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Messages - CryptoPrometheus

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31
Muse/SoundDAC / Open Letter to Cob
« on: January 26, 2016, 03:00:25 am »
@cob,

Some people on this forum have begun to question your ability to execute. While I do not yet count myself among them, I have a growing concern with your lack of professionalism, casual dismissal of the valid grievances of MUSE shareholders, and apparent unwillingness to provide a greater level of transparency. I understand that what you are attempting to build must be very difficult, but if you were to spend some time finding ways to improve communications with MUSE shareholders, then I think a little effort would go a long way.

As a Peertracks crowdfund investor, I would like to bring to your attention some concerns I have about the way you have conducted your fiduciary responsibilities to your shareholders. To be clear, I am aware that you are not legally bound to any duties as such, but nevertheless I hope the contents of this letter can provide you some insight and feedback that you will choose to take to heart.

I do not possess any “insider” information that would give me a reason to doubt the project, but I also do not have much solid evidence to the contrary. Therefore, I believe that my evaluation is likely similar to what others who are “outside the loop” have found.

Here’s my assessment:

From October 6 thu. December 5, 2014, you raised 1,436 BTC, ostensibly towards the development of a Music promotion/sales/peer-2-peer platform based on the DPOS software protocol.

I assume that you immediately converted those funds to a stable fiat currency, rather than holding the BTC and speculating with the funds that investors entrusted to you. Between the two crowdfund dates, Bitcoin never fell below $350, so even if you only managed to get $300 per BTC, that would still put your grand total over $430,000.
http://www1.agsexplorer.com/

From December 2014 to present, you have averaged less than 1 official update to the Bitshares community (your largest crowdfund donor pool) per month, usually 3-4 paragraphs each, in which you have repeatedly claimed that 90% of your plans must remain under lock and key, as they are so amazing that they would immediately be stolen by the competition.

During this same period, you published 4 different websites, IMO all rather unprofessional looking, but nevertheless full of big promises. Setting aside the numerous spelling and grammatical errors, none of them seemed to leave the reader without much sense of what Peertracks actually is. In fact 13 months after the completion of your crowdfund, you have yet to deliver a business plan, timeline, milestones, strategy, budget, marketing materials, or much real evidence that you have done anything besides talk. (I personally believe that you have done more than talk, but nevertheless I am finding little empirical evidence to support this.) I'm not a coder, but AFIK releasing a clone of the Bitshares light client and labeling it "MUSE" is does not require more than a few days effort.

Last Thursday, you dropped a bombshell of an update. Please correct me if I misunderstood, but you stated that you must raise more money or you will not be able to continue development? I thought it was rather strange that you chose to spend 1/3 of the update justifying how your admittedly bad decision to outsource developers "actually worked out in your favor" because of labor market forces beyond your control. This does not inspire much confidence in you ability to make sound business decisions.

What I mean is - if you are trying to prevent a loss in confidence, then why would you spend 3 paragraphs highlighting your error, and then attempt to cover your tracks by basically saying “don’t worry guys... due to a fortuitous accident, we didn’t mess up as badly we should have”. I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m just trying to highlight that you guys should really consider hiring a PR manager.

More to the point - my number one question is - How have you spent the rest of our money? I know that nobody likes to be micromanaged, but since you have taken funds from a public crowd sale - I believe we have the right to know. Even if you round to the nearest $1000, I would find that more satisfactory than nothing.

Frankly, your inconsistent and cryptic communication over these last 12 months would never fly if you were a publicly traded stock. At this stage, you would be hard pressed to raise a 2nd round of capital from any investor who did his due diligence. Of course you could always try your luck with a naive and unsuspecting “kickstarter” crowd, which is apparently what you are now considering.

To be perfectly clear, I am not at all accusing you of foul play, but I am trying to highlight the fact that a few short paragraphs of hype and promises does not satisfy your responsibilities to the people who have been waiting patiently for over a year. I have extended “benefit of the doubt” up to this point, and have chosen to watch and wait patiently. I have not overlooked the obvious roadblocks that you have faced, least among them the bumpy upgrade to DPOS 2.0. I have been a huge supporter in my own circles, and several of my friends and family members have invested in Peertracks. I say this to disclose that perhaps my feelings or opinions are not entirely unbiased.

