[Worker] Acquire Bitshares.com Domain - Cryptonomex

[xeroc]

Sorry, this took me a while to reply - there are a couple conflicting interests
that I needed to sort with myself first.



These are the points that prevent me from approving the worker even
though I would like the wider community to have access to bitshares.com:

* BitShares is a DAC. The decentralized aspect of it may not be
  important to some, but is very important to me. No single entity
  should have control over the blockchain itself or crucial elements of
  the ecosystem. Since BitShares.org is already owned by Cryptonomex
  Inc., I would very much prefer some other entity to hold control over
  bitshares.com. This might seem like I prefer the bitcoin.com drama
  over Michael's proposal, while in fact I would like to reduce the risk
  of said drama to appear in the case that the community and Cryptonomex
  run into a disput in the far future.

* Cryptonomex Inc. is a for-profit company. While this alone is not much
  of a problem, it becomes a problem when it holds a domain for the
  community and gives promises to that community. Even though the risk
  is hopefully small, Cryptonomex has some risk of trouble simply
  because of its for-profit nature among which are legal disputes,
  insolvency and buy-ins. If Cryptonomex was to use community funds to
  obtain bitshares.com, I would request to let the community know about
  the actual composition of shareholders as well as the anual reports of
  the last years to get a bigger picture of the risk associated with
  this "contract" between CNX and the BTS holders.

* This statement: "We will set referrer to the BTS fee pool account and pay
  back the Worker Proposal until paid in full." is at the root of my problems
  for several reasons. I guess that you want to run the "faucet" for
  bitshares.org and use the income to pay back that worker, but that comes
  with multiple problems:

   a) Who would operate that faucet and at which costs?
   b) How do you pay for the account cration fee?
   c) What makes you think that you can create that much profit from the
      referral reward? Being running a faucet myself for 2+ years, I don't see
      these amounts, even with the price of BTS exploding.
   d) The biggest problem is that there already is a worker proposal approved
      by the BitShares shareholders that sets the default/reference faucet and
      serves as income for the BitShares DAC.

  As a consequence, someone voting for the infrastructure worker cannot also
  approve this worker.
  Recommendation: Either you make this conflict and consequences clear in the
  worker proposal for shareholders to make their decision or you iterate over
  that statement and make clear how BitShares profits from this.

* What in it for @richcg who took the time and efforts to create is1.com to
  begin with? Will Cryptonomex Inc. at least hire him as a web developer? Also,
  unless he agrees publicly that hosting his page on .com is fine with him, I
  only see legal trouble (copyright, even if MIT license website content) for
  Cryptonomex Inc - not sure if you are aware of this of have this solved already.
  Recommendation: Please contact @richcg and let him state publicly that he is
  fine with CNX using his website on .com.

* Last but certainly not least, I can only wonder about the
  "competitors" the worker proposal is talking about that also want to
  acquire bitshares.com. Out of the top of my head I know a bunch of
  projects that could have interest in that domain:
    * OpenLedger
    * BitShares Foundation
    * BitShares Europe
    * BitShares-Munich
  among others. Being on that list myself (as BitShares Europe), you do
  know that I have had contact to the owner of BitShares.com in the past
  already and wonder why you haven't approached me to see if I could be
  that "competitor". Now, what makes you think that Cryptonomex is a
  more legit owner of bitshares.com than any other in the BitShares
  ecosystem?

[mf-tzo]

Regarding this proposal and how it goes, I would like to remind you all here some past threads from the seller of bitshares.com
You can see them here back in 2014

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,3819.msg58711.html#msg58711

4 BTC back then was $2500 and a couple of weeks  ago that 4BTC were worthing  $80,000. Back then the seller said that if someone would offer $100,000 he would take the offer. Obviously the $100,000 back then was by far exceeding his expectations for a domain name so I would assume that he would accept $30-$50k back then. Moreover most of the community members were just fine with .org back then and did not want to buy the .com

In addition in May 2016 (2 years later) the seller was saying that the domain will be soon sold. I guess it never did..

