Some basic newbie questions

[xeroc]

Quick question. Products like Blockpay run on the Bitshares network. Does that mean that when products like these are getting used more, Bitshares is also profiting from that in terms of received fees? Same question for Stealth. Or how does this work?

More people using BitShares -> more transactions on the blockchain -> more fees used to pay for the transactions
Given that the fees are 'removed from supply', this also means that the available/liquid supply goes down. If you assume that the market cap of BitShares stays the same, then the share price grows.

Stealth transactions are just a special "operation" that pay a higher fee .. the fee here is split into a) a regular fee part and b) goes into the FeeBackedAsset "STEALTH" (buying back and burning STEALTH for BTS)

[MrFrismint]

Quick question. Products like Blockpay run on the Bitshares network. Does that mean that when products like these are getting used more, Bitshares is also profiting from that in terms of received fees? Same question for Stealth. Or how does this work?

[Thom]

I have a newbie question.

If one is a Witness or Delegate (not sure what all this means), how much BTS do they earn?

For example, in LSK, they earn about 11 or 14k per month.

"Delegate" is the old terminology for BitShares prior to Graphene. There were 101 delegates then which served a similar function to witnesses in BitShares 2.0 today.

To be precise, witness pay is set by the committee, and was increased in late February for the first time since BitShares 2.0 was released in October of 2015 (16 months ago). It is currently 3 BTS for each block generated. The committee also sets how many active witnesses are allowed to generate blocks, and is currently 21, down from 24. I believe the committee can also set the block time which is currently 3 seconds.

There are a total of 86400 seconds in a 24 hour period, and every 3 seconds a block is produced. That's 28800 blocks each day. The blocks are divided among the 21 witnesses in a randomized order, so each witness can generate around 1371 blocks each day. Assuming the witness doesn't miss any blocks, their daily pay = 1371 x 3 or 4113 BTS per day.  ((60x60x24) / 3) / 21 = 1371.428571428571 blocks per day times 3 BTS per block = 4114 BTS.

When the price per BTS was only $0.0035 and pay was 1.5 BTS per block, the monthly witness pay was $216 per month. Now that the price per BTS has risen (for now at least, let's hope it doesn't drop back to those lows) the pay has increased substantially. If the price of BTS stays at 1 cent all month witness pay would be $1234 per month!!!

If a witness operates 2 nodes with 8GB of RAM, one for the witness and the other for a seed and as a failsafe backup, that amounts to VPS server costs of approximately $80 per month, leaving $136 / month for profit to cover labor for the month. Nothing to get rich from, but given the time involved very reasonable.

If you run your nodes on dedicated servers the costs can be considerably higher, but still doable. For example Vultr's dedicated servers with 8GB or RAM are only $60 / month, leaving $96 for labor / profit. Bytemaster once said $300 / month was a good target for witness pay for 1 node. It hasn't gotten that high until recently. My VPS costs were higher b/c I ran 4 nodes. I now run 5 and all have been upgraded, one to 16GB of RAM. I am still using shared VPSs, but will be going to dedicated servers if witness pay doesn't fall below $400 / month, considering I run 5 nodes.

One of the tasks for the committee is to set the pay rate of witnesses. Keep in mind the number of BTS paid has NOT increased since late February. However, if the price of BTS remains high (yea!) the committee could (and should) reduce the payout per block. However, given the volatile nature of crypto, adjustments to witness pay should not be too frequent. IMO once a month maximum, but that is entirely up to the committee to decide.

Only active witnesses are allowed to publish feeds, tho there is no firm requirement that they do so. Proxies / shareholders can vote witnesses out for any reason, for example if they don't produce feeds or if they miss "too many" blocks. Standards for witnesses have yet to be defined. It has been suggested that if measurable metrics and thresholds were defined that witnesses could be removed automatically for failing to meet minimum acceptable performance. This idea hasn't gotten much traction however, despite multiple threads discussing it.

IMO the more determinism we build into the system the better it will be, and the easier it will be to explain. I believe I've been one of the few witnesses that have pushed this idea with respect to standards for witnesses.

That's probably more detail than you asked for but I like to be thorough, and precise

[nmywn]

 ~3BTS/min per witness.

[renkcub]

I have a newbie question.

If one is a Witness or Delegate (not sure what all this means), how much BTS do they earn?

For example, in LSK, they earn about 11 or 14k per month.

[xeroc]

I am very confused by the interplay between WALLETS and ACCOUNTS on openledger.

Can I share balances between accoutnts? Do I need more than one "Wallet"?

A wallet can contain many accounts. Each account is controlled (usually) by just two private keys. If those keys are installed in multiple wallets, then you can actively use your account through multiple wallets.

The blockchain only knows accounts!!

[renkcub]

I am very confused by the interplay between WALLETS and ACCOUNTS on openledger.

Can I share balances between accoutnts? Do I need more than one "Wallet"?

[xeroc]

Thanks @xeroc for answering these questions. So if products like Openledger are used more, this will increase the value of BTS too, right? Regarding the chicken-egg problem on liquidity. What's done to solve that problem?

Liquidity is already growing for months .. IMHO it's just a matter of time and improved tools ..

[MrFrismint]

Thanks @xeroc for answering these questions. So if products like Openledger are used more, this will increase the value of BTS too, right? Regarding the chicken-egg problem on liquidity. What's done to solve that problem?

[xeroc]

- Why is there an entity called Bitshares Munich? It has an own website, but that looks a bit amateur/basic to be honest.

