You guys don't understand devshares.

[sumantso]

If PTS was indeed merged and the chain left to die out, the natural progression of the social consensus would have been 20% on BTS (thats what I thought was being offered for the inflation anyway).

Now, any one using the toolkit would make BTS holders angry (as pointed out by Dan today). So they have to sharedrop on PTS, AGS and BTS. Then there may be squabbles over the ratios. The safer thing would be to simply not bother. This is in stark contrast to the previous scenario where the entire community was united behind the 20% min for AGS+PTS.

The best thing would've been to let PTS die and BTS becomes the target. Since that was not happening, I had suggested trying to create a good sharedrop token using PTS, AGS, some BTS and even other projects like NXT, NEM etc. The idea was to pitch a sharedrop token to potential toolkit users which is widely distributed with an united community. Sadly, alphaBar and co looked at it as decreasing their profits and ignored it.

In short, social consensus is dead. It was always on shaky ground and the strength it had was a big community support which has now fractured.

[alphaBar]

Alphabar using the Bitshares name and I3 social consensus. This just seems wrong to most of us. What Alphabar seeks to create is a kind of universal sharedrop token for any future DAC and that seems like a completely new venture with it's philosophical roots in Sharedrop Theory and not in the old PTS social consensus. Yet he uses the Bitshares name, yet he uses the PTS name, yet he claims the right to market as the preferred sharedrop target for DAC's using the Bitshares Toolkit.

The fact that Devshares effectively "recognized" his claim has only further irked people that feel Bitshares developers are essentially encouraging Alphabar instead of promoting sharedrops to BTS. To be clear, I'm talking about sharedrops from future DAC's that use the Bitshares toolkit (important point).

It is my opinion that if Alphabar would change the name of his DAC and drop the references to being the preferred sharedrop token for DAC's using the Bitshares Toolkit, then all this would go away.

On the other hand if Bytemaster prefers to gift Alphabar the Bitshares name and preferred sharedrop status then that needs to be said as well. Then we can all move on.

Wow, another completely inaccurate characterization. What about Stan and Dan's repeated support of the PTS upgrade over the past weeks? what about TestZ (the custodian of PTS) supporting the upgrade? What about all of the exchanges and services supporting the upgrade? Did I manipulate all of these stakeholders into bending to my will? Absolutely comical that you would frame this as though it was a lone venture. This was a consensus among PTS shareholders, nothing else. Why alphaBar and not TestZ or Stan or Dan or Bter or Poloniex or Coinmarketcap or etc, etc, etc?? You cannot create a story around your own facts, sorry.

And where is this "completely new venture" you speak of? Literally nothing has changed about PTS except the consensus algorithm (and even that was out of pure necessity due to a dying PoW chain). Name one thing, except the DPoS upgrade, that has changed. Did we alter the allocation? No. Did we modify the social consensus? No. Did we change the name? No. Where is this "new venture" that you speak of? The only new venture I see is the attempt that is being made here to twist Dan and Stans prior statements (in one of many early proposals) to make it appear as though it was their position that PTS should die. And no matter how many times they correct this, in this very thread, people continue to promote it as though it is fact. Let me state this for the record again:

* The merger was not intended to kill or absorb PTS. This was confirmed repeatedly by both Stan and Dan.
* Stan and Dan are no longer the official custodians of PTS. They have expressed support for the project, but are not responsible for its continued development.
* The social consensus was not modified by the merger. Even if a DAC intended to create a new or different social consensus, as Dan stated in the Mumble session this morning, the core feature-independent DPoS protocol was funded and supported almost entirely by PTS and AGS investors so it would make sense to sharedrop to that demographic and not BTS. Ultimately, developers will do as they please, but there is a compelling argument to continue the role of PTS and AGS as sharedrop instruments going forward.

[slacking]

First of all, glad to have Bytemaster weigh in on this finally. IMO, only  his opinion has the weight to end the bickering and unite us. It is quite distressing that this is being argued under a thread called "You guys don't understand devshares" since I don't think this is about devshares, it's really about this:

Alphabar using the Bitshares name and I3 social consensus. This just seems wrong to most of us. What Alphabar seeks to create is a kind of universal sharedrop token for any future DAC and that seems like a completely new venture with it's philosophical roots in Sharedrop Theory and not in the old PTS social consensus. Yet he uses the Bitshares name, yet he uses the PTS name, yet he claims the right to market as the preferred sharedrop target for DAC's using the Bitshares Toolkit.

