BitShares Forum

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stan on June 05, 2014, 10:41:57 pm

Title: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Stan on June 05, 2014, 10:41:57 pm
There's been too many technical questions lately, I'm throwing a few management questions out there:

Is there a limit to how many DACs should be launched in one day?  one week?  one month?

As an industry, we've got a lot in the pipe and Murphy's Law dictates that all developers could finish on the same day!  (Especially since they all get the same 90%-done head start from using the same toolkit.)

As a thought experiment, if we (as an independent community of developers) did have a whole batch ready to go at about the same time, which would be better?

1.  Hold them to launch all at the same time to generate a blazing mile-high spike of buzz?

2.  Launch them serially, separated by days, weeks, months to give each one chance to be flavor of the day/week/month?

Should their snapshots be done all at the same time or spaced out as well?

What's the best roll-out strategy?


Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: nodata on June 05, 2014, 11:40:20 pm
I'd say for the initial launch of DACs, to choose the most well developed and seemingly stable ones and release those ones first.

Might be hard to decide, but thats whats logical to me :)
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: toast on June 05, 2014, 11:41:44 pm
I think 2-4 weeks apart is best. Snapshots should be staggered as well.

Just think...

* LottoShares (TY freetrade for buying us time)
* XT
* ME
* .p2p
* Lotto (BitShares)
* X
* Music
???
* Voting
* MAS


Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: onceuponatime on June 05, 2014, 11:44:29 pm
I'd say for the initial launch of DACs, to choose the most well developed and seemingly stable ones and release those ones first.

Might be hard to decide, but thats whats logical to me :)

I'd say choose the first two in different jurisdictions.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: BldSwtTrs on June 06, 2014, 12:04:46 am
Definitly not the same days imho. The market would have no idea how to price a bunch of new cutting-edge technologies and produce some retarded and erratic valuations.
 
It's better to let the market discover a bit what was the first product and thus assess what might worth the following ones. I think a 2/3 weeks separation is best.

Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Talos on June 06, 2014, 12:05:34 am
Fortnightly launches maybe - to balance the effects of flooding the marketplace versus avoiding delaying DACs ready for release.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Mrrr on June 06, 2014, 12:28:40 am
Try and nurture your devs in such a way that it is all a bit distributed. This DAC some more protein on Tuesdays, that DAC some more carbohydrates on Fridays. And whatever you do make sure bytemaster doesn't OD on Koolaid.

We have all seen what happened at the februari snapshot :/. While back then it was the right thing to do, looking at it now it made no sense whatsoever.

If you were to have 5 DAC's launching in 1 day followed by months of nothing this would certainly not help the cause. This mile high spike of buzz will haunt you till the day that you die I can promise you that :).

4 years ago I drove through southern Serbia in the first week of August. And I drove through dozens of villages that each had multiple trucks filled with watermelons on both sides of the road. Selling their watermelons at dump prices. I got one as big as a skippy ball for 2 euros. Poor man couldn't even lift it. It was so huge in fact that the Montenegran border police took fotos of it.

2 weeks later I drove back and the stench was unbearable. No more trucks but huge piles of watermelons rotting by the side of the road in every village I drove by. We stopped at a supermarket for supplies and there it was: a watermelon in the fridge, imported from Israel. For 6 euros A KILO.

Moral of the story: this is the kind of shit that made Adam Smith think about the basics of economy back in the 18th century. And it is the kind of shit that should make you think about how to structure DAC releases :).
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: donkeypong on June 06, 2014, 12:53:43 am
Spacing them out a bit should help build/sustain the buzz. If they're ready, though, I wouldn't hold the DACs back for long. How about one week spacing? It works for football.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: jwiz168 on June 06, 2014, 01:21:00 am
How about making it seasonal . So that each DAC has the chance to live up to its expectations. However, DACs are different in businesses so it depends on the timing . All I can suggest is leave a space in between launches.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: tianshi on June 06, 2014, 03:22:29 am
I think 2-4 weeks apart is best. Snapshots should be staggered as well.

Just think...

