Author Topic: Now is the perfect time to implement sweeping transparency measures.  (Read 10729 times)

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Offline Rune

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I am in favor of eliminating all legal entities owned by multiple individuals.
I am in favor of no corporations (creation of the state).

So as soon as possible I hope to switch over to individuals.


That said, what is the difference between a "super coder" which manages and outsources 100 people but takes 100% responsibility and 100 average coders hired directly.   It is only a question of productivity and cost.   Do you trust the super coder to use what ever means necessary (including delegation and hiring help?) 

So lets set the principle that no "shared ownership legal entity"....

I don't expect a super coder who specializes in coding to also specialize in trust management, as they are two completely unrelated skills.  This is my reasoning behind why I'd vote against it at least. I'd much rather see the super coder running his team "on-blockchain" so to say, and have the entire managerial structure completely transparent via delegate slates, so potential bad apples can be discovered and removed.

Offline bytemaster

I am in favor of eliminating all legal entities owned by multiple individuals.
I am in favor of no corporations (creation of the state).

So as soon as possible I hope to switch over to individuals.


That said, what is the difference between a "super coder" which manages and outsources 100 people but takes 100% responsibility and 100 average coders hired directly.   It is only a question of productivity and cost.   Do you trust the super coder to use what ever means necessary (including delegation and hiring help?) 

So lets set the principle that no "shared ownership legal entity"....
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Offline Rune

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The answer to the delegate question is simply a question of what is most profitable. I think shareholders will eventually strongly prefer to have total transparency and control over every employee (to avoid gatekeepers).

Once we are in the situations where we have 101 delegates on board who are engaged in profitable work, and someone like vbuterin signs up to join the organization, I imagine stakeholders will vote to increase the number of delegates rather than throwing out an incumbent delegate or having vbuterin working as a subemployee of a middleman delegate.

Offline Method-X

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As guess this is as good a thread as any to ask this question: should the number of delegates be variable? Why is it currently fixed to 101? The number of people mining Bitcoin is variable. I'm genuinely curious.

Doing an analysis of additional security gained by adding each delegate, Bytemaster observed that adding the second delegate increased security by 100% while adding the 100th delegate only increased it by another 1%.  Diminishing returns.

Then there was the desire to have an odd number and enough that anyone could see 101 small businesses is much more decentralized than Bitcoin's ruling 5 big businesses.

Solid reasoning. Do you think it would be best to hire Invictus (the corporation / small business) as one single delegate as opposed to hiring each member of the team as a seperate delegate? Or perhaps each division within Invictus could be hired as a delegate? i.e. Development, marketing, legal, etc. I can see there being advantages to starting with that model.

Offline Stan

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As guess this is as good a thread as any to ask this question: should the number of delegates be variable? Why is it currently fixed to 101? The number of people mining Bitcoin is variable. I'm genuinely curious.

Doing an analysis of additional security gained by adding each delegate, Bytemaster observed that adding the second delegate increased security by 100% while adding the 100th delegate only increased it by another 1%.  Diminishing returns.

Then there was the desire to have an odd number and enough that anyone could see 101 small businesses is much more decentralized than Bitcoin's ruling 5 big businesses. 
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 05:37:05 pm by Stan »
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Offline xeroc

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As guess this is as good a thread as any to ask this question: should the number of delegates be variable? Why is it currently fixed to 101? The number of people mining Bitcoin is variable. I'm genuinely curious.
It's a mixture of having a fast checkpointing (after 51% delegates signed a block we essentially have a checkpoint)
.. and scalability / efficiency ..

the number 101 is ODD!! so that a fork will always resolve towards a majority ..

besides those two facts .. no REAL limitation is set .. no optimum is known either ..
could work aswell with 111 or 91 ..

maybe not use 10001 because of the first restriction above

Offline Method-X

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As guess this is as good a thread as any to ask this question: should the number of delegates be variable? Why is it currently fixed to 101? The number of people mining Bitcoin is variable. I'm genuinely curious.

Offline Thom

Great concept and assuredly the way forward - except for the Country Club Cronyism.

Candidly that part of your proposal goes against everything a DAC represents.

