The recent posts about NeuCoin and its staking schedule gave me an idea that could help BTS or a BTS competitor. 

NeuCoin is promoting the fact that the company behind it owns 2.5 billion coins that are locked away for 5 years.
NeuCoin is promoting the fact that "staked coins" which are locked up and do not move will dramatically inflate the supply diluting the unstaked coins.

It occurred to me that these are both desirable properties because it encourages people to keep funds in the system and rewards those who hold long term relative to those who hold short term.   The 2.5 billion coins that are locked away for 5 years provide a big incentive for the backing company to make it successful and enables them to raise capital.  These coins are not a threat because most coins are either successful in 5 years or worthless. 

What if a new chain were to share drop 100% on BTS, but only 10% of the share drop was liquid and the other 90% was locked up for 5 years.   Anyone could unlock their remaining 90% for a fee based upon how long they held it.   Suppose you held it for 1 year, you could unlock 20% and pay an 80% fee.   If you held it for 4 years then you could get 80% and pay a 20% fee.   

Under this system no stakeholder would be diluted and the chain would be a 100% share drop.  If everyone held for 5 years then there would be no change in ownership.  Someone looking to cash out early would face less sell pressure (because more people have incentive to hold) and the result would be they would get a better price, but they would be selling a smaller percent of the DAC than if they had waited.   

The question is, should Sparkle (to be launched once BTS hits 1.0) use this approach and would it be considered a 100% share drop?   

The bigger question is what if BTS did the same thing.  At an appointed block issue EVERYONE 9x their current balance in a balance that they can only claim in full if they hold for 5 years.     Those looking to sell BTS after the appointed block would have to ask themselves whether the value of  1% of the new shares today is worth more than 100% of the new shares in 5 years.   2 years from now they would be asking if 40% today is worth more than 100% in 3 years.   Would this be considered an unfair "dilution" or would this be to the benefit of all shareholders who are "long term oriented"?   

In some ways this would be like sucking 90% of the liquidity from existing stakeholders and selling it off at a profit to those who willingly gave up their liquidity. 

I don't think BTS could handle such a change, but I think it is something that new chains may want to consider.

I'm still around and waiting for BTS 1.0 like everyone else.   

It is too much work to do constant integration with their changes.   When they get there I will merge it in and launch.

Quote from: toast on December 18, 2014, 04:25:12 pm

BTW if there were too many complaints it will just go 100% to BM. If you're arguing the allocation you're missing the point

I don't see any complaints yet - discussion. 

PS: Building 33/33/33 14 Dec snapshot allocation you will help Sparkle as well 

I approve and appreciate!

Quote from: sparkles on December 14, 2014, 11:15:35 pm

Actually I said exchange sparks belong to the exchange not to the depositors unless the exchange chooses to do otherwise.

... because you cannot force them to do otherwise (read: the "right" thing) 

Actually as founder I deem the right thing for the exchange to keep them.  I want the exchange to have financial incentive to list sparks so they can potentially sell them.  I want them to have a stake in the success.   I want people to keep funds off of exchanges. 

https://github.com/sparkle5/Sparkle/releases

Alpha 7 has been released with the latest merged from BitShares

Quote from: sparkles on December 13, 2014, 05:12:43 am

Quote from: myhometalk on December 11, 2014, 06:01:33 pm

under current difficulty , it is very hard to find a block .

It seems the difficulty has adjusted properly on its own.    This was a good test.

Is the Sparkle experiment going to continue?  It's caught my eye, at least.

Yes it will continue.  Snapshot in 2 days and then public launch once BTS has a stable version.   Hard forking Sparkle will be much harder than what we saw with BitShares today.

I am about to release another update with the latest BitShares updates merged in so we can continue to test it.

Quote from: bytemaster on December 13, 2014, 04:25:05 am

Aggregate Public Opinion Matters

Whether we like it or not the mob ultimately runs society.  Individual property rights mean nothing in a riot.   If public opinion turns against something nothing can resist it for long, not even the most oppressive governments.  A libertarian utopia is the result of changing public opinion and maintaining public support for universal application of the Golden Principle without exception.     

Unfortunately most people do not form their opinion based upon facts and reason, but instead defer to the opinions of others.  Each and every day people make decisions based upon what they think other people think.   Style, language, morals, religion, politics, and just about everything are heavily influenced by other peoples opinions.   When in doubt most people defer to public opinion over their own opinion and this is the heart of democracy.

Billions of dollars are spent every single year in an effort to shape and then measure the aggregate opinion of the entire population on politics alone.   There is an entire field of study dedicated to the manipulation of pubic opinion for profit.

Some of the more sophisticated techniques of manipulating opinion is by corrupting the measuring and reporting process.   If you can control the major media outlets and continuously show support of a minority opinion over a majority opinion then people will come to believe that the minority opinion is the majority opinion.   This can either be subtle or overt. 

Perhaps one of the most overt attempts to manipulate public opinion is the corruption of “scientific polling” prior to elections or the elections themselves.   As a result of publishing these scientific polls people conclude that some candidates are unelectable while others are extremely popular even if they are not.  If you can manipulate an election then you can change the very constitution of a society while facing limited opposition.

No one likes to be a minority that stands out against the majority.  They will often publicly support the majority opinion even if they privately object.  This creates a self reinforcing cycle that results in the quiet suffering and repression of the majority.

If we are to achieve a libertarian utopia it becomes critical that the market produce an actuate and fully trustworthy measurement of the aggregate opinion.   A private, incorruptible, continuous polling of the population would provide a means for people to feel safe communicating their desire to change the way society operates. 

Fortunately with the combination of the internet and modern cryptography we now have the tools necessary to produce a nearly incorruptible anonymous polling solution.   

Well, I wrote something nice on another thread you just started. On this one, I suppose that if I have nothing nice to say, then maybe I shouldn't say it. But this voting thing lends itself to so many angles of critique. Someday, it may replace elections. That would be an improvement over the current situation, but I think it will take many years. And before then, in order to replace public opinion polling, it will need to offer results that are broken down by demographics and geographic location; without that, it won't be "scientific" in their world, and won't be credible enough to trust or use. I hope this solution includes those features.

Public opinion polls are not evil. If they were manipulated to the point where they were inaccurate (much beyond the margin of error), then those pollsters would be out of jobs. They need to be accurate and scientific. There are some that "push poll" people or frame their questions in marginally dishonest ways, but no one in the political world puts those "polls" on the same level as the truly predictive ones. There are also partisan pollsters, but everyone knows who they are and their stuff is taken with a grain of salt. Surprisingly, once you add that grain of salt, they come out pretty accurate.

Sorry, but I have to knock your argument on one other point. If you think present polls are keeping people from actually voting (if they know the real election won't matter, because the result is clear in advance), then won't this DAC voting solution have the same (dampening the real vote) effect?

Here's how I see it. What sucks about polls is what they DON'T ask, and how they don't follow up or lead to actual solutions. Of course, not, since they are owned and run by the companies who have a vested interest in electing certain politicians who support the policies those companies like. And THAT, I think, is where a better solution could be transformative. It can be broader in terms of reaching people that don't vote. But it also could be much DEEPER than the simple questions asked on these current polls. It could help re-invigorate democracy in a new way.

But I think all of this will take time. In the meantime, can we please get a functioning BTS 1.0 client? Thank you.

Give the man a break, he identified and fixed a major bug in BTS while on travel.   

Bytemaster has already said he doesn't like voting and doesn't want people to vote in real elections.  This is clearly an example where block chain technology solves another problem that we depend upon trust.   Whether they are scientific polls or elections we must trust the source of the data.   Now we don't have to do that any more.