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Topics - Samupaha

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General Discussion / How to design efficient and resilient DAO

« on: August 21, 2016, 07:12:30 pm »

You might be interested in my post about DAO design: How to design efficient and resilient DAO.

I describe a model for an efficient DAO that's based on Bitshares 2.0. It could be used to make new and better version of Bitshares because it removes the problems that Bitshares currently has.

General Discussion / Importance of early adopters

« on: March 28, 2016, 09:49:46 am »

There was good comment on Slack, I move it to here so it won't disappear so quickly.

This was a comment by viz10nari for my claim that we need more early adopters.

Quote

well i very respectfully hold a different view on that, because as a marketer, and i speak for myself only, getting a significant amount of people (or even just one person) to take a specific desired action is for me simply a matter of creating the right value proposition to motivate them to act. In other words, non-early adopters (the so called masses being the demographic that doesn't care two hoots about how the underlying technology works as long as it works, ) can most definitely be incentivized to become "early adopters". Also, the masses don't arrive all at once as in a million of them in one day... so the first 10 that turns into 100 and into 1000, 10,000 are effectively "masses early adopters". My question for you @ samupaha, would be this - what exactly are these early adopters doing that the masses are waiting for them to do? I do not agree that early adopters for a crypto platform have to be limited to or defined as "crypto enthusiasts". I really cannot imagine a single housewife or young professional, upon being presented with a powerful and compelling BitShares powered value proposition, sitting down to do research and then telling themselves "hmmm, i don't think they're enough "early adopter crypto enthusiasts on board with BitShares yet, so despite the amazing solution presented to me using BitShares that can clearly solve my financial problems in the next 6-12 months, I'll sit on the fence until whenever BitShares manages to get 20,000 crypto enthusiast early adopters on board." I personally think too many marketers accept widely promoted marketing "principles" as being irrefutible. For me, everything is irrefutible and anything is possible. In closing I will say this - if I invented a new kind of screw and when i advertise it nobody rushes to buy it, it doesn't mean that my new screw technology is flawed or not useful (a la BitShares), it just means that the value proposition I presented wasn't compelling enough. So if I then design some visually beautiful and functionally cool household gadget that solves a real pain in the but problem for consumers and my new screw is at the heart of the new gadget's ability to solve the pain problem, the new value proposition i present around the pain solution can be compelling enough to get a million units of the gadget sold. But guess what, not a single one of those million buyers will have given a single thought to the screw that's in it, yet they have indirectly bought and are using my new screw technology. Then screw manufacturers and retailers would take notice and come knocking trying to licence the patent, offer distribution etc. BitShares is an enabling technology that when adopted by and wrapped within a truly powerful "use case", will gain rapid users "by default". That is what Sollarsand Sense is trying to do right now and I'm sure many others, like Ken's OpenPOS and ECHO... when the masses see something really useful and "accessible", they migrate up the early adopter food chain as fast as their motivation drives them. Marketing without strategy is just plain old gambling unfortunately, and nobody really wants to be doing that.

Crypto projects are quite different thing than for example simple gadgets. Nothing is ready for the prime time yet. Products are still very much incomplete and buggy. And very complicated to understand, especially Bitshares.

Because of this environment the early adopters are really important. They are people who will help others to use and understand what all this is about. They will file bug reports when newbies encounter problems. They will do continuous marketing wherever they happen to be. They will show other people how wallets work. They will buy stuff with cryptocurrency just to show support for the merchant who accepts them. They will try to attract more developers to join.

Without very active early adopters it's much more difficult for big masses to adopt any cryptoproduct. Most of the value comes from network effect. Big masses will lose their interest very quickly if there are not other people using the product, no matter how beautifully it's packaged. They don't do anything with a currency that nobody else uses.

IMO Bitshares is suffering right now lack of active early adopters. There is too much to do and only a few people actually doing. That's why we should be targeting marketing to people who can be easily attracted to become early adopters (like libertarians and other people who want to change the current financial system).

General Discussion / Non-transferable BTS & BitBTS – We need to make Bitshares more resilient

« on: March 28, 2016, 08:17:07 am »

A while ago there was discussion if BTS should be made non-transferable. A lot of good arguments have said in defence of the idea, but it has also some problems (mainly how it would be difficult to implement). Here I'm trying to find a reasonable, step-by-step process how non-transferableness could be enabled.