With regard to disbanding I3 I think it would be more realistic to give I3 one or two years to finish development before handing the reigns to a consensus mechanism.

Folk seem to have extremely unrealistic expectations (measured in days or weeks) for rolling out a tech like Bitshares.

BM and Co. are maximizing shareholder value and serving tough love when needed - like the merger.

Frankly, if this mechanism was in place the merger would not have happened... nor any of the other changes BM has proposed and implemented, all of which have made Bitshares what it is today.

There's a reason organizations have hierarchies and its not a conspiracy.

Group hugs are nice if you want to feel warm and fuzzy but they are absolutely the worst mechanism possible for getting things done.

Right now Bitshares needs a strong and visionary leader to get it off the ground. That leader is BM, period.

Let's give I3 some room to do their job and get Bitshares through the atmosphere.

Man how I love the wisdom of "age". +5% to oldman
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Offline Rune

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Great concept and assuredly the way forward - except for the Country Club Cronyism.

Candidly that part of your proposal goes against everything a DAC represents.

With regard to disbanding I3 I think it would be more realistic to give I3 one or two years to finish development before handing the reigns to a consensus mechanism.

Folk seem to have extremely unrealistic expectations (measured in days or weeks) for rolling out a tech like Bitshares.

BM and Co. are maximizing shareholder value and serving tough love when needed - like the merger.

Frankly, if this mechanism was in place the merger would not have happened... nor any of the other changes BM has proposed and implemented, all of which have made Bitshares what it is today.

There's a reason organizations have hierarchies and its not a conspiracy.

Group hugs are nice if you want to feel warm and fuzzy but they are absolutely the worst mechanism possible for getting things done.

Right now Bitshares needs a strong and visionary leader to get it off the ground. That leader is BM, period.

Let's give I3 some room to do their job and get Bitshares through the atmosphere.

Once BTS has been launched we will have the capability and demand to hire every single developer currently working in any area of the bitcoin or altcoin industry. We will be able to pay them a higher salary than they are currently making, and we will almost universally be able to extract more value from their work, and be able to manage them better through the transparent system of delegate payment. As long as the work they are currently doing is profitable, we will be able to make it even more profitable and compensate them even higher for their work.

When economic incentives align this clearly, the free market usually moves incredibly fast. We will probably see explosive growth in our management structure and our development. It will be a lot faster than most of us can imagine.

Offline oldman

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Great concept and assuredly the way forward - except for the Country Club Cronyism.

Candidly that part of your proposal goes against everything a DAC represents.

With regard to disbanding I3 I think it would be more realistic to give I3 one or two years to finish development before handing the reigns to a consensus mechanism.

Folk seem to have extremely unrealistic expectations (measured in days or weeks) for rolling out a tech like Bitshares.

BM and Co. are maximizing shareholder value and serving tough love when needed - like the merger.

Frankly, if this mechanism was in place the merger would not have happened... nor any of the other changes BM has proposed and implemented, all of which have made Bitshares what it is today.

There's a reason organizations have hierarchies and its not a conspiracy.

Group hugs are nice if you want to feel warm and fuzzy but they are absolutely the worst mechanism possible for getting things done.

Right now Bitshares needs a strong and visionary leader to get it off the ground. That leader is BM, period.

Let's give I3 some room to do their job and get Bitshares through the atmosphere.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 03:45:49 pm by OldMan »

Offline James212

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Okay so first of all, I'm so insanely exited for the birth of BTS!!!! It's going to be so freaking awesome, I can hardly put it into words. There'll be a new calendar, year 2014 = year 0. This is a complete gamechanger for humanity.