BitShares Munich is one out of multiple companies that work **on top**
of BitShares. They have a stake in BitShares and try to profit from its
products. To my knowledge they build an android app, a POS terminal and
other quite cool stuff. They are also doing some business development
for BitShares.
Other companies that work on BitShares are Openledger, BitKapital,
ChainSquad, Blocktrades, ShapeShift, etc. ...
It's an open system and anyone can do business on it.

- What are the most important topics that are currently under development?

Depends, are we talking frontend, backend, or maybe middleware? There
is:

- btsbots
- pybitshares
- bitshares.eu
- stealth
- smartwallet
- bitshares-trezor
- tapin
- ...

- I heard something about an upcoming fork. Is that true and if yes, why is that needed and when will this happen?

There is no hard fork planned currently and if there was, it would be up
to the shareholder to approve it or now. In contrast to other chains,
BitShares **does** have a governance system!

- What is the reason there are already so many products ready, but Bitshares marketcap is still so low (low usage)?

- BitShares is more complicated than bitcoin
- BitShares is in a market niche that is *HIGHLY* regulated which slows
  down businesses and startups
- BitShares suffers the chicken/egg problem: No Traders -> No Liquidity -> No Traders

- What marketing efforts is Bitshares making in order to get more usage of the many products that already exist and with that receiving more fees?

Currently mostly grass roots efforts (still). Different businesses have
different goals on how to fund further marketing, but keep in mind that
there is **no** central entity/foundation that owns BitShares and is
willing to throw money at marketing. That's why there never was a lot of
marketing. It's also questionable if you actually *want* to market
BitShares. My company at least would rather want to market the products
it offers such as price stable crypto currencies, fast exchanging, yada
yada ..

- The pool of BTS for paying workers is quite large. Who owns access to that pool and how safe is it to protect for theft by people why do have access?

The pool is owned by all BTS shareholders. The only way to get money out
of there is
* Via witnesses (paid a fixed per-block-rate)
* Via workers (paid as requested)

Both require shareholder approval. The rate of the witness-pay is
committee controlled whose members are also shareholder approved.

[MrFrismint]

Thanks for the answers on the above questions! This helps to understand the project way better.

Some more to add:

- Why is there an entity called Bitshares Munich? It has an own website, but that looks a bit amateur/basic to be honest.

- What are the most important topics that are currently under development?

- I heard something about an upcoming fork. Is that true and if yes, why is that needed and when will this happen?

- What is the reason there are already so many products ready, but Bitshares marketcap is still so low (low usage)?

- What marketing efforts is Bitshares making in order to get more usage of the many products that already exist and with that receiving more fees?

- The pool of BTS for paying workers is quite large. Who owns access to that pool and how safe is it to protect for theft by people why do have access?

Thanks for answering

[konelectric]

- when will stealth be fully implemented (not test)?

Stealth transactions are already available in the core network. What's still missing is proper GUI support. @Chris4210 is working on it I believe.

And his partner @kenCode.

[Permie]

Thanks pc, good answers

The fact that MrFrismint had to ask all of these questions here, instead of finding all of these answers in a quick and easy to do google search is concerning.

But I am very grateful that you did ask MrFrismint!
Welcome

[pc]

- where can I find information about the team working on development?

There is no longer a single team working on BitShares. BitShares is a DAC and pays workers for maintenance and features when necessary.
You can see the list of currently elected workers here: http://cryptofresh.com/workers
Workers usually have a thread with their proposed work and progress reports here in this subforum: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/board,75.0.html

- where can I find a roadmap that is up to date? I can only find old information.

There is no roadmap at this time. Doesn't fit the worker structure, see above.

- if I go to the online exchange via the homepage it seems that the data is not loaded. When will the exchange be up and running?

The exchange has been up and running since the start of BitShares. Did you check https://bitshares.openledger.info ?

- when will stealth be fully implemented (not test)?

Stealth transactions are already available in the core network. What's still missing is proper GUI support. @Chris4210 is working on it I believe.

- what is BitUSD and why is the marketcap of this so much lower than before?

BitUSD is a market-pegget asset, aka smartcoin. It is loosely pegged to the US-$. The mechanics are explained here: http://docs.bitshares.eu/user/mpa.html . BitUSD are created by users / investors by borrowing them from the chain, and they are destroyed when those who borrowed them pay back their debt. This means the supply is variable, and since the price is more or less fixed the market cap is variable as well.

- what drives the value of a bitshare?

BitShares is an autonomous entity that operates on behalf of its shareholders. Its business plan boils down to "offer blockchain services and get paid fees". The fees are collected in a reserve pool, from which workers and witnesses are paid. Once the collected fees get higher than the payouts (which is currently not the case), the reserve pool will start growing, which means the number of BTS on the market will decline. This is equivalent to a buyback in a traditional company listed on the stock market, i. e. the lower the number of shares gets, the higher the value of each share will be.

- Bitshares works with DPOS if I am correct. How many servers are there and how does the voting work?

There are currently 19 active witnesses. You vote using your wallet. Your voting weight is proportional to the number of BTS in your wallet.

- how do we know the servers are really decentralised and not managed by one or a few people or institutes.

Shareholders must apply due diligence when voting. I can guarantee that I was running only one witness until I was voted out. :-)

- how do servers get paid?

Servers get paid by those who run them. Witnesses get paid for each block they produce, this payment is supposed to be sufficient to cover a server plus a backup node.

[sahkan]

I am new as well but found this page useful: https://bitshares.org/
If you download the light client from that page the exchange will work fine.
You can also sign up through my link https://bitshares.openledger.info?r=sahkan-bitshares