How to increase the value of Devshares

[bytemaster]

I will actively fight against a delegate buying DVS to burn them, or inflating BTS to drop on DVS. No no no

Perhaps the easiest solution is that each new Devshares wallet gets a million DVS for free. That allows those without BTS to play too and avoids any controversy about value. As above, consensus on value cannot be controlled, unless there is inherently no value..

Sybil attack + we want it to have non-0 value.   We don't have to artificially support it to give it non-0 value.

[davidpbrown]

I will actively fight against a delegate buying DVS to burn them, or inflating BTS to drop on DVS. No no no

Perhaps the easiest solution is that each new Devshares wallet gets a million DVS for free. That allows those without BTS to play too and avoids any controversy about value. As above, consensus on value cannot be controlled, unless there is inherently no value..

[toast]

I will actively fight against a delegate buying DVS to burn them, or inflating BTS to drop on DVS. No no no

[theoretical]

A delegate could use all of their pay to buy dev shares.   Easy.

This gets from me, provided the delegate burns the DVS from a published DVS address allowing anyone to audit that output / input (DVS destroyed / BTS issued) is close to the market DVS / BTS exchange rate.

This is similar to my original proposal for DevShares which had DVS backed by inflationary BTS.  But my proposal divided the BTS among all DVS holders, while bytemaster would only issue it (indirectly via sale) to those trying to get out of DVS.  So his proposal gets much more mileage (in terms of DVS valuation boost) for a given amount of BTS dilution

Of course there is no free lunch and bytemaster's approach sacrifices liquidity (if people are getting out of DVS faster than the delegate can dilute new BTS, the DVS / BTS exchange rate will move, whereas having inflationary BTS reserved for all DVS holders would keep it stable.)

[zerosum]

Your statement that devs can drop 66% on themselves if they want is misleading in the extreme.  Perhaps your implication would be true if they target some other coin (like Ripple) that has a very limited distribution which they own disproportionately.  But we all know the heritage of AGS, PTS, and BTS and it is pretty hard to make the case that the decentralized free-lance team of developers working on DevShares have any kind of a significant individual ownership percentage or bias among the three mailing lists.  Of course, if they did, everyone else had the same chance as to adjust their ownership ratios over the course of time too.

But such arguments miss the whole point.  I'd like to see you repeat your analysis from the point of view of what motivated/motivates members of all three target demographics.  What makes each valuable?

According to your theory, the market cap of a demographic determines its value.  But the AGS demographic has zero market cap, yet it represents a mailing list of those known to make no-strings-attached donations to a crypto-currency cause.  Priceless, if you are counting on a similar kind of support for your new asset.

Likewise, PTS holders represent a pure demographic of those willing to hold a simple currency for no other reason than a desire to own and support new products.  They obviously must recognize the value of DAC ownership,  understand share drops and do not insist on mining as a distribution method.  Yet every asset they hold was mined into existence, for those who think that matters.  For some demographics and developers this characteristic is... Priceless.

BTS is the most active demographic, but people hold BTS for many reasons, the least of which may be sharedrop targeting.  Yet they are most likely to be actively using a robust set of new features.  They represent a great demographic of active, informed users, if that is important to a developer's bootstrap strategy.

So the decision is the developer's and depends solely on the developers' assessment of the relative value of these groups to her support-building strategy.  It is clear to me why all three demographics are equally important to DevShares.

You will be much more likely to influence a developers' allocation if you argue why a particular demographic is more valuable and, more importantly, why giving it a higher percentage will increase the support of its members.  You also have to consider the possibility that any bias away from equal distribution will be perceived negatively by the group(s) you don't favor. 

Sometimes, its just not worth that risk.   

Great post... as usual. If you need something explained or even spun for you, you should ask Stan!

My favorite part is the free-Lance team, but that is another story...

[bitfayre]

Someone's misunderstanding the title of the blog post "the value of DevShares."  The value of DevShares is entirely in the increased stability of BitShares, that we don't have so many problems upgrading.  If you assign a monetary value to DevShares, then people won't want to take risks testing on it, defeating the entire purpose of creating DevShares.  You'd have to create DevShares^2 as a test network to protect the price of DevShares...

