BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: jimbursch on June 13, 2014, 03:50:12 pm
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Hello Bitshares community
I am a php/mysql developer and the creator/founder of the MyMindshare paid messaging system, which can be found online at MyMindshare.com. I am new to Bitshares, but I do have experience in working with Bitcoin -- this year I denominated MyMindshare in Bitcoin.
I would like to propose the creation of a DAC which will be granted a MyMindshare affiliate license. Below is the short business plan I have written for MyMindshare which describes how MyMindshare and its affiliate program works. The DAC will be a prototype for subsequent DACs that will have to purchase MyMindshare affiliate licences. We can call the prototype DAC "BitMindshare".
I would like to invite an established and trusted member of the Bitshares community to act as a mentor for me, since I am new to Bitshares and have a limited understanding of some (okay, many) aspects of Bitshares and DACs.
In addition to the site at MyMindshare.com, which is fully operational, and the business plan below, you can also view some videos that I made here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq13ETGL8l9E-TFep92bc2Q
MyMindshare Paid Messaging System
Introduction
Sometimes a message is more valuable to the sender than it is to the receiver, especially when there is a weak or non-existent relationship between the sender and receiver.
Imagine that Alice and Bob are members of a dating service. Alice is very attractive and receives many messages from men in the dating service, to the point where she finds it tiresome to sort through the messages. Bob thinks that Alice is fantastic and he really wants to tell her a little about himself and ask her for a date. How can Bob make it worthwhile for Alice to read his message ahead of all the other men who are sending her messages?
Can you imagine other situations which are analagous to Alice and Bob's? One example that comes to mind is advertising, where consumers play the part of Alice and advertisers play the part of Bob.
When a message is more important to the sender that it is to the receiver, the sender needs to attach some value to the message to make it worthwhile for the receiver. This is especially true in an environment where there are many senders competing for the attention of a receiver, and it is especially true when the marginal cost of sending a message is near zero -- an environment full of spam.
MyMindshare is a paid messaging system that enables senders to attach real value to their messages (“Twitter with an eBay business model”). It does this by combining a bidding and rating system with a surveying and targeting system.
The Bidding System
At MyMindshare.com, users find messages with a bid amount attached to each message. A “bid” is the amount of money a sender attaches to a message for the recipient. The sender can also place a bid for the recipient to visit a web page.
After the recipient reads a message or visits a web page and accepts the bid, the bid amount is transferred from the senders’s account to the recipient's account.
Senders set their own bid amounts, including the option to set a free bid. Messages are sorted by the bid amount so that the highest bids appear first.
A keyword search function allows users to narrow the list of messaages to those that s/he is interested in at the time.
The Rating System
When a recipient accepts a bid, s/he also has an opportunity to rate the message, giving simple feedback in answer to the question, “Was it worthwhile?” The message is then given a rating based on the average of the feedback given by recipients.
By default, the message list is sorted by bid amount, then by rating, so that the highest bids with the highest ratings appear at the top of the list. Users have the option to re-sort the list by rating so that only the highest rated messages appear at the top of the list.
The Surveying System
A surveying system is integrated into the bidding system in such a way that it is a natural part of the process of viewing messages, enabling users to easily build a dynamic profile.
Survey questions appear one at a time as simple yes/no questions and when a user answers a question, new messages are immediately added, based on how s/he answered the question. The new messages will be more relevant and tend to have higher bid amounts, thus rewarding the user for answering survey questions.
The Targeting System
The key to unlocking the value of mindshare is to deliver the right message to the right person. The surveying system enables users to voluntarily profile themselves and the targeting system enables senders to deliver their message based on that profile.
At no time do senders see personally identifying information, thus protecting the privacy of users. Senders know that their messages are delivered to the people who fit the desired profile, but they never know who those people are individually.
In addition to enabling senders to target their messages, the combination of the surveying system and the rating system enables senders to learn the profile of the people who respond positively to their message, thus enabling them to finely target their message to just the right people.
For example, a sender might place a low bid casting a wide net and learn that men between the ages of 25 and 35 who are parents and dine out regularly respond positively to their message. The sender can then post a higher bid amount targeting just those people who fit that profile. This is how messages get more relevant and more valuable to users.
