Social Contract
One of the main issues here is that it is not fulfilled. It lured a lot of people into trusting III. Even if they had no intention to follow the contract they didn't make enough effort to say it clear. With the proposal even if it is fair under some perspectives it is unfair in the terms of the contract. This is what bothers many people. There were many suggestions attempting to make an alternative proposal abiding the contract AND merging all into one chain. Apparently something else is needed to persuade III.
Forget about persuading III. Decentralize and innovate.
Here is a path you could take:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10468.01) Form a Bitshares Cooperative.
2) Track decentralized reputation and award Non-Transferable Patronage Points to verified identities who give gifts to support development.
3) The cooperative can form partnerships with individual developers, private corporations, public institutions, non-profits, to give dividend rewards back to those who acquired good reputation mapped on the blockchain with Non-Transferable Patronage Points.
4) Competitive gift giving to support development can replace investment which would remove SEC and regulatory vulnerability.
Patronage Points (decentralized reputation credits) would allow the community to enforce the social contract through the Bitshares Cooperative. If you violate the will of the community then you don't get awarded Patronage Points for your development efforts and as a result the community will not reward your efforts with gifts.
The benefits to doing it through a cooperative is that as the network effects grow the amount and variety of the gifts which could be given can grow. These gifts could fund development just fine without any legal obligation and the blockchain could map reputation even when participants are pseudo-anonymous persons. The Bitshares Cooperative could be the place where we all go to verify our unique identities on the blockchain as well because Patronage Points have to be Non-Transferable to act as reputation credits which means you need to confirm a real world identity somewhere.
The benefit to confirming your real world identity with a Bitshares Cooperative is that the moment you do so you become a member and shareholder of the cooperative. This immediately allows you to benefit from any partnerships, deals, rebates, discounts, vouchers, gifts, from any centralized or decentralized institution. So a Bitshares Cooperative is just a legal bridge to connect DACs to centralized institutions so that the Bitshares Cooperative can start international credit unions for example with Bitshares users as the shareholders.