Why Vision Matters Blog Post

[Stan]

Here's what we have done:
We have made the results of all our efforts open source for others to build on.
We have encouraged a host of other entrepreneurs to build their own businesses. 
We have provided several funding mechanisms (referrals, workers, FBAs, etc.) to make that easier for them than it has ever been.
We have offered to build whatever entrepreneurs want to fund.

What else can we do? 

Very simple: you can offer a worker proposal aimed at creating robust documentation for Graphene so that the outside developers can get on a level playing field with CNX developers.
Currently only one man (@xeroc) is working on this and AFAIK what he produces is not meant to be a technical documentation for Graphene developers.
For me good documentation would be one that includes a guide describing how to write, test and deploy a modification affecting the BitShares protocol.

Are you asking that we go create some more developer companies for you, so you will have a choice?

All I am asking is to hold off changing your vision every 6 months until we can honestly say that BitShares is open to third-party development (including modifications affecting the protocol).
Otherwise the shareholders have only this choice: they can either follow your vision or sell.
I'd like to give them a third option: vote for an alternative vision.

"All you are asking" is for us to not use the platform we worked so hard on for its intended purpose - to build new businesses that make money - for six months. 

Anybody can write that worker proposal and hire us or anybody else to do that work.
Every entrepreneur is also welcome to hire us to do consulting to get them up to speed. 

Why does everyone have to wait for us to act on what they want to see?
You simultaneously demand alternatives to CNX and yet wait for CNX to make the first move on everything.

Why not write a proposal for what you want, offer to manage it, sell it to the community and recruit us or someone else to do the work?

[Stan]

Maybe that's because the way I am and I respect that because we are all different and see things differently but I see BitShares with lack of ambition and turning soft. Not chasing the money it needs. But unfortunately there seems to be the lack of man power so we're "stuck" with CNX and they can't do everything alone even if they wanted. But like I said, different people think different ways and have different approaches... Can't really do anything about that other than trying to set a path to follow.

I think there is a HUGE misunderstanding about MAS.
It was selected as something to consider for our next internal investment because we think it represents the best opportunity to make money and grow BitShares in the near term.

People are reacting to the "sales pitch" to MAS users (which is necessarily warm and fuzzy) rather than the "pitch deck" to MAS investors (which is hard nosed profit oriented).

Let me try to clear that up for you.

Sales pitch to MAS users:  "Hey, in addition to donating to help people in your favorite cause and getting a tax deduction, why not also get insurance for yourself as an added benefit?  We can offer the lowest overhead charity in the world that delivers peer to peer help where you can confirm that the people you wanted to help actually got the money AND you become eligible to receive the same help from others in the future."

Sales pitch to MAS investors:  "BitShares holders, MAS FBA holders, and referrers get to share a small cut of all donations made for all causes which constitutes our only overhead."

Given the size of the donation business, a perhaps 5% cut is very profitable, generates funds for BTS and CNX, and increases the demand for BTS and the number of people signing up for BTS accounts.  It gives our affiliate marketers something concrete and easy to understand to sell, which has been the biggest limitation to their ability to use the BTS referral program so far.

The forums for each MAS type (BM suggested several) are not this forum and they can each have their own philosophical ideals - without imposing them on BitShares.

BitShares remains a profit motive oriented platform for building many businesses that may be either economically or ideologically driven (or both).

And people who want to focus on the DEX can take great pleasure in all the new users who come there to buy and sell their MAS tokens. (And thereby discover all the other insanely great products and services the DEX can offer.)

[Ben Mason]

Here is the manipulation, Stan: the above list is purely theoretical at this stage.
You pretend we have a choice but actually we don't.

As long as CNX is the only player capable of implementing changes affecting BitShares protocol - this is a one-man show.
DPOS and shareholders voting on worker proposals is pure fiction at this stage.

We (the shareholders) did not have a choice between Stealth and Maker. We were offered Stealth or nothing. So we chose Stealth.
Now again the same thing is happening: we do not have a choice between DEX and MAS. We are offered MAS or nothing.

Honestly I am surprised. Surprised that you are so close to the truth,. Actually you just need one more step in the right direction and you will see the whole picture - the whole picture loudly screaming at you.

Actually @lil_jay890 did it for you (and everybody else) and  last night posted (one of the, if not the) greatest post on this forum. He went on to delete it unfortunately...