Marketing Plan: The Affiliate Program
The purpose of the affiliate program is to promote the propagation and adoption of the MyMindshare messaging system.
There are two parts of an affiliate business:
-- Growth business
-- Core business
Both businesses require the purchase of an affiliate license to operate.
Growth business: 50% commission on license sales
The growth business is the business of selling MyMindshare affiliate licenses. The advantage of selling affiliate licenses is that the commission on license sales can be as much as 50%, which means that it can get very profitable very quickly. There are, however, some risks in the business of selling affiliate licenses.
New license sales may be limited, suspended, or terminated altogether depending on market conditions related to the Ponzi Risk Factor (see below)
The commission rate on new license sales may change (10% - 50%) depending on the Ponzi Risk Factor.
License holders can re-sell licenses, and may do so at a price below the price of a new license, which may make it more difficult to sell new licenses.
Ultimately, the true VALUE of a license, regardless of the price, will be determined by the quality of the core business that is developed with the license. Due to these risks, only experienced Internet marketing organizations and professionals should consider the purchase of an affiliate license.
Core business: 10% commission on message volume
The core business of MyMindshare is the trading of mindshare, or the sending and receiving of messages. Typically an "Advertiser" is the sender of a message and the "Consumer" is the receiver. However, in the MyMindshare system, anyone can be a sender or receiver.
In the MyMindshare messaging system their are two events from which commission revenue can be generated:
Deposit of funds: 10%
Cash out of funds: 10%
Commission is generated when any user for whom the licensee is indicated as the "source" completes one of these transactions. For example, when an "Advertiser" deposits funds in their account, the licensee will collect a 10% commission, and when a "Consumer" cashes out, the licensee will again collect a 10% commission. Licensees who are the "source" of both the Advertiser and the Consumer will collect a total 20% commission on the transaction value.
There are three ways to grow the core business:
1. Increase registered users
2. Increase the volume and value of messages
3. Sell an affiliate license to someone who does the above
The ultimate value of an affiliate license is determined by the core business that is sourced by the license. A license will become worthless if the core business is not developed.
Ponzi Risk Factor (PRF)
The Ponzi Risk Factor is a calculation of the ratio of growth business to core business in the MyMindshare system. A PRF is calculated for every affiliate license.
If the growth business gets out of proportion to the core business, there is a risk that the business will be perceived as a Ponzi scheme (or a pyramid scheme), which is unethical and possibly illegal. When the PRF is outside an acceptable range, measures must be taken to bring the business into balance by increasing core business or curtailing affiliate license sales.
NOTE: The core business of client licensees is included in the calculation of each license PRF, which means that it is better for PRF to sell licenses to people/organizations that can build the core business.
Create your own affiliate site
MyMindshare affiliate licensees can create affiliate sites on any topic or for any community. A site can be created for a home town or a favorite hobby. Licensees can build a business on the topic they know or topic they love, whether it's fly fishing or financial products.
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You described a centralized service which is better left centralized, but you didn't describe what the DAC would do.
Or do you mean you would replace this company with a DAC? I think it would work better as a traditional company.
What kind of advantages do you see in using decentralization / blockchains for this?
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My immediate reaction reading through is that you need the blockchain to prevent bots to abuse the system. The CAPTCHA paradigm (http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/1671424_700b.jpg) is stupid, and will become even more stupid as pattern recognition gets better, which it will. Then we need to tie identity up to the clicks, and then we might as well just tie reputation into the clicks as well, as the people who pay to have their content viewed would pay more for highly reputable individuals.
That said, I did not quite get the model yet. As for presentation I suggest bolding the headings and include an abstract on the top, where you summarize your proposal.
And as Toast pointed out, try to explain what the blockchain will do. For instance, the blockchain can keep track of your ad-consumer identity and the reputation of this identity, furthermore, the blockchain can automatically do the transaction when you use this identity to view an ad, and give you proportionally to your reputation according to how the ad-seller identity has specified the buy-order. Following the ebay logic, the ad-seller can also have a reputation that is displayed on each buy-order that the ad-consumer can see.. etc. I guess the worry is that one does not need a unique DAC for just this purpose, as a general one that is used for other stuff can serve your purpose. This in turn depends on the value of launching one DAC for each purpose, etc.
Btw, the video is great. I think it is a really cool idea.. :)
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Thank you very much for the feedback and the opportunity to clarify my proposal.
