Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - alphaBar

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [10] 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ... 22
136
General Discussion / Re: Paid-delegates is genius
« on: November 03, 2014, 04:38:52 pm »
I totally disagree with the premise. Once you break into the top 5 in market cap (as we already have) there is no need to fight for acceptance from exchanges. What we're trying to do is effectively conflate the incentive structure of block production with that of marketing and development. What we're actually doing is creating new incentives that serve neither purpose.

137
General Discussion / Re: What is the Profit model of BTSx ?
« on: November 03, 2014, 08:40:31 am »
Here is what the argument really boils down to:

Will the negative perception/stigma and bad PR that we've created by implementing dilution be outweighed by the investment capital that is generated through dilution? Well, we can make certain assumptions. The first assumption I will make is that the technological competitive advantage (let's call that TCA) doesn't matter past the point of saturation. What I mean is that there is a point of diminishing returns on technological improvement. Once you have 10 second blocks, decentralized exchange, bitAssets, and DPOS/TaPOS then the next dozen features bring you far less return on your investment when competing against an asset like Bitcoin or Litecoin, that is inferior in literally every possible way with respect to technology. Nobody is sitting on the sidelines thinking, "man I will totally buy Bitshares once they prove to me that their technology is superior to Litecoin...

As a result, my second assumption will be that marketing is where the majority of our resources should be spent. But to what objective? I agree with Coinhoarder that the lowest hanging fruit in terms of user growth and reputation are crypto-currency hobbyists. And what does this demographic want? No dilution, fair distribution, transparency of funding and community assets, and lastly, no dilution. So we've come full circle. The best way to spend our funds is to create a reputation as a fair, transparent, non-inflationary coin with all of the TCA we've already built.

We've proposed two fundamental changes: a merger of competing DACs and dilution. I'll let you guess which is killing the share price right now...

138
I've not heard about a 13% number. I've seen I3 stated funds at circa 5% & that they are going to be split up in a plan tba.



The BitShares community is a contract-free zone where at no point in time shall there exist a legal obligation for any party to behave any way in the future.   We shall stick to these principles and rely on reputation and community coordination to facilitate efficient commerce with low overhead. 

To this end the funds held by I3 for development will be divided among the core developers who will work together as independent parties to grow the community.  Details of this plan are still under review, but at the end of the day the result will be that no one developer will have "king making authority" for delegates.    People have stated that I have "too much power", but I do not wish to rely of fiat to get things done, but instead on my ability to persuade the community.   I also wish for the development of BTS to continue regardless of what the SEC or government attempts to accuse I3 of.   BTS is bigger than any one of us and has the potential to unite everyone under a fully voluntary society. 

Lets make this happen... lets change the world and reimagine BitShares.

It appears the actual percentage of BTSX owned by the Trust is ~6% (I've updated the post):
http://www1.agsexplorer.com/balances/PaNGELmZgzRQCKeEKM6ifgTqNkC4ceiAWw

I think the idea of simply "granting" (not sure what the exact meaning of this is) this money to developers and trusting each of them to use the funds for their intended purpose is frankly scary. I trust III because I trust Dan, but I can't say the same for everyone else. In other words, Dan is right that he probably holds too much power by keeping the funds under his control. But the alternative, trusting 10 developers as shepherds of the community dev funds, could actually be worse. When it comes to community assets I think it is okay to have a little trust if the trusted entity is transparent and provides a full accounting of both past and future use of the assets. Spreading out the assets to less-trusted members may appear to reduce the risk of centralization, but not really in the case of Bitshares. The reason this doesn't really work for Bitshares is that there are three main risks to be contended with:

1) Dan runs away with the money and wastes it away on drugs and strippers ;)
2) Government agency confiscates the money
3) Attacker steals the funds

I think we all agree that Dan is smart enough to store the funds securely and that #3 is not a huge risk either way. If #1 were to happen I would argue that the amount of money lost would be irrelevant and that Bitshares is unlikely to survive regardless (in the short to medium term). So far there is no benefit to "spreading out" the assets. Now, #2 is the wildcard. I argue that because the entire dev team is public and resides in the US, it is just as easy for the funds to be confiscated from 10 people as it is from just one. So, we can see that none of the major risks of "trusting" the funds to Dan have been mitigated by spreading them out to multiple devs. On the other hand, here is what we lose by distributing the community's funds:

1) Risk of less trusted entities running away with the money ouright.
2) Lack of oversight and performance management with less trusted entities.
3) Possibility of different developers prioritizing funds differently (this may not be bad).

