Until BTS' market cap has swallowed all other crypto currencies the pay a BTS delegate can offer is still not competitive. I think the way we will take bitcoins market cap is by headhunting all their developers, it will cause so much controversy and attention in the community that they will be unable to avoid researching and finally understanding us. In fact, I think simply annoucing to the industry that we're going to hire all the good developers in the space, will render them unable to ignore us. If they understand the economics involved, and understand we will always be able to pay a higher fair market rate for a good developer (since we will get their skills applied fully to improve the blockchain, AND we will gain publicity from the move), then they will understand the inevitability of our dominance.
IMO it is plausible to get the entire crypto market cap in 3 months if we all work together in this mass decentralized headhunting of top talent. Every holder of coins will intuitively know that their coins aren't worth more than the developers currently maintaining and improving them. If they see the talent siphoning off, their demand will follow. Or even better, they will rage on whine publicly on forums about us, causing us to gain even more attention.
However we cannot really begin this if top developers have to make due with 50 BTS per block. I like the 50 BTS cap, but I think it is vital we can offer a competitive pay to _anyone_ who shows interest (and is worth it), and we should be ready to offer even, say, Gavin 20% more than his current salary if he joins us. Imagine what would happen to our market cap if Gavin publicly announced he would step down from the BF and join bitshares as a delegate. Even if we had to pay him something outrageous like 80k per month it would still be an insanely good investment, and if it later turned out he simply wasn't that good a developer we could vote him out again. The DAC should be able to do anything that it determines is profitable.
But before we can get started with it, we/I need the forums blessing that we/I can go offer developers more than 2,5k in salary without causing a shitstorm here if they sign up for more than two delegates (the pay I "offer" will just be an example in my opening spiel when trying to headhunt them). In fact even if I don't get the "blessing" I will still do it, but then I'll just have the shitstorm happen now rather than in the delegate-developers application thread. Once people see the massive market cap increase some celebrity developer signing up would cause, I think all the concerns about multiple delegates will disappear. In fact just the effect of them signing up might on its own be enough to render the need for several delegates unnecessary. Still we need to be prepared to be flexible.
I personally plan to target Amir Taaki first, as I think out of all people he's probably the one who deserves to work directly for the blockchain the most. Also he's currently being slapped in the face with the hard reality that bitcoin development isn't sustainable on a daily basis, and will understand the value proposition of BTS quickly.
I disagree. Why promote centralization for no good reason?
If delegates are paid for by dilution then there is plenty of incentive for developers.
What about non-developers? They are important too.
Some of the promises you're making are unrealistic. Bitshares is not going to get the entire crypto market cap in 3 months. Paying developers more than everyone else without it being tied to their reputation for achieving results is stupid in my opinion.
Here is my opinion on how it should be done:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10745.msg141289#msg141289Let me try to simplify it into core concept points.
1) Algorithmic hiring via smart contracts: This means the shareholders define a "policy" and this "policy" has an objective which must be met in order for an entity matching the "attributes" to receive the "automatic votes" to be made a delegate.
2) Attributes: This includes the criteria that the policy is looking for. So if the criteria is referrals as part of a marketing smart contract then the contract will only say the attributes are met when and if they surpass a certain amount of referrals to win the votes as a reward.
3) Hired: This is what occurs whenever the attributes are reached and the terms of the contract are met. This means any random person could refer a bunch of people and the moment they pass the threshold within a specific time period (or unlimited time period) then they are approved by the contract. Once this happens the contract gives them all the automatic votes necessary to make them into a delegate.
I hope these concept points are enough to make it understood what I mean. The result of these ideas should be a system where we give out votes to smart contracts instead of delegates. The smart contracts would then give out votes to whichever delegates match our criteria and automatically fire those delegates by removing votes when they don't meet the terms of the contract.
I think we should use algorithmic hiring. Reputation for achieving results can and should be taken into account by the algorithm if you want to do it that way but a new developer with no community trust or experience should not be given more pay than anyone else with no community trust or experience.
In the area where I do agree with you is that we should focus on attracting intellectual capital. I think the best way to do that in the algorithmic method is to create a smart contract which defines as a policy to acquire intellectual capital for projects. Once this policy objective is set then the smart contract could have a list of attributes it looks for such as community reputation, trust level, degrees of separation, project contribution success rate, or whatever else we would want to quantify. Any entity, whether corporation, cooperative, individual or team who meets these attributes would be automatically hired by the smart contract via automatically voting in their delegate.
A project requires more than just programmers. I agree that we will need around 100 full time programmers to really accomplish all of our dreams but we need more than that. We need people who do marketing, we need people who do communications, we need people who handle usability, who make GUI images, artwork and logos, we need people who create the culture, who define the culture, who blog and who refer new people. The way to do this in my opinion is to have algorithmic hiring in place so that anyone who has the right attributes receives my votes which can result in them getting hired.
From there the smart contract will expect a certain threshold of success and if they fail to meet that minimum level of success they are fired so someone else can have a chance. So if it is referrals then we expect them to constantly bring new people in so that they can remain as a delegate. We can give them extra points for bringing in very socially connected people so who they bring in can matter, but it's multi-level referral marketing which can be measured for success or failure.
What I don't want is human beings deciding stuff on a whim based on whomever can trick them into a vote. It should be algorithmic so that human beings can define their priorities in advance and give their votes to their pre-defined priorities (not to specific individuals). This would make coercion more difficult, and help to make it so anyone can have a chance to get a job without collusion interfering.