I very much want this project to succeed, and so I hope that my feedback will useful to you. I also hope you will honor your responsibility and address some of the recent feedback of other concerned shareholders, rather than the “ignore and push on forward” method that I have seen you adopt in the past.

Thanks for your time,

Michael

32
This is a historical moment - it's a first attempt to implement a new feature in the Graphene code-base without CNX being directly involved.
Well done @abit

Let's hope CNX will be supportive and offer some feedback regarding the quality of abit's code.
Even if they don't find BSIP10 especially useful.

The baby is learning to walk :)

+5% I agree - this is a first - and I am very happy to see it!

Furthermore, I think we should pay his asking price,  if only to send a positive signal to others who might be watching and wondering if we are a bunch of tightwads.

33
@cob - you need to hook up with @SolomonSollarsNSense to handle Muse promotional videos. He's got some serious chops.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20218.msg272353.html#msg272353

34
General Discussion / Re: New Years Group Hangout (Guestbook)
« on: January 01, 2016, 10:58:23 pm »
Does anybody have an audio copy of this hangout?
http://bitsharesnews.info/post/136400048328/smartcoins-point-of-sale-openpos-hangout-raw

Thanks jakub, thats the open pos... was wondering about the cryptonomex hangout - did that not happen this morning?

35
General Discussion / Re: New Years Group Hangout (Guestbook)
« on: January 01, 2016, 09:09:11 pm »
Does anybody have an audio copy of this hangout?

36
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: DPOShub.org [PR Delegate Update Thread]
« on: December 06, 2015, 06:50:59 pm »
Where are you? Taking shareholders money and not performing?

Edit: How much was your payrate?

We have never accepted any money from any shareholder. This year, Jonathan and I spent a few thousand dollars of our own money in an attempt to put together a working prototype that matched our DposHub whitepaper, however the project is much more complex than a few thousand dollars worth of contract labor could achieve. Because of this, we have put the project on hold and are exploring other options.

We ran a 100% delegate for six months on BitShares 1.0, but since we were never voted into the top 101 we did not receive any BTS.

37
General Discussion / Re: [ANN]Now Open: ShareBits CrowdDonations
« on: November 15, 2015, 06:15:30 am »
@fuzzy @kuro112 @ccedk

Great Initiative!

I saw fuzzy mention that the OP was only a pre-proposal, so maybe some of these questions can't or don't have answers yet, but I figured I would just rattle them off anyways.

Here goes:

1)  Will this project be closed source, or open source and licensed? If it it closed source, will there be a transparent way to audit that everything is working properly?

2)  Do you plan to ever dilute the Sharebit UIA to more than 250k in the future? Who will be the official trustees?

3)  Do you have any built in mechanism for funding future development of the bot? For example, do you plan to allocate a percentage of the referral income towards ongoing development? In your breakdown I saw $1200/year for maintenance fees, but I don't remember any mention of an ongoing development fund.

4)  I'm very interested to hear about how do you plan to implement dividend payments to UIA holders (high level, of course ;))

5) Last - out of curiosity, If you end up sharedropping ShareBits UIA onto BTS and Brownies holders, how much is that going to cost? Aren't there like 60,000 addresses? That's a lot of transaction fees!

All in all, I think this project has a lot of potential, if done correctly. I am no expert on the "correct" way to do this, but I am very encouraged by the way you are approaching it so far.

Edit: One final question I have - how will the project be governed? Will ShareBits UIA holders have a say in any decision making processes going forward, or will it be "centrally" governed by Beyond Bitcoin and CCEDK? My personal (unsolicited) opinion is that it would have a much higher chance of success if you did not try to formally involve the token holders in much (if any) of the decision making processes. I know this isn't even possible yet (until hopefully FMV releases their UIA voting software), but nevertheless I am wondering about how you envision the tipbot to be "governed", i.e. who is pulling the trigger on major and minor decisions?

