Quote from: arhag on October 12, 2014, 07:07:52 pm

Some features I can think of off the top of my head which I am not sure if they are already in the code yet or will require a future fork:

• Changing votes with BTSX held as collateral in short position.
• Attaching arbitrary(?) length messages in a transaction to another account beyond the small memo field (both encrypted and plain-text versions). Is this still planned?
• Public balances for accounts (although this may already be possible on the blockchain without a fork).

And then there is of course the nearly endless items on my personal wishlist that will either not happen or it will be a long time before they do happen:

• Restructure block headers to implement lightweight client verification.
• Delegate proposals with shareholder ratification where the ratified proposals modify the rules of the DAC. This includes all the wonderful features that come along with it such as: inflation caps, BitAsset yield rate caps, workers, hard-fork proposals, etc.
• Cover short position through a BitAsset market buy order using collateral in short position as payment.
• A fair and monotonic BitAsset yield distribution (linear interest is fine if continuous compounding complicates the implementation too much).
• Automatic conversion of network fees using internal exchanges to get DAC revenue in the form of the BitAsset/BTSX desired for either payment to delegates/workers or payment to BitAsset yields.
• Time-based multisig where spending a transaction requires a 2-of-3 multsig between t0 <= t < t0 + 6 months, and a 1-of-1 sig can be used in addition to the 2-of-3 multisig after t >= t0 + 6 months. This allows for beneficiaries to claim the funds of a deceased benefactor after 6 months of inactivity.
• Allow delegates to take a vacation / retire from their delegate role and take back a percentage of their submitted delegate registration fee (called the surety bond portion), and if they want to go back to being a valid delegate candidate, they need to repost that surety bond. Then, the DAC should allow anyone to submit proof of a double-sign of a block by an active delegate to the blockchain which will automatically ban that delegate and claim the surety bond as revenue for the DAC. This increases the opportunity cost of misbehaving for any active delegate who is tired of being a delegate and wants to quit anyway.
• Separation of private keys to update BTSX votes and transfer BTSX stake. This allows for keeping the vote updating keys on the hot client while keeping the keys controlling the movement of the funds safely in cold storage.
• Implementation of BTSX yield (similar to BitAsset yield) instead of the current buyback mechanism for providing shareholder dividends in order to financially incentivize updates of votes by, for example, withholding yields on BTSX balances that have not moved for over a year. Potentially a 5% inactivity fee on balances that haven't been updated for a year could work as substitute.
• An inactivity fee on BitAssets and BTSX (regardless of the above point) to reclaim value lost due to missing private keys. Lost BitAsset value cannot be claimed by letting the market factor it in (it could only act as a black swan fund). While lost BTSX could be factored in by the market in the price of BTSX, it is better to be 100% sure it is lost by just claiming old inactive funds. I suggest not touching balances with less than 5 years of inactivity, and then claiming 100% of the funds by year 6 starting with 0% claimed at the beginning of year 5 and interpolating linearly with time.
  
• Many more...

Quite the list you have there...

I could add a dozen more hard-fork features...
1) Using BitAssets as collateral for shorts
2) Allowing reverse shorting (BTSX... etc)
3) Allow publishing of price feeds in USD per GLD to reduce update frequency compared to BTSX vs GLD...
4) Ring Signatures like Crypto-Note...

All of that said I think BTSX will gain more from feature stability with perhaps annual updates after massive test nets than it will from rapid addition of features.

Increasing demand for BitUSD is what we need. I'd rather create more volume organically (from people) than just have bots trading it back and forth, though if that helps with stability it can be a good thing.

Quote from: toast on October 08, 2014, 07:47:25 pm

None of the devs have built such a tool yet because we trust ourselves. It is simple to implement in the toolkit right now but then you either have to strip it down until it's small enough to audit (the hard part) or you'd just be trusting us anyway.

No one is questioning you. However I prefer to sign on a machine that is offline. Produce the signature there. Then transfer via USB and then import it. This is the safest.

Even if your software is trusted most people's machines aren't!

With AGS not being liquid this is a big deal.

And I beg you to add this to the code it is relatively easy to do. And should have been the default way to import keys in the toolkit.

Going forward this is a must for BTS DACs

Quote from: Rune on October 07, 2014, 04:49:22 pm

It is very difficult to sell bitUSD in the market engine, there is very low demand. I think the solution to this issue will be the implementation of yield.

The yield is already implemented ... I have received some bitUSD (fractions) with my last transaction ..

So as I see it .. its a opportunity .. isn't it?

Quote from: bytemaster on October 05, 2014, 04:08:31 pm

The goal of this idea is that no dilution occurs unless a user signs up and first buys 1000 bit usd.  Then the dilution is used to purchase bit usd, not sold for real usd. 

As long as the referral program is growing there would be no sell pressure at all. 

If it works the the users who stick around will provide more than enough new inflow of capital.

While I'm not necessarily against issuing more shares to fund marketing (share metaphor vs. coin), I'm against this $100 bonus. It's a complete waste of money and will not lead to the kind of adoption you think it will.

Let's use PayPal's early marketing strategy as a case study.

a) They focused on one marketplace (eBay) to build a real user base.
b) They used bots to simulate demand on eBay.

Here's a summary (source):

Quote

For a period of time, Paypal effectively gained a following by offering new users a $10 credit for registering and another $10 for referrals. However, this strategy also burned through its cash reserves pretty quickly. To separate itself from the competition, Paypal had to build and control a proprietary distribution channel that their competitors could not easily detect, much less duplicate.

When Paypal figured that eBay was their key distribution platform, their marketing team came up with a creative marketing campaign to simulate demand. They created a robot – a script that could spider eBay’s site looking for certain types of auctions – that bid on items and then, insisted on paying for the auction using Paypal.

Here's a quote from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal:

Quote from: Peter Thiel

“Poor distribution, not product, is the number one cause of failure. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished… People say it all the time: this product is so good that it sells itself. This is almost never true. These people are lying, either to themselves, to others, or both. “

If I were in charge of marketing strategy at BitShares, I'd focus on a strategic partnership with OpenBazaar. The only users willing to put up with Bitcoins volatility will be drug related users (because they have no other choice); for OpenBazaar to attract "legitimate" users they need a stable crypto for their merchants and users to transact in. They need BitUSD (or NuBits) just as much as BitShares needs ONE solid distribution channel as a catalyst for organic adoption.

a) Focus on making BitUSD easy for merchants to integrate into pre-existing online marketplaces that currently need the product (i.e. OpenBazaar).

b) Seed the marketplace with BitUSD to kickstart the BitUSD economy.

Whichever stable crypto taps into a popular online marketplace first will gain network effect and spread organically from that point on. This is called a "viral insertion point" and is absolutely critical.

Focusing on attracting a "mainstream" audience (that doesn't even need/care about crypto to begin with) in favor of already existing marketplaces that legitimately need our product will be a fatal error.