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22662.msg294650.html#msg294650

Now again this topic is raised 2 years afterwards...So I see that every 2 years we are discussing this.

Anyway...My take on all this is that since as a community back then we did not care about .com (we could have bought is for $30k - $50k), we were happy about .org, we never created a similar worker proposal in 2016,  I am on the opinion that the offer from the worker proposal should not be more than $80,000 and the seller since he claimed was also a bitshares shareholder he should be more than happy with this offer.

This is only my opinion, obviously the beauty of bitshares system and voting will define the right course of action

[pc]

As of right now, Cryptonomex holds the bitshares.org domain. Cryptonomex is a profit company and can go bancrupt (I couldn't find any transparent reports on that side), then the domain(s) are on the market again. Also, it is lead by one individual with all the power. Of course I do not want to  insinuate any ulterior motives, but this is something one needs to think about in a worst-case-prevention model.  For that reason it would feel better to give it to a non-profit entity, may it be the BBF or a new trustee.

This!

[sschiessl]

There is no legally binding contract between the Foundation and the Blockchain. But it is the closest and most trustworthy entitiy there is in my opinion.

In my own opinion, I do agree in the sense that efforts to purchase the domain are valid and make sense, for a reasonable price. It is also meant as a worst-case prevention model. In that sense I would even go further:

As of right now, Cryptonomex holds the bitshares.org domain. Cryptonomex is a profit company and can go bancrupt (I couldn't find any transparent reports on that side), then the domain(s) are on the market again. Also, it is lead by one individual with all the power. Of course I do not want to  insinuate any ulterior motives, but this is something one needs to think about in a worst-case-prevention model.  For that reason it would feel better to give it to a non-profit entity, may it be the BBF or a new trustee. Such a trustee could additionally make a legally binding agreement that it follows what is being voted on the blockchain.

WIth the current worker I also have follow up questions:
 - What is the agreed upon price? You write up to 250k USD. Is that already the price? With that funding a lot could be done in terms of advertising / branding protection and more
 - What are the imposed deadlines by the seller? Is he willing to go public?
 - What exactly is the plan with the referals? The infrastructure worker just managed in december to set up a transparent faucet that directly benefits all shareholders
 - You want to introduce a new landing page (http://www.is1.co/) in the same worker. What is the plan for bitshares.org?

Can you comment on that please @cryptofielder

[R]

I'd support the effort in principle, however with Cryptonomex no longer being "the company behind bitshares" ownership of the domain should be transferred to the BitShares Foundation.

I agree, however the Bitshares Foundation equally doesn't answer directly to BTS holders, right?

[pc]

I'd support the effort in principle, however with Cryptonomex no longer being "the company behind bitshares" ownership of the domain should be transferred to the BitShares Foundation.

[chamber]

I agree with your analysis.   Not sure how best to get this to the attention of the whales that can make it happen. 

[cryptofielder]

Steemit Post :

Worker Proposal creator : Michael Taggart

I am open to editing this proposal as needed, the reason for the amount being higher than 250k is due to BTS price fluctuations and some chance of unforseen costs of escrow and remitting funds. All money spent will be presented to the BTS community for transparency.

Also, @Stan asked me to post this proposal as he is out of the country and very under the weather at the moment.

We must secure the Bitshares.com domain for several reasons. There are already offers by unknown parties (not us) on the table for purchase, however, we have secured a deal to purchase the domain. They have offered a substantial amount to the owners of the domain. What we know is this, they are not us nor do they represent the community, and that is a problem.

We have reached out previously in the years before - and they have always wanted a premium price for it. The price they want has increased due to the surge in BTS value, and value of the brand. If we continue to rise, the price will as well, if it is ever available to buy again that is.

