Author Topic: BBF Asking to be Elected as Approved Spokesperson  (Read 16925 times)

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Online Brekyrself

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Any update with Bittrix?  Last update was 19 days ago on Steem: https://steemit.com/bitshares/@bitshares.fdn/the-contacts-with-bittrex-and-its-legal-counsel-are-moving-forward

Having BTS relisted would help spread awareness especially when this market is red hot.

Offline xeroc

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what channels did you use to inform shareholders of the asset bug & hold of creation, or is stakeholder relations not covered in this proposal?
That discussion wasn't made throught the BBF .. if you read through the BBFs proposal carefully, the spokesperson's job is not to interfere with the blockchain, but to be a point of contact for outside people.
The "asset_creation" bug was identified by abit who has contacted core developers, from there, the committee members have been approached to approve a change in fee real quick.
After the approval, a detailed description was published through the BBFs webpage (their duty is to keep everyone in the loop, too).

Any communication with Poloniex on BTS being "under maintenance?"
BBF is trying to contact polo. It's on them to get back to us .. we've tried all channels we know of

Online Brekyrself

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Any communication with Poloniex on BTS being "under maintenance?"

Offline fav

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what channels did you use to inform shareholders of the asset bug & hold of creation, or is stakeholder relations not covered in this proposal?

Offline pc

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Thanks for the clarifications, @xeroc (and for coming up with the proposal in the first place)!

I definitely see the need for the role, and I'm going to support the proposal.
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Offline xeroc

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Thanks for all your feedback. Let me address them individually

I only know xeroc on their team, and you basically want me to vote for a bunch of (to me) unknown people to represent our multi billion blockchain? I already have some concerns in terms of marketing, because this seems like missing an actual agenda.
I agree with that. We are working hard on our presence of BitShares
Blockchain Foundation but got distracted big time due to the Bittrex
incident.

I personally trust each and every single individual involved in the
Foundation and I will make sure they will be publicly known more.

Here are the changes I would like to hear your opinions on:

* double the payment, add bitshares.org/support paid team
* for the love of bitshares, get some trusted names as advisors in
* define some clear targets

this whole proposal is too passive in my opinion.
Technical Support is explicitly not what we want or can focus on right
now. This has to be done by businesses that make a profit out of
building on top of BitShares, like OpenLedger or RuDEX. I don't think
there will ever be a centralized support team, other then the broader
community. Also, this worker is **explicitly** only for getting a
spokesperson.

The goal is to be able to sign documents with exchanges and represent
BitShares with them. Otherwise, noone cannot be proactive business
wise.

We do have some trusted advisors and will list them on the page as
soon as we are done with cleaning up the dust around recent events.

I find it difficult to define clear targets for a spokesperson. It is
not like it would do marketing or public relations. It really is merely
meant to be someone that people can approach and that we can send to
important meetings on behalf of the BTS holders.

As I described this on telegram already: This worker is to solve the
following questions:

* Who would sign an NDA with an exchange
* Who is supposed to be invited by regulators
* Who would businesses approach in order to get into the space
* Who would sign a 'listing'-proposal for with exchanges

To these questions, community-members *cannot* be the answer!

define clear, reachable goals.

for example:

- get in a meeting with 2 exchange every month
- contact 4 high potential businesses

and so on, make it measurable.
Again, the spokesperson proposal merely serves for "obtaining the
required approval to be able to do things for the BitShares business".

It is not meant to be proactive but to be able to do things when
required.
The other worker (compliance) is about smoothening the way to be listed
on more exchanges. If you want that, you should vote on that one.
But then again, the spokesperson worker is somewhat required in order to
sign **ANY** deal on behalf of the BitShares business.

bonus:

* get a pro marketer on, call the proposal "marketing", take 150 or 200k for all I care for representative, support, and marketing.

thoughts?

Marketing is out of scope for those two workers.

My primary concern after reading these 2 proposals is they lack any statement concerning fundamental principles that guide your goals. The docs do well state the goals, mainly focused on improving adoption IMO, but not what motivates that goal.

