Here are some GUI designs from a possible competitor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeoB5y9zjLw&feature=youtu.beWhy
http://www.deepdotweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2.png

Built in Chatrooms: Bitshares mail will not be good enough!

Notice the clever integration of the built in chatroom? That built in chatroom supports encrypted voice and video. It supports file sharing as well.

Notice the clever integration of news?

Notice the store? Address book?

Why not borrow their designs best elements and improve on them for Bitshares?

I think Bitshares will need to integrate chat functionality. It can go beyond email by implementing the Jabber protocol so that users can connect to all the mainstream instant messaging platforms including Googletalk.

Built in fundraising: The gift economy should be promoted within the user interface.

I also think we should integrate the gifting/donation fundraising directly into the GUI. When people load up Bitshares there should be a category (fundraisers) or something similar. In that category there should be different projects seeking fundraising such as Bitshares Music and there should be a way to donate BitUSD to those projects directly through the Bitshares interface.

This way the process can be streamlined, it can improve marketing, as it would be less keystrokes and clicks away for an individual  if it's built into the GUI vs if they have to go to a fundraising site. Network effects will make it where we might someday not need fundraising sites anymore and having it built into the GUI would allow eventually the Bitshares DAC to charge a fee to people who want to be listed in the GUI.

It may seem unorthodox as marketing but the less a person has to leave the Bitshares GUI the more sticky it becomes.

What do millennials like to do with their computers? Instant message? Chat? Video chat? Voice chat?

Most people don't use email anymore so while email is nice in theory it's a protocol people are moving away from. People are into Instant Message, Twitter, Video chat and Voice chat. People also like to check the news and if you could provide a news feed for all the Bitshares relevant information to be in one place I think it would be useful.

The idea is people should keep Bitshares open at all times. They should check that GUI for everything Bitshares related instead of checking this forum. There should be exclusive information channels to that specific application which don't exist outside of it.

How many people here view the blockchain as sovereign or think it should be sovereign?

http://bitshares.org/bitshares-the-platform/

I think overall it's well written but there are some very important changes which I thnik should be made.

BitShares takes the whole ecosystem into one DAC friendly free-trade zone with all the services that benefit from network effect already in place.

I suggest we remove "free-trade zone" and replace it with "contract-free zone" or "investor-free zone".  Otherwise you're setting yourself up.

The most critical problem phrase is this: "A built-in venture capital system where you can compete for start-up funds – democratically."

Self-funding system, or any phrase is probably better than to call it a venture capital system.

We should not call it "venture capital". The dictionary defines "venture capital" as :

Venture capital (VC) is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund earns money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as biotechnology and IT.

This phrase attracts the SEC. At this point we do not know if the SEC is rational or politically motivated. If the SEC is politically motivated then this phrase leaves an unnecessary future opening for SEC interference. It should be made clear in all future blog posts and articles that investors are barred, banned, excluded, from the ecosystem and that all that can be exchanged are gifts, donations, etc.

If you call it a "venture capital fund" then even if its just a piece of software it doesn't mean regulators are smart enough to understand that. Remove all investors from the ecosystem and there is no possibility of anything being a security. This might take some explaining in some blog posts on gift economics but I think it would be a good time to make those explanations rather than stick with the old metaphors which are problematic even if you desire fundraising capability.

For the traveler who might want to send money to their families?

BitUSD has an advantage here because it's cheap, it's fast, it's secure, and the user can be anywhere on planet earth.

You could be in China and send money home to your family in seconds. I think remittance is the 'killer app' of Bitshares X.

Any plan for that? If there is then it might make sense to get more currencies up and running. Which currencies are most popular for remittance?

The US has been the leading source of remittances globally in every year since 1983. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland have been the next most significant senders of remittance since 2007.[15]
Asia[edit]

Overseas Chinese remittances
A majority of the remittances from the US have been directed to Asian countries like India (approx. 66 billion USD in 2011), China (approx. 57 billion USD), the Philippines (approx. 23 billion USD), Bangladesh (approx. 21.5 billion USD) and Pakistan (approx. 16 billion USD)[16] and (see here 1 2). Most of the remittances happen by the conventional channel of agents, like Western Union, Al Ansari Exchange,Xpress Money, UAE Exchange, Intel Express and MoneyGram. However, with the increasing relevance and reach of the Internet, online and mobile phone money transfers from companies such as Remit2India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance#By_region

Kim Dot Com might be a good person to partner with if you look into his background.

CAMBRIDGE, MA–(Marketwired – Oct 20, 2014) — ID3 (Institute for Data Driven Design), a research nonprofit founded out of the MIT Media Lab, today teamed with nearly two dozen leading digital currency firms to announce the Windhover Principles, a new principles-based framework collaboratively written with public and private stakeholders to ensure secure personal identity, trust and access to shared open data on the Internet. Key advocacy and support was generated by DATA (Digital Asset Transfer Authority) in building the coalition.

