Surprised nobody commented about the value these vested funds represent as I did. What good does delaying the vesting? The major point of vesting is to retain talent, and that aspect is mostly gone as empirical said. Same with deleting them. Sure that counters inflation, but how significant is that in the bigger picture? That primarily makes sense to the anti-dilution crowd, who offer zero input on how to pay for sustaining this ecosystem let alone improving it. They seem to loose sight of the fact their holding will become worthless if the ecosystem dies or cannot be maintained. Maybe the illusion of protecting their holdings is blinding them to the slow death that zero tolerance dilution will bring.
You could make the vesting period 5x longer and really slow the downward pressure. You could also just stop the whole process for X years.
What good would this do? It would slow/stop the dilution that is apparently bleeding BTS. My understand that is the objective of the suggestion in this thread. This would go further in the "good" it does. It would keep people from saying their BTS was stolen from them. Stolen from people who paid for the development of BTS2. My approach at least seems morally acceptable and is not blatant theft.
I see, that makes sense, total sense. I wasn't aware that the recipients of the vested BTS were selling them, or a significant portion of them, such that it has been negatively influencing the market. If that is indeed the case then delaying the vesting is a better solution, tho it is also changing the rules so is also quite controversial.
So much better than outright theft, whether that be to burn the unvested shares or use them for some other purpose.
The bottom line I think is the decision to do this is all about ethics and integrity, not about practicality.
Is self preservation ever an excuse for theft?
If self preservation is a rational basis for violence, even violence leading to the death of the aggressor, which is the equivalent of theft of life, then it follows that the answer is yes, if survival is at stake theft is a rational response to what is threatening survival.
Is it overly dramatic to apply that to the question at hand? If not there is no sound basis for the action proposed.
Although the case empirical made for eliminating the vesting and stopping future delivery of those shares is based on a failure of that vesting to achieve it's goal, that cannot be viewed as a good reason for taking the proposed action. As I said before, the contract was flawed, but it isn't reasonable to change the contract retroactively and that is exactly what this is.
Now that I've thought about this more and boil it down to the essentials, I find it difficult to see the present situation as one that threatens the survival of the ecosystem and so theft should be off the table IMO.
As to lengthening the vesting period, that retroactively violates the past agreement and this will negatively impact the integrity and trust others will have in BitShares and by induction the members of this entire community.