Idea 1:             Bitcointalk Announcement thread

A strong well supported announcement thread in the Announcements sections - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0
 
The main market of people looking to spend BTC on something pre-launch frequent that section. We should make a great announcement there imo.

It moves at a mile a minute so it needs to be well supported and we all need to get behind it and respond at the start for it to gain traction.


Idea 2:                 NameCoin Marketing

NameCoin holders are the second key target market. Presumably people holding NameCoin are doing so because they want access to something like what BitDNS will start delivering in less than a month.

A) Start a soft thread on their forums -'BitDNS, NameCoin alternative launching end Aug discussion'

B) Mystery Sharedrops - Fee Fi Fo fum, I dislike sharedrops, but if we should sharedrop to anyone that would likely be buyers it should mostly be to NameCoin imo.

C) BTCE trollbox, 80% of NMC volume is @ BTCE, they have a trollbox good idea if you have an account there to mention/promote BitDNS to the traders and direct them  to snapshot announcement.


Idea 3:                Change BitShares-PTS on coinmarketcap to PTS (BitDNS 21/08)   (Crazy Idea)

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6712.msg89060#msg89060
 

Crazy idea - Change 'BitShares-PTS' on Coinmarkecap when it is 'snapshot hot'

From now until the BitDNS snapshot date. What about changing 'BitShares-PTS' to 'PTS (BitDNS21/08)' on Coinmarketcap.com till the snapshot date. (or whatever DNS DAC will be called)

(Also change the link when on coinmarketcap.com so that when you click on PTS it takes you to the snapshot announcement during the period PTS is 'snapshot hot' 

My thinking - BitShares-PTS serves no other purpose than being a vessel for snapshots, so altering it  on coinmarketcap.com when it is 'snapshot hot' is brand positive imo & also helps people understand what BitShares-PTS does in general.

CoinMarketCap is ranked 3000th in the US (FAR FAR higher than any of BitShares related sites) This is the perfect place for a prime time billboard advertising a snapshot. (Even if we have to pay CMC for hassle of changing it.) 

Thoughts?

I've read some of the threads, apologies if  this has been covered or not do-able just giving my ideas & my thinking behind them.
 
1. A 10% Auction system.
2. A minimum opening bid which decreases each month
3. Current top 10 000 valued ICANN domains have higher minimum opening bids which decrease each month
4. 0.5% Renewal fee auction every one or two years.

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1. A 10% Auction System

I really like the .p2p auction system in general to incentivise people to bid a domain up to somewhere near it's current value. I also think it is exciting and interesting, this is something people will want to take part it in!
As for the auction system described in the OP, I think it's fine.  But what's wrong with with a very simple to explain system?


To start an auction you must offer the minimum required opening bid. 
Another bidder must offer at least 10% more.
If there is another bidder you get 1/2 of the difference between his bid and your bid and 1/2 is dividends for shareholders. 
This means you will make a minimum of 5% return if someone bids higher than you.
If no-one else bids you will own that domain.

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2.     The Minimum opening bid (decreases over time.)

Problem: It is likely domain names will be undersold and most of the good & valuable names taken via a land grab by initial shareholders in the first two months. 

(This is bad as we get a lower price as shareholders and I think it's very important in order to increase adoption that people both want to join as quick as possible but also don't feel like they've missed the party and that all the good names have been taken in the first two months.)

Possible Solution: A minimum required opening bid that decreases over time.

Price fixing is good imo. Most sellers of product start high and over the course of a season (or a day in fresh produce) the price drops - to avoid underselling yourself at the start

In month 1 the minimum opening bid is say circa $10-20 and it decreases by $1/2 a month until it reaches $1 in month 12. (I know we don't have BitUSD just a general concept/idea.)

This decreasing minimum opening bid stops the bulk of good domain names being undersold in the first few months when DAC participation is low.

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3. The Current top 10 000 ICANN valued domain names

A bit more out there...

Problem: Even with no.2, all the most popular domain names will be undersold and most of the good names taken via a land grab by early adopters.. (Sex.p2p, Casino.p2p, Apple.p2p, Nike.p2p, 888.p2p  etc.)
It will feel unfair that initial shareholders have taken all the best names. It also removes a lot of potential excitement and interest from the DAC imo.

