Author Topic: Summary of recent events / merger proposal  (Read 18002 times)

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Offline xeroc

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can we have the friendly chinese restaurant owner mentioned in the recent talk translate the OP ... please?!

Offline Rune

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Nice summary, sounds good to me!  How do we move forward with this?  Do BTSX holders need to vote for delegates who support this or is it all just being done via Bytemaster power somehow?

I am not sure.  I think we should have a very clearly defined proposal, based on general community consensus, that includes exact share numbers for each party, and then we should have a community vote. 


Based on the market action, it seems that most of those who would be opposed to this have simply dumped all their BTSX already, and that those who held are generally in favor.

Before the big merger, a system that allows stakeholders to vote on hard forks will be implemented. We will then vote to decide if it should be implemented or not.

Offline Ander

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Excellent summary! Here's my rally call.


48 hours is way too fast.  At the very least we need to go for the november target that bytemaster first proposed for closing PTS (the 1 year anniversary of PTS).
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Offline Ander

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im new to bitshares and i have so much trouble understanding all the different acronyms that it makes me frustrated.

AGS is Angelshares.  People donated bitcoins in exchange for Angelshares, and in return are given a percentage of each future bitshares project.

PTS is protoshares, a proof of work based blockchain.  Holders of PTS are also given a percentage of each future bitshares project.

BTSX is Bitshares eXchange.  It is the flagship product of the bitsahres community, the first bistahres 'DAC', or company.   
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Offline Explainlikeimfive

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im new to bitshares and i have so much trouble understanding all the different acronyms that it makes me frustrated.

Offline roadscape

Excellent summary! Here's my rally call.

The metamorphosis of PTS:

Stan: The rules are that snapshots give two week's notice.  So if someone decides to do this, you've got several whole days left to make the announcement if you want to hit the Nov 5th anniversary date.

We market it as a 1-year anniversary celebration/evolution/metamorphosis/death.
We will convert the remaining value of PST+AGS to BTSX through dilution.
We announce the death of PTS/AGS and introduce BitSharesNoX.

Perfect grassroots campaign. I can smell the upvotes.

It will be fair but not 100% fair. Who cares. PTS is Chucky Cheese currency.
I'll gladly redeem it for any BTSX, and rid my hands of it once and for all.
And 3i has more skin in the game than any of us.

We have just over 24 hours to take this opportunity. Been looking for a way to get involved?


Let's start moving BTS over to the launch site.
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Offline emski

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+5% Well done that was good summary!

As far as BitShares goes it is clearly the best solution. I fully support creating one BitShares as fast as is responsibly possible.

Here I've outlined some issues with current proposal:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10189.0

I support merging PTS/AGS/BTSX into BTS. I do not like the proposed mechanics of it.

Offline Ander

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Nice summary, sounds good to me!  How do we move forward with this?  Do BTSX holders need to vote for delegates who support this or is it all just being done via Bytemaster power somehow?

I am not sure.  I think we should have a very clearly defined proposal, based on general community consensus, that includes exact share numbers for each party, and then we should have a community vote. 


Based on the market action, it seems that most of those who would be opposed to this have simply dumped all their BTSX already, and that those who held are generally in favor.
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Offline Empirical1.1

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 +5% Well done that was good summary!

As far as BitShares goes it is clearly the best solution. I fully support creating one BitShares as fast as is responsibly possible.

Offline Rune

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Offline matt608

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Nice summary, sounds good to me!  How do we move forward with this?  Do BTSX holders need to vote for delegates who support this or is it all just being done via Bytemaster power somehow?

Offline Ander

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In the interest of helping everyone to understand what is going on, to reduce the uncertainty that is hurting the BTSX price, lets get an accurate current summary of the current proposal.

Everyone, please comment on any inaccuracies in this post so that we can fix it!  Thanks!


The background: what are the problems we are trying to solve?

1) Conflict between BTSX and VOTE.  (Conflict between supporting the interests of stakeholders in BTSX vs post-Feb 28 AGS/PTS buyers).

At present, Bytemaster's attention is being split between working on BTSX, and working on development of future DACs such as VOTE.  Some people purchased BTSX but do not hold AGS/PTS, and expect bytemaster to support BTSX so that it can fulfill its potential.   Some people donated to AGS or bought PTS after Feb 28, when BTSX was split off, and these stakeholders expect Bytemaster to work to develop DACs such as VOTE, as they donated in order to acquire a stake in those projects.

