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« on: March 31, 2014, 06:05:20 pm »
I will iterate on this and eventually make a blog post when it is really polished. In the meantime, let's discuss.
Proto-DAC theory
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This is a synthesis of several months of learning about different DAC bootstrapping philosophies. In this post I will propose a model for bitshares proto-DACs (XT, DNS, LOTTO(?)) to consider as a substitute for snapshots in some situations. This is inspired in part by adam levine's DACP paper[]. I will use the term proto-DAC in case I misrepresent part of his proposal.
To create a DAC you need enough development fuel to push it into "orbit", which is when the DAC can pay for it's maintainence from stakeholders paying for dev time to protect their dividend income. There are two goals: Raise enough funds, and distribute the initial tokens to the set of people that maximizes chance of succeess.
Let's look at some history:
* Bitcoin and other 1.0 cryptoequities distributed 100% of their shares to miners. This is equivalent to proof-of-burn while shares have already started circulating.
* Mastercoin had an "exodus address", and ??% of shares were allocated proportionally to donators. The other ??%% were premined as dev funds.
* Counterparty had a "burn address", and 100% of shares were allocated proportionally to burners. They had a separate donation address that did not earn shares.
* NXT had a MSC-style funding rund
* Ethereum has a mix of MSC-style (IPO) and mining rewards.
* Bitshares chains use AGS (variation on MSC style), PTS, and proto-DAC snapshots, and dev premine, in whichever combination suits that particular DAC
So Bitcoin totally bootstrapped, mastercoin double-fundraised, XCP anti-fundraised for extra leverage in speculation on XCP's success. NXT single-fundraised, Ethereum half-fundraised, and PTS/AGS is complicated.
If we view burned funds as dividends[] then you could generalize these models with a few parameters. The first is % of funds go to dividends and which % go to developers. The critical difference is that dividends immediately increase everyone's stake in the proto-DAC while dev funds puts slight downwards pressure on the DACP as devs sell it to pay for development. Suppose this parameter is called D and it ranges from 0 (MSC-style) to 1 (XCP-style). A higher D value is like taking a higher leverage bet that the DAC will grow faster than its proto-DAC.
Taking a snapshot of Protoshares for XT was morally equivalent to a 100% proof-of-burn round on the PTS blockchain, in terms of how value was split between the networks. Essentially february 28th PTS holders made a bet against XT holders with D=1 level leverage, and the price drop reflected a sentiment like "If anything works at all, then BTS X will be very profitable". Remember that this was in February, when other DACs were hardly mentioned at all.
Another parameter is set "off-chain" and it is what fraction of DAC shares will come from the proto-DAC share donators and what will come from other sources (like dev premine).
A proto-DAC should be defined as a DAC whose shares are used to speculate on the DACs that do fundraising/burn rounds on its blockchain.
You need:
Minimum % of Proto-DAC shares to start a round
On chain:
Specify which fraction of proto-DAC shares from this fundraising round will become dividends (burn). The rest go into dev escrow on the proto-DAC.
Off chain:
Specify how much of DAC share % will be dev premine and how much will go to donators from the fundraising period.
There's your allocation snapshot.
What this allows is for the exact same value transfer as with a PTS snapshot, with a custom AGS round, without extreme price swings. If I'm not mistaken this model would allow for a superset of the fundraising models we've seen so far.
Also note that the blockchain can do kickstarter-style all-or-nothing rounds.
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