You guys don't understand devshares.

[nomoreheroes7]

People have mentioned that we didn't DISCUSS it with everyone and just acted.   That was mostly because we didn't want to DELAY our test network launch and we didn't WANT IT TO BE POLITICAL.  We just wanted a network out there and assumed it would be of low enough value that no one *SHOULD CARE*.    Bad assumptions apparently.   

Now we have a firestorm and have lost days of effort dealing with the fallout.   

I guess it is too much to ask for people to pick their battles.

There is no battle & expecting the human response to information stimuli to be different than it is, is too much to ask. I think 99/100 media guys could have told you a post 11/05 drop of BTS anything to PTS was negative at this stage. I don't think it's too much to ask to run something by 1 person the community thinks is decent at PR. Then there is no delay, no fallout, no drama. All of which are completely unnecessary.

This.

[Pheonike]

Instead of splitting the pie pts/ags etc, why not drop to the technology. Make a dpos drop and include everyone who uses dpos tech. Since anyone who uses dpos ha shown that the believe in the tech.

[gamey]

So, I would expect widely the reply will be - yes, 100% BTS preferred.. unless you now consider [nullstreet leaders]/[Chinese community leaders]/[core developers] do not have enough support from BTS delegate payments and that only sharedrop to them is useful, in which case I cannot see anyone challenging that. Trying to drop to a few ?insiders who held PTS in the face of what was a clear market drop because of the ~merge to BTS, is odd and appears preferential to those who have PTS still. If there is a clear need to prefer a drop to certain resources like the Chinese or like certain devs, then that's fine - but do it in the open because such moves draw support and acknowledge those in the gesture as well as in its value.

The people who were too lazy to try and find suckers to fleece for a few dollars because it was expected their PTS would drop to 0 are now "insiders"?  Seriously?  What are you then?  Somewhere between hustler and scammer or you never owned any PTS - I suppose.

Do you people have absolutely 0 understanding of what open-source implies?

Dan, please give a lot to nullstreet so they can redistribute it to people.  That would be better than the greedy *********  whiney ******** contingent.

[Empirical1.1]

People have mentioned that we didn't DISCUSS it with everyone and just acted.   That was mostly because we didn't want to DELAY our test network launch and we didn't WANT IT TO BE POLITICAL.  We just wanted a network out there and assumed it would be of low enough value that no one *SHOULD CARE*.    Bad assumptions apparently.   

Now we have a firestorm and have lost days of effort dealing with the fallout.   

I guess it is too much to ask for people to pick their battles.

There is no battle & expecting the human response to information stimuli to be different than it is, is too much to ask. I think 99/100 media guys could have told you a post 11/05 drop of BTS anything to PTS was negative at this stage. I don't think it's too much to ask to run something by 1 person the community thinks is decent at PR. Then there is no delay, no fallout, no drama. All of which are completely unnecessary.

[alphaBar]

[...]

Other third parties who consider PTS2.0 crowd's interest is worth acknowledging can acknowledge PTS2.0. For now, to me and it seems a few others, PTS is not what it was - those involved are smaller in number and perhaps include whales that will argue strongly in their own favour. If that is seen not to be the case later, perhaps BTS future DACs can return to dropping on PTS2.0 because it is clear that crowd is beyond what dropping on BTS can do for BitShares' interest. For now though, to my mind, dropping on BTS 100% is at least equal and likely safer and simpler to dropping on BTS+PTS2.0.


Frankly, I don't care beyond having been disappointed that the BTS drop in DevShares didn't seem to show at all. Hopefully, that will be rebooted at some point, that we can all spend time instead testing it to breaking point.

If you continue to make a good case for PTS2.0, then I might return to that. I don't want to suggest it's not possibly useful but atm all interest is in BTS. Show me 3rd party DACs likely to drop and my interest in PTS will evolve..

We should not conflate the upgrade of PTS with the merger. They are unrelated and should be evaluated independently. PTS was upgraded because the old PoW chain was insecure and vulnerable to 51% attack (it was producing about 1 block per DAY). The protocol change was no different than the 10 or so hard forks that BTSX and now BTS have performed to keep their tokens secure and liquid.

