BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: merockstar on June 26, 2014, 08:01:21 am
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Background story:
I sat down at my computer last night, intent on providing a few paragraphs that would serve as an introduction to bitshares for people already accustomed to cryptocurrency culture, as requested by toast (sorry toast, guess I'll get to that tomorrow). Instead, I was struck with a severe case of writers block, and ended up having a conversation with my own brain:
Brain: No no no, I'm tired of explaining these dry technical details! I'm not having it tonight, give me a break, merockstar!
Me: Not happening, you're going to produce, then you're going to revise the article you wrote about DPOS.
Brain: Yea? That's what you think.
Me: *puts fingers on keyboard and forces self to start typing*
Brain: No goddamnit! I told you I was sick of this boring writing style you've been subjecting me to these past few days! Ugh, you're going to force this to happen aren't you? Well I got news for you, bucko, it's not going to come out the way you anticipated.
This is what came out instead. As always, I all but worship people who provide me critical feedback.
PS: No I was not on drugs when I wrote this.
PPS: bytemaster, I hope you're okay with the way I portray you in this.
***clipped, please see newer draft later in this thread***
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Background story:
I sat down at my computer last night, intent on providing a few paragraphs that would serve as an introduction to bitshares for people already accustomed to cryptocurrency culture, as requested by toast (sorry toast, guess I'll get to that tomorrow). Instead, I was struck with a severe case of writers block, and ended up having a conversation with my own brain:
Brain: No no no, I'm tired of explaining these dry technical details! I'm not having it tonight, give me a break, merockstar!
Me: Not happening, you're going to produce, then you're going to revise the article you wrote about DPOS.
Brain: Yea? That's what you think.
Me: *puts fingers on keyboard and forces self to start typing*
Brain: No goddamnit! I told you I was sick of this boring writing style you've been subjecting me to these past few days! Ugh, you're going to force this to happen aren't you? Well I got news for you, bucko, it's not going to come out the way you anticipated.
This is what came out instead. As always, I all but worship people who provide me critical feedback.
PS: No I was not on drugs when I wrote this.
PPS: bytemaster, I hope you're okay with the way I portray you in this.
Bitshares Everywhere! first draft
Bitshares X, Bitshares XT, Bitshares-PTS, Bitshares ME, Bitshares YOU, Bitshares XC, Bitshares XF, Bitshares, Bitshares everywhere ahhhhh!
Actually I made up Bitshares YOU, it doesn't exist on paper yet unless you count the rambling you're currently feasting your eyes on, but it might someday if somebody decided to make a Decentralized Autonomous Corporation, commonly referred to as a DAC, to emulate the functions of Facebook on a blockchain, or something, and called it that.
You might be asking yourself:
"What are all these Bitshares and why should I be interested in them? Should I be scared?"
That's okay. First stumbling upon this community can be daunting for even the most geeky, lingo hardened crypto enthusiast. Step back, take a deep breath, and maybe I can help demystify the purpose of all these Bitshares, and clarify the details for you.
Bitshares-PTS, formerly referred to as Protoshares before a name change, is the first product that was put out in circulation with the Bitshares handle. This is the cryptocurrency you can purchase on Poloniex or Cryptsy, or wherever. It is in just about everyway yet another alt-coin. Nothing too special about it as alt-coins go, but it has a special reason for existing. Holding this coin puts you at risk of making some extra money, if you happen to be holding during the snapshot for a Bitshare's community supported DAC honoring the social consensus.
DACs are the brainchild of one Daniel Larimer, ostensibly the person you can blame for all these different projects named Bitshares. Daniel, whose adopted the online pseudonym "bytemaster," envisions a whole slew of upcoming uses for the blockchain technology pioneered by anonymous Bitcoin mastermind Satoshi Nakamoto. He was working on this idea for a cryptocurrency that implements the functions of a bank, when he got to thinking, and I'm paraphrasing here, something along the lines of, "You know, a blockchain can be used for much more than just a currency or a bank, it can be used for lots of stuff! This could be the beginning of a whole new business paradigm! Every new use for a blockchain somebody can come up with could represent a profit generating corporation, in and of itself."
