to people without clearly identified objectives or measures.
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A recent topic of discussion around the office is that usually when people leave good jobs and take lower pay and higher risk, they are compensated with leveraged rewards (equity).
What advantage does a developer have working for lower pay on BitShares (getting paid in BTS) versus working for higher pay elsewhere and using a part of their income to buy the BTS? It is an open market.
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"waiting a few months" for the market cap to go up so we can hire people with a single delegate is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. The thing that will most likely cause our market cap to explode in the first place will be that we're getting the top talent. If we can't starting getting the top talent instantly, we can't grow our market cap exponentially within a few months.
Bringing in talent would definitely pump the price. But we'd also have to be careful to not have too many cooks in the kitchen. They would all have to be trained, as well..
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A recent topic of discussion around the office is that usually when people leave good jobs and take lower pay and higher risk, they are compensated with leveraged rewards (equity).
What advantage does a developer have working for lower pay on BitShares (getting paid in BTS) versus working for higher pay elsewhere and using a part of their income to buy the BTS? It is an open market.
There is no advantage. That's the point. One better materialize soon.
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I agree that we should avoid centralisation, however in this case it is for a VERY good reason = getting the top talent, which is the most important thing for a company in the tech industry.
This is one of the few reasons why I strongly support a separation between delegates that run the consensus engine and workers who get paid to further the interests of the DAC. Mixing the two leads to many problems. The only problem is that implementing the separate workers concept requires more code to be written (also it requires stakeholders to come to a consensus on the BitUSD salary of each worker as a collective).
This will be a temporary measure though. As soon as we get even one "superstar dev" our market cap will explode beyond anything that will ever require multiple delegates in order to pay a fair market rate anyway.
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Pay them to do WHAT? Just cause they are a "top developer". Do you have a project plan? Work breakdown structure?, milestones?, roadmap? You seem to just want to "hire" people and give money to people without clearly identified objectives or measures.
+5%
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A recent topic of discussion around the office is that usually when people leave good jobs and take lower pay and higher risk, they are compensated with leveraged rewards (equity).
What advantage does a developer have working for lower pay on BitShares (getting paid in BTS) versus working for higher pay elsewhere and using a part of their income to buy the BTS? It is an open market.
There is no advantage. That's the point. One better materialize soon.
We can always pay a higher salary at fair market rate. No matter who the developers current employer is, unless they're currently fleecing the employer they will get higher pay with us because we will make more from their contributions.
Currently developers are either begging for their salary (and thus can't work full time), or they're paid by a third party to monetise an inefficiency in the blockchain (instead of fixing that inefficiency). Because a developer is most valuable when he is working directly on improving the blockchain, we will always be able to gain more value than those other methods, and will thus always be willing to pay a higher salary, resulting in us eventually getting all developers.
As the industry starts to realize this undeniable truth, the entire market cap should collapse into ours.
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Allowed? Anyone can run as many delegates as they want, and shareholders can vote however they want. Delegates can operate as many signing nodes as they can get approved, and can allocate delegate pay to themselves or to any developer, team, or other effort they like.
This cannot be prevented. Embrace it.
The stakeholders will certainly factor decentralization into their priorities, but not because of some unenforceable rule telling them they have to, or that they're currently allowed to approve multiple delegates for the same person.
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A recent topic of discussion around the office is that usually when people leave good jobs and take lower pay and higher risk, they are compensated with leveraged rewards (equity).
What advantage does a developer have working for lower pay on BitShares (getting paid in BTS) versus working for higher pay elsewhere and using a part of their income to buy the BTS? It is an open market.
There is no advantage. That's the point. One better materialize soon.
I don't know what you guys are planning, but I don't see how you could create an advantage. The BitShares ecosystem has the freedom to create any financial instrument open to anyone, not just a select few. Even if you create BTS options, we could have an open market selling those options as well (meaning you could work for USD at some other job, move the USD into BitUSD, and use the BitUSD to buy the options at the market price in the internal market). At the end all that matters is what is the current dollar value of the compensation provided to the employee since they then have the freedom to change that into whatever form of value they wish.
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By the way, while I respect Amir Taaki a lot as a human being why would you want to target the most controversial developer in the entire industry?
In my opinion when you bring in delegates it should be based on some criteria you define.
