Quote from: fav on April 10, 2017, 10:11:25 am

so who's formulating the idea and approaching blockpay.ch (via email)?

so... anyone?

Why not you fav? Your idea, take it and run with it. Just think, if you put the same effort into writing ken an email to look at key posts in this thread you believe are convincing, the task you're requesting others to do would already be done.

I know @kenCode and his team have a full plate of work, so I am doubtful on that basis alone he'll be interested in taking this on, but it never hurts to ask. IMO it's a worthy project that has great potential. Whether he agrees or wants to invest the effort to assess the code and then get a proposal written is any one's guess but his.

This is basically situation we currently have. Current model is unsustainable. We are spending more then we earn.

^^THIS - you nailed it with this statement. THIS was the fundamental issue that truly hooked me that differentiated BitShares from virtually EVERY other coin out there, ESPECIALLY Bitcoin, so thank you for reminding everyone in this thread that this principle of operation cannot be minimized or swept under the rug.

However, it's also important to view our current situation from the standpoint of a startup company, which always operate at a loss conceptually until their product is out there in the market earning money b/c people value it. Is it true the "Current model is unsustainable" ? Over what period? Is the reserve pool growing or shrinking? We have sustained this ecosystem over the last 1.5 years with this model, so I'm not sure, so my question is not unreasonable.

Whether we could go another 10, 20 or 30 years with existing model as a financial projection is not the whole story, I don't think anyone here cares as long as we don't spend ourselves out of existence this year or next. Point is all of us here want to make it better, want to improve growth and adoption, and that is not happening with the current model, so from that standpoint something needs to change.

I also believe we need to remember how important marketing is to the success of BitShares. None of us want to see BitShares become the BetaMax of the crypto world (superior tech but failed due to inferior marketing) The referral program can help with that, but it may not be enough. At this stage of evolution marketing is crucial, and should be considered as a necessary cost of doing business that directly affects sustainability. It needs to be a factor, but not as a static or permanent expense. Ideally IMO marketing needs a big chunk of funds now but should be tapered off as traction is gained, where hopefully things like the referral program will kick in to sustain and fund growth after the major push is no longer needed. IMHO a worker proposal is perfect for such funding. It has the accountability and approval built in, no need to find an alternative now. Depending on how successful a campaign funded this way goes may require other funding, but to start with I believe a worker proposal will be adequate.

This is an excellent discussion. All it seems to be lacking is input from the coders and technical side regarding the cost to implement these ideas.

I am very pleased to see the participants here being open minded to the various distribution allocations, especially you @fav. You may feel you shouldn't be known as the strongest advocate for the referral system, but in my mind you are. Glad to see your willingness to be flexible. I wonder if this discussion had taken place 12 - 14 months ago if your perspective would be different.

I agree with @fav that this should not become a debate about whether referral programs have merit, because it's a proven fact that they can be incredibly powerful.  However, OPs idea cannot be realized without modification of the existing program. So that clearly has to be a part of this conversation. Not to mention, we know the referral program has issues that need to be addressed.  So this may also be a very good opportunity to make the referral program more sensible and effective...while simultaneously making it possible to pay interest to bitAsset holders, as well s fav's great new idea of paying a dividend to LTM accounts.  All without dilution.

EXACTLY tbone, well said.

Rewarding those who simply hold assets does not improve the DEX.

I disagree with that, however you raised several very good points so I don't want to dismiss everything. Thanks for contributing to the conversation @kani.

Your perspective appears to be that of a trader, not the average Joe or Joanne who are looking for a safe alternative to confiscatory practices of mainstream financial institutions. I agree with others who have stated they saw the removal of interest on BitUSD present in Bitshares 0.X era as a bad thing. That is a perfect example of factions that are at odds with each other, as traders who shorted BitUSD back then with their "Yield Harvesting" did not have the best interests of the ecosystem in mind and such activities ruined the sustainability and long term viability of BitUSD as a savings asset.