Ultimately developers will sharedrop whatever they wish. My opinion is that we, as a community, should continue to support PTS as a sharedrop token and vanilla implementation of DPoS because it contributes to better design and better concentration of our resources. BTS developers can worry about rapid development and not need to think about whether things like having your tokens tied up in a market order will kill your ability to receive a sharedrop, or whether a change to the protocol will make forking the Toolkit more difficult for 3rd party devs. PTS shareholders and devs can accept the burden of these responsibilities and can provide the platform and resources to 3rd parties without being a distraction to the efforts of BTS. From a pure design perspective the separation of these tokens makes logical sense, not to mention that PTS has inherent qualities that can never be replicated or hacked into BTS.

If I had to boil this down to just one philosophical point it would be this: there can never be one blockchain to rule all blockchains. A blockchain like BTS can do MANY things, but it cannot be expected to do ALL things. Aside from the failure of PoW, this is one of the things that Bitcoiners just can't seem to grasp. The analogy of Bitcoin as HTTP is fundamentally flawed. There is very little barrier to entry for other coins, and in fact the infrastructure being built for Bitcoin actually makes adoption of altcoins easier and more likely. The distribution of cryptocurrencies will end up looking similar to modern day credit cards. One will grab a majority of the market share and thousands of others will exist directed towards increasingly niche applications. I think BTS will probably be that one big coin (though I'm probably wrong), but I want this community to have a share in the thousands of other coins underneath it by means of a strong social consensus.

[bytemaster]

People have mentioned that we didn't DISCUSS it with everyone and just acted.   That was mostly because we didn't want to DELAY our test network launch and we didn't WANT IT TO BE POLITICAL.  We just wanted a network out there and assumed it would be of low enough value that no one *SHOULD CARE*.    Bad assumptions apparently.   

Now we have a firestorm and have lost days of effort dealing with the fallout.   

I guess it is too much to ask for people to pick their battles.   

[Empirical1.1]

I would much rather not be the one to make decisions because it is easy to critique but difficult to decide.   I also don't want to let the squeaky wheel rule the day just because they complain the loudest.   So it is a real challenge to determine where the AGGREGATE PUBLIC OPINION falls.     

This is true too. With any decision there will be negativity from a group. The initial reactions can be emotional, negative and personal, including from myself. Most businesses have a media and PR department who give input, feedback & help communicate a message.  (cn-members already fulfils this kind of a role, as most of the Chinese hear the announcements via his and others translations of them.) I don't think you or other devs should have to deal with the negativity or are best equipped to respond to it. (It also probably results in devs feeling under-appreciated and frustrated too, fulfilling this dual role, when they are on the receiving end of most of the negativity yet they're the ones doing nearly all the hard world changing work.)

I don't think Stan is the ideal intermediary or messenger myself. I don't go to the mumble but that seems to be a good place for better communication though it is often reacting to a situation that has already happened. Perhaps some kind of PR team, including Method and CN members, people the community have already endorsed to fulfil those kind of roles could be useful. They can give the developers overall input and feedback & interpret the aggregate public opinion pretty well. They can also help be the conduits for things like this. NullStreet has perhaps also funnelled the Western marketing department. So going over there and saying 'This is what we're working on and looking at doing in the next few weeks, what's your input on how to approach these announcements.'
So they're not influencing your work just helping shape the message and putting up a red flag if something is going to cause a PR problem. Once you've included the marketing wing of your shareholders in the messaging process, they're more likely to be interpreted positively & the marketing team can bear some of the brunt and communication responsibility.

[davidpbrown]

* The fact remains that the social consensus was never eliminated or modified by the merger. What you are proposing is...

Mine is only one opinion.

Let's avoid opinion and consider what we know:
- Something changed enough that the PTS market reacted and the price dropped out of that market.
- You've taken the initiative to revive PTS and all credit to you for doing so but to my mind that is a new and distinct prospect - to the point that it should be called simply PTS and not BitShares PTS.

Your last point arguing the case for the new PTS is an interesting one:

* Competitors of BTS would never sharedrop to it (think Ethereum), while PTS is a DAC-agnostic token that would be viewed favorably by all future DACs.

but.. perhaps that does suggest that still for BitShares, they should drop 100% BTS.