If you're talking about intellectual capabilities then we all can agree Amir Taaki is a capable developer but he comes with some downsides too. He's in the media a lot, he takes on very partisan stances, he is involved with projects which are very questionable, so while he might help the development side he could hurt the marketing side.
Having said all of this I think with algorithmic hiring it would be the algorithm which hires or fires based on policy, attributes, trust and reputation. Amir Taaki has a reputation in Bitcoin but not much of a Bitshares community reputation so he would have to earn a reputation and trust to improve his stance if the policy were set to measure that.
In my opinion, I prefer the sort of policies which start out treating everyone as equal blank slates. Then over time as they develop some kind of reputation this is when perhaps the policy could be set up to pay trusted developers more than untrusted. So someone like Bytemaster, Toast, Xeroc, and the other developers currently involved would definitely be more trusted than Amir Taaki based on evidence from our community.
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Pay them to do WHAT? Just cause they are a "top developer". Do you have a project plan? Work breakdown structure?, milestones?, roadmap? You seem to just want to "hire" people and give money to people without clearly identified objectives or measures.
In the beginning the only thing we need top developers to do is simply to be attached to our project, and to spend their time going through the code looking for bugs, thus lending their professional credentials as an endorsement to our blockchain. The explosion in market cap this, and the ensuing publicity, will far outweight whatever salary we pay them.
Once we've gotten them on board and they're familiar with the code, they will most likely be able to organize autonomously due to open source experience. If not then we can have an entity such as I3 step up and try to create a development framework. Or perhaps one of the top developers from bitcoin with experience working together with as many contributors as bitcoin, will be able to come up with a system.
If it turns out there are developers on board that are simply not worth their money we can reduce their salary or fire them entirely if they are truly useless. The absolute transparency of our system allows us to autonomously scale any number of developers in a decentralized manner, like a self organizing microsoft where the middle managers are replaced by activist-stakeholders with transparent access to all information.
And if you don't think the community will be good enough at stakeholder activism, just look at the recent examples of bitcoin action such as the robocoin scandal, the moolah hunt, etc. The community has proven many times that it will actively seek out and call out anyone it feels is acting dishonestly, and our system allows it to work at full efficiency due to the forced full transparency that delegates give.
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By the way, while I respect Amir Taaki a lot as a human being why would you want to target the most controversial developer in the entire industry?
Amir Taaki is a superstar, and will attract LOADS of attention. In addition to that then, as you say, he is an extremely capable developer and that's enough to make me not give a damn about his personal opinions. The way I see it dark wallet is basically a non-profit attempt at turning bitcoin into bitshares anyway, so he's already got the vision.
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but a new developer with no community trust or experience should not be given more pay than anyone else with no community trust or experience.
Agreed. I doubt that anyone the community didnt trust would be elected, especially to multiple paid delegates.
Delegates will have to earn our votes.
This is why I support the idea of algorithmic hiring. I think a lot of developers might be able to manipulate people's emotions to become a delegate. Anyone can win votes from the masses who are untrained on how to properly spend their votes.
If the masses can go into Bitshares, select a template policy for a smart contract or write their own, and then let the algorithm delegate their vote to whomever or whatever has the required attributes then everything could be made to work.
Imagine if it were an election where you simply set it up so that your algorithm will automatically vote for whichever politician has a history of doing what you want? No need to listen to their bs because they cannot fool the algorithm. Imagine if voters all voted algorithmically? If the algorithms were really good then those algorithms could optimize to produce really good results.
The algorithm doesn't care who takes the job because it's just an algorithm. The algorithm just looks at the numbers and if those numbers surpass a certain threshold then the votes go to the that delegate. You'd all be free to choose any policy you want or even follow the policy of someone you look up to (like Bytemaster) if you want.
By the way, while I respect Amir Taaki a lot as a human being why would you want to target the most controversial developer in the entire industry?
Amir Taaki is a superstar, and will attract LOADS of attention. In addition to that then, as you say, he is an extremely capable developer and that's enough to make me not give a damn about his personal opinions. The way I see it dark wallet is basically a non-profit attempt at turning bitcoin into bitshares anyway, so he's already got the vision.
