I think it's really important to remember that DACs perform a service. It's those services and the ingenious way they perform those services that brings people to this forum.

I'm super excited about all the DACs that Invictus are doing and all the other DACs that people are proposing. I am really thrilled and honored to be taking part in this revolution. Invictus is doing some ground breaking work and we all can help and be a part of that.

ProtoShares were/are a way to vet ideas in the market. The original idea was that any DAC would be able to test their ideas using protoDACshares. I think for the most part, they worked fairly well for Invictus. ProtoShares primary function was to bring us together, to look at their ideas and decide if we wanted to keep PTS in our wallets or dump them into the market.  It worked. Even with profiteers dumping PTS, the price stood strong. We gave Invictus the green light to move ahead.

The mining of bitshares
I'm not sure if mining bitshares had anything to do with equal distribution of the shares. Under proof-of-work, mining secures the network. Invictus originally wanted to create a way so that only single users would be able to mine, as to avoid Bitcoin's achilles' heel of centralized mining power.

The simple question is: Why should we give shares away through mining or a giveaway for no reason whatsoever?

As per my discussion tonight, the AngelShare funds should be held by members of the community via a multi-sig transaction. In essence Invictus would have to write an invoice for funds, have it approved by the community, who then can sign the transaction from the Angel address to Invictus.

Therefore if the earth was to open up and swallow Invictus, it would not matter. All the code is open source anyways, and the community would still have 98% of the funds. Just hire a new team, and hope no more strange acts of God happen.

It adds transparency backed by the blockchain. 

tldr; Remove point of failure with multisig.

Invictus should take precautions that the funds can be moved and we should be introduced to a second or third developer(hopefully outside their current city/state or perhaps the country.) who wants be the Godfather/mother for this project. However, I don't really want to hamstring Invictus too much. Perhaps they can just propose an opening budget, say 10 million, then everything after that could be locked up until they need more funds. But they have to be able to make commitments to developers and others. If they tell someone they can hire them for one year, that developer needs to know she's going to be paid. The proposal could just be a general outline but it would be nice to have more details later to make sure there's no waste.

The future of DACs
Two days ago Bytemaster introduced to us an idea to create Angel Shares. AngelShares is what I'm calling a development engine. It's extremely powerful. It would allow resources currently wasted to be pumped into development. Right now, Invictus is on the bleeding edge of a new frontier opened up by Bitcoin. But things are happening quickly and people are flooding into this new space looking for opportunities. The BitShare project risks falling behind.

How the development engine works
It's not much different from renting an ASIC miner to mine Bitcoins. Instead, you rent the miner from Invictus. You rent the miner and then you receive shares directly to your wallet. Mining will be proportional to work as measured by the money invested. This money will be used to fuel the BitShares project.

ProtoShares
ProtoShares will continue be mined. However, because Invictus only has enough time to mine so many AngelShares before the release of Bitshares, this means ProtoShare holders will end up with more than 10% of the money supply. It could be up to 50% or more.


Mining
Invictus has made it clear for awhile that it was looking to move from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. This means, the DACs no longer need to pay miners to work for it. This is why Bitshares will no longer be mined. Mined shares are a reward for the work miners do, or used to do. There is no reason to pay for that work. It would just be a waste of electricity. Also, it has become clear that Proof-of-Work has many weaknesses. In addition, mining eventually favours the rich. How many of us can build a factory to produce ASICs to mine Bitcoin? This has happened with Bitcoin and it threatens its survival. Companies are mining Bitcoin. With Proof-of-Work, the rich will win. With Proof-of-Stake, the rich have to come through us if they want in. And if they want in early, then they will only be supplying us with the tools to make us stronger.

Centralisation
Some have raised concerns about Invictus being a point of failure. Some of these concerns are valid and there are possible solutions to the problem. However, Invictus is already a central point of failure. It is unclear who would pick up the torch should something happen to Invictus. If there was capital fuelling the development of the project, then there would be a larger pool of people who could continue the project should anything happen to Invictus. I believe bringing on more developers to the project will actually help the community who is already overly reliant on Invictus.