[islandking]

Keeping PTS + AGS alive makes explaining BitShares more complicated, that's a reason not to drop on them.  When you get to the part about explaining about the occasional sharedrops you have to then explain PTS + AGS.  Admittedly this isn't a major part of BTS due its massive feature set, but still, it confuses an already very complex message and will inevitably cause some BTS buyers to give up.  Better to nip it in the bud or the squabbling will happen every time.

All else I can say is BTS drop does incentive PTS + AGS due to the BTS drops on those chains, so PTS + AGS are being over-incentivized, and pure BTS holders under-incentivized.  If a truly even drop on all 3 groups was desired then it would be more like 20/20/60 or 15/15/70.

  I agree.

[matt608]

OK, so PTS + AGS have particularly useful people to strongly incentivise who are technical and maybe ideologically aligned making the drop about more than fulfilling the social contract (and what seemed like 'over-fulfilling' it in my mind).  Point taken. 

66% being dropped on the just devs was a bit of an exaggeration, I don't know the distribution I just presume PTS+AGS are less evenly distributed with more larger founder stakes than BTS which has much higher trading volume.

Market cap has value as a sharedrop distribution factor because it could be used to pay a delegate to work on DVS or as BM suggested to buy DVS.

Keeping PTS + AGS alive makes explaining BitShares more complicated, that's a reason not to drop on them.  When you get to the part about explaining about the occasional sharedrops you have to then explain PTS + AGS.  Admittedly this isn't a major part of BTS due its massive feature set, but still, it confuses an already very complex message and will inevitably cause some BTS buyers to give up.  Also better to nip it in the bud or the distribution squabbling will happen every time.

All else I can say is BTS drop does incentive PTS + AGS due to the BTS drops on those chains, so PTS + AGS are being over-incentivized, and pure BTS holders under-incentivized.  If a truly even drop on all 3 groups was desired then it would be more like 20/20/60 or 15/15/70.

I'll leave it at that as I'm starting to repeat myself.

[Stan]

BTS used to by DVS the BTS has to be sold, taking value from BTS.  There's no way a BTS delegate should pay 66% of their pay to AGS + PTS, which is how DVS is distributed.  If it was a testing chain just for BTS alone with 100% BTS sharedrop that would be fine, and is another reason the sharedrop should have been just on BTS.  BTS is the only coin that can fund it and it's BTS developers who are working on it.  PTS + AGS have nothing to do with it.  Unless devs now have no allegiance to BTS but to the toolkit? (while profitable) 

It's 'dev choice' and devs have lots of PTS + AGS so they can drop 66% themselves if they want.  The provided reason for the 66% giveaway was to get the support of AGS + PTS, except they (almost) have no market cap so they're worth much less as supporters.  No 100% BTS holder would vote in a delegate to subsidies AGS + PTS (i.e. DVS).  It's just a big mistake to drop on them when great lengths have been taken to streamline the BTS message, I mean, who are they working for?  BTS or not? 

People think its no big deal because it will be worthless but I'm not so sure.  I've seen countless 'worthless' coins become very valuable, e.g. litecoin.  Crypto is very unpredictable.  We shouldn't underestimate random speculation on DevShares.  There's no need to vote in any subsidy.  If they dropped on just BTS we could organise something as a backup measure if necessary.

Don't want to stir the pot for the sake of it, just expressing my honest opinion as a community member.

Your statement that devs can drop 66% on themselves if they want is misleading in the extreme.  Perhaps your implication would be true if they target some other coin (like Ripple) that has a very limited distribution which they own disproportionately.  But we all know the heritage of AGS, PTS, and BTS and it is pretty hard to make the case that the decentralized free-lance team of developers working on DevShares have any kind of a significant individual ownership percentage or bias among the three mailing lists.  Of course, if they did, everyone else had the same chance as to adjust their ownership ratios over the course of time too.

But such arguments miss the whole point.  I'd like to see you repeat your analysis from the point of view of what motivated/motivates members of all three target demographics.  What makes each valuable?

