There were a lot of good arguments in this discussion. A short note, we also have to keep in mind that Chinese exchanges charge almost 0 fees for trading and transfering crypto because the competition among exchanges is so high. If you want to have high volume and attract traders in China, you need to provide low fees. Since we are in a global competition that also affects our exchange. BitShares is doing better with low fees. Other exchanges that are just focusing on local markets, like Turkey, Greece, Poland, or Mexico etc. can raise higher fees because they have no competition.

Anyways I would like to focus on the following good arguments now.
 

Quote from: xeroc on January 13, 2017, 04:50:27 pm

Quote from: kani on January 13, 2017, 04:46:54 pm

Quote from: yvv on January 13, 2017, 04:42:51 pm

Things like dividends and referrals should not be coded into blockchain. They should be paid by businesses which run on top of blockchain from their own revenue, whatever they think they can give away. Blockchain fees should be very small, just enough to cover expenses which are essential for running blockchain, namely witnesses and workers.

Agreed.

For my final 2 BTS on the topic, I don't see why LTM should get a special dividend for doing nothing, especially when it is taken away from referrers.  To much emphasis on referrers has the risk of looking like a Ponzi, so I'm not sure I want to see that changed either.

Cheers!
- kani

This .. there is already enough incentive to upgrade to LTM:
- ability to register your own accounts
- ability to enter referral program
- fees reduced by 80%!!!

Paying out dividends only makes sense if the business (BitShares) makes a profit. And we aren't there yet.
Once there is profit generated, we can setup a worker to move funds out of the reserve pool and hand it out to all shareholders of BTS (because they are ALL shareholders) .. but then again, it makes no sense to take them out just to redistribute them .. it would effectively just reduce the price while keeping the market cap ..

Agreed, there is incentive to upgrade to LTM !

The thing that is lacking is the incentive to use the referral program to promote BitShares. This is the missing piece. This tool works on fee, we have lower it a lot and thus broke it.

We have change it because of the Chinese sentiment about it beeing to high. It was suppose to be only while we were gaining traction or before we had an idea to get the referral program working with something else. Since then we have just sadly accept "the referral is dead".

It's not dead, we just need to figure out how to make it exiting again ! It is an amazing way to have people working on promoting Bitshares without paying them, just on the perpective to win money if BitShares takes off and their referred users start using it.

there is a big difference between BTS and a real company share, the price of the latter depends greatly on the dividends while the former does not, we should discuss more on what a business model BTS should or really have but not focus on dividends.

So in summary, it would be better to not hard code a dividend feature in the Blockchain, and rather
- paid out through a worker or
- paid by a 3rd party company referral program
- raise fee later

So following Bitcrab, Data (telegram), and Xeroc suggestions we should focus on the core business model for BitShares and improve it. I wrote the topic down and look forward to discussing it next Friday at the Bitshares mumble. Based on that we can focus on the next steps how to improve the platform over the next weeks.

Once we agree on the right business model, we can adjust the marketing and referral program.

I don't know now how much fees the platform can get from users every month, but I think it's very low, too low to worth doing such a dividend distribution.

Yes, that is one of the risks. So we have to further analyze the idea and calculate how many dividends could be paid.

 Another option would be to take a % of the daily worker/witness budget for a payout. But I would prefer more to pay the dividends based on the overall transaction volume of the DAC. So the payout will be different each interval.

I have no problem with the notifications. I get them per mail. Did you go to the extra posting options and activated "Notify me of replies."?

Quote from: BunkerChain Labs on January 12, 2017, 01:12:40 am

Quote from: Chris4210 on January 11, 2017, 08:33:22 pm

This Worker Proposal is for 6 months, and will include fixing Graphene Issues via github, and building the new features for the Bitshares platform and DEx that the community has been asking for.
 

What exactly does this mean? There is room for a lot of clarifiaction:

Issues in github? There are plenty to go for a while, which ones are planned for with what milestones?
What new features specifically has the community been asking for?

Without a clear plan for work inefficiency creeps.