A formatted version of the short biz plan for MyMindshare is available here:
https://mymindshare.com/businessplan/mymindshare_short_bizplanVERSION2.pdf
I am proposing "BitMindshare the DAC" which will be licensed to operate "BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare" which will generate revenue as a MyMindshare affiliate. The affiliate program is described in fuller detail here:
https://mymindshare.com/index.php?view=affiliate
So, in answer to toast, MyMindshare is and remains a traditional company (currently comprising one person).
One idea I have (this needs to be vetted) is to issue a share in BitMindshare to every member of the Bitshares community (however that may be defined). This will incentivize the community to use and promote BitMindshare. There is something elegant about the idea of users also being shareholders in the enterprise.
Now let's take a flight of fancy into the future, when Bitshares is wildly successsful and the forum and reddit are chock full of noisy chatter about this wonderful invention. This creates a problem for Bob Entrepreneur who has a great idea he wants to pitch to Alice Angel, who has gotten tired of all the empty chatter in the forums and on reddit.
Enter BitMindshare.com, where Bob can post his pitch targeting just Bitshares Angels. Bob deposits $11 in his BitMindshare.com account, $1 of which is paid as commission to "BitMindshare the DAC", which leaves Bob with $10, which he then uses to fund his post to 100 angels at $0.10 each.
To Alice, who is fabulously wealthy thanks to her investment acumen, $0.10 is a trivial amount of money. But Alice has found that the posts on BitMindshare.com tend to be of better quality than the cruft that gets posted on the Bitshares forum, simply because it costs something to get posts seen on BitMindshare.com. Also, posts on BitMindshare.com are targeted and rated, which also reduces the noise/signal ratio.
Eventually (surprisingly quickly) Alice finds herself with a balance of $10 in her BitMindshare.com account, which she decides to cash out. When she does so, $1 is paid to "BitMindshare the DAC" as commission and $0.50 is paid to MyMindshare, leaving Alice with $8.50 for a treat at Starbucks.
Alice also happens to be a delegate for "BitMindshare the DAC", which means that she represents all the shareholders in deciding what "BitMindshare the DAC" should do with the $2 it has recently accrued in its MyMindshare account. Basiclly she has two choices -- she can leave the $2 in the MyMindshare account and use it to fund promotional activities for BitMindshare, or she can cash out the $2 and pay a share-burning dividend to all the shareholders of "BitMindshare the DAC".
Thus ends our little flight of fancy into the wonderful world of Bitshares and Mindshares. I hope this helps clarify what I have in mind with this proposal.
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Here is what I guess would be BitMindshare.com alpha:
http://bitmindshare.mymindshare.com/
It is fully functioning, so feel free to mess around with it.
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I really hope I have missed something here but can I ask:
Can you explain why this proposed DAC is anything else other than promotion on your part – i.e. attempt to sell one franchise license of you remaining centralized business?
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I am proposing to grant the BitMindshare DAC a license free of charge, since it will be the prototype. Subsequent licenses will be sold.
One thing I am interested in is price discovery of affiliate licenses. Perhaps subsequent licenses should be auctioned.
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I really hope I have missed something here but can I ask:
Can you explain why this proposed DAC is anything else other than promotion on your part – i.e. attempt to sell one franchise license of you remaining centralized business?
Get used to it, I'm afraid. In a couple of years, the DAC ideas we know and love will represent only a fraction of the overall market. Most of it will use the blockchain to promote and outsource other (not strictly DAC) business functions.
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I am proposing to grant the BitMindshare DAC a license free of charge, since it will be the prototype. Subsequent licenses will be sold.
One thing I am interested in is price discovery of affiliate licenses. Perhaps subsequent licenses should be auctioned.
but what does the DAC do?
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but what does the DAC do?
Based on my understanding so far of Bitshares and how DACs work, the BitMindshare DAC blockchain functions as a ledger of ownership interest in the revenue generated by BitMindshare.com. The value of BitMindshare DAC shares will reflect the market's estimation of future revenue generation, and it will be in the interest of current shareholders to maximize both current and future revenue generation. Minimally, shareholder participation as users of BitMindshare.com will contribute to revenue generation. More growth will occur when shareholders elect a management team (delegates?) that can further promote BitMindshare and reinvest some of the revenue for growth.