This has become important when chinese exchange Yunbi started an attack against Bitshares development by voting with it's customers BTS to stop all development (including documentation and bug fixes).

Badly behaving exchanges are not anymore just a theoretical threat to Bitshares. It's real threat, already in use. To make Bitshares more resilient against attacks like this we should disable transferableness of BTS. It will force users to withdraw their BTS out from exchanges and solves the problem.

1. Free transactions for shareholders

Free transactions feature is probably coming in the near future because it has a lot of support in the forum. Thanks to abit we already have a simple and elegant implementation proposal. This will mean that users can make free transactions depending on how much they own BTS.

2. Creation of BitBTS

BitBTS is a derivative of BTS that is backed with 100 % of BTS so it tracks the price of BTS. The biggest difference is that BitBTS owner doesn't have voting power.

BitBTS is borrowed into existence just like any other smartcoin. Borrowers can use more than 100 % collateral if they want to decrease the risk of force settlement.

Borrowers will retain the voting power for the collateral. When they sell BitBTS for BTS they will have double voting power and BitBTS owner has none.

If BitBTS owner wants to vote, he must either force settle or buy BTS with BitBTS (exchange rate will be very close to 1:1).

When BitBTS is created, we can inform all other exchanges that it will replace BTS everywhere else exept Bitshares internal exchange, so they have time to make necessary changes.

BitBTS is also elegant solution for the voter apathy problem. There are lots of investors who just want to make profit when BTS price goes up, but they are not interested in voting because they don't have time to keep up with everything that's happening in Bitshares. With BitBTS they will give up their voting power for those who borrow BitBTS into existence. It is becoming clear by now that proxies alone are not a sufficient solution for voter apathy, disinterested shareholders don't use even those.

3. Disable free transactions feature for BTS

We can reduce the incentive of using BTS as a currency by disabling the free transactions feature for it's transfers. Users could use the subvention credits for BTS trading in the DEX but not for transfers. This will reduce a little bit the incentive to send BTS to traditional, centralized exchanges.

4. Raise the price of BTS transfers

This will create bigger incentive to use BitBTS for everything outside our internal exchange. If users want to trade in other exchanges, they would rather send BitBTS for free than BTS with expensive fee. Little by little we will make it more expensive.

5. Make BTS non-transferable

When most of the transfers outside our internal exchange are happening with BitBTS, it won't be difficult to just disallow BTS transfers entirely.

Random Discussion / Cryptocurrency: The Policy Challenges of a Decentralized Revolution

« on: March 27, 2016, 04:10:58 pm »

Cryptocurrency: The Policy Challenges of a Decentralized Revolution

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected from losses? Will they ensure financial privacy or enable criminal activity? Will they replace central banking or serve as a new tool for monetary management? And will government regulations encourage, discourage, or remain neutral to these emerging and transformative technologies? Join us for a day-long conference considering the policy implications of the decentralized cryptocurrency revolution.

General Discussion / Can we reduce the current supply of BTS somehow?

« on: March 27, 2016, 10:08:23 am »

Recently there was a hangout with a guy from Dash. One really interesting concept was masternodes that Dash has. Especially the collateral that is demanded for masternode seemed to be very successful idea.

Every masternode has to have 1000 dash that they lock for so long as they are a masternode. This has been very helpful for dash price because it has sucked a lot of dash away from market liquidity.

It's more profitable for dash owners to lock it up and get rewarded rather than trade on exchanges: they get an interest for the collateral and dash price goes up because there is less to sell.

What would be the best way for Bitshares to implement something like this?

First and most obvious option is of course that we will have a worker that will pay interest for accounts that have locked a certain amount of BTS. And of course there will be the old antidilution argument... but in this case, the funds from reseve pool are not going to liquid markets, they are going to be locked away from markets.

Those funds are not increasing the current supply and they incentivize people to reduce current supply. That would be pure win for everyone. In addition that will incentivize people to move their BTS from exchanges to their own wallets. So the "antidilution" argument doesn't apply in this case.

Couple of questions:

- Should there be a minimum amount of BTS that is entitled to the interest? 1000 dash is approximately 1 000 000 BTS.