If you think of DNS shareholders as native Indians and domain buyers as settlers of the New World, even with an auction system, we would do better rather than auctioning the best land to the first 100 settlers, at least waiting for a few more thousand settlers to arrive on ships before we sell the best land.

Possible Solution: We already have an idea from existing domain systems which domain names are likely to be more popular & valuable so why not reference valuation sites to derive a minimum opening bid for them?

Before the DAC starts we input the current 10 000 most valuable domain names into the system. (The minimum opening bid for a top 10 000 domain is it's $ value on the DAC start date divided by 10 000 with a 25% monthly drop.  (I know we don't have BitUSD, just a general idea.)

Example:

Nike.com is valued at $11 Million so it would cost $1100 to open the bidding on Nike.p2p in month no.1 of the BitShares DNS DAC! This sounds expensive right? It is! But by month 12 it would only be a $35 minimum bid.

This will stop an unfair situation where all the most valuable & popular names are taken in the first few months. This will be great for the perceived fairness of the DAC and I think it will create a lot more excitement and interest. Watching and seeing some of the most popular domain names come down in minimum opening bid price and wondering when people are going to grab them & taking part in the auctions. It could also give time for the actual companies that currently own them to take notice. (If they all were all auctioned  in the first month it would be pretty bad imo.) 
 
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4. Renewal fee Auction

Problem: Domains are worth vastly different prices at different times & the DAC also has a long term sustainability problem. 

Possible Solution: A renewal fee that takes into account the domains current value.

Even including something like ideas no.2 & no.3 above, in a couple of years the majority of the good names will have been sold and the value of the DAC will decline unless there is a renewal fee which extracts a fee from domain names that is somehow related to their current value. (It would also be a small deterrent or a tax on squatters if they could be forced to pay a higher renewal fee for a popular domain.)

Renewal fee auction - Every one or two years there is a renewal fee auction. If there are no bids in the auction the site owner pays the minimum renewal fee. If there are bids, the site owner only has to pay 0.5% (maybe higher?) of the highest bid (within 30 days) to retain his site for another 1/2 years or he loses it to the highest bidder.

Example:

I bid $10 000 for Nike.p2p so the owner must pay a $50 renewal fee to keep it for another 1/2 years or I get it for $10k (The final bidder gets 50% of the renewal fee and 50% goes to dividends)

This one may be controversial as it is a form of paying ground rent, why I think it is important is also here....
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=3635.msg45990#msg45990

Edit: I'm always a fan of the most simple clear system  but arhag's basic concept here has some merit.

But we can make things even better in order to strike an appropriate balance between disincentivizing squatters and not punishing legitimate domain holders too much. The tax rate could be a function of the length of time the domain holder has held onto the domain

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6561.msg88961#msg88961


Other thoughts

-It would be good if the equity release only kicks in after 30-60 days
-There is quite a lot of equity being funnelled through delegates maybe people would be happier if normal delegates only get fees& only the top 10-20 delegates by approval are trusted with directing equity release.






.

Quote from: Stan on August 05, 2014, 06:12:35 pm

Quote from: Empirical1 on August 05, 2014, 03:17:14 pm

Toast isn't Namecoin but Namecoin is Toast

Slogan of the Summer! 

...and what a toast? 

  

Edit - With the above being said, I don't care much since there is still the original approach.  As long as DNS has the option for both approaches then I have no concerns.  Just as Agent stated, no one is being forced to lease the domain to utilize this technology.

   (I still think the original approach doesn't solve the problem of getting some relative value from specific domains long term though but I'll look at the original one more now.)

Hi Agent86,

Why will domains in your proposal find a fair market rate at the initial auction if bidders aren't incentivised to participate?

Thoughts

1. Registration Fee

The model has a flat registration fee to start an auction but we already have an idea from existing domain systems which names may or are likely to be more popular or valuable so wouldn't it make sense to reference existing domain name valuation systems to derive a fee to register a TOAST domain and start an auction? (I.e. The registration fee for Nike.Tld should be more than Ilovelamp.Tld imo.)


