Another point he made was that he was calling this a "share drop" not a "merger",  My understanding of this was that, although "merger" was a usefully descriptive word used early in the discussions, he no longer feels that is the best description of what has evolved from this week's discussions.  He now thinks "share drop" is a better description.  Names matter because they set expectations and assessments of whether one has acted "fair and honorably".
...

Suppose BM, in his new role of single DAC developer, wanted to honor the existing community with a new revolutionary DAC concept, BTS.  Using the previously established consensus he decides to honor the existing community this way:

10% AGS
10% PTS
80% BTSX

Thanks for that perspective Stan. Perhaps I missed it but I didn't hear him refer to the rebranding / reorg as a sharedrop, and I listened to it twice.

It really doesn't help me, as I'm still not sure I understand the whole sharedrop (airdrop?) concept. If you read my post you would see the percentages in your post are not a sufficient explanation, at least to me. I still consider myself new here, but keep in mind there are many shareholders that know even less about the bitshares ecosystem than I do.

Will all of the existing blockchains, such as DNS continue to exist after Nov 5th, or will some be "absorbed" into BTS? If some will cease to exist the sharedrop metaphor wouldn't apply to them, right? And will any of them become apps on the BTS blockchain? If so sharedrop wouldn't apply to them either, right?

The best way to explain it would be with examples of specific holdings of each existing item (AGS, PTS, DNS, BTSX ...) and how many BTS shares those holdings will become after Nov. 5th. Of course you will need to use hypothetical values for market cap etc, but it's easy to plug in real values to see what position you'll end up with. It may be complicated to provide such examples but you can't get easier to follow than that.

For me personally I only own BTSX, so I just need to hear if the number of shares will change and by how much. I read one post that said BTSX--> BTS is 1:1 since it's just a rename of the same old blockchain.

Examples with numbers should clear up any confusion that anyone might have.

I think many will just wait for all this discussion to settle down and look for a more definitive, official statement later.

Why are you talking about getting in bed with government?

About the only thing I can agree with you luckybit is the need to ditch the "corporate" moniker.

I understand why you seek legality in the eyes of gov & status quo institutions, but you're barking up the wrong tree and missing the fundamentals. Government is force and it plays one group off against another. It only knows winners and losers. Lets look forward to a new perspective where we're all winners. Lets make our own rules and show everyone how we can all be winners working cooperatively, together.

Fuck the corrupt legal system, fuck the banksters! If that means our growth is slower so be it. When the heavy hand of corrupt institutions get unbearable BTS will be the safe haven the oppressed will look for. Let's be here unfettered and untainted by any rules of the status quo game when they come.

I tried to post this a few hours ago but the forum was offline.

On 10/18/2014 bytemaster started this thread: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10148.msg132495#msg132495 relating his initial proposal for a merger. Two days later Ander started this thread: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10214.msg133796#msg133796 to summarize the merger discussion as of 10/22/2014.

At the end of the mumble session today I offered to document what I perceive is the majority consensus on some of the issues, but it is by no means a comprehensive summary of all of the points discussed in the session. Gamey always does an excellent job of that. My primary objective is to help document what appears to be points of consensus concerning the proposed merger. Upon reflection and a second listen of the entire session, I don't believe I have much of a consensus to document. Nevertheless, perhaps this post may help clarify some points for someone.

Translation of Existing Stakes Into BTS Shares

From what I have seen in the forums this week, the issues around what position each stakeholder of [AGS | BTSX | DNS | PTS | VOTE | MUSIC | etc.] will have in the new BTS ecosystem constitutes the majority of the contention and concern. No surprise there.

I was quite surprised however that no discussion of this took place in the mumble session. My personal take, given the large number of forum posts discussing this is:

• Either the majority of the community is satisfied and thus has reached a consensus
• None of those dissatisfied were present in the mumble session
• Those who were dissatisfied and present chose not to raise their concerns

As I think through the issues I read on the forum, I realize there are several aspects of the merger besides how a given stake will transform into BTS shares, such as how PTS will vest in BTS over time, will those vehicles continue to exist after the merger and how will they be represented on the exchanges, what market caps will be used to calculate investment values and issues about liquidity.

Since none of this was discussed at all in the mumble session, I tried to go back through the forum posts to come up with a concise position transformation formula, but I cannot, there is too many discussions and too many elements to factor in, at least for me.

Although much discussion was posted about the relative portions of AGS, BTSX, DNS & PTS etc to BTS It's not exactly clear to me when I see a statement like "7% AGS, 7% PTS, 3% VOTE, 3% DNS and 80% BTSX" what that even means. Percentage of what? If I have 1000 shares of PTS does that mean I get 70 shares of BTS? Is it a percentage of each funds market cap or of BTSX's market cap? It's very difficult to understand these discussions when so many elements are assumed or scattered on different threads.

Bytemaster was asked if DNS would be the same after the merger or if it would be a bitAsset. He said BTS would allow auctioning the domain names for bitUSD, but did not know the auction specifics.

