Bitshares identity crisis - have we changed course?

[Thom]

hi AB, i can understand where you're coming, but i dont think the vision has changed. the timeline for implementing the vision has merely become more realistic

The way i see it, the old vision fragmented development of several products and pigeonholed the bitshares toolkit developers into working on their own projects in relative isolation. from what i can tell, the bitshares toolkit still requires some major development time, and realistically there are only a handful of developers alive that currently have the know how to do so.

 the old plan essentially dictated that key devs like Toast, HackFisher etc would have to stop developing the toolkit (which is critical to DAC industry growth) and work on their own projects. between coding, taking on the role of project manager, providing support for delegates and users, etc i cant imagine there would be any time left for them to help develop the toolkit. software development is rarely a one man job and for good reason imho

developing separate, competing DACs is a great idea (and inevitable if bitshares succeeds) but the infrastructure needs to be sufficient first

Here, here! What he said ^

[arhag]

Proof of work distribution is the only provable and trustless form of distribution.

I suspected that you still believed in that fallacy but didn't want to call you out on it until I was sure.

An ICO where the funds donated remain locked until the crowdfunding is over is also provably fair distribution.

Trading ones stake for money on an open exchange is also provably fair distribution.

Creating new stake (inflation/dilution/capital infusion) and giving it to certain individuals that the stakeholders have come to a majority consensus about is also a distribution method that is transparent, provable, and I would even argue fair (although some may complain about the tyranny of the majority).


Regarding the ICO method, the BitShares AGS campaign had a slight flaw because the BTC/PTS received could have been recycled back into the ICO to dilute other people of their stake. But I don't think anyone actually believes that I3 did such a thing. Going forward it would be more ideal for the sake of transparency to have a well publicized ICO that has a much shorter period so that the organization receiving the money can wait until it is done before touching the funds.

Also, an ICO has far more benefits than POW for distribution. The money that was being spent on wasteful electricity and buying useless space heaters called ASICs is instead given to the people who can make the vision that people donated money for more likely to be successful.

Besides, your proposal to take PTS and put it on DPOS gets rid of POW distribution. So what, POW was a good form of distribution for a year, but now screw it, let's now lock in the stake and make it deflationary? By doing that aren't you admitting that trading stake for money is also a great and fair form of distribution of stake?

This is one of the failings of Nxt.

The criticism with NXT is that too few founding individuals got too high of a percentage of the initial stake (BTW I don't necessary agree or disagree with that criticism against NXT). That line of argument could potentially be valid since it is regarding the decentralization of decision making power for the DAC. I3 only has about 5% stake in BTS, which is too small to allow them to be dictators acting against the wishes of all other stakeholders.

[alphaBar]

hi AB, i can understand where you're coming, but i dont think the vision has changed. the timeline for implementing the vision has merely become more realistic

The way i see it, the old vision fragmented development of several products and pigeonholed the bitshares toolkit developers into working on their own projects in relative isolation. from what i can tell, the bitshares toolkit still requires some major development time, and realistically there are only a handful of developers alive that currently have the know how to do so.

 the old plan essentially dictated that key devs like Toast, HackFisher etc would have to stop developing the toolkit (which is critical to DAC industry growth) and work on their own projects. between coding, taking on the role of project manager, providing support for delegates and users, etc i cant imagine there would be any time left for them to help develop the toolkit. software development is rarely a one man job and for good reason imho

developing separate, competing DACs is a great idea (and inevitable if bitshares succeeds) but the infrastructure needs to be sufficient first

These two things are not mutually exclusive. I3 can do the merger and not stray from the "open" strategy. I am merely saying that I3 should "bless" the open platform strategy and convey it clearly. I outlined some simple bullet points that would be sufficient for doing so.

