Proposal to Resolve a Million Issues at Once

[Method-X]

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.

Is it even possible to "merge mine" a DPOS blockchain?

Yes, it is possible, though different than merged mining in the PoW sense. One potential solution for determining burn rate is to allow each user to vote for the following options:

1) merged mining with BTSX with a preferred burn rate
2) non-merged mining (regular voting for delegates)

The system then takes the preferred burn rates of ALL merged mining votes and calculates an average burn rate, which is paid to all BTSX delegates who choose to merge mine the DAC. It is true that bandwidth constraints would limit each delegate to merge mining a limited number of DACs, but that will sustain the Bitshares ecosystem until separate chains are justified (we will probably not have more than a handful viable DACs for near term).

I have always wondered if it would be possible to potentially have one delegate that effectively works for multiple chains at once--this would cost substantially less and significantly increase the value proposition for delegates...

From my understanding, the reason sidechains don't really work for Bitcoin is that the PoW sidechains can still be attacked by the biggest chain. So it's not an ideal solution. Sidechains would work much better for DPOS.

[fuzzy]

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.

Is it even possible to "merge mine" a DPOS blockchain?

Yes, it is possible, though different than merged mining in the PoW sense. One potential solution for determining burn rate is to allow each user to vote for the following options:

1) merged mining with BTSX with a preferred burn rate
2) non-merged mining (regular voting for delegates)

The system then takes the preferred burn rates of ALL merged mining votes and calculates an average burn rate, which is paid to all BTSX delegates who choose to merge mine the DAC. It is true that bandwidth constraints would limit each delegate to merge mining a limited number of DACs, but that will sustain the Bitshares ecosystem until separate chains are justified (we will probably not have more than a handful viable DACs for near term).

I have always wondered if it would be possible to potentially have one delegate that effectively works for multiple chains at once--this would cost substantially less and significantly increase the value proposition for delegates...

[inarizushi]

After listening to the last dev hangout and the mumble, I definitely like the new proposal. This multi-DAC thing is insanely exciting to me. Getting rid of POW and clarifying the product is perfect. The only problem is that the end of AGS/PTS will be unfair to somebody, but the positive effects should be worth the pain.

[carpet ride]

Seems less risky than crypto equity m&a.  . However either proposal works for me as long as we end up with a mothership DAC

Hmm, I think you may have misunderstood. My post was essentially equivalent to bytemaster's proposal, just another way of looking at the same thing. Or maybe I misunderstood what your position was?

Right, I think we both understand that it's all about how this "seems" and we're on he same page really




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[arhag]

Seems less risky than crypto equity m&a.  . However either proposal works for me as long as we end up with a mothership DAC

Hmm, I think you may have misunderstood. My post was essentially equivalent to bytemaster's proposal, just another way of looking at the same thing. Or maybe I misunderstood what your position was?

[xeroc]

we discussed the "merged-mining" proposal in the hangout yesterday .. and IMHO would should go the other way round and focus all power in one blockchain .. and gather speed ...

once the market can stand on it's own .. the blockchain features can be "spinned off" the main business and be run on a separated chain using the same assets/delegates .. but different chain/feature set ..

[carpet ride]

3) AGS received a much larger allocation of DACs per dollar invested precisely because they are "locked" into the Bitshares ecosystem. Making them liquid after the fact is unfair. It essentially gives AGS holders all of the benefits of PTS without any of the downside. Here is the "company" analogy we like to use so much: The Bitshares Corporation gives investors a choice between buying one of two corporate bonds, A and B. Bond A is perpetual and bond B is convertible. For this reason, A has a much higher yield than B. After the bonds are issued, the company turns around and says "just kidding," A is now also a convertible bond, though it keeps the higher yield. Just something to think about.

I propose another analogy. AGS/PTS still exist and the social contract is in place. I3 decides they want to create a super-DAC (lets call it BTSO for BitShares Other) that will include all future ideas that they were planning on crediting AGS/PTS with. They could give 10% to AGS and 10% to PTS, but instead they decide to be generous and give 50% to AGS and 50% to PTS (just like BTSX). Remember, the social contract said any fork in the same industry must snapshot off the blockchain in that industry. Forks of BitShares X to include interest were planned to fork off BTSX not AGS/PTS. Similarly, future spin-offs of the industries in BitShares Other credit BTSO not AGS/PTS. Because of this and because I3 would have decided BTSO will be for ALL future ideas they come up with, it means AGS and PTS would then likely be worthless. They still exist, but no would bother mining or trading PTS anymore.

