The solution is not about limiting ideas or the channel where the ideas flow. There are great values in transparency and the free-flow of ideas. Rather it should be how the ideas are to be taken up by the sharesholders. We need a way for the sharesholders to VOTE on those ideas. If the shareholders VOTE for the ideas, they will have no reason to panic or sell bts as a way to 'vote with their legs'.
- Client voting proposals so we hear from the larger holders, not just those that have time to hang out around the forums.
Fuzz, you may be right this ability is another year out, but IMO it's a year overdue. If the whole point of this DPoS ecosystem is to empower the shareholders this should have been a high priority to implement early. The fact it's still not considered important is clear testimony to how comfortable "the leaders" are with being in control. For all the "talk" about principles and giving people a voice thru "honest voting" why is it we don't have this extremely important functionality for our very own community?
It's a matter of resource management while in the early stages. Which would you rather have, a stable client or proposal voting? An unuseable product would render us voting over how to best use a pile of ashes. What is it that people want to vote on anyway? I've not seen any proposals considered urgent other than the proposal to be able to vote on proposals, which I agree is needed in the future. It will be vital for the governance of the DAC. But people seem to want to have a say just for the sake of having say, without actually having anything to say. If you can tell me which development branch you would axe in order to develop proposal voting I am all ears.
What we should be aiming for is the success of the project, that is BitShares BTS, for the sake of bringing financial freedom to the world and enriching those who believe in it enough to invest in it. Handing over full power to the shareholders with proposal voting may be a beautiful principle, and inevitable, but it's worthless if it doesn't result in success of the project and could even be harmful if done in a rush or with the sacrifice of other vital features.
Having said all this I am not a developer and don't know if implementing proposal voting in a useable way is even very difficult. Toast demonstrated it can already be done in a primitive way by starting up 0% delegates. However, the full client is still very slow for many people so you can't have a representative proposal vote anyway without increased client usability, backing up my argument that basic functionality must continue to be improved first.
If a dev wanted to step in now and say 'actually, we can get it done to a reasonable standard in a week', then that is great. But these things have a way of taking far longer than anyone estimates, and we know it will take months for the full client to be very stable and useable for everyone. We cannot afford delays. Also proposals ideally need to be voted on anonymously as some may be controversial and I
know that is a not an easy feature to develop. We can still vote for delegates to get paid via dilution. That's a pretty big innovation right there, let's not forget the power we have already been given.
I'm always open to rational argument and could change my mind. Cube's argument of investors 'voting with their legs' if this feature isn't implemented is compelling. What makes it difficult is that I envision a very large overhaul being needed, rather than quick and messy proposal vote system being slapped together without anonymity and without access to all voters due full client usability problems (which are improving but still have a fair distance to go). This makes me think more time is needed before this becomes top priority.