Other third parties who consider PTS2.0 crowd's interest is worth acknowledging can acknowledge PTS2.0. For now, to me and it seems a few others, PTS is not what it was - those involved are smaller in number and perhaps include whales that will argue strongly in their own favour. If that is seen not to be the case later, perhaps BTS future DACs can return to dropping on PTS2.0 because it is clear that crowd is beyond what dropping on BTS can do for BitShares' interest. For now though, to my mind, dropping on BTS 100% is at least equal and likely safer and simpler to dropping on BTS+PTS2.0.


Frankly, I don't care beyond having been disappointed that the BTS drop in DevShares didn't seem to show at all. Hopefully, that will be rebooted at some point, that we can all spend time instead testing it to breaking point.

If you continue to make a good case for PTS2.0, then I might return to that. I don't want to suggest it's not possibly useful but atm all interest is in BTS. Show me 3rd party DACs likely to drop and my interest in PTS will evolve..

[fluxer555]

Doc, you gotta help me. I can hear BTS's engine, and it seems to have a transmission problem. Every time it starts to pick up speed there's a loud *pop* sound, and suddenly a loss of acceleration. It's been like this since August. Is there any hope for you to fix it, Doc?

[sumantso]

What you are proposing is to modify the social consensus based on your personal opinion of the merits of BTS vs PTS as a sharedrop target.

In the same way you modified the social consensus when launching alphabar PTS by ignoring AGS?

Guess your version of social consensus is whatever suits PTS.

[btswildpig]

My current conclusion

Our dev team plus Stan, even collectively lack the ability  to discern within a market acceptable degree of accuracy the likely response of the market to their actions.

Why? Developers seem to be very literal. They appear to be genuinely confused & frustrated even as a collective,  why the market would respond negatively to some of their decisions.

The title of Toast's thread and even BM's last post in the same thread highlight it best. (They actually think it has something to do with DVS.) They also think it is shareholders fault for reacting that way, not an entirely predictable response of a market.

It's also possible Stan doesn't intend to be so condescending, patronising and evasive in most of his posts either.

Everyone thinks you are all rock stars we want you to be appreciated and respected as such. We want you to change the world for the better, be rich and famous and make us wealthy in the process.  I doubt most want to overly influence what you work on or what you do. What you have though is a dev brick wall atm. Even when you think you've taken input, it gets filtered through the literal wall and we end up with decisions the create completely unessecary PR problems for the umpteenth time. The result is frustration and confusion from the markst because we can't understand how a group of exceptionally intelligent people can make such unnecessary  unpopular, divisive and BTS value damaging decisions.

It's perfectly obvious that the DVS thing of going post 11/05 would be interpreted badly especially by the Chinese market after the merger & is not worth the blowback.

But I will try to understand that I'm dealing with a group of people that don't intend to make such negative PR decisions that look antagonistic towards their own shareholders. They are genuinely even as a collective just very literal people who are unable to pre-emptively discern how their actions will be received and the wider implications of them on the market

I certainly recognize that I did blame others for their response and that in general I have no one to blame but myself.   I appreciate that you recognize our INTENT is do do well by all and that we cannot possibly know others expect. 

One thing I have learned is that changing anything is bad and I am loath to do it even if the original decision was a mistake.   

I would much rather not be the one to make decisions because it is easy to critique but difficult to decide.   I also don't want to let the squeaky wheel rule the day just because they complain the loudest.   So it is a real challenge to determine where the AGGREGATE PUBLIC OPINION falls. 

If changing to a 100% BTS allocation would make everyone happy it would be a no brainer.  I am not in this to pick favorites. 

So is there any objection to a 100% BTS allocation, if so please speak up now.

I am actually thinking about allocating 10% to nullstreet leaders and 10% to Chinese community leaders and 10% to core developers and 10% AGS 10% PTS and 50% to BTS.   This way the key players all have something to work with.

My only fear in changing anything is that it will just result in a DIFFERENT PR mess.    Can you all prove to me that the PR would be better by changing it now than by letting it ride?

My prediction is that if we were to exclude AGS / PTS all together that many people will create just as much negative PR.

I agree with the market not liking changes.

My prediction is that a 100% drop to BTS is optimal.

I would look in particular to hear what CN-members has to say. China is the biggest market and his interpretation of the situation is probably one of the best guages of overall market opinion to how BTS as a market will respond to decisions imo.

Reporting from China , the temperature here is 8 centigrade , it's raining . Iphone 6 is very hot in the market right now .......
Ok , enough with chit chat.....