So then, BTSX, BTSO, DNS, VOTE, and NOTE exist (AGS/PTS also exist but are worthless so we can ignore them). The social consensus at that point is that industries in a bank and exchange snapshot off BTSX; industries in domain names snapshot off DNS, industries in music snapshot off NOTE; industries in voting snapshot off VOTE; and, industries in everything else snapshot off BTSO. These are all separate DACs that will be at worse directly competing with each other or at best spreading the focus and energy of I3 too thin. It is completely fair game for any one of these DACs to out-compete the others and kill them all off. Those decisions on the future direction of the DACs are no longer in the hands of I3 but rather the shareholders of each DAC. The proposal is that we now want to consolidate some of these industries together because it is less confusing for investors and we are stronger together than when competing with each other. What is the fairest way of doing this? I don't know. In some sense it doesn't really matter. What matters is what is the best way of doing it which gives the resulting super-DAC the best chance for survival, because that is all that matters in the ruthless business world. In my opinion, bytemaster's proposal seemed pretty fair to all parties, and more importantly it seemed like a proposal that would lead to the most unification possible in our community and the least amount of pissed-off people who dump their stake in anger. Maybe there is a better merger strategy that more of us will agree to (we will never be able to please everyone). What I am confident about is that we have a much better chance of surviving against outside competitors, who will eventually come to their senses and decide to clone the BitShares toolkit, if we unite together into one DAC, at least in these early growth stages.

Seems less risky than crypto equity m&a.  . However either proposal works for me as long as we end up with a mothership DAC


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[amencon]

@amencon
you obviously didn't read the Vote DAC thread if you think the community has nothing to do with this decision.

Maybe not closely enough, but from what I saw the community reaction was due to poor message delivery from BM.  Then to counter-act overreaction from the BTSX heavy investors, this proposal was rolled out, further intensifying the confusion originally created from the Vote DAC thread.

The community doesn't know why BM was excited by Vote DAC and so weren't in a position to judge whether or not it actually was a threat to BTSX investments.  Now the community still doesn't know all the plans at I3 HQ and really aren't in a position to judge how necessary this new course reversal is.

At this point you just have to trust I3 is doing the right thing and hope for the best.  Majority of shareholders are going to go with BM's suggestions nearly regardless of what they are (there are enough here that regard him as a "thought leader" and actively encourage others to follow him blindly) and in the end they may not be wrong to do so.

Eyes closed, fingers crossed.

[alphaBar]

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.

Is it even possible to "merge mine" a DPOS blockchain?

Yes, it is possible, though different than merged mining in the PoW sense. One potential solution for determining burn rate is to allow each user to vote for the following options:

1) merged mining with BTSX with a preferred burn rate
2) non-merged mining (regular voting for delegates)

The system then takes the preferred burn rates of ALL merged mining votes and calculates an average burn rate, which is paid to all BTSX delegates who choose to merge mine the DAC. It is true that bandwidth constraints would limit each delegate to merge mining a limited number of DACs, but that will sustain the Bitshares ecosystem until separate chains are justified (we will probably not have more than a handful viable DACs for near term).

I should clarify that "merged mining" is far less efficient than using user-issued assets, but may allow for an easier transition to non-merged mining (ie, without a hard fork / protocol change). I haven't thought through all of the implications but I was thinking of sort of a compromise between full consolidation and being completely disjoint.

[amencon]

Amencon, mat608 and mf-tzo, would you be prepared to also repeat your points on some of these mumble-hangouts with Bytemaster?

You all touch on some very valid concerns and I would like to have your perspectives be part of those real-time discussion as well. Especially since some of you feel that I did not do a good enough job defending the multiple separate chain idea.

I admit that I now favor the idea of having separate DACs be developed more independently from the bitshares team, because I think having only Dacs developed by the  bitshares team would be just as bad as having a single blockchain. So my expectation of the future is now that trying to help bitshares reach more success in the short term, will boost adoption rate of separate blockchains and (D)Pos by others more, than having a crippled small team try and create a complete ecosystem from day one, complete with competitors. I'm noticing that some famous people in the industry are looking into Pos now as well, whereas they were completely opposed to the concept not too long ago.

Also on the topic of changing course and being inconsistent, I don't completely agree with that point of view. It does not account for this being a completely new experiment, with no definitive answers. Do keep in mind that bitUsd was not a finalized or even as trusted a concept as it is now. Also because of the idea of the bitUsd mechanic of btsx being part of most of the DACs planned by bitshares in the future, which was not part of the perceived reality when the plan was to create these separate selfsufficient blockchains, the situation did change from that time and it does make sense to reevaluate the path with this new development. What path is chosen should indeed be left to the individual stakeholders and what they believe is the best road forward.

Would be nice if people talked and ask questions first before panicking and selling before anything is even close to being decided. For one the details on how the percentage stakes would be divided has not even come up.

I have no problem continuing the discussion, I've also not sold anything yet as I'm not in this for the short term speculating.  I will wait to see how this all plays out before readjusting my levels of investment.

I wouldn't be against joining some sort of Mumble session, unfortunately I work full time, overtime and side jobs.  Emails, forums and texts are the best kinds of communication mediums for me as it allows me to multitask, however if there was a Mumble during time I was free I would jump on.

[arhag]

3) AGS received a much larger allocation of DACs per dollar invested precisely because they are "locked" into the Bitshares ecosystem. Making them liquid after the fact is unfair. It essentially gives AGS holders all of the benefits of PTS without any of the downside. Here is the "company" analogy we like to use so much: The Bitshares Corporation gives investors a choice between buying one of two corporate bonds, A and B. Bond A is perpetual and bond B is convertible. For this reason, A has a much higher yield than B. After the bonds are issued, the company turns around and says "just kidding," A is now also a convertible bond, though it keeps the higher yield. Just something to think about.

