Now that Daniel Larimer (aka bytemaster) is gone...

[arhag]

No doubt a sidechain or a kind of automatic multisignature wallet managment for btc be safe.btc should be a target to be truly decentrilised, of course i dont want to screw with openledger they have open asset n it works pretty good n.they help us to make things happen....probably n start a bull run n make 30x the nowdays value it will be easy to.funding.....

Don't get me wrong, OpenLedger is great and a wonderful ally to have in the BitShares ecosystem. And I do think the scenario of using centralized gateways like OpenLedger for UIA tokens on top of our decentralized exchange is slightly better compared to just using a pure centralized exchange. Specifically, there is less of an attack surface of the centralized party for hackers to exploit. The decentralized exchange is well-designed to be resistant to hacks.

However, my opinion is that in long-term, gateways like OpenLedger should focus on providing UIAs for tokens that are not possible to provide sidechains for, like fiat currencies. As far as I am aware, OpenLedger is already doing this with USD. They can of course also handle the niche of being gateways for cryptocurrencies that the DEX is not interested in supporting a sidechain for.

[okidoki]

Perhaps this will be easier after November 5th when there is (presumably) less sell pressure from the merger to compete with sell pressure from worker proposals. Although, if someone was willing to defer selling until after November 5th (and say wanted to keep the majority of revenue in BTS), then BitShares already provides the ability to pay from the worker in vested form such that it cannot be sold prior to November 5th. So if a credible developer was willing to take such a deal for something that added value to the platform, there should be no reason to delay that work until after November 5th (other than anti-spending zealotry).

Can you please elaborate on the type of sell pressure regarding to Nov. 5th? Have they gotten shares all the time and after this date they do not get anything anymore, or will they get access to all the shares Nov. 5th at once?

They have been gradually vesting over two years.  Some people claim them as they come free and immediately sell them generating downward pressure on the price like Bitcoin mining fees.  Others have yet to claim any of them, or do so in infrequent chunks.  After two years they will all be vested and available to sell or spend.  Right now, about 80% are already out there, with the last 20% slowly releasing between now and November 5.

Thanks Stan for clarifying this. Good news in this case! So only a 100 million to go... I think this was definitely holding down Bitshares for the last 18 months...

[Stan]

Perhaps this will be easier after November 5th when there is (presumably) less sell pressure from the merger to compete with sell pressure from worker proposals. Although, if someone was willing to defer selling until after November 5th (and say wanted to keep the majority of revenue in BTS), then BitShares already provides the ability to pay from the worker in vested form such that it cannot be sold prior to November 5th. So if a credible developer was willing to take such a deal for something that added value to the platform, there should be no reason to delay that work until after November 5th (other than anti-spending zealotry).

Can you please elaborate on the type of sell pressure regarding to Nov. 5th? Have they gotten shares all the time and after this date they do not get anything anymore, or will they get access to all the shares Nov. 5th at once?

They have been gradually vesting over two years.  Some people claim them as they come free and immediately sell them generating downward pressure on the price like Bitcoin mining fees.  Others have yet to claim any of them, or do so in infrequent chunks.  After two years they will all be vested and available to sell or spend.  Right now, about 80% are already out there, with the last 20% slowly releasing between now and November 5.

[arhag]

Ethereum has a big market cap because for years everybody was fantasizing about what this could become. but in reality it is not used for anything right now... and as there is almost no scalability I think it will never be used for anything but speculation...

I partially agree with this, but I also think it is foolishly too confident of a statement. I have my own problems with Ethereum's design. But it is important to remember that Ethereum is a moving target. They are actually spending funds to innovate (admittedly that is easier to do when their holders aren't dumping their asset to oblivion). The Ethereum devs are doing research on improving scalability, and they currently have the capital to sustain that. I think it is foolish to discount the possibility that they might succeed in changing their designs in the future to fix scalability problems.

Lisk is a lot smarter in several things than Ethereum and it might be used someday for something.

I have strong opinions on platforms like Lisk. They are doing it all wrong IMHO.
If you are interested, first read Dan's post: https://steemit.com/lisk/@dan/why-lisk-is-inferior-to-ethereum
and then read my comment on another similar project (Rise) here: https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@liondani/rise-crowdsale-is-open#@arhag/re-liondani-rise-crowdsale-is-open-20160602t145546425z

Also Bitcoin is on top because of its liquidity. Chinese cannot enter and exit Bitshares without moving the price at this point. They use it for protection from devaluation from CNY... but you cannot pump even a million USD in Bitshares without doubling the market cap. So for this type of usage they have to use Bitcoin until volume and market cap goes up for BitShares.

