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

[lil_jay890]

The over riding theme here seems to be to try to generate some ideas on how we can make the bitshares token more valuable.

right now, as confirmed by Dan Larimer, the bitshares network could become very successful but the actual bitshares token could have a relatively low market cap.  This is already present by looking at the ever climbing daily order fills but a stagnant to declining market cap of bts.

If you wan't the bitshares token to increase in value, the only way I can see it increasing is by aquiring traders.  I've spouted on and on about this and how the Dex currently lacks many core features that a trader needs.

For a while now people have been trying to figure out why there is so little trading volume on the DEX.  I've traded forex and stocks for over 10 years and have written dozens of trading bots (Expert Advisors) in the mql language.  I've turned $2,500 into $50,000 in 6 months.  I've also turned $50,000 into $20,000 in 6 months as well. I think I have a pretty good idea of what traders need and expect from a platform.

1. Shorting in the DEX is cumbersome and confusing
I recently tried to short using the DEX.  I borrowed CNY and then sold that CNY for BTS.  I ended up getting margin called as BTS fell in price.  I'm ok with being wrong about a position, but I'm very confused with the mechanics of how this happened.  I also had no idea what my position was worth throughout the trade, and I'm not even entirely sure how much I lost.  Shorting needs to be streamlined and simplified.  The borrow/sell thing is too many steps and not knowing the positions value during the trade is borderline scary.

2.Is there a way to put a stop loss or take profit order?
Because right now I can't figure out how to do it.  This means there is no money management ability.  Without the ability to manage a trade, the DEX is unusable for serious traders.  There needs to be at a minim stop loss orders.  There really should be a way to put trailing stops in as well.

3.Indicators are shaky at best
Right now there are 4 indicators and 2 of them are moving averages.  The RSI doesn't appear to be working as the only reading I see on the more liquid markets are 100, 50, or 0.  It looks like an EKG witch tells me something isn't working correctly.  Not all traders use indicators, but many do.

These are just basic GUI things that are preventing traders from using the DEX.  It doesn't even include the inability to use leverage.  Just fixing the 3 things above will bring much more utility and liquidity to the dex.  I will guarantee it.  The people that originally designed the DEX were not traders.  They thought poloniex was a good interface to base their platform on.  Unfortunately, poloniex is not a good platform.  A professional trader would never use Poloniex.  Poloniex's platform is modeled off some cheap retail trading platform.

How do we fix this??
Right now we are consumed by petty fee debates and if we should keep calling ourselves DPOS.  These things are not that important right now.  It's not what will drive mainstream traders to the BTS platform.  What is needed is A PLUGIN FOR METATRADER 4.  While it isn't the most sophisticated trading platform, it's the most widely used and known.  It's also light years ahead of the current DEX.  What I propose is that instead of @dannotestein and blocktrades using a worker proposal to fix basic blockchain bugs, rather is work on creating a plugin for MT4.  They are already an exchange and have a good understanding of BTS.  I know it's not as easy as fixing "bad coding techniques", but getting this plugin for BTS would do more to improve the market cap and utility than anything else.

You can find more of that discussion here: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21343.msg277468.html#msg277468

The reason to make traders the key demographic is because they will be willing to pay small to medium fee's for reliability and safety.  This will allow us to reintroduce fee's for trading in the more liquid markets.  These liquid markets can be where liquidity providers focus their efforts.  Fee's will increase the value of the token.

The next step after improving the GUI and adding some liquidity providers will be to create margin trading.  Hopefully we are successful at building the right trading platform and attract traders who then attract 3rd party marging trading providers... that would be the optimal solution.

[okidoki]

On a side note, Dan Larimer has not been gone from BitShares for anywhere near as long, nor anywhere near as completely, as Jakub (the OP) was when he was mia for many months. No doubt Jakub was off doing valuable research and work - although he gave us no intimation of that. Should we expect any less of Bytemaster, who's hiatus will likely much benefit BitShares in the long run?

Please everyone take that into consideration when evaluating this thread.

All that's left of BM is his "promise" to offer worker proposals (in some undefined point in time) for the migration of his STEEM inventions *if* they prove to be successful.

He has no longer any significant stake in BTS.
He has no plans to offer any worker proposals, apart from emergency fixes.   
And he's not even willing to promote OpenLedger as a trading platform for STEEM.

For me this is enough to call it "gone".

Satoshi is gone for Bitcoin as well... I think this does not have to be crippling... and as said, I think BitShares is so far ahead of the curve... for 10 years there should be no need to do any further development on the core. Services like OpenPOS from KenCode can now focus on a stable core and I think they would not appreciate too much if they would change the core substantially every 6 months...

[crypto4ever]

I'd like to offer the community my perspective

[...]

 For me, decentralization means that we can survive when a leader is gone, but still we cannot move forward without having one.

[..]

we should definitely scrap the name "BitShares" and replace it with something more neutral (e.g. "DEX")

100% agree on these two "critical" points.  If both of these do not occur in the next couple of months (which is equal to 2 years in normal life), we're going to be hurting pretty bad.

This isn't something to just throw out there and hope something works out.  We need a plan to get both done.

I suggest we begin by coming up with a roster of people who are most willing to help with these two things, and then let the community decide on which of them are most capable (based on historical follow through and devotion).

