Bytemaster had good reasons for merging the DACs. No one is perfect and no one can totally plan ahead every last detail.

Can we please just move on? The rebranded & merged BitShares without the X even sounds simpler, and will be more appealing to new buyers who dont understand every minutia of BTS crypto-lore.

Merging multiple DACs is not contrary to the original vision of Bitshares. If it makes sense and if the shareholders agree then there wouldn't be a problem with merging Vote with BTSX, or even possibly DNS (though that seems like a tangent). Also, I've been arguing for a re-brand for a looooong time. Neither of these action is contrary to the original vision of an open Bitshares platform.

The problem initially began with the proposal to "eliminate PTS/AGS" (though that has been reversed) and the ongoing hostility towards even the mere existence of other chains built on the Toolkit. Even though the decision to eliminate PTS/AGS was reversed, there is still another sharedrop to PTS/AGS happening on November 5th which seems totally arbitrary. I argue that we should not re-sharedrop PTS and AGS and that we should support their continued existence as sharedrop instruments for 3rd party DACs. Furthermore, we should separate or support the efforts of others to separate the core Toolkit from the BTS repo to make it easier for 3rd parties to fork the toolkit and develop cool DACs.

Isolationism doesn't work and centralization doesn't work. Bitshares as a platform has far more potential than Bitshares as a swiss-army knife of features built into a single blockchain with a hostile and unwelcoming attitude towards alternative strategies. Would you rather own a single app or the entire operating system? Are we a spider or a starfish? We shouldn't be consolidating around a particular action or product decision (to merge or not to merge). Rather, we should consolidate around a set of core principles that define our mission and identity as a community.

I think this deserves its own thread so I'm reposting my feelings on the merger and re-org here.

I see a complete reversal of strategy happening on this forum and, frankly, it is frightening. Some of us have abandoned the “open platform” model of the Bitshares Toolkit in favor of protectionism and centralization. Bytemaster is a smart dude, but the assumption that any innovative idea must have his blessing and must consume his limited resource is just plain wrong. Why should we sink or swim on the basis of a single DAC? The original vision of the Bitshares Toolkit was collaborative and open. 3rd party developers would be encouraged to fork the toolkit and to innovate. Now it seems that we’ve reverted to the very model that Dan campaigned against in the Bitcoin space - that one chain would eventually rule them all. What is the price of all this protectionism? Even if it were true that individual DACs would indirectly compete in the marketplace, why do we assume that this is some sort of a “failure”?

I understand that Dan himself, as an individual, cannot work on competing alternatives. That has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not to position the Toolkit as an open platform for innovation by 3rd party DACs. When I hear people calling for an end to PTS and AGS, it signals to me that we’ve abandoned this vision. Dan doesn’t need to personally develop each DAC, but I think he can do certain things to keep the platform open and to incentivize development by third parties. For example:

* Keep and promote PTS and AGS as sharedrop instruments for future DACs. (Thank you for the recent change of position on this.)
* Create a reasonable and voluntary divestment strategy for the Bitshares Trust to ensure that 3rd party DACs are incentivized to sharedrop for a fair and balanced distribution.
* Either contribute to, or promote the efforts of others who wish to separate the core DPOS code base from DAC-specific applications such as BTSX, DNS, and Vote. Separating the code base would go a long way towards incentivizing 3rd party development. Not only is this good practice from an engineering perspective, but it lowers the barrier to entry for the developer who has an idea for “the next great DAC”.

If a superior technology is built on the Toolkit, then as shareholders of AGS and PTS we would greatly benefit from it. Pushing 3rd party devs and DACs away from the platform will not prevent the existence of competing alternatives to BTS. More than likely, it will just ensure that those alternatives are built elsewhere and that we as a community do not benefit from them.

I support multiple dacs in the community, I just cannot work on multiple dacs.

Dan, PTS is ill-suited to serve as a sharedrop instrument with the Bitshares Trust owning 13.5% of the money supply. I need you to make a good faith effort to address this by agreeing to a reasonable voluntary divestment strategy. I've outlined my proposal here - https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10701.0. We'd be setting ourselves up for failure if we ignored this issue...

Quote from: yellowecho on October 29, 2014, 07:32:08 pm

Quote from: bytemaster on October 29, 2014, 01:26:53 pm

I am of the opinion that an upgrade of this sort needs an entirely new name.   

Pollyshares powered by bitshares toolkit. 

I kindly request that we not confuse the bitshares brand. 

I will also suggest that launching this will require significant dev resources just for maintenance.

Quote from: Gonzo on October 29, 2014, 01:34:59 pm

For the record, I disagree with the proposal

  to you both.  I honestly don't think this proposal has enough merit or support amongst its own community let alone others to thrive.  Enough of this proposal, instead I propose we have one final celebratory air drop and go out with a bang! 

