We got great coverage about our Prediction Market feature.... and that is bad thing, because our prediction market is terrible.


Our core developer spent 20 minutes describing how this works... and as people say in youtube coments:


This is obvious that no one would spent this amount of time to investigate how this works... and if someone will not be sure, simply will be too afraid to use it.

Amanda also didn't decide create her own prediction market smartcion... i guess... mostly because of price. I am sure, that if that would cost her only let say 100 BTS, she would create that asset.

My thoughts:

- short selling is too complicated for average Joe. I would like to just have to buttons - [BET A] or [BET not A]
- prediction smartcoins should be cheaper. Why? Because very often they will be live only... for example one week (because next football match is in next sunday). Right now there is no way to reuse those smartcoins after they are "decided".

Having "feature" like that makes us more harm than profit. Don't believe me? Go to youtube and read people comments.

I am not writing this because I want to complain. I am writing this because I believe that together we can design better look and feel for that feature.

I have created a short video with announcement, that I would like to find some people who could help me perform some Usability Tests of Bitshares... and in return I have offered exactly the same... that I can test other projects, and be recorded

If you have account on reddit, please upvote this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/4994f5/i_am_looking_for_people_who_could_help_me_perform/

I created this thread on forum, because I would like to post here all tests which I will perform.

I hope, that will help us design better Bitshares User Experience

I hope, that concept of sidechain already took your attention. It seems that there are numerous of ways to implement that, but none of them is significantly better than other. I would like to introduce my idea of sidechain implementation. I am sure that it is not perfect. To be honest I will be surprised if nobody be able find a "no go" security reason for this approach because I am not an expert.

Nevertheless, I decided to spent some time to describe my idea in details. Maybe this will build some new perspective and will help figure out even better solution.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xl5EtlybVahh631b6OO-RK0fpLRV97s75WjFD308BJ4/edit?usp=sharing

Cheers!

On Feb 29th the first Bithsares Liquidity Event took place.

I decided to create that thread, because I am an enthusiast of Agile Development what means... that I prefer develop things in small steps, next gather feedback to perform better in next iteration.

Personally I think, that 1st Liquidity Event can be considered as Minimum Viable Product which proved that we as a community can organize such things.

In the other hand, this event for sure was not perfect. We should think about what went wrong... and what went well.

That's why am asking you for feedback. Let's use a "MADs, SADs, GLADs" convention:



The goal of this thread is to define Action Points (AP) which will be applied in next iterations... in 2nd, 3rd, etc. Liquidity Events.

So... let me start:

I am GLAD that whole event was not a total failure
I am GLAD that many people participated in that event
I am GLAD that LE was unexpectedly amazingly promoted via TheDailyDecrypt (LE was mentioned in 5 episodes - details) - Thank you Amanda @TheDailyDecrypt
I am GLAD that there are people who cares about future of bitshares like @onceuponatime and @ccedk who funded 4 weeks of TheDailyDecrypt sponsorship from own pocket, and @JonnyBitcoin who helped coordinate that
I am GLAD that we still have liquidity on https://bitshares.openledger.info/#/market/BTC_USD !!!

I am SAD that so little people twitted about LE, or upvoted an information about LE on https://www.reddit.com/r/bitshares/
I am SAD that I was forced to prepare LE poster by myself... because no one prepared anything before scheduled deadline (14 Feb)... even despite the fact that I have planned to donate 5000 BTS for that, plus @onceuponatime wanted donate 4000 BTS. To be honest... I am still in shock that no one decide send anything.
I am SAD that I was confused... because on 21 Feb (after deadline, and after my poster was already send to Amanda) @cass also prepared amazing graphics. However because that was already after scheduled deadline and because I already prepared and publish myself, I didn't sent him anything. I have now some mixed feelings
I am SAD that I didn't know where else we should send information about LE (I had a problem to find a proper list of blogs and contacts to authors)

I am MAD at myself... because I should be better prepared from technical point of view for hangout which took place on 02-19... because when people asked about Liquidity Event details, then I started talking... and then... I lost my Internet connection (facepalm)... BTW... I realised that after... 3-4 minutes of my monolog
I am MAD at myself... because I had a plan to prepare some kind of instruction for newbies how to trade or borrow BTC/USD. I have started working on this... but I started too late, and I realised that I will not be able to finish that on time. It would be better if I just prepared some text instruction at least.

My thoughs and proposition of Action Points:

- Sponsorship of DailyDecrypt or similar media should not be made from private pockets. We have mechanism of worker proposals for that. And it would be great to have some kind of similar exposure to any media during next LE. Should we always ask onceuponatime or ccedk for money? No!

AP: for next LE prepare a Worker Proposal, to ask for some small amount of money for promotion.
- Who can take care about that next time? Personally I don't know how to create such worker proposal.

AP: Prepare text or video tutorial for newbies how to participate in next event
- this same here... any volunteer?

AP: We should collaborate and create list of email addresses to various authors of blogs, to which we could send some brief information with small media pack (posters, logos, etc)
- I guess.. this list should not be public, because then it will become a spam list. Any idea how we could prepare that?

In my opinion community is the most important thing for each cryptocurrency. When new user approach bitshares first time for sure he or she has a lot of questions.