- How often interest is paid? Once a month? When funds are unlocked?

- How much is the interest?

- Is there some minimum time for locking? If user unlocks before that, they need to pay a fine, which is added to the interest pot and divided for those who keep their funds locked?

Another possibility is "savings club" that @Empirical1.2 suggested a while ago.

Users will deposit assets to an account where they sit for a year (or some other time). When year is over, they need perform "proof of life" to get their assets back. If they don't, they lose the assets and those are divided for other users as an interest. So it's like a mild form of gambling.

Originally Empirical proposed that this would be for BitUSD but I think it would work best with BTS. We want BitUSD to be liquid, so there is not much reason to lock it away from markets. Instead we want BTS to be locked away from current supply to make it more valuable.

This could be funded with fee backed assets so there is no need to use reserve pool funds.

Meta / Forum profile information

« on: March 23, 2016, 09:46:44 am »

Delete MSN (nobody uses this)
Delete Payrate (not in use anymore)

Add Proxy (all who are proxies should be better known)

Random Discussion / Paper about Economics of Blockchain

« on: March 20, 2016, 05:03:07 pm »

Really interesting stuff!

Economics of Blockchain

Sinclair Davidson
RMIT University - School of Economics, Finance and Marketing

Primavera De Filippi
Université Paris II - Panthéon-Assas

Jason Potts
RMIT University

March 8, 2016

Abstract:
Claims blockchain is more than just ICT innovation, but facilitates new types of economic organization and governance. Suggests two approaches to economics of blockchain: innovation-centred and governance-centred. Argues that the governance approach — based in new institutional economics and public choice economics — is most promising, because it models blockchain as a new technology for creating spontaneous organizations, i.e. new types of economies. Illustrates this with a case study of the Ethereum-based infrastructure protocol and platform Backfeed.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 23

General Discussion / Possible sidechains projects

« on: March 20, 2016, 01:30:27 pm »

In the latest hangout Bytemaster talked about what kind of sidechains would be worth of doing. Those have to be radically different from any other blockchain that exists today, little tweaks like parameter changes aren't big enough foundation for a new chain.

I don't generally support gambling but if people are going to do it anyway in the blockchain, they should do it in the Bitshares or in a Bitshares' sidechain. Gambling sidechain could be a good alternative – if it's a sidechain, there is no regulatory risk for Bitshares (or at least it's considerably smaller).

Gambling chain could be a good opportunity to test rate limited free transactions in a way that Bytemaster discussed in his blogpost How to build a Decentralized Application without Fees.

I've heard that many gambling business operators have stayed out of blockchain because they need fast and reliable transactions (Bitcoin blockchain is out of question). If the sidechain is Graphene-based, it will be suitable for their needs. If it's truely rate-limited for transactions, operators can be also sure that they have a certain quota of capacity for their games, based on how much core asset they own. If they need more capacity, they will buy more core asset.

Of course the gambling chain would make a good sidechain for Bitshares. That way users will have several different ways to acquire assets that can be used for games, including fiat-gateways. Gambling chain operators don't have to worry how their customers will get funds in and out, they can just focus on building more games and optimizing the blockchain. It would be win-win situation for both, Bitshares and gambling chain.

Does anybody else have any good ideas for possible sidechain projects?

General Discussion / What is better name for "Rate Limited Free Transactions" feature?

« on: March 20, 2016, 08:54:20 am »

In Bytemaster's original blog post the rate limiting of transactions was important piece of the system, but abit's implementation is more like "subsidized transactions" kind of system, where users are given credits which they can use to pay for transactions.

While the original idea and the abit's implementation accomplish pretty much the same outcome, mechanics are still very different.

After the credits are used, there are no limits for use of Bitshares – users just have to pay normal fees for transactions just like they do now. Talking about "rate limitations" will be very confusing for newbies because in reality there is nothing limiting in abit's implementation.

From a marketing perspective the name "rate limited free transactions" is really bad because it's so confusing. We need to come up with a better name.

Imagine that you are total newbie, you don't know anything about Bitshares. You go to the website. What there should be written so that you understand immediately what this feature is about and how it works?

General Discussion / Have you all realized that we have fiat on the blockchain!?

