Author Topic: BitShares Reform: Solving its Identity Crisis and Establishing a Brand.  (Read 15178 times)

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Offline JonnyB

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The front page of our website should just say     "Bitshares is a fully decentralised exchange"


The text currently on the front page of bitshares.org is meaningless to new visitors.
I run the @bitshares twitter handle
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Offline yvv

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With all of these pending bail-ins and negative interest rates, a decentralized bank is huge. If we just had a BitShares Bank with a sexy front end and some nice on-off ramps i'm sure that in itself would be absolutely huge.

http://techcitynews.com/2016/02/09/62-of-people-would-switch-their-bank-account-to-a-fintech-provider/

62% of people ‘would switch their bank account to a FinTech provider’

And who is this "FinTech provider" would be?

Offline mike623317

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With all of these pending bail-ins and negative interest rates, a decentralized bank is huge. If we just had a BitShares Bank with a sexy front end and some nice on-off ramps i'm sure that in itself would be absolutely huge.

http://techcitynews.com/2016/02/09/62-of-people-would-switch-their-bank-account-to-a-fintech-provider/

62% of people ‘would switch their bank account to a FinTech provider’

Offline Ben Mason

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We have made the sound assumption that given access to absolutely secure storage and transmission of value, everyone on the planet would be interested. So what is stopping BitShares from spreading like a virus? It currently targets the wrong people....a niche within a niche. That's not an accusation because it's a highly motivated niche that has taken us this far.

I complete agree with everyone's comments about ease of use and simplicity of pitch being the biggest stumbling block. The fact is, BitShares is not particularly valuable because despite its promise, hardly anyone can use it. BitShares has the highest ideals for a secure, open transaction & value storage network but even if people can get to grips with the technology, their use of its native units can only be achieved with significant risk and complexity given that it is completely reliant upon other units, networks and exchanges as intermediaries.

We need to sell the vision of BitShares to communities of normal people and when we do, we need to show them an unbelievably simple method for changing FIAT to bitAssets or BTS and back again. At the same time the tools we introduce them to need to be highly targeted to them and very simple.

In an ideal situation we need teams of people who are all able to specialise in the marketing and refinement of major tools within the BitShares platform for particular groups of people or businesses. The most important group in my mind is ordinary people who could benefit from the most basic application of the BitShares tools.  It is the one group we seem currently to be the furthest from serving and in turn benefiting from gigantic network effect that would immediately drive everything else. I hope (so hard diamonds will be dropping out my butt soon) that we can adjust focus in this direction because we can still out-compete our competitors and those with far smaller dreams and make Bitcoin (with all due respect) look like a firework compared to our space-ship.

We should attempt to partner with anyone trying to do a similar approach. I know there is already a huge amount of effort going on within BitShares to accomplish these goals all the time. Massive respect and thank you for the hard work.


Lol!

Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

We have made the sound assumption that given access to absolutely secure storage and transmission of value, everyone on the planet would be interested. So what is stopping BitShares from spreading like a virus? It currently targets the wrong people....a niche within a niche. That's not an accusation because it's a highly motivated niche that has taken us this far.

I complete agree with everyone's comments about ease of use and simplicity of pitch being the biggest stumbling block. The fact is, BitShares is not particularly valuable because despite its promise, hardly anyone can use it. BitShares has the highest ideals for a secure, open transaction & value storage network but even if people can get to grips with the technology, their use of its native units can only be achieved with significant risk and complexity given that it is completely reliant upon other units, networks and exchanges as intermediaries.

We need to sell the vision of BitShares to communities of normal people and when we do, we need to show them an unbelievably simple method for changing FIAT to bitAssets or BTS and back again. At the same time the tools we introduce them to need to be highly targeted to them and very simple.

In an ideal situation we need teams of people who are all able to specialise in the marketing and refinement of major tools within the BitShares platform for particular groups of people or businesses. The most important group in my mind is ordinary people who could benefit from the most basic application of the BitShares tools.  It is the one group we seem currently to be the furthest from serving and in turn benefiting from gigantic network effect that would immediately drive everything else. I hope (so hard diamonds will be dropping out my butt soon) that we can adjust focus in this direction because we can still out-compete our competitors and those with far smaller dreams and make Bitcoin (with all due respect) look like a firework compared to our space-ship.

We should attempt to partner with anyone trying to do a similar approach. I know there is already a huge amount of effort going on within BitShares to accomplish these goals all the time. Massive respect and thank you for the hard work.

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Offline Ben Mason

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We have made the sound assumption that given access to absolutely secure storage and transmission of value, everyone on the planet would be interested. So what is stopping BitShares from spreading like a virus? It currently targets the wrong people....a niche within a niche. That's not an accusation because it's a highly motivated niche that has taken us this far.

