We don't see PLAY or MUSIC having their own version of bitUSD. In fact, you see them using the BitShares version.
I haven't been following Play lately, but who says they, especially Music, aren't/won't be using their own version of BitUSD? The Music blockchain isn't ready yet, so how can you make that claim? Unless there is some huge news I somehow missed, I am sure Music will have its own version of BitUSD.
As far as play goes, they have already said they will not be making their own version of USD. I speak with Hackfisher frequently enough and have already asked him this question in a Mumble hangout.
As far as MUSIC, it is NDA (so honestly we do not know what their plan is). Howeve Taulant is a signatory on that NDA and he is making MUSIC liquid on BitShares to help boot up liquidity on the platform and get NOTES trading now. If these things are all the case, there is more reason to believe they are a benevolent ally to BitShares...at least in the short/medium term.
Yeah that's great except they all need a stable foundation blockchain to build on and also all either need or greatly benefit from the BitAsset system as well. Bidding on domain names isn't that great when you have to account for the price volatility of your DNS token over the 30 day bid period, for example. Using BitUSD would be better. Music lovers would rather pay 99 cents for a song rather than 1500 NOTE today but then 1800 NOTE tomorrow, for example. Great so they can each have their own BitAssets except now they split liquidity across many chains making each of the BitAssets worse than they would be if they were all on the same chain.
It only matters what shows on the user interface. Transactions can be made behind the scenes with something like MetaExchange (with expanded features) to give front-end service providers (like Peertracks and the many others that will pop up for separate DACs) the ability to quickly and cheaply change NOTES for bitUSD on purchase. The user still sees "I am paying $.99/1302
N for Track Number 1 on Snoopdawg's new record" and bitUSD ends up with more organic volume. I see nothing going wrong on this personally, but am open to opinions.
Okay, so let's have them all use the same BitAsset as the one on the BitShares X chain. Well this is a technically tricky but doable with some trade-offs. I have discussed a way this could be done in the past and have since become a stronger and stronger advocate of this approach. But even then, it takes lots of coding and testing before such functionality would be available for use. So then core devs need to work on that. But that work is reusable on all other blockchains, so it would make the most sense for the BitShares X devs to work on that and then when it is done all the other chains can adopt that technology. And their chains aren't really 1.0 ready until that feature is ready. They can work on the other business logic of the chain in parallel though if they can get the funding to do so.
See above. As said before, what happens on the back end and what happens on the front end are two different things.
As far as reusability of code, I completely agree.
As for working on the business logic of another chain in parallel...this is actually my preferred way of doing it. If the original Devs still have a Delegate in the BitShares ecosystem, that means they will be more likely to use their chain's resources to help all the baby bitshares chains at least get to a point where they can start competing on some level with each other (but that, in my mind, is still a little ways away).
So now you have BitShares X devs working on improving the foundations of the blockchain and BitAsset system. They are improving the performance, eliminating bugs, improving the market engine, and developing the new features needed to allow other chains to use BTSX's BitAssets. How long would this take and what resources would it require? Well we know at least how long it would take all of our core devs working on all but the last thing. That is because that is exactly what they are working on right now and they are still not done. It all took WAY longer than originally promised. That's what happens in software development. Also, it basically took all of the money I3 had raised (in fact, with all the price drops, how much longer do the core devs have before their year-end bonuses aren't enough to even pay them an unsustainably low wage for their services?) and some small additional money from delegate dilution pay.
If we had other DACs floating around...if they were even a million in marketcap they could hire people who are passionate about things like DNS and simply give them multiple delegates. Early on, the person heading the project up could use the initial voting stake to pretty much guarantee a trusted group of developers over time. As the system matures, they would shed their "masters" and become truly far more decentralized. So they would be able to fund themselves. What's more. There might be devs who have no interest in helping with a decentralized exchange (and so our marketing efforts would be wasted on them), but who might have a great deal of passion for decentralized DNS to the point where getting delegate positions is just a bonus. So resources shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Would there be enough money available to allow them to finish that task much less any extra to devote to OTHER devs working on VOTE and DNS functionality in parallel? Where would that money come from? Crowdfunding similar DPOS blockchain related projects would likely just be taking away buy pressure from BTSX, which would reduce the delegate dilution pay for the core devs working on the foundation of the blockchain. We are a small group and not growing fast enough. But to grow fast enough we need a compelling product to sell to others who haven't bought into the vision yet. That means going after the really high value services and providing those services in a very high quality way. A decentralized exchange on a very robust platform with a fast lightweight client that looks beautiful and is easy to use is what is required. This is part of the foundation that other DACs depend on. It makes no sense to waste limited resources (money and dev talent) on things that are not going to grow the token's value fast enough. We need the token value to grow because that is the source of revenue to pay for more devs who will then be able to work on many interesting different blockchain services and features in parallel.
I disagree it would likely be taking away that much buying pressure from bitshares. If you look at most of these coins out there, it is not the coin, but the protocol that wins out. We are in a stage where every single one of our "altcoins" can actually have unique value propositions. No other protocol allows for that. If we stop looking at the protocol as the foundation of all of this, I think we miss the big picture. The market is already showing this with Counterparty spreading to different coins and I believe this is the market telling us we need to have many networks tying themselves together with the same common foundational protocols.
So the way I see it, the economics of the situation would have forced DNS and VOTE to languish anyway until enough of the BitShares X foundation was built. What is worse is that they would have avoided paying for the cost of the foundation that they use since the dilution would have been for BTSX only and not of the other DACs' tokens. I think the BitShares ecosystem would have not looked very differently in terms of functionality available or user adoption at this point in time, and I would even say we would have most likely been worse off than we currently are.
It is also possible that we would be worse off than now. However, I still seriously doubt it. Just ask the marketing people here if it would be easier to sell BitShares if it had a solid and focused identity. In turn the message would have been simpler to teach and people would have likely learned about bitshares far more easily. That message spread by word of mouth would bring people interested in blockchain technology to us over time.
And lets face it man...really. What do we have now? Toast working for another project and Adam still with Follow My Vote going on the side.
No matter what we think, the decision seems made already.
At this point, I think we just need to finish getting the core blockchain technology and the client software polished to get user adoption to increase and hopefully have the price of BTS increase, and then use those extra resources paid for through delegate dilution of the higher BTS price to build the functionality necessary to allow third-parties to concurrently build DApps and/or child DACs on the BitShares platform with minimal effort while using BTS's BitAssets and even leveraging the consensus/networking systems of the BTS blockchain (basically "Turing complete scripts" but done by allowing the validators or "child DAC delegates" to run arbitrary sandboxed executable code that implements the business logic of their DAC/DApp and uses the BTS blockchain and optionally their own nested blockchains, which are committed to the BTS parent blockchain, as the persistent data store for their DAC/DApp). Once this foundation is set, my hope is that we can have developer resources explode and see many third-parties concurrently working on new features like prediction markets, bond markets, voting, DNS, etc.
Well...now. If it worked out this way, that would be pretty nice. I'll agree there. Interesting thoughts.