[sschechter]

hi AB, i can understand where you're coming, but i dont think the vision has changed. the timeline for implementing the vision has merely become more realistic

The way i see it, the old vision fragmented development of several products and pigeonholed the bitshares toolkit developers into working on their own projects in relative isolation. from what i can tell, the bitshares toolkit still requires some major development time, and realistically there are only a handful of developers alive that currently have the know how to do so.

 the old plan essentially dictated that key devs like Toast, HackFisher etc would have to stop developing the toolkit (which is critical to DAC industry growth) and work on their own projects. between coding, taking on the role of project manager, providing support for delegates and users, etc i cant imagine there would be any time left for them to help develop the toolkit. software development is rarely a one man job and for good reason imho

developing separate, competing DACs is a great idea (and inevitable if bitshares succeeds) but the infrastructure needs to be sufficient first

 

[.yoshi]

hi AB, i can understand where you're coming, but i dont think the vision has changed. the timeline for implementing the vision has merely become more realistic

The way i see it, the old vision fragmented development of several products and pigeonholed the bitshares toolkit developers into working on their own projects in relative isolation. from what i can tell, the bitshares toolkit still requires some major development time, and realistically there are only a handful of developers alive that currently have the know how to do so.

 the old plan essentially dictated that key devs like Toast, HackFisher etc would have to stop developing the toolkit (which is critical to DAC industry growth) and work on their own projects. between coding, taking on the role of project manager, providing support for delegates and users, etc i cant imagine there would be any time left for them to help develop the toolkit. software development is rarely a one man job and for good reason imho

developing separate, competing DACs is a great idea (and inevitable if bitshares succeeds) but the infrastructure needs to be sufficient first

[alphaBar]

This post is illustrative of the exact point I was making. You support the merger but differ in your opinion of the strategy (which is fine). But strategy matters and that is exactly why it is absolutely not a waste of time to discuss the issue. As to your point about sharedropping to PTS - there are two issues with this. The first issue is that any person who have a business strategy that competes with the business strategy of BTS would be insane to sharedrop to their competitor. For example, what if I want to create a different DNS DAC or a different Vote DAC? Would I sharedrop to my own competitor.

If there is a strong division (say 50/50) in the BTS community about how to move forward or on certain critical business decisions, then it makes a lot of sense to do a 100% snapshot of BTS. This would effectively split the DAC and let the various stakeholders move to a position they like. This would be done despite the fact that it weakens their network effect considerably (Metcalfe's law).

If there was a small minority disagreeing, it would not be worth it to split the DAC. Certainly any one of the dissenting minority voices could snapshot the DAC anyway, but since they were small the DAC would have a tiny market cap, tiny network effect, and be unlikely to be successful. It would also not make sense to bother sharedropping to all of BTS in that case, since they would be giving the holders who disagree with their strategy the ability to profit as they dump the new stake. So, in this case it would make more sense to create a new DAC that is allocated according to an ICO, and try to compete with the main chain despite the much smaller network effect. If they were smarter about these different decisions compared to the holders of the bigger chain, they might become successful. In fact, this is the same strategy BitShares is taking vs Bitcoin: why snapshot BTC holders when the vast majority of them don't even believe in the vision of DPOS and BitAssets and would thus just dump anyway?

The second issue is a tangent to the first. Any success, failure, strategy, or implementation that is implemented in BTS would taint its use as a sharedrop instrument. Anyone who disagrees even slightly with any aspect of the DAC would choose not to sharedrop to the DAC. PTS is business-agnostic and DAC-agnostic with a pure proof of work distribution. These properties are ideal for a sharedrop instrument and the open-platform model I have outlined above.

What do PTS holders stand for? What do I even know about them anyway? Why would they be strong hands for my particular DAC implementation? They might just dump the genesis stake anyway because they do not agree with the vision of my DAC. It makes no sense to sharedrop to a "business-agnostic" asset holder. If I am giving up network effect entirely, then I might as well ignore AGS/PTS entirely and just do an ICO that self-selects people who believe in the vision of my DAC.

Proof of work distribution is the only provable and trustless form of distribution. This is one of the failings of Nxt. As for your other comments about the feasibility of competing alternatives, they may be factually correct but irrelevant to the current discussion. Rational minds with overlapping interests (this community) have a decent chance at converging upon a consensus with equal access to information. I don't believe we've exhausted the discussion yet, though I'm sure some will disagree.

Edit: Also you have somehow interpreted "3rd party developer" to mean only developers who have no vested stake in PTS/AGS. There are plenty of talented developers who are invested in PTS and AGS (I know many of them), and would be willing to try and build a new DAC if it were encouraged. If we position PTS properly we can gain a lot of traction from developers both inside and outside of our community.