Looking forward to the reply.

exactly, please give the detail of the new features in the develop plan, there should be a process for the community to agree on adding new features.

I will post a roadmap for this worker. We want to start with the long issue list on Github first, and then move into building new features. Which features we should build will be discussed in the forum, and on the mumble.

Here is the latest feature list for the BitShares Blockchain. I collected most different ideas from chat, mumble and old forum posts/roadmaps.

The goal is to keep the list updated, and vote in the forum/mumble about the next feature.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kgTYNEeqYP8xrEKBs2L0uc52xjQCPURuigI2CIplEtE/edit?usp=sharing

@ken can give a direct roadmap which of the 190 open github issues we are planning to fix first.

Dear BitShares Stakeholder,

We would like to introduce a new worker proposal that pays for a new BitShares core dev.

Please vote for Worker 1.14.49: Alfredo Garcia, Bitshares Core Dev
 
This Worker Proposal is for 6 months, and will include fixing Graphene Issues via github, and building the new features for the Bitshares platform and DEx that the community has been asking for.
 
Worker Details

• Total Cost of hiring Alfredo: 3,261,671 BTS (~9600 USD at $20/hr)
• This Proposed 6-month Worker will cost Bitshares 1,630,835 BTS (~4800 USD)
• *BitShares Munich will pay the other half, ~4800 USD
• Worker Lifetime: 6 months, (Jan 23 - Jul 23, 2017)
• Working Hours: 20h per week
• Worker focus on the 190 Github Issues, and new BitShares features from BitShares Roadmap

Note from Chris4210:
We are calculating with a stable BTS price of 0.0033 BTS/USD, including a small security buffer for BTS price, voting volatility, etc. The Worker funds will be paid to our BitShares Munich (bitshares-munich-devs) account, and we will manage the regular monthly payouts to Alfredo.

*BitShares Munich will be paying half of his salary (see above), since increasing the security of the Bitshares platform also increases the security of our products such as BlockPay.

Short bio about Alfredo

• A professional programmer for over 10 years
• Hacker forever, prefers free markets and voluntary interaction
• Codes in pretty much any high level language like C++, C, etc.
• High level experience also in php/mysql/javascript/python
• Has been learning his way around Graphene and projects headed up by BitShares Munich such as BlockPay, Smartcoins Wallet, C-IPFS, Stealth, Echo, Bridges and Gateways.

The last 4 years Alfredo started working in the financial field making automated programs for Meta Trader, Ninja Trader, Calgo, Tradestation and other platforms. Then he moved a bit to binary options development, this is mainly Brokers that have web based API's so he started to make automated software that trade in binary options.
 
Most recently, he started to work with Bitcoin related projects. He started working for others at some online casinos and small projects but it was extremely hard to find serious people in the field. He has also worked for the Supernet "Iguana" project, helped them out quite a bit. Similar to the "Komodo" project.
 
Alfredo is under the supervision of, and reports daily to @kenCode at BitShares Munich.
 
Ken will post weekly updates in his usual thread here:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22576.0.html
and Alfredo’s commits can always be monitored here:
https://github.com/kenCode-de?tab=repositories
 
Please vote for Worker 1.14.49: Alfredo Garcia, Bitshares Core Dev

Link to vote: https://bitshares.openledger.info/#/account/bitshares-munich-devs/voting/
Worker info: http://cryptofresh.com/workers


Thank you for your support!

Best regards, Christoph

Thank you Estefan to pick that idea up.

I like the idea to pool the worker funds in a multi sig account , optional committee controlled or by others) and give the owner of the account three options.

a) Total Payout
b) Part Payout
c) Refund to Reservepool

In this way we have a project management team that approves or disapproves a worker and has the option to refund the money if the job was not well done.

We saw with Vikrams worker, that we can easily vote somebody in, and vote somebody out once he does not deliver correctly. To further avoid fraud, such a worker "escrow" team could manage the payment better.

I will add the idea to the wishlist, that will be published this week.