So he temporarily dropped what he was doing, and started exploring this idea further. Again, I'm paraphrasing what the bytemaster might have been thinking:
"I can't make ALL these DACs by myself, I need to create a set of tools that people can use to make their own DACs without necessarily having to be ridiculously good programmers, and I need to incentivise a community to rally around this new platform. How can I do that?"
The answer, of course, to the question of how to get a community to rally around this new idea was to pay them!
"Great scott! I could create a crypto-currency, associate it with this toolkit I'm going to invent soon, and tell people that if they hold this crypto-currency they could get paid because I'm going to form a company, funded by venture capitalists, that would act to support and encourage the invention of new DACs and further innovation in this new frontier, and tell the proprietors of these new DACs that if they pay the people who hold this new crypto-currency, then my company will have their back in all kinds of matters! It could be like a new kind of IPO, except not!"
At least that's how I like to imagine the guy's thought processes. In reality, each idea probably came along much more slowly, and the whole thing was probably alot more boring, building on itself one step at a time. I'm also picturing it in Christopher Walken's voice, which probably also was not the case, although one can speculate. Nonetheless, fast forward to today and that company is called Invictus Innovations Incorporated, or 3i if you will, the Bitshares toolkit exists, and that crypto-currency is called BitShares-PTS.
The idea of incentivising the founders of DACs to pay people who hold that crypto-currency also came to be a reality. It's called the "social consensus," and it asks that new DACs honor the people who had faith in 3i early on by awarding, in each respective DAC's genesis block, ten percent of it's initial shares to holders of PTS, and ten percent to holders of AGS, which stands for Angelshares.
Angelshares were an idea for an additional way to fund this future mega-conglomerate of a company that Larimer was building. As a limited time offer, by donating PTS or BTC to the company, you could get more Angelshares back, and thus more shares in future DACs, than you would get from just holding PTS alone.
So that's my take on the story of how we got to where we are today. It is late June of 2014 and this party is in full swing, the soon to be released toolkit exists, the Angelshares accounts are funded, and everything is set up for an impending influx of incoming DACs. Bytemaster has resumed work on Bitshares X, the soon to be banking and exchange platform which will provide the first example of what a DAC is supposed to look like, establishing the status quo for a social consensus honoring product.
Bitshares X actually refers to a chain of banking and financial related DACs. If the name of the DAC starts with an X and has another letter after it, that means it's referring to a specific feature within Bitshares X, that will be rolled out one at a time. All eventually to be united under the banner of Bitshares X. The first iteration, currently in testing and OMG OH SO CLOSE to being rolled out to the general public, is Bitshares XT. The 'T' does not stand for "test," as far as I can tell it's an arbitrarily chosen letter. This string of DACs comprising Bitshares X will use Bitshares (no letter after it) as the primary currency. It will implement the first few features, including a small number of bitAssets, and the ability to short them.
Finally, Bitshares ME is just another name for Bitshares Music, which may be released under a different name, who knows. This refers to a currently in the works DAC which many members of the community are excited about.
+5% I'll leave it for others to give you content feedback, but I really love the fun conversational tone :)
The reason I can't give content feedback is I didn't even realise BitShares ME was BitShares Music! I got educated.
I thought BitShares ME was 'Keyhotee meets Facebook, meets personal data storage, investment tracking, personal contracts, wills and more.' I thought it might be hidden in a Keyhotee sub-section, and I hadn't had a chance to check it out, but turns out that doesn't exist it was all in my head!! :o
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ME was supposed to be "personal shares"...
Music is supposed to be ME + Jukebox
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ME was supposed to be "personal shares"...
Music is supposed to be ME + Jukebox
"personal shares" I like. We should use "personal" more often. Like personal computer, personal banking, and so on.
At the time no one really thought it made sense to have a personal computer just like today no one knows what a personal bank is.
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+5% personal banking
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At the time no one really thought it made sense to have a personal computer just like today no one knows what a personal bank is.
+5%
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BitShares ME = "counterparty/mastercoin, but fun and social and totally for the average person not geeky or scary finances or anything"
MUSIC just happens to use exactly the same tech as ME
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so ME is like buying shares in artists/songs and Music = decentralized itunes?
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so ME is like buying shares in artists/songs and Music = decentralized itunes?
MUSIC is a clone of me. Music is like buying shares in artists/songs. There will be a parallel centralized site like itunes.
