I got tired of wondering what's going on with stealth, so I asked @kenCode what the deal is and he said his team resumed work on it some time ago and the public testnet is probably less than a month away. That was really great to hear!
Not to mention, apparently libsnark has been replaced by Confidential Assets (CA). This is fantastic because with CA, transactions are much faster than with libsnark (which apparently slow down transactions by at least 40 seconds). Also, with CA there is no "trusted setup" issue like zcash and other libsnark implementations have. Anyone who has followed the "trusted setup" controversy even a little bit knows that it's a big deal. So this is a very positive development for Bitshares!
https://blockstream.com/2017/04/03/blockstream-releases-elements-confidential-assets.html
Quoted the entire thing because it's that important. Also is it time for a happy dance or do I need to reel myself in?
Why would blockpay, Ken, Chris, and whoever else is in charge over their leave investors completely in the dark about this? They missed out at a massive opportunity to increase the value of the blockpay token... @Chris4210 mentioned in a previous mumble that the purpose of the blockpay token may be changing, what is the status with that?
While it's good to hear that Ken is still working on this, Blockpay investors shouldn't have to hear this "through the grapevine".
Why are shareholders being left in the dark? THAT is a VERY important question. I totally agree, they shouldn't be. In a mumble several weeks ago chris4210 claimed kencode did not have an agreement with his devs concerning the ownership of the IP their code represents. That was a serious allegation, and one I found difficult to believe as kencode has been a businessman who managed open source software projects in the past. Ken personally assured me he DOES have such agreements in place. The fact that kencode has control of the code repository of that IP which chris has been trying to obtain is strong evidence (not proof) of that.
I have been in contact with onceuponatime throughout this mess, who as you may know has been the original investor the FBA that STEALTH was to become the first implementation of. He has also been working very hard to resolve the issues between ken & chris, including asking
@Stan to mediate the dispute (who did agree to do so) rather than involve attorneys. It is not surprising to me that Chris rejected that offer being the son of a rather high ranking attorney. By high ranking I mean has a Phd in jurisprudence or something along those lines, not just a typical Bachelors or Masters graduate.
I have also been in contact with kencode directly for at least a couple of weeks who has kept me informed. I was one of the parties onceuponatime chose to oversee the stealth FBA once it became operational, and he awarded me a block of those tokens to do so. So yes, for full disclosure I too have a direct vested interest in this matter. If you were present in mumble today you noticed both kencode and chris4210 were present, as were onceuponatime and myself. When chris was asked if the devs who are working on stealth for BitShares Munich under ken's management were being paid or not (a simple yes or no question), chris4210 declined to answer with anything other than "No comment". The community had the perfect opportunity to ask any of us questions but there didn't appear to be much interest in doing so. Why do you so readily accept a "No comment" response? Have politicians conditioned you so well that you no longer will hold anyone accountable to what they agree to do?
Ken had a broken mic (this is not a new problem for ken. It's just not a priority to spend money or time to fix) but assured everyone present via the mumble chat those devs have NOT been paid. I don't know about you but I put far more credibility in an affirmative answer directly from the dev's manager than a "No comment" from the accounting department (i.e. chris4210). In addition chris4210 has not accounted for the 50% pay that was agreed to by BitShares Munich to supplement the worker proposal. Has he kept that for himself? Why has he not paid that which he agreed to pay? That represents a violation of the worker proposal chris4210 published before it was approved to sweeten the deal to shareholders. Chris4210's remark in mumble several weeks ago concerning a reissue of a different BlockPay token are pretty strong evidence of a hostile takeover attempt. He is not being transparent in the least and it saddens me this community does not DEMAND accountability. It smells of THEFT to me, but that is just my opinion. For all who know about the NAP, THEFT IS A FORM OF AGGRESSION and I hate to see it infiltrate BitShares Munich, BlockPay and if it turns out to be true the BitShares committee as well by anyone that uses AGGRESSION.
This dispute arose shortly after ken turned over responsibility of accounting/payroll to chris4210, adding to chris4210's role of marketing. Ken trusted chris and it allowed ken to focus on development. He felt confident his 51% ownership in BitShares Munich protected him from loosing control of the company he worked so hard to create. It's important to note that ken has NOT relinquished control of his majority shareholder position. To this day that remains 49% chris4210 51% kencode. Ken sent me a copy of the document they both signed before it was posted on steemit. I may have been misinformed earlier when I said chris4210 gave some portion of his 49% to ridrigo to manage the marketing in South America / Mexico. That isn't important anyway. According to kencode, Rodrigo and Chris got into a heated dispute and Rodrigo emphatically told Chris to knock off the bullshit and stop trying to do an end run around ken by contacting his devs and requesting them to report to chris4210 rather than kencode. According to kencode his devs are not listening to chris4210 and remain loyal to him which is very apparent since they continue to work on stealth due to onceuponatime's continued generosity to fund their work.
Frankly this whole matter is very disturbing to me. I am also disturbed by this community's lack of interest in getting to the bottom of this. People seem to want to turn their heads and ignore the ugliness of what seems very clear to me is a hostile take over and coercion to gain control away from the rightful owner by withholding payments. Do you people have such lack of discernment that you can't see that, or at least question these actions?
Lastly I will comment on an aspect of kencode's management style I am not a big fan of, that being disclosure of specifications and design documents. The issue of specs was mentioned in today's mumble as well. This is also an area that xeroc has raised concern over. Ken & I have also had differences over his lack of disclosure concerning the roadmap to completion you may have read here in the forum, however I admit I am not in ken's shoes so I am willing to let him manage the project in his own competent manor. Doesn't mean I'm letting him off the hook, I am just giving him more time.
It's very important to note that I have raised similar concerns with the PeerPlays project about disclosure of witness duties, those related to reporting event results.
@Taconator has hit the nail on the head in his steemit article to describe what is involved in that aspect of a peerplays witness responsibilities. I have also spoken with Jonathon about this in addition to bringing it up on the Friday mumble many times. The point I am trying to make is that the reason these people are not being transparent regarding such details, stealth specs / roadmap and peerplays witness event reporting details, is because BOTH ARE OPERATING IN A HIGHLY COMPETITIVE MARKET and they believe such disclosure would be detrimental to the success of the project. I was persuaded by Jonathon's rather lengthy but thorough explanation of the rationale for those decisions, and defer to his judgment now that I better understand some of the elements that went into it.
As to design docs & specs, I tend to take xeroc's perspective and believe those are extremely important. But when has ANYONE demanded that ByteMaster or Cryptonomex produce such documents, let alone to do so BEFORE their product was released? That is simply not reasonable. A roadmap is a different matter IMO, and is more a matter of PR and accountability than anything.
Topic: BlockPay in Serious Trouble (Read 47173 times)