Are you saying PTS should die?

Yes, he seems to be disagreeing with the divestiture proposal only because he has a preference that PTS should die. Totally illogical. If you think PTS is worthless after the merger then there is nothing to divest and you should have no problem with the proposal. If you think it has value then you should support our efforts to make it better. A rising tide lifts all boats, and what we're trying to do here applies only to PTS and only after the merger is complete.

I'm not sure I like the restrictions for III.
Their stake is significant but this should be the case anyway.
We want them to have a stake in future 3rd party DACs.
This way they will be incentivised to provide support.
I'd leave everything as-is.

I agree that their stake should continue to be significant. 3% is a very large stake to maintain in every future DAC (think of the possibility of owning 3% of all Bitcoin for example). The rest of the stake would mostly be divested in a manner that provides significant ongoing revenue to the Trust and funds further development and support. At the same time it gives confidence to investors that the Trust cannot single-handedly overpower the entire consensus mechanism (this cannot be overstated).

Quote from: alphaBar on October 29, 2014, 04:28:00 am

I agree with you that we have an uphill climb ahead of us. I think the main objective here was to give investors some confidence that the funds in the Bitshares Trust would be dealt with responsibly and to counter the argument that we will inevitably face when people object to the lopsided holdings of the fund.

IMO holding a BTS bond with 2 year redemption gives me more confidence and feelings of security than holding a coin that generates no value that currently has no developers, no business plan, and minuscule volume.  I own PTS and I don't feel like things are 'lopsided' with the distribution nor do I feel burned by the BTS share allocation.  PTS was basically a development fund for I3 similar to Devcoin except it promised sharedrops so I have no problem with them holding a large stake... in fact, that gave me more confidence that my investment was safe.  I3 already sharedropped 50% of BTSX to PTS and the other snapshats were also largely sharedropped to PTS.  I think the final airdrop of BTS should be celebrated rather than muddying the waters with this mumbo-jumbo.  PTS was a fine vessel but BTS is the ship that will take us to the moon then the stars. 

Edit per Stan's response:

Quote from: Stan on October 29, 2014, 04:35:02 am

One of the early proposals was the idea of merging them into BTS but that did not achieve consensus and is not part of the current proposal.  PTS and AGS will remain unchanged, representing their two demographics as always.

The current proposal airdrops on AGS and PTS like always, with special provision for DNS and VOTE as "partially born" DACS.  The only issue is the makeup of the BTS sharedrop, not a proposed change to the targets of that drop.

Ok, I've said it about 4 times in this thread, but you seem to not care at all about the point of discussion here. The allocation issues were only discussed by way of background. I specifically stated: It is not the intent of this post to discuss the “fairness” of the allocation. Then I repeated it not once but twice. The purpose of this thread is to discuss the divestment proposal I have outlined for the PTS Angel fund in the upgraded PTS (post-November 5th). You've made your point that you believe PTS will have no residual value so therefore I will assume that you also have no issue with the divestment plan.

Blech just make it into a BTS asset.  PTS had one purpose.  If a PTS DPOS chain is made and forces all these rules because of DPOS, then I'd just as soon see someone create the BTS asset and be done with this.

I thought the whole point of using PTS was because it was considered a fair distribution... well ok, not really ?

Again, this was not the point I am trying to address in this post. A group of us are working to create a PTS upgrade. This post was intended to create a reasonable divestment plan for the Angel fund in that upgraded PTS chain (nowhere else). I discussed this with Stan and he suggested getting input from the community to make sure there was no strong objection to it.

Quote from: alphaBar on October 29, 2014, 04:07:27 am

This proposal allows the Bitshares Trust to generate a lot of revenue from a currency that would otherwise die and therefore be worthless to all parties.

Race donkey here. I appreciate your efforts. But where's the other shoe here? If I'm following your logic, you are saying that (1) the PTS currency is presently worthless, but (2) you want to allow I3 to sell this worthless currency to make some money. I can see some utility in #2, but who is going to buy it if #1 is true?

If you're going to resurrect PTS, that's cool. And I'm with you there. But considering there aren't a lot of DACs on the horizon, I think you have a lot of work to do to sell the 'valuable currency' part before talking about sucking more value out of it. I understand this proposal could improve the governance, but it also creates a headwind before it's been made clear where any forward momentum would come from.

Cart before the thoroughbred?

I agree with you that we have an uphill climb ahead of us. I think the main objective here was to give investors some confidence that the funds in the Bitshares Trust would be dealt with responsibly and to counter the argument that we will inevitably face when people object to the lopsided holdings of the fund.