Bytemaster also stated that PTS and AGS would not end but will continue on; they are not bought out or retired, contrary to his original proposal. Though PTS and AGS will continue to exist, he will no longer have any interest in them to divide his time and loyalties. But when asked if AGS would only be used for BTS "because they were bought out", he said yes. He also said that it's up to the shareholders of Music or Vote or other DAC team to decide whether to be a part of BTS or operate on their own separate blockchain, it wasn't his decision to make.

A summary of the current proposal should be stated for each of the entities in this ecosystem without ambiguity. Issues such as the vesting schedule and market cap should also be stated. But you'll have to wait for someone more capable than I at summarizing the forum discussions. When I asked Bytemaster  when a more formal merger description would be forthcoming he tentatively said next week.

Chinese Community

There was considerable time given to address issues from the Chinese community, as well as discussion about marketing efforts to them. Concerns were raised that individual efforts from the Chinese community were not being recognized or compensated. Bytemaster said he trusts in Bo Chen but would like to see more transparency and disclosure of how the funds he has provided are being spent.

It was stated early on in the session that we should all be aware of the language barrier and difficulty the Chinese community has in participating in the session, and to make an effort to speak more slowly. There were several people present helping with the translation in real time.

Some questions were posed by the Chinese community about the metrics for evaluating performance. Bytemaster responded by discussing what Brian Page was working on and the difficult position he is in. He related how pleased he is about the new, unified BTS and how Brian had been asking for it for quite awhile now. He said Brian's pay and that of the entire marketing staff are dependent on market cap growth, as it doubles.

They would get 10 - 20 million BTS shares if they are able to bring BTS' market cap up to match bitcoin's.
Bytemaster was asked about the model of how new developers would be added. He responded by saying anyone wishing to become a BTS developer should demonstrate their value, how they will work with the team by fixing bugs or implementing new features.  He feels it would be bad to hire someone with unproven skills.

The BTS Roadmap

After the merger a BTS marketing push slated for this December with a rebranded client, everything merged in with their vesting stake a working voting application or voting booth. IN early 2015 "KeyGraph" will be an important focus (aimed at vote validation / certification). After that the long term plan is to create a scripting app to compete with Etherium. The goal is to be able to create any other DACs without the need for continual hard forks. After that the focus will become specific appliations such as auctions and others TBA.

BTS DAC Structure

A number of questions related to the company structure and accountability to shareholders were raised, and bytemaster responded by saying the future direction would be to migrate developers into elected delegate positions and have their work rewarded by that model as opposed to being paid through I3. He emphasized that AGS funds would be invested into the growth of the BTS "superDAC" and it's staff.
When asked about revealing individual staff member pay bytemaster said they have avoided doing that to protect privacy, but salaries as a group will continue to be reported for I3.  Bytemaster said that tying delegate pay to bitUSD would be very complicated.

I have been active here on the forum for only about 2 months now, and I've spent most of my time in the general discussion / newbie sections. The top level hierarchy proposed sounds good to me, but it might be good to look at the existing general discussion and determine if there is a better set of child forums under it.

This forum is an absolutely huge effort to stay on top of.

Gift shares to another blockchain using the same keys.
http://bitshares.org/bitshares-airdrop-theory/

Sorry to inject this side discussion. Reading that article quickly exposes my newbie status. You said in it:

Just take a snapshot of the account balances in their block chain and use the same public keys for their corresponding accounts in your block chain.

What if the public keys of their blockchain (by chance) already exist on your blockchain for some other user? Why could that not happen? I mean how can such a collision of random numbers be assured not to occur?

I dream of a day where the forum feels less like an episode of The View and more like the start of an emerging technology.

+100%

Quote from: Brent.Allsop on October 23, 2014, 03:17:07 pm

OK, we've thrown up a first stab at a start of a consensus building survey topic on this bitshares merger proposal at Canonizer.com titled: " BTS Dilution / Merger Survey":

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/160

I've started by splitting the general, "should BtsX ever be diluted" at the most important level, as that seems to be the most important and fundamental issue of disagreement.  We plan to create a sub camp of the "Rarely Delute" camp representing the state of the art of the leading consensus camp of exactly what, how, and when... it will be done.  Now we need someone to provide a concise description of their view of the state of the art of what is being or what should be proposed so we can start building and tracking how much consensus, we can achieve for this and all competing proposals.

As always, this is just the first draft stab at a consensus building survey topic.  Anything can change at any time by anyone.  Hopefully people will see a better way of doing things and help make the improvements in a wiki way.  Lots of small contributions and people joining camps are what will make this great and amplify everyone's wisdom on what is the best thing to do.  If a camp representing what you believe is already there, sign and join it to help it along.  If your exact view isn't yet included, please help to get that view started, so others can start building expert consensus around the best ideas.

With all due respect, I'm not sure all forum members would be comfortable signing up for an account on your site first, not fully understanding the Mormon Transhumanist Association. With polls, etc., people like to remain anonymous. If you want wider participation, you might want to give assurances that people are remaining anonymous and aren't joining some list.