But I'm a newb, so I may have it wrong.
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No you have it right. But you expect for granting free license someone to do all the development work needed to put his pretty complicated centralized idea on a blockchain (all that for a pretty uncertain profit potential, and totally unclear benefits of DAC vs regular company). If you really have built the code for your site, you sure are aware that virtually nothing can be directly used and moved to a blockchain/DAC. The remaining business logic that must be accommodated is also extremely complex (read time consuming). And I repeat, all that work for unconvincing profit potential and or advantages (other than promotion of your services among all DAC shareholders, which is benefit for you not for them).
!!!The above is just my take and nobody else’s, someone might find it doable!!!
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But you expect for granting free license someone to do all the development work needed to put his pretty complicated centralized idea on a blockchain
I am not asking anyone to do development work. I have already done the development work creating the MyMindshare messaging system. My understanding (however limited) is that Invictus is developing the toolkit for creating a DAC with all the functionality that my proposal requires, and I am ready willing and able to do the further development work that is needing to hook up the BitMindshare DAC with BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare, including the coding of business rules that makes all this operational in code in a distributed and trustless manner.
all that work for unconvincing profit potential
Pretty much everything we are doing here is speculative, and the whole point of this post is to make a convincing argument for profit potential. If you are not convinced, can you tell me why?
which is benefit for you not for them
My proposal will benefit the users and shareholders of BitMindshare, which includes myself, and can include you if I am successful.
Thanks for the feedback!!! Your take is valuable to the process.
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But you expect for granting free license someone to do all the development work needed to put his pretty complicated centralized idea on a blockchain
I am not asking anyone to do development work. I have already done the development work creating the MyMindshare messaging system. My understanding (however limited) is that Invictus is developing the toolkit for creating a DAC with all the functionality that my proposal requires, and I am ready willing and able to do the further development work that is needing to hook up the BitMindshare DAC with BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare, including the coding of business rules that makes all this operational in code in a distributed and trustless manner.
Thanks for the feedback!!! Your take is valuable to the process.
-If you want to do all the work - I do not think anybody will/can stop you.
-'My understanding (however limited) is that Invictus is developing the toolkit for creating a DAC with all the functionality that my proposal requires' - Not the expert on that, but highly unlikely
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But you expect for granting free license someone to do all the development work needed to put his pretty complicated centralized idea on a blockchain
I am not asking anyone to do development work. I have already done the development work creating the MyMindshare messaging system. My understanding (however limited) is that Invictus is developing the toolkit for creating a DAC with all the functionality that my proposal requires, and I am ready willing and able to do the further development work that is needing to hook up the BitMindshare DAC with BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare, including the coding of business rules that makes all this operational in code in a distributed and trustless manner.
Thanks for the feedback!!! Your take is valuable to the process.
-If you want to do all the work - I do not think anybody will/can stop you.
-'My understanding (however limited) is that Invictus is developing the toolkit for creating a DAC with all the functionality that my proposal requires' - Not the expert on that, but highly unlikely
Actually I think nothing he has suggested is outside the realm of possibility for a blockchain. My concern/question/confusion is about the fact that the DAC's business model seems like nothing more than a glorified accounting spreadsheet on behalf of a centralized company. That's a perfectly valid application, by the way - I just prefer DACs that generate revenue on their own by providing some sort of service.
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You have ‘a toolkit for creating a DAC with all the functionality that his proposal requires'?
GREAT!
Great know that fact too.
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the DAC's business model seems like nothing more than a glorified accounting spreadsheet on behalf of a centralized company.
That is indeed a legitimate concern, however I would caution against undervaluing the value of a "glorified accounting spreadsheet" that has all the attributes that are so eloquently described and being developed by the Bitshares community. We are talking about a "glorified accounting spreadsheet" that is entirely outside of the control of the centralized company -- it is distributed and trustless, and perhaps most importantly, it is trade-able (or, rather, it is a record of trades that is distributed and trustless and outside the control of the centralized company).
Again, I'm just beginning to understand Bitshares, so I may be wrong, but let's take a look at BitUSD, which by my understanding is a unit of digital asset that is designed to trade at par with the U.S dollar. One could argue that BitUSD is a "glorified accounting spreadsheet on behalf of a centralized" government or central bank.