38
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 11, 2015, 04:57:39 am »
Just a quick note.

DEX orders stays in memory for ever, so at current market cap and 0.1 BTS fee for limit_order_create operation, it will take ~20K USD to exhaust all witnesses memory. ( Assuming 4GB mem witnesses )

Code: [Select]
0.003186*0.1*4*1e9/64 ~= 20K USD
64 = memory usage of 1 limit_order_object
0.1 = fee
4*1e9 = 4GB
0.003186 = USD per BTS

Memory exhausting protection need to be taken into account also.

Thanks ElMato, this is good information to have. However, I think at this stage the difference between 0.1 BTS and 1 BTS is negligible. In other words, we could easily raise the cost of spamming the network from $20,000 to $200,000 and still require only 1/3 of a cent (1BTS) fee.

The question is, would $200,000 in new income from the attack be enough to justify paying the witnesses more money so they could upgrade their RAM? Probably yes. Especially since Ram is cheap. However, would this be a security risk in the interim? I don't know the answer to that. Wouldn't the network technically survive if just some of the witnesses were using more than 4 GB or RAM at the time of the attack?

Edit: Seems like Xeldal beat me to the punch ^^

39
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 11, 2015, 02:39:06 am »
Back to proposal #2:

I do not agree that giving the committee members their own personal "slush fund" is a good idea. Regardless of whether there is some direct voting system involved in spending these funds (which doesn't seem to be outlined in the proposal), it seems to add another needless level of complexity in determining how BitShares spends its reserve pool/income from fees. Not to mention it could undermine the whole system of checks & balances we are trying to achieve with DPOS 2.0.

So that said - regarding volume based fees on SmartCoin trading -  what if keep the 80/20 split with the referral program (so that this is not further undermined), but we automatically take the network 20% and liquidate at the feed price? Would this be too much of a burden on shorts?

If we did this, it would allow the network to receive all of its fee income as the core BTS token. It could all go back into the current reserve pool, and we would not have to deal with giving the committee members (an unpaid "political" position) the burden/responsibility of figuring out how to spend the network's funds. This would continue to be solely the responsibility of workers, by popular vote.

40
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 10, 2015, 11:03:17 pm »
it is foolish to "hire someone who has little to no track record of writing code for graphene, and then just assume that some (nonexistant) qualified graphene experts are just sitting around waiting to offer their code auditing skills for "next to nothing".

Dammit, you've convinced me. <--- that's me being sarcastic. ;)

I'm now going to run with the herd again, because it's futile to do otherwise and remain a part of this Community herd.

Hay guise, good talk!  So m000000n!  (oh wait, that's BTC getting hammered by some whale)

And remember guise ... Dan's the only answer ... never forget!!!

Everyone else is just a random coder that can't figure out Graphene, so don't even consider it, much less bring it up on the forum.

I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings Tuck, it was not my intent. Again, I am looking at what is in front of me, not what exists in some golden land of potential. In that land, Everything exists, so its kind of pointless to use in an argument.

Believe me, I want to see more people come in and code for BitShares too. I hope this happens as soon as possible. I share your frustration that nobody else has stepped forward, I am just not as apt at wearing it on my sleeve as you are   ;)

41
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 10, 2015, 10:49:28 pm »
All told CNX has spent about $60,000 developing the existing GUI.

In total this amounts to about 20M BTS.

We can open source it for everyone connecting to BitShares which will help Open Ledger, Meta, Bunker, Banx, Blocktrades, BitCash, and others by doubling their potential revenue by not having to license from CNX. This means higher referral rewards for users. Use for other blockchains would still be reserved to CNX.

We would be prepared to accept 10M BTS vesting over 1 year.  This will avoid creating any downward sell pressure for the next year and I think would be widely supported by all of the major partners.

This is less than 30,000 BTS per day.

Hopefully this will help kickstart a bunch of businesses and remove artificial barriers while helping to fund ongoing maintenance and improvements.  Just $90 per day.

This is a proposal for review.

