What about bts as bitcoin sidechain, is it also in plan for 2.1 version?

Probably not. As far as I have understood, it's implementation is still far from ready.

2.0 to 2.1

When rate limited free transactions feature is implemented, we should change the version number to 2.1 because it really is a major change on how Bitshares works.

In cryptoworld people love new things, whether you like it or not. Change of version number is easy way to signal that we are doing new things here and get people's attention.

It's also easy way to get Bytemaster to interviews.
- "Hey, we made a big change! You should interview Dan about it!"
- "Oh, cool! Thanks for the tip, we will!"

Website update

We need to completely check the website and update it where necessary. Especially the technology page doesn't reflect the current status of development. We need descriptions and/or tutorials for:

- Stealth transfers (explanation that satisfies cryptoexperts and tutorial that newbies can understand)
- Referral program (seriously, how you think people start utilizing this feature if nobody knows how to use it?)
- Fee backed assets (explanation for developers and businesses how they can use this feature to make money)

Blog on the website hasn't been updated for a long time. This is bad because it gives the impression that the whole project is dead. @Akado you have been active and also did some time ago the weekly hot topics update, could you take some responsibility to write something in there? Weekly hot topics and updates is a good format. Of course other people can help too, we could collect all relevant topics and news into a googledoc and publish it regularly.

Intellectual framework: Bitshares as a DAC

DAC point of view differentiates us from other cryptocurrencies. We should emphasize it. BTS is not a currency, it's a share.

I'm not sure how well this will be recieved, but I want to try and see what happens. I think it has a lot of potential, but it's always possible that people just don't get it.

We need early adopters

Especially we need high quality early adopters. People who really get excited about how Bitshares can change the world. I've been thinking mostly libertarian groups and communities. They are already align with our thinking, we just have to convince them that Bitshares is a worthwhile project.

We can also try to get people onboard from other cryptocommunities. There are lots of failing projects, which means there are lots of people willing to change their focus on something better. A good persuasion technique is to point out some real or potential problems and tell how Bitshares has solved them, and let other people realize that their project is inferior compared to Bitshares. Do not tell directly that to people (it will create negative reaction), it's much better to let them understand it themselves.

Another potential group: cryptocompanies. I'd like to see more companies as witnesses, because it's good to have witnesses that are not dependent on one person. We should have at least some witnesses that are maintained by reputable companies. It shouldn't be too difficult to advertize this: "hey, you can make some money by this running software and updating it regularly". Once they do that, we have good chances that they will get more involved in Bitshares.

Timeline

When rate limited free transactions feature is coming out? Most of marketing efforts should come right after that. Stealth is coming out very soon, so we should start with that but not with full speed.

Focus will be on rate limited free transactions, stealth transfers and fee backed assets.

Stealth is out in a month, right? We'll start by making some noise about it. Can we get free transactions feature ready and tested in two months? As far as I understood, implementation is almost ready. After it comes out, everybody should be ready to do whatever they can.

I know that it's probably impossible to get marketing worker proposal approved so we have to do this with our own money and time. So please think of ways that are as effective as possible so that we can get most bang for the buck and not have to spend too much time in stuff that really doesn't matter.

And remember, all communication is marketing! When newbies find this forum, please be polite for them and for everybody else.

Quote from: Samupaha on February 27, 2016, 03:21:57 pm

I started to think more about incentivizing fiat liquidity... In your OP you offered two choices: signup/deposit bonuses & subsidizing yield and exchange liquidity. I think we could do both of these to attract more users and create more liquidity in fiat/smartcoin markets.

- Signup bonuses to people who verify themselves in Openledger. It doesn't need to be a big one, because BTS price is so low that even low value sums seems big for newbies. 1000 BTS bonus for 100 first verified users would cost only 100 000 BTS.

- Deposit bonuses for users that make their first OPEN.USD/EUR/CNY deposit.

Personally I don't think Sign-Up bonuses are a good way for a DAC to attract users/bootstrap if they have to use shares to fund it. (For example, even though our Market CAP is $10 million dollars, a $100 000 promotion for example would cost much much more in terms of the sell pressure it creates. So it's incredibly hard to make up that high cost. It's also counter-productive to bootstrapping a DAC because a declining share price will lose you more existing supporters than a bonus paid in shares to new users attracts)

No need to do high cost project. 1000 BTS for verifying and for first deposit for 100 new users would cost 200 000 BTS which is about 800 USD. We could try this as a campaign and see how it works. If we see good results (more liquidity in fiat/smartcoin markets) we can do it again and stop when we have enough orders. Fiat liquidity is quite important and we won't see it without verified users. I'd like to see at least 5000 USD/EUR in 5 % from spot price.

This is not a sharedrop for random people but a thankyou-bonus for becoming a verified user. We need them because unverified users can't deposit and withdraw fiat currencies. Of course I'm open to other ideas as well, this is just a first one that popped to my mind today.

@bytemaster made a good point in the latest hangout. Why pay interest to all bitUSD? Wouldn't it be more effective if we paid only for bitUSD that is in the orderbook?

Of course this will still create yield harvesting. People will just put their orders so far from the spot price that they will never execute. But it's still way more better than people just creating bitusd only for themselves.

One possible benefit: increased liquidity in bitUSD/fiat-USD markets (right now we have only OPEN.USD but hopefully we get more gateways in the future). Easy way to make money would be setting orders to bitUSD/OPEN.USD market for 3-5 % profit. Relative price isn't moving to anywhere so it doesn't even need a bot. In the worst case user gets only the yield, in a good case he makes also money with trading.

We should also give yield for bitCNY and bitEUR to incentivize use of OPEN.CNY and OPEN.EUR. Liquid bitasset/fiat-markets could be really great for our exchange. I bet @ccedk will love this idea!

Thanks Xeroc.  My confusion comes from are we importing the account name & balance or just the balance?  Based on your response the account name for 0.9x are gone and we are simply importing a balance?

No, you can import both: accounts and balances. You can choose what to import, if you want for example just one of them and leave other to be imported later. You can also choose to which account you want a certain balance to be imported in.

If you want to see how it works, just start the importing. You don't have to finish it.

Why not post to General discussions board?

It's already so bloated and I thought this is anyway pretty much metadiscussion.

I just listened to Econtalk episode with Cesar Hidalgo on Why Information Grows and it got me thinking about learning to manage a decentralized autonomous company.

Hidalgo talks about importance of networks in creating new knowledge and know-how. The Bitshares DAC is a network that connects people around the world. It's somewhat like a traditional company, but because of the strong trust that blockchain creates, people don't need know each other and they don't need to work and cooperate face-to-face what is usually required for human organizations. DAC is very unique in that sense.

Mostly we try give right economic incentives for people. But that is not necessarily enough. We, as a community, need to also accumulate know-how how to actually run this thing succesfully for a long period of time. It is a big challenge because anybody can come and go as they please. Shareholders, workers, committee members and witnesses are not bounded in any way to Bitshares. They can leave anytime they want. But on the other hand, we can approve new people in very easily – we just need to learn how to effectively teach them the know-how that we have accumulated.

Even if Bitshares fails someday, I will be probably very thankful for all the experience and knowledge that I've gathered from this community. We are trying to do here something that nobody else has ever done. We are pioneers of DAC management. Every failure and struggle that we enocunter teaches us at least what does not work and we learn to avoid it in the future. Even with this very incomplete and inadequate information we know more about DAC management than 99.99 % of the people in the world.

Any thoughts?