The fact that Devshares effectively "recognized" his claim has only further irked people that feel Bitshares developers are essentially encouraging Alphabar instead of promoting sharedrops to BTS. To be clear, I'm talking about sharedrops from future DAC's that use the Bitshares toolkit (important point).

It is my opinion that if Alphabar would change the name of his DAC and drop the references to being the preferred sharedrop token for DAC's using the Bitshares Toolkit, then all this would go away.

On the other hand if Bytemaster prefers to gift Alphabar the Bitshares name and preferred sharedrop status then that needs to be said as well. Then we can all move on.


 

[jshow5555]

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.

I wonder what those media guys would have advised if our plan had been to stick with the 11/05 date and therefore sharedrop on ourselves before we returned all the PTS...

 

I do not know Stan.
I saw a so called DRAFT with not a single objection to the 11/05 date, which you decided to change in the official news letter. Why, the change? I no longer ask such questions - I just accept that you just change things, not due to objections, but when you feel like it.

100% BTS is probably the best right now as  things stand. But even 11/05 for PTS will be accepted as OK, as 90% of the people who cannot read your or alphaBar's mind, have accepted this to be the case.

@gamey and @bytemaster - it is really 'reassuring' from 1 old forum member and the leader of the project - accusation of whinnying when people have clearly stated that they have problems in principle not for their insignificant monetary interest. And even against such interest in the case of Emperical, for example.


As for constructive thoughts @allDevs - read WildPig's, Emperical's and Agent86's posts -ALL OF THEM, in both threads- if you want to indeed see the problem/change the things for better.

Let me finish with a great post! 

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

[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.

I wonder what those media guys would have advised if our plan had been to stick with the 11/05 date and therefore sharedrop on ourselves before we returned all the PTS...

 

They would probably have said drop 100% to BTS

You have the potential for a massively successful business here, if you don't respect the input of Western 'media guys' at least just ask someone like CN-members 'hey what do you think of this?'

China is by far the biggest market and he's one of the main conduits.

Exploring PR solutions, that can still work within tight time constraints that development sometimes demands could completely transform shareholder perception & confidence in development decisions and as a result the fortunes of BTS.

I've already mentioned your personal style often comes across as patronising, condescending, evasive and now in the above comment snide. I don't know if your sometimes messenger role is more of a help or further hindrance to BTS at times myself.

[Stan]

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.

[Edit for tone and clarity]

One thing we should have shared with everybody sooner is that we simply could not stick with the 11.05 date because that would mean share-dropping on ourselves -- back when I3 owned all the PTS we returned.

[Agent86]

Damage control is never fun and not as effective as avoiding the problems in the first place.  But I think the biggest danger right now is people just feel like they are not being heard; they feel like the devs can't seem to understand where they are coming from or don't care.  Some might feel disrespected.  This is a danger because that is when people give up on arguing and just sell (arguing is a lot of work).

So with that in mind, I think making a change now will be a net positive and shows a willingness to listen.  I think even considering that 100% BTS is a change of course for Devshares distribution, it would still have a lot of support.  I think there are other distributions that would have been fine if it was the original plan but I think at this point I would go for simplicity.

From an admittedly biased perspective:

* BTS source includes a ton of functionality that must be pruned out by 3rd parties
* BTS includes functionality that complicates sharedrops (market orders cannot currently be accounted for in a sharedrop).
* Do we want BTS devs spending time on these things, which have no direct benefit for BTS but are rather beneficial for 3rd parties (some of which will compete with BTS)?
* If you are arguing against hasty decision making and lack of consensus building, should we change the current longstanding consensus in favor of a group of people who have miscontsrued & misunderstood Dan's posts to create the FUD in this thread? Or are we better off not introducing yet another potentially harmful change, respecting the originally conveyed message and those who understood it correctly, and avoiding yet another another fallout?
* PTS is not in competition with BTS and serves an entirely different demographic. If Ethereum adopts DPoS they will most certainly not sharedrop to BTS. PTS would be an easier sell in this case.
* Separate nonoverlapping functions here: modular design principles should be used.

