It is clear that the announcements on this forum and bitcointalk have not informed many people. What is the best way to bootstrap awareness of Sparkle?
How are you measuring "awareness"?
Do you really mean "awareness", or are you looking for some specific action?
If so, what is that action?
The answer to that question would help inform an answer to your question.
Well I would think there would be more miners on the test net considering the blocks will be honored. I would expect more people to be asking questions. So how do you get the word out about the Dec 14th snapshot and the "start of mining" for the live network?
OK, good, by "awareness" you seem to mean "the hashpower being thrown at Sparkles".
Here's a question.
To mine Sparkles, would I have to switch my miners over from mining PTS? And if so, will this make the PTS blockchain, which you are sharedropping to, even slower than it is now?
Perhaps it would.
I am not a technically proficient person, so I can't even switch over without getting help from one of my techie friends. I have been mining PTS for the last while more or less as a public service.
However, it is my experience from watching the cryptocurrency world closely for the last few years, that most miners are motivated by personal financial gain rather than any philosophical bent (I am speaking of the majority here). They will therefore switch over to mining Sparkle if and when they think that it is profitable for them to do so.
Since Sparkles have no value on any exchange yet, the only way I can think of to get miners to rally to your cause is to make it financially worth their while (and I am talking short term here). Perhaps you could offer an incentive in bitUSD on this forum or in BTC on bitsharestalk.org for every block found on Sparkle?
That would perhaps get former miners in the Bitshares ecosystem to fire up their miners again, and perhaps get miners in the POW world to switch to mining Sparkle (ie. for financial gain).
Just a thought.