You are talking about liquidity of the BTS token. Sure that isn't very liquid but ultimately I don't think that liquidity is the main issue. The bigger issue is the lack of liquidity in the markets on our DEX for tokens like smartcoins and other UIA assets. So how do we bootstrap liquidity? First, the platform must be attractive enough for traders to use. Why are traders not using the DEX? That is something we need to figure out.

The truth is that, despite what people in the cryptocurrency crowd say, decentralization is not valuable enough to them to put up with a product that is not as good as what they currently use. We need to figure out what those deficiencies are from their point of view, and fix them. Is it the UI? I really don't know, I'm not a trader, but let's find out what actual traders do prefer and change it to that. Is the lack of margin trading? If we are confident that is the real reason for lack of adoption, then maybe we should adopt that feature. But we better be confident, because it is a lot of work to build that feature properly and I would rather leave that for much later (hopefully after some gain in marketcap). The product needs to be as nice to use for a trader as their current centralized exchange and ON TOP of that it needs to be decentralized. Otherwise, they will stick what what they know and are comfortable with.

Or maybe they recognize that the decentralization isn't really all that decentralized for their purposes. This goes back to the counterparty risk with UIA assets (like OPEN.BTC) that I talked about earlier. Sidechains are the technological solution to that problem.

But even if we fix all those problems, it is still not enough to pull them away from what they are comfortable with. You need to give them some incentive to take the leap. That is where subsidizing liquidity of some key markets comes in. This is necessary to motivate traders to move, in mass, passed that hump everyone experiences when trying something new and different from what they are used to. If many of them move to our DEX and start tightly trading assets to capture some of those rewards, the liquidity will greatly improve and so other traders will be more interested to use a DEX with liquid markets. Once the market is bootstrapped and there is liquidity, the subsidies are weaned off and reasonable market percentage fees are added in so the DAC can make some revenue. Hopefully inertia continues to keep liquidity fairly strong and people still continue to use the DEX because it has liquid markets and is decentralized. Of course to do this requires both implementing the liquidity features in the blockchain (not super difficult to do) and more importantly (and more difficulty) getting BTS holders to accept funding it from the reserve pool.

[gamey]

If you missed it, Dan has not abandoned Bitshares, but has just moved the experimentation to another blockchain and has suggested in other posts when the results of those experiments yield positive results, then those things can be considered for introduction/inclusion into our current blockchain. Many of the features do revolve around new ways to provide liquidity to the markets.

I've known Dan long enough to be able to make my own judgement.
For me he did abandon BitShares (in different aspects: mentally, as a stake-holder and as a leader) and I am quite happy about that.
Without him there would be no BTS but now, as he's gone, BTS has a better chance to evolve and succeed.
With him "leading" we were stuck in a limbo.

Unfortunately it is hard to imagine a scenario where Dan is going to want to work on BitShares.  Maybe if the market cap grows and the hiring sentiment changes. I sorta get the feeling he doesn't enjoy coding that much.

The name thing is sort of funny. As big as they were embracing that whole concept, when it came down to it that was no share-dropping. So the idea of BitShares has very little positive traction and doesn't really fit the project particularly well. A complete rebrand would be good although thats a lot of artwork and editting. You'll have "bitshares" mentioned all over the place etc.

[jakub]

Rebranding is a tricky subject. DEX has a much better ring to it than BitShares, IMO. In my understanding, the origin of the name BitShares is the connection from BitCoin to company shares, putting an emphasis on the difference between currency and stake. Depending on what happens to BTC after the reward halving, it might be a good idea to get rid of the "Bit" in the name altogether.

I also see the built-in exchange as the most powerful asset that we currently have. SmartCoins are practically dead. Currency tokens are having a difficult time trying to gain traction. But the exchange just works nicely, it's fast and secure!

DEX is a generic name, which in our case makes a perfect sense: our blockchain is in fact a generic decentralized exchange, on top of which other entities (such as OpenLedger) can build their businesses.
This is what we are: a space where other exchange businesses can exist. And the word "exchange" is meant to be understood in a very broad sense: every financial transaction can be perceived as an exchange of financial assets.