I will state many reasons for purchasing Bitshares.com here:

Brand Security

• Potential to become a phishing site. Imagine what will happen to our brand and price if that were to happen.
• We cannot allow a competitor to secure the domain name.
• A bad actor could purchase and post content there to hurt our brand, etc.
• Anyone could get this domain and damage Bitshares. Imagine our biggest detractors getting ahold of it and posting derogatory information or misinformation.
• Have you seen what has happened because of Bitcoin.com and Bitcoin.org having different owners, etc? Bitcoin Cash lovers hating Bitcoin, using their leverage of brand to drive competition into the dirt, and more.

http://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-com-cto-sells-bitcoin/
https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoincom-cofounder-dumps-bitcoin-bitcoin-cash/
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/the-swedish-founder-of-bitcoin.com-one-of-the-largest-sites-in-the-industry-has-sold-all-his-bitcoins-because-its-as-good-as-useless--/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/74mn7i/bitcoinorg_to_denounce_segwit2x/
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/76wngm/bitcoincom_bitcoin_cash_is_bitcoin/

THIS IS WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO US JUST LIKE BITCOIN.COM DID TO BITCOIN:

Consumer Awareness.

• Most users type in .com for any brand. And if they have no idea the .com is not owned by the brand, this could cause major problems.
• Read about Peter Schiff and his comment below. Imagine if we DID own Bitshares.com when he typed it into Google and he saw that we already built and perfected what he is trying to conceptually describe.
• Consumers don't want to think. They are trained to type in .com. They trust.com No matter how much we don't think it matters, it matters to them.

Common Sense

• We are currently worth approximately 2 Billion usd Marketcap. We need to secure our name and brand on the most used domain extension in the world (.com)
• If we become worth 20 billion or even 200 billion or more, this case is just that much more compelling.
• Why on earth would we allow other entities or persons to control the most valuable .com in our brand?

MAJOR EXAMPLE ON WHY WE SHOULD ALREADY OWN THIS AND NEED IT RIGHT NOW:

Here we have a former advisor to Ron Paul talking about all the features that Bitshares CAN ALREADY DO, even by mentioning bitshares.com would be a good name for this sort of thing, and he's oblivious that not only is this already a reality, but that its decentralized AND built around the fundamentals of austrian economics.

"If you believe in blockchain, which is separate from bitcoin, I mentioned how other assets could be on a blockchain. Central banks could have their currencies in a blockchain, you could have assets, bonds, stocks, shares of stock to trade. I looked up online ‘Bitshares.com’ is actually for sale."

"Who would want that? Bitshares... maybe somebody who was providing a marketplace for crypto stock.
IBM, General Motors, Apple could make their stock available on crypto form. Then you would find exchanges where you could trade shares of stock without a broker, low transaction costs...
Then if someone on a country was worried about their money and wanted it to move out the country, would they prefer apple stock or bitcoin?
Digital "something's" have more value than a digital nothing (bitcoin)"

"I was also thinking how companies could use it. What about airlines?
With air miles issued as digital currency.
You could use it to buy miles or an upgrade for free ticket, or you could sell it to someone else.
Airmiles are worth like $0.02 a mile, if someone owed me $100 I could accept 10,000 airline miles instead. Sounds a good deal. "

"Everybody could have an accountX and just own a cryptocurrency that was delta, or American Airlines."

THE TERMS/HOW WE WILL SPEND FUNDS

Funds will be held in escrow by Stan. Stan will use the BTS to acquire the bitUSD needed and send to Cryptonomex account.

Cryptonomex will use the funds created will be to pay up to $250,000 USD for the domain, and any fees associated with converting the bitUSD to a crypto the seller prefers payment.

Any surplus funds in BTS or bitUSD format will be returned/burned.

We will set referrer to the BTS fee pool account and pay back the Worker Proposal until paid in full. This is more like a loan to acquire this valuable asset than a permanent expenditure.

The wallet will continue to be hosted on .org and a link to that wallet will be on .com

We have already secured the price and the domain will be transferred immediately upon sale and clearing escrow.

We will place the new site: http://www.is1.co/ that our community member @richcg created on the domain: https://steemit.com/bitshares/@richcg/bitshares-new-website-update

No milestones other than acceptance of the offer and escrow.

Cryptonomex will cover the cost of hosting and any other associated cost going forward.

Time is of the essense on this as they already have another offer on the table and they were going to accept until we contacted them.[/list]