Just catching up on the announcement of BitShares 2.0.

Edit by Bytemaster:   https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16953.0.html     BitShares 2.0 will be licensed for use with BitShares under a BSD-style license, all code up till the announcement has been released under CC0 (Public Domain) license. 

This thread has been locked because inaccurate claims.

I am baffled that people are being caught in the thick of thin things about secondary matters like the ownership of Cryptonomex, and fail to see the elephant in the room: BitShares without its free-software community funded core is not BitShares anymore! It cannot be as per the very nature of BitShares. The whole point and philosophy of BitShares is to be an open toolkit allowing anyone to leverage on the technology to create all sorts of innovative DACs, and in return sharedrop some of the new DAC's tokens to BitShares holders under what we call the "social consensus".

What you are being pitched as BitShares 2.0 is an attempt to strip from the real BitShare immensely valuable assets such as its community, its brand name, its place in the crypto space and slap them on top of a proprietary non-free-software technology to increase it's appeal. Bitshares 2.0 is not an upgrade, it's a corporate dismantelment.

Under the BitShares 2.0 "proposall "announcement", BitShares becomes a trade show exhibit for the exclusive benefit of Cryptonomex Inc. Bitshares 2.0 and the BitShares community will be used as:
- A lab rat to test Graphene before it's used for real clients, and to test future new features before they are added to the professional toolkit.
- A display to show to Cryptonomex's clients that Graphene works as intended
- A live testnet for Graphene prospects and users to test their applications
- An exhibit model for sales and fund raising pitches as well as presentations
- A social sandbox in which Cryptonomexand its clients can test new marketing and product ideas before trying them in the wild
- A free source of consulting, features proposals, feedback, bug reports, bug fixes and contributions
- An army of volunteers to help promoting Graphene
- A complementary source of funds

BitShares loses everything. Under the new model:
- It cannot anymore be forked and loses the benefit of sharedrops by third party DAC developers.
- Its allowed scope of evolution becomes restricted by the use cases allowed by the Graphene licence.
- It loses the control of the BitShares brand
- It loses its reputation on the crypto scene: even Ripple is free software with no strings attached!
- It loses its soul and fundamental raison d'etre

Meanwhile since BitShares is still around and may even do well for a while after the upgrade when it's not yet too apparent that it has lost its purpose and independance, BitShares core developers can continue to sell their BTS.

It's time to wake up: we do not have to accept the upgrade to BitShares 2.0 and the subsequent disparition of the free software BitShares we have funded. Nothing justifies such an extreme solution. From an organizational perspective, if the core developers are going to walk away, it would be very poor decision making to accept an upgrade to new code that only they understand and control. No organization in their right mind would migrate to a system developed by an employee who is leaving, BitShares is no exception. From a technical perspective nothing justifies a migration either: the Graphene based chain will be launched in parallel as a BitShares fork, why not just let it be a BitShares fork? The rules so far have been that anyone forking BitShares was going to do it under her own brand and was expected to respect the social consensus. I don't see any reason to change the rules.

Don't let yourself impressed by people telling you that BitShares is in a dead end, that developments have stalled, and that selling our soul by accepting a faustian pledge is the only solution. BitShares price may be low, but this has happened quite a few times to Bitcoin, Ripple and NXT to name only a few, and they are still doing fine. The whole crypto industry is in a bear market so things are looking gloomy, but like any bear market, this is only temporary. Better days will come when the market reverses, and these days may not be that far away given the fact Bitcoin's price has  stabilized. Developments may have stalled as a consequence of the price drop, but will resume when the price rises again, and BitShares isn't going to die because developments have slowed down: if that was the case Bitcoin wouldn't be around anymore.

There is no reason to rush and accept a bad deal. Cryptonomex may have timelines but we don't. Let's take the time to discuss and campain and see what the community really thinks about the upgrade.

edit: replaced "closed source" by "non free software" and "open source" by "free software"

Bitshares community, is this anything that you would be interested in being a part of and how could Bitshares "breathe" life into this project?

Sounds feasible with a market pegged asset, which would be pegged to the spot of your index.

Quote from: klosure on March 03, 2015, 07:45:37 am

Quote from: cube on March 02, 2015, 05:37:21 pm

We decided to work with our partners to rebuild the backend platform, completely resolve the wallet issue, reactivate bter operation.

Translation: BTER was sold, and of course next owner wants to keep the exchange running. That someone would pick such a low handing fruit was a no brainer: you'd really have to be short-sighted not to see the tremendous value in BTER .

It is beyond amusing that you think that a DAC should take up the remains of a insecure centralized exchange.  I don't even begin to understand how you think that would work.  All those different coins and addresses, someone has to make sure it is straightened up going forward.  Who would fund and manage this?  I guess the bitshares devs would drop working on bitshares to finish cleaning up the bter mess??   Yea, so much value... value if you want to steal the coins.

When  you buy a company you get the staff with it. If the company is profitable like BTER is it pays for its own staff. I already explained the details higher in the thread so I am not going to waste time beating a dead horse. Just wait and see BTER resume operation as a SuperNET gateway and you'll understand what I meant earlier.

We decided to work with our partners to rebuild the backend platform, completely resolve the wallet issue, reactivate bter operation.