We need to finally position ourselves and gain some identity.
Ethereum is for smart contracts. Ripple is for inter-bank transfers. DEX is for exchanging digital assets.

If we don't acquire a true leader to replace BM, choose our business identity and let go of our sentimental attachments - we are not gonna survive.

[bitsharesbrazil]

Besides first mover advantage it's because people want a lot stability & certainty from the pure digital currencies like BTC, LTC, PPC etc. so their lack of innovation (Change) is often a positive.

Good point.

The decentralized companies who aim to bring something to the market other than a limited, immutable crypto-currency have to be more innovative, with additional revenue generating (in future) products/apps in order to increase their value. (However for both, increased utility, accessibility and third party integration often adds more value than more expensive development work. eg. Payment processor/exchange/bank/Azure integration etc.)

Right. Yes third-party development is incredibly valuable. And it is important for any changes to the blockchain to not be such that they feel it is impossible to invest time and resources building on this platform and ecosystem. I think there is still a lot of innovation that can be added to BitShares to make it more appealing that doesn't conflict with the work of third-parties.

One is not really a change to the blockchain at all, so it can even be thought of as a third-party innovation I suppose. That is side-chains. To make the Decentralized part in DEX really meaningful, we shouldn't have the same counterparty risk for traders of BTC and other altcoins as centralized exchanges do. That is the situation we currently have with OPEN.X assets. Ideally such a sidechain mechanism would be integrated with the blockchain in the sense that the witnesses would be the dynamic multisig group holding the reserves backing each SIDE.X asset. Initially, it would be smart to support at least the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

The second innovation is margin trading. This one is a little difficult to implement (depending on how its done). But it would add a lot of value to our DEX.

There is lots to be done, the question is: can we get the funding necessary to do it? Perhaps this will be easier after November 5th when there is (presumably) less sell pressure from the merger to compete with sell pressure from worker proposals. Although, if someone was willing to defer selling until after November 5th (and say wanted to keep the majority of revenue in BTS), then BitShares already provides the ability to pay from the worker in vested form such that it cannot be sold prior to November 5th. So if a credible developer was willing to take such a deal for something that added value to the platform, there should be no reason to delay that work until after November 5th (other than anti-spending zealotry).

If I was a rich guy and wanted to park my money and assets somewhere safe, would I choose the BitShares blockchain? Or would I be a bit skiddish knowing that my assets and such would be visible on cryptofresh.com? Even sending money to people is easily visible.
 
edit: the only features we are going to add to BitShares right now is Stealth (as soon as we can afford it). Stealth is already done for the most part but it just needs an awesome gui plugged in and secure backups (we use IPFS/IPNS now). you want Whales? -give them some privacy.

I hope you focus first on getting GUI support for just blinded transfers. Hiding metadata as well is a trickier problem to do right. Focusing efforts first on just hiding the amounts makes the most sense. That approach means it is far less likely for funds to be lost, but you still need a good automated memo key backup strategy (I have written about this publicly before). After that is in place, better stealth (that hides sender metadata as well) can come later. I have ideas for how this can be done without risk of funds lost using on-blockchain decentralized coin mixing using the RingCT cryptographic primitive.

No doubt a sidechain or a kind of automatic multisignature wallet managment for btc be safe.btc should be a target to be truly decentrilised, of course i dont want to screw with openledger they have open asset n it works pretty good n.they help us to make things happen....probably n start a bull run n make 30x the nowdays value it will be easy to.funding.....
Now it works.....thats good thing......if it get more volume it will shine, I think we need for now a big market player for dex, so it will be useful will generate fee from all people that will come, value will start to rise n we can start funding

[Stan]

I am against a rebranding... BitShares has an excellent brand and logo. Who would want to start from scratch?

Come on, we are talking about several million market cap and you are worried about a logo whose good replacement might cost at most a few thousand USD?

The logo is not bad, I agree but the problem is the name, not the logo.
Every single marketing professional on this forum has told us that the name is a nightmare for marketing purposes, both in terms of wider consumer adoption and for the purpose of business pitches.

Regrading the "excellent brand" - at this stage we have no brand to speak of.

Yes.  Here are some brand names that have similar nightmare problems:

Kleenex
Google
Apple
IBM (or any other 3 letter name)
Verizon
Tesla
JPMorgan (or any other founder's name)
Yahoo
United

We need a brand name that instantly communicates to the uninitiated consumer that we are likable, reliable, cool, and provide everything you have always wanted but were afraid to ask -- all in one household name.