We all want to make some money, take some profit. Some don't care how that is achieved and it becomes their top priority. Others such as myself DO CARE about the underlying principles that frame the Blockchain Prime Directive as a driving force for financial freedom which must back all our efforts.
Here is the thing, financial freedom is great but in case of BitShares
won't work unless we ensure it can survive the scrutiny of regulators.
If you want a decentralized exchange to survive the upcoming flood or
regulatory disasters building up, we need to be able to proactively
approach those regulatory bodies. Otherwise they will shut down every
business that deals with BitShares - sure they cannot shut down
BitShares, but they can make our live very difficult.

We all live in the physical world, and while I would love the internet
and the way that BitShares is "alegal" (you should google that term),
non of us lives "on the internet". We need to play nice with whoever
governs the physical world. This is most important if you want to do
"actual business" on bitshares and not just see this as a nice to have
hobby/community project for fun.

Even the Linux Kernel plays by patents and trademarks - not to mention
how RedHat works.

As long as I always have a choice and am not REQUIRED to register a real world ID to hold an account and use the platform I will won't object.
This is what we want to educate the people about. Let me show you a
quick document I wrote up earlier today:

Quote
When we talk about "BitShares", we need to distinguish these three
things clearly:

* BitShares - the platform

   BitShares, much like Bitcoin, is a blockchain-based platform that offers
   "featutes" (sometimes called smart contracts) to people to do certain
   things in an autonomous way. The focus of the BitShares platform is the
   (possibly compliant) FinTech area. That said, it offers features, such as
      * token creation,
      * token transfers,
      * recurring&scheduled payments,
      * trading of tokens,
      * token vesting,
      * .. and potentially more that can be added tot he protocol
   The distinction from the Bitcoin platform is, that it offers "more"
   features/services to its users. In contrast to Ethereum (and other
   general purpose platform) BitShares does NOT allow any user to just
   install their own "features"/services, but the platform is limited
   to the currently installed features, and new features may only be
   added upon approval of the owners of the platform (see below).

* BTS - the crypto token on the BitShares platform

   The BTS token is the (core) token of the BitShares platform. It gives its
   holders the ability to "vote". These votes can be used to
      * define the set of block producing entities
      * define the members of a committee (board of technical directors)
      * protocol upgrades (e.g. new features)
      * project funding (via BTS 'dilution')
   The initial distribution of the BTS tokens happened through 2 mechanisms:
      * Mining of a 'proto'-token called BitShares-PTS
      * Donations to the development (no tokens issued for donators)
   100% of the initial BTS supply has been gifted to participants of those
   to schemes on a 50%/50% split pro-rata to their mined/donated amounts.
   Other than voting, the BTS token may be used for trading on the internal
   platform, or on an external exchange. It is fully liquid.


* BitShares - the Business

   BitShares likes to see itself as a "Business", namely a decentralized
   autonomous company (DAC). That means it comes with
      * owners (of the core BTS token)
      * revenue producing services (features that ask for a fee)
      * expenses (block producers and funded projects)
   In contrast to "regular" companies, BitShares does NOT pay dividends to
   holders of the BTS token. Even if BitShares (the platform) that a dividends
   feature, the BTS token would not be an autonomous target for dividends
   payments funded through the revenue streams it has.
   Instead, the blockchain's income flows into a "reserve" that is not
   spendable other than through approval voting by the BTS holders. The
   reserves are pre-funded with around 1B BTS tokens. The funds in the
   reserves can thus only be used for paying the block producers and the
   funded projects (only after approval voting by BTS holders). This far,
   most of the time, more BTS have left the reserves than entered it.
   If at one point in time, more BTS go into the reserves than are used for
   the expenses, the liquid and spendable supply of BitShares will shrink.
   This might, or might not have the impact of the individual share price
   to grow.

Regulators will need to understand this - and our spokesperson will make
sure they do!