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I think that the fundamental question that my proposal raises is:
"Can BitMindshare.com as described and implemented (see http://bitmindshare.mymindshare.com) produce a revenue stream for BitMindshare the DAC?"
Actually, this is two questions, one speculative and the other technical.
1. Can BitMindshare.com produce revenue?
2. Can that revenue accrue to the DAC?
As the developer of the MyMindshare messaging system, in cooperation with Bitshares developers (or the Bitshares toolkit), I can confidently answer the second question affirmatively.
As to the first question, of course my answer is yes, and I am prepared to make my case to anyone who can make a counter argument.
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I suppose an explanation of #2 is what I'm looking for. The "glorified spreadsheet" vs "For Real DAC" question can be asked like this: How does the DAC generate demand for its shares? For BTS X, it is, "you are *required* to purchase the underlying share in order to go short BitUSD". What operations will *require* you to buy shares in the DAC? (Besides normal transaction fees). How will you turn demand for your service into demand for the equity? Just the fact that the centralized company will pay dividends to those shares?
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The short answer is yes, demand for the BitMindshare DAC equity is based on the dividends that are earned by BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare.
Here's how it looks from my end:
I have created an account in MyMindshare with the username bitmindshare. I have granted that account affiliate license #15 and created the affiliate site at http://bitmindshare.mymindshare.com/ (this is what will become BitMessage.com when the domain is registered).
Now, everyone and everything that registers at the affiliate site are tagged with #15, which means that when revenue events occur, the commission is paid to the bitmindshare account.
BitMindshare the DAC needs to be programmed to periodically cash out the bitmindshare account. This means that the DAC needs a bitcoin wallet. Then the DAC distributes the revenue by purchasing it's own shares and destroying them.
So how is demand created?
Let's say that the DAC doesn't distribute dividends. Instead it just let's the bitcoin sit in its wallet. Let's say that there are 1000 shares of the DAC. If there is 1 BTC in the DAC wallet, then each share is worth 0.001 BTC. Now let's say that it is anticipated that BitMindshare.com will generate another 1 BTC in one year, increasing the value of a DAC share to 0.002 BTC -- the overall value of the DAC increases to 2 BTC.
The current owners of the DAC shares are not willing to sell for less than 0.001 BTC, but they would be willing to sell for something more than 0.001 BTC. Believing that the value of a share is going to double in one year, how much would you pay today to own a share? If anyone is willing to pay something, then we have demand. If anyone is willing to pay more that 0.001 BTC, then we have a market for BitMindshare DAC shares.
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This is interesting -- if the DAC shares are trading at par, then the DAC self liquidates when it distributes dividends -- it purchases and destroys all its shares.
This would happen if the market anticipates zero future revenue.
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I hate to say it but this doesn't sound like a DAC at all, it sounds like a vending machine.
Read this: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=3488
BitMindshare the DAC needs to be programmed to periodically cash out the bitmindshare account.
This means it has to interact with a centralized entity according to the centralized entity's rules - this is no better than just making another website.
This means that the DAC needs a bitcoin wallet. Then the DAC distributes the revenue by purchasing it's own shares and destroying them.
The whole point of a DAC is that it is not sovereign over anything except its own shares. As soon as you include "bitcoin wallet" you aren't talking about an autonomous incentive structure anymore.
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This is good. Now I'm being educated. I'll think this through and get back to you.
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Some good starting points if you're going to be thinking about it:
Who are all the different people that interact with your service, what are their needs? What exactly is each person getting in return for putting in money? DACs don't do much else besides facilitate trades that people already want to make, "if only we could agree to trade by particular rules". DACs let you enforce those rules. If everyone leaves feeling like they gained value, then the DAC can be made profitable.
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Here is the lineup of players in the MyMindshare messaging system:
1. Senders of messages
2. Receivers of messages
3. The creator/administrator of the system
In the MyMindshare system, messages are transactions. Senders attach value to messages, and Receivers complete the transaction when they receive the messages. A 5% admin fee is charged by the creator/administrator of the system.
With the affiliate program, a fourth player is added to the lineup:
4. Affiliate
Think of the Affiliate as an entrepreneur who has created/identified a community of Senders and Receivers for whom the MyMindshare messaging system is useful/valuable. The Affiliate receives a 20% commission on the value of transactions sourced by the Affiliate.