I would vote for this proposal. IMO the sooner we open source the wallet software the better. Could be a huge draw for potential businesses. Out of curiosity, I wonder if someone could devise a way for the community to haggle your price?

Not so fast pinkie!
Let's see how much is left from the affiliate program after lowering the fees across the board, leaving only % fees on trading...and only trading fees on BTS it seems (so 50% and probably less of the trading volume). Leaving most of the people out of the desire for LM, and possibly even making it not profitable for traders to upgrade.
Giving up on 50% of revenue (of pretty much no revenue) in exchange for cash, in this case is like selling something worth [now] close to nothing as income stream for hard money. And it does not matter  if it cost you 100K  to  produce it. If it offers no income stream,  we are not paying your 100K  just cause you incur that much expenses.

Alright Professor K, if your argument is that we should focus on cementing our income stream before we go spending money on other things, then I would agree in principal. However, we are talking about vesting the shares for a year, in exchange for a true "out of the box" platform for attracting other coders and businessmen to the ecosystem. Weren't you just complaining that Cryptonomex has too much of a monopoly in this regard?

As far as the trading & transfer fees, this is a separate issue. If you are asking for my opinion (I assume you are, since you brought it up), then I would say that transfer fees should stay the same as they are now. This includes all assets, Smart, UIA or Core. This has nothing to do with the exchange, and I am not sure why this got mixed up into the discussion. No centralized exchange (that I know of) allows users to transfer funds back and forth between each other, so we don't need to compete with them. As far as competing with other "cryptocurrencies", I would say that we are offering a premium platform, so we are justified to charge more premium fees. The only thing I think about transfer fees that I feel could be improved is the way that fee pools are funded, but I will leave that for another discussion.

Volume based fees on the other hand, IMO (contrary to proposal #2) should ALL pay out through referral program, whether they are SmartCoins or Core asset. Perhaps UIA volume fees can be exempt from this, because their market value is not always easy to determine, but volume fees on SmartCoins is potentially a huge income stream. Handing these fees to the committee members to spend as they see fit, regardless of whether voting is involved, is not the answer. At this time, I do not have the answer, I only have a feeling about what is NOT the answer. Usually I have to think about these things for awhile and I don't like going on about something unless I have an idea about the solution, but since you ask I am happy to share my unfinished thought process.

42
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 10, 2015, 09:41:54 pm »
All told CNX has spent about $60,000 developing the existing GUI.

In total this amounts to about 20M BTS.

We can open source it for everyone connecting to BitShares which will help Open Ledger, Meta, Bunker, Banx, Blocktrades, BitCash, and others by doubling their potential revenue by not having to license from CNX. This means higher referral rewards for users. Use for other blockchains would still be reserved to CNX.

We would be prepared to accept 10M BTS vesting over 1 year.  This will avoid creating any downward sell pressure for the next year and I think would be widely supported by all of the major partners.

This is less than 30,000 BTS per day.

Hopefully this will help kickstart a bunch of businesses and remove artificial barriers while helping to fund ongoing maintenance and improvements.  Just $90 per day.

This is a proposal for review.

I would vote for this proposal. IMO the sooner we open source the wallet software the better. Could be a huge draw for potential businesses. Out of curiosity, I wonder if someone could devise a way for the community to haggle your price?

43
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 10, 2015, 09:27:18 pm »
We have retracted #1.

To those in this thread that says the community always just rubber stamps everything, this is evidence that we dont just rubber stamp everything.


Are there any issues with any of the other proposals that we need to discuss more? 
Things definitely seem to go best when we have a dialogue between devs and community and everyone works to refine and improve each others ideas.

We should discuss everything in detail as much as possible on the forums, and use Friday's mumble to ask questions and to further clarify the finer points of the proposals. I hope that Cryptonomex does not plan to publish the official worker proposals until this has happened. IMO, these are the 2 best tools we have right now (forums and mumble), and anyone who wants to be part of the discussion should be given plenty of time to voice their concerns. If someone else wishes to step forward and present an alternative proposal, they should do so. (This includes the army of "phantom" coders that I have been led to believe are waiting to step up and fill the void. Now is your chance).