Right now there are 6 IM communication channels (which I am aware of) used by community:

• chat on forum: http://bitsharestalk.org/chat/
• Mumble: https://beyondbitcoin.org/mumbleinfo/
• Telegram: https://telegram.me/joinchat/BYoMpwH95HL-crZbLpMiAA
• brand new Slack channel: http://slack.bitshares.org/
• cryptonomex dev Slack channel: https://graphn.slack.com
• new service developed by cryptofresh: https://cryptofresh.com/posts

and... a lot of people thinks that we need another one: trollbox in wallet

As you can guess... this bring a lot of dilution for our community. In new user's eyes we may seem to be very small group of people... which is simply not true!

Each mentioned communication channel was created for a reason. Some of them for sure will not be removed because of unique technical features, like Mumble which is audio conference tool not just simple IM.

What we need is Strategy. Here are few my propositions:

• we should have main communication channel promoted by whole community. In my opinion the main candidate should be brand new http://slack.bitshares.org/. IM on official subdomain looks very elegant.
• we should remove link to chat on forum (http://bitsharestalk.org/chat/) from forum's header. I never seen anyone there. In my opinion it is completely abandon. We should replace link to chat with link to http://slack.bitshares.org/
• I think we should think about building trollbox on top blockchain (bitshares blockchain... or some helper-blockchain). If I understand correctly (CC: @roadscape), https://cryptofresh.com/posts already works that way. In that case that should be easy to integrate with wallet. Why we need trollbox? IMO trollbox is a tool for traders, concentrated on what is going right now on the market.
  
• if we choose slack.bitshares.org as main communication channel, we should abandon Telegram
• Dev chat is another thing. Of course I understand that Cryptonomex may need own inner communication chanel. FYI right now https://graphn.slack.com requires invitation. But Bitshares needs own public channel for developers. In my opinion #dev channel on http://slack.bitshares.org/. It would be great if all cryptonomex employees involved in Bitshares project join that channel as well. They should be available to community.
• Slack is not an alternative to Mumble, however we should somehow link one with another. Before each official hangout there should be send reminder about that on main #bitshares channel. In that way, more peaple will notice it.

So in the end, we should have three communication channels:
* slack
* mumble for audio conferences
* trollbox based on blockchain

When you will ask Americans which currency is the most stable for them, they will answer - USD
When you will ask Chinese which currency is the most stable for them, they will answer - CNY

This is obvious, right?

So why we are selling and buying things here with BTS? This thread is of course related to @tonyk 's thread: bitSHARES - As True Shares and Not a Currency!

When I came to bitshares, I was convinced, that bitshares has great value for companies, because there is no risk at all, when you use it as derivative asset. This is great explained here:

https://youtu.be/pbX4nt2UKP4?t=6m55s

So... the question is, why we pay witnesses with BTS? We should ask each of them which bitAsset they prefer and give them exactly so many bitUSD/bitCNY which they need to cover their expenses - electricity, server, etc. This have different cost in different parts of the world, so why we are paying every witness exactly the same? If there are two subcontractors which can do exactly the same thing (read this closely exactly... I mean, by price, certainty, quality, downtime server, etc), we should always pick the cheapest one. In most cases big difference in price for specific service comes not from the different quality of service/product (we can always find products/service with the same quality), but from cost of developing them in specific local market. - this may seem to be controversial, but you... should think like shareholders!

Back to the witnesses, our employees should not be worried whether next month price of bitshares will cover their expenses or not.

In general, this exactly the same with all offers in our internal Market on forum - https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/board,7.0.html. They all should be in bitUSD, bitEUR, bitCNY, etc!

I also made this same mistake, when I have announced, that I will give someone 5000BTS for the best Liquidity Event poster. When I came up with this idea wondered, whether I am able to spend ~$20 for that. And right now this offer is worth $21.375. I took completely unnecessary risk.

We should try to switch to this kind of thinking. Stable assets are our greates product, so we should use them, and stop using BTS for transaction now! We do not need new implementation of bitshares as pure shares, to achieve that.

From now, I will remind people about that, every time when they will offer anyone any BTS. @fuzzy I truly believe that actually your http://sharebits.io/ should not allow send anything other than bitAssets.

Did you heard about Brave Browser? No?

Here you have: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/267089/new-browser-offers-brave-solution-to-ad-blocking.html

this is browser created by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, which integrate bitoins to it.

I have just created an ticket in their github (I hope, that this is the right place, and they will notice it).

https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/682

Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster) - lead developer of cryptonomex lately proposed an idea of new way of charging fees in the bitshares network. Briefly... bitshares can be a fee-less blockchain, allowing for truly micropayments.

In first poll [91,5% of bitshares community](https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21359.0.html) support this idea, what means that probably in near future this will be implemented.

I believe that cooperation of brave and bitshares can introduce a lot of new possibilities. People could not only send fractions of bitcoins, but actually fractions of stable bitAssets like bitUSD or bitCNY.

Moreover, sites could giveaway custom tokens (which are very easy to create on bitshares) to their readers/users, which can act like shares of blog/site/service. In that way, owner of the website can not only offer a ads free service for tiny price, but also a revenue from profits of website/blog.

It would be great deal in the future, to trade "RedditSupporter" asset for a discount buying a airplane ticket on Hipmunk.com (both services were created by A. Ohanian). Possibilities are endless

What do you think about this idea? I wrote an ticket, but maybe direct approach by @bytemaster could be better.