Some recent posts by BM have caused a bit of panic. I just talked to him and we came up with a clearer game plan which I think this will make everyone happy.
Explain like I'm 5 version: XT is now what most people probably think BitShares X is. Buy XT, have decentralized exchange. No dilution.1)
BitShares XT will launch without market functionality but will be upgraded to a full-featured BitShares X DAC. It will have a small number of BitAssets, probably USD, GLD, and BTC.
2) BitShares XT will be 50/50 with no dilution for delegate pay.3) BitShares XT will be the snapshot target for *all* subsequent BitShares X DACs. These won't appear until long after everyone understands BTS X.For example, BitShares XCC might trade cryptocurrency, XFC might trade fiat currency, XCM might trade commodities, etc.
These will all share *some* BitAssets and have cross-chain trading.
This was how it was described in the whitepaper back in fall 2013. What a lot of people think of as "the one BitShares X" is actually a collection of X chains that have cross-chain trading of shared bitassets. The idea is that once you have BitUSD it doesn't matter which chain is backing it.
4) I3 will focus almost exclusively on XT for a long time. Anyone who launches the subsequent chains will honor XT and pull upgrades to XT onto their chains.Notice that:
* There was never a plan to have one monolithic "BitShares X" chain, not even back in november. Heck, there's even a sticky at the top of this forum that describes this:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2940.0* It was always the case that any chain could be forked with different parameters at any time. Now that XT will be a real bts X chain with bitassets, this is no different from BM having said "hey, our clones would probably do better if they dilute their shares to pay the delegates".