Quote from: Chris4210 on December 29, 2016, 08:48:08 pm

This topic has been discussed in the Telegram channel and mainly debunked. The source "China research agency" is not a credible source. The report also does not mention any details about the security issues, how the code was tested and what really was found.

National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China
1.  Brief Introduction
The National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (known as CNCERT or CNCERT/CC) was founded in September 2002. It is a non-governmental non-profit cybersecurity technical center and the key coordination team for China’s cybersecurity emergency response community. As a national CERT, CNCERT strives to improve nation’s cybersecurity posture, and protect critical infrastructure cybersecurity. CNCERT leads efforts to prevent, detect, warn and coordinate the cybersecurity threats and incidents, according to the guideline of “proactive prevention, timely detection, prompt response and maximized recovery”.
CNCERT has branches and offices in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across mainland China. As the key coordination organization of China’s cybersecurity emergency response system, CNCERT organizes enterprises, schools, non-governmental groups and research institutes that are specialized in cybersecurity and coordinates ISPs, domain name registrars and other emergency response organizations in a joint effort to build the cybersecurity emergency response system of China and handle major cyber security incidents.
As an important non-governmental organization to assist in the cross-border handling of cyber security incidents, CNCERT actively carries out international cooperation in cybersecurity and is committed to establishing a mechanism of prompt response and coordinated handling for cross-border cybersecurity incidents. CNCERT is a member of the world-renowned Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) and one of the founders of Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT). As of 2015, CNCERT has established “CNCERT International Cooperation Partnership” with 165 organizations in 66 nations and regions.
 
2. Mission Statement
Incident Detection: Leveraging on the cybersecurity detecting platform, CNCERT performs proactive detection of security incidents for critical infrastructure. It also discovers cybersecurity threats and incidents by sharing data and information with domestic and foreign partners and by receiving cyber security incident reports from domestic and foreign customers through hotline, fax, email and website.
Early Warning: By making comprehensive analysis of big data and acquiring information from multiple channels, CNCERT can warn cybersecurity threats, report cybersecurity incidents and analysis cybersecurity posture. It provides customers with such services as information on cybersecurity situation and sharing of cybersecurity technology and information.
Emergency Response: If incidents of serious threat are proactively discovered or received, CNCERT will respond in a timely manner and actively coordinate the handling. Priorities include incidents that affect Internet operation security, affect a large scope of Internet users, involve key government departments and critical infrastructure, cause major consequences users complaint, as well as all kinds of cybersecurity incidents reported by national emergency response organizations of foreign countries.
Security Evaluation: As a professional organization of cybersecurity evaluation, CNCERT provides security testing services for government departments, public institutions and enterprises guided by the principle of “supporting the regulatory, serving the society” and through scientific methods, standard procedures, impartial attitude, independent judgment and relative standards.
 
3. Incident Handling Procedures
Report: CNCERT has set up a 24*7 mechanism to accept the report of cybersecurity incidents. Both domestic and foreign users can report an incident to CNCERT in the following ways: website, email, hotline and fax.
Ø Website: http://www.cert.org.cn/
Ø Email: cncert@cert.org.cn
Ø Hotline: +8610 82990999, 82991000(EN)
Ø Fax: +8610 82990399
Acceptance: Cybersecurity incidents undertaken by CNCERT mainly include the following types: malware, defacement, backdoor, phishing, vulnerability, information destruction, denial of service attack, abnormal domain, router hijacking, unauthorized access, spam, mixed cyber security incidents and other cyber security incidents.
Handling: After confirming that the incident is true by sufficient evidences, CNCERT will perform emergency handling based on the prompt response mechanism which has established with domestic and foreign ISPs, domain name registrars and cybersecurity service vendors.
Feedback: When each of the three steps above - report, acceptance and handling - is completed, CNCERT will provide feedback to the reporter, including receipt of the report, whether it is accepted and for what reason, and the handling results.

Ok great, thanks for pointing that out. It is good to know that they analyzed our code base. Maybe they found some valuable information for us? Thanks for Bitcrab to collect the full report!