There will be pressure by regulators to eliminate anonymous and likely psuedo-anonymous registrations as well. If the foundation or any of its' personel don't demonstrate their willingness to defend that basic right not to be tracked, my support for the foundation will quickly disapear.
Understood. Rest assured that that's not what we plan to do. *BUT*, as
you may know, BitShares itself is capable of running compliant
businesses ONTOP, by means of whitelisting. That means you WILL see
businesses that use BitShares in a compliant environment.
Also, you may have noticed that the BTS token is owned by the
null-account which means, BTS will never require any whitelisting. It's
simply not how it works.

It will be particularly interesting to see how the foundation will position and describe blinded transactions and future stealth functionality to regulators.
I don't think we will be required to do so. Regulators care about
customer protection and they can do so be going after gateways that act
badly. Private Transactions are a feature that people know (more or
less) from bitcoin. So I don't see a big problem with BTS that BTC
wouldn't have as well.

Will this ecosystem remain true to the original disruptive vision of blockchain technology invented by Satoshi Nakamoto or will it morph into an ecosystem the regulators will be happy with b/c they can turn it into weaponized money that tracks every transaction?
We hope to find a way to keep those goals and am confident that we will.
Ultimately, ofc, it will be the BTS holders choice to decide the next
steps.

The spokesman WILL NOT MAKE DECISIONS!!

Quote
to engage in external communication as the only spokesperson with the authorities, market parties and legal council. To coordinate and distribute work and to act as representative. If need be the foundation may sign on behalf of the community when it is a document that protects its interests in registration or public tradability.
This is problematic, to say the least.
The reasoning here is to make sure "other people" don't claim to do
things in the name of BitShares. We have seen how that can be perceived
miserable by people outside of our realm.

While i tend to agree with this being problematic, I think we should
give this a try until we know a better solution for this.
I personally can think of a scenario, where we have multiple
spokespersons representing subcommunities within BitShares. Think:
Ester and Western. ...

I don't think "the community" exists as an entity in some legal sense. If the proposal is accepted, this provides a certain justification for the BBF to act as a spokesperson. If this justification is sufficient or acceptable probably lies with said "authorities, market parties and legal councils". But I think it is doubtful that it would hold when challenged.
The major problem is that a decentralized autonomous company has noone
to guide them and no one to speak for them. But old economy requires a
headquarter, an address, and a person to speak with.

While this spokesperson will never be or act as "BitShares' CEO", it
hopes to link the old economy more with the new economy. Again, The
spokesperson is here to *represent* BitShares, not make decisions over
BitShares - else we would have been voting for a CEO!

On the other side, it is (to me) extremely unclear what it means in practice that the foundation "may sign on behalf of the community". First of all, disagreement about our interests is the rule in this community, not the exception. From this it follows immediately that it is undecidable if signing a document is in our interests, which means that any such signature is most likely not valid.
Second, any agreement that the BBF signs on behalf of the community is unenforcable (against us). For example, if the SEC demands that the stealth feature is removed, and the BBF promises to do so, the community might simply refuse to do that. Neither the SEC nor the BBF can enforce the removal of stealth.
Exactly .. and if the spokesman were to promise or sign such a deal
the BitShares holders could fire him/her anytime. We do know that, and
that is why "signing documents" is not meant to do promises or do make
decisions over what happens on BitShares, because, as you noted, this is
out of the spokesman's influence. Changes to the Protocol **NEED** BTS
holder approval - end of discussion.

The documents we are talking about are in the realm of NDAs, or other
agreements that do not affect the protocol itself but allow other
businesses to interact with the BitShares ecosystem - in general.

The documents sign on behalf of BitShares by the spokesperson will be
publish as possible.

Please clarify how you are planning to handle all of this.
I hope I did so.

One clarification that needs to be made still is that the BitShares
Blockchain Foundation is the spokesperson, not me personally!

I feel like this is a power grab and won't vote to approve this.
That's your freedom as a BTS holder.