There are a million reasons why the social consensus should not be tampered with. A healthy PTS is a net benefit for DPoS and for BTS. Any claims to the contrary are just not supported by any historical precedent.

Dropping 100% of Devshares (BTS test network) onto BTS doesn't violate any interpretation of the "social consensus" that I ever had.  It was said very early on that new banking/exchange type chains might drop to BTSX rather than AGS/PTS and just honor them because they had a stake in BTSX.

[alphaBar]

Agreed that our PR needs some work. I would ask that a low friction process be implemented, e.g., a committee can be formed as a starting point for potentially sensitive topics (eg, "I'd like to post the following. Please review and raise any concerns within the next 24 hours..."). I'd be happy to participate if requested. As for the concerns about PTS, I'd like to share a point I made in another thread:

PTS is not a competitor to BTS and certainly nobody is "stealing resources" (that's not how open source software works). They are completely different tokens directed towards different applications. BTS is a feature-rich DAC that is intended to disrupt a variety of industries, while PTS is a DAC-agnostic sharedrop token that could never compete with BTS on features or development. No crypto-coin in history has EVER been displaced by a copycat clone or a token with a subset of its features. Other DACs will exist whether we want them to or not. PTS ensures that we get a stake in all of those tokens, many of which will be doing things that BTS doesn't desire to do (see Music for example). It is true that 3rd party DACs (not PTS) will compete with Bitshares and that some of them may be successful despite our wishes. PTS ensures that we own a stake in those tokens too. It is not a zero-sum game. We are not losing anything by holding both the vanilla DPoS sharedrop token (PTS) and the Ferrari of DACs (BTS). Killing one will not increase the value of the other, but having them both will probably lead to some synergy. This is the same reason why Toyota created Lexus, Honda created Acura, etc, etc, etc. They are directed towards different applications (not competitors), and yet they both promote the same underlying technology (DPoS).

[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.

on one hand , they want to be free from all the professional things that big companies do .

on the other hand , they want to attract big money and big investors like big companies do in order to grow .

It's a transition stage that they might not be ready . All the blow backs , just part of what shareholders would do in even a 5 million USD worth of  company in the real world , let alone a 40 million USD one . They want to earn the big bucks , they'll have to be equiped to earn it , do things they don't like in their bones .

Does Bitcoin have all of the professional things that big companies have?   
Big companies have professional things because they keep things behind closed doors.   We do almost everything in the open. 
A DAC must not depend upon any one individuals strengths or weaknesses.

You do realise this drama was caused by a unilateral, behind closed doors DVS equity decision that you're now justifying by suggesting everything must done in the open and not be decided by a small group of unilateral decision makers. I'm suggesting do things however you think is best just include someone, anyone the community considers decent at PR to give you a good gauge of aggregate public opinion if you're in the position that you don't have time to waste gauging it from the market via discussions, though where possible especially with anything equity related engaging BTS through discussions or a blockchain vote would be best.

Anyway I've done my best to take the time to give constructive feedback on addressing what I believe is BTS's main and unnecessary weakness at this stage. I'm off to enjoy some of the holidays. Thank you guys for all your hard work! Looking forward to the NY as I said in another post I really think POW is clearly dying right now and I think we have an opportunity to go really big time. Please consider the possibility that PR is not BTS's strong point and that other PR approaches are worth considering if they have a chance at preventing these kind of dramas, delays etc. in the future.

[alphaBar]

Damage control is never fun and not as effective as avoiding the problems in the first place.  But I think the biggest danger right now is people just feel like they are not being heard; they feel like the devs can't seem to understand where they are coming from or don't care.  Some might feel disrespected.  This is a danger because that is when people give up on arguing and just sell (arguing is a lot of work).

So with that in mind, I think making a change now will be a net positive and shows a willingness to listen.  I think even considering that 100% BTS is a change of course for Devshares distribution, it would still have a lot of support.  I think there are other distributions that would have been fine if it was the original plan but I think at this point I would go for simplicity.