ME is a separate DAC, for buying shares in normal people.
Same functionality, separate blockchains for separate audiences.
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so ME is like buying shares in artists/songs and Music = decentralized itunes?
MUSIC is a clone of me. Music is like buying shares in artists/songs. There will be a parallel centralized site like itunes.
ME is a separate DAC, for buying shares in normal people.
Same functionality, separate blockchains for separate audiences.
That's the way I have been explaining it to people.
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so ME is like buying shares in artists/songs and Music = decentralized itunes?
MUSIC is a clone of me. Music is like buying shares in artists/songs. There will be a parallel centralized site like itunes.
ME is a separate DAC, for buying shares in normal people.
Same functionality, separate blockchains for separate audiences.
oh my goodness! that makes the article as it stands completely misleading at the end.
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ME was supposed to be "personal shares"...
Music is supposed to be ME + Jukebox
"personal shares" I like. We should use "personal" more often. Like personal computer, personal banking, and so on.
At the time no one really thought it made sense to have a personal computer just like today no one knows what a personal bank is.
+5%
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Bitshares Everywhere! first draft
Bitshares X, Bitshares XT, Bitshares-PTS, Bitshares ME, Bitshares YOU, Bitshares
XC, Bitshares XF, Bitshares, Bitshares everywhere ahhhhh!
BitShares .. capital "S"
Further:
*BitShares Music
*BitShares DNS
*BitShares Lotto
Bitshares-PTS, formerly referred to as Protoshares before a name change, is the
first product that was put out in circulation with the Bitshares handle. This is
the cryptocurrency you can purchase on Poloniex or Cryptsy, or wherever. It is
in just about everyway yet another alt-coin. Nothing too special about it as
alt-coins go, but it has a special reason for existing. Holding this coin puts
you at risk of making some extra money, if you happen to be holding during the
snapshot for a Bitshare's community supported DAC honoring the social consensus.
+ BitShares PTS might someday (pretty sure) be upgraded to DPOS because mining
is **shit** (:
Could you link your article about social consesus .. haven't you written about
it already? otherwise a reader just wont get it! or something link (see below)
or (read on)
"Great scott! I could create a crypto-currency, associate it with this toolkit
I'm going to invent soon, and tell people that if they hold this crypto-currency
they could get paid because I'm going to form a company, funded by venture
capitalists, that would act to support and encourage the invention of new DACs
and further innovation in this new frontier, and tell the proprietors of these
new DACs that if they pay the people who hold this new crypto-currency, then my
company will have their back in all kinds of matters! It could be like a new
kind of IPO, except not!"
IPO is misleading ..
http://getcredits.io/blog/pros-cons-presale/
Call it pre-sale!
Angelshares were an idea for an additional way to fund this future
mega-conglomerate of a company that Larimer was building. As a limited time
offer, by donating PTS or BTC to the company, you could get more Angelshares
back, and thus more shares in future DACs, than you would get from just holding
PTS alone.
However, in contrast to PTS .. AGS are not liquid!
So that's my take on the story of how we got to where we are today. It is late
June of 2014 and this party is in full swing, the soon to be released toolkit
exists, the Angelshares accounts are funded, and everything is set up for an
impending influx of incoming DACs. Bytemaster has resumed work on Bitshares X,
the soon to be banking and exchange platform which will provide the first
example of what a DAC is supposed to look like, establishing the status quo for
a social consensus honoring product.
There are still a few more days on the AGS countdown!
Bitshares X actually refers to a chain of banking and financial related DACs. If
the name of the DAC starts with an X and has another letter after it, that means
it's referring to a specific feature within Bitshares X, that will be rolled out
one at a time. All eventually to be united under the banner of Bitshares X. The
first iteration, currently in testing and OMG OH SO CLOSE to being rolled out to
the general public, is Bitshares XT. The 'T' does not stand for "test," as far
as I can tell it's an arbitrarily chosen letter. This string of DACs comprising
Bitshares X will use Bitshares (no letter after it) as the primary currency. It
will implement the first few features, including a small number of bitAssets,
and the ability to short them.
Maybe you can go for a
BitShares XM (Metals, Gold, Silver, Platin, ...)