According to your theory, the market cap of a demographic determines its value.  But the AGS demographic has zero market cap, yet it represents a mailing list of those known to make no-strings-attached donations to a crypto-currency cause.  Priceless, if you are counting on a similar kind of support for your new asset.

Likewise, PTS holders represent a pure demographic of those willing to hold a simple currency for no other reason than a desire to own and support new products.  They obviously must recognize the value of DAC ownership,  understand share drops and do not insist on mining as a distribution method.  Yet every asset they hold was mined into existence, for those who think that matters.  For some demographics and developers this characteristic is... Priceless.

BTS is the most active demographic, but people hold BTS for many reasons, the least of which may be sharedrop targeting.  Yet they are most likely to be actively using a robust set of new features.  They represent a great demographic of active, informed users, if that is important to a developer's bootstrap strategy.

So the decision is the developer's and depends solely on the developers' assessment of the relative value of these groups to her support-building strategy.  It is clear to me why all three demographics are equally important to DevShares.

You will be much more likely to influence a developers' allocation if you argue why a particular demographic is more valuable and, more importantly, why giving it a higher percentage will increase the support of its members.  You also have to consider the possibility that any bias away from equal distribution will be perceived negatively by the group(s) you don't favor. 

Sometimes, its just not worth that risk.   

[matt608]

Let's NOT try to drive the price of DVS up! Calling it "devshares" doesn't mean it's supposed to be paying for devs!

This whole thread is driving me nuts and is taking the wrong perspective. Next you'll be angry about some injustice about some DVS transfer. I seriously want to put a master key all the devs know with the ability to print 1 trillion more shares for people to understand how DVS should be treated.

lol, I'm not actually angry, just doing back of the napkin calculations leading me to find enough $ is at stake by the sharedrop allocation to fund my brief 'squabbling' campaign :p  If DVS went to 10million market cap (unlikely) a holder with 1million BTS (0.04% of BTS, then divided by 3 for DVS)would get about $1300, or $4000 if it was 100% BTS sharedrop.  I'm guessing there will be a DVS bubble/pump at some point which could result in 10million market cap for a short period, if it only made it to $5million that's still $2k per million BTS with 100% sharedrop.  BM estimated somewhere it might be worth around 7million, which which case for anyone with over a million BTS few $kusd is at stake from the sharedrop allocation.

I accept I could be thinking about it wrong way and it might not ever be worth that much, or that if it was BTS would be doing very well too so it wouldn't matter.

[davidpbrown]

Last thoughts on this..

One rather odd option following from the suggestion there is no morality on devshares, would be to give it value and invite attacks.
The other obvious point is that any market that has perceived stability, risks becoming valued.

[davidpbrown]

Perhaps then do reset to BTS snapshots every couple of upgrades.. or some period that the chain doesn't get too large. Surely it just needs to be like DVC is to BTC.. 0.00000006 BTS.

[toast]

Let's NOT try to drive the price of DVS up! Calling it "devshares" doesn't mean it's supposed to be paying for devs!

This whole thread is driving me nuts and is taking the wrong perspective. Next you'll be angry about some injustice about some DVS transfer. I seriously want to put a master key all the devs know with the ability to print 1 trillion more shares for people to understand how DVS should be treated.

[bytemaster]

FYI i do not think DVs needs artificial support. 

[davidpbrown]

Also this would probably result in DVS getting a higher marketcap than BTS, which is nuts

Maybe I am confused but I cannot see how that could happen even if you draw on all the fees that delegates got and put them to DVS, the fees are the less part of the value in BTS by orders of magnitude. Certainly it seems there's a lot of value in being delegate but tansfer to DVS could be set at a fraction much lower than 20% too. If you're going to give any DVS value, then you're taking it from BTS one way or another.. it's in the same ecosystem. I don't mind, just a thought. As for comparison with other altcoins.. it should stand like Devcoin DVC and be near zero.. if we want to stress test certain market functions, then that can be coordinated or fudged in some way to provide whatever real value is needed.