Author Topic: An alternative vision for Bitshares 2016  (Read 4576 times)

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Offline Samupaha

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We have two levels of focus: The whole system and individual features.

System

With the system I mean the blockchain and how it is governed. We have the best blockchain, let's keep it that way and make it even better. This means that we can't just focus on individual features but to remember also look at the system as a whole. We need to nurture it as a whole system. Let's make it more antifragile.

From the blockchain governance point of view we are still lacking at least GUI for committee. Is something else critical still missing?

We need more committee members. Let's find more real members and drop all inits this year. Shouldn't be too hard to achieve?

Marketing has been bad. It would be a good start if the website and blog were updated regularly. No need to have flashy videos or other gimmicks, just tell what we are up to, so outsiders don't get the picture that project is dead.

When we communicate better the strengths of our blockchain and all the possibilities it offers, I hope we can attract more users, developers and investors. Now it's like this amazing blockchain is just our little secret and nobody else knows about it.

Fee Backed Assets are going to be really important part of funding new features. Let's make sure that everybody knows that FBA exists and how it can be used.

Individual features

If we want to get the blockchain profitable, we need to have profitable features. This should be the focus for everybody.

No need to get everybody to work on same feature at the same time, we can have lots of different projects. But when you are thinking about business idea or should you start developing something or should you invest, try to focus on short term profitability.

Hopefully FBA will bring lots of funding money on the table, but it's not going to fund everything. Something is still left for the workers. When thinking who should you vote to be funded, focus on if the feature will be useful for somebody in the short term. If it is useful, it will bring money in. Right now we need just some profitable examples for others to be inspired to do their own thing in the Bitshares blockchain.

Stealth is already coming, that's awesome, it has been wished by so many that it probably is useful. Point of sale system might get more store owners interested in Bitshares, which is very promising.

Recurring and scheduled payments are great for any kind of subscription based service. As far as I know, there is no competition in the cryptosphere. We should probably prioritize these and try to monopolize the market.

What comes to the exchange itself as a feature, I think it's kind of vague to say that we should focus on making it better. Better for what? An exchange can be used for many things. Of course the user experience etc. should be polished, but besides that there should be more clear objectives. Who wants to use it right now and bring profits for Bitshares? Let's go after those people and serve them first.

Features/businesses that I have mixed feelings:

Any kind of crowdfunding platform. Right now there is lots of competition, it might be hard to get any meaningful traction fast. But on the other hand, would it really be that hard to try something in small scale? Like forking Mike Hearn's Lighthouse to work with Bitshares?

Features/businesses that I would delay:

Prediction markets. Let's face it, Augur is already leading. They have lots of intelligent people and a big chunk of money. If we are seriously going to go for prediction markets, we need a good team and enough money backing the project. It's not only the technical side, but it has to be marketed as well. There has to be website/webwallet dedicated to it, with good UI and videos to explain how it all works. So far I haven't seen any serious plans to actually make it all happen with Bitshares. So don't hold your breath while waiting PM bringing profits for Bitshares. Not going to happen soon. Probably some day, but not in the near future where I'd like our focus to be now.

Features/businesses that I would ditch for now:

All market pegged assets for cryptocurrencies (including bitBTC). These are only useful for traders, and not even everyone of them will use these. Remember, Bitshares exchange is a derivatives exchange, so all these MPAs are derivatives, not the real thing. For normal cryptouser bitBTC is inferior to real BTC because they can't use it anywhere else than in our exchange. So it will bring only little value for small group of people. That's why I'd like to see more focus on trading with gateway-BTC (and other gateway-altcoins). On the other hand, fiat/gold/silver-MPAs are useful for all people, so we should emphasize those markets more.

Feel free to add your own analysis for different features, services, products and other business ideas.

jakub

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Listen to Charles Hoskinson (from 4:00 to 7:00)
https://youtu.be/HFgZvJxkbvI
He talks about the future world in which "everything will be tokenized".

And then listen to this guy (from 10:00 to 11:30)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49LtMyXK7Q
He talks about the concept of "The Stock Market of Things".

If everything that has value is going to be tokenized, there will be a huge demand for an exchange that handles seamless conversion between tokens (CH mentions this).
Isn't this a convincing vision showing the usefulness of BitShares DEX?