* LottoShares (TY freetrade for buying us time)
* XT
* ME
* .p2p
* Lotto (BitShares)
* X
* Music
???
* Voting
* MAS


1. I cannot agree more. 2~4 weeks seems to be the perfect strategy.

2. If the problem Stan was talking about would really happen, it basically means that we could see the the dawn of the victory.

3. However, al least until now, things are not so optimistic.  no product has been finished yet and the price of PTS reflects the doubt and the fear of the investors. We are losing the market. people even doubt that if there will be really some products coming out or when these products are released, if there will be big bugs which could destroy the whole thing. 

4. At last, I just want to say that:  Hope the first product---BTS--- could come soon and well.

PS: Can we have a rough date about the release day?  I am a little worried that by the end of this year, BTS will still be unfinished.






 



Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Amazon on June 06, 2014, 03:27:10 am
I think we should not split the team before X is mature. XT is not enough, ME is not enough, we need X before we move to other product. We can discuss the plan after X's successful launch. Just my 2c.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Stan on June 06, 2014, 04:22:18 am
I think 2-4 weeks apart is best. Snapshots should be staggered as well.

Just think...

* LottoShares (TY freetrade for buying us time)
* XT
* ME
* .p2p
* Lotto (BitShares)
* X
* Music
???
* Voting
* MAS


1. I cannot agree more. 2~4 weeks seems to be the perfect strategy.

2. If the problem Stan was talking about would really happen, it basically means that we could see the the dawn of the victory.

3. However, al least until now, things are not so optimistic.  no product has been finished yet and the price of PTS reflects the doubt and the fear of the investors. We are losing the market. people even doubt that if there will be really some products coming out or when these products are released, if there will be big bugs which could destroy the whole thing. 

4. At last, I just want to say that:  Hope the first product---BTS--- could come soon and well.

PS: Can we have a rough date about the release day?  I am a little worried that by the end of this year, BTS will still be unfinished.

Don't worry, be happy!  Our optimism is higher than ever.  Risk is profoundly lower than when we started.  Team productivity is skyrocketing. 

There is a Darwinian natural selection process going on. 
Those who are able to see and correctly assess our status will thrive.
And those are the ones we think should thrive.

Survival of the Fittest!

 :)
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: mint chocolate chip on June 06, 2014, 05:44:29 am
Each DAC should be released when each one is ready independent of any other DAC. If that means that sometimes several are released on the same day or they come out weeks apart, so be it.

Autonomous:
-acting independently or having the freedom to do so.
-existing or acting separately from other things or people.
-having the power or right to govern itself.

Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: jae208 on June 06, 2014, 06:13:54 am
My personal opinion is that all of them should be released on the same day. Why?

It may be remembered as a special day for years to come. It may be remembered as the day that the average person heard of the 'DAC.'

Plus it helps reward those that stuck around despite the fact that our patience was tested. The people that have already left will regret having left. ;)

Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: fuzzy on June 06, 2014, 06:41:03 am
Voting should come out first, Air-dropping 10%PTS/10%AGS and air drop like 10% of them to Rand Paul's campaign for president in 2016. 20% to Nigel Farage (a frequent Max Keiser guest) and his UKIP party in the UK...and do the same for other political parties/leadership who have fallen victim to voting scams based on voting systems w/ centralized control.  This would give really good PR before the other DACs start coming out and would get supporters of these movements on board (also connecting us with their VAST network on an issue for which they have great passion).   

The DAC creators should ultimately be deciding how to launch and who to air drop & what %, but air drops that automatically imbue the tokens with meaning and value can be powerful from a marketing perspective because:
1)  Getting shares into the hands of both crypto enthusiasts and newbies who will have an interest in learning how to use them as the tools they are. 
2)  Constant press releases based off of the initial drop and also from the ability of the DAC to bring together altcoin "competitors" around development tasks.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: xeroc on June 06, 2014, 09:00:42 am
I think 2-4 weeks apart is best. Snapshots should be staggered as well.

Just think...

