Quote from: Empirical1 on July 23, 2014, 12:48:26 am

Quote from: puppies on July 23, 2014, 12:08:13 am

Do we have an announcement post at BTT?

I did start a thread about BitShares X myself, but it's literally just me talking to myself -  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675455.0 

I think they are discussing starting some proper BTT threads here  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6016.0

Edit: (In my defence this thread I started about PTS did generate more interest, with the help of Clout and others
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=664146.0  )

Would love some more input from this forum in this thread.  If there is another thread other than the one friendofbitshares started I would love a link too.

  & Thanks for your input there Puppies, helping people out with registration BTSX and the demo web wallet.

I will definitely remember it when voting (When I can get a wallet working on my system.) 

  Good idea

Okay prove me wrong. Attract just one VC to Bitshares X without Bitshares X proving itself on the ROI stage.

Do you own BTSX? If so, job done 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital

Venture capital (VC) is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, growth startup companies

It's really semantics but Venture Capital often comes in before any ROI is generated I believe.

If you mean much bigger significant Wall Street type general investor funds, yes they probably only take notice at a much bigger CAP. It's less to do with ROI, a 10% ROI for the year might interest them depending on the risk/opportunity etc. but  I think it's more to do with the fact that they manage such a big fund they need somewhere they can put at least $X million. So you need to be big enough to accommodate that.

(In the process of getting to that CAP we'll obviously generate significant ROI) The way we get to that CAP is either by some amazing marketing hype or providing a good service and product to the market. I think it will be the latter and the investors you are referring to will come in as a by-product of that success at various stages along the way. (From momo alt-coin people the first time we go up 50% on CoinmarketCap to others taking notice when we pass LiteCoin, then when we pass a $Billion etc.) 
 

@ Luckybit, Yeah I have heard the silver to Bitcoin's gold marketing message. But even that falls away without their USP.

In your ROI  stuff, you are talking about technical analysis traders. Yeah especially Western ones, if the price is rising and has momentum and is big enough it will generate some of that investment.  However that's a by-product. You don't really target that. (Unless you're doing it on a small scale with a pump and dump type deal.)  Also the majority of investors will use some form of fundamental analysis, meaning they're not going to buy just because the price is rising but only if they genuinely believe the fundamentals of the business make sense and there will be genuine end user demand for the product/service in the future.

BitShares X has a product that will do that. BitAssets provide huge advantages and utility to traders, merchants and private investors. That's a HUGE market. They will come to X not as an investment but to actually make use of the product and service it provides. As a by-product of the share price rising, yes, it will attract many of the 'momo traders' you are referring to as well. It will also attract fundamental analysis investors who look at the market X is targeting, our dominant position, competitor analysis etc.

In reality X should have attracted more VC investor interest (which includes alt-coin investors) for the release but I would say the main reasons we haven't been as successful as we could in that area is because BitShares has quite a steep learning curve, we've been off the map since February, until last month marketing was lagging and instead of spending all their time talking a good game, BitShares has instead focused on getting things done. As a result this is literally the buying opportunity of a lifetime imo. The investors you are thinking of will be here soon enough
 

This is quite a good brief overview

http://bitshares.org/delegated-proof-of-stake/

1.0 Background
Distributed transaction ledgers need to be secure, unambiguous and irreversible in as short of time as possible to facilitate the most robust and decentralized systems. In practice there are two different aspects to this process: selecting a unique node to produce the block and making the ledger irreversible.

1.1 Proof of Work
The first successful attempt at solving this problem was Bitcoin which used proof of work to make it computationally difficult to produce a longer ledger. Proof of work behaves like a lottery where on average one node finds a block every 10 minutes. If two nodes find a block at the same time then the network decides which block to build on top of based upon the decision of subsequent nodes. From a statistical perspective, a transaction is considered unambiguously confirmed and irreversible after 6 blocks (about 1 hour); however, the core developers require 120 blocks (about 1 day) before they consider the network sufficiently protected from the potential of a longer attack-chain emerging that the newly generated coins may be spent.

Despite it being unlikely that a longer chain could emerge, any actor with significant economic resources could potentially build a longer chain or gain enough hashing power to freeze user accounts.

1.2 Proof of Stake
There have been many variations on proof of stake, but the basic concept is that the difficulty of producing a block should be proportional to your stake (percent ownership) in the network. There have been two working systems deployed to date: Peercoin and Nxt. Peercoin uses a hybrid model where your stake adjusts your mining difficulty and Nxt uses a deterministic algorithm to select a random shareholder to generate the next block. Nxt’s algorithm adjusts the probability of being selected based upon your balance.

While Nxt and Peercoin have each solved the problem of who should generate the next block, they have not sufficiently solved the problem of making the block chain irreversibly secure in a timely manner. Peer coin requires at least 6 blocks (1 hour) and Nxt requires 10 blocks according to the information we could find. We could find no basis for the level of security provided by Nxt after 10 blocks.

We previously published a paper on Transactions as Proof of Stake in which every transaction includes the hash of the previous block in the chain. With this system the network becomes increasingly secure and irreversible by anyone as eventually every block is voted upon by every shareholder. The challenge with Transaction as Proof of Stake (TaPOS) is that it defines no way to decide who should generate the next block.