My proposal is to replace the Affiliate/Entrepreneur with Affiliate/DAC/Shareholders.
The DAC is a mechanism by which a community of Senders and Receivers can act corporately and share the profits of the enterprise. It also enables them to realize future profit by trading the DAC shares.
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There is another way that the DAC can be useful to this system.
Perhaps the biggest problem that I face as the creator/administrator of this system is the problem of the dishonest Receiver. This is an entity (person or bot) that has misrepresented itself in order to receive higher value targeted messages. This is the college student sitting in her dorm at 3am pretending to be a high net worth middle aged family man who owns his home, drives luxury cars, travels business class and actively manages his stock portfolio.
Let's call our miscreant college student Eve. Let's also imagine a future when there are a wide variety of sites powered by MyMindshare serving a wide variety of communities. Because Eve is greedy, she has created a wide variety of false profiles, each one optimized to maximize the value of targeted messages.
Eve is actually in the process of killing the golden goose because the extent to which she is successful is the extent to which Senders will start abandoning the MyMindshare system.
But there is one site powered by MyMindshare on which she is meticulously honest and works obsessively to ferret out other Eves from the site. This is the site that is devoted to college students like herself, where her honesty adds value. This site was founded by a DAC and Eve was in on the IPO, so as a shareholder she has a vested interest in the overall health of the site. If the Eves of the world are able to run amuk, the share price will collapse.
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Now let's plug our players into a payoff matrix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory#Normal_form) and see what comes up:
The Sender has two choices: send a targeted message with value attached or don't send a targeted message with value attached.
The Receiver has two choices: be honest in the profile or be dishonest in the profile.
If the Sender believes the profile is honest, he will send a message with value attached.
If the Sender believes the profile is dishonest, he will not send a message with value attached.
If the Receiver believes she will profit more from being honest, she will be honest.
If the Receiver believes she will profit more from being dishonest, she will be dishonesst.
As we see from the story of Eve, her participation as a DAC shareholder puts her squarely in the first quadrant.
We could put everybody in the first quadrant if we require everyone to be a shareholder to participate.
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Now it's making a bit more sense. The DAC is a messaging platform which makes it too expensive for dishonest users to participate. Seems reasonable, I suppose next steps are to make a more concrete description of the DACs operations: what are all the different transaction types and their costs.
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Thank you very much for the feedback and the opportunity to clarify my proposal.
A formatted version of the short biz plan for MyMindshare is available here:
https://mymindshare.com/businessplan/mymindshare_short_bizplanVERSION2.pdf
I am proposing "BitMindshare the DAC" which will be licensed to operate "BitMindshare.com powered by MyMindshare" which will generate revenue as a MyMindshare affiliate. The affiliate program is described in fuller detail here:
https://mymindshare.com/index.php?view=affiliate
So, in answer to toast, MyMindshare is and remains a traditional company (currently comprising one person).
One idea I have (this needs to be vetted) is to issue a share in BitMindshare to every member of the Bitshares community (however that may be defined). This will incentivize the community to use and promote BitMindshare. There is something elegant about the idea of users also being shareholders in the enterprise.
Now let's take a flight of fancy into the future, when Bitshares is wildly successsful and the forum and reddit are chock full of noisy chatter about this wonderful invention. This creates a problem for Bob Entrepreneur who has a great idea he wants to pitch to Alice Angel, who has gotten tired of all the empty chatter in the forums and on reddit.
Enter BitMindshare.com, where Bob can post his pitch targeting just Bitshares Angels. Bob deposits $11 in his BitMindshare.com account, $1 of which is paid as commission to "BitMindshare the DAC", which leaves Bob with $10, which he then uses to fund his post to 100 angels at $0.10 each.
To Alice, who is fabulously wealthy thanks to her investment acumen, $0.10 is a trivial amount of money. But Alice has found that the posts on BitMindshare.com tend to be of better quality than the cruft that gets posted on the Bitshares forum, simply because it costs something to get posts seen on BitMindshare.com. Also, posts on BitMindshare.com are targeted and rated, which also reduces the noise/signal ratio.