Okay, so on to the topic:

During the multi-DAC phase it made sense to have a centralized development team and an external funding pool to fund their projects and pay their salary. However, now that everything gets consolidated into a single blockchain, we can simplify and improve things tremendously, and we can drastically increase transparency. I want to stress that I argue for these measures not because I don't trust I3, on the contrary I have immense faith in them because they have really proven themselves to be absolute geniuses. Us, currently existing investors do not really need that much transparency, but these measures will be for new investors who will greatly value it, especially those coming from the altcoin community. With enough transparency, it will be so much easier for prospective buyers to decide to buy in, if they're able to see all the cards. As an investor that wants to see our DAC grow, I present these two measures I would like to see implemented:

Consolidate all assets and employees under the direct control of BTS

With the introduction of the revolutionary concept of share dilution in a DAC, we have gained an insane competitive advantage over any other blockchain due to the ability that we now have to rapidly fund development and marketing in a decentralized manner that scales infinitely. To ensure total transparency and optimal governance, we should have it as a rule that there will never be any middle men for paying salary i.e. any person who works full time and is paid a salary by BTS, must work directly for the blockchain rather than as a worker in some external, centralized management structure. With the introduction of share dilution there is simply no need for anyone to be employed by anything else than the DAC.

I would like to see every team member on this page http://bitshares.org/community/team/ apply to become a paid delegate after the hard fork. It would greatly increase transparency and understanding of the average shareholder about what exactly is being done, and who is doing it, and will MASSIVELY increase shareholder confidence and demand. I don't think anyone has ever seen a company structure like this before, the level of transparency will be absolutely revolutionary. Once the entire team has been integrated as paid delegates, it will provide an excellent showcasing to new developers that might be interested in working for the blockchain.

Also, now that BTSX has bought out AGS, that means we own 100% of what AGS donation are designated to be spent on. With the new capability we have to pay salary directly to team members, instead of going through an external entity, there is no need for these funds to be stored any longer. I propose that they are all used to buy up BTSX, and then burned. The only exceptions should be the funds set aside for the marketing push, and the funds that will be used to make the bitUSD buywall.

In the future, if a delegate wishes to raise a large, one time sum for a project, they should simply issue a user issued asset that is basically a bond for the project with a small interest rate. The bond will then be paid back by the delegate increasing their pay rate. This ensures that the DAC will never have to take on the risk of entrusting a single person with a large amount of money, but only people who specialize in judging risk will have to do that.

Create a forum for large stakeholders where EVERYTHING will be revealed, thus ending secrecy and implementing absolute transparency.

I have never been a big fan of the secrecy that I3 has had for stakeholders, but I fully understand they were necessary for competition reasons. However, now that BTS is maturing, I think it is time to implement a measure that will enable the community to have absolute transparency by proxy, through having independent people in the know. A forum for big stakeholders will allow at least a part of independent stakeholders to know everything that is going on, so they can relay to the broader community that everything is going well. As long as the required stake to gain access is large enough, there will be no chance that a competitor will manage to get in and steal an idea (if they bought that large a stake, they'd rather just collaborate). I'd say something like 0.1% should be the minimum to gain access to this private board. I think that eventually, when we have achieved the Network Effect, there will be no need for any secrecy at all, because there'll be no chance that people will choose to compete with us rather than collaborate.



As a shareholder, I think that if these measures were implemented then it would be such a HUGE value boost, due to the high demand for transparency, especially in the crypto world. It would really help cement the launch pad we are building to get ready for the marketing push and the Moon. People who are smart enough to understand will literally not be able to come up with a single reason why they shouldn't invest, or even bet the farm.

I currently own a couple million of shares, and the only thing holding me back from going all-in is the transparency. If I get a commitment that this absolute transparency will be implemented with the formation of BTS, I'll be making another huge buy. I'm just so insanely excited for BTS!!!! It's literally one of the greatest things EVER. We are shaping the history of the universe. I feel silly talking about the moon, we're going to the freaking GALACTIC CENTER.

 +5%.  You haver some good opines heresia.

I think your requiremnt to be a "large stakeholder" is too low though.   It should be a minimum of 0.02%........twice what you have proposed, minimum.
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Offline starspirit

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I was going to propose creating kind of a 'reserve fund' to buy up BTS in the event of say a 50% flashcrash to protect us.  Say BTS price drops 50% in x hours, delegates receive alerts to prompt them to release the fund to place buy orders, stopping the crash and saving everyone.  Maybe the fund could be held in bitcoin with multisig wallet with a few delegates in control.  I mean a single large stake holder could accidentally crash the whole thing!  What if they got drunk and recklessly sold?  I don't want to be depending on no one dumping suddenly.  Having some kind of reserve fund to back up the BTS or at least a method that allows a fund to begin to form.  This region is a part of BTS I'm still haven't fully wrapped my head around but it seems having collateral in some other form would strengthen the system, maybe a basket other cryptos could be used.  Just an idea...