From an admittedly biased perspective:

* BTS source includes a ton of functionality that must be pruned out by 3rd parties
* BTS includes functionality that complicates sharedrops (market orders cannot currently be accounted for in a sharedrop).
* Do we want BTS devs spending time on these things, which have no direct benefit for BTS but are rather beneficial for 3rd parties (some of which will compete with BTS)?
* If you are arguing against hasty decision making and lack of consensus building, should we change the current longstanding consensus in favor of a group of people who have miscontsrued & misunderstood Dan's posts to create the FUD in this thread? Or are we better off not introducing yet another potentially harmful change, respecting the originally conveyed message and those who understood it correctly, and avoiding yet another another fallout?
* PTS is not in competition with BTS and serves an entirely different demographic. If Ethereum adopts DPoS they will most certainly not sharedrop to BTS. PTS would be an easier sell in this case.
* Separate nonoverlapping functions here: modular design principles should be used.

There are a million reasons why the social consensus should not be tampered with. A healthy PTS is a net benefit for DPoS and for BTS. Any claims to the contrary are just not supported by any historical precedent.

[Agent86]

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.

Damage control is never fun and not as effective as avoiding the problems in the first place.  But I think the biggest danger right now is people just feel like they are not being heard; they feel like the devs can't seem to understand where they are coming from or don't care.  Some might feel disrespected.  This is a danger because that is when people give up on arguing and just sell (arguing is a lot of work).

So with that in mind, I think making a change now will be a net positive and shows a willingness to listen.  I think even considering that 100% BTS is a change of course for Devshares distribution, it would still have a lot of support.  I think there are other distributions that would have been fine if it was the original plan but I think at this point I would go for simplicity.

[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.

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.

on one hand , they want to be free from all the professional things that big companies do .

on the other hand , they want to attract big money and big investors like big companies do in order to grow .

It's a transition stage that they might not be ready . All the blow backs , just part of what shareholders would do in even a 5 million USD worth of  company in the real world , let alone a 40 million USD one . They want to earn the big bucks , they'll have to be equiped to earn it , do things they don't like in their bones .

Does Bitcoin have all of the professional things that big companies have?   
Big companies have professional things because they keep things behind closed doors.   We do almost everything in the open. 
A DAC must not depend upon any one individuals strengths or weaknesses.

[Xeldal]

I wish this notion of the old 'social consensus' would die.

To me, what we're calling the 'social consensus' is not what we have, is not a consensus, is no longer beneficial, and I recommend dropping it all together.   I had hoped the 'merger' would solve this, but it persists.  It started as a "all future DAC's from i3 will honor the social consensus of... ____"    Since then I believe the actual working 'consensus' has become a theory about what works best for the successful launch of a DAC.  ie. Share-Drop Theory.

Share-Drop Theory IS the new social consensus, is constantly evolving, and is different for every DAC.  Bottom line; A DAC developer should do what is most beneficial for her DAC, period.  Share-Drop Theory attempts to set guidelines for this.   

I3 Devs, to my knowledge have no intention of releasing any further DACs outside of BTS. I3 as it is, will come to a close, and by that notion there is no need for this dictum of "must honor this or that"

I'm ok with whatever allocation is used, I just hope this social consensus term is dropped and or redefined.

100% BTS makes sense to me as BTS holders are the only ones really interested in the successful test development of BTS, or some % at Devs and Nullstreets could also be a good idea.  BTS already covers all relevant AGS and PTS holders so I see no need to drop additionally on them, especially given this x80 value disparity(any% seems random if you don't consider relative value of the token being dropped on).

edit: (sry this is kind of a pent-up reply to 7 different threads, so it seems slightly out of context to me)

[btswildpig]

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.

on one hand , they want to be free from all the professional things that big companies do .

on the other hand , they want to attract big money and big investors like big companies do in order to grow .

It's a transition stage that they might not be ready . All the blow backs , just part of what shareholders would do in even a 5 million USD worth of  company in the real world , let alone a 40 million USD one . They want to earn the big bucks , they'll have to be equiped to earn it , do things they don't like in their bones .

[davidpbrown]

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.

Take it easy.. I'm just going off what was a clear discontinuity in the value of PTS1.0 market cap. A lot of people appear to have moved out and likely into BTS and a lot took the BTS vested shares and were happy with those. Now it seems those still with PTS are wanting more alongside those taken with the idea of PTS2.0. Too much has been made of this already. Someone draw a line and be done with it.