[arhag]

This post is illustrative of the exact point I was making. You support the merger but differ in your opinion of the strategy (which is fine). But strategy matters and that is exactly why it is absolutely not a waste of time to discuss the issue. As to your point about sharedropping to PTS - there are two issues with this. The first issue is that any person who have a business strategy that competes with the business strategy of BTS would be insane to sharedrop to their competitor. For example, what if I want to create a different DNS DAC or a different Vote DAC? Would I sharedrop to my own competitor.

If there is a strong division (say 50/50) in the BTS community about how to move forward or on certain critical business decisions, then it makes a lot of sense to do a 100% snapshot of BTS. This would effectively split the DAC and let the various stakeholders move to a position they like. This would be done despite the fact that it weakens their network effect considerably (Metcalfe's law).

If there was a small minority disagreeing, it would not be worth it to split the DAC. Certainly any one of the dissenting minority voices could snapshot the DAC anyway, but since they were small the DAC would have a tiny market cap, tiny network effect, and be unlikely to be successful. It would also not make sense to bother sharedropping to all of BTS in that case, since they would be giving the holders who disagree with their strategy the ability to profit as they dump the new stake. So, in this case it would make more sense to create a new DAC that is allocated according to an ICO, and try to compete with the main chain despite the much smaller network effect. If they were smarter about these different decisions compared to the holders of the bigger chain, they might become successful. In fact, this is the same strategy BitShares is taking vs Bitcoin: why snapshot BTC holders when the vast majority of them don't even believe in the vision of DPOS and BitAssets and would thus just dump anyway?

The second issue is a tangent to the first. Any success, failure, strategy, or implementation that is implemented in BTS would taint its use as a sharedrop instrument. Anyone who disagrees even slightly with any aspect of the DAC would choose not to sharedrop to the DAC. PTS is business-agnostic and DAC-agnostic with a pure proof of work distribution. These properties are ideal for a sharedrop instrument and the open-platform model I have outlined above.

What do PTS holders stand for? What do I even know about them anyway? Why would they be strong hands for my particular DAC implementation? They might just dump the genesis stake anyway because they do not agree with the vision of my DAC. It makes no sense to sharedrop to a "business-agnostic" asset holder. If I am giving up network effect entirely, then I might as well ignore AGS/PTS entirely and just do an ICO that self-selects people who believe in the vision of my DAC.

[alphaBar]

The new strategy seems to be a radical departure from the original strategy of Bitshares, yet there is little in the form of explanation. Lastly, it is entirely unclear what the role of PTS and AGS play in the new strategy. First they are absorbed, then they live on. But still everyone secretly wants them to die.

I will not-at-all-secretly publicly state that I want AGS and PTS to die after the November 5.

The purpose for AGS and PTS has ended in my opinion. One purpose was to reward the people who donated the BTC/PTS funds that make I3's approximately 5% stake in BTS possible, which is to be used for developing the future of this ecosystem. The other purpose was to have strong community support. The sharedrop has changed these two purposes. It allows I3 to focus all of the funds in their position to making BTS the best it can be (and we need every penny we can get to accomplish that vision). It also means that after the sharedrop, people who had their allegiance divided between BTSX, AGS, PTS, VOTE, DNS can now focus it all on just one system BTS. If it is true that nearly all of the support has been diverted away from those various assets and to BTS (which I believe it is since the sharedrop seemed pretty fair to me), than the support for AGS/PTS should have significantly dropped. Why would a third-party DAC want to credit AGS/PTS now if they do not get support using I3's funds anymore and they also do not sharedrop to strong hands who won't dump their stake when the market opens up?

It makes far more sense for the third-party developers to instead sharedrop to asset that there is a lot of support around (BTS). I also think it is preferable that they do some crowdfunding (despite possible SEC risks) to both raise capital and get self-selected strong hands in the genesis block, similar to what BitShares Music is doing with their Note pre-sale.