Developers don't need attention attracted to them. Developers aren't the people best at marketing or managing that attention. LOADS of attention on our developers could put our developers at increased risk over time from governments. It could also mean developers get stalked by TMZ as they go out for coffee each morning.
It's fair to say we disagree on the strategic benefit of that particular example but what is your opinion on algorithmic hiring? In algorithmic hiring if you set your policy to attract the intellectual capital with the most Google searches then yes you could use Google searches as an attribute in the smart contract. Only developers with a certain amount of Google searches would meet the attributes to receive your vote and if enough people adopted that policy we'd have very famous developers.
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I want to make clear that by using terms such as "superstar devs" for current outside talent, I'm not actually grading them in a professional manner. I'm not trying to imply, e.g., that they are better than the current team. With the amount of cheerleading I've done for BM and BTS' technical superiority in general, it should be clear that I deeply respect the current team.
I'm talking purely in marketing terms, and in terms of longterm stakeholder confidence. The bitcoin community considers amir a superstar, and many will take it very, VERY seriously if he joins us.
The eventual coalescence of the entire crypto industry into a giant collaboration on improving BTS will basically be a developer reorganization into the framework that the current team has already built. The current team will most likely become the new industry-wide superstar, and enjoy the reverence people like Gavin and Gmaxwell currently receive.
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I hate the uncertainty inherent in the inflationary model that's been chosen to fund development via giving delegates the power to create new bts.
Money creation/quantitative easing etc remains the outstanding problem of fiat currencies especially in less developed countries and this seems like a backwards step to me.
It would be better to carve out an initial fixed stake up-front, and then distribute in some manner (maybe delegates) and let Bitshares live or flounder on that basis of work achievable with those funds.
Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
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I want to make clear that by using terms such as "superstar devs" for current outside talent, I'm not actually grading them in a professional manner. I'm not trying to imply, e.g., that they are better than the current team. With the amount of cheerleading I've done for BM and BTS' technical superiority in general, it should be clear that I deeply respect the current team.
I'm talking purely in marketing terms, and in terms of longterm stakeholder confidence. The bitcoin community considers amir a superstar, and many will take it very, VERY seriously if he joins us.
The eventual coalescation of the entire crypto industry into a giant collaboration on improving BTS will basically be a developer reorganization into the framework that the current team has already built. The current team will most likely become the new industry-wide superstar, and enjoy the reverence people like Gavin and Gmaxwell currently receive.
The Bitcoin community is also very small because of that. Sure you'd get the hardcore crypto-anarchists and they make up some of the best coders currently involved. The problem is that in a few years they wont be the best coders in the industry anymore.
So you have to not focus on politics so much and focus only on the numbers. If you're going by the numbers then it doesn't matter at all how famous a developer is. What matters is the beauty of the code they wrote, their level of innovation, etc.
Bytemaster is pretty innovative, if we are lucky we'll find another person like that. Innovative developers would be developers who invented something entirely new. This would mean SunnyKing, the developer who invented NXT, Satoshi Nakamoto, Bytemaster, Dacoinminster.
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I hate the uncertainty inherent in the inflationary model that's been chosen to fund development via giving delegates the power to create new bts. Money creation/quantitative easing etc remains the outstanding problem of fiat currencies especially in less developed countries and this seems like a backwards step.
It would be better to carve out an initial fixed stake up-front, and then distribute in some manner (maybe delegates) and let Bitshares live or flounder on that basis of work achievable with those funds.
Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
Having delegates inflate their salary into existence is the exact same as having all shareholders pay equally to funding the delegates. From the point of view of how value moves through the system, there is no difference. This is also why tx fees are destroyed rather than paid out to shareholders - the net effect is the same.
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I hate the uncertainty inherent in the inflationary model that's been chosen to fund development via giving delegates the power to create new bts. Money creation/quantitative easing etc remains the outstanding problem of fiat currencies especially in less developed countries and this seems like a backwards step.
It would be better to carve out an initial fixed stake up-front, and then distribute in some manner (maybe delegates) and let Bitshares live or flounder on that basis of work achievable with those funds.
Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
This isn't like QE, because BTS is a stake not a currency, and because no one is coercing you to hold it. If you think BTS will lose value, or if you prioritize stability, hold bitGold or bitUSD instead. Holding BTS is betting on growth, not betting on stability, so you should not expect BTS to be stable.
