MaidSafe IPO on Mastercoin

[JoeyD]

You could make a website, but that doesn't change the issue with having to create a secure way of generating genesis blocks to handle that list, without any errors and needing to be part of the new toolkit being developed, which is not an afternoon of work. Also those signed transactions without something like a blockchain-timestamp-verification method will not be any more secure than the very first key and would in all practicality not solve anything. Alternatively if the Invictus team, starts to centrally screw around with the donating addresses that will open a Pandoras box of shitstorms that will make the current spring breeze of hissy-fits look insignificant in comparison.

Imo, your points about wanting to divest does not change much about the hostage-story being bs. Because all that time PTS was and is still there as a completely viable choice and I still think it strange why people chose AGS if they did not really want to and then start blaming others. AGS was never meant to be liquid and I never got the impression it was supposed to be and I always saw it as a kickstarter style fundraiser to help development of an industry and not a presale of a finished product. PTS was for the speculators and the angelshares were meant for funding the cause. Also even with the over-enthusiastic estimate, it was never anything more than that and as far as I understood it only for the first public test-chain, not the final bet your pension plus inheritance one. Even before the announced estimate there were warnings that a bug would require a new test chain to be developed, which lucky for the speculators was discovered before trading actually went live.

Thinking about it I don't understand why any PTS-holder would be whining at all, because they get the added bonus of AGS investments and things those funds are paying for, without PTS-holders needing to lift a finger. Do PTS-speculators actually think they are buying directly from the Invictus team instead of their money going to other speculators and miners?

[bitmeat]

They couldn't put up a web page where people could digitally sign a transaction and it is visible publicly by everyone? Just as an interim solution until the actual BTS x is up and running. They could easily make this a bounty. Now I know that this seems like a bandaid but it is better to be liquid. Anyways, I see all these solutions and they are all possible and easy to implement. As far as being held hostage it is not rubbish. Most people here expected to be able to trade BTS X shortly after the Feb snapshot. In fact I expected end of March, end of April was my somewhat conservative estimate. Yes, some of us who would like to divest now that our confidence is lower are being held hostage. Furthermore I'm offering a solution that would not slow down Bytemaster and should be very easy to implement. Heck I might even implement it myself if there is enough interest and a good bounty.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JoeyD]

Perhaps I am not explaining this well. Here is all that is needed: collection of digitally signed transactions to be collected somewhere and included in the new genesis address. How is the regulatory environment preventing that from happening?

That's not what you are asking though, you're asking for a tradeable/transferable coin/token to be honored in the genesis blocks of all DACs, and that is PTS. Setting up AGS like that is most definitely not as easy or trivial as has been suggested by some, as the original topic of this thread illustrates and there was no real practical and more secure way of doing it at the start of the fundraiser anyway. Changing it now also doesn't take only a minute, because it requires a completely new ledger/blockchain system to accomplish. Also manually messing with private/public keys and manual intervention in the way the genesisblock will be initiated is dangerous territory and a lot of work.

I also would like to know who started this "our funds have been taken hostage" rubbish (disclaimer: yes I also have donated to AGS and no I'm not as big of a stake-holder in this as the one I suspect for starting that campaign nor am I "echoing" anyone when I disagree with something, I am a solitary actor not part of any clique or club or anything like that and have not had a direct conversation with anyone of the Invictus-team). Why did people donate to the AGS-fund if they wanted tradeable tokens? Sure puts into perspective why a lot of projects are starting to think crowdfunding is more trouble than it's worth and probably one of the reasons why Ethereum went the VC-route instead and I suspect will only sell the tokens as part of their marketing.

[bitmeat]

Perhaps I am not explaining this well. Here is all that is needed: collection of digitally signed transactions to be collected somewhere and included in the new genesis address. How is the regulatory environment preventing that from happening?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Stan]

As Elton John once sang,
"Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids."

[liondani]

Something as simple as ability to digitally sign over AGS/BTSX to another address if only for security purposes could have easily been done without slowing down Bytemaster. Currently those are held hostage by Invictus anyways pending release of the solid software. Why couldn't they just allow digital signatures that are stored in some side chain until software is done? Seriously this would take just a weekend to do. May be I'm oversimplifying it but the "snapshot" doesn't have to be "set in stone". Once close to a release Invictus can announce freezing of transfers since their software has passed the tests. But until then we are all held hostages. Again I'm not advocating Bytemaster stop doing what he's doing. I'm advocating that the snapshot could be traded prior to the official release. Of course every step of the way I've been told to be patient but now I want to move my AGS to a different private key for security reasons.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Alas, we live in a very constrained regulatory environment. 

Have you thought to "change" the environment?
Or are you confident that your "address" is proof-security enough?

[Stan]

Something as simple as ability to digitally sign over AGS/BTSX to another address if only for security purposes could have easily been done without slowing down Bytemaster. Currently those are held hostage by Invictus anyways pending release of the solid software. Why couldn't they just allow digital signatures that are stored in some side chain until software is done? Seriously this would take just a weekend to do. May be I'm oversimplifying it but the "snapshot" doesn't have to be "set in stone". Once close to a release Invictus can announce freezing of transfers since their software has passed the tests. But until then we are all held hostages. Again I'm not advocating Bytemaster stop doing what he's doing. I'm advocating that the snapshot could be traded prior to the official release. Of course every step of the way I've been told to be patient but now I want to move my AGS to a different private key for security reasons.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Alas, we live in a very constrained regulatory environment. 

[Stan]

Ok Fuznuts, I shall not use the A-word again on this forum. Is there a word I could have used to describe the contents of the post in that particular case, without it immediately being linked to the person making the post? Or should I make a disclaimer signature, with the declaration that my posts are only reactions on the words not reaction on the persona placing them?

The interconnectedness between the wallet and the blockchain cannot be ignored.   These things cannot be built in isolation.

I think this point should be elaborated upon and is one of the crucial misconceptions AdamBLevine seems to have been perpetuating as well.

You cannot change (hard-fork) something as complex as a distributed concensus system like the blockchain as if it's nothing, if only for the bolded parts. You also can't just switch from one blockchain technology to the other, just like that. Actually if you could, it would mean bitcoin and the invention of the blockchain is a joke and the rubbish most sceptics have been spewing on the mainstream is actually true, that you could just change things on a whim.

Also designing, coding, bugfixing/maintaining all those different systems at the same time is not nearly as easy, trivial or cheap as has been suggested in this thread, nor does it solve the problem of the PoW-model not being able to work for bitsharesX in the first place. Who in their right mind would waste everyones time, energy, money and his reputation on releasing a product which he is certain will fail just to prove that it will fail?

I think I'