Quote from: Gonzo on November 07, 2014, 02:56:30 pm

Quote from: toast on November 07, 2014, 02:50:27 pm

Quote from: Rune on November 07, 2014, 12:48:43 pm

I think it needs to be a lot more clear what bitshares actually is. If bitshares was just an iteration or improvement of some existing tech that the average consumer knows about, then it would be feasible to sell it mainly on emotions through pictures. But the closest we can get to that is to write that bitshares "is like bitcoin" or "bitcoin 2.0". That will probably still not be enough to prevent the average user from bouncing from confusion.

It sucks, but I think we will have to explain some fundamentals of the the system right on the first page, and will thus need to use a lot more text. Unless people are buying into a third party centralized service that holds bitUSD for them, they need to understand that bitshares are distributed and decentralized with no issuer or owner, so there's no risk of an owner running away with their money, but also no official support, insurance or guarantees.

I had an idea that one of the ways we can communicate the public key crypto that powers our system, is to market to our users as "owners". So you're not a bitUSD user, you're a bitUSD owner. An owner can never have his funds seized, frozen, snooped on or restricted in any way. You're only an owner if you control the private key. We can do an emotional sell by playing on this as something that should be a fundamental human right: if you've earned something through honest work NO ONE should be allowed to take it from you.

I think a good source of inspiration for the visual style would be the style of graphics used in the weusecoins video. I especially like the pacifying colors and that each feature has its own unique icon (and even sound), it quite amazingly done.

Here are some random ideas for how I think it could be done in the current style. These are just quick suggestions and written in haste, but maybe some of the ideas are useful.

BITSHARES - a bank without bankers

DECENTRALIZED (picture: stylized drawing of a meshnet) - Bitshares is powered by all its owners, who work together to run the software that maintains the system across thousands of computers. This ensures that there are no intermediaries between owners and that no one have the ability to change or steal from the system.

OPEN SOURCE (picture of whatever people positively associate with open source) - The open source software uses the most reliable proven cryptography to ensure that an owners funds are always safe and spendable only by him. Every line of code is public and can be audited by anyone at any time.

STORE OF WEALTH (gold bars) - You can deposit money into bitshares in many forms: bitUSD, bitEUR, bitGOLD... Each of these tokens always hold the value of their underlying asset, and pay an interest rate (currently x%). Everything is collateralized at 300% of its value by the highly liquid backbone currency bitshares.

LOW FEES, NO RESTRICTIONS (stylized broken or frozen bank)- Using bitshares you can send money in any form, directly to any other user anywhere on the planet within 10 seconds for 2 cents. You can also exchange currencies and assets instantly and at low fees. There are no restrictions, requirements or authorization needed for the owner to send and spend his money as he wishes. Transactions are private and no one will know how you spend your money.

BE YOUR OWN BANK (picture of sympathetic person) - these features allows anyone to store their money with total privacy in the way they decide, out of reach of getting stolen, frozen or seized. Finally you can own what you own.

DECENTRALIZED could be COOPERATIVE


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 And I think change from decentralized to cooperative is a good idea. It makes me think of "credit unions" with their lower fees versus banks and I think it's a better description of what's going on.

Quote from: toast on November 05, 2014, 10:33:34 pm

Quote

assets entrusted to I3 for purposes of development and marketing

This is them spending it on development. Contract negotiation is a reality... Maybe you disagree with these particular expenditures. I've disagreed with lots of Dan's in the past.

I'll let Dan explain the details when he gets around to it. In the meantime, consider these two facts that have been brought up a few times:

* I gave up $150k / year at Google to work for a fraction of that salary at enormous risk. The other devs are at least as skilled as I am.
* We are the only people on earth capable of delivering on BTS. If we left right now BTS would die, while we could make a viable competitor.

If you think we aren't actors you want to make into vested interests well in excess of what we could buy from working another job, I suggest you lay out what you would need try to build something without us. I guess your alternate PTS is trying to do this, so far all the people actually building this thing seem to just blow it off.

Hey toast, thanks for the reply and no thanks for the hostility. Here's why I made the post, most of which you did not address:

1) I've been asking for this information for weeks with no response - there was no community input or explanation.
2) You keep comparing your Google salary to the amount of money you are being granted for work on BTS. This is so utterly and fundamentally flawed it hurts me to have to explain it, but here goes: Your entire BTS grant is paid to you up-front with no performance evaluation, expectation, roadmap, milestones, or other provable/non-provable/binding/non-binding expectation of any kind. Even your vesting PTS does nothing to incentivize any actual work - you will receive the funds regardless of whether you perform or not.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but I've been around the block a few times. There are at least a dozen different ways this could have been implemented with some accountability baked in (multi-sig oversight for example). Less importantly, there at least a dozen different ways this could have been communicated, explained, and discussed openly before "granting" donated funds with no strings attached and me finding out about it through the blockchain despite asking openly for weeks.

Edit: Here's a likely scenario. I'm a dev. I take a few hundred thousand dollars and continue to work on BTS occasionally, but also take a full-time paid position as a Google engineer. No expectations, no accountability, no recourse of any kind.

Umm if you have the time and skill to run a DAC can you not create a redundant one, and either contribute to BTS or make something new.

No offense, but this is not a good use of resources.

Would someone please write a comment to this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2l5ct2/programmer_want_to_work_in_the_bitcoin_space_for/

Quote from: Gonzo on November 02, 2014, 02:22:24 pm

Quote from: Shentist on November 02, 2014, 09:04:09 am

assume a marketcap of 2Bn - why would we need 8% dilution in this marketcap? would be 160 million for the employeed people.

in the near future maybe it is possible to change the dilution model to take the needed value from the stakeholders direct.

you hold 1.000.000 million BTS and the employeed people need 5% this year to work for us, so we take 50.000 BTS from this owner (as an example for all owners) so he will hold 950.000.000 BTS in the end of the year.

i know this is not common, but maybe the stakeholders will watch the employeed people closer and will higher and fire faster.

We need to see the controls for dilution and delegate's work processes.  My hunch is it all ties back to VOTE. But in the mean time, not knowing how much we'll be diluted, and to what gain, is the investor's greatest area of uncertainty.


So many people want to be delegates, and it scares shareholders that there could be 101 delegates diluting the system. There is no clear and standardized way to track these individuals.  And even then, will enough people actually recast their votes to get the over promising, under producing delegates out?


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Imo, there's also a centralisation of active voting stake problem. BTC38 controls at least 10% which is more than enough to strongly influence delegate selection.

Once you add in dilution + TITAN, BTS requires a lot of trust in a centralised exchange  which kind of defeats the point imo.