FATAL FLAW IMO (At first glance, maybe I misunderstood.) 

In your model you're really only 'renting' the domain for X period. Then there is a new auction and you have to pay rent for the next rental period at a new rate based on that auction, someone can even force you into a new rental contract at any time? 

Problem: 

This means you will be punished the more successful your domain is. You could have to pay a huge new rental fee because of your success, (Someone will want the domain you have built) or  a competitor will want to force you to pay a lot to increase your running costs.
 
What kind of person wants to buy a piece of property on a vacant piece of land, build a fantastic house and furnish it.  Only to have to pay a rent the following year that reflects the improvements he has made to the property?

That's why renters don't upgrade properties because they don't own the results.

Your solution makes domain name holders renters.

Solution: IMO the solution is a form of leasing not this. Push people to pay a fair price at auction like the initial model and then have an annual ground rent that discourages squatters or at least extracts value from them for shareholders but doesn't punish people who have put in hard work to build successful sites too much. 

My kind of model the % and time can be tweaked but that achieve the result

Every year/two, each domain is automatically auctioned again. The current owner has 30 days in which he has the option to either sell the domain to the winning bidder or keep his domain for another year by paying 1% of the winning bids price. (1/2 of it may go to final bidder and 1/2 to the network, maybe even a bit to a maintenance and development fund. Thus ensuring BitsharesDNS has long term value and can extract a little bit of value from Domains that go on to be very succesful.)

Examples:

Say Bitshares.org is valued at $10 000, I should be able to put in a bid of $5000 knowing that BitShares will more than happily pay the $50 annual rental fee. ($25 to me and $25 to delegates.)

I could bid of $200 000 for a $1 million website 'Y', knowing 'Y' will be happy to pay $2000 rent for the year. (1k easy money to bidder and 1k to shareholders via delegates)

But in your model Ethereum can force BitShares to pay $5000-20 000 rent for the next rental period. BitShares will be forced to pay a ridiculous amount for that period & be unfairly punished or lose their site. Or a Coinmarketcap can build a good site, but have little cash flow and be forced to sell to some competitor with funds that just steals their hard work.
(But by only having to pay 1% of the bid on an annual auction of a site you already own competitors and shareholders can't punish you too much and just extract a small fair annual ground rent.) 

Toast isn't Namecoin but Namecoin is Toast

Quote from: Stan on August 05, 2014, 04:10:37 am

Quote from: donkeypong on August 05, 2014, 02:15:48 am

The BitShares brand name is important, but each of these DACs needs both a front end retail presence (which might have a retail trade name) and a back end presence for investor/developer/booster participation. The back end should be named Bitshares Something, but a business might also have a retail site with some name that is different and catchy (isn't this what Music is doing?). That said, DNS may have more blurring than usual, because there should be lots of overlap. I think the primary retail audience for DNS is going to be nerds. And I mean that in a good way.

This is what I have assumed all along - all DACs should have a market name and a consumer friendly front-end name.

BitShares Lotto might be known to game players as the Hard Luck Casino
BitShares Music might be known to its customers as BitTunes
BitShares Toast might be known to its customers as Names-R-Us

It's up to the developers to pick a name that will attract their customers.

But on coinmarketcap, BTER, BTC38, etc. they all show up as a branded family and work together to attract attention of investors.   

When you need to connect the two, then Follow My Vote powered by BitShares is an easy way to have your cake and eat it too.

 - well said!

A bit of cross-over in the beginning maybe but yes that puts it together nicely.

BitToast. The best thing since sliced bread. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  

Biggest question: Will this be *perceived* as more or less FAIR?

Good question, personally I think it will be 'perceived' as more fair.

Other thoughts

- I think the main thing is people will be more comfortable with less equity release as it is a new concept.
- I would choose 5% Mystery Sharedrop, I think the market might choose slightly more?
- I don't think the market will have a problem with 5% dev preallocation, I certainly don't   
- I would choose even less via delegates for the first DAC 24/24/6/6 & 40.
 
  to this model though, I like it, I think the market would like it more & I would get behind it.

Will be very interested to hear what others think.