Announcing Brownie Points (BROWNIE.PTS)

[kenCode]

I just sent out some more brownies.    Plan to send out even more.   I have someone who is going to help me keep up and not lose track of people!   
Please don't be offended if I overlooked you thus far, I can assure you it was not intentional.

...on a SATURDAY no less.

[bitder]

Mmmm brownies...

Contributions

• Started mining PTS back in 2013-12 (a bit late and wasn't very fruitful)
• injected money into the bitshares ecosystem by buying PTS and contributing to AGS
• involved in early btsx testing
• helped identify the root cause of an account/key indexing problem during early refactoring. (I was already thanked with some PTS -- which I contributed back to AGS)
• helped people with linux build issues
• helped test bitshares DNS - ran active delegates for a while
• ran an active BTSX delegate delegate.bitder for a long time until being bumped off when the 100% delegates were voted in
• mined Sparkle for a while
• contributed code to compute the genesis rich list
• lurking on this forum every day
• most importantly still buying BTS

Account: bitder

[bytemaster]

I just sent out some more brownies.    Plan to send out even more.   I have someone who is going to help me keep up and not lose track of people!   

Please don't be offended if I overlooked you thus far, I can assure you it was not intentional.   

[pendragon3]

Ok, so my contributions to BTS to date may be modest, but please be assured that they were earnest and well-intentioned:

1. I've followed developments here from nearly the beginning, circa Dec. 2013 or so. Used a goodly amount of my take-home pay to make AGS donations and PTS purchases throughout the first six months of 2014, both before and after the DPOS breakthough happened--and even throughout the Dark Days of Spring 2014.

2. Shorted BitUSD heavily around Sept. of 2014, and did not fully cover until this past Spring (ouch!). Well, the way I see it, this was a good contribution to the liquidity of the BTS system  . Who knows whether BTS would even be viable now if not for my "butterfly-effect" contribution?

3. If memory serves me well, I was one of the first to ask about whether it's "bitshares", or "Bitshares", or "BitShares".

4. Sept. 2014: I pointed out to Bytemaster a potentially serious order-matching bug leading to an erroneous increase in the BitCNY supply. This was back in the BTSX days when even syncing the wallet without crashing it, not to mention placing trades, was a frustrating experience, to say the least.

5. Railed repeatedly against the suggestion of open-ended dilution of BTSX to pay delegates for signing blocks. Criticized the merger plan as being unfair to those who believed that Vote with its special sauce would eclipse BTS.  As iron sharpens iron, hopefully my arguments and views helped Bytemaster in some small way to adopt a balanced perspective and forge the right path for the BTS community going forward.

6. Listened to virtually every Mumble session recording, even if I wasn't able to make it to the live sessions. Honestly, after each listening I always walked away more excited and impressed about the direction of the ecosystem.

BTS: pendragon3

Congrats to Dan et al. for everything BitShares has become and for all the promise it holds for the future. Much obliged to the PTB for any brownie.pts that may be deemed appropriate!

[carpet ride]

I would like some brownie points please [emoji1].  I am working on bringing VC and partners to CMX.  I once tried to create a BitShares blog.  I put my savings into AGS and PTS in 2013 and have only bought more BTS since. Looking forward to the adventures to come. 

BTS: carpetride

[jakub]

So while we thought that Brownie.PTS is a way for Cryptonomex to give back to the community in an unofficial manner, in reality, if most Brownies are owned by Cryptonomex (up to 99% potentially), then Brownie.PTS are actually a vehicle for funneling half of future sharedrops to Cryptonomex. It's a bait and switch. A heist.

If it is a "heist" then the actual victim is the share-dropping entity, not me. It's up to the share-dropper to make sure Brownies are well distributed and worth share-dropping.

I was initially skeptical about Brownies (and that's why it took me so long to apply for them) but now I can see that this concept has had a positive impact on the community so maybe it makes sense.
My only concern is that Brownies might discourage people from being critical. So if I were BM I would make sure constructive critics are very well rewarded in terms of Brownie.PTS. Even if they are wrong.

