Currently the only way for stakeholders to fund common work in the BitShares system is to vote for individual developers and marketers, who are then paid like employees of the system. Realistically, all the core developers need to be individually voted in to continue their work toward the team priorities if we want development to progress. This process allows funding for directed development, but does not give stakeholders any meaningful say in the direction or prioritisation of that development. Their only option is a binary one - to opt in or opt out of owning BTS, with those votes reflected in the BTS price, which affects the delegate group collectively.
Its possible to instead have a system where stakeholders are individually free to vote on the priorities for development of the entire system, and to use their stakes to direct this effort. This would be through the voting and funding of public agents. Public agents would maintain a public policy and budget, and a required number of seats for office. Their platform could be specific to an area, like product design, or development, or security, or a more holistic policy, vision or principle to implement within BitShares. And the public could vote them in so that they receive the required public funding and create those outcomes through their expenditure plans.
Rather than merely acting as employees, public agents could be considered as running an office. Their budget would include employees as well as payments to other service providers to influence workflow performed in the system. For example, if a public agent with a new product design obtained enough seats by public vote, they could budget payment to the core developer team to either influence a change in priorities or allow them to pull in more coders to fulfil this demand.
A much broader skill-set would be utilised by these public agents, beyond coding and marketing. They may bring skills in design, strategic planning, law or other fields, and use this to direct change in the system.
Public agents could also receive voluntary funding from stakeholders, and this list of patrons could also be used in various ways without obligation, such a votes on budgets if required. (*)
Now I've been careful not to say public agents are delegates, although clearly the delegate structure, with a couple of modifications, could easily be redirected toward this purpose. These modifications would include:
- removing the requirement for all delegates to perform certain tasks such as block-signing and feed-prices (see
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15688.0.html), a process that can be managed by specific agents
- setting up control mechanisms for delegates to transparently and honestly manage their budgets
We could alter the labels we use if we want to avoid confusion with the historical role of delegates under DPoS, being purely block production. So for example, we could call the block-signers delegates, and the public agents "ministers" or "agents" or some other more useful name. I do happen to think though that delegate is a useful label for what I am describing, moreso than the block-producers.
Now in modern society, the structures of government, businesses and other institutions are largely hierarchical in their decision and prioritisation processes. What I'm suggesting here is a way to truly decentralise the governance structure so that stakeholders retain as much control over the evolution of their system as possible.
(* Its conceivable that the system could exist on patronage alone rather than any public funds, but that requires deeper thought).