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Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
But most open-source projects are not on any hard deadlines so the urgency is not there.
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I hate the uncertainty inherent in the inflationary model that's been chosen to fund development via giving delegates the power to create new bts. Money creation/quantitative easing etc remains the outstanding problem of fiat currencies especially in less developed countries and this seems like a backwards step.
It would be better to carve out an initial fixed stake up-front, and then distribute in some manner (maybe delegates) and let Bitshares live or flounder on that basis of work achievable with those funds.
Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
Having delegates inflate their salary into existence is the exact same as having all shareholders pay equally to funding the delegates. From the point of view of how value moves through the system, there is no difference. This is also why tx fees are destroyed rather than paid out to shareholders - the net effect is the same.
It is a mistake to compare it to how governments inflate currencies.
The point of working with an initial stake, is that there is a fixed bound to creation.
At the moment nobody can say whether Bitshares will be net inflationary or deflationary over the coming decade.
Markets punish that type of uncertainty.
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Doesn't inflation allow delegates to get paid more if they can make a case as to how that will contribute to the community?
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I hate the uncertainty inherent in the inflationary model that's been chosen to fund development via giving delegates the power to create new bts. Money creation/quantitative easing etc remains the outstanding problem of fiat currencies especially in less developed countries and this seems like a backwards step.
It would be better to carve out an initial fixed stake up-front, and then distribute in some manner (maybe delegates) and let Bitshares live or flounder on that basis of work achievable with those funds.
Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
Having delegates inflate their salary into existence is the exact same as having all shareholders pay equally to funding the delegates. From the point of view of how value moves through the system, there is no difference. This is also why tx fees are destroyed rather than paid out to shareholders - the net effect is the same.
It is a mistake to compare it to how governments inflate currencies.
The point of working with an initial stake, is that there is a fixed bound to creation.
At the moment nobody can say whether Bitshares will be net inflationary or deflationary over the coming decade.
Markets punish that type of uncertainty.
Every asset is like this. Markets can never know if they will go up or down in the future, everything the market knows is already priced in.
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Doesn't inflation allow delegates to get paid more if they can make a case as to how that will contribute to the community?
There is a max amount per delegate, to make sure that the overall inflation level is capped at a reasonable amount.
If voters want to hire someone for more than that amount, they would need to create multiple delegates and get all of them voted in.
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I hate the uncertainty inherent in the inflationary model that's been chosen to fund development via giving delegates the power to create new bts. Money creation/quantitative easing etc remains the outstanding problem of fiat currencies especially in less developed countries and this seems like a backwards step.
It would be better to carve out an initial fixed stake up-front, and then distribute in some manner (maybe delegates) and let Bitshares live or flounder on that basis of work achievable with those funds.
Also, many Open-Source projects attract developer talent on the basis of their inherent perceived value of the project - consider Linux,BSD,XOrg,firefox,GNU,apache etc as obvious and high-profile examples.
It's certainly true there's a lot of marketing value in head-hunting sought-after candidates.
Having delegates inflate their salary into existence is the exact same as having all shareholders pay equally to funding the delegates. From the point of view of how value moves through the system, there is no difference. This is also why tx fees are destroyed rather than paid out to shareholders - the net effect is the same.
It is a mistake to compare it to how governments inflate currencies.
The point of working with an initial stake, is that there is a fixed bound to creation.
At the moment nobody can say whether Bitshares will be net inflationary or deflationary over the coming decade.
Markets punish that type of uncertainty.
Every asset is like this. Markets can never know if they will go up or down in the future, everything the market knows is already priced in.
Right. And the consequence, is that assets like bitcoin or gold will always command a premium since the information regarding their supply can be ascertained with higher precision.
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Doesn't inflation allow delegates to get paid more if they can make a case as to how that will contribute to the community?
There is a max amount per delegate, to make sure that the overall inflation level is capped at a reasonable amount.
If voters want to hire someone for more than that amount, they would need to create multiple delegates and get all of them voted in.
What dollar figure does that max amount equate to for a single delegate at this market cap?
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Doesn't inflation allow delegates to get paid more if they can make a case as to how that will contribute to the community?
There is a max amount per delegate, to make sure that the overall inflation level is capped at a reasonable amount.