I was thinking of posting a thread "The great Future of BTS  as a Ponzi scheme" for some time now, but actually his description is better "BTS a personal charity  for the benefit of a business called CNX". The consequences and the future should be clearer, having realized that.

Here you all have it.... consider yourself warned!!!!.

I see a genuine and sincere struggle against a myriad of challenges. There has been an aggressive need for innovation and adaptation. Your bitterness is palpable tonyk, but there is no need to give in to self-pity and blame the people who are trying hardest to bring success to BitShares.

For anyone that is feeling frustrated or let down in some way, we have the power to make things right for you. All it requires is for us to galvanise our efforts, support each other....especially our devs, unify behind a common purpose, finish what we started and extend the hand of hope and friendship to everyone else.

[kenCode]

This means attracting more users to generate demand for BitShares
...
hire developers to build what you want.

Bingo. ..and BINGO.
 
1. The BitShares Wallet for Android/iPhone will be released on Jan 4th.
2. The OPENPOS token pays the developers AND rewards its Hodlers.
3. Smartcoins POS attracts the users you mentioned, AND supermarkets.
 
Join us in the Beyond Bitcoin mumble this friday the 1st!
Details: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20762.0/all.html

[jakub]

Here's what we have done:
We have made the results of all our efforts open source for others to build on.
We have encouraged a host of other entrepreneurs to build their own businesses. 
We have provided several funding mechanisms (referrals, workers, FBAs, etc.) to make that easier for them than it has ever been.
We have offered to build whatever entrepreneurs want to fund.

What else can we do? 

Very simple: you can offer a worker proposal aimed at creating robust documentation for Graphene so that the outside developers can get on a level playing field with CNX developers.
Currently only one man (@xeroc) is working on this and AFAIK what he produces is not meant to be a technical documentation for Graphene developers.
For me good documentation would be one that includes a guide describing how to write, test and deploy a modification affecting the BitShares protocol.

Are you asking that we go create some more developer companies for you, so you will have a choice?

All I am asking is to hold off changing your vision every 6 months until we can honestly say that BitShares is open to third-party development (including modifications affecting the protocol).
Otherwise the shareholders have only this choice: they can either follow your vision or sell.
I'd like to give them a third option: vote for an alternative vision.

[Akado]

Adding new applications to the BitShares platform does not constitute any kind of a turn.

1)  Stealth
2)  Maker
3)  Lending (Bond) market
4)  Prediction market
5)  MAS

We now have 5 and may well have a dozen such candidate businesses by this time next year.
In the mean time, each candidate needs a champion willing to raise or supply the cash to develop it.

Here is the manipulation, Stan: the above list is purely theoretical at this stage.
You pretend we have a choice but actually we don't.

Honestly I think this too... It seems it's already set up for MAS to be the next thing.

I'm also under the impression that the goal of having something profitable is slowly fading away. I feel we're turning more into a charity project. There's no problem helping others, but to successfully do that, I'm of the strong opinion you need to be rich first. If there's no money where are you going to get the resources?

I thought BitShares was supposed - above everything - to be profitable just like any other company. But I just don't see that ambition any more. Instead of being pragmatic, start somewhere and have a clear objective, BitShares seems like it's lost in the desert not knowing where to go.

What if crypto exchanges are not a big market globally? First, we need to start somewhere. We are already a niche so we must please that niche. Meaning we should aim to be the number one exchange. It's all about building a brand. Then once established we could move onto other things like real non crypto exchanges, etc. Isn't the derivatives market huge? Well if we want that (which I think we dont anymore), we need to start somewhere. Have goals. Have milestones. Once we're established as a nice exchange other exchanges would join, adding more and more volume until we absorb all the ones we can. That should be our first milestone imo. Second, crypto is growing so sooner or later the crypto exchange bizz will grow huge and could even replace others. Now guess what, if you're ahead in the exchange stuff, we would always be one of the top choices.

Then we would move onto other things. Bigger things with bigger markets! Expand to new stuff. But then, we could actually have the luxury of doing that because we have an established and acknowledged brand. We would be a reference, be profitable and shareholders would have something much more valuable in their hands at that point. Meaning they would finally have more money to invest in new and bigger stuff.

I strongly believe only by being wealthy can you truly create awesome and revolutionary stuff, because that takes money. You can have 1001 of the best ideas someone ever had but you can't do them, practically. That's unfortunate but it's true when you're dealing with new technology and competing with tons of people at the same time. You just need it.