Other than that, I do not see much point pining about how things "should have" or "might have" been. I will cast my votes to hire someone capable of undertaking these challenges. If there is someone other than Cryptonomex who can do this right now, PLEASE STEP FORWARD! We need more coders! Nobody is denying this fact! Until this happens, what are we going to do? For those of you who think that throwing Cryptonomex under the bus is a good idea, and will call everyone who wants to see them improve BitShares a "mind controlled sheep", then I suggest you get busy finding or convincing another way to improve and advance BitShares. Until I see evidence that someone else is willing to step up and meet these challenges, I am going to make the best of what is in front of me, and use my time and energy to critique the current proposals.

44
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 10, 2015, 08:10:05 pm »
"We have plenty of qualified coders here who would review the code for next to nothing" ??

Tuck, forgive me if you were being sarcastic (I can never tell), but this statement is absurd. We are talking about writing new code to change the native functionality of the blockchain. Do you honestly think that it is a wise idea to ridicule the idea of asking Cryptonomex (who are more familiar with graphene than anyone else) to audit and test the new code to make sure that it will work? They could do this faster, and more efficiently than anyone else at this stage.

So just to clarify, my understanding: you are talking about hiring someone who has little to no track record of writing code for graphene, and then just assuming that some (nonexistant) qualified graphene experts are just sitting around waiting to offer their code auditing skills for "next to nothing"?

I'm wondering why Dan is stating that CNX will have to review any code, as if we don't have any other options. There are other options, they are rarely brought up or considered.

Denying or ignoring that fact is just going along with the herd mentality that we see here far too often ... and I like going against the herd because it's the only way this forum will address any topic seriously versus the usual ...

"You da man Dan! Whatever you say is gold! I'm all for it ... with my proxy vote because I'm too lazy to think or vote for myself!"

I am not trying to come to the defense of Cryptonomex, they can defend themselves. I am just stating a FACT - They are the most qualified to audit any new code for graphene, and IMO we certainly want them auditing any new code that will be adopted by the blockchain at this stage- especially since we have still not achieved major adoption and (I would argue) are still vulnerable in many ways. 

It's also a FACT that we don't have to use CNX.

Another FACT is that this forum rarely discusses any alternatives. The forum herd just listens to Dan and immediately announces they back whatever he says, without any further consideration.

Why is that? Where has that mentality gotten us so far?

Why is the majority of the forum so afraid to discuss other options?

Anyone bringing up an alternate opinion gets responses like this one of yours, which focuses on my post and it's intentions instead of discussing/seeking out any alternatives that may be available, while at the same time reiterating that Dan's the best answer we have. How do you know that? Have you sought out third parties within the few hours this proposal was posted? Nope, you haven't. You're just stating Dan's the best answer, when you have no clue if Dan's the best answer because you haven't even considered any alternatives outside of the one I mentioned, which I agree is not the best one, but at least it is one!

I haven't had more than an hour myself to find a better alternative, neither has anyone else, but hey screw all that, let's just go with what Dan says, because we've exhausted all possibilities in those few hours!  ::)

It's as if Dan's the only answer and any other opinions are too "this or that", so let's just go with Dan's idea, because we don't want to have any sort of real discourse, that's too much trouble and time consuming. It's not like we have more than a few hours to decide.  ::)

Hell, v2.0 hasn't been out that long and we're already moving towards v3.0.

So tell me again how great Dan's 2.0 idea was? Oh yeah, so great that he himself is scrapping it after a few weeks.  :-\

By all means, let's just continue to deride anyone else offering to solve the problems with BitShares by calling them "random coders" and rely solely on Dan, because we just don't have the time to think about things!  ::)


Of course we all hope this will change going forward, as outside teams of coders learn to write for graphene, but this has not happened yet.

Why would it happen when they will simply be talked to like a autistic step-child (it's OK, I'm an autistic step-child so I can say that) by Dan and the forum will give responses like yours, as if there's not possibly anyone else in the world as qualified as Dan and time is running out, we must hurry or else the "competition" (where are they again?) will get all our monies!  ::)


Think about it this way

No. Too many people here rely on others to think for them.