This post is illustrative of the exact point I was making. You support the merger but differ in your opinion of the strategy (which is fine). But strategy matters and that is exactly why it is absolutely not a waste of time to discuss the issue. As to your point about sharedropping to PTS - there are two issues with this. The first issue is that any person who have a business strategy that competes with the business strategy of BTS would be insane to sharedrop to their competitor. For example, what if I want to create a different DNS DAC or a different Vote DAC? Would I sharedrop to my own competitor. The second issue is a tangent to the first. Any success, failure, strategy, or implementation that is implemented in BTS would taint its use as a sharedrop instrument. Anyone who disagrees even slightly with any aspect of the DAC would choose not to sharedrop to the DAC. PTS is business-agnostic and DAC-agnostic with a pure proof of work distribution. These properties are ideal for a sharedrop instrument and the open-platform model I have outlined above.

[arhag]

The new strategy seems to be a radical departure from the original strategy of Bitshares, yet there is little in the form of explanation. Lastly, it is entirely unclear what the role of PTS and AGS play in the new strategy. First they are absorbed, then they live on. But still everyone secretly wants them to die.

I will not-at-all-secretly publicly state that I want AGS and PTS to die after the November 5.

The purpose for AGS and PTS has ended in my opinion. One purpose was to reward the people who donated the BTC/PTS funds that make I3's approximately 5% stake in BTS possible, which is to be used for developing the future of this ecosystem. The other purpose was to have strong community support. The sharedrop has changed these two purposes. It allows I3 to focus all of the funds in their possession to making BTS the best it can be (and we need every penny we can get to accomplish that vision). It also means that after the sharedrop, people who had their allegiance divided between BTSX, AGS, PTS, VOTE, DNS can now focus it all on just one system BTS. If it is true that nearly all of the support has been diverted away from those various assets and to BTS (which I believe it is since the sharedrop seemed pretty fair to me), then the support for AGS/PTS should have significantly dropped. Why would a third-party DAC want to credit AGS/PTS now if they do not get support using I3's funds anymore and they also do not sharedrop to strong hands who won't dump their stake when the market opens up?

It makes far more sense for the third-party developers to instead sharedrop to asset that there is a lot of support around (BTS). I also think it is preferable that they do some crowdfunding (despite possible SEC risks) to both raise capital and get self-selected strong hands in the genesis block, similar to what BitShares Music is doing with their Note pre-sale.

[alphaBar]

arhag - open source code is different from a development platform. It doesn't require significant resources, just proper messaging and a tiny bit of code reusability is sometimes enough. Dan and his team do not need to actively work on other DACs. I think they should support the platform as a diversity play and to ensure that better ideas are incubated within our ecosystem rather than outside of it.

Free riding also doesn't work. Can we all come to a consensus that these third party DACs will be diluting by a fair amount to pay for the core technology development that they all share? How can we enforce that with separate DACs? I like the unified BTS because all BTS holders need to pay for the development/marketing that will benefit all BTS holders. Incentives are aligned. For this to work however, it means we need to have a strong enough network effect to squash any challenger that is daring to take a dominant position away from BTS by copying all of the features and advertising itself as a platform similar to BTS.

Let's be realistic, no cryptocurrency in existence has EVER been displaced by a copycat. And what we're talking about here is not a copycat at all. PTS as a featureless DPOS coin does not have exchange, bitAssets, Vote, or DNS. How can anyone claim it is a "direct competitor" or a "threat" to BTS? I remember when the idea of open source software was conceived there was this amazing hostility and vitriol directed towards it. People laughed and ridiculed anyone who promoted the concept. History *has a way of repeating itself.

Why should we fear 3rd party devs if we have a vested interest in their success? They can only succeed if they offer a competitive advantage, and as a platform we would have a vested interest in their success anyways. Should we tell them to innovate elsewhere? Is that in our best interest as a community?

Edit:*

[alphaBar]

Get over it, AB. This is beating a dead horse of a non-argument. Don't you have your own forum now?

This is exactly the type of shallow, non-productive response and attitude I was referring to in my post. Why don't you address the substance of my argument instead of being so dismissive? If anything what you've provided is the very definition of a "non-argument".

Look, you're now a competitor.  Don't expect a pat on the back.

