Author Topic: BTS  (Read 7400 times)

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Offline fuzzy


Why not just make it an option and give the user the choice of how much they want to burn in addition to their vote.  A person votes as normal, but then they can add influence. The influence is the choice of how much you would burn to influence your outcome.  The amount you are willing to burn is locked until the voting is over. If your choice wins, the shares are burned, if not then they are released. The influence vote is worth some multiple of the a regularly vote.

You can think of influence like lobbying except the the whole community get the payout.

To keep things from getting crazy, there should also be  limiter on how much can be burned per vote. I would suggest no more than 1% of your total BTS.


nice idea man.  well thought out.
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Offline starspirit

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I didn't listen to the hangout, so I'm missing the background on this. But what is the main purpose of BMs proposal? If people are willing to give up some BTS to help prioritise certain projects, why not use all of those BTS for funding the project, rather than locking them up or burning them? That way there might be a much larger funding pool?

No, because then they sell them on the open market and drag the price down defeating the sole purpose of raising the market cap by reducing supply, man.


Using the coin for funding facilitates more value-adding projects, which increases the value of BTS, and demand for it. If the projects are productive, this demand would absorb any selling pressure when the coins re-enter circulation. The value of bitShares rises with the increased capital and utility we build to support it.

The logic of withholding that capital to constrain its use in the hope of increasing scarcity value is highly dubious. In the wider world outside crypto, investors provide capital to ventures that create value. The world ends up with a more valuable economy, and better goods and services, as a result. Capitalists don't then worry that when the employees of those companies spend that money (i.e. "sell" it or convert it for other things they need) the pressure of "selling money" will reduce the value of it. They don't then conclude as a result that everybody would instead be better off hoarding money (presumably to increase its value) rather than investing it so we can all be paper-rich.

Collectively we can burn as much BTS as we like, and it will never increase the value of bitShares in totality. If we burn everything until we have 1 BTS left to split between all of us, that 1 BTS will be worth no more than what all today's BTS are worth, without any increase to the wider market's valuation of the utility of BTS. To me these just seem like convoluted games to distribute BTS within our little collective. What we need to be talking about and promoting and getting excited about are not such games, but real value-add.

Offline Pheonike

Well then we could split it. Influence for the winning side goes to the project and the losing side gets burned. Or the loosing funds go to a general project pool.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2015, 05:56:28 am by Pheonike »

Offline starspirit

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I didn't listen to the hangout, so I'm missing the background on this. But what is the main purpose of BMs proposal? If people are willing to give up some BTS to help prioritise certain projects, why not use all of those BTS for funding the project, rather than locking them up or burning them? That way there might be a much larger funding pool?


Offline luckybit

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BM says that we can (if we choose to implement this feature) bet on which BTS project proposal will happen next and all proceeds go to every community member equally.  This is not gambling because if you guess correctly, then you win nothing!  Donations do affect the outcome of the event (which proposal wins).

No laws are broken anywhere on the planet, because charitable auctions are not against the law.  Take that The Man

It works, functionally like a pure donation to the BitShares community as a whole.  It is a charitable donation to the BitShares community.  If you are against this proposal, then you are anti-charity and against members of this community accepting donations from humans.

In effort to become profitable, and supply users with more degrees of freedom than any other community, Bytemaster just let us know that we can "sell hard fork votes" (votes on proposals)(not votes for delegates or parameter changes) by either burning BTS, or locking BTS up for a pre-determined period.   

Such an initiative would only affect "which proposals get funded next" while simultaneously funding development and temporarily reducing BTS supply.  Since these additional purchased votes cannot be used to elect the delegates that set the proposals in motion, or vote on changing any internal parameters (both of which could potentially steer BitShares in a negative direction), there cannot be any negative influence on the system becasue the community obviously supports each and every proposal to some degree otherwise the delegates would be fired.

This is just another way that we can monetize the time and money of our community that does not create any avenue for bad actors to hurt our community.

Here are BM's own words from an initial thread I created without knowing that BM could indeed limit the purchased votes to"

"just allowing them to be applied to the proposal voting process"

(and not actually be used for delegate or parameter voting both of which are critical to the security of the system)

"Proposal voting" is like choosing which flavor of ice cream you want:  one positive and harmless outcome vs another positive and harmless, but different, outcome.

We can set the parameters based on the cost of one or more proposal votes.

You can also vote to "defund a worker" at any time.   

The examples in the OP are not realistic unless you are referring to a hard-fork decision.   But even that requires massive consensus prior to, during, and after.   

It really comes down to this:

1. what is the value of a vote?
2. what is the value of locking up funds?

If we knew the value of a "vote", then we could simply sell additional votes in exchange for burned stake.    Someone with 100M BTS may be willing to burn 1M BTS to double their vote it it will cause their remaining 99M BTS to rise in value or prevent it from falling in value.   

Locking up funds means the individual looses liquidity, which has some non-0 value.   If everyone with BTS was forced to lock up their funds for 90 days except delegate pay, then delegate pay would be the only source of liquid BTS which would make it more valuable.   Hence, locking up funds has some non-0 value to those with liquid funds.   It would be like EtherCoin being valued higher than ETH because it was liquid while ETH was not.   