- if there were a bunch of people sitting around who were qualified to audit new graphene code - don't you think that they would be writing code themselves as we speak? Where are they? I'm not saying they don't exist, but I am also not just assuming that they DO.

How would you know? In the few hours you've spent reading Dan's proposal, who have you sought out as an alternative?  Who's council did you seek that offered other opinions on the matter? How much were you able to cover in those few hours? Do you really want to make drastic changes to your monetary future that quickly based on the thoughts of one man who history has shown repeatedly has gotten it wrong? I mean, what incarnation of PTS are we on BTW? How many name changes (so we forget the past mistakes) have we been through? How many more must we endure?

Disclaimer : Dan you're the man bro!  But I want alternatives discussed. I want to hear other opinions, other coders thoughts, other alternatives to your ideas proposed and this forum. Constantly bowing to your ideas is not helping that progress. At some point we have to give this some time, let others have a chance, which has yet to happen and if things continue this way it never will happen. There never will be others offering to help as long as the Community continue to do whatever Dan says and not even give others the chance to open their mouth or even find out about the opportunity (like now). We might as well slap a disclaimer on all of Dan's Worker Proposal's that reads, "You have two hours to decide or else!".

There are two different ideas that I believe you are conflating, and it would be good to separate them for purposes of clarity.   

The notion that recognizing the FACT that Cryptonomex has proven their qualifications as expert coders (and thus capable of auditing any future graphene code) is the same thing as agreeing with the SUBJECTIVE features/ developmental decisions that they have made thus far is false. These are two separate things.

I will not take your comments about "going along with everything Dan says" personally, as I have often disagreed with Dan's approach (you can check my posts in this very thread), but nevertheless I agree that there are perhaps a number of people who think this way. So be it.

I am much less concerned with the "masses" of followers, than I am with the few who would seek to undermine a legitimate organization because there is some "better solution" that might be out there. Of course there is always a better solution.. If you are going to get upset with someone for pointing out the flaws in your argument, or throw up straw men to vent your frustrations, you are welcome to do that. But I stand by my statement - it is foolish to "hire someone who has little to no track record of writing code for graphene, and then just assume that some (nonexistant) qualified graphene experts are just sitting around waiting to offer their code auditing skills for "next to nothing".

If you intended your original post to be a springboard for further discussion, then perhaps you should consider my comments as a reflection on the situation as it currently stands, rather than an attack on your personal philosophy about whether or not things should continue in the same way.

45
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Worker Proposal Review
« on: November 10, 2015, 07:18:30 pm »
@bytemaster, In your quest to make BitShares more like the centralized exchanges, (your  "0 fees" plan) you have proposed a solution that will once again take BitShares farther away from the centralized exchanges, by creating a "global volume" based fees system that toggles up and down at random times, depending on total global usage of the exchange. As far as I know (I might be wrong), there are no centralized exchanges that do this.

Think about it - you are talking about penalizing people for using the exchange while many other people are using it - how absurd is that? Sure, there might be a logical reason for it (as an anti-spam measure, you cannot have 0 fees without this - or so you have determined), but it will almost certainly be PERCEIVED as a random tax on users.

You can't have uncertainty in the fee schedule. It must be reliable - users must know how much they are going to pay before they initiate the transaction. We can't say "you might get this or you might get that, depending on factors beyond your control." If we do this, Mark my words, we are going to have a bunch of pissed off users every time the global volume increases. We are going to run into the same problem as we have now - people are not going to look at this in a 100% rational way.

They won't see the big picture. They will say "I assumed that I would only pay 2 cents, but a bunch of people were online and trading that day so I ended up paying 10 cents. What a ripoff. Screw this". Sure, this thought might be subconscious, and they might continue trading for awhile, but you will be hitting them where it hurts - their perception. They will have uncertainty - they will never know for certain how much fees they will be paying. In the long term, IMO this is worse than just having them pay a relatively high fixed fee (like we have right now.)

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