How about 

IndustrialStrengthReplacementForTheEntireFreakingWorldFinancialSystem
FeaturingStableAndIncorruptiblyHonestMoneyAndOtherInnnovativeFinancialAssetsYouCantGetAnywhereElse!^TM

The meaning and connotations of a brand name are what you associate with it by a well funded brand building campaign.

With enough money, I could even make the name "Stan" into a beloved household word.

[okidoki]

Perhaps this will be easier after November 5th when there is (presumably) less sell pressure from the merger to compete with sell pressure from worker proposals. Although, if someone was willing to defer selling until after November 5th (and say wanted to keep the majority of revenue in BTS), then BitShares already provides the ability to pay from the worker in vested form such that it cannot be sold prior to November 5th. So if a credible developer was willing to take such a deal for something that added value to the platform, there should be no reason to delay that work until after November 5th (other than anti-spending zealotry).

Can you please elaborate on the type of sell pressure regarding to Nov. 5th? Have they gotten shares all the time and after this date they do not get anything anymore, or will they get access to all the shares Nov. 5th at once?

[jakub]

Welcome back, Jakub! Could you comment on this post please: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21230.msg288507.html#msg288507

I've already communicated with abit and all issues regarding his potential access to BSIP10 worker funds are settled for now.

[arhag]

Besides first mover advantage it's because people want a lot stability & certainty from the pure digital currencies like BTC, LTC, PPC etc. so their lack of innovation (Change) is often a positive.

Good point.

The decentralized companies who aim to bring something to the market other than a limited, immutable crypto-currency have to be more innovative, with additional revenue generating (in future) products/apps in order to increase their value. (However for both, increased utility, accessibility and third party integration often adds more value than more expensive development work. eg. Payment processor/exchange/bank/Azure integration etc.)

Right. Yes third-party development is incredibly valuable. And it is important for any changes to the blockchain to not be such that they feel it is impossible to invest time and resources building on this platform and ecosystem. I think there is still a lot of innovation that can be added to BitShares to make it more appealing that doesn't conflict with the work of third-parties.

One is not really a change to the blockchain at all, so it can even be thought of as a third-party innovation I suppose. That is side-chains. To make the Decentralized part in DEX really meaningful, we shouldn't have the same counterparty risk for traders of BTC and other altcoins as centralized exchanges do. That is the situation we currently have with OPEN.X assets. Ideally such a sidechain mechanism would be integrated with the blockchain in the sense that the witnesses would be the dynamic multisig group holding the reserves backing each SIDE.X asset. Initially, it would be smart to support at least the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

The second innovation is margin trading. This one is a little difficult to implement (depending on how its done). But it would add a lot of value to our DEX.

There is lots to be done, the question is: can we get the funding necessary to do it? Perhaps this will be easier after November 5th when there is (presumably) less sell pressure from the merger to compete with sell pressure from worker proposals. Although, if someone was willing to defer selling until after November 5th (and say wanted to keep the majority of revenue in BTS), then BitShares already provides the ability to pay from the worker in vested form such that it cannot be sold prior to November 5th. So if a credible developer was willing to take such a deal for something that added value to the platform, there should be no reason to delay that work until after November 5th (other than anti-spending zealotry).

If I was a rich guy and wanted to park my money and assets somewhere safe, would I choose the BitShares blockchain? Or would I be a bit skiddish knowing that my assets and such would be visible on cryptofresh.com? Even sending money to people is easily visible.
 
edit: the only features we are going to add to BitShares right now is Stealth (as soon as we can afford it). Stealth is already done for the most part but it just needs an awesome gui plugged in and secure backups (we use IPFS/IPNS now). you want Whales? -give them some privacy.

I hope you focus first on getting GUI support for just blinded transfers. Hiding metadata as well is a trickier problem to do right. Focusing efforts first on just hiding the amounts makes the most sense. That approach means it is far less likely for funds to be lost, but you still need a good automated memo key backup strategy (I have written about this publicly before). After that is in place, better stealth (that hides sender metadata as well) can come later. I have ideas for how this can be done without risk of funds lost using on-blockchain decentralized coin mixing using the RingCT cryptographic primitive.

