Hello, I would like to thank @ioBanker very much for raising this matter and everybody who contributes to the discussion!
Athough I share most of the ideas highlighted by @ioBanker above, I am more crytical towards current situation of the community and do believe Bitshares are in deep crysis that may easily finish with the ecosystem's marginalization and stagnation, moving price of the core currency down.
IMHO the root cause of the problem is lack of leadership and vision. The founder has left the project in the early stage and there is noone who effectively replace him. Decentralized governance so far is not being effective enough to cope with the current challenges and drive the DAC towards success and mass adoption. The original idea and vision has never neen revised and most likely are not shared by most of the stakeholders at the moment. The fact that several people are expressing similar opinions at the same time, and major stakeholders undertake immediate and rough actions to change the trend, shows that it is time for major actions to address system issue that we have. I strongly believe this is not a subject for just, minor correction.
I would like to put here a copy of my post in the other thread, I do believe it is totally relevant for this discussion. Sorry for the long read.
Let me express my humble opinion on the current Bitshares status and possible future development, based on my deep understanding of Bitshares as well as common business rules, marketing and analisys of other blockchain ecosystem. I may be missing some parts of the full picture because I'm not involved in some of the core activities and not being part of the governance team, however I believe I express more or less independent opinion and can think out of the box.
In few words, there is no difference between DAC and a typical company (there are some slight ones, but generally those are not game changers), and therefore a DAC MUST follow same rules to win the business and increale its value, namely:
1. Have a clear governance and ownership structure, with effective internal communication and decision making means.
2. Have a clear mission and values adopted by the management. Those to be put as corner stones under the marketing and business strategy.
3. Have a clear marketing and business strategy - what is the business, its short and long term goals, who are the target customers, what is the value proposition, how do we position our company on the market and compete with other companies - etc, etc.
4. Have a clear legal structure and follow the regulation of the operating markets.
5. Have a clear and effective financial managment, to control revenues, costs and investments.
6. Have all resources (financial, human, material) that are required to implement the business plan.
7. Have a clear and effective organizational structure so that company management and emplyees could collaborate effectively and know who is responsible for what.
8. Have a clear communication strategy to integrate the efforts and report on results.
This is the basis and 99% of you know this is a paramount for any successfull business.
SO WHY BITSHARES IS GOING THE OTHER WAY?!
WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK THIS DAC WOULD BE A SUCCESS IF IT DOES NOT FOLLOW BASIC BUSINESS RULES?!
Let's look at the points above in more details.
1. Governance and ownership structure: although this is the backbone of DPOS consensus, it definitely could be better. Generally, we have 4 levels of governance:
- investors (aka BTS holders). Many of those have no idea how Bitshares is governed, to whom they proxy their voting power and don't participate the DAC governance in any way.
- proxys, actually key decision makers in the ecosystem. Most likely do not share any common vision, often acting only in own interest and are not actively supported by investors (e.g. historically have many stakes from referrals or hold a CEX account).
- committee. Although being publicly elected and are in control of key network settings, they have low power when it comes to business decisions, again not sharing same vision and in many cases care more about their own business (although inmany cases aligned with the DAC).
- witnesses, mostly providing technical resources for the network to operate, but sometimes can implement some power, i.e. when it comes to price feeds. Probably the best part of the governance model, working as it should be.
2. Mission and values adopted by the management. As mentioned before, there are different opinions on that matter, and this is OK. However, the government MUST work out some statements supported by the majority and use those to define the strategy. Othervise the backbone is missing and the body is vulnerable and weak.
3. Marketing and business strategy - again, no consensus on that matter. Many people express their opinions because they have their vision and care but nothing formulated and agreed upon by the majority. Having weak plan is better than having no plan, but we don't have even a weak one. Key questions - what is the value Bithsares brings, is it for individuals or businesses, how do we reach them, what is the message we send.
4. Legal structure - although BBF is a good step, it is definitely not enough. Legal status and regulations applied are not defined. This prevents business from adoption and buy-in and makes Bitshares a very risky investment.
5. Financial managment - there is some form of it, but having every single penny recorded in the ledger, must be more formal and detaled, also support the business strategy. Noone is in charge of the DAC profitability at the moment, many take it as endless gold cart.
6. Financial, human and material resources - most likely present, but most likely not effectively managed and spend with huge overheads. Also with no business plan you never know how the resources must be spent and managed.
7. Organizational structure - there is some form of it and sometimes works well, but definitely could be better.
8. Communication strategy - presents in form of this forum and several TG chats, but maybe cumbersome and ineffective in many cases. Internal and external PR looks weak and ineffective w/o the strategy and proper governance.
With the above being said (although again, I may miss many points or misintepret those), here are some actions I would recommend to re-start the the business at the new level:
1. Put major proxies and investors into public negotiation to define DAC's basis - mission, values and business strategy.
2. Use all means to involve end users and BTS holders so that their support is based on their decision, and is not by default or as void.