How can the authorities have any impact on the DEX? Gateways and centralized exchanges are the only vulnerable entities, of which BTS is neither.
Who would defend BitShares in case it gets delisted from an exchange?
Who would defend BitShares against false claims by anyone?
Who would exchanges contact in order to get founded facts about the network?

While I agree with you that the authorities may only affect 'external'
businesses, these businesses should be supported by us. In the end, they
are business partners of the DEX. Being a business partner of a
decentralited autonomous company is *NEW* and not understood by any
legal body. Would you not want to offer any help to fix any upcoming
legal issue with that?

Keep in mind, no one *EVER* did something like this before!

$50k over 15 months isn't too bad for some of the work which you propose, however mandating that you're the one that dictates what work must be done seems like undermining subsequent worker proposals.
1. The bitshares blockchain foundation has the "mandate" to be spokes person, not me personally.
2. The spokesperson cannot make decisions over the blockchain protocol - that's what the approval voting is good for

The spokespersons job is to be a first contact person. Not to make
decisions. Decision making is the job of a CEO - and BitShares doesn't
have one and wont' need one because the BTS holders have a form of
"direct voting".


"There can be only one representative for the BitShares blockchain, as otherwise other parties will use this to disqualify all." Yet there are many representatives of bitcoin and nobody cares about that given that those who control it change over time (POW), much like how shareholders change over time.

"Propose changes to the BTS holders in order to become compliant with specific regulations" Care to elaborate on what this means?

That is off-topic to the spokesperson proposal.
But we already do know a few points that need change in order to
smoothen the way through regulatory turbulence. Among those are
modifications to the documentation ... you already saw a posting of mine
declaring that smartcoins are not CFDs but collateralized loans. That
came as a consequence to what we learned while talking with regulators.

If you mean exchanges need someone official to contact, then they can contact witnesses and committee members whilst halting wallets if there's a serious issue. If they're not confident enough to talk to these key members then they're not going to talk to you.
You must be kidding ..
Would you prefer a witness to sign on behalf of the blockchain? Some
technical savvy individual that might not know about legal and
regulatory aspects of countries they don't even live in? I wouldn't want
the witnesses to stop producing blocks just because they got threatened
in a discussion with SEC or any other authority. Their job is to build
blocks and not to go into discussion with lawyers. That's also not what
they are paid for - and it would be unfair to burden those witnesses
that live in the U.S. over those that live somewhere else while paying
them the same money.
That's even worse for committee-members which are not paid AT ALL!!
Don't you agree?

Offline R

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I feel like this is a power grab and won't vote to approve this.

How can the authorities have any impact on the DEX? Gateways and centralized exchanges are the only vulnerable entities, of which BTS is neither.

$50k over 15 months isn't too bad for some of the work which you propose, however mandating that you're the one that dictates what work must be done seems like undermining subsequent worker proposals.

"There can be only one representative for the BitShares blockchain, as otherwise other parties will use this to disqualify all." Yet there are many representatives of bitcoin and nobody cares about that given that those who control it change over time (POW), much like how shareholders change over time.

"Propose changes to the BTS holders in order to become compliant with specific regulations" Care to elaborate on what this means?

If you mean exchanges need someone official to contact, then they can contact witnesses and committee members whilst halting wallets if there's a serious issue. If they're not confident enough to talk to these key members then they're not going to talk to you.

Offline pc

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Quote
In a decentralized ecosystem, we are not looking for leaders or owners, but we are looking for leadership.

The strength of BitShares is that of technical superiority, and distributed governance, but by nature of its decentralized and autonomous community organization all the rest is not continuously attended unlike in most other platforms. In some areas now with very undesirable effects. There is no one following a bigger picture, not business development, public relations, or even marketing. This needs to change.
With this I fully agree. I have said similar things before.

Quote
to engage in external communication as the only spokesperson with the authorities, market parties and legal council. To coordinate and distribute work and to act as representative. If need be the foundation may sign on behalf of the community when it is a document that protects its interests in registration or public tradability.
This is problematic, to say the least.