Maybe that's because the way I am and I respect that because we are all different and see things differently but I see BitShares with lack of ambition and turning soft. Not chasing the money it needs. But unfortunately there seems to be the lack of man power so we're "stuck" with CNX and they can't do everything alone even if they wanted. But like I said, different people think different ways and have different approaches... Can't really do anything about that other than trying to set a path to follow.

[Stan]

Here is the manipulation, Stan: the above list is purely theoretical at this stage.
You pretend we have a choice but actually we don't.

As long as CNX is the only player capable of implementing changes affecting BitShares protocol - this is a one-man show.
DPOS and shareholders voting on worker proposals is pure fiction at this stage.

We (the shareholders) did not have a choice between Stealth and Maker. We were offered Stealth or nothing. So we chose Stealth.
Now again the same thing is happening: we do not have a choice between DEX and MAS. We are offered MAS or nothing.

So my appeal to CNX is this: be fair and offer us a choice. You are welcome to propose a vision but do not force this vision upon us (the shareholders).
And to have a choice we must wait till there is at least one more development team in the ecosystem capable of offering worker proposals as complex as Prediction Markets or Maker.
Then CNX will have every right to propose MAS as an alternative to DEX and let the shareholders actually choose between MAS and DEX (or choose to finance both).

I don't want to have developers who have a vision.
I want developers who are happy to be paid for implementing the vision of the shareholders.

As we have it now, it got all mixed up: we have developers and vision creators as one entity.
Which leaves us with this "choice": share their vision or sell.

Then you need to find developers who think your way.

Are you asking us to quit being visionaries? 
If we had to give up being developers or give up being visionaries, which do you think we would choose? 

Here's what we have done:
We have made the results of all our efforts open source for others to build on.
We have encouraged a host of other entrepreneurs to build their own businesses. 
We have provided several funding mechanisms (referrals, workers, FBAs, etc.) to make that easier for them than it has ever been.
We have offered to build whatever entrepreneurs want to fund.

What else can we do? 
Are you asking that we go create some more developer companies for you, so you will have a choice?

Well, we think the best way to cause more developers to come into existence it to create more opportunities for them.
This means attracting more users to generate demand for BitShares to increase the purchasing power to hire them or at least inspire them.

Users will attract entrepreneurs who will hire plain, non-visionary, developers and tell them what to develop.

If they hire us, we will dutifully build what they want - just like we are now doing for Onceuponatime.
If we hire us with our own money, then naturally we will decide what we want to spend it on.

If you want to set the direction instead of CNX, the best way to do that is to raise funding for your vision. 
Then you will have lots of developers standing in line.  (Probably us too.)

Right now we are paying our own bills, so we get to set our own vision.
And we have (very fairly) left the door wide open for others to do the same.

Here's the way it works now for everyone:

1.   Decide what you want.
2.   Find like minded individuals who want what you want.
3.   Work with them to raise funds to pay for what you want.
        (Tap your piggy bank, propose a worker, do a FBA raise, build a community....)
4.   Use those funds to hire developers to build what you want.

BitShares is a platform designed to make those four steps as easy as possible for everyone.

[jakub]

Here is the manipulation, Stan: the above list is purely theoretical at this stage.
You pretend we have a choice but actually we don't.

As long as CNX is the only player capable of implementing changes affecting BitShares protocol - this is a one-man show.
DPOS and shareholders voting on worker proposals is pure fiction at this stage.

We (the shareholders) did not have a choice between Stealth and Maker. We were offered Stealth or nothing. So we chose Stealth.
Now again the same thing is happening: we do not have a choice between DEX and MAS. We are offered MAS or nothing.

Honestly I am surprised. Surprised that you are so close to the truth,. Actually you just need one more step in the right direction and you will see the whole picture - the whole picture loudly screaming at you.

Actually @lil_jay890 did it for you (and everybody else) and  last night posted (one of the, if not the) greatest post on this forum. He went on to delete it unfortunately...

I was thinking of posting a thread "The great Future of BTS  as a Ponzi scheme" for some time now, but actually his description is better "BTS a personal charity  for the benefit of a business called CNX". The consequences and the future should be clearer, having realized that.

Here you all have it.... consider yourself warned!!!!.