This. is an example of how different target audiences have different and sometimes opposing views on what bring them value and utility. We need to mange these differences in a balanced and reasonable manor so they don't become divisive. Diversity need not be detrimental if we view it as opportunities to sell in different markets.

Who here would say the USA should never have established trade relations with China b/c freedom and communism are not compatible? (disregarding the fact that NO gubermnt promotes and protects freedom. I could see an argument to avoid trade with others based on the principle of shunning or "helping an enemy", or the fact that the US gubermnt has adopted 9 out  of the 10 planks in the communist manifesto, but I'll not go there now)

Quote from: fav on April 09, 2017, 07:57:26 am

Referral systems are multi billion dollars of magnitude better than what anyone else could possibly add to BitShares. Problem is no one here has any clue.

Then pls elaborate this multi billion dollar idea. Referral system is derivative of recognition of life time value of the client. New clients value is sum of all profit they bring to a business during their life time. Small part of that value is given to the ones that bring this new business, basically as one time reward rarely as a fee.  Now, how Bitshares referral system fits to this general idea. I think this referral system doesn't have Bitshares platform as business in mind.

I disagree, and wonder where your strong attitude is coming from.

I do agree we haven't see significant value from referral system yet, but that's primarily due to the lack of utility to non-crypto / more mainstream crowd. Once that starts to take off I think the referral program will show value.

Also Max Write did come up with the idea of MLM to market BitShares, but the referral program is not truly MLM as it cuts off benefit at (2 ?) levels. I use MLM as a easy way to say "pyramid scheme".

Referral program concept is grass roots marketing. It takes very little away from BitShares if it isn't used much (like so far), but will be an inexpensive way to market BitShares while at the same time promoting individual business for those with a sales / marketing interest.

Your strong attitude when there are so many greater issues leads me to be skeptical of your perspective.

Lastly the referral program like so many other aspects of the entire BTS ecosystem is a grand experiment. Don't be too hasty to presume it won't work without adequate data.

Quote from: Brekyrself on April 07, 2017, 07:38:10 pm

@kenCode Any updates this week?  I always look forward to reading this thread on Friday's!

I usually enjoy posting my updates every friday too, but this week I was forced to coordinate my post with a couple of community members first, waiting on their approval now, so I will try to post it here as well as soon as allowed, no worries.

I was wondering what happened to my clock I missed seeing the results of your work here too, so thx for the update ken!

We had a very fruitful discussion in the BitShares mumble this morning, and the idea of forming a marketing committee was put forth.

DSN from @BunkerChain Labs had a great analogy and summary of what BitShares needs in terms of marketing. To paraphrase, he likened our situation to a talented group of musicians who can play their own instruments well, but they all need a skilled conductor to produce a coordinated musical masterpiece people are emotionally moved by so they go away touched and talk about it at the water cooler the next day.

Not only are moved to just talk about it, but also are impacted enough to take action.

All are pretty much agreed that BitShares needs marketing, and so it was suggested to have a regular segment devoted to that in the BitShares mumble hangouts each week.

I also called for volunteers to work on this committee, and the following people voiced interest:

• MrWang
• VirtualGrowth
• Taconator
• Chris4210
• GChicken
• Brindleswan
• Xanoxt
• SolomonSollarsNSense

Some of you might recall a similar attempt to address marketing concerns by @Method-X called "null street marketing" back in the day, on the trailing edge of Brian Page's reign & exodus. Solomon was involved in that effort. At that time Cryptonomex was still very active in controlling the direction of the ecosystem. Anyone can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong, but from my perspective there was a lack of consensus between the community, cryptonomex and method-x on how to do marketing and how or to what level marketing should be funded.

Cryptonomex is no longer a factor, it's now up to us, the present community to decide how to approach marketing. BitShares is also a totally different beast than it was back then too.

This committee is only a starting point. We need to start somewhere, and before any decisions about HOW to fund marketing and what LEVEL of funding is required can be made we need to discuss a PLAN or APPROACH to it. Once a consensus about that is reached secondary concerns about the best ways how to achieve that approach can be focused on and decided.