If voters want to hire someone for more than that amount, they would need to create multiple delegates and get all of them voted in.
What dollar figure does that max amount equate to for a single delegate at this market cap?
around 2.5k USD per month
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Doesn't inflation allow delegates to get paid more if they can make a case as to how that will contribute to the community?
There is a max amount per delegate, to make sure that the overall inflation level is capped at a reasonable amount.
If voters want to hire someone for more than that amount, they would need to create multiple delegates and get all of them voted in.
What dollar figure does that max amount equate to for a single delegate at this market cap?
around 2.5k USD per month
Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
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Doesn't inflation allow delegates to get paid more if they can make a case as to how that will contribute to the community?
There is a max amount per delegate, to make sure that the overall inflation level is capped at a reasonable amount.
If voters want to hire someone for more than that amount, they would need to create multiple delegates and get all of them voted in.
What dollar figure does that max amount equate to for a single delegate at this market cap?
around 2.5k USD per month
Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
These are the kinds of questions that require us to build the tools first. Until we have a user friendly means of establishing consensus that is transparent and auditable (Vote should help with this), we are substantially held back from growing in these ways. My inclination is to say that, at least a present, you are not going to see something like this happen as it adds a new layer of complexity that the community does not yet have the tools to absorb.
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I disagree.. I'm a good developer but yet I still prefer Nxt.. precisely because I understand it.
Nxt is truly decentralized and has a very secure core algorithm providing 90% protection. Something that Bitshares cannot match, precisely because of the delegate system.
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I disagree.. I'm a good developer but yet I still prefer Nxt.. precisely because I understand it.
Nxt is truly decentralized and has a very secure core algorithm providing 90% protection. Something that Bitshares cannot match, precisely because of the delegate system.
Thanks for your perspective, but this sounds more like a biased response toward expressing why NXT is better than bitshares. This is not really the topic (imho).
However, your point about understanding it being the number 1 reason you are choosing to develop on it does give us one valid datapoint. If only we could get it from all Devs...because they all have different motives.
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
The question is "how". We have to incentivize voting in our ecosystem (imho). We also have to incentivize investors learning about the actual investment, both on a technological level and an economical level, so they can make the best possible decisions for everyone involved.
Perhaps voter turnout should be rewarded...
Perhaps people could designate votes in certain areas of expertise to people they trust to have similar philosophical inclinations and those who vote for them get the rewards that those for whom they vote would have received. In this way, if an expert begins voting in ways that hurt the shareholders, the shareholders who trusted them will cease to designate them with their vote...thus impacting the expert directly.
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Perhaps people could designate votes in certain areas of expertise to people they trust to have similar philosophical inclinations and those who vote for them get the rewards that those for whom they vote would have received. In this way, if an expert begins voting in ways that hurt the shareholders, the shareholders who trusted them will cease to designate them with their vote...thus impacting the expert directly.
Aha! And there's a new voting paradigm to replace the one-person-one-vote-one-party traditional paradigm. VOTE DAC, take note!
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At 2 cents a share, a 100% paid delegate makes ~$30k USD a year. As Rune said, this isn't enough to poach someone.
If the market cap went up a lot, one delegate would be plenty, but for now, we could potentially see a developer that we wanted create multiple delegates, and voters who wanted to hire them would vote for all their delegates.
there are many typical man can run a delegate, including developer , marketing ,big stakeholder ,exchange site. independent monitor, etc.
a good developer also can get pay from AGS fund partly. there need some delegate just keep BTS DAC more decentralization. these delegates don`t cost much. can donate partial BTS gained to AGS fund.
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
The core issue is the max of 50 BTS per block... it's an arbitrary number. (Or does it prevent an attack vector?)
Can the community be trusted to not elect a delegate requesting 500k BTS per block?
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
The question is "how". We have to incentivize voting in our ecosystem (imho). We also have to incentivize investors learning about the actual investment, both on a technological level and an economical level, so they can make the best possible decisions for everyone involved.
Perhaps voter turnout should be rewarded...
Perhaps people could designate votes in certain areas of expertise to people they trust to have similar philosophical inclinations and those who vote for them get the rewards that those for whom they vote would have received. In this way, if an expert begins voting in ways that hurt the shareholders, the shareholders who trusted them will cease to designate them with their vote...thus impacting the expert directly.