We should have both DEX and MAS. We don't need to choose between one or the other.
We have the money (over USD 40k can be spent per month via worker proposals plus quite unlimited funding via FBA).
We just need to attract developers to build it for us.
So opening up to developers should be our number one priority in 2016.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2016, 12:53:35 pm by jakub »

Offline JonnyB

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I've tried to ask how fast MAS can be up and running but so far neither Bytemaster or Stan haven't answered. I suspect that it will take so much work that we don't see any meaningful benefit from it in 2016. I put it in the "long term projects" category.

Your ideas are great Samupaha! Let's get doing what you've suggested. It seems to me to be mostly aligned with BM's vision anyway.

Yeah, the biggest difference is the focus. I really wouldn't like to see much resources poured into MAS project at this point.

I don't believe one needs to be a hippy to employ reason to conclude that humans can organise themselves differently and in such a way that peace is one of many outcomes. Peace  ;D

I just find the hippie rhetoric to be usually kind of embarassing when the real subject is business. Better to use some other expressions to communicate.

I'm with you, 100%.

I'm totally with you Samupaha aswell. Lets just focus on building the best exchange in the world
I run the @bitshares twitter handle
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Offline Ben Mason

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Jeepers Hunter_S, I'm pretty sure that is not what I've said or meant, but if I've miscommunicated my points, I appologise.
No worries Ben. I see what you mean and actually agree about the vision of Bitshares and whatnot, I was just a little annoyed with what I thought was some random and sudden change in direction. My bad if I misinterpreted that. I just feel very strongly about getting things done right before we move on to the next idea.
Thank you. I really do understand. One way or another we'll get it right because between us all, there is an abundance of passion to do so.

Offline SpiritofJefferson

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Jeepers Hunter_S, I'm pretty sure that is not what I've said or meant, but if I've miscommunicated my points, I appologise.
No worries Ben. I see what you mean and actually agree about the vision of Bitshares and whatnot, I was just a little annoyed with what I thought was some random and sudden change in direction. My bad if I misinterpreted that. I just feel very strongly about getting things done right before we move on to the next idea.

Offline donkeypong

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Sure it's cool to be decentralized, but in the end it's just a gimmick if that's our only superior feature. I like the MAS idea, but I feel like bytemaster just made it up a couple days ago and now we're abandoning our focus as Samupaha said. The real way to change the world is not by putting out a bunch of small projects that aren't perfect, but by revolutionizing and perfecting one aspect of our business at a time. We can get to MAS, but first we need to build the markets...

Exactly. Very well said.

Offline Ben Mason

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Jeepers Hunter_S, I'm pretty sure that is not what I've said or meant, but if I've miscommunicated my points, I appologise.

Offline facer

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 I really agree with you!
We need stable bta which @bitcrab is leading, and lower fees to attract small business.

Offline SpiritofJefferson

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@BenMason Saying that people who disagree with you don't care about the poor is just insulting. The point is that Bitshares needs to be really REALLY good at one thing, and, as Peter Thiel put it, try to "monopolize" that part of the industry. If we aren't trying to be the go-to exchange, why are we building it in the first place? Sure it's cool to be decentralized, but in the end it's just a gimmick if that's our only superior feature. I like the MAS idea, but I feel like bytemaster just made it up a couple days ago and now we're abandoning our focus as Samupaha said. The real way to change the world is not by putting out a bunch of small projects that aren't perfect, but by revolutionizing and perfecting one aspect of our business at a time. We can get to MAS, but first we need to build the markets, and make our exchange the best in the game. MAS would no doubt be useful, but I really don't think people would use it other than the community as both our company, and our existing features are still unproven (in terms of business, not tech). We need to prove our company's worth by putting out one near-perfect product, and accomplishing one goal at a time. Anything else is just a distraction and wishful thinking.

Offline morpheus

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Our exchange is very versatile platform that can be used to create and trade basically any kind of derivative. Let's focus on that and think how we can create markets that don't exist at the moment in the cryptosphere.