I would also like to mention an idea that I think would be very useful to this committee, that being Bob Podolsky's "Octologue". In a nutshell Bob is a researcher with decades of experience and solid real world data that indicates the optimum size of an effective group is ideally 8 people composed of 4 men and 4 women. Another aspect of an Octologue is that all decisions made by the group must be unanimous. Bob has written a 200+ page book about his research and experiments named "Flourish"  that describes in great detail how such groups work. There are several practical examples of successful companies built around this concept.

I would encourage anyone interested to read Flourish and become familiar with his definition and examples of what ethics are. Can you define what an "ethic" is? I thought I knew, but now I KNOW. I encourage everyone to look into that for your own clarity as a basis for forming a solid, cooperative and unified core group to be as effective as possible. Bob's website where you can read about his work and ethics is https://www.titanians.org/. I will update this post later today to provide a link to Flourish.

With that as background, let this thread serve as the start of forming this committee. The initial meeting time has been tentatively set to sometime during the evening hours of a weekday, and 9PM CDT Wednesday was the initial suggested time to meet on mumble (CDT = Chicago time - https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/) . The focus of the initial meeting is to solidify a plan on how to proceed, including establishing:

1) A consistent meeting time
2) A place to meet (mumble, slack, Discord etc, but should provide real time conversation at a minimum)
3) Who is willing to setup and participate in a multisig account to oversee distribution of funds, and how many participants multisig should have
4) What the agenda will be for the next meeting
5) Decide a list of specific actionable items to be accomplished by the next meeting. Suggestions:
    -   define a mission statement that unifies and brings focus onto the group's purpose
    -   define (at a high level) target audience(S) for BitShares, and marketing priorities for each demographic (traders, grandma, crypto enthusiasts)
    -   identify key areas of BitShares features that have the greatest potential to reach people emotionally
    -   establish the multisig account

Comments?

I have a newbie question.

If one is a Witness or Delegate (not sure what all this means), how much BTS do they earn?

For example, in LSK, they earn about 11 or 14k per month.

"Delegate" is the old terminology for BitShares prior to Graphene. There were 101 delegates then which served a similar function to witnesses in BitShares 2.0 today.

To be precise, witness pay is set by the committee, and was increased in late February for the first time since BitShares 2.0 was released in October of 2015 (16 months ago). It is currently 3 BTS for each block generated. The committee also sets how many active witnesses are allowed to generate blocks, and is currently 21, down from 24. I believe the committee can also set the block time which is currently 3 seconds.

There are a total of 86400 seconds in a 24 hour period, and every 3 seconds a block is produced. That's 28800 blocks each day. The blocks are divided among the 21 witnesses in a randomized order, so each witness can generate around 1371 blocks each day. Assuming the witness doesn't miss any blocks, their daily pay = 1371 x 3 or 4113 BTS per day.  ((60x60x24) / 3) / 21 = 1371.428571428571 blocks per day times 3 BTS per block = 4114 BTS.

When the price per BTS was only $0.0035 and pay was 1.5 BTS per block, the monthly witness pay was $216 per month. Now that the price per BTS has risen (for now at least, let's hope it doesn't drop back to those lows) the pay has increased substantially. If the price of BTS stays at 1 cent all month witness pay would be $1234 per month!!!

If a witness operates 2 nodes with 8GB of RAM, one for the witness and the other for a seed and as a failsafe backup, that amounts to VPS server costs of approximately $80 per month, leaving $136 / month for profit to cover labor for the month. Nothing to get rich from, but given the time involved very reasonable.

If you run your nodes on dedicated servers the costs can be considerably higher, but still doable. For example Vultr's dedicated servers with 8GB or RAM are only $60 / month, leaving $96 for labor / profit. Bytemaster once said $300 / month was a good target for witness pay for 1 node. It hasn't gotten that high until recently. My VPS costs were higher b/c I ran 4 nodes. I now run 5 and all have been upgraded, one to 16GB of RAM. I am still using shared VPSs, but will be going to dedicated servers if witness pay doesn't fall below $400 / month, considering I run 5 nodes.