« on: March 15, 2016, 04:16:00 pm »

Openledger's fiat-gateway is way too undervalued. Seriously, it's freakin' awesome that we have real fiat on the blockchain.

One way of describing Bitshares has been "be your own bank". Now you have possibility to use real dollars, euros and yuans in your Bitshares wallet.

This is great for all newbies who are interested in blockchain tech, but are really suspicious about financial derivatives like smartcoins. I can understand that not everybody is willing to believe there can be such thing as derivative on a blockchain that reliably tracks the value of fiat-currency.

This is great for all merchants who don't want to use cryptocurrencies but want the benefits of blockchain. Now they can send and recieve fiat in seconds, anywhere in the world. OpenBazaar, hello!

This is great for all traders who have made huge profits in the DEX and want to take out them as fiat.

Please people, show some love for fiat-UIA markets. BitEUR/OPEN.EUR has some liquidity and tight spread but BitUSD/OPEN.USD and BitCNY/OPEN.CNY are still nonexistent. It's easy to trade even without bot because relative price doesn't change.

Last month there were news about Barbados dollars on Bitcoin blockchain. Well, our blockchain is faster and better, and who cares about BBD? We have USD, EUR and CNY. It's also easy for anybody to implement their own gateway thanks to tools for handling KYC/AML regulations.

General Discussion / Bitshares community needs a project management tool

« on: March 13, 2016, 04:56:08 pm »

I've been thinking that this forum isn't very optimal tool for managing a DAC like Bitshares. A lot of topics will be forgotten very fast and probably many aren't seen by people who could or should be interested in them. Going offtopic is also common problem. Slack is nice, but it's mostly just for chatting.

Lack of communication is serious problem. Recently I tried to start a marketing campaign but it seems to be a failure because lack of communication/collaboration.

Decentralized organisation doesn't work without effort. It usually demands even more effort because there is nobody telling what to do. People have to do stuff on their own. If we want to succeed as a DAO we need to learn how to make plans and execute them in a decentralized manner.

My suggestion is that we start to use a project management tool. I've been looking for different possibilities today. Probably best choice would be Basecamp. It's widely used and praised and it seems to be suitable for our needs.

Todo-lists, deadlines etc. have to be collected on a same place where they can be found and updated easily. Jakub made a nice roadmap, but it hasn't been updated since january. We need to get information like this to a place where several people can update them when changes happen so they are not left outdated.

Roadmaps, hardforks, website updates, hangout questions, committee proposals, worker proposals, social media presence, marketing campaigns, etc. can be planned/communicated/discussed in there.

So, if I set up a Basecamp for Bitshares, would you start to use it?

We could try it for a few months to see if it gives any benefits for us. If not, I'd like to hear better ideas for organizing collaboration. We really need to get our shit together if we want to achieve something.

Technical Support / How much witnesses earn?

« on: March 06, 2016, 09:47:34 am »

How much witnesses get paid?

Cryptofresh says: "Witness budget: 1,800 BTS per hour". Does that mean 1800 BTS per hour is divided for all witnesses, so that more we have witnesses, less is the salary of one witness?

I need to know this so that I can tell what people can expect to earn if they become witnesses.

General Discussion / Problems with "decentralized exchange" as the focus of marketing

« on: March 05, 2016, 12:54:35 pm »

What I've seen, it's quite hard to get people really excited of decentralized exchange. Exchange part is interesting mostly for cryptotraders, which is quite small group. Even smaller subgroup are the people who really want decentralized exchange. Most traders seem to be rather happy with centralized exchanges and are not ready to change just because there is decentralized alternative.

To get people excited is really important, because we need more fresh blood to do marketing efforts. As we have seen, Bitshares doesn't market itself automatically – we need actual individuals to do that. When there is no direct financial incentive, there needs to be ideological or some other type of incentive. There is probably very few people who oppose the idea of decentralized exchange on ideological level, but on the other hand, there seems to be very few people who support it strongly in ideological level and are ready to use their time and resources to market it.

Also it's not necessarily very clear to everybody what decentralized exchange actually means. "It's not decentralized if it is centralized on only one blockchain" would be one counter-argument. This is why I'd like to hear from all of you who have been wanting to focus on decentralized exchange, how exactly do you define it?