Right now we don't have the data to know exactly whom to trust with what. I would say that I would trust Bytemaster when it comes to C++, knowledge of what decisions to make as a lead developer, etc, but that is because the data for that is obvious. What isn't obvious is how we track the reputation of people who aren't developers so that there isn't a trail of code and decisions to look back on.
I think you can trust the decision making capabilities of humans who have proven their capabilities of making good decisions but I think doing this would create super delegates which further centralize decision making in ways which could be risky.
I support algorithmic methods because if a person agrees to let an algorithm be their leader then they can only be betrayed if the algorithm produces bad results. Mathematics cannot betray as it's just a language that describes what is or what could be so if I'm trying to make decisions I want algorithmic assistance.
Bytemaster originally stated that one design axiom would be automation. I think if we can figure out how to get scripting / smart contracts then we can have decision making capabilities that the world has never seen before. I understand that it will take significant developer time to code the kind of BTS which would truly change the world but in my vision that kind of BTS requires a Turing complete scripting language.
Once we have a Turing complete scripting language then all of the problems we discuss here will be solved. Ethereum will rule the world (literally) if it has a Turing complete scripting language and BTS does not compete in that area. The moment BTS has a Turing complete scripting language then we can either write these smart contracts ourselves or we can provide the reputation incentive for the developers who write them on our behalf.
The way to incentivize voting is to reward voters who makes quantifiable good decisions. Ideally if algorithms can automate voting then whomever writes the most efficient/beautiful algorithm could be rewarded with some kind of community prize similar to prizes mathematicians win.
Reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKLy8uSy2SQ
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There is more than enough dev talent at I3 to get BitShares off the ground and no need to hire additional dev talent right now.
Bringing in outside devs right now would be a disaster - 'superstars' are by nature my-way-or-the-highway.
The last thing this tech needs is a philosophical split in the dev team.
I3 needs three to six months to finish the basic tech.
Once a client, trading platform, basic on/off ramps and initial marketing are in play I3 can be disbanded and the community can start hiring new talent.
Lets not put the cart before the horse.
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It is far more important to find like-minded developers than super star developers.
Amir is not like minded, he hates profit motive and company metaphor.
BTC devs have a different philosophy, so we must be careful.
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It is far more important to find like-minded developers than super star developers.
Amir is not like minded, he hates profit motive and company metaphor.
BTC devs have a different philosophy, so we must be careful.
I agree in the sense that the individual skill or personality of a developer will mean little to their overall contribution to the project. However from a marketing and publicity perspective they are crucial. Unless we poach the hardcore bitcoin developers early(ish) we might literally never be able to make the bitcoiners understand, and they might simply go down with their ship and miss the real boat, so to speak.
Additionally the quick early influx of users and capital taking the crypto community will give us will be crucial. Both to the short term gains of investors, who will surely vote for it, and for the overall security of the system. Only if enough money is involved will we be robustly beyond destruction by authorities or criminals. We have too understand that we are going to take heat far, far beyond what bitcoin is currently getting. The western world will cling to the company metaphor and use it to justify a crackdown. China will realize how we are a fundamental threat to the regime once they start to see bitCNY adoption in any quantity.
I think it is imperative that we are as far beyond reach as we can possibly be, when they realize they have to act.
The way I see it, there's definitely nothing to be lost at attempting to cause as much of a stir as possible. As long as our fundementals are impregnable, it will be difficult to tell our story without also exposing why we are better.
If we're able to actually sift through the industry and choose the best developers it will be a massive advantage and will leave our competitors with nothing. In the end I don't see why everyone who is currently running a profitable project in the industry, shouldn't be doing that project but releasing it open source, for free, with bitshares support, and be paid a salary by the blockchain instead.
Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
I, for one, would definitely never ever consider of voting for anything close to that many multi person delegates. I have faith the majority of stakeholders would agree, and I'm convinced the community will be very good at constantly keeping taps on all the delegates, especially the few of them who will have more responsibility.
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
I really like this idea. It give us the flexibility to pay people what they are worth. While someone who is running a node and publishing feeds, doing updates is great we need to bring in more skilled dev's to more projects forward at a faster pace.
We certainly dont have a shortage of features or ideas for changing things we just need more people capable of making those changes.
