First to get our definitions right as this might be a bit unclear for newcomers:
- Witnesses are paid for generating blocks and providing price feeds.
- Workers are people (or companies) paid by the blockchain for whatever they propose and do. This mainly includes coding (new features or integration with other systems) but they can also do code-related jobs (e.g. writing documentation)
- Committee members are unpaid volunteers that propose changes to the network parameters.
- Proxies are people who have time to monitor the three groups listed above and manage voting on behalf of those who don't have time to do it.
As far as I understand, you would like to integrate your merchant ecosystem project with the BitShares 2.0 platform.
To do that you have two options:
(1) you can fund the coding work yourself by paying some hired developers to do the integration.
(2) you can propose your concept to the BitShares community (as you just did) and ask for the blockchain to sponsor the work needed to achieve the integration.
Choosing (1) makes sense if you expect that your main income will come through the referral program, i.e your merchant ecosystem will bring a lot of new users to BitShares and you want to capture 80% of their transaction fees. In that case all you really need is to agree with Cryptonomex on technical details how to achieve the integration and then hire a developer (ideally recommended by Cryptonomex) who will do the job. So this path has nothing to do with the DPOS actors described above.
If you choose (2) you'll need to make use of the DPOS actors:
(a) You'll need to create a worker proposal similar to
this one. The worker proposal includes the description of your concept but also time horizon and proposed daily payout for the person(s) doing the actual job. Also, you will have to hire a developer (again ideally recommended by Cryptonomex) who will do the job. So the only difference here is that the developer's salary will be paid by the blockchain, not you.
(b) You'll need to convenience BitShares shareholders to support your worker proposal by voting for it. And here is where having proxies on your side is important as they have relatively strong voting power.
So if you are successful in option (2) the end result will be:
- your merchant ecosystem integration will be up and running.
- you won't have to pay for its development personally as the BTS blockchain will pay for it.
But the crucial part in (2) will be presenting your case in such a way that BitShares shareholders perceive it as beneficial for the entire blockchain.
My initial opinion is that it is actually a win-win situation so you'll have my voting support.
My advice is to choose option (2).
To have to the worker proposal created and placed on the blockchain, I think
@mindphlux has the most experience with this.
To have the actual coding job done, I think you're lucky that
@svk offered his help - he's one of the coders behind the GUI so he has a lot of valuable experience.
But first I think BM (Daniel Larimer) would need to asses how much work is involved to achieve the integration and whether it is just a GUI level task or something more.