One of the tasks for the committee is to set the pay rate of witnesses. Keep in mind the number of BTS paid has NOT increased since late February. However, if the price of BTS remains high (yea!) the committee could (and should) reduce the payout per block. However, given the volatile nature of crypto, adjustments to witness pay should not be too frequent. IMO once a month maximum, but that is entirely up to the committee to decide.

Only active witnesses are allowed to publish feeds, tho there is no firm requirement that they do so. Proxies / shareholders can vote witnesses out for any reason, for example if they don't produce feeds or if they miss "too many" blocks. Standards for witnesses have yet to be defined. It has been suggested that if measurable metrics and thresholds were defined that witnesses could be removed automatically for failing to meet minimum acceptable performance. This idea hasn't gotten much traction however, despite multiple threads discussing it.

IMO the more determinism we build into the system the better it will be, and the easier it will be to explain. I believe I've been one of the few witnesses that have pushed this idea with respect to standards for witnesses.

That's probably more detail than you asked for but I like to be thorough, and precise

Quote from: xeroc on April 05, 2017, 03:47:44 pm

* The entity/business could run with the BTS or simply not burn it

If there's any type of trusted group/foundation/company involved then this idea is no good.
It would be a step backwards to involve any third party.

Currently the blockchain currently pays the witnesses and workers in BTS, the idea is that the blockchain pay them in BitUSD instead.

 

With the increase in activity on the BitSharesTalk.org forum, in Telegram and on the DEX itself, starting now I will provide regular updates, no fewer than once a month near the first of each month. I may provide additional reports as necessary to cover other activities. I will also mirror these reports on both steem and the BitSharesTalk forum.

---

WOW! What a rally in BTS price this past weekend
 
- Status of Upgrades
I just completed the upgrade of all of my nodes in March, doubling their RAM capacity and deploying the memory savings feature @xeroc told us about during the testnet. Yet, I added a 5th node with 16GB of RAM to insure adequate capacity should this rally in activity continue or grow.

All of the VPS providers I utilize must accept payment in crypto. That rules out the biggest hosting services like AWS or Digital Ocean, although some D.O. resellers accept crypto. The difficulty now is finding companies that also offer the bigger RAM configurations. If the BTS price remains at these levels dedicated servers will be the next upgrade path.

I also believe it's important to have good geographical coverage, so I run nodes in France, Australia, Singapore, Germany and the Netherlands. I have had nodes in North America (both USA & Canada) in the past, however that is well covered by other witnesses. I found a provider in Romania, however that provider suggested to relocate the node to the Netherlands to improve the network performance. The move only resulted in a small reduction in ping time.

One thing I've noticed is that the Singapore and Australian nodes miss more blocks than those in Europe and North America. The network connectivity is significantly slower to nodes in that region of the world, with ping times between 180 and 350ms.

Here are some graphs of RAM, CPU and active connections used from the bts_tools monitoring software I use (thanks @wackou!). Only 3 nodes are shown as the one in Romania is being relocated and I haven't determined where I will place the 5th node:

France (16GB RAM, despite scale on graph)

 
Australia

 
Germany


Netherlands


Singapore

 
- Other Activities
I have also spent considerable time migrating a Wordpress website and associated forum to a VPS using an open source control panel called Webmin/Virtualmin. I prefer the leaner Nginx web server over Apache, which is how it is running now, however it's proving to be difficult under the Virtualmin control panel. I chose to use a control panel to simplify setup and management of email primarily, though there are many other conveniences and features as well. I also intend to use that platform to provide VPN services.

Once all this VPS work is complete I will begin writing a rudimentary scheduler in Python to deliver programming for a radio station. Once I'm reasonably comfortable in Python I will turn my attention to @xeroc's uptick to create a few utilities to gather information from the BitShares blockchain and to help @wackou improve bts_tools.