To me it appears there is little to be gained and much to be lost in distributing community funds in such a way, especially since these types of funds are really only necessary in the short to medium term (as dilution was supposed to be the sustainable solution).

Lastly I want to mention that it is critical to have a detailed, publicly disclosed, and binding divestment plan in place for these funds (regardless of the chosen stewards). This should not be treated as a perpetual asset or some type of investment vehicle that trusted parties can pass around for decades. I personally like the analogy of using these as "booster engines" that provide the extra resources that we need while our network effect is small (1-3 years). As the network effect grows and the main engines start firing, the boosters can fall off and let the sustainable decentralized solution take hold. The divestment plan would also help our brand image and marketing efforts which depend so heavily on these funds.

139
I just had a chat with Stan that I think should be an open discussion. As far as I know these are the assets that III holds:

* BTC donated to the AGS Fund.
* PTS donated to the AGS Fund.
* Sharedrops in other DACs that were granted to the PTS Fund address. For example, the Bitshares Trust should own around *6% of all BTSX in circulation. They will continue to own proportional amounts in the merged BTS.
* Cash converted to cover the costs of operation.

After the merger I assumed the funds would still be held by the Bitshares Trust to ensure that they will be used only for development, but it appears I may be wrong. Can someone please explain the plan for these assets and also explain how we can be sure that they will continue to be used for development/marketing of the platform?

*Edit: updated the percentage of BTSX to 6% based on this link:
http://www1.agsexplorer.com/balances/PaNGELmZgzRQCKeEKM6ifgTqNkC4ceiAWw

140
 +5% +5% +5% I could not agree more with the OP. I know of people who are ready to divest very large amounts (~*XXXX) over two main issues, dilution being one of them.

*Edit: removed amounts to avoid being accused of spreading FUD

141
We haven't really changed directions:

1) I still believe in competing DACs and lowering the barrier to entry.
2) I still believe that 3rd party developers should recognize those who built the software they are using as a foundation.
3) I still believe in the company metaphor for economic development.
4) I still believe in NO CONTRACTS and NO OBLIGATIONS on any party (us or 3rd party developers)
5) I still believe that all DA(CCCCC) metaphors apply and are useful:  Currency, Company, Co-Op, Community, Country
6) I still support 3rd party DACs as being good, just so long as I don't have to spend more than an hour or so per week helping them.

So all that has happened is that I demanded a unified project to work on and the options were: create a competitor to BTSX or adapt BTSX.   This was entirely within the realm of the original planning. 

So I fully support your efforts on Launching your own PTS currency based upon your core tenants.   No need to fight any one.  Just go and do it.

In summary we haven't changed course, but all things are a matter of perspective and from some perspectives the course may have changed.   I would say the primary course correct was to "grow and then divide" rather than "divide and then grow".... and course correction was not optional, the original plan was unsustainable.

Dan, I totally understand your position. Can you clarify the following:

1) Are you willing to accept the divestiture strategy I proposed for the Bitshares Trust PTS Angel fund (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10701.0)? For many who are working on the PTS upgrade project, this is of paramount importance.

2) You've already stated that PTS/AGS will live on (after the merger), but can you confirm that it is I3's position that the social contract should also continue to be honored by future DACs (10+%PTS/10+%AGS)?

142
I see the old single-dac-chains as potentially having innovations that get 3rd party Devs recognized by SuperDACs (like BTS/Ethereum).  Is there a flaw to my logic here?  Why wouldn't 3rd party Devs want to develop on those smaller, less competitive DACs?

Well, for one, funding would likely be a bigger issue on the smaller, less competitive DACs. They either need to have earned a huge amount of money from an ICO to fund all the development they need, which we are slowly moving away from in favor of the dilution model, or they would need the stake of their DAC to have a high enough market cap to fund development (either by selling off some of their initial genesis stake or even better getting paid with stakeholder approval through dilution of the stake). If the market cap of the DAC is puny it will be too difficult to generate high enough salaries to pay the developers.

If the developers are creating technology that can bring value to BTS stakeholders, then it would be smart for the BTS stakeholders to pay those developers through BTS dilution (which they can afford to do because of a much higher market cap) to create the technology and add that value to BTS.

In this way, it would essentially be a way to lower barrier to entry for talented Devs who have no other way of proving themselves to a broader community.