This^

Offline donkeypong

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I've tried to ask how fast MAS can be up and running but so far neither Bytemaster or Stan haven't answered. I suspect that it will take so much work that we don't see any meaningful benefit from it in 2016. I put it in the "long term projects" category.

Your ideas are great Samupaha! Let's get doing what you've suggested. It seems to me to be mostly aligned with BM's vision anyway.

Yeah, the biggest difference is the focus. I really wouldn't like to see much resources poured into MAS project at this point.

I don't believe one needs to be a hippy to employ reason to conclude that humans can organise themselves differently and in such a way that peace is one of many outcomes. Peace  ;D

I just find the hippie rhetoric to be usually kind of embarassing when the real subject is business. Better to use some other expressions to communicate.

I'm with you, 100%.

Offline Stan

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I just find the hippie rhetoric to be usually kind of embarassing when the real subject is business. Better to use some other expressions to communicate.

We envision that there will be multiple MAS communities each with their own motivating rhetoric.

Save the Whales
Eat the Whales
No Government!
Mo' Government!
Hippie's for Global Cannibis.
Rednecks for Corn Squeezin's.

Whatever.

Naturally, we have our own visions we hope to promote with some of them, but hey, whatever cause that can use a unique low overhead peer to peer combination of helping others while insuring oneself against the same threat... go for it!

Don't let the first slogan you hear bias your assessment of the business proposition.

People contribute to all kinds of causes.
They worry about how their donations get spent.
And all they get in return is a tax break.

We can do better.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2015, 08:57:37 pm by Stan »
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline Stan

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I've tried to ask how fast MAS can be up and running but so far neither Bytemaster or Stan haven't answered. I suspect that it will take so much work that we don't see any meaningful benefit from it in 2016. I put it in the "long term projects" category.

As Bytemaster has said, we are just in the market analysis phase.  We don't plan to build anything unless there is a strong community somewhere we can inspire to support it.  If they exist, we will build it quickly.  Minimum viable product would take several months after go-ahead depending on the number of people funded to work on it.  We do not plan to seek funding from BitShares so you can view this as following the FBA bootstrap model.


While it may take years to get to legendary size, we believe this has a chance to gain traction with existing organizations quickly.  If we didn't think it was in the "potential traction this year" category, we would be looking at something else.
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline Ben Mason

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"Business" did not begin a significant network effect for many thriving networks. Many of the people we need to reach are not interested in business. A lot of the language used by some to try to describe a deeper motive or vision for being a part of BitShares is the result of critical thought. To conclude that helping people and finding focus with building mutually supportive communities is embarrassing is to put down the single biggest route for potential growth that exists. I'll tell you what I'm embarrassed about.....there are millions, perhaps billions of people that are desperate, with virtually nothing compared with the luxuries most of us here take for granted.  If the focus for BitShares is anything other than to help people and communities resist corruption over time, then what we are doing here is ultimately  worthless.....because someone will use the technology and succeed in doing just that.

That is not to say that I don't understand your concerns and that it is not important to ensure the economics driving the system correctly align incentives for participants. I want you to succeed Samupaha, I want us all to succeed in our goals.  We can try many different ways that inspire us....
« Last Edit: December 31, 2015, 07:53:58 pm by Ben Mason »

Offline Samupaha

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So what should we do?

Anything that will bring paying customers. Focus on all projects that look
promising. Our main objective should be getting out as many useful products and
services as possible, as fast as possible. Many of them will fail, but with
continuous trial and error I believe we can find something that will bring
profits.
Why can MAS not be one of them?

I've tried to ask how fast MAS can be up and running but so far neither Bytemaster or Stan haven't answered. I suspect that it will take so much work that we don't see any meaningful benefit from it in 2016. I put it in the "long term projects" category.

Your ideas are great Samupaha! Let's get doing what you've suggested. It seems to me to be mostly aligned with BM's vision anyway.

Yeah, the biggest difference is the focus. I really wouldn't like to see much resources poured into MAS project at this point.

I don't believe one needs to be a hippy to employ reason to conclude that humans can organise themselves differently and in such a way that peace is one of many outcomes. Peace  ;D

I just find the hippie rhetoric to be usually kind of embarassing when the real subject is business. Better to use some other expressions to communicate.