Where does the money go
This question is still open for debate. Personally, I'm advocating for an expansion of bounties. There are many things that DACs need done. Wikis, FAQs, How-To guides, and much, much more. DACs need people! And of course the project can use funds to bring on more developers.

How is the money allocated
This is still open for debate. Personally, I'd like to see the core team hand down the tasks and then the community can decide on appropriate bounties and completion requirements.

Distribution of Wealth
Some have raised concerns about only people with money being able to participate in the AngelShares system. As shown above, tasks and work can be distributed and this work is paid for from the Angel funds. The DACs will always need people to do stuff. Unfortunately, this means that people who just wanted to use their computers to mine for shares won't be able to do that. It should be pointed out though, that it's already too late for people with personal computers to mine ProtoShares meaningfully, and that BitShares, even under the Proof-of-Work strategy, would have been GPU and ASIC proof and cloud-proof and pool-proof. There would have been no BitShare windfall for profiteers. Without the need for brute work, it's difficult to see how or why Invictus should just give away shares. Mastercoin and Ripple provide examples of different strategies that may help us decide how to proceed.

Summary
Invictus is a slow moving steam locomotive. With Angel Shares, Invictus could turn this project into a high speed train.

[UPDATE Decemeber 18]
{This is from the newsletter.}

We hold these truths to be self-evident
1. ProtoShareholders benefit from appreciation of their ProtoShares (PTS).
2. ProtoShares appreciate as more PTS DACs are announced by credible developers.
3. More PTS DACs would be announced if credible developers could find funding.
4. Sources of funding generally expect shares in the businesses they fund.
5. The mining lottery method of distributing shares dis-incentivizes such investment.
6. Investors divert their money from helping developers to unproductive mining activity.
7. A new model which incentivized investment would benefit developers and investors.
8. Consumers of DAC services would benefit from a well-funded support system.
9. Entrepreneurs and volunteers would benefit from bounties and funded piece-work.
10. Something-for-nothing participants, small or large, won’t care - they’ve already sold.

{Que23}
Now, It's my understanding that AngelShares will be tradable. This really changes everything if they are and takes away a lot of the worry about centralization. As soon as some of the competing DACs are ready to move forward, then we will have real competition within this space. Don't like BitShares? Don't think it's adding value to your ProtoShares? Then swap your Invictus Angelshares for some new developer's AngelShares. If one DAC can't get Angels to invest, then there's something wrong with the idea or the team. If a team of Developers starts doing things you don't like, swap out your DevXAngelShares for Invictus AngelShares. Better trade fast, because if they're really screwing up, then their AngelShares will go to zero and they will have a very hard time finding new investors. Competition! It solves so many problems.

No, i'm talking about how Bitshares are eventually allocated.  We signed on with Protoshares being 10% and mining being 90% with a total supply of 21 million.

Quote from: bytemaster on November 13, 2013, 05:24:37 am

1) All chains Invictus launches will be derived from ProtoShares with a 1:1 mapping and 10% of the ultimate money supply of that chain.
2) ProtoDomains may Split from ProtoShares prior to the Launch of DomainShares so that it can be traded and valued separately.   
3) Keyhotee ID is not a currency, there is no way to map ProtoShares into Keyhotee ID (the name chain)
4) There will be many BitShares based chains, not one, and all of them will be 1:1 with ProtoShares
5) We reserve the right to release ProtoShares v2 that honors 100% of ProtoShares v1 with 100% of the money supply allocated. 
6) Associated Press, DAC would honor ProtoShares

Exceptions to the ProtoShares honoring would be if we decided to release a true competitor to be used as a money-only coin and not a trading platform.  In this case we may choose to honor the initial positions in ALL existing *-coin chains proportional to their market cap. 

I want to make it very clear that at no time will we 'reset the clock' for a new chain and owning ProtoShares today does get you ownership in everything we do in the future either directly or indirectly.

This post above was posted by you and written by bytemaster. I found it odd that you haven't posted it here, since you think the contract has been broken. There isn't one mention of 90% anywhere. In fact, it says they have the right to release v2.

Invictus doesn't sell bitshares or protoshares or angel shares. This is really odd that people would vote for them to do that. Really odd.