[triox]

Buck Fankers, Jakub, and the few people who didn't receive their Brownies, you're wasting your breath.

Bytemaster only needed to distribute enough Brownies to shut out dissent, so that the most active Bitshares shareholders feel they're part of the insiders club.

So while we thought that Brownie.PTS is a way for Cryptonomex to give back to the community in an unofficial manner, in reality, if most Brownies are owned by Cryptonomex (up to 99% potentially), then Brownie.PTS are actually a vehicle for funneling half of future sharedrops to Cryptonomex. It's a bait and switch. A heist.

[jakub]

(1) One of the first things I did when I joined the community was creating an ELI5 description of the BitShares bit-asset mechanism which eventually became a part of the official wiki page. It was quite a surprise for me that it was even translated to Chinese.

(2) Then I kept on creating several threads, some of them quite critical as I've always been mad that the BitShares project is obscured by bad PR and UX:
Question to Brian, the Marketing Director
How is delegate voting implemented in the GUI?
What UX improvements would you like to see in 1.0?
Issues with the voting process
Invoices in 2.0?
The business model for Hosted Wallet Provider
The BTS 2.0 partnership program - how does it work?
So what I mostly do on the forum is ask some tough questions and hopefully the answers I get are helpful for others as well.

(3) Together with DataSecurityNode I helped to discover summer announcement #7

(4) Starting from November 2014 till March 2015 I undertook a huge effort of creating an alternative BitShares GUI. I guess you are already familiar with the screen-shots. You can see the source code here. It was a fully fledged JavaFX desktop app almost ready to be released. But the thing is... it was never released. So I am not sure if it counts from the Brownie perspective. I hope it does
(It was not released because we eventually concluded we did not have enough resources to finish it up and offer a proper customer support. And then 2.0 was announced which made our work obsolete.)
As you probably realize, the coding took quite a lot of effort and hundreds of hours. First I needed to reverse-engineer the JavaScript code of the official wallet and recreate it in Java. Then I spent over 2 months trying to get the UX right. I think it wasn't bad as I got very encouraging reviews from the community. So I guess it was a success and a failure at the same time.

(5) For the last year I've been accumulating a lot of knowledge about BitShares. Right now my company is in the process of acquiring some serious funding from the European Union for a BitShares-related business and if that turns out to be successful I hope to be able to leverage this knowledge to a very good cause for the entire ecosystem. But these are plans for the future.

BTS account name: jakub

[Buck Fankers]

Fwiw I did not mean to come across as feeling "entitled" (I don't) I simply wanted to point out what I saw as a flaw in the system as I expressed on slack (more eloquently I hope). Apparently my previous post was overlooked but I had to consider the rules as they were laid out and that left open another possibility as well as my post simply being overlooked. Seeing how everything is public it's a little embarrassing to me personally to ask for anything but I'm learning simply because ... I don't want to be left out, I want some hugs too! And I also don't mind getting something for my "productivity" (as Mr. Robles puts it) as long as everyone else is too.

I don't like being the only person in the room getting hugged. And I don't like seeing one person excluded from a hug especially if they rode in the same car as the rest of us to the hugfest. It's just weird. Which makes me wonder if you've ever considered SmartDropping^TM Brownie.PTS to all BitShares holders at a well thought out rate? I'm going to assume you have but I missed why you didn't or haven't to date.

Ok on with it here's what I've done since the last time you graced me with your hugs :
This will be good for my INFJ.

Transcripts

https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-developer-hangout-with-bytemaster-july-10-2015
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bonus-hangout-with-brotherjohnf-about-physical-silver-and-his-crypto-experiences
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-developer-hangout-bytemaster-brownie-pts-and-cryptonomex-july-17-2015
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-dev-hangout-bytemaster-stealth-confidential-transactions
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bonus-hangout-qora-vrontis-ciyam/
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-dev-hangout-bytemaster-on-shareholder-approval-july-31-2105
https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-dev-hangout-bytemaster-consensus-august-7-2015

I've included the Bonus Hangouts as well since we do discuss BitShares quite a bit to those crowds to raise awareness of BitShares as well as hear about their projects and attempt to create a working relationship with the Dev's and / or their community.