So shareholders have to balance these complex valuations when they set policy.   

If we pay people to lock up funds today it can increase the potential purchasing power of the funds we pay to witnesses/delegates/workers today.   In effect, is paying interest to borrow money from the future.


How about reputation points for the people who continuously guess right? These points can be meaningless but they can give bragging rights and status.

I have to think more about Bytemasters proposal, it sounds good but I need a better understanding.
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Offline roadscape

Not sure I'd burn any BTS if I couldn't at least double my voting power.. seems inconsequential & wasteful otherwise.

If the multiplier is 2X, you have to burn 100% of your stake to double your voting power.
If the multiplier is 8X, you have to burn 14% of your stake to double your voting power.
If the multiplier is 20X, you have to burn 5.3% of your stake to double your voting power.
If the multiplier is 40X, you have to burn 2.6% of your stake to double your voting power.
If the multiplier is 80X, you have to burn 1.3% of your stake to double your voting power.

How much of your stake are you willing to burn for a temporary doubling of voting power? 1%? 10%?
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Offline EstefanTT

I like it more this way, just for proposals.

I think this poll should come after another asking people if they think it's a good idea.

Somethink like :

O - yes, ASAP
O - no, never
O - let's discuss it afterthe release of bts 2.0

When I read that, I feel like it's been already decided.

IMHO, it's a good idea but I feel there is no need to rush it.


Fuck you,

I don't tell you how to act

do I?


Are you serious ? I didn't mean to tell you how to act. I was just giving my opinion.
Isn't it the purpose of these threads, gather opinions and get the reflexion moving on ?

My english is far from perfect, if I expressed myself in a aggressive way, it wasn't intentional.

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Offline Pheonike


Why not just make it an option and give the user the choice of how much they want to burn in addition to their vote.  A person votes as normal, but then they can add influence. The influence is the choice of how much you would burn to influence your outcome.  The amount you are willing to burn is locked until the voting is over. If your choice wins, the shares are burned, if not then they are released. The influence vote is worth some multiple of the a regularly vote.

You can think of influence like lobbying except the the whole community get the payout.

To keep things from getting crazy, there should also be  limiter on how much can be burned per vote. I would suggest no more than 1% of your total BTS. 
« Last Edit: August 18, 2015, 11:09:39 pm by Pheonike »

Offline Ander

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The current voting results are transparent until the voting period ends is it not? So voting very late in the process and burning only if necessary will be what ends up happpening. #unintendedconsequences

Thats not a problem if there is no end date on elections. 
If they work like current delegate votes do, then if you get enough votes for one project it will be "in" and getting paid, but then if you burn for a different project then it will become "in" and getting paid. 

Is that how it works?  Or not.
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Offline mint chocolate chip

The current voting results are transparent until the voting period ends is it not? So voting very late in the process and burning only if necessary will be what ends up happpening. #unintendedconsequences

Offline Ander

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I think I get it.. I maybe wrong.. but I seem to recall that the power to down vote will be introduced in 2.0 as well. Not just say YES, but say NO also.

Say an incumbent worker has a contract to impliment something that I have a competing one for.. mine is called bitWidget his is eWidget. The contract is worth far more than the value of the votes being cast for it.. Would this not enable me to 'buy' my proposal in either by way of directly voting my own in through the burn.. or voting NO to the other guy to make him appear to be weak and limp in his public support?

If I had 10X the vote power by doing a burn like that.. I could significantly swing the vote in my favor to get the contract.

What am I missing here where this scenario would not likely happen if burning BTS yielded that much greater of significance change in vote power on workers?

This is why the multiplier needs to not be set too high.

(And if its too low no one will burn, so we must find the good middle ground).
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Offline Pheonike

Why not just make it an option and give the user the choice of how much they want to burn in addition to their vote.  A person votes as normal, but then they can add influence. The influence is the choice of how much you would burn to influence your outcome.  The amount you are willing to burn is locked until the voting is over. If your choice wins, the shares are burned, if not then they are released. The influence vote is worth some multiple of the a regularly vote.

You can think of influence like lobbying except the the whole community get the payout.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2015, 11:09:09 pm by Pheonike »

Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

I think I get it.. I maybe wrong.. but I seem to recall that the power to down vote will be introduced in 2.0 as well. Not just say YES, but say NO also.

Say an incumbent worker has a contract to impliment something that I have a competing one for.. mine is called bitWidget his is eWidget. The contract is worth far more than the value of the votes being cast for it.. Would this not enable me to 'buy' my proposal in either by way of directly voting my own in through the burn.. or voting NO to the other guy to make him appear to be weak and limp in his public support?

If I had 10X the vote power by doing a burn like that.. I could significantly swing the vote in my favor to get the contract.

What am I missing here where this scenario would not likely happen if burning BTS yielded that much greater of significance change in vote power on workers?
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Offline Empirical1.2

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« Last Edit: August 18, 2015, 02:14:28 pm by Empirical1.2 »
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Offline mint chocolate chip

... there cannot be any negative influence on the system...
That is a bold statement. Maybe we just haven't thought of any yet...
« Last Edit: August 18, 2015, 02:35:10 pm by mint chocolate chip »