Why are people voting for Invictus to sell protoshares or bitshares. Invictus doesn't sell Protoshares, and Bitshares aren't even out yet, nor will they be sold by invictus. I think there's a real lack of understanding in the community about what this project is.

Looks good, I hadn't noticed you used some of my copy  I actually never liked the use of 'affairs' though. Anyone is free to substitute another word.

Quote from: Gekko on December 15, 2013, 09:58:56 pm

Keeping PTS "1.0" as they are is necessary and good. Even if mining doesn't pay at current rates / difficulty, but no one knows where PTS will be in 2014.

As for Angelshares/coins I'm not sure how they could be evenly/fair divided. Angelshares without mining would mean already rich people will get even richer by being able to invest more BTC into Angelshares right from the beginning. By mining poorer people would be able to get a good amount of "coins" while difficulty is low. - If Invictus wants to avoid mining they should think about mechanisms to give poorer investors a chance of getting lots of Angel"coins" by being fast/early/whatever. Just being rich shouldn't give anybody such a huge advantage at the start of a new "investment round".

Here is my thread on how to solve the distribution problem.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1413.msg15246#msg15246

The best numbers I came up with is 2,2,2 or 2,2,1.

Either 2 million PTS, 2 million Angelshares and 2 million mined Bitshares.

Or 2 million PTS and 2 million Angelshares and 1 million reserved for Proof of Commitment.

Proof of Work is probably dead. Proof of Stake can be useful if the transaction scheme can be used. Proof of Commitment can replace mining as a distribution scheme.

Basically it would work where we'd all have Keyhotee IDs and we'd all earn credits working and then in the future we redeem those credits for Bitshares which are "mined" by our labor. I think this would work well.

For example instead of mining to get your Bitshares you put a signature advertising Bitshares up and at the end of 1 month straight of having that signature up for 24/hr * 7 * 30 you receive your marketing credit which will give you the same amount of Bitshares as if you mined for that month. Now you've turned the miner into a marketer and you reward him with credits which can be redeemed for Bitshares.

If everyone were to use the signature method then "difficulty" would go up and the payout would shrink. This would encourage everyone to select different tasks.
We would vote on tasks which would come in the form of a To-Do list. As we vote then the tasks which rise to the top of the To-Do list would be the most profitable tasks to complete or "mine" but if it's something everyone wants to do then difficulty will rise and it will not be as profitable.

So basically the jobs that no one wants to do or cannot easily do but which receive the highest priority by vote will be the most profitable tasks on the To-Do list and will receive the greatest payout. Every task no matter how small will receive some payout though so that anyone could earn some Bitshares doing some BitcoinGet like tasks such as watching videos or something similar.

The signature tasks could also have tiers which reward people who keep the signature for longer with greater payouts each month, or which reward based on how many posts, or which reward based on the ratings of posts on the forum so that highly rated posts get pushed to the top and are more likely to receive credit.

Until we build this there shouldn't be talk about removing mining from Bitshares because you're right the way it seems is like they want to make it a toy for the rich who can afford to buy Bitshares. Also what if people don't even have Bitcoins and aren't deep into the Bitcoin community but just happen to be into or stumble upon Bitshares? Now they cannot just mine Bitshares but have to figure out how to buy Bitcoins? What if they can't buy them so easily?

For this reason we need to let people work for them.

This is not a bad idea. You're basically saying that they should set some shares aside to set bounties and payout faucets and stuff like that. Wouldn't it be better and more efficient though to pay bounties in Bitcoin from the Angel Shares fund. After all, we don't want to just give money to people who believe in the project, we want to attract new talent to the project as well.

Quote from: ripplexiaoshan on December 16, 2013, 06:03:18 am

What will happen to PTS mining when BTS comes out? People will turn to mining BTS I guess, because exchange ratio for PTS with BTS is 1:1

Some may decide to switch to BTS mining, but PTS block chain will continue, there will be more DACs supporting PTS in future, so PTS still have it's value.

There will be no BTS mining. Please read: Transactions as Proof-of-Stake & The End of Mining