My calculations come to (my previous estimate was highly inaccurate) :

54,266 words  @ ~30 words per minute = 30.147 hours (check that if u like I'm horrible with teh math) +  3.5 hrs (~30 min ea.) of proofreading / comparing to audio + 3.5 hrs (~30 min ea.) setting up the hangout pages = 37.147 hours since last hug.

I spent $20 on https://transcribe.wreally.com yearly access. It's well worth it btw. It saves a bunch of time.

I probably smoke about a gram of dro to get me through each hangouts transcript because some of you guys change your train of thought too much and I have to kind of create what I think you were trying to say  ... so about $100 worth.   

If you feel my contributions are worthy ... I appreciate you and what you're doing!     If you don't feel my contributions are worthy ... I appreciate you and what you're doing! 



P.S. Oh yeah we also post the hangouts to reddit and have done the audio editing on one show and one of us (me or Tuck Fheman) post the raw version here when we remember to.

And I made this : https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,17584.msg223892.html#msg223892

And we made 29 BitShares related post in the last month to our blog in the dedicated BitShares section : http://tuckfheman.com/tagged/bitshares

And we promote the shit out of BitShares every where we go.

[Empirical1.2]

In some categories that have a "standardized" treatment Bytemaster has delegated distribution to volunteers.
For the rest, he has asked people to help by posting what they've done in a designated thread.
From time to time he processes that thread and leaves behind a bookmark saying "I think I'm caught up."

Ok thanks. Since I posted to the thread previously and did not receive Brownie.PTS afterwards should I assume I'm not contributing anything worthwhile? At what point should I stop groveling publicly or is that based upon each individual's level of shame (mine's pretty low so I stopped posting after one rejection)? 

Based on each person's level of shame I imagine. Perhaps publicly grovel some more and also apologise for having the temerity to question your brownies and you might find yourself in his favour again.

I may reward them (or not) as I see fit, in the amounts I see fit, for the reasons I see fit.   I may also seize brownie points from any account if you fall out of favor and anyone who complains in any way about how Brownie Points are issued or how I use Brownie Points is certainly not in my favor and may lose any Brownie Points they have earned.

[Stan]

In some categories that have a "standardized" treatment Bytemaster has delegated distribution to volunteers.
For the rest, he has asked people to help by posting what they've done in a designated thread.
From time to time he processes that thread and leaves behind a bookmark saying "I think I'm caught up."

Ok thanks. Since I posted to the thread previously and did not receive Brownie.PTS afterwards should I assume I'm not contributing anything worthwhile? At what point should I stop groveling publicly or is that based upon each individual's level of shame (mine's pretty low so I stopped posting after one rejection)? 

Given all you do, I'm sure that's not the case.  PM BM if you don't want to ask about it publicly.  He's trying to get a hundred things done and sometimes he's interrupted recursively till he has a stack overflow and loses his place in the old todo list.  He's about to get some help in that category, so we'll see if things improve.

[Buck Fankers]

In some categories that have a "standardized" treatment Bytemaster has delegated distribution to volunteers.
For the rest, he has asked people to help by posting what they've done in a designated thread.
From time to time he processes that thread and leaves behind a bookmark saying "I think I'm caught up."

Ok thanks. Since I posted to the thread previously and did not receive Brownie.PTS afterwards should I assume I'm not contributing anything worthwhile? At what point should I stop groveling publicly or is that based upon each individual's level of shame (mine's pretty low so I stopped posting after one rejection)? 

[lil_jay890]

August 13 of this thread.. why I don't like sharedropping.

If he had smartdropped a set rate to those that sought it out, nobody would have anything to complain about.

Regardless.. the obvious is missing here.. It's 100% HIS choice who or what he will sharedrop on. It doesn't matter how fair or unfair it looks to others, it was ultimately up to John et. his org what type of goals they wanted to accomplish with it.

You can call it whatever you like.. but at the end of the day for all you freedom lovers.. it's HIS CHOICE who he WANTS to sharedrop on.. there is absolutely no obligation to anybody to take any such actions today.

