Proxy: jakub - better execution / implementation / communication of BM's ideas

[santaclause102]

Your posts / thoughts always seemed to be grounded in rationality.

You have my vote too. Just have to finally import to 2.0...

[GaltReport]

 

[Method-X]

You'll have my vote.

[jakub]

Following BM's appeal for establishing a foundation of proxies, I'd like to offer my service as a proxy for BTS voting.
I believe I'm in a good position for this role as I follow the forum quite closely and I've been participating in almost every mumble session this year.


The background

I've been aware of BitShares almost since the initial concept came into existence and was immediately in love with the idea. I have enormous admiration for BM's talent for inventing and designing powerful incentive schemes. His logical mind and technological insight are absolutely brilliant for me.

However, I've always been a bit critical about some of his business decisions and the way those decisions were handled & executed. I'd say I've agreed with almost all his views and strategic choices (including the most controversial ones, like the 2014 merger) but I've had lots of issues with the way he has communicated and implemented them. For an example of my approach please refer to this thread regarding the 2.0 launch. And I agree with Charles Hoskinson that even the best inventions have to be properly communicated to be able to succeed. So I'd say that as much as the strategic decisions were damn good, the operational ones (including the communication strategy) could have been much better.

But I don't expect anybody to excel at everything so I've always defended the "BM owes us nothing" attitude on this forum. Even if things are clearly mismanaged I generally believe that it's our shared responsibility and BM should not take any more blame than anybody else here. For me, he's free to do whatever he wants (as any of us here) and even if he sells & quits now I'll still be grateful for what he's done.

With the release of 2.0 I see the beginning of a new era: BM finally gave us a tool to transfer power from himself to us and to relieve him in the areas he is clearly not very good at, i.e. communicating BitShares ideas and making operational business decisions. So this is the time when the community needs to take over from him and by becoming a proxy I'd like to be part of this process.


Short-term vision

Regarding the current situation after the 2.0 launch, I believe there are two crucial stakeholders we should take care of at this initial stage: the traders and the merchants. If the traders are happy they will give us liquidity for SmartCoins and thus a product to sell. If the merchants are happy they will give the "normal users" a reason to acquire and spend their SmartCoins.

The traders will be happy if we give them these things:
- a good trading UI
- competitive transaction fees for executing market orders
- stable rules for SmartCoins shorting

The merchants will be happy if we give them these things:
- an opportunity to significantly lower their costs of receiving payments
- an opportunity to earn extra income by referring new users to BTS

It might sound a bit harsh but IMO the so called "normal users" are irrelevant to us at this stage, i.e. there is really not much we can do to attract them right now. They will either come to us due to their political views / lifestyle choices (BTS as an alternative to the corporate world, desire to take part in something meaningful) or because the merchants will convince them to do so using their own incentives. They won't come because we can offer a better UX (the best we can do - and should do - is match the legacy systems UX) or lower prices (they are insensitive to pricing as on average they make only a few on-line payments a month). The situation might change when "normal users" start using SmartCoins for everyday expenses (i.e. when BTS expands into off-line transactions via mobile phones or partnering with debit cards) but if this happens we will already be in a position to embrace that and significantly lower the fees.

This is a good summary of my vision for BTS in the next 6-12 months:
good trading interface -> liquidity for SmartCoins -> SmartCoins become truly useful -> the referral program kicks in


Short-term priorities

At the current moment, in my view the absolute priority is the GUI. Other features (e.g. the bond market) can wait but the UI has always been our weakest point and this needs to change, especially that for the first time in our history we have a very solid foundation for the GUI in the form of web sockets and react.js. Right now I cannot help with coding but I do care about the GUI a lot which can be measured by the number of issues I've reported on github.

I'm quite open to the idea that the current GUI made by CNX might evolve into a live demonstration of Graphene's capabilities and third-party solutions (like Moonstone) will gain more momentum. But before that happens we definitely need a very good UI for the traders and should do everything to make them happy as without them we have no liquidity and thus no product to sell.

I strongly agree with BM's concept of a DAC which implies that a blockchain network needs to be economically sustainable. For me, inflation is only acceptable as a temporary emergency solution or to finance IT development (shareholders investing in their own company) but not as a long-term method of subsidizing business operations. In the long run, BTS holders should not be forced to subsidize BTS users and this is what inflation does in my view.

And last but not least, we need much better communication both inside and outside the community. For a start I'd support:
- publishing a short-term road-map utilizing the results of this poll.
- publishing a clear set of rules regarding SmartCoins shorting and guidelines for collateral position management
- publishing a white-paper describing the 2.0 implementation of SmartCoins


Our competition

In my view, our main competitors are not other crypto-currencies because we have a unique product that no-one else has: price-stable assets free of counterparty risk. Thus we compete mainly with PayPal and on-line usage of debit cards. Therefore we should reach to merchants already accepting bitcoins but we should not waste time on old-school bitcoiners: they are emotionally attached to their concept and we have a bigger fish to fry in other demographics. I agree that in the long run, our target market is South America, East Asia and Africa, not the western world.


Voting

As for witnesses, initially I am going to support witnesses according to their efforts during the 2.0 testing. The number of supported witnesses will be in the range of 19-25 as I agree with BM's argumentation that it's better to have fewer of them but pay them well and have them properly vetted. I'm still in the process of compiling the list so please forgive me if I've missed someone important and let me know if your witness deserves to be added due to your efforts during the tests.

As for committee members, my current priority will be keeping the existing pricing strategy unchanged (except lowering the market orders fees if the traders clearly demand a change in this respect). In the future (but not as a priority), I am inclined to support transaction fees proportional to the amount being transferred.

As for workers, my priority will be upgrading the trading interface to a Poloniex standard, implementing the worker proposal functionality in the GUI and gradually bringing all the existing 2.0 features to the GUI level.


Conclusion

I wish Dan Larimer and Charles Hoskinson (CH) could join together again, but as that seems to be currently impossible, we need to "recreate" a virtual CH using the wisdom of the proxy functionality. And when I mention CH, it's not his views that are important here. What matters for me is that someone like him would constitute a perfect complement to BM's talent and a healthy counterbalance. So I'm talking here from an HR manager's perspective (though I'm not one) and CH is just a symbol here, not for his opinions but for his skills. For me, CH's skills begin where BM's skills end: BM invents great things and CH perfectly communicates them to both the insiders (the community) and the outsiders (the outside world). IMO we badly need some form of CH here (though Stan has been doing an amazing job lately) and hopefully the improved DPOS system and proxy votes will finally enable the community to play this role.

So if you agree with the above opinions and/or if you generally support BM's point of view but would like to see better execution / implementation / communication of his ideas, please consider setting my BTS account named jakub as your proxy.

My current voting slate:
http://www.cryptofresh.com/u/jakub