Eventually (surprisingly quickly) Alice finds herself with a balance of $10 in her BitMindshare.com account, which she decides to cash out. When she does so, $1 is paid to "BitMindshare the DAC" as commission and $0.50 is paid to MyMindshare, leaving Alice with $8.50 for a treat at Starbucks.
Alice also happens to be a delegate for "BitMindshare the DAC", which means that she represents all the shareholders in deciding what "BitMindshare the DAC" should do with the $2 it has recently accrued in its MyMindshare account. Basiclly she has two choices -- she can leave the $2 in the MyMindshare account and use it to fund promotional activities for BitMindshare, or she can cash out the $2 and pay a share-burning dividend to all the shareholders of "BitMindshare the DAC".
Thus ends our little flight of fancy into the wonderful world of Bitshares and Mindshares. I hope this helps clarify what I have in mind with this proposal.
I think the idea isn't so bad but you have to decentralize it completely. It doesn't have to exist on the blockchain but you should be utilizing the Bitshares toolkit technology. My advice would be to put the website itself on a decentralized backend if possible when the time comes such as MaidSafe and use a Bitshares DNS.
The concept has great value to the Bitshares community and most likely will be profitable. But can it be called a DAC? I don't know. I would say you need to make it more decentralized and totally autonomous so that it runs itself without your involvement or ours.
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At this point I am not proposing that the message platform be the DAC. I'm not proposing that the message ledger be blockchained, ala BitMessage. While that may be desirable at some point, right now it would be too huge a project.
I am proposing a DAC affiliate, as described above. This may be where my proposal goes off the rails, because the DAC has to be the owner of the MyMindshare account. Can a DAC own an asset other than its own shares?
Maybe the mechanism is not that the DAC owns the funds in the account, but that the DAC orders MyMindshare to purchase DAC shares with any funds in its account, thus converting the revenue to shares.
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I am proposing a DAC affiliate, as described above. This may be where my proposal goes off the rails, because the DAC has to be the owner of the MyMindshare account. Can a DAC own an asset other than its own shares?
A DAC can "own" anything where you can define "ownership" from reading data off of the blockchain. So if you built your centralized service 'around' the DAC then the DAC could interact with it as you described.
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A DAC can "own" anything where you can define "ownership" from reading data off of the blockchain.
When you say "the blockchain" do you mean any blockchain? Could it be the bitcoin blockchain? So the DAC has its own blockchain, which is a ledger of ownership interest in a bitcoin private key.
So if you built your centralized service 'around' the DAC then the DAC could interact with it as you described.
I don't know what you mean by 'around'. I understand I would have to build an API that the DAC would hook into. Not a problem.
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A DAC can "own" anything where you can define "ownership" from reading data off of the blockchain.
When you say "the blockchain" do you mean any blockchain? Could it be the bitcoin blockchain? So the DAC has its own blockchain, which is a ledger of ownership interest in a bitcoin private key.
No, only its own blockchain
So if you built your centralized service 'around' the DAC then the DAC could interact with it as you described.
I don't know what you mean by 'around'. I understand I would have to build an API that the DAC would hook into. Not a problem.
Other way around - make an API on the DAC that your site could hook into.
DACs can only read and write to their own blockchain. If you want it to interact with other systems, it has to be read-only. This way you could define ownership however you like but that ownership would have to be enforced by outside systems.
A great example is how bitshares X works - it can only make IOUs that track the value of a bitcoin, but it cannot actually control bitcoins.
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I'd like to lay this whole thing out using the dating analogy.
Here is the cast of players:
Alice -- a nice blue-eyed blonde
Bob -- a nice single guy
Eve -- brown-eyed brunette
BitDateDAC -- a dating service DAC that has an affiliate license with MyMindshare
BitDate.com -- a dating web site powered by MyMindshare
Bob is free on Saturday night so he has decided to try the new dating site called BitDate.com to get a date with a nice blue-eyed blonde. He registers and deposits $10 in his account. A 10% commission is transferred to the BitDateDAC account, leaving Bob with $9 to fund his message. Bob writes his message asking for a date on Saturday night that includes a link to his Facebook page. He attaches $1 to his message targeting blue-eyed blondes. He is betting that at least one of the nine recipients of his message will go out with him. If he wins the bet, he will continue to use BitDate.com; if he loses, he won't.