I don't think "the community" exists as an entity in some legal sense. If the proposal is accepted, this provides a certain justification for the BBF to act as a spokesperson. If this justification is sufficient or acceptable probably lies with said "authorities, market parties and legal councils". But I think it is doubtful that it would hold when challenged.

On the other side, it is (to me) extremely unclear what it means in practice that the foundation "may sign on behalf of the community". First of all, disagreement about our interests is the rule in this community, not the exception. From this it follows immediately that it is undecidable if signing a document is in our interests, which means that any such signature is most likely not valid.
Second, any agreement that the BBF signs on behalf of the community is unenforcable (against us). For example, if the SEC demands that the stealth feature is removed, and the BBF promises to do so, the community might simply refuse to do that. Neither the SEC nor the BBF can enforce the removal of stealth.

Please clarify how you are planning to handle all of this.
Bitcoin - Perspektive oder Risiko? ISBN 978-3-8442-6568-2 http://bitcoin.quisquis.de

Offline Thom

Posted on Telegram:

Thank you Fabian for your work on the foundation.

My primary concern after reading these 2 proposals is they lack any statement concerning fundamental principles that guide your goals. The docs do well state the goals, mainly focused on improving adoption IMO, but not what motivates that goal.

We all want to make some money, take some profit. Some don't care how that is achieved and it becomes their top priority. Others such as myself DO CARE about the underlying principles that frame the Blockchain Prime Directive as a driving force for financial freedom which must back all our efforts.

As long as I always have a choice and am not REQUIRED to register a real world ID to hold an account and use the platform I will won't object.

There will be pressure by regulators to eliminate anonymous and likely psuedo-anonymous registrations as well. If the foundation or any of its' personel don't demonstrate their willingness to defend that basic right not to be tracked, my support for the foundation will quickly disapear.

It will be particularly interesting to see how the foundation will position and describe blinded transactions and future stealth functionality to regulators.

Will this ecosystem remain true to the original disruptive vision of blockchain technology invented by Satoshi Nakamoto or will it morph into an ecosystem the regulators will be happy with b/c they can turn it into weaponized money that tracks every transaction?
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline cryptofielder

If it is anything I agree on the point with Fav above:

* double the payment, add bitshares.org/support paid team
* for the love of bitshares, get some trusted names as advisors in
* define some clear targets - Measured goals/sprints
*get a pro marketer on, call the proposal "marketing", take 150 or 200k for all I care for representative, support, and marketing

Offline fav

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my thoughts on this one:

I only know xeroc on their team, and you basically want me to vote for a bunch of (to me) unknown people to represent our multi billion blockchain? I already have some concerns in terms of marketing, because this seems like missing an actual agenda.

Here are the changes I would like to hear your opinions on:

* double the payment, add bitshares.org/support paid team
* for the love of bitshares, get some trusted names as advisors in

* define some clear targets

this whole proposal is too passive in my opinion.

define clear, reachable goals.

for example:

- get in a meeting with 2 exchange every month
- contact 4 high potential businesses

and so on, make it measurable.

bonus:

* get a pro marketer on, call the proposal "marketing", take 150 or 200k for all I care for representative, support, and marketing.

thoughts?

Offline xeroc

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Yet another industry-first

The BitShares Blockchain Foundation approches the BitShares token holders to
approve us (a Dutch non-profit foundation) to become public spokesperson of
its decentralized and distributed ecosystem.

In our opinion, this will grow confidence in the platform and allow new
businesses to approach a legal entity for consultation. This will also
enable the BitShares platform to approach businesses directly that are
under the scrutiny of regulatory and compliance bodies.

Read more about the proposal here:

    http://www.bitshares.foundation/workers/2017-10-spokesperson

We kindly ask you to take a few minutes to read and understand those
proposal and consider voting for it,


Kind regards
 -- Fabian Schuh
« Last Edit: October 17, 2017, 07:30:42 am by xeroc »