I complete agree with everyone's comments about ease of use and simplicity of pitch being the biggest stumbling block. The fact is, BitShares is not particularly valuable because despite its promise, hardly anyone can use it. BitShares has the highest ideals for a secure, open transaction & value storage network but even if people can get to grips with the technology, their use of its native units can only be achieved with significant risk and complexity given that it is completely reliant upon other units, networks and exchanges as intermediaries.

We need to sell the vision of BitShares to communities of normal people and when we do, we need to show them an unbelievably simple method for changing FIAT to bitAssets or BTS and back again. At the same time the tools we introduce them to need to be highly targeted to them and very simple.

In an ideal situation we need teams of people who are all able to specialise in the marketing and refinement of major tools within the BitShares platform for particular groups of people or businesses. The most important group in my mind is ordinary people who could benefit from the most basic application of the BitShares tools.  It is the one group we seem currently to be the furthest from serving and in turn benefiting from gigantic network effect that would immediately drive everything else. I hope (so hard diamonds will be dropping out my butt soon) that we can adjust focus in this direction because we can still out-compete our competitors and those with far smaller dreams and make Bitcoin (with all due respect) look like a firework compared to our space-ship.

We should attempt to partner with anyone trying to do a similar approach. I know there is already a huge amount of effort going on within BitShares to accomplish these goals all the time. Massive respect and thank you for the hard work.

Offline Empirical1.2

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If you're interested in giving ideas on how to communicate BTS briefly as a brand you may wish to contribute ideas to FOX's community action request for Azure Baas Blog post...

Community Action Request: Content for Azure BaaS blog post. 

Background:
I've been in contact with Marley Gray, Director, BizDev & Strategy - Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft on the on-boarding process for BitShares to Azure BaaS.  We are a pull request approval from being live. 

Request:
First, please review Mr. Marley's previous blog posts to see how other blockchain offerings are being positioned [1].  Then, please provide ideas on what you feel should be included in his upcoming blog post highlighting BitShares.  I have a skeleton contained within the metadata.json and README.md files within the GitHub repository [2].  If you choose to tweet this information, please mention @ryanRfox

Gratitude:
Thanks to all those that have tested the scripts and provided feedback thus far; please offer more. 

[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/author/marleyg/
[2] https://github.com/ryanRfox/azure-quickstart-templates/tree/review/bitshares-ubuntu-vm

This was my contribution/attempt to help explain/market/position what BTS is very briefly...

BitShares is a Decentralized Financial Services Blockchain offering an industrial-grade asset exchange and specializing in Smartcoins. SmartCoins are price stable crypto-currencies innovated by BitShares that allow users to hold & trade balances denominated in commodities like gold, currencies like USD as well as popular stocks and indexes. They also offer additional tools such as User Issued Assets, Smart Contracts and recurring payment functionality. Their goal is to provide a financial safe haven for individuals & a cutting edge blockchain for business without the volatility.

If BTS does get added to Azure that will be great exposure for BTS. As I mentioned on the price speculation thread, DACs that have previously been added have risen quite a lot in value as a result and held on to a lot of those gains too.
If you want to take the island burn the boats

Offline Samupaha

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I've been also pondering the question "what is Bitshares?" lately, especially from a marketing perspective. We should have a one simple answer to that, like "Bitshares is a financial platform build on blockchain".

But besides that one, we can have many different answers for different people. When you are telling somebody about Bitshares, you can choose the best point of view for each individual or group.

Bitshares is Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC)
- For people looking for investment opportunities. BTS is a share of a DAC that offers high quality financial services globally. Anybody can buy it without any restrictions.

Bitshares is a financial platform on a blockchain
- For people looking for alternative economic systems.
- For people looking for alternatives for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
- Fintech professionals.

Bitshares is a decentralized exchange
- For traders.

Bitshares is a decentralized bank
- For people looking for alternative economic systems.

Bitshares is a fast and versatile payment network
- For businesses.

Offline abit

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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.
Hi @Akado ,

If I understood correctly, the Rate Limited Fees feature is super high priority? Would you like to write a feature definition document in the formal BSIP format for us? I'm a bit sick of requesting for deployment/hard fork without a detailed feature definition document.
Please refer to :
* BM's blog post: http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/02/10/How-to-build-a-decentralized-application-without-fees/
* BSIP example: https://github.com/bitshares/bsips/blob/master/bsip-0010.md
* my implementation post: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21462.0.html
* Github feature request: https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/issues/603

Thanks a lot!