1. Some people are upset about not honoring the 11.05 snapshot .

2. Many people invested in PTS and BTS in the first place because I3 had a long term plan and company structure that offers extra sense of stability . That's something Peercoin or NXT could not offer . The October merger changed that , many have left , and those who stayed , are afraid of more changes . They're not concerned about the devshares itself , but concerned about any future changes that might lead to another October break down .

3. This may not be a big deal after all . But it would affect opinions on that sense of stability .

4. This is not really about right and wrong , who gets what . They view BTS as a serious investment , so it should have a serious business plan and not change it at will . Because learning BTS is already to hard and consumes too much brain power , if added extra concerns then it's more harder to attract serious investors .

5. Change it , don't change it , what would be the outcome , there's no exact equation for that .

6. They could have accept the changed plan if BM asked nicely upfront and stress that Devshares will only have small value and will serve as a testing tool for BTS only . But instead , BM stressed the investment nature of Devshares .

7. Those who are not talking are not necessary agree with the plan , some of them are too disappointed to even argue . Those who argued , may not care about this for themselves at all .

8. Most reaction : what changed again !!!   Holy cow .....           
That how scared some of the people are right now .....

9. Anyone here can win over any single argument . But investors can only do two things : Buy and Sell . How to let them want to buy more instead of selling more ? I think that's the real question we want to ask ourselves . Arguments are just for forum members , investors argue with their money .

10. Holy cow , it's 2:42 AM .

[alphaBar]

As it happens, it is perhaps good this cloud hangs over DevShares.. and apt, given its purpose. DevShares are of little consequence and it does not matter, so long as everyone with real interest has an option to participate and that requires BTS is acknowledged.


The problem is simply reviving PTS and AGS where the perception had been those were finished with in return for vested shares in BTS.

My thought is that AGS/PTS are acknowledged within BTS but vested; acknowledging those vested shares is not a problem, indeed that would seem appropriate.


So, I would expect widely the reply will be - yes, 100% BTS preferred.. unless you now consider [nullstreet leaders]/[Chinese community leaders]/[core developers] do not have enough support from BTS delegate payments and that only sharedrop to them is useful, in which case I cannot see anyone challenging that. Trying to drop to a few ?insiders who held PTS in the face of what was a clear market drop because of the ~merge to BTS, is odd and appears preferential to those who have PTS still. If there is a clear need to prefer a drop to certain resources like the Chinese or like certain devs, then that's fine - but do it in the open because such moves draw support and acknowledge those in the gesture as well as in its value.

* The fact remains that the social consensus was never eliminated or modified by the merger. What you are proposing is to modify the social consensus based on your personal opinion of the merits of BTS vs PTS as a sharedrop target. Violating the social consensus will not sit well with many people here - especially those who read and understood the intent of the merger as it was written.
* There is heavy overlap in the demographics of BTS and PTS, so honoring one will result in the other being mostly honored as well (indirectly).
* Forking PTS is much easier in its current form.
* Competitors of BTS would never sharedrop to it (think Ethereum), while PTS is a DAC-agnostic token that would be viewed favorably by all future DACs.

These are among the many reasons why the social consensus should not be altered, and especially not because of a distortion or misunderstanding of Stan and Dan's prior statements. The community benefits from continued support of both PTS and BTS as complementary tokens under the umbrella of DPoS.

[davidpbrown]

One thing I have learned is that changing anything is bad and I am loath to do it even if the original decision was a mistake.   

Progress is good and changes at times are needed. The only limit is that the market will expect strict consistency and clear communication of reasoning. It is also very important to recognise where you have resources and to maintain those; acknowledging your support is key to maintaining a community consensus. Equally being dynamic is important, don't be afraid to respond in the best interests of BitShares but understand that investors have a stake here too; being dynamic isn't a conflict with consistency, those are different. Honest communications like you produce will always help maintain support.

If changing to a 100% BTS allocation would make everyone happy it would be a no brainer.  I am not in this to pick favorites. 

So is there any objection to a 100% BTS allocation, if so please speak up now.

I am actually thinking about allocating 10% to nullstreet leaders and 10% to Chinese community leaders and 10% to core developers and 10% AGS 10% PTS and 50% to BTS.   This way the key players all have something to work with.