We must find a competition for CNX in 2016 or there is no bright future for BitShares.
Without true competition among developers BitShares will be reduced to an experimental lab for CNX, where the bill for all unsuccessful experiments is paid by the BitShares shareholders.

CNX might have the best intentions, I have no doubt about it.
But this situation is pathological and it will end badly.

EDIT: I don't blame CNX for not coming forward with worker proposals for DEX if they now believe MAS is the future.
So the problem is not CNX. The problem is lack of competition.
And IMO lack of competition mainly stems from the lack of documentation and educational resources about Graphene.

[tonyk]

Here is the manipulation, Stan: the above list is purely theoretical at this stage.
You pretend we have a choice but actually we don't.

As long as CNX is the only player capable of implementing changes affecting BitShares protocol - this is a one-man show.
DPOS and shareholders voting on worker proposals is pure fiction at this stage.

We (the shareholders) did not have a choice between Stealth and Maker. We were offered Stealth or nothing. So we chose Stealth.
Now again the same thing is happening: we do not have a choice between DEX and MAS. We are offered MAS or nothing.

Honestly I am surprised. Surprised that you are so close to the truth,. Actually you just need one more step in the right direction and you will see the whole picture - the whole picture loudly screaming at you.

Actually @lil_jay890 did it for you (and everybody else) and  last night posted (one of the, if not the) greatest post on this forum. He went on to delete it unfortunately...

I was thinking of posting a thread "The great Future of BTS  as a Ponzi scheme" for some time now, but actually his description is better "BTS a personal charity  for the benefit of a business called CNX". The consequences and the future should be clearer, having realized that.

Here you all have it.... consider yourself warned!!!!.

[jakub]

# What is the philosophy of windows, IOS, Android, Linux and other operating system ? Do they have a philosophy ?
# How could we sell Windows to a random guy if there is not any program running on it ?
# How could we motivate entrepreneur to build on our plateform when we don't have user ?
# How most successful OS have done that in the past?
# Is BitShares blockchain the OS or is the DEX ?
# ...
the purpose of the BM article is to gather the community, to make it more united. Let's help him (and us) out and gather our reflexions to define better what we are, what we do, our goals and where we are going. It's not an easy task but we need it. It should be, as a smart community,  our nº1 priority  before anything else.

Beautiful

Bitshares is an OS aimed to protect life, freedom & property. That's cool and easy to understand.
Bitshares is an OS where different apps can coexist. That's also cool.
Only 4-5 people in the whole world are capable to build an app for BitShares OS. That sucks.
Clearly such an OS is an unfinished product.

To be clear: I want the product finished but I don't expect to get it for free - I want to pay well for making it complete.
And for me it is finished when this condition is met: there are at least two different companies competing with worker proposals that address a roadmap defined by the shareholders.

So if we treat BitShares is an OS, we don't need Stealth or Maker or Prediction Markets or Bonds to call our OS complete.
All we need is a practical ability to acquire those features via worker proposals.

[bytemaster]

That 240M valuation of exchange market is so stupid. OMG you worked in exchange for years and this calculation is what you have? Bitcoin has value because of freedom activitist? You can't be more stupid, seriously can't. Ur own market research told you "change the world" is easier to sell? Stupidity will laugh at you. You are too over.

To be fair, I was asking the question and making rough estimates based only on volume and a valuation of 20x profits. If coinbase was valued at 400M all by itself that tells me that the market is pricing in a lot of speculative value about future volume and probably using lower multiples.

Bitcoin has value because of network effect and speculators. It had network effect first!  Speculators second.  I was around with Bitcoin in the beginning and so I know how it got started and the type of people who were early adopters and why. 

I am not attempting to sell "change the world", I am attempting to sell a MAS to the target market of gofundme.

Obviously I haven't communicated everything I have in mind.  It is a VISION for a better world.

[Ben Mason]

There is a lot of good reflexions in here !

What is very shocking is that nobody here seems to understand what is BitShares and how to explain it to someone.
If we are unable to clarify this point in our very community, it's not surprising that the outside world is completely confused about it.

If think most of the confusion comes from the fact that BitShares is a plateform made to support all kind of projects. Each project with its own philosophy, with its own public target, ect ...

It seems to me very hard to define the philosophy of BitShares with something else than very wide concept as "freedom" "respect" "independance" ... (these are just random words to make my point)

<just an idea> 

Maybe the reflexion would be easy comparing ourself to an operating system (and not to a software).