Eve thinks the whole BitDate thing is stupid and she wants to either scam it or short it, preferably both. To scam it, she needs to create an account and indicate in the profile that she is blue-eyed and blonde to receive Bob's $1 message. But in order to create an account, she has to purchase a share in BitDateDAC, which cancels out her short position and she loses $1 in transaction fees. It's not worthwhile to scam BitDate.com, but she might make some money shorting BitDateDAC.
Alice likes the BitDate concept, so she was happy to register and purchase a share in the enterprise. She knows that it only works when people are honest, so she is honest in her profile and she receives Bob's $1 message. Alice also tells her blue-eyed blonde friends about BitDate, and they alse get Bob's $1 message. One of them agrees to go out with Bob on Saturday night, so Bob wins his bet and he plans on telling his friends about BitDate.
Eve's short position was countered by Alice's long position, and it turns out that Alice's position was the most profitable. But Eve is watching and waiting for the BitDate hype to blow up. Meanwhile, she is free next Saturday night, so she might give this BitDate thing a try.
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A great example is how bitshares X works - it can only make IOUs that track the value of a bitcoin, but it cannot actually control bitcoins.
So, BitMindshare DAC shares would be IOUs that track the value of the BitMindshare account at MyMindshare.
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Is it possible that a DAC is not necessary to accomplish what I am proposing? Can BitsharesX create a BitAsset called BitMindshare that tracks the value of the bitmindshare account at MyMindshare?
MyMindshare can be required to purchase BitMindshares with the funds in the bitmindshare account, which would align the interests of MyMindshare with the BitMindshare shareholders.
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I thought this proposal was going well, but it seems to have faltered. How can I get this back on track?
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Sorry about that, I am just busy with development
Is it possible that a DAC is not necessary to accomplish what I am proposing?
I think this is the case - I still don't think you are proposing a DAC but rather you are trying to use a blockchain to track something which is ultimately under centralized control. Would the DAC accomplish anything if mymindshare didn't exist?
Can BitsharesX create a BitAsset called BitMindshare that tracks the value of the bitmindshare account at MyMindshare?
I don't think so - for the market peg to work there need to be several independent external price reference points, whereas the value of the account is determined by a single centralized entity which might as well just issue the assets itself
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The DAC I am proposing is tracking ownership interest (shares) which MyMindshare does not control in an account balance which MyMindshare does control. The DAC wouldn't accomplish anything if MyMindshare did not exist.
I was thinking that it would be too big a project to make MyMindshare into a DAC -- to blockchain and distribute the message ledger, as well as identity/profiles that are the senders/recipients.
I think a saw that a message system is part of the Keyhotee project. Do you think it would be worthwhile to propose MyMindshare and its business model as an extension of Keyhotee?
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The DAC I am proposing is tracking ownership interest (shares) which MyMindshare does not control in an account balance which MyMindshare does control. The DAC wouldn't accomplish anything if MyMindshare did not exist.
I was thinking that it would be too big a project to make MyMindshare into a DAC -- to blockchain and distribute the message ledger, as well as identity/profiles that are the senders/recipients.
I think a saw that a message system is part of the Keyhotee project. Do you think it would be worthwhile to propose MyMindshare and its business model as an extension of Keyhotee?
I think I understand what you're trying to do. Let's collaborate. I will PM you.
I do think your concept has merit, and I do think it can be decentralized. It's a matter of programming expertise and thinking out of the box.
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One use for a BitAsset is price discovery. So if I want to discover the price of attention from a specific demographic I should have a DAC which allows me to determine the price.
So there has to be that so we can know how much the attention of a particular demographic of users will cost. The market would speculate on how much it costs and a BitAsset can help a lot there.
Another thing you could do is make sure users of your app recieve shares in your app. You would need a blockchain to facilitate that so that is another mechanism.
But it does not mean you have to do it all over Bitshares. Bitshares can do certain things well but it cannot do everything. Just because it cannot do everything it does not mean you cannot find a decentralized solution elsewhere.
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I think I understand what you're trying to do. Let's collaborate. I will PM you.
I do think your concept has merit, and I do think it can be decentralized. It's a matter of programming expertise and thinking out of the box.
I do agree that this idea have ‘luckybit’ written all over it. Do not ask what I mean, I just have that feeling all the time reading about it.