* LottoShares (TY freetrade for buying us time)
* XT
* ME
* .p2p
* Lotto (BitShares)
* X
* Music
???
* Voting
* MAS


1. I cannot agree more. 2~4 weeks seems to be the perfect strategy.
+5% .. Plus, if third party DAC developers should decide *independently*!

Quote
3. However, al least until now, things are not so optimistic.  no product has been finished yet and the price of PTS reflects the doubt and the fear of the investors. We are losing the market. people even doubt that if there will be really some products coming out or when these products are released, if there will be big bugs which could destroy the whole thing. 
I see this as an opportunity for those that have more information about whats going on.
+Checkout the latest git repo and see for your self how the code works
+Join the testnet and feel the power
+Check out the last thread about the testnet
+See the increased efforts in the git-commits on github

Price really does not reflect recent developments because those speculating on PTS don't read this board and that gives us an advantage!

Quote
4. At last, I just want to say that:  Hope the first product---BTS--- could come soon and well.
Testnet is incredible!!! Titan rocks. The web UI is awesome!

Quote
PS: Can we have a rough date about the release day?  I am a little worried that by the end of this year, BTS will still be unfinished.
BitShares-XT will be finished within a fewish(tm) weeks (IMHO)

BitShareX only needs some polishing and testing AFAIK. My guess would be: definitly this year! (Unless design flaws appear again)
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: davidpbrown on June 06, 2014, 09:47:34 am
I haven't time to read the thread in detail but would suggest pacing those products that you know are sound, rather than dumping them all at once into a smaller pool of interest. If you can make a splash with one and then pause, the next splash might be even larger?
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: CLains on June 06, 2014, 10:39:43 am
To release at the right time is really an art! Some considerations,

1. Hype in the crypto markets; primarily, hype surrounding Bitcoin and the hype surrounding Bitcoin 2.0 products like NXT, CounterParty, etc. For instance, atm NXT is all the rage, and a product competing with it - if sufficiently impressive looking -  might steal some of that 100 million market cap.

1.1. Topical Type hype, such as privacy, nationcoins, etc. For instance, we had a stretch were DARK, X11, Anoncoin, etcetc. were all the rage, and a stretch were Aurora, Mazacoin, Maltacoin, Electronic Goulden, and all the rest of the nation coins were trending.

1.2. Event-hype over events like elections, as fuznuts mentions can be exploited for Voting DACs, or the Olympics, that Dogecoin exploited to do the marketing stunt, and Football VM coming up will be exploited in betting/prediction markets, etc..

2. Space them out (but not too far apart!)  AND list them in a giant visual plan AND fulfill each expectation, that is how to build investor confidence and trust that you know what you are doing. In addition, this will create a fun game for the speculators who love the kind of dynamic market it will create.

3. As davidpbrown and others point out, release the products you are most comfortable with first, as the hype for the latter products will depend on the successes and the attention created by the previous products. If the first and second releases fail to gather attention, it will be more difficult to market the third, and so on.

BTW, there is no need to release the exact release date of the DAC when releasing the date of the snapshot. The snapshots should be announced fairly soon in my opinion, because otherwise we are not free to launch when it is optimal to do so, on command. (imagine having Auroracoin 2.0 ready to go just when Auroracoin was was going crazy, versus having it two weeks later - it is all the difference in the world.)

When doing snapshots, I think the main consideration is the influx of money into BTC, and secondarily into NXT. If we can pull PTS into a solid uptrend, there will be a lot of eyes on Bitshares.org that feeds back into the system. If PTS merely doubles, it outweighs any amount of AGS donations in the remaining 40 days.

Put another way, if PTS merely doubles we could easily spend 2 million dollars on whatever is needed, and then it would surely double again, at which point we reach escape velocity.

The most important consideration of all is to produce hype on command IF BTC approaches new all time high, or NXT keeps climbing to challenge LTC. As every surfer knows, when the big waves are coming you need to paddle like a crazy person on command at just the right time.