If the devs hasn't proved themselves yet, then people probably wouldn't donate to an ICO to allow the devs to carry out their vision. They would also likely dump the stake that the devs generated through snapshots because of lack of confidence in the devs. A dev first needs to prove himself/herself. If they have some background that would make BTS stakeholders think they can actually pull it off, they can appeal to stakeholders and get hired as a developer paid for by BTS dilution. As they start proving themselves they can get paid more to grow their team and accomplish their grander vision. If they don't even have enough credentials to get elected by stakeholders, then I guess they have to first build that reputation by contributing to the open source project for free.

If some devs have proven themselves (say through the above actions), they might have gained enough of a reputation to then launch their own competing DAC if they really wanted to take it along a different path. Ideally BitShares as a platform with Turing complete scripts would be flexible enough to allow them to accomplish their goals within the blockchain, but if for some reason their vision requires fundamental changes that are incompatible with BTS, then they have to launch their own chain. Their reputation can then allow them to get the necessary funding through an ICO, or if they don't want to deal with the legal issues with that, they could even snapshot BTS (and potentially other tokens) and still have enough strong hands who believe in their vision to not dump the genesis stake.

Your main points are again about not being able to secure funding and about technical superiority (my devs are smarter than your devs). I'm afraid your trapped in the paradigm of the "profitable DAC", which is not applicable in every situation. Doge did not ascend to the place it currently holds with any development or funding. If I say "no crypto can possibly succeed without fulfilling requirements A and B" and there is an existing crypto that is literally the polar opposite of requirements A and B, then I need to take a step back and think about what I am saying.

The requirements you've outlined are fine, and they may lead to a wildly successful DAC that meets a particular need or fulfills a particular application nicely. The problem I have is that you've closed your mind to the possibility that alternative business models exist and that you lose nothing by stopping this pointless battle against openness, competition, and diversity. Let me distill it for you again:

You believe:
1) PoW distribution is not the best method of allocation.
2) A DAC cannot succeed without a solid funding model.
3) A DAC cannot succeed without strong developers and technical superiority.

I believe:
1) Without diverging from the topic, most people in the crypto space disagree with you on point #1.
2) A good currency and sharedropping coin CAN succeed without technical superiority.
3) The most important attributes of this coin are: (i) fair distribution, (ii) strong scarcity (non-inflationary), (iii) efficiency and secuirty (DPOS).

Our views mostly differ on our marketing and business strategy. Both may work within a given niche or application. The difference is that I'm not railing against your idea saying that it will never work. Even worse, you have literally nothing to lose but everything to gain if I am right. Just a shame...

143
hi AB, i can understand where you're coming, but i dont think the vision has changed. the timeline for implementing the vision has merely become more realistic

The way i see it, the old vision fragmented development of several products and pigeonholed the bitshares toolkit developers into working on their own projects in relative isolation. from what i can tell, the bitshares toolkit still requires some major development time, and realistically there are only a handful of developers alive that currently have the know how to do so.

 the old plan essentially dictated that key devs like Toast, HackFisher etc would have to stop developing the toolkit (which is critical to DAC industry growth) and work on their own projects. between coding, taking on the role of project manager, providing support for delegates and users, etc i cant imagine there would be any time left for them to help develop the toolkit. software development is rarely a one man job and for good reason imho

developing separate, competing DACs is a great idea (and inevitable if bitshares succeeds) but the infrastructure needs to be sufficient first

These two things are not mutually exclusive. I3 can do the merger and not stray from the "open" strategy. I am merely saying that I3 should "bless" the open platform strategy and convey it clearly. I outlined some simple bullet points that would be sufficient for doing so.

144
This post is illustrative of the exact point I was making. You support the merger but differ in your opinion of the strategy (which is fine). But strategy matters and that is exactly why it is absolutely not a waste of time to discuss the issue. As to your point about sharedropping to PTS - there are two issues with this. The first issue is that any person who have a business strategy that competes with the business strategy of BTS would be insane to sharedrop to their competitor. For example, what if I want to create a different DNS DAC or a different Vote DAC? Would I sharedrop to my own competitor.

If there is a strong division (say 50/50) in the BTS community about how to move forward or on certain critical business decisions, then it makes a lot of sense to do a 100% snapshot of BTS. This would effectively split the DAC and let the various stakeholders move to a position they like. This would be done despite the fact that it weakens their network effect considerably (Metcalfe's law).