BitShares XC (Cigarettes, how knows (: )
BitShares XF (Fastfood restaurants)
Just as an example
Finally, Bitshares ME is just another name for Bitshares Music, which may be
released under a different name, who knows. This refers to a currently in the
works DAC which many members of the community are excited about.
+ Decentralized ITUNES!!!
Besides that.. a general regular expression
> s/bitshares/BitShares/ig
Nice article .. again!
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Me lets you issue customized tokens meaning you can color a coin and make it traceable on the blockchain. Then you as the issuer can guarantee anything to the holders of this coin as a trusted centralized entity.
One way to use the ME technology is Bitshares Music: The artist issues for example "Album # 2 2014" coins which guarantees the holders of this coin for example 10 % of the profit the artist will make from that album. The guarantee is not trustless and not "hardcoded", it is based on the reputation of the artist.
The artist gets two things this way: Fans that have a material incentive to promote the album on social media and among friends (kind of a gamification of being a fan). And the artist gets money / capital to invest into the production of the album, into advertisement etc...
Toast, in which way is Me "social"??
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going to revise this tonight and try to come up with something new as well.
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xeroc, amazing feedback my dear lad!
I have not written about social consensus quite yet, I touched upon it in my airdrop/snapshot article, but haven't much gone into detail about it... it just got added to my list of things to write about. thank you for that.
otherwise, i've tried to incorporate all the feedback from this post into this new draft.
sorry it took so long guys, I think I burnt out there and my brain shut down for a couple days, but all is well, and I have several ideas for new articles brewing. meanwhile... for your approval:
BitShares Demystified!
BitShares X, BitShares XT, BitShares-PTS, BitShares ME, BitShares YOU, BitShares XC, BitShares XF, BitShares Music, BitShares DNS, BitShares Lotto, BitShares, BitShares everywhere ahhhhh!
Actually I made up BitShares YOU, it doesn't exist on paper yet unless you count the rambling upon which you're currently feasting your eyes, but it might someday if somebody decided to make a Decentralized Autonomous Corporation, commonly referred to as a DAC, to emulate the functions of Facebook on a blockchain, or something, and called it that.
You might be asking yourself:
"What are all these BitShares and why should I be interested in them? Should I be scared?"
There's no need to fear! First stumbling upon this community can be daunting for even the most geeky, lingo hardened crypto enthusiast. Step back, take a deep breath, and maybe I can help demystify the purpose of all these BitShares, and clarify the details for you.
BitShares-PTS, formerly referred to as Protoshares before a name change, is the first product that was put out in circulation with the BitShares handle. This is the cryptocurrency you can purchase on Poloniex or Cryptsy, or wherever. It is in just about everyway yet another alt-coin, although in the future it may be upgraded to Delegated Proof of Stake (http://bitshares.org/intro-to-delegated-proof-of-stake/). Nothing too special about it as alt-coins go (until DPOS), but it has a special reason for existing. Holding this coin puts you at risk of making some extra money, this is if you happen to be holding during the snapshot for a Bitshare's community supported DAC honoring the social consensus.
DACs are the brainchild of one Daniel Larimer, ostensibly the person you can blame for all these different projects named BitShares. Daniel, whose adopted the online pseudonym "bytemaster," envisions a whole slew of upcoming uses for the blockchain technology pioneered by anonymous Bitcoin mastermind Satoshi Nakamoto. He was working on this idea for a cryptocurrency that implements the functions of a bank, when he got to thinking, and I'm paraphrasing here, something along the lines of, "You know, a blockchain can be used for much more than just a currency or a bank, it can be used for lots of stuff! This could be the beginning of a whole new business paradigm! Every new use for a blockchain somebody can come up with could represent a profit generating corporation, in and of itself."
So he temporarily dropped what he was doing, and started exploring this idea further. Again, I'm paraphrasing what the bytemaster might have been thinking:
"I can't make ALL these DACs by myself, I need to create a set of tools that people can use to make their own DACs without necessarily having to be ridiculously good programmers, and I need to incentivise a community to rally around this new platform. How can I do that?"
The answer, of course, to the question of how to get a community to rally around this new idea was to pay them!
"Great scott! I could create a crypto-currency, associate it with this toolkit I'm going to invent soon, and tell people that if they hold this crypto-currency they could get paid because I'm going to form a company, funded by venture capitalists, that would act to support and encourage the invention of new DACs and further innovation in this new frontier, and tell the proprietors of these new DACs that if they pay the people who hold this new crypto-currency, then my company will have their back in all kinds of matters! It could be like a new kind of pre-sale!"