The development of VOTE lead to the ideas for some new features which would be very good for VOTE but would bring it in conflict with BTSX, as described in these threads:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10057.0
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10118.0

It appeared that BTSX and VOTE would enter a darwinian competition with each other that only one could win.  For example, both DACs could have their own versions of bitUSD, and those bitUSD versions would be in competition with each other for market share.

This looked like it might fracture the community into stakeholders of BTSX who would desire BTSX to succeed, versus stakeholders of VOTE who would desired VOTE to succeed.  (With many people owning a stake in both, of course).


2) Complexity.

The Bitshares ecosystem is very complicated for newcomers.  People learn about Bitshares or BTSX or PTS and they are unsure what to buy.  There are too many moving parts, and too much complexity, which is hurting adoption. 

Because of this, there was an idea that we should eliminate PTS, as described in this thread:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10104.0


3) Need for capital infusion. 

Bytemaster and other members of the development and marketing team have stated the need to raise additional funds in order to support a strong marketing campaign for BTSX. 

Currently, BTSX has a fixed supply and cannot issue more shares as a means of funding itself.  However, leadership appears convinced that it is imperative that we raise more funds for this marketing campaign, in order to grow quickly and become big.   
 
BTSX development is not at risk of dying due to shortage of funds, but does not have enough funds for the big marketing campaign they would like. 



The proposed solution:

To resolve this conflict, Bytemaster proposed merging BTSX, PTS, and AGS back together into a new entity called Bitshares (BTS).  The new entity would be able to create new shares to be sold to new investors for a capital infusion, by shareholder vote, for purposes of funding the marketing campaign. Proposal was made in this thread:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10148.msg132495#msg132495

How this resolves the three issues outlined above:


1) This solves the issue of competition between BTSX and VOTE (or other future DACs), by recombining all stakeholders into a common pool.  Thus, there will no longer be subgroups of stakeholders who want BTSX or VOTE to win.  Instead, there will be one new entity, Bitshares, which everyone has a stake in.  Bitshares will contain all of the features that BTSX and VOTE would have had, (plus possible additional features?)


Because different individuals have purchased BTSX, AGS, and PTS at different prices over time, it is not possible to provide absolute fairness to everyone in terms of their stake in the new entity.  In order to be as fair as possible, recent market caps are used to determine how much stake each of the merging entities will provide in the new BTS:

* At the time of the proposal, the market cap of BTSX was roughly $50 million.
* At the time of the proposal, the market cap of PTS was roughly $5 million.
* AGS is essentially equivalent to PTS, and is thus valued at roughly $5 million.

This matches up nicely with the community norm of giving 10% of shares to AGS and PTS for new DACs.

This is generally fair to all parties.  The market believed that BTSX was worth roughly $50M.  The market believed that a 10% stake in the value of the future DACs that would be created was worth roughly $5M.   The new entity, Bitshares, would be created with a $60M market cap, giving $50M worth to BTSX, and $5M to PTS and AGS. 

Note: We need clarity regarding whether the above is indeed correct.  How many shares will be granted to each entity?  We need to come to the fairest arrangement that is possible for all of the stakeholders, so that we can be a united community, and not leave a bunch of people bitter about the share allocation!



2) The issue of too much complexity for newcomers is solved by merging BTSX, the flagship product that is the way that most people now hear of Bitshares, with AGS and PTS. 

There will be one simple answer to give to newbies regarding what to buy in order to get a stake:  You buy Bitshares.   They do not have to worry about buying a stake in BTSX, and a stake in PTS, and worrying about the difference between them.


3) Capital infusion to fund marketing efforts is solved by allowing for a majority vote of BTS holders to vote to create and sell shares for funding purposes, which would then be used to grow Bitshares much faster than it could otherwise have developed (hopefully). 

If the community believes that the secondary offering of new shares is in its interest, it would vote in favor.  If the community believes that the dilution is not worth the benefits, they will vote against it.

The change allows for the possibility of funding the marketing campaign proposed by the leadership team, if the community is in agreement.


Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion.
if anyone has better specifics of the new proposal, please comment and I will try to update this!
« Last Edit: October 20, 2014, 08:48:18 pm by vikram »
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