Once we pick our top 5 as a task force, then can let us know what equitable and fair compensation is requested, and we can then create a fund raising user issued asset to fund it.

If someone has anything better, I'm interested.

[jakub]

On a side note, Dan Larimer has not been gone from BitShares for anywhere near as long, nor anywhere near as completely, as Jakub (the OP) was when he was mia for many months. No doubt Jakub was off doing valuable research and work - although he gave us no intimation of that. Should we expect any less of Bytemaster, who's hiatus will likely much benefit BitShares in the long run?

Please everyone take that into consideration when evaluating this thread.

All that's left of BM is his "promise" to offer worker proposals (in some undefined point in time) for the migration of his STEEM inventions *if* they prove to be successful.

He has no longer any significant stake in BTS.
He has no plans to offer any worker proposals, apart from emergency fixes.   
And he's not even willing to promote OpenLedger as a trading platform for STEEM.

For me this is enough to call it "gone".

[arhag]

I nominate arhag as leader if xeroc isn't interested.

Thank you. But too much of a time commitment for me. So I have to reject that nomination.

couldnt you share the role with xeroc?....I follow you on steemit n you have a vision man

Happy to provide insight and ideas from the sidelines. But I think "community leader" should be a very dedicated position by a single individual.

[bitsharesbrazil]

I nominate arhag as leader if xeroc isn't interested.

Thank you. But too much of a time commitment for me. So I have to reject that nomination.

couldnt you share the role with xeroc?....I follow you on steemit n you have a vision man

[jakub]

But I do think it would be beneficial to promote the use of the term DEX as "ours" in our marketing literature (web site, social media, and even the web wallet). I use this term all the time in telegram/slack, as do many others, to describe our trading network. So I suggest we keep BitShares to describe the coin and the chain and use "the DEX" to describe the actual market that runs on the chain.

As I've stated earlier, I'd keep the coin name as well, but start officially using the name DEX for the blockchain itself.
We could do it gradually and start with "BitShares DEX" and then at some point the BitShares prefix will be dropped naturally.

But please let us officially claim the name DEX before anyone else does it.
Or at least start using it on our website and coinmarketcap listings.

If we don't act now, sooner or later this will happen: our competition will claim the very name of our core activity.
And then they will be the DEX, not us. We will lose what remains of our identity.
Also, it will be a huge blow in terms of our future branding.
 
It's a shame we lack leadership and vision in such important areas.
Nobody seems to care or feel responsible for matters which are crucial in this competitive environment.

[onceuponatime]

I don't think we need to rebrand BitShares as such, partly because I don't like rebranding in general (wastes precious time, sends a conflicting message, and usually leads me to suspect it's being done because of mistakes made in the past) and partly because I don't think it is a bad name.

But I do think it would be beneficial to promote the use of the term DEX as "ours" in our marketing literature (web site, social media, and even the web wallet). I use this term all the time in telegram/slack, as do many others, to describe our trading network. So I suggest we keep BitShares to describe the coin and the chain and use "the DEX" to describe the actual market that runs on the chain.

The above ^^ makes complete sense to me.

On a side note, Dan Larimer has not been gone from BitShares for anywhere near as long, nor anywhere near as completely, as Jakub (the OP) was when he was mia for many months. No doubt Jakub was off doing valuable research and work - although he gave us no intimation of that. Should we expect any less of Bytemaster, who's hiatus will likely much benefit BitShares in the long run?

Please everyone take that into consideration when evaluating this thread.

[arhag]

I nominate arhag as leader if xeroc isn't interested.

Thank you. But too much of a time commitment for me. So I have to reject that nomination.

[unreadPostsSinceLastVisit]

I nominate arhag as leader if xeroc isn't interested.

I favor a rebrand.

How about "Dexter"

[dannotestein]

I don't think we need to rebrand BitShares as such, partly because I don't like rebranding in general (wastes precious time, sends a conflicting message, and usually leads me to suspect it's being done because of mistakes made in the past) and partly because I don't think it is a bad name.

But I do think it would be beneficial to promote the use of the term DEX as "ours" in our marketing literature (web site, social media, and even the web wallet). I use this term all the time in telegram/slack, as do many others, to describe our trading network. So I suggest we keep BitShares to describe the coin and the chain and use "the DEX" to describe the actual market that runs on the chain.

[bitsharesbrazil]

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 are 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
(Again get rid of the spaces after the @ sign. Damn this forum's buggy @ mentions implementation!)

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.

THIS!!!

[jakub]

If APPLE MADE IT WHY NOT BITSTAN!

Right, let's compare ourselves to IBM, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
If they've made it, so will we.

[bitsharesbrazil]

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.

Epic!

If APPLE MADE IT WHY NOT BITSTAN!

[jakub]

A complete rebrand would be good although thats a lot of artwork and editting. You'll have "bitshares" mentioned all over the place etc.

If the rebrand moves the market cap by just 10%, all this effort will pay off.

The only case we lose out is when the rebrand worker costs more than market value appreciation.
Would anyone criticizing rebrand be willing to short BTS on Poloniex during this period?

To be clear: I'm not suggesting the rebrand just to push the market cap.
I think we need it as part of the process of growing up and finally defining our identity & our place in the blockchain landscape.