Notice that a lot of these points are in conflict, and we need artful judgement to find the optimal tradeoffs in each case.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: bulabu on June 06, 2014, 05:56:39 pm
Since April ,pts/btc fell from 0.016 to 0.006,pts has been discarded by miners gradually.If the dac's release could raise the price of pts in some way,bounties like "1000pts" maybe more bountiful,and more developers will work with 3i.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: donkeypong on June 06, 2014, 06:48:27 pm
Since April ,pts/btc fell from 0.016 to 0.006,pts has been discarded by miners gradually.If the dac's release could raise the price of pts in some way,bounties like "1000pts" maybe more bountiful,and more developers will work with 3i.

Just a guess, but don't you think the upcoming buzz for the DACs, combined with the end of the AGS donation period, combined with the move of PTS to a DPOS PTS2 will create just a LITTLE bit of upward pressure on the PTS price? I'll venture a guess that PTS value it will rise anywhere from 30% to "through the roof"...
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Stan on June 06, 2014, 06:51:21 pm
Well, people should not be surprised if there is at least one such snapshot coinciding with the end of AGS donations ...if not sooner.  It just makes too much sense from a savvy marketing promotion point of view.

NOTE:  This is not a promise, I am merely issuing the airdrop equivalent of a tornado watch.   :)

Quote
"A watch is issued when conditions are favorable, for example, either for a severe thunderstorm or tornadoes."

-- Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, AccuWeather.com
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: liondani on June 06, 2014, 07:46:59 pm
variable*  time between dacs and pool voting  for the order...

*the time could be depended  from the quantity of votes...
  example: the next dac (with the most votes) will come out every 8 weeks OR when it gets at least x** votes...(if it gets x votes after 2 weeks it will released immediately then)


** x must be a "equilibrium" number... (it could be for example y times the average "Most Online Today visitors" for the last 8 weeks on bitsharestalk.org...
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: hadrian on June 06, 2014, 09:13:18 pm
It could be overwhelming and confusing if too many DACs come at once. If a couple of successful DACs are released first, it would create enough buzz to draw people in. These people would then become familiar with Bitshares and may then be ready to jump in immediately when a new DAC arrives. They may be even more compelled to do so if they feel like they're 'getting in on the ground floor' with something brand new.
This could be something to bear in mind if there are DACs which would be best off with a very rapid adoption rate.

I've just typed this out and after reading through it I've decided that I disagree with myself! ???
I'm gonna post it anyway...
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: mf-tzo on June 06, 2014, 09:36:04 pm
I think 1-3 weeks is enough for the release of each DAC. We need to move from  "I3 promised and still didn't deliver" to "I3 is releasing every week a new DAC".

As long as the main shareholders of the DACs do not massively dump their shares irrespective of a bull or bear market and if we see these DACs as long term stable, valuable investments I am confident that all  DACs will go to the moon!!
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: donkeypong on June 06, 2014, 09:48:41 pm
I think 1-3 weeks is enough for the release of each DAC. We need to move from  "I3 promised and still didn't deliver" to "I3 is releasing every week a new DAC".

As long as the main shareholders of the DACs do not massively dump their shares irrespective of a bull or bear market and if we see these DACs as long term stable, valuable investments I am confident that all  DACs will go to the moon!!

I agree on 1-3 weeks. If DACs are ready, then it is not fair to their developers to wait longer than that.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: jwiz168 on June 06, 2014, 11:18:47 pm
From the crypto market's point of view, make each DAC a seasonal release . The price of BTC today is only 50% of its highest value . That is an indication the more we approach mid November, IMO, the higher market index would be reached. Let each DAC matures for its role . And when it is stable enough to stand on its own feet, then make another DAC launch. But it should not be later than  December 25 , where all people are in shopping malls for spending spree (investors divest their shares). Rest assured after that , BTC will again plunge to lower value.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: fuzzy on June 06, 2014, 11:38:07 pm
variable*  time between dacs and pool voting  for the order...

*the time could be depended  from the quantity of votes...
  example: the next dac (with the most votes) will come out every 8 weeks OR when it gets at least x** votes...(if it gets x votes after 2 weeks it will released immediately then)


** x must be a "equilibrium" number... (it could be for example y times the average "Most Online Today visitors" for the last 8 weeks on bitsharestalk.org...