@abit You want me to make a BSIP for Rate Limited Fees? I've never tried that and remember I'm not a technical member so I can't really go into much details without copy/pasting.

I can give it a try if you want, nonetheless
Yes @Akado I want someone to do some documentation work, just like @jakub has done for BSIP10. I'm not good at writing those papers. Imo it requires little technical knowledge but more knowledge about features of BitShares system. It's great if you can help, best try to understand it and write in a easier-to-understand language, but not just copy/pasting.
Thanks very much!

By the way it's a bounty job :)
Sure, I'll pony up 10k BTS for the bounty.  Let me know who to pay when it's finished.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2016, 03:07:06 pm by abit »
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Offline bitacer

A platform for local community currencies . IMO this will be a major market for such platforms. There are thousands of them popping up all around the world.

Offline Akado

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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.
Hi @Akado ,

If I understood correctly, the Rate Limited Fees feature is super high priority? Would you like to write a feature definition document in the formal BSIP format for us? I'm a bit sick of requesting for deployment/hard fork without a detailed feature definition document.
Please refer to :
* BM's blog post: http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/02/10/How-to-build-a-decentralized-application-without-fees/
* BSIP example: https://github.com/bitshares/bsips/blob/master/bsip-0010.md
* my implementation post: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21462.0.html
* Github feature request: https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/issues/603

Thanks a lot!

@abit You want me to make a BSIP for Rate Limited Fees? I've never tried that and remember I'm not a technical member so I can't really go into much details without copy/pasting.

I can give it a try if you want, nonetheless
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Offline EstefanTT

Maybe the administrator of the bts2.slack could create several channel of communication.
Each one for every aspect of the current problematic of bts ; GUI, free Tx, Stealth, side chains, marketing, announcement, ...
"Announcement" should be clean of conversations a only reserve to devs and contributors. If every important matter would be announce in the "announcement channel" (each new available beyond bitcoin hangout, each new GUI update, forks, updates on new features progress, new ideas,  ...) we could use the content of this channel to create a feed news on bts.org and give it more dynamism.
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Offline CLains

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I would love to see a slack for Bitshares in general, with channels for development like #plasma, and channels for current issues and ideas (ie pricing etc), this way things are not mixed.

This slack is coming along great, I urge everyone to join in: https://bitshares2.slack.com/

Offline abit

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I agree with Liondani, witnesses let's have more, what about 1000 if possible?

Number of witnesses is not the key of centralized or decentralized in BitShares. Voting power is.

Our top proxies /stake holders are able to vote in as many as 1001 witnesses if they are willing to. It's already possible with current protocol.

On the other hand, currently only about 40 people are willing to run block producing nodes. Why? cost + difficulties + responsibilities V.S. return. IMHO the question "what about 1000 if possible" atm is nonsense. I appreciate what @Fox did about integrating BitShares node template into the M$ cloud platform recently, which will reduce the difficulty of running witness nodes.
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Offline betax

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Here are some thoughts:

BTS / Graphene is a great product and we all know it. We have a great community whom apart from the losses have stick here for 3 years.

My feedback apart from the provided, it is about the information, communication, transparency, community involvement and announcements.

Edit: Which deviates a bit from the original OP.

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I would like to see a single and simple source of information and communication, the Friday meetings are great, and expose great ideas, we then have the transcripts  and private chats, and other bits and bots. But there is not a single source of information, for Road Map, Vision, Ideas, Experiments, etc.

If we look at Ethereum and Dapps, their forum is not widely use, their channels are Reddit (general public / discussion), Slack (general chat), gittter (general development chat) and forum (announcements, support). But everybody knows the roadmap and what each component is doing, the current forum is a blurred of information, ideas and political (meeting room) discussions

I would love to see a slack for Bitshares in general, with channels for development like #plasma, and channels for current issues and ideas (ie pricing etc), this way things are not mixed.

No private channels.

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The line between CNX and Bitshares is very blurred, I am avid promoter of CNX as I support the whole development team and recognise their major work. But this is a closed group, and I think it divides the community, you are in or out, and if you want to be part of Bitshares you need to create your own business.

We have the community token, which are brownies, maybe we could rename them, as they have bad connotation? If you are a community member / holder, this might make you feel you are part of CNX the same way as other members that joined in the first instance?

Ideally be more open of any internal decisions, no secret sauce.

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I agree with Liondani, witnesses let's have more, what about 1000 if possible?

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No more announcements of partnerships, just continuous feed of information. If a Company wants to announce they are working with Bitshares, they should do that themselves, this way if the project does not go ahead and/or is not worthy, this should not affect Bitshares in general or CNX.

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« Last Edit: March 03, 2016, 10:31:12 am by betax »
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