tldr; BitShares has an identity crisis. We need focus and to find our own market. Imo our niche should be financial markets.
Imagine a boat, drifting in the middle of the ocean. Going around randomly, according to how the wind blows and water currents move. Then place a maze the size of the ocean on top of it with many dead ends. The boat needs to get to the other side. That boat is BitShares.
Exposing the ProblemBitShares has a major identity crisis. No one here can exactly answer the question "What is BitShares?". Well, maybe some can, even though they will most likely have different answers. Now from an investors pov, assuming you're a new user searching for info about BitShares, you can't find anything specific. What is it? What does it try to achieve?
These are the questions that keep people at bay. This is what causes most people to overlook BitShares. Consider the following projects. What do they all have in common?
I think a key difference is that they and the market are clear on what industry they will dominate in 'The New (Decentralized) World.'
Ethereum - Decentralized Apps
MaidSafe - Decentralized Data
Bitcoin - Decentralized Gold
Augur - Decentralized PM (Gambling)
BitShares - Decentralized Bank & Exchange
A market, an objective, a goal. The industry they're aiming to disrupt and improve. If you ask most people in the crypto space about Augur or Ethereum they will immediately tell you what they're all about. It's easy.
Most acknowledged projects and the ones being taken into consideration and expected to be huge, can be easily identified via the industry they're in and their goals. It gives people a sense of security because they know what they're about.
Now onto BitShares. What is it? Like I said, most can't answer that, let alone new people. If you don't know what something is about, will you invest, will you feel motivated to go deep and discover what it has to offer? Most likely not. Even worse, from a business perspective: completely impossible to find new partners willing to build something using BitShares and to use it. They don't know what it is about, they don't know how it can be used to solve their problems and help them achieve better services, cut expenses and secure more profit.
I've seen on the forums arguments of the type: "BitShares can be whatever you want it to be." "It depends on how you look at it." "Everyone has their own interpretation" "It can do a lot of stuff" "Smartcontracts", etc
What? Are we talking about art? What did I just describe here? Something completely abstract with no sense or form, that no one will be interested on. Are you going to pitch that to investors and new businesses? Are you going to explain that to new people? The amount of info they have after you explained that to them, regarding BitShares is zero. They will still not be able to understand how it can be used. How they can use it. What is it for and what's the objective. At that very moment you will look exactly like someone who doesn't even understand Bitcoin, explaining Bitcoin a week after release. Some kind of crazy person talking about virtual stuff that
in people's eyes, is useless.Even when smart contracts are mentioned. Yes, they are the trend now thanks to Ethereum, but well, what can we do with them? What type of smart contracts will BitShares create and use? It's just a fancy word with no meaning behind it.
Perception is everything. This shows others we have a
lack of focus and plan to grow, which consequently doesn't stimulate a sense of confidence and interest.BitShares' path is a MazeIf we don't even know what BitShares is, if people who are looking for new stuff with potential can't understand BitShares, what path can we take? What will we do next?
Here comes the previous arguments once again "You can do everything, the sky is the limit". That kind of stuff. However, think about it. We can do everything and have no concrete path to follow. What will this cause? A maze. This is the perfect analogy for BitShares' development path if we don't solve this.
People will start worker proposals for this and that, some will get approved, some don't. However, in the end they might not even be related. They might not even complement each other.
Picture a company with an awesome product that has the potential to make a profit and be successful. Then the CEO, who has zero focus on what the objective of his company is, decides to experiment and develop all sorts of new products, essential killing the profit of that one single, awesome original product. All of this because he lacks a purpose, an objective, a goal. That is BitShares.
If in the end all the worker proposals are for completely random different stuff, they, as a whole, are worthless, because they just don't add up. Not to mention worker funds, obviously, aren't infinite so they need to be carefully managed. What will happen when we build tons of "awesome" stuff, that together don't add up or make any sense?
They will just be a bunch of random features and every cent spent on them will be for nothing.We need focus and a purpose.
As for vision's like "Helping achieve financial freedom" ... I always think "And..." . That's the objective of all crypto, ever since the inception of Bitcoin. It doesn't even make sense to say it like that. Bitcoin was done for that in the first place. But that's not the worst. The worst is that it is just too subjective. Once again, go pitch that too investors and new people. Or rather I can just ask you a simple question: "How do you plan to achieve that?" Most likely your answer will end up not making sense or be satisfactory enough or you won't even be able to explain it.
It's too subjective. It will fail to get business people in. It will fail to attract investment.
What Should BitShares' Purpose Be Then?The decentralized platform that will provide financial tools and aims to host the world's biggest financial markets. Basically, Financial Markets. At least now we seem to have an objective. It's now easier to explain our objective and what we aim to do. It can now be pitched easily by most people. It can now be understood more easily by other investors or new people looking for an interesting project.
"Ethereum makes Dapps, Augur Prediction Markets and BitShares aims to take on the Derivatives Market." That simple to share a rough idea of what we aim to do. Now we leave others thinking about how big the derivates market is. $$$. sure it can be hard as hell, far fetched, call it as you want, but well, who wouldn't like to take the chances of being an early adopter of a project who plans on taking on a $1.2 quadrillion market? If you want to have an idea of the size of what we could be getting on check this link, which even compares it with Bitcoin
http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization/
Exchanges, hedge funds, banks, etc, all using BitShares via
Stock Markets
Bond Markets
Commodity markets
Money markets
Derivatives markets
Futures markets
Insurance markets
Foreign exchange markets
I strongly believe with a plan like that we could attract several new people and see BitShares grow. Why? Because we would finally be acknowledged. People would immediately associate BitShares with financial markets and people would finally know what they would be getting themselves into. It would bring back confidence, security. People would finally understand what BitShares is about and what it tries to achieve.
If we did some kind of rebrand like updating the website with new info, advertise this, etc we would make news and make an impact. We time that with Rate Limited Fees for example and I believe it could give us that initial boost people are looking for.
Obviously this applies to any other plan or objective you may have, this is merely my opinion.
I just decided to post this when I was updating the road map thread with metatrader 4 integration and if you notice most plans there could be used and fit this niche. I don't know the feasibility of this, it's just what I would like to see.
BitShares would only need to focus on developing itself on that front and always maintaining scalability and performance as a top priority.
Imagine being acknowledged as the blokchain with the best performance and scalability who is going in for derivatives market! That's a pretty strong brand right thereA strong brand, a project with a clear direction and sense of what it aims to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_markethttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_instrumenthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_%28finance%29https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivatives_market
Topic: BitShares Reform: Solving its Identity Crisis and Establishing a Brand. (Read 24849 times)