3. Make key proxys to publicly announce their position towards DAC's mission and strategy, along with their personal and business information. This is not mandatory for sure, but those who are open and transparent may gain more support.
4. Spend particular resources (via a worker) to develop a straightforward business and marketing plan. Make sure it is based on proper market and competitors evaluation. Ensure support by the majority.
5. Allocate resources to implement the plan, control and elaborate it, report on the progress. Apart from promotion approach and business model this also shall also include efforts for users/clients onboarding and support.
6. Ensure proper financial control by designated authorized parties, along with timely and clear reporting to the government and the community.
7. Ensure effective resource spending, avoid spare funding overheads. Think ROI.
This is to start from. I trully understand that this approach may be not supported or adopted by the majority of the players (gateways and other businesses on top of Bitshares), many of those are looking for short term benefit and does not care about the ecosystem development. It is most likely not something what most of dev team would appreciate, because this would mean costs cutting for sure. However, all of them could definitely benefit from strong and powerfull Bitshares in the future.
I call to the investors, it is time for you to shout!
Thanks for reading to this point 
18 months ago when I first joined the committee, I tried to push the committee to take on that role and act in a similar way. We actually planned quite a few things as @xeroc / @abit / @bitcrab and others will confirm. The plan never went ahead because a large number of the "vision" items were covered by new and upcoming workers so we felt that our plan was not needed.
In retrospect it was needed if only for PR purposes to show clearly that all workers were functioning under a common vision/roadmap.
It's tough to explain how much work and discussion took place in the committee at that time with regard to all the points you're making above but perhaps this rough draft of our announcement post for that plan (which in the end remained unpublished until now) will show what we were thinking.
The following was written 18 months ago (so some issues like the domain name one have already been resolved)
Dear BitShares stakeholders and members of the BitShares community,
As you all know, we are all part of the community supporting one of the best blockchain offerings out there. The technological advantages of BitShares, from transaction speeds and smart-coins to the stability and flexibility offered, are undeniable.
However, although we all find the governance model of BitShares to be ideal, it is not entirely suited to new organizations. When it comes to start-ups, which is essentially what all blockchain projects are during this massive push into the mainstream, strong and capable leadership, as well as people taking responsibility for decision-making, are key for a project to find its path and establish a strong foothold in this expanding space.
The BitShares Workers created and approved so far have done great work over all this time, proving that the funding and approval model works but if you look at them as a whole, it becomes apparent that the vision and coordination for takings BitShares to the next level is missing.
What is even more frustrating is that unlike other projects, BitShares does not suffer from a lack of funding. At current BTS valuation and DEX usage with the current workers active, the reserve pool would empty in approximately 60 years. Even with a small appreciation in value, the funds available for the expansion of BitShares would be larger than almost every other blockchain project out there.
With that in mind, and seeing the increasing competition from other projects and companies, we, the BitShares committee have decided to exercise the full mandate bestowed upon us by the stakeholders to make business management decisions as originally stated in the BitShares white paper. We plan to use the expertise of the members comprising the committee in business administration, project management, development, marketing, sales etc. to provide this vision and focus. As is always the case in BitShares, final approval still resides on the hands of the stakeholders.
In the coming days, the BitShares committee will be creating the first of many “Committee-Managed Growth & Innovation Budget” worker proposals for stakeholders’ approval.
Each of these workers will run for 6 months and lay-out a roadmap of key actions and projects to be completed as selected and prioritized by the committee, but always in consideration of the community’s wishes. These actions will cover the entire scope of a business’ expansion strategy, from technological progress and infrastructure hardening to marketing and new-business onboarding as well as everything in between. There will be regular updates as well as quarterly and annual reviews of status, results and work completed.
The purpose of these workers is to provide funds to the committee so that the roadmap items, which the committee considers key for the expansion and growth of BitShares can be completed. This will be achieved by offering bounties, hiring people out-right or even providing extra funds as required to existing workers if an item is part of what is already being worked on.
If at any time, while implementing the roadmap, real-world agreements and contracts must be made, the committee has reached an agreement with the BitShares Blockchain Foundation for them to be the legal entity representing the BitShares blockchain.
Although we already have many items and goals under consideration for the future, the focus of this first worker will be on lowering the barrier of entry for developers and businesses to build on top of BitShares. To that end, we have already discussed our plan with Ryan R. Fox, who will be coordinating the recently voted-in BitShares Core Development Team, and he is just as excited as us about what the future holds for BitShares.
As part of this initiative and because some of the roadmap items discussed by the committee depend on it, we will also be working with the BitShares Blockchain Foundation to finally find a solution to the website/domain-name issue. The BBF are currently reworking all the texts and documentation according to legal counsel and there is a new website design already produced by a community member waiting. We are only missing a domain name that can represent the community forever, avoiding all conflicts of interest. Once again, regardless of what our suggestion will be, it will still be subject to stakeholder approval.
We are looking forward to releasing full details of our plan soon along with the Worker Proposal and hope the community embraces it so we can move BitShares forward together.
Thank you,
The BitShares Committee
Show Posts