As it happens, it is perhaps good this cloud hangs over DevShares.. and apt, given its purpose. DevShares are of little consequence and it does not matter, so long as everyone with real interest has an option to participate and that requires BTS is acknowledged.


The problem is simply reviving PTS and AGS where the perception had been those were finished with in return for vested shares in BTS.

My thought is that AGS/PTS are acknowledged within BTS but vested; acknowledging those vested shares is not a problem, indeed that would seem appropriate.


So, I would expect widely the reply will be - yes, 100% BTS preferred.. unless you now consider [nullstreet leaders]/[Chinese community leaders]/[core developers] do not have enough support from BTS delegate payments and that only sharedrop to them is useful, in which case I cannot see anyone challenging that. Trying to drop to a few ?insiders who held PTS in the face of what was a clear market drop because of the ~merge to BTS, is odd and appears preferential to those who have PTS still. If there is a clear need to prefer a drop to certain resources like the Chinese or like certain devs, then that's fine - but do it in the open because such moves draw support and acknowledge those in the gesture as well as in its value.

[Empirical1.1]

My current conclusion

Our dev team plus Stan, even collectively lack the ability  to discern within a market acceptable degree of accuracy the likely response of the market to their actions.

Why? Developers seem to be very literal. They appear to be genuinely confused & frustrated even as a collective,  why the market would respond negatively to some of their decisions.

The title of Toast's thread and even BM's last post in the same thread highlight it best. (They actually think it has something to do with DVS.) They also think it is shareholders fault for reacting that way, not an entirely predictable response of a market.

It's also possible Stan doesn't intend to be so condescending, patronising and evasive in most of his posts either.

Everyone thinks you are all rock stars we want you to be appreciated and respected as such. We want you to change the world for the better, be rich and famous and make us wealthy in the process.  I doubt most want to overly influence what you work on or what you do. What you have though is a dev brick wall atm. Even when you think you've taken input, it gets filtered through the literal wall and we end up with decisions the create completely unessecary PR problems for the umpteenth time. The result is frustration and confusion from the markst because we can't understand how a group of exceptionally intelligent people can make such unnecessary  unpopular, divisive and BTS value damaging decisions.

It's perfectly obvious that the DVS thing of going post 11/05 would be interpreted badly especially by the Chinese market after the merger & is not worth the blowback.

But I will try to understand that I'm dealing with a group of people that don't intend to make such negative PR decisions that look antagonistic towards their own shareholders. They are genuinely even as a collective just very literal people who are unable to pre-emptively discern how their actions will be received and the wider implications of them on the market

I certainly recognize that I did blame others for their response and that in general I have no one to blame but myself.   I appreciate that you recognize our INTENT is do do well by all and that we cannot possibly know others expect. 

One thing I have learned is that changing anything is bad and I am loath to do it even if the original decision was a mistake.   

I would much rather not be the one to make decisions because it is easy to critique but difficult to decide.   I also don't want to let the squeaky wheel rule the day just because they complain the loudest.   So it is a real challenge to determine where the AGGREGATE PUBLIC OPINION falls. 

If changing to a 100% BTS allocation would make everyone happy it would be a no brainer.  I am not in this to pick favorites. 

So is there any objection to a 100% BTS allocation, if so please speak up now.

I am actually thinking about allocating 10% to nullstreet leaders and 10% to Chinese community leaders and 10% to core developers and 10% AGS 10% PTS and 50% to BTS.   This way the key players all have something to work with.

My only fear in changing anything is that it will just result in a DIFFERENT PR mess.    Can you all prove to me that the PR would be better by changing it now than by letting it ride?

My prediction is that if we were to exclude AGS / PTS all together that many people will create just as much negative PR.

I agree with the market not liking changes.

My prediction is that a 100% drop to BTS is optimal.

I would look in particular to hear what CN-members has to say. China is the biggest market and his interpretation of the situation is probably one of the best guages of overall market opinion to how BTS as a market will respond to decisions imo.

Other: Shareholders will feel they needed more consultation & input on anything relating to equity imo. The overall market cannot complain about anything that goes 100% BTS though imo, so unless there's a huge advantage to doing otherwise, in cases like this I can't see it not being the best option.

[santa.claus]

Share drops are for everyone who has been nice!!!   Marry Christmas!