It has been explained many times before that the crash would have to happen pretty fast. Bitcoin has not experienced a crash that large and that fast yet. Not even when bitcoin was "banned" in china. Not even after the Mt Gox fiasco. So while it is a possibility it is not a large one.

Also remember the high yield one gets for holding a bitassets more than compensates for that risk.

Are you sure?  On individual exchanges there have been flashcrashes such as on btc-e.  In feb it there was a flash crash from over $700 to below $100.  Just one big dump from one person (probably).  The price immediately recovers in bitcoin, but I'm not sure what happens if the same thing happened on BTS.  Wouldn't that trigger margin calls?  I am unclear about the sequence of events that would follow such a dump.  Can someone explain?

I'm not so worried about news causing a crash, more so to do with someone dumping irrationally.  And in what timeframe does it need to occur for there to be daner?  All within 1 day, 1 hour?

Margin calls are tied to price feed... flash cashes would have to be across all exchanges.  The feed averages the price over time so it is very unlikely for a flash crash to happen that triggers margin calls.
Flash rallies in the underlying BitAsset cause the same problem. I mentioned in another thread that we could try to peg cryptocurrencies (due to demand for a counterparty-free crypto trading solution) but this admittedly could be a big challenge for doing cryptos.

Offline jsidhu

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I didnt think price feeds are a long term solution?
The the questionmark is there on purpose then the answer is .. they are not intended for long term .. just until the markets mature ..

If you just hit the questionmark key accidentally .. then the result would be: *confirmed* :)

Heh its my weird way of asking a question yet it's what I thought was the answer all at the same time...

Well in that case.. we can apply an agile methodology and "care" about the solution when it matters... or we can brainstorm on ideas on how to fix it.. I personally think it makes sense to care when we want to implement, as we don't know what will change in between.
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Offline xeroc

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I didnt think price feeds are a long term solution?
The the questionmark is there on purpose then the answer is .. they are not intended for long term .. just until the markets mature ..

If you just hit the questionmark key accidentally .. then the result would be: *confirmed* :)

Offline jsidhu

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I was going to propose creating kind of a 'reserve fund' to buy up BTS in the event of say a 50% flashcrash to protect us.  Say BTS price drops 50% in x hours, delegates receive alerts to prompt them to release the fund to place buy orders, stopping the crash and saving everyone.  Maybe the fund could be held in bitcoin with multisig wallet with a few delegates in control.  I mean a single large stake holder could accidentally crash the whole thing!  What if they got drunk and recklessly sold?  I don't want to be depending on no one dumping suddenly.  Having some kind of reserve fund to back up the BTS or at least a method that allows a fund to begin to form.  This region is a part of BTS I'm still haven't fully wrapped my head around but it seems having collateral in some other form would strengthen the system, maybe a basket other cryptos could be used.  Just an idea...

It has been explained many times before that the crash would have to happen pretty fast. Bitcoin has not experienced a crash that large and that fast yet. Not even when bitcoin was "banned" in china. Not even after the Mt Gox fiasco. So while it is a possibility it is not a large one.

Also remember the high yield one gets for holding a bitassets more than compensates for that risk.

Are you sure?  On individual exchanges there have been flashcrashes such as on btc-e.  In feb it there was a flash crash from over $700 to below $100.  Just one big dump from one person (probably).  The price immediately recovers in bitcoin, but I'm not sure what happens if the same thing happened on BTS.  Wouldn't that trigger margin calls?  I am unclear about the sequence of events that would follow such a dump.  Can someone explain?

I'm not so worried about news causing a crash, more so to do with someone dumping irrationally.  And in what timeframe does it need to occur for there to be daner?  All within 1 day, 1 hour?

Margin calls are tied to price feed... flash cashes would have to be across all exchanges.  The feed averages the price over time so it is very unlikely for a flash crash to happen that triggers margin calls.
I didnt think price feeds are a long term solution?
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