I'm seeing
Latest BTS Version: refs/tags/bts/0.7.0
Latest DVS Version: refs/tags/dvs/0.6.3

https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/tags

Are we expecting to upgrade DVS first .. there hasn't been a DVS update for a while.. are DevShares still working in the way intended.. is the network valuable to the devs or is there a question about whether it was worthwhile?..

I was just wondering a graph of total number of accounts over time would be interesting as an indication of change. Paired with market cap perhaps might help to show the real effect of efforts to grow.

And while a snapshot is a nice feature.. just doesn't seem all that trustless to me.  How can you trustlessly prove that you are holding on to the correct snapshot with any degree of certainty?

Perhaps it's more complex than I'm imagining but I would expect it's no different to any block proofing. So long as the history is available and distributed widely, most nodes will see the benefit. Those that play host to the history perhaps do not even need to hold all of it. I wonder it must be challenging otherwise BTC and others would have suggested it before now.. 

How could you possibly sell Bitshares as a savings account with a feature like this?

It would give our competitors a field day. Inactivity fee was a massive negative in my mind when I first checked out this community.

 

Average user will consider that BitShares is already too complex without it adding obvious negatives. If you have to punish people to use it, then that's likely to push more people away than the numbers that will understand the subtlety. If there is a fundamental problem that calls for warping the money, then there surely must be better approaches that allow the number of tokens in an account to be unaffected. It's daft but simple psychology of number matters more than value of it.. see people's reaction to bank charges in fiat and what that does for brands.

This was just on reddit: When designing Bitcoin products, we should always keep in mind that the VAST majority of people are like this. Despite that being from 2009, it's a good reminder that most people's interest is never going to be BitShares but that they still might use it.

The products that do win will likely not be those that are pure perfect outputs but functional in a simple way - dare I say like AOL was.. browser for noobs comes first?

So, is BitShares simple enough?.. Can it be made easier to use.. ABC rather than XYZ. BitShares potential users are perhaps one step beyond the public but going mainstream, is not the same as designing a perfect product that is functional. What we have now I feel is more functional that fool proof. Perhaps rather than focusing on marketing in the PR sense, there can be more efforts put to ensuring that people who's main interest is not BitShares, can still use it without having to commit time to understanding the product first.

A problem that has me recall that Ubuntu declared bug #1 -- 'Microsoft has a majority market share'. BitShares bug #1 undefined atm??

The other aspect that prompts this, is that if your are good at sales and say get 10% of those you market to, then the marketing that reaches out beyond the 10% IT literate, might do well.

 

Also, if for whatever reason you still trust BTER, it looks like they are bringing trading back online next week: https://twitter.com/btercom

Ah! Now that is good news. I'm very sympathetic to bter, having had no trouble in the past with them, I'm glad to see they are working through this.. not only because I had some coin left on there. Hopefully they will rise again as a major player - until decentralised alts do away with them of course

It's become harder to engage the forum now the preview of recent posts was removed. Still unclear who did that and why but there's been no obvious response in the Meta thread.. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13311.0

Also, I'm not liking the move to PR when BitShares is only at 0.6#.. if devs must be muffled, then wait till 0.9 or v1.0 for the 'normal' PR speak dull sales-message-only default. A little difference among devs is a sign they are engaged. A move to PR looks weak to me, especially given that no PR I've seen has delivered. Perhaps a symptom of talk where there is no product yet but still if BitShares is to find its way and navigate through choppy waters, better than any other random offering that hides its activity behind marketing, then it needs to be adhering to what makes Blockchain technology work.. transparency is part of that.

I don't know why they should not continue. Surely the benefits far outweigh any downside.

BitShares, like all other Blockchain offerings, will succeed or fail relative to its utility; developers; community. Those are not distinct from one another. The community takes confidence from the competence of the developers. That raw talent, is not something that can be communicated through intermediaries; any PR dulls the message.

If you are going to attract new talent and real savvy investors, who in turn will amplify the message, then you need to provide sight of what they are signing up to. If you only provide sight of the community and utility, allowing vague allusions and speculation on reality, rather than giving sight of the nuanced way that the devs are thinking, then you substantially weaken the attraction.

BitShares at its root should be about what makes Blockchain technology's potential - devolved power driven by real talent. Without open discussion about what is best, users are not encouraged to think about what is best and why they are committed to BitShares over an alternate that does hide its developers behind good PR.

If the users are truely in control and if BitShares is to be distributed, then you need to respect those users and provide them clear sight of the state of play; both so that they can understand and learn from that and so they might contribute.