What about using AGS funds in some way as payment option? It was discussed in the mumble that we are going to want to use them sooner as opposed to later....
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
Yes. Then go just one step further and replace the pay rate percentage with a BitUSD salary as described in the proposal here (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10781.msg142497#msg142497) and further elaborated here (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10781.msg142701#msg142701).
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Instead of capping the inflation per delegate, why don't we cap the total inflation across all delegates? That way a single delegate can earn a lot more if the community accepts it.
This would certainly help to keep the number of independent signers closer to 101. Otherwise we might find ourselves driven toward 25 4-node employees until our market cap quadruples.
Yes. Then go just one step further and replace the pay rate percentage with a BitUSD salary as described in the proposal here (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10781.msg142497#msg142497) and further elaborated here (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10781.msg142701#msg142701).
This would definitely be the best solution. 5050 BTS max dilution per round would definitely be a lot better than 50 BTS per block. The total inflated BTS since beginning of each round is stored as a variable, and if that variable hits 5050 then payments stop for that round. Paying in actual bitUSD would be impossible, I think, but the BTS payment could be tied to the current feed rate, so if a guy specifies he wants 15 cents per block he will gain 15 cents * feed of BTS per block. This would cause a bunch of problems if the BTS price fell too much though, however the salary decrease caused by hitting the round max early would be evenly spread out over all delegates in the long run, since their place in the round is chosen randomly.
Another idea I had that would allow us to pay competetively for talent without sacrificing any decentralization would be to allow "passthrough delegates", where one or more persons (nominated by the developer and accepted by the community through voting) will take their full 50 BTS per block, then subtract some tiny amount for delegate maintenance and send the rest on to the developer to complement his salary.
As long as this has to be done every week these pt delegates will never be able to steal, because if they don't make their payment transparently on the blockchain on time, they can quickly be voted out and will take a net loss since they had to invest 2 weeks of pay to register the delegate in the first place. Of course any accidents or unforeseen issues with the payments would present a significant risk to the pt delegates and they should probably be rewarded more than just delegate maintenance fees as compensation.
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With turing apps you can have a app exchange your bts to bitusd and burn the rest ..
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With turing apps you can have a app exchange your bts to bitusd and burn the rest ..
But then what happens if there are no shorts at the feed price? I guess it could be done but it would just require some more advanced logic. The thing about this I think would be most important is that voters need to be able to easily and transparently determine exactly how much money a given delegate will make, and this needs to be apparent in the same place where they cast their votes (so it should be retrievable from the blockchain)
In the short run I don't think it is vital to have salary pegging in some form, but in the long run it would definitely help a lot with governance. The biggest temptation a delegate will have is probably "forgetting" to reduce their own salary after a BTS rally.
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With turing apps you can have a app exchange your bts to bitusd and burn the rest ..
But then what happens if there are no shorts at the feed price? I guess it could be done but it would just require some more advanced logic. The thing about this I think would be most important is that voters need to be able to easily and transparently determine exactly how much money a given delegate will make, and this needs to be apparent in the same place where they cast their votes (so it should be retrievable from the blockchain)
In the short run I don't think it is vital to have salary pegging in some form, but in the long run it would definitely help a lot with governance. The biggest temptation a delegate will have is probably "forgetting" to reduce their own salary after a BTS rally.
- The delegate sets a 100% payrate and publishes a Turing Dapp on the blockchain which will receive the payouts (both can be enforce and verified on the blockchain)
- the code of the Dapp should be readable and verifiyable!
- it takes the BTS as input and puts up a market buy oder for USD (there will surely be short orders at the feed .. take a look at the current market -- that will probably never be an issue)
- the script exchanges BTS to USD send the USD to some other address so that the delegate can spend it
- the rest of the BTS can be burned in a proof-able manner
The only issue I see is that the delegate can change the payout address to point to a different Dapp doing something differently without requiring shareholder approval ..
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Another possibility to solve the OPs issue is for delegates who have no other use for inflation to instead make a proposal to use their inflation to fund another delegate. Stakeholders can then effectively vote for that as per normal. This method operates within all the usual rules of the system, without the need to give a developer multiple delegate positions. I prefer this because it seems to maintain a stronger control in the system.