The client .. and all transactions are currently based on TITAN. In TITAN you do not send your funds to an address but you generate a stealth address everytime you send funds to an account. Theses sealth addresses have the purpose to anonymize transactions and hide yuor balance from other users. But in order for you to access the funds, the stealth  addresse have to be generated in a very particular (mathematical) way and thus use YOUR public key to derive the stealth address ..
All stealth addresses that are derived from your public key can be accessed by your private key (taht corresponds to the public key) ... however the public keys are ugly and longer than bitcoin addresses ... so what you do in TITAN is you register an (almost) arbitrary name with a public key on the blockchain ..
if you want to send funds to a name .. the client crawls the blockchain and searched the registration of the name, gets the public key (much like domain lookup), generates the stealth address and send the funds to a newly generated address ..

In theory you can also send funds to the address that corresponds to the public key .. however the client does not have a call for that .. the devs want to hide addresses completly from the users as they are solely used by TITAN ..

I'm restating this in a different way just to make sure I understand. Let me know if it's wrong somehow.

1. I register "MyAccount" as a name
2. I request bitshares from "YourAccount"
3. YourAccount sends bitshares to MyAccount
4. TITAN figures out where MyAccount is and generates a dynamic address to send the funds.
5. The funds magically appear, but only "...sfds756a4asd7f65asdf..." or whatever shows up in the block chain.

One question about step 4: How is there anonymity if there is a record of the account name registration stored on the block chain? Is it not possible to find those registration points and then crawl the blockchain for all addresses afterward that correspond to that public key?

I sort of checked out of the Protoshares universe in January because of some personal stuff.  Since then there have been a lot of changes.  Now my PTS are converted over to Bitshares-PS, BitsharesX is installed, and I've bought some BTSX at bter.  I guess the PTS will turn into some number of BTS at some later date...but I'm not sure how that will happen. (How will that happen, actually?)

All this has been done, admittedly not entirely wrapping my head around all the concepts yet. So I have two questions:

1. Why would someone want to 'register' his account on the blockchain? Is this just for convenience, or for some other reason?

2. What is a 'delegate', and why would someone want to make her account one?

I've read some explanations, but clearer ones would be appreciated.  If I wrap my head around this more fully, I can probably help with explaining this to an equally confused public.

Quote from: Gekko on December 03, 2013, 11:13:08 am

I have a comprehension question:

Let's say I have 10 ProtoShares.

In a few weeks/months/years there are 10/100/1000 different DACs.

What will be my "share" of every DAC?
Will I have 10 "BitShares" in each of the 10/100/1000 DACs (and in every future DAC) just by holding my 10 PTS?
Will my 10 PTS be converted into 10 BTS for every DAC?

If so:
If I hold 10 PTS until there are 100 DACs and I thereby have 10 BTS in each of those 100 DACS - and then I sell 5 of my PTS.
Will I have 5 BTS in every DAC created after the 100 DACs and keep the 10 BTS in each of the first 100 DACs?

If so:
selling PTS - ever - would be a no-go, wouldn't it?
As PTS are "all-purpose" and there will be only about 2 million PTS - their price MUST skyrocket if DACs will be successful?
BTS instead are not "all-purpose", you can buy them (you can mine them?) but only put them into a chosen DAC "once" and they are "gone" (into that DAC), until you pull them out of that DAC und put them into another DAC right?

By George, I think he's got it!   

ProtoShares are an investment in an entire DAC product line - perhaps an entire DAC industry.

I'm wondering about the example numbers in his post.  I get the concepts...but is it accurate to say that one protoshare is going to equal one bitshare in every DAC, or is this going to be some ratio that fluctuates on a case-by-case basis?

Question two: to keep the 1:1 simplicity...my 100 PTS means i have 100 bitshares in DAC XYZ. So then I sell 25 PTS. Does that also sell the 25 bitshares in DAC XYZ, or are those two entities separate? (editing this to say it looks like this question he had already addressed in his post above)