1.3 Ripple Consensus
The Ripple consensus algorithm allows a group of nodes to agree to reach consensus based upon the concept of a unique node list. The initial unique node list is like a club where 51% of the club members must vote to include a new member. Consensus will follow this core 51% and those outside have no influence. Because this club starts out “centralized” it will remain “centralized” and if it ever becomes corrupted there is nothing the shareholders can do. Like Bitcoin and Peercoin, Ripple separates shareholders from voting rights and is thus much more centralized than other systems.

2.0 Delegated Proof of Stake
Adopting the metaphor of a Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC), decentralization means that each shareholder holds influence proportional to her stake and that a vote of 51% of the shareholders is irreversible and binding. The challenge is reaching the 51% approval threshold in a timely and efficient manner.

To achieve this goal, every shareholder may delegate their voting power to a delegate. The top 100 delegates by total votes take turns generating blocks on a defined schedule. Each delegate is allocated a time slot to produce a block. If they do not produce a block then their slot is skipped and the next delegate in line produces a block. All delegates receive pay equal to 10% of the transactions fees included in the average block. If the average block contains fees of 100 shares, a delegate will receive pay of 1 share.

It is possible that network latency could cause some delegates to fail to propagate their block in a timely manner and this would result in a chain fork. However, this is unlikely to occur because the delegate can establish direct connections to the delegate before and after them in the chain. The establishment of this direct connection to the delegate that follows you (and perhaps the one that follows him) is to make sure you get paid.

With this model new blocks can be produced every 10-30 seconds and under normal network conditions chain forks are highly unlikely or can be resolved in just a few minutes.

3.0 Attacks
There are generally two kinds of attacks that the network must defend against: denial of service and double spending. An attacker performs a denial of service by preventing some or all transactions from being included in the ledger and can be performed by anyone with 51% of the network (whether Bitcoin, Nxt, or others). A double spend attack is performed by gaining a short term advantage while the network is still attempting to reach consensus.

To defend against these attacks the network must get 51% shareholder agreement as quickly as possible.

3.1 Preventing Exclusion of Transactions
Having 100 delegates each elected by the shareholders and being required to take turns means that any transaction that is approved of by even 1% of the shareholders can be included in less than 30 minutes. This means that no delegate can benefit by excluding transactions that vote for other delegates.

3.2 Centralizing power in a few Delegates
Because each delegate has an equal vote and the top 100 are given equal weight regardless of votes delegated to them there is no ability to concentrate power by acquiring more than 1% of the vote in a single delegate.

It may be possible for a single individual or organization to control multiple delegates in the chain, but this process would involve deceiving a large percentage of the shareholders into supporting sock-puppets.

Even if 51 sock-puppets could be set up their power to disrupt the network would still be limited, quickly identified, and then remedied. Without the barriers to entry caused by proof of work, the honest majority would identify the attack and issue a fork of the code that ignored blocks produced by the attacker. It would be disruptive, but not fatal.

3.3 DDOS of Delegates
Because there are only 100 delegates it is conceivable that an attacker could perform a round-robin denial of service attack against each delegate when it was their turn to produce a block. Fortunately this particular attack is easily mitigated by the fact that the delegate is known by their public key and not their IP. This will make identifying the target for a DDOS more difficult. With the potential for direct connections between delegates it will be more difficult to interfere with the propagation of their blocks.

Grateful?

That's a very good plan, but shouldn't we wait for the success of BTSX, then carry out this plan?

At this moment, IMHO, we should think about how to improve the current buggy version, and do a better marketing,  instead of enjoying the success...

He means they are implementing a plan to thank people who are helping BitShares to become successful. (Like for example helping to improve the buggy version you are talking about.)

  I think it is a good.

Does the 'BitShares Trust' already have funds to execute the 'BitShares is grateful' plan?

Thanks for the reply Luckybit

It's not necessarily going to be better it's just more general purposed. If you wanted to build a distributed state for example you might be better off with the flexibility that Ethereum offers you. Ethereum offers you flexibility, options, and a place to experiment with the most cutting edge ideas and technologies.

I'll have to look into it more. I'd have to see an example, like a business trying to do 'Y' on a DPOS BlockChain/With BitShares will be out competed by one using Ethereum because...

The way to profit from ETH is because ETH is the gas/fuel and must be mined for running any contract. So if you're a miner you'll make a fortune if the popularity of smart contracts grows (and it's likely going to grow over time).

I think this is what people are basing most of the value on but I don't get it.  If there is value to be gained that way, individual companies and their investors would rather have those gains flow directly to them. (Chance Coin makes bettors convert to CHA rather than BTC to increase their value. BlackCoin pays out POW miners in BC rather than BTC to increase value. BitShares X brings people into a BTSX denominated system to increase value rather than operating in BTC.)

I must be misunderstanding something about smart contracts & why developers will keep them on the Ethereum blockchain to benefit all Ether holders, when the could have seperate blockchains people can buy into with BTC.

Oh and obviously Bitcoin is doomed anyway.