Gonzo - there is a difference between getting a pat on the back and a rational response. How in the world do you figure that a stripped feature-less PTS would compete with the feature-packed merged BTS??? It's like saying that Ferrari views the Honda Civic as a direct competitor. Ludicrous. And merging the DACs doesn't magically produce unity. If anything there is a lack of clarity on the vision of Bitshares and the role of the various products under the Bitshares umbrella. Merging the products with seemingly arbitrary decision-making results in uncertainty, fear, and a fractured community. We need a united strategy, we need to articulate that strategy clearly, and we need to explain how each of the moving parts supports that strategy. I've seen somewhat of a strategy conveyed, but it has been conceived haphazardly and conveyed poorly. The new strategy seems to be a radical departure from the original strategy of Bitshares, yet there is little in the form of explanation. Lastly, it is entirely unclear what the role of PTS and AGS play in the new strategy. First they are absorbed, then they live on. But still everyone secretly wants them to die. If there is anything we've learned from the experiments of Doge and Nxt, it's that properly executed strategy (Doge) can trump technology and that technical superiority means nothing without proper strategy (Nxt)

[arhag]

The problem initially began with the proposal to "eliminate PTS/AGS" (though that has been reversed) and the ongoing hostility towards even the mere existence of other chains built on the Toolkit. Even though the decision to eliminate PTS/AGS was reversed, there is still another sharedrop to PTS/AGS happening on November 5th which seems totally arbitrary. I argue that we should not re-sharedrop PTS and AGS and that we should support their continued existence as sharedrop instruments for 3rd party DACs. Furthermore, we should separate or support the efforts of others to separate the core Toolkit from the BTS repo to make it easier for 3rd parties to fork the toolkit and develop cool DACs.

A lot of people donated money to AGS and speculated on PTS with the hope that the I3 team would be focusing their attention on multiple DACs. For good reasons we have all already dicussed, their attention (and their AGS funds) will now be directed to focusing initially on one DAC (BTS). AGS/PTS still exist for third-party developers. However, the change in focus is likely to considerably reduce the value of AGS/PTS because most people were betting on bytemaster and team to use the AGS funds to make the DACs successful. In order to be nice and fair, and more importantly to attract the AGS/PTS (and also DNS/Vote) holders to keep their wealth in BTS rather than dumping into competing forks, the 7/7/3/3/80 share drop was done.

The sharedrop is done to be fair because they will not be focusing their attention on these other DACs anymore. We want them to not be distracted with other DACs so they can focus their attention at making BTS the best it can possibly be. To demand they also spend considerable time and resources helping third party developers means the sharedrop is no longer fair. So third party developers are now mostly on their own. The code is open source and I am sure some of the devs are happy to help them out a little, but there should be no expectation of that from the community or third-party devs.

Isolationism doesn't work and centralization doesn't work. Bitshares as a platform has far more potential than Bitshares as a swiss-army knife of features built into a single blockchain with a hostile and unwelcoming attitude towards alternative strategies.

Free riding also doesn't work. Can we all come to a consensus that these third party DACs will be diluting by a fair amount to pay for the core technology development that they all share? How can we enforce that with separate DACs? I like the unified BTS because all BTS holders need to pay for the development/marketing that will benefit all BTS holders. Incentives are aligned. For this to work however, it means we need to have a strong enough network effect to squash any challenger that is daring to take a dominant position away from BTS by copying all of the features and advertising itself as a platform similar to BTS.

[speedy]

Get over it, AB. This is beating a dead horse of a non-argument. Don't you have your own forum now?

This is exactly the type of shallow, non-productive response and attitude I was referring to in my post. Why don't you address the substance of my argument instead of being so dismissive? If anything what you've provided is the very definition of a "non-argument".

Isnt it because we are kind of tired of the debate, and the community has basically agreed that the new course is for the best ?

[Ander]

The problem initially began with the proposal to "eliminate PTS/AGS" (though that has been reversed)

Really?  When was this reversed?

When the community didnt want PTS/AGS to be eliminated.

[alphaBar]

The problem initially began with the proposal to "eliminate PTS/AGS" (though that has been reversed)

Really?  When was this reversed?

The decision was reversed, but with little explanation or clarity on the future of PTS/AGS. I've put forth a strategy that does nothing to hurt the merged BTS. If anything I am arguing that we can have a stake in both the operating system AND the coolest apps built on top of the OS.