Translation: BTER was sold, and of course next owner wants to keep the exchange running. That someone would pick such a low handing fruit was a no brainer: you'd really have to be short-sighted not to see the tremendous value in BTER .

 

I've outlined how I think it should be done...in a way that puts the risks directly on those philosophically inclined to buying out BTER and does it in a way that gives those who take the risk a large portion of the benefit while giving the BitShare's ecosystem some level of Plausible Deniability when Inevitably all those posters with Dan and Stan's heads on communist Russia propaganda start becoming popular memes all over crypto.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the community makes some commitments and stands to benefit from initiatives. Or it doesn't and then things don't happen and people move on.

Quote from: klosure on February 19, 2015, 05:00:01 am

I have a new proposal. I'll develop more on that later, but here is the outline:
We create a bailout fund that will be funded by N delegates. Each time the fund receives delegate payments, it bugs bitBTC and airdrops it to BTER users who registered on Bitshares prorata of their lost BTC holding. This is litterally a vested bail out fund but the vesting schedule is dynamic and adjust with the BTS exchange rate.

No delegates. 

I do not support delegates because this forces people who are obviously against this idea to pay for something they hate.

Delegates are voted. If we create delegates for this fund and they are voted in, it unambiguously means that the majority supports such delegates in which case it was right to create them. If they are not voted in then nothing lost. No matter what is the topic at hand there will always be people opposing specific delegates for whatsoever reason and ending up having to pay for something they didn't aprove if the majority decides otherwise.

Let me play the devil's advocate: your delegate fuzzy... Was it voted in unanimously? If not are you paying back the stakeholders who didn't vote you in by airdropping on them their prorated share of your delegate income? If not where have gone your moral qualms about making minority stake holders pay for something they didn't approve?

Let's push that one notch further. I proposed a fund backed by N delegates. N is the adjustment variable to be modulated according to the majority's opinion of what would be a proper bail out and BTER's feedback on whether our vested bailout proposal would be deemed sufficient to takeover the brand. If appetite is moderate N could very well be 1. This would still be better than nothing for BTC holders and could result in a fast bailout should BTS value take off. 1 delegate would cost the same as you fuzzy. So now let me ask the question you know was coming: can you say with a straightface that your work for Bitshares brings more value than the entire BTER user base creating a Bitshares wallet, testing it and revisiting monthly to withdraw their monthly bail out installment?

Ok that was quite provocating but that was needed to put my point across. I know you are doing a great job fuzzy and deserve that delegate. The point I'm trying to make is that onboarding the entire BTER user base and keeping them coming back regularly would add tremendous value to the network that no single voted delegate would be able to emulate, specially after these have understood that they now have a vested interest in Bitshares success. That is well worth 1 delegate don't you think?

do not want to trade a user base over at BTER (who might simply bail and go to a competitor after they regain access to their funds) for an already loyal COMMUNITY here

There is no trading one thing for another. As  always the community will support whatever its majority has decided to do because that's the consensus on which Bitshares is based and something every stakeholder accepted when they joined Bitshare.
Regarding the BTER user base, what I propose forces them to be faithful since the bailout will unfold over a period of months to years depending on the price of BTS and the number of delegated given to the bail out fund. They will have to create a wallet and visit every so often to witdraw their accrued balance. This opens a good window of opportunity to try to convince them that Bitshares is worth their while and makes 80% of the distance from a prospect to a user.

Let people buy in if they want to.  Get contact with BTER

I will contact BTER once I have the funding nailed. Contacting them now to offer them nothing concrete is a waste of time. I also expect that they must be flooded by messages from their angry users so it will certainly help if the message is delivered through the usual official channel so that it doesn't end up being garbaged by a support staff.

Another thing I didn't have the time to explain earlier: since BTER is willing to hand over the brand and website and dissolve the company there won't be a need to keep the central exchange running with the same staff. That means we can transform BTER in whatever we want: a Bitshares centric exchange, a gateway.

If that happens I'm willing to roll my sleeves and help migrating BTER to a new Bitshares centric backend. But first we need to nail the funding aspect.

According bytemasters blog, being a gateway is safer being a exchange, and profitable meantime. If our community don't do something, i.e. 1. community members set up a gateway of our own; 2. commubity members lobby other ppl to set up one, then bytemaster'blog post will be meaningless, perhaps to outsiders like a JOKE.

Creating a new BTS-centric gateway won't have at all the same effect as steering progressively an existing generalist exchange to a more BTS and BitAsset centric paradigm. A new gateway will only attract existing BitShares users and do nothing to increase our userbase and demand. Fuzzy's exemple of Poloniex for NXT is spot on but it would be even better with a Bitshares owned BTER because the user base is huge and BitShares allows to withdraw and deposit fiat as BitAssets. Basically BitAssets could become the preferred method of depositing and withdrawing cash to/from BTER in the long run and could even become a widespread inter-exchange settlement network if other exchanges follow suit.

Buying out an established exchange user base is a rare opportunity to expand massively our user base. No matter how you look at it there is no other fast and guaranteed route to widespread adoption of Bitshares than that. Yes we could keep doing the same and hope to organically grow by convicing one new user at a time but this could take a very long time and in this highly competitive environment time is not our allied.