# What is the philosophy of windows, IOS, Android, Linux and other operating system ? Do they have a philosophy ?
# How could we sell Windows to a random guy if there is not any program running on it ?
# How could we motivate entrepreneur to build on our plateform when we don't have user ?
# How most successful OS have done that in the past?
# Is BitShares blockchain the OS or is the DEX ?
# ...
</just an idea>

How could we become what we want to become if we don't know what we want to be ?

There is a lot smart poeple here, this thread should continue during 50 pages until we figure it out.

As I see it, the purpose of the BM article is to gather the community, to make it more united. Let's help him (and us) out and gather our reflexions to define better what we are, what we do, our goals and where we are going. It's not an easy task but we need it. It should be, as a smart community,  our nº1 priority  before anything else.

Wonderful EstefanTT....

[kenCode]

# What is the philosophy of windows, IOS, Android, Linux and other operating system ? Do they have a philosophy ?
# How could we sell Windows to a random guy if there is not any program running on it ?
# How could we motivate entrepreneur to build on our plateform when we don't have user ?
# How most successful OS have done that in the past?
# Is BitShares blockchain the OS or is the DEX ?
# ...
the purpose of the BM article is to gather the community, to make it more united. Let's help him (and us) out and gather our reflexions to define better what we are, what we do, our goals and where we are going. It's not an easy task but we need it. It should be, as a smart community,  our nº1 priority  before anything else.

Beautiful

[EstefanTT]

There is a lot of good reflexions in here !

What is very shocking is that nobody here seems to understand what is BitShares and how to explain it to someone.
If we are unable to clarify this point in our very community, it's not surprising that the outside world is completely confused about it.

If think most of the confusion comes from the fact that BitShares is a plateform made to support all kind of projects. Each project with its own philosophy, with its own public target, ect ...

It seems to me very hard to define the philosophy of BitShares with something else than very wide concept as "freedom" "respect" "independance" ... (these are just random words to make my point)

<just an idea> 

Maybe the reflexion would be easy comparing ourself to an operating system (and not to a software).

# What is the philosophy of windows, IOS, Android, Linux and other operating system ? Do they have a philosophy ?
# How could we sell Windows to a random guy if there is not any program running on it ?
# How could we motivate entrepreneur to build on our plateform when we don't have user ?
# How most successful OS have done that in the past?
# Is BitShares blockchain the OS or is the DEX ?
# ...
</just an idea>

How could we become what we want to become if we don't know what we want to be ?

There is a lot smart poeple here, this thread should continue during 50 pages until we figure it out.

As I see it, the purpose of the BM article is to gather the community, to make it more united. Let's help him (and us) out and gather our reflexions to define better what we are, what we do, our goals and where we are going. It's not an easy task but we need it. It should be, as a smart community,  our nº1 priority  before anything else.

[lil_jay890]

Adding new applications to the BitShares platform does not constitute any kind of a turn.

1)  Stealth
2)  Maker
3)  Lending (Bond) market
4)  Prediction market
5)  MAS

We now have 5 and may well have a dozen such candidate businesses by this time next year.
In the mean time, each candidate needs a champion willing to raise or supply the cash to develop it.

Here is the manipulation, Stan: the above list is purely theoretical at this stage.
You pretend we have a choice but actually we don't.

As long as CNX is the only player capable of implementing changes affecting BitShares protocol - this is a one-man show.
DPOS and shareholders voting on worker proposals is pure fiction at this stage.

We (the shareholders) did not have a choice between Stealth and Maker. We were offered Stealth or nothing. So we chose Stealth.
Now again the same thing is happening: we do not have a choice between DEX and MAS. We are offered MAS or nothing.

So my appeal to CNX is this: be fair and offer us a choice. You are welcome to propose a vision but do not force this vision upon us (the shareholders).
And to have a choice we must wait till there is at least one more development team in the ecosystem capable of offering worker proposals as complex as Prediction Markets or Maker.
Then CNX will have every right to propose MAS as an alternative to DEX and let the shareholders actually choose between MAS and DEX (or choose to finance both).

I don't want to have developers who have a vision.
I want developers who are happy to be paid for implementing the vision of the shareholders.

As we have it now, it got all mixed up: we have developers and vision creators as one entity.
Which leaves us with this "choice": share their vision or sell.

Cnx may have given up the licensing portion of bitshares, but they didn't give up control.

Good post jakub