[kenCode]

If I was a rich guy and wanted to park my money and assets somewhere safe, would I choose the BitShares blockchain? Or would I be a bit skiddish knowing that my assets and such would be visible on cryptofresh.com? Even sending money to people is easily visible.
 
edit: the only features we are going to add to BitShares right now is Stealth (as soon as we can afford it). Stealth is already done for the most part but it just needs an awesome gui plugged in and secure backups (we use IPFS/IPNS now). you want Whales? -give them some privacy.

Yeah, stealth is ok as well... although privacy concerned people would use a username like "bgd67eydh" to park their stuff... In bitcoin addresses are also visible and are used... if you use a handle like "kenCode" everybody knows it is you... but it was your choice. Everybody knows what Satoshi has in Bitcoin, but does somebody know who he is? No.

How much is missing in Stealth in terms of months? (If you say money is missing, if there is no money and it does not arrive, then perhaps never?)

Money and probably less than 4 months with testnet success.

[okidoki]

Welcome back, Jakub! Could you comment on this post please: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21230.msg288507.html#msg288507

You bring up some interesting points.

I agree that we need a replacement for bm. Someone who has a vision and can be a driving force, towards that vision. However, I think that vision should be mostly non-technical. Graphene provides us with a very stable codebase. The blockchain is ticking along nicely. We have a few items in the queue that should be finished, like free transactions (see above), but I don't see any major changes being required.

Rebranding is a tricky subject. DEX has a much better ring to it than BitShares, IMO. In my understanding, the origin of the name BitShares is the connection from BitCoin to company shares, putting an emphasis on the difference between currency and stake. Depending on what happens to BTC after the reward halving, it might be a good idea to get rid of the "Bit" in the name altogether.

I also see the built-in exchange as the most powerful asset that we currently have. SmartCoins are practically dead. Currency tokens are having a difficult time trying to gain traction. But the exchange just works nicely, it's fast and secure!

Since I'm very sceptical about Steem, I'd strongly recommend to not rush to integrate ideas from Steem into our codebase. IMO Steem is going to crash heavily after July 4th. It has nothing to offer for us.

I think you are rushing your conclusion that SmarCoins never will be used... give it some time... BitShares 2.0 has been there for only 6 months for god's sake... If Bitcoin would have been altered after 6 months rebranded and so on it might have never gotten traction.

[pc]

Welcome back, Jakub! Could you comment on this post please: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21230.msg288507.html#msg288507

You bring up some interesting points.

I agree that we need a replacement for bm. Someone who has a vision and can be a driving force, towards that vision. However, I think that vision should be mostly non-technical. Graphene provides us with a very stable codebase. The blockchain is ticking along nicely. We have a few items in the queue that should be finished, like free transactions (see above), but I don't see any major changes being required.

Rebranding is a tricky subject. DEX has a much better ring to it than BitShares, IMO. In my understanding, the origin of the name BitShares is the connection from BitCoin to company shares, putting an emphasis on the difference between currency and stake. Depending on what happens to BTC after the reward halving, it might be a good idea to get rid of the "Bit" in the name altogether.

I also see the built-in exchange as the most powerful asset that we currently have. SmartCoins are practically dead. Currency tokens are having a difficult time trying to gain traction. But the exchange just works nicely, it's fast and secure!

Since I'm very sceptical about Steem, I'd strongly recommend to not rush to integrate ideas from Steem into our codebase. IMO Steem is going to crash heavily after July 4th. It has nothing to offer for us.

[okidoki]

If I was a rich guy and wanted to park my money and assets somewhere safe, would I choose the BitShares blockchain? Or would I be a bit skiddish knowing that my assets and such would be visible on cryptofresh.com? Even sending money to people is easily visible.
 
edit: the only features we are going to add to BitShares right now is Stealth (as soon as we can afford it). Stealth is already done for the most part but it just needs an awesome gui plugged in and secure backups (we use IPFS/IPNS now). you want Whales? -give them some privacy.

Yeah, stealth is ok as well... although privacy concerned people would use a username like "bgd67eydh" to park their stuff... In bitcoin addresses are also visible and are used... if you use a handle like "kenCode" everybody knows it is you... but it was your choice. Everybody knows what Satoshi has in Bitcoin, but does somebody know who he is? No.

How much is missing in Stealth in terms of months? (If you say money is missing, if there is no money and it does not arrive, then perhaps never?)