If you think the issues with BTS snapshots are complicated now just wait until things really get rolling.
Let's say BTS has a multi billion dollar market cap, a thousand UIAs, hundreds of millions of BTS locked up in collateral and cold storage, institutional investors owning large stakes in BTS, etc.
Now something like PLAY or MUSIC comes along and wants to AirDrop to an engaged crypto community. Is BTS the best answer? I think it'd be an absolute nightmare.
I'm trying to look at this and find which is really the best snapshot token.
Non-technical me (as you know:p) doesn't know how hard it will be to just snapshot all the BTS in collateral and cold storage. Is that a big undertaking? Not sure that UIAs would effect it. The other side effect of BTS being a snapshot token is that people who only want to buy a snapshot token have to buy the much more expensive BTS, which they might not want to do.
The main problem I see with PTS is it's so easily manipulated. A price increase from dropping on BTS will be much smaller so it's harder for the developer to pump up the price with the project announcement. The bigger the market cap of the receiver the less powerful the insider info about the drop is, so that's an objective plus for BTS.
Other potential pluses for BTS are the high market cap which could potentially be made use of by a DAC which snapshotted it heavily enough to win voters approval. e.g. A BTS delegate could fund the new DAC if it dropped heavily on BTS. Also the BTS community is very large and very active.
Active voters are needed for DPOS to succeed. Does anyone know the difference between the levels of voter activity in BTS vs PTS? Higher voter activity is great argument to receive a sharedrop. BTS must have far higher numbers of individual voters as there are considerably more active users. It's possible PTS will still have a high percentage of active stake, but it will be owned by far fewer people I would think, which is what matters for a DPOS chain looking for active individual voters to sharedrop on.
With such a weak social consensus, if any, still existing, on what 3rd parties should do, there's no safe way to invest in all future DACs. Buying PTS and hoping for a stake is a gamble if there's no solid social consensus - which no one has the power to declare. If there is disagreement then the consensus is gone, sadly, or not depending on your position.
Ironically if PTS hadn't been revived there would probably be a consensus that BTS should be snapshotted as there would be nothing to dispute.
So now people who want to invest in all future (bitshares-toolkit) DACs, there is no clear path. All that's left is fighting between BTS and PTS. How can the two be brought out of conflict so there is no competition for future 3rd party sharedrops?