The Windhover Principles are being implemented on an open source platform, foundationally based on ID3’s contribution of its Open Mustard Seed (OMS) software platform. As the cornerstone of the new principles and framework, ID3 announced support from a wide range of digital currency and Bitcoin-related companies and individuals: BitPay, BitReserve, Bitstamp, BTC.sx, Coinsetter, DATA, Delta, Epiphyte, Erik Voorhees, Hub Culture Group/Ven Currency, LaunchKey, Personal, Personal Black Box, Ripple Labs, SnapSwap, Swarm, Trefoil Labs, Vaurum, Xapo, ZipZap and 37coins.

The Windhover Principles for Digital Identity and Trust are deeply rooted in the belief that individuals should have control of their digital personal identities and personal data. Underlying this core value is the principle of ensuring innovation in trust and privacy. Concurrently, the industry group’s support of transparent, proportionate and risk-based regulation will allow stakeholders to meaningfully leverage new technologies for enhanced governance, auditing and enforcement needs. Implementation of the core Windhover Principles on the inclusive OMS open source platform as a sustainable industry step, paired with MIT-designed Living Labs, underscores a results-driven ethos supported by the group of companies and supporters.

https://idcubed.org/home_page_feature/21-top-bitcoin-digital-currency-companies-endorse-new-digital-framework-digital-identity-trust-open-data/

https://idcubed.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O22acc48lKo

A gift economy is defined:

A gift economy, gift culture or gift exchange is a mode of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.[1] In contrast to a barter economy or a market economy, social norms and custom govern gift exchange, rather than an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity.[2]

Since crowd funds, crowd sales, and similar mechanisms have legal issues a way around that is to form a gift economy and gift culture. This thread is about how a gift economy can be formed around Bitshares so that reputation and generosity combined with smart contract technical functionality can result in a system which resists fraud while providing rewards for those who give.

Gift economies are built around the concept of the non-market exchange. An example of one of the first P2P apps to make use of a gift economy can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GiFT

Description:

A gift is the transfer of a good without an explicit specification of a quid
pro quo. The good can be a tangible thing or money, but it also can be
intangible, as in the form of time, attention, information or knowledge. A
present is a gift and so may be the attention that one person ‘gives’ another,
or the time that a person donates to an art institute as a volunteer. Usually
a gift entails reciprocity: the giver expects something in return for the gift
given. Friends expect friendly gestures in return for their friendly gestures;
donors expect some form of appreciation or another; and those who
give presents at Christmas expect to receive presents in return. The key to
understanding the phenomenon of the gift is the nature of the reciprocity
involved.

BitTorrent is also a gift economy if it's set up so that the more you share the more you can receive from others. There is no promise, no guarantee, nothing more than the value of reciprocity enforced by social cultural conditioning and source code. So it is possible to establish a social contract which tracks the donations a person makes to certain projects and then give them a reputation rating according to that reputation of being a "giver". The opposite reputation would be that of a "taker". Givers could be encouraged to give by being rewarded unexpectedly by other givers in the form of gifts.

Psychological details:

The psychology behind it is the psychology of the variable ratio reward schedule. This mechanism would socially condition all participants into becoming "givers" over time rather than "takers" because the consequences of being a giver would reveal that "givers" have a higher probability of winning.

In sociology, social capital is the expected collective or economic benefits derived from the preferential treatment and cooperation between individuals and groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

Technical mechanisms of enforcement:

Reciprocity could also be enforced in smart contracts which reward "givers" more than "takers" anonymously. Smart contracts could figure out how to regulate in favor of promoting reciprocity without any "investors" or promises made by any human beings. Just as in Bitcoin miners just expect that the reward schedule is determined by math, with smart contracts it could be something similar but the reward could be designed to go to whoever donated the most to specific charities, entities, or groups of individuals.

If it is a charity it would require that developers of DACs form non-profits from now own. Invictus could become an NGO. The NGO would be staffed by volunteers but those volunteers could be given gifts, perks, discounts, vouchers, etc so that it becomes a coveted role.

I was encouraged to think about this by Stan, Bytemaster, and by the individuals in the community who have been concerned about the actions of the SEC. Rather than let the SEC dictate free speech it would be better to simply stop thinking of DACs as "corporations", to stop having "crowd sales" "crowd funds" or anything like this, and to accept that all donations as well as the possible rewards in consequences are gifts. This means not every donation would result in a gift reward but since it's good for anyone's reputation to return a favor to a friend it would end up resulting in positive outcomes in situations where everyone is honest.

DACs probably could best be called decentralized autonomous cooperatives. The organizations which build them could be non-profits or NGOs. The individuals who participate in them could be "friends" and the network a F2F network with decentralized identity and reputation for security.

http://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf

This paper could be why the Bitshares technology may be merging.  The community divided is less competitive.

Personally I would have done the merger different. I proposed some merger ideas between the Bitshares community and other Proof of Stake communities. However it does make sense to unit DPoS over time as long as it does not hurt the investors of class 2013 and class 2014.

Stakeholder analysis is important and should be conducted prior to crypto mergers. The crypto-merger process is a way to unite stakeholders around a technology.

If you don't like how Bytemaster conducted this crypto-merger and you think you could do better there will be many opportunities for DPoS chains to merge with altcoins. In fact any third party DAC can do a sharedrop on any altcoin which agrees to sharedrop on it, and the vesting period could be set to a variable interval schedule so that no one can dump the price.