I propose another analogy. AGS/PTS still exist and the social contract is in place. I3 decides they want to create a super-DAC (lets call it BTSO for BitShares Other) that will include all future ideas that they were planning on crediting AGS/PTS with. They could give 10% to AGS and 10% to PTS, but instead they decide to be generous and give 50% to AGS and 50% to PTS (just like BTSX). Remember, the social contract said any fork in the same industry must snapshot off the blockchain in that industry. Forks of BitShares X to include interest were planned to fork off BTSX not AGS/PTS. Similarly, future spin-offs of the industries in BitShares Other credit BTSO not AGS/PTS. Because of this and because I3 would have decided BTSO will be for ALL future ideas they come up with, it means AGS and PTS would then likely be worthless. They still exist, but no would bother mining or trading PTS anymore.

So then, BTSX, BTSO, DNS, VOTE, and NOTE exist (AGS/PTS also exist but are worthless so we can ignore them). The social consensus at that point is that industries in a bank and exchange snapshot off BTSX; industries in domain names snapshot off DNS, industries in music snapshot off NOTE; industries in voting snapshot off VOTE; and, industries in everything else snapshot off BTSO. These are all separate DACs that will be at worse directly competing with each other or at best spreading the focus and energy of I3 too thin. It is completely fair game for any one of these DACs to out-compete the others and kill them all off. Those decisions on the future direction of the DACs are no longer in the hands of I3 but rather the shareholders of each DAC. The proposal is that we now want to consolidate some of these industries together because it is less confusing for investors and we are stronger together than when competing with each other. What is the fairest way of doing this? I don't know. In some sense it doesn't really matter. What matters is what is the best way of doing it which gives the resulting super-DAC the best chance for survival, because that is all that matters in the ruthless business world. In my opinion, bytemaster's proposal seemed pretty fair to all parties, and more importantly it seemed like a proposal that would lead to the most unification possible in our community and the least amount of pissed-off people who dump their stake in anger. Maybe there is a better merger strategy that more of us will agree to (we will never be able to please everyone). What I am confident about is that we have a much better chance of surviving against outside competitors, who will eventually come to their senses and decide to clone the BitShares toolkit, if we unite together into one DAC, at least in these early growth stages.

[alphaBar]

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.

Is it even possible to "merge mine" a DPOS blockchain?

Yes, it is possible, though different than merged mining in the PoW sense. One potential solution for determining burn rate is to allow each user to vote for the following options:

1) merged mining with BTSX with a preferred burn rate
2) non-merged mining (regular voting for delegates)

The system then takes the preferred burn rates of ALL merged mining votes and calculates an average burn rate, which is paid to all BTSX delegates who choose to merge mine the DAC. It is true that bandwidth constraints would limit each delegate to merge mining a limited number of DACs, but that will sustain the Bitshares ecosystem until separate chains are justified (we will probably not have more than a handful viable DACs for near term).

[Method-X]

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.

Is it even possible to "merge mine" a DPOS blockchain?

[emski]

Wow, I haven't checked on the forums in a while and... what a train wreck. Here are the main issues with this proposal:

1) There is no fair method of consolidating multiple blockchains. At best, 50% will lose and 50% will gain.
2) Further to #1, emski is right about this: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10189.0
3) AGS received a much larger allocation of DACs per dollar invested precisely because they are "locked" into the Bitshares ecosystem. Making them liquid after the fact is unfair. It essentially gives AGS holders all of the benefits of PTS without any of the downside. Here is the "company" analogy we like to use so much: The Bitshares Corporation gives investors a choice between buying one of two corporate bonds, A and B. Bond A is perpetual and bond B is convertible. For this reason, A has a much higher yield than B. After the bonds are issued, the company turns around and says "just kidding," A is now also a convertible bond, though it keeps the higher yield. Just something to think about.

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.

And I didn't even enter this into calculations at all.

[alphaBar]

Wow, I haven't checked on the forums in a while and... what a train wreck. Here are the main issues with this proposal:

1) There is no fair method of consolidating multiple blockchains. At best, 50% will lose and 50% will gain.
2) Further to #1, emski is right about this: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10189.0
3) AGS received a much larger allocation of DACs per dollar invested precisely because they are "locked" into the Bitshares ecosystem. Making them liquid after the fact is unfair. It essentially gives AGS holders all of the benefits of PTS without any of the downside. Here is the "company" analogy we like to use so much: The Bitshares Corporation gives investors a choice between buying one of two corporate bonds, A and B. Bond A is perpetual and bond B is convertible. For this reason, A has a much higher yield than B. After the bonds are issued, the company turns around and says "just kidding," A is now also a convertible bond, though it keeps the higher yield. Just something to think about.

I have a counterproposal: fork all of the other DACs (except AGS) and create a system for "merge mining" them with BTSX. This way they stay on their own blockchains but use the single set of delegates from BTSX. We'd have to resolve the burn rate issued and they can be given the option to vote away from merged mining at any time. This solution keeps the allocations and blockchains the same (no complaints from anyone about "fairness") but consolidates delegates.