Just like you have all been free to to speak out against it on this platform and likely have burned (pardon the pun) any likelyhood of anybody wanting to sharedrop on anything related to the BitShares community again less they should suffer the stink of a handful of hornets in the nest, they have the freedom to launch their coin as they see fit.

It's not yours, it's theirs.

If I have a new coin or UIA and I decide that brownie.pts is a good 'list' to reach a certain demographic that I want.. who is anybody to judge otherwise?

Where is Brownie.PTS now? I think a lot of people here could use HUGS right now.

We payed for his blockchain protocol via delegate pay. That's why we deserve a share drop.

Dan/Stan were able to whisper in Underwood's ear to donate 20% to some asset that they have complete control over.   Your telling me that brownie holders have done the same amount for developing graphene as bts holders?

No one understands clearly how brownies are distributed... And for some opaque instrument to warrant the same value as bts seems wrong.  Any investor from the past year has paid dearly for the development of graphene... Through the merger and all the pumps and promises.

That said, brownies could be a good idea if they were better defined and detailed.

This would hold all true if there was no distribution on anything else.. it just happens the brownies get a bit more.. so social consensus is fulfilled regardless.. going forward though this idea of the social consensus has to step down.. it's technically over.... it just happened to fit into John's plans.

So is the consensus that new chains should drop 20% on BTS for using Graphene?  How was this decided?  Documented anywhere?

[Stan]

No one understands clearly how brownies are distributed... And for some opaque instrument to warrant the same value as bts seems wrong.  Any investor from the past year has paid dearly for the development of graphene... Through the merger and all the pumps and promises.

That said, brownies could be a good idea if they were better defined and detailed.

Ok, ok, we'll tell you the secret formula!

The goal is to make brownies reflect who has been active and helpful while keeping a bit of a fun random lottery component. 

Step 1:  First Bytemaster makes an infallible assessment (accurate to 9 decimal places) of how much he appreciates something someone has done.

Step 2:  We run that number through a random number generator (our overworked, chaotic business processes) where it gets multiplied by a number from 0 to 2 (again to 9 decimal places).

The net result is the number of brownies you receive - part lottery and part reward for a job well done.

If you are an entrepreneur looking for an optimal mailing list to distribute your coin and you want to target active community members with a bit of a lottery to it, then Brownie.PTS is a great choice.

It's a precisely targeted helicopter drop with a bit of swirling wind in the air.

BitShares Sharedrop Theory

[Stan]

Where is Brownie.PTS now? I think a lot of people here could use HUGS right now.

Disclaimer : Yes this is bytemasters asset that he paid to issue and he can do with it what he like's however he like's and anyone else can sharedrop to it however they want and no one can change that.

How are we supposed to get them these days outside of attending the Hangouts?  I've dropped approximately 100,000 words of BitShares history in transcripts since the last time I saw a Brownie.PTS (and I know I'm not alone). Shall I and many others assume we're on bytemaster's shitlist since we don't get Brownie.PTS for contributing? I guess I don't get how this all works. Everyone was asked to post in a thread about what they've done and some Brownie.PTS were sent about 2 months ago or so. Are we supposed to keep posting each time we do something we think is worthy of a Brownie.PTS nod from @bytemaster or will he simply know we contributed or how do we know when to stop begging for Brownie.PTS for contributing because we didn't know we were on a shitlist?   

Also in a rough estimate I pulled from my arse and some data obtained on another page it appears that 2.5% of the BitShares forum community are considered "contributors".  This means 97.5% of the forum members are not "contributors" and will not be sharedropped to. Does that number seem high or low to you? Do you (bytemaster) foresee any issues with the community if 97.5% feel excluded and a portion of the 2.5% feel under-hugged for whatever reason?   

"I'm just asking questions. Please don't shitlist me!"

In some categories that have a "standardized" treatment Bytemaster has delegated distribution to volunteers.
For the rest, he has asked people to help by posting what they've done in a designated thread.
From time to time he processes that thread and leaves behind a bookmark saying "I think I'm caught up."
If you feel you've been missed or do something new, add it to the list.
BM is not omniscient, he is merely all-knowing.