Decentralized exchange is definitely one marketing point of view, but I don't think it should be the most important. Yesterday the Bitshares.org mainpage was changed to "BitShares - Your share in the Decentralized Exchange" which is better than it was earlier, but still is not very optimized message for most of the people who could become users and investors of Bitshares.

@JonnyBitcoin I'd like to hear especially your comments.

General Discussion / Give your answers to the question: "What is Bitshares?"

« on: March 05, 2016, 08:01:14 am »

How would you answer to the question: "What is Bitshares?" I want lots of different (but accurate!) answers.

There are lots of different people who could use Bitshares for different things. I want to identify as many groups as possible. This will help to market Bitshares. We don't need to push the same image of Bitshares to everybody, we can and we should differentiate the message depending on who we are communicating with.

This list is also good foundation for articles and promovideos.

Here are some of what I can think of. Please help to refine the arguments, add more target groups and of course add your own answers.

Bitshares is Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC)

* BTS is a share of a DAC that offers high quality financial services globally. Anybody can buy it without any restrictions.
* Bitshares has advanced governance model. With witnesses, committee, workers and reserve pool we have all the necessary parts in place for deciding how to use the blockchain.
* Main products of Bitshares are an exchange, market pegged assets (smartcoins) and payment network.
* Developers can use the Bitshares blockchain to build their own smartcontracts on it. With Fee Backed Assets it's easy for them to get paid for succesful smartcontract/dapp.

- For people looking for investment opportunities.
- For developers to get hired by the DAC.

Bitshares is a financial platform on a blockchain

* Bitshares blockchain is fast and versatile, intended for use of different financial products.
* Bitshares has build-in exchange that individuals and businesses can use.
* In Bitshares anybody can issue their own assets, including smartcoins. Issuers of assets can earn money when users are making transactions with their assets.

- For people looking for alternative economic systems.
- For people looking for alternatives for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
- Fintech professionals.

Bitshares is a decentralized exchange

* Anybody can be a trader. No need for any permissions, just create an account and start trading. You can build and use your own trading bots.
* In Bitshares it is possible for everyone issue their own assets. They can be smartcoins, IOUs or FBAs. White-listing is optional for those who need it, for example fiat-IOU issuers.

- For traders.
- For businesses such as exchanges, gateways, bridges, etc.

Bitshares is a decentralized bank

* Smartcoins are price stable cryptocurrencies that peg their price to another currency or asset, such as USD, CNY, EUR, gold, silver or oil. With smartcoins you can be sure that value of your assets isn't as volatile as value of bitcoin, but still have all the benefits of cryptocurrency.

- For people looking for alternative economic systems.

Bitshares is a fast and versatile payment network

* Bitshares offers a large scale of different cryptocurrencies and assets that can be used by everyone.
* Bitshares network is the fastest cryptocurrency network at the moment. It should be able to do more than 100 000 tx/s when all witnesses are updated with appropriate hardware and internet connection. It has been tested to make 1000 tx/s, which is still way more than Bitcoin's 7 tx/s.
* Anybody can issue their own assets which can be used for example as reward points, gift cards or event tickets.

- For businesses.

Muse/SoundDAC / EB120 – Maciej Olpinski: Solving The Economic Mismatch Between Content And Atten

« on: March 01, 2016, 04:32:52 pm »

Might be relevant to your interests: Epicenter Bitcoin ep. 120 – Maciej Olpinski: Solving The Economic Mismatch Between Content And Attention

The problem around content monetization is one which content producers are constantly trying to solve. At the core of this problem is a mismatch between supply and demand. Content, which is increasingly abundant, is captured by human attention, which is in limited supply. The volume of content being produced is growing at staggering rates while total human attention remains flat.

Our guest, , argues that the current content monetization model is outdated, broken and is in need of an overhaul. Previously at Google and YouTube, Maciej has a broad understanding content monetization models and lays out a vision for open marketplaces for attention using blockchains. He argues that content discovery systems like the Google Page Rank algorithm and Facebook’s News Feed could be replaced by open networks based on the mechanics of Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode include:

– How the current content monetization model works and why it’s broken
– The inner workings of content discovery
– The economics of content discovery
– Open marketplaces for attention and reputation
– New web-native business models for content discovery

Links
Maciej's blog