Really like this, and would allow the market to evaluate and show Invictus which DACs are the most anticipated.  At the very least, that data would be very valuable moving forward.

It would also help us answer the questins clains is bringing forward.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: unimercio on June 07, 2014, 10:43:30 am
There's been too many technical questions lately, I'm throwing a few management questions out there:

Is there a limit to how many DACs should be launched in one day?  one week?  one month?

As an industry, we've got a lot in the pipe and Murphy's Law dictates that all developers could finish on the same day!  (Especially since they all get the same 90%-done head start from using the same toolkit.)

As a thought experiment, if we (as an independent community of developers) did have a whole batch ready to go at about the same time, which would be better?

1.  Hold them to launch all at the same time to generate a blazing mile-high spike of buzz?

2.  Launch them serially, separated by days, weeks, months to give each one chance to be flavor of the day/week/month?

Should their snapshots be done all at the same time or spaced out as well?

What's the best roll-out strategy?

IMHO, 1 would be a train wreck, 2 maybe but too arbitrary. Better:

3.  Launch each only once acceptance tested by the community and critical staff and procedures are online and prepared to handle the workload on all cylinders.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: CLains on June 07, 2014, 12:36:58 pm
liondani with another creative leap, voting for the releases! I like it!

However, what I am most afraid of, when making strategies with time frames like 8 weeks etc. is that Bitcoin might explode too quickly, as the market is moving the quicklier the more it matters. Personally I believe we are going down to 580 in the next few days and then up to 1400++ in 6-9 weeks, which of course, would be perfect for Bitshares; in that time NXT can grow to rival Litecoin as well, creating some major Bitcoin 2.0 buzz ;) hope, hope, hope!  +5% +5% +5%

I've just typed this out and after reading through it I've decided that I disagree with myself! ???

The eternal struggle!  :D
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: Troglodactyl on June 07, 2014, 01:57:39 pm
I would suggest releasing at most one a week, and preferably timing the launches early weekend.  It could be interesting to add a launch party segment to the end of the Saturday morning Beyond Bitcoin show on weeks that have a launch, and launch right then.  Thoughts fuz?
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: luckybit on June 07, 2014, 09:59:03 pm
There's been too many technical questions lately, I'm throwing a few management questions out there:

Is there a limit to how many DACs should be launched in one day?  one week?  one month?

As an industry, we've got a lot in the pipe and Murphy's Law dictates that all developers could finish on the same day!  (Especially since they all get the same 90%-done head start from using the same toolkit.)

As a thought experiment, if we (as an independent community of developers) did have a whole batch ready to go at about the same time, which would be better?

1.  Hold them to launch all at the same time to generate a blazing mile-high spike of buzz?

2.  Launch them serially, separated by days, weeks, months to give each one chance to be flavor of the day/week/month?

Should their snapshots be done all at the same time or spaced out as well?

What's the best roll-out strategy?

Launch them independently. It's not really important that they launch at once.

Think of it as game titles, as long as you show you can launch that first title then you can use the success of that to launch the rest. It's also good to give people 2 weeks warning so they can generally save their money or prepare.

So I would say give each launch about 2 weeks to itself. If you can launch more than one chain in the same week then do it but it's not something to plan for.
Title: Re: Critical Mass or Fratricide?
Post by: luckybit on June 07, 2014, 10:15:14 pm
Over time I think you would have to go from the "game titles" model to a more album type model. Look at the effort it takes to sell a music album or even a best selling book.

Since these are the first DACs in my opinion it's important to get the majority of them released over the summer so we have a way to expand the community. As new DACs get released there will need to be a marketing campaign.

If you look at music albums for example there is a lead single (Bitshares XT), and then every few weeks you get another single until at some point 3-4 singles are out there and then the entire album is released (Bitshares X). I suggest going with that model.

By the fall we want to have everything released. Also if you release in the summer you give people time to actually learn about and play with the technology. It's a good time to market it in the summer so that by fall you've got the line up in place and by winter you're preparing for the 2015 lineup.