http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2016/01/21/why-microsofts-blockchain-service-has-20-companies.html

Using products like Consensys is proving so popular that Microsoft now has 20 other partners waiting to have their blockchain products admitted to the Azure platform.
To meet the demand, Microsoft currently, employs three full-time people at the Times Square office where the project is being managed, labs and showcases are hosted, and partners and customers can gather.

Announcing ENS: Decentralized ICANN for Ethereum registry top level namespaces controlled by the ENS token. DEVCON livestream announcement begins when this post is 45 mins old. First public spec proposal on Github.
 
https://blog.makerdao.com/2015/11/11/announcing-ens-decentralized-icann-for-ethereum-registry-top-level-namespaces/
http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3setdx/announcing_ens_decentralized_icann_for_ethereum/

Why is follow my vote transferring their money to polonieux?  I'm not jumping to conclusions, but they have no more bts left.  Have they been selling downward to pay for expenses?  Or are they now short bts?

follow-my-vote sent 1,000,000 BTS to poloniexwallet     27 minutes ago

We seem to be fussing about the migrated Bitusd market, which is very low in liquidity right now. If I recall correctly, this migrated market doesn't even have 24h forced settlement.  Would a user created asset have a 24h forced settlement?   WE should be using the full features of BTS 2.0... not sticking to BTS 1.0....

This would get around the problem of the SPQ that is squeezing out all the shorts.  And I incorrect here? 

We should find a group of people to make APPL, GOOG, VIX, SPY, etc, using this 24h forced settlement.  Not this bts 1.0 bitusd....

This would dramatically help with the issues of low thin liquidity we are facing now.  Does anybody know how to enable this?  Is there a step-by-step guide?

http://www.coindesk.com/fincen-rules-commodity-backed-token-services-are-money-transmitters/

Wow I actually believed Stan when he said there would be announcements every week until the end of the summer.  Remember until they go to sleep.  It turns out nothing this week.  And last week itself was a non-annoucenment since we already knew about it long ago.  So far the announcements have been underwhelming.  Nothing really says game changing.  And we don't even know what one announcement will do, and this one #4 will occupy yet another annoucenemnt spot at the end of the month.  What happened to all those secret memos and partnerships that Stan couldn't tell us about in his previous weekly updates?


All of this only makes me think how a bit hyperboled up bitshares 2.0 has been.  Can they deliver on time and effectively?  Should we now start questioning the intent the business leaders when they say something?  I think this is constructive criticism if not a good example that I wanted to bring this up with the community because I know I am not the only one who feels slighted if not entirely frustrated. 

The 1 Year vesting period for referral fees strikes me as something that could be a dealbreaker for a lot of inquiring companies.  Its a very long time length to prove a business model that might not even work.  And for that one year, its wasted savings that is just sitting , while it could be reinvested elsewhere or put to work.  Most importantly, this long vesting period will hurt smaller, startup type firms who would want fees as quickly as possible to reinvest into their business.

Now I understand the need for the investing period to prevent attacks.  I'm just not convinced it will work out as expected because of this one-year vesting period.  Now for the solution:

Its certainly possible for these referral members to set up a UIA that will source money from the public.  They could offer at a 95% reduction.  So a normal user could pay 95 BTS and within one year get 100 BTS out of the referral member's pool.  Of course, the referral member would never offer more UIA than he has in his fee reserves.  Effectively it will function as a bond.

The one thing I think the dev team could do better to assist the transaction, is make that special reserve acct linked to the UIA.  So at the end of the vesting period, the vested BTS will go directly to the purchaser and not the referral member.  This would alleviate cpty concerns and bring more trust into the system as a whole.  Once then this referral system will really have one to boot! 

Any thoughts?