If there was a small minority disagreeing, it would not be worth it to split the DAC. Certainly any one of the dissenting minority voices could snapshot the DAC anyway, but since they were small the DAC would have a tiny market cap, tiny network effect, and be unlikely to be successful. It would also not make sense to bother sharedropping to all of BTS in that case, since they would be giving the holders who disagree with their strategy the ability to profit as they dump the new stake. So, in this case it would make more sense to create a new DAC that is allocated according to an ICO, and try to compete with the main chain despite the much smaller network effect. If they were smarter about these different decisions compared to the holders of the bigger chain, they might become successful. In fact, this is the same strategy BitShares is taking vs Bitcoin: why snapshot BTC holders when the vast majority of them don't even believe in the vision of DPOS and BitAssets and would thus just dump anyway?

The second issue is a tangent to the first. Any success, failure, strategy, or implementation that is implemented in BTS would taint its use as a sharedrop instrument. Anyone who disagrees even slightly with any aspect of the DAC would choose not to sharedrop to the DAC. PTS is business-agnostic and DAC-agnostic with a pure proof of work distribution. These properties are ideal for a sharedrop instrument and the open-platform model I have outlined above.

What do PTS holders stand for? What do I even know about them anyway? Why would they be strong hands for my particular DAC implementation? They might just dump the genesis stake anyway because they do not agree with the vision of my DAC. It makes no sense to sharedrop to a "business-agnostic" asset holder. If I am giving up network effect entirely, then I might as well ignore AGS/PTS entirely and just do an ICO that self-selects people who believe in the vision of my DAC.

Proof of work distribution is the only provable and trustless form of distribution. This is one of the failings of Nxt. As for your other comments about the feasibility of competing alternatives, they may be factually correct but irrelevant to the current discussion. Rational minds with overlapping interests (this community) have a decent chance at converging upon a consensus with equal access to information. I don't believe we've exhausted the discussion yet, though I'm sure some will disagree.

Edit: Also you have somehow interpreted "3rd party developer" to mean only developers who have no vested stake in PTS/AGS. There are plenty of talented developers who are invested in PTS and AGS (I know many of them), and would be willing to try and build a new DAC if it were encouraged. If we position PTS properly we can gain a lot of traction from developers both inside and outside of our community.

145
The new strategy seems to be a radical departure from the original strategy of Bitshares, yet there is little in the form of explanation. Lastly, it is entirely unclear what the role of PTS and AGS play in the new strategy. First they are absorbed, then they live on. But still everyone secretly wants them to die.

I will not-at-all-secretly publicly state that I want AGS and PTS to die after the November 5.

The purpose for AGS and PTS has ended in my opinion. One purpose was to reward the people who donated the BTC/PTS funds that make I3's approximately 5% stake in BTS possible, which is to be used for developing the future of this ecosystem. The other purpose was to have strong community support. The sharedrop has changed these two purposes. It allows I3 to focus all of the funds in their position to making BTS the best it can be (and we need every penny we can get to accomplish that vision). It also means that after the sharedrop, people who had their allegiance divided between BTSX, AGS, PTS, VOTE, DNS can now focus it all on just one system BTS. If it is true that nearly all of the support has been diverted away from those various assets and to BTS (which I believe it is since the sharedrop seemed pretty fair to me), than the support for AGS/PTS should have significantly dropped. Why would a third-party DAC want to credit AGS/PTS now if they do not get support using I3's funds anymore and they also do not sharedrop to strong hands who won't dump their stake when the market opens up?

It makes far more sense for the third-party developers to instead sharedrop to asset that there is a lot of support around (BTS). I also think it is preferable that they do some crowdfunding (despite possible SEC risks) to both raise capital and get self-selected strong hands in the genesis block, similar to what BitShares Music is doing with their Note pre-sale.

This post is illustrative of the exact point I was making. You support the merger but differ in your opinion of the strategy (which is fine). But strategy matters and that is exactly why it is absolutely not a waste of time to discuss the issue. As to your point about sharedropping to PTS - there are two issues with this. The first issue is that any person who have a business strategy that competes with the business strategy of BTS would be insane to sharedrop to their competitor. For example, what if I want to create a different DNS DAC or a different Vote DAC? Would I sharedrop to my own competitor. The second issue is a tangent to the first. Any success, failure, strategy, or implementation that is implemented in BTS would taint its use as a sharedrop instrument. Anyone who disagrees even slightly with any aspect of the DAC would choose not to sharedrop to the DAC. PTS is business-agnostic and DAC-agnostic with a pure proof of work distribution. These properties are ideal for a sharedrop instrument and the open-platform model I have outlined above.