At least that's how I like to imagine the guy's thought processes. In reality, each idea probably came along much more slowly, and the whole thing was probably alot more boring, building on itself one step at a time. I'm also picturing it in Christopher Walken's voice, which probably also was not the case, although one can speculate. Nonetheless, fast forward to today and that company is called Invictus Innovations Incorporated, or 3i if you will, the BitShares toolkit exists, and that crypto-currency is called BitShares-PTS.
The idea of incentivising the founders of DACs to pay people who hold that crypto-currency also came to be a reality. It's called the "social consensus," and it asks that new DACs honor the people who had faith in 3i early on by awarding, in each respective DAC's genesis block, ten percent of it's initial shares to holders of PTS, and ten percent to holders of AGS, which stands for Angelshares.
Angelshares were an idea for an additional way to fund this future mega-conglomerate of a company that Larimer was building. As a limited time offer, by donating PTS or BTC to the company, you could get more Angelshares than PTS back, and thus more shares in future DACs, than you would get from just holding PTS alone. That is to say, where one PTS will count as a share in future DACs, one Angelshare will as well, but one PTS (or denomination of Bitcoin) will be worth multiple shares of AGS (http://www1.agsexplorer.com/ags101).
So that's my take on the story of how we got to where we are today. It is late June of 2014 and this party is in full swing, the soon to be released toolkit exists, the Angelshares accounts are funded, and everything is set up for an impending influx of incoming DACs. Bytemaster has resumed work on BitShares X, the soon to be banking and exchange platform which will provide the first example of what a DAC is supposed to look like, establishing the status quo for a social consensus honoring product.
BitShares X actually refers to a chain of personal banking and financial related DACs. If the name of the DAC starts with an X and has another letter after it, that means it's referring to a specific feature within BitShares X, that will be rolled out one at a time. In other words, BitShares X is the all encompassing software, then within it will be different blockchains each with a new feature. The first rollout will be BitShares XT, the first iteration, currently in testing and OMG OH SO CLOSE to being rolled out to the general public, is BitShares XT. The 'T' does not stand for "test," as far as I can tell it's an arbitrarily chosen letter. This string of DACs which comprise BitShares X will use BitShares (no letter after it) as the primary currency. Then as each new feature comes out they will be named with letters like XC, and XF, but they all will be a part of BitShares X.
BitShares ME is going to represent a way for a people to issue personal shares in themselves, similar to how a company might use startup funds from an IPO to kickstart themselves, this technology will make it possible for a person who is able to convince others that they would be a good investment to kickstart whatever it is they're plotting. Such a person may not even need to monetize their plans to make their stock go up, it could be about how the investing public perceives that person's worth to the world.
BitShares Music will use almost the same technology for issuing shares as BitShares ME, but it will be oriented towards musicians, and come with a jukebox tacked on. Bitshare's Music is being spearheaded by a veteran of the music industry so, being in development stll, there may be other ideas included with that platform that we haven't thought about yet.
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+5% very nice article and introduction to the whole ecosystem!
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All eventually to be united under the banner of BitShares X. The first iteration, currently in testing and OMG OH SO CLOSE to being rolled out to the general public, is BitShares XT. The 'T' does not stand for "test," as far as I can tell it's an arbitrarily chosen letter. This string of DACs comprising BitShares X will use BitShares (no letter after it) as the primary currency. It will implement the first few features, including a small number of bitAssets, and the ability to short them.
Just pointing something out. On the main bitshares.org site (see http://bitshares.org/faq/). The :
What is the difference between BitShares X and XT?
BitShares X is a family of DACs based on the decentralized exchange concept. Each one will have its own blockchain and will implement different variations on the core idea. The “T” in BitShares XT stands for “Test”; it is the first DAC in the BitShares X family.
Might need changing..
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appreciate the input-- i'll take another look at that and see if I can't phrase it better.
edit: done.
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You should see if Stan would be interested in turning this into a blog post... I think it would be great. B
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It is now up on the blog in all its glory! BitShares Demystified - http://bitshares.org/blog/ (http://bitshares.org/blog/)