146
He seemed like a thoughtful contemplative person who may even have slight regrets at our previous interaction. 

Thanks gamey, water under the bridge...

... I would like to point out that it is trivial to remove the stake during the sharedrop or to lower it to whatever amount the developer feels comfortable.  So on a technical level and ignoring marketing issues, the reduction of the stake is not needed at the PTS level.  It just needs to be readily known that developers can do what they want.  (Including putting the stake back in to the genesis block if PTS elects to remove it)

I wanted it to be voluntary because I think it is fair to allow the Trust to keep a significant stake and also because I truly believe that it is in the best interest of the Trust to divest responsibly to a reasonable amount (and to profit handsomely in the process). I want the blessing of I3, and I'd rather reach a mutually beneficial result.

147
arhag - open source code is different from a development platform. It doesn't require significant resources, just proper messaging and a tiny bit of code reusability is sometimes enough. Dan and his team do not need to actively work on other DACs. I think they should support the platform as a diversity play and to ensure that better ideas are incubated within our ecosystem rather than outside of it.

Quote
Free riding also doesn't work. Can we all come to a consensus that these third party DACs will be diluting by a fair amount to pay for the core technology development that they all share? How can we enforce that with separate DACs? I like the unified BTS because all BTS holders need to pay for the development/marketing that will benefit all BTS holders. Incentives are aligned. For this to work however, it means we need to have a strong enough network effect to squash any challenger that is daring to take a dominant position away from BTS by copying all of the features and advertising itself as a platform similar to BTS.

Let's be realistic, no cryptocurrency in existence has EVER been displaced by a copycat. And what we're talking about here is not a copycat at all. PTS as a featureless DPOS coin does not have exchange, bitAssets, Vote, or DNS. How can anyone claim it is a "direct competitor" or a "threat" to BTS? I remember when the idea of open source software was conceived there was this amazing hostility and vitriol directed towards it. People laughed and ridiculed anyone who promoted the concept. History *has a way of repeating itself.

Why should we fear 3rd party devs if we have a vested interest in their success? They can only succeed if they offer a competitive advantage, and as a platform we would have a vested interest in their success anyways. Should we tell them to innovate elsewhere? Is that in our best interest as a community?

Edit:*


148
Get over it, AB. This is beating a dead horse of a non-argument. Don't you have your own forum now?

This is exactly the type of shallow, non-productive response and attitude I was referring to in my post. Why don't you address the substance of my argument instead of being so dismissive? If anything what you've provided is the very definition of a "non-argument".

Look, you're now a competitor.  Don't expect a pat on the back.

Gonzo - there is a difference between getting a pat on the back and a rational response. How in the world do you figure that a stripped feature-less PTS would compete with the feature-packed merged BTS??? It's like saying that Ferrari views the Honda Civic as a direct competitor. Ludicrous. And merging the DACs doesn't magically produce unity. If anything there is a lack of clarity on the vision of Bitshares and the role of the various products under the Bitshares umbrella. Merging the products with seemingly arbitrary decision-making results in uncertainty, fear, and a fractured community. We need a united strategy, we need to articulate that strategy clearly, and we need to explain how each of the moving parts supports that strategy. I've seen somewhat of a strategy conveyed, but it has been conceived haphazardly and conveyed poorly. The new strategy seems to be a radical departure from the original strategy of Bitshares, yet there is little in the form of explanation. Lastly, it is entirely unclear what the role of PTS and AGS play in the new strategy. First they are absorbed, then they live on. But still everyone secretly wants them to die. If there is anything we've learned from the experiments of Doge and Nxt, it's that properly executed strategy (Doge) can trump technology and that technical superiority means nothing without proper strategy (Nxt)

149
The problem initially began with the proposal to "eliminate PTS/AGS" (though that has been reversed)

Really?  When was this reversed?

The decision was reversed, but with little explanation or clarity on the future of PTS/AGS. I've put forth a strategy that does nothing to hurt the merged BTS. If anything I am arguing that we can have a stake in both the operating system AND the coolest apps built on top of the OS.

150
Get over it, AB. This is beating a dead horse of a non-argument. Don't you have your own forum now?

This is exactly the type of shallow, non-productive response and attitude I was referring to in my post. Why don't you address the substance of my argument instead of being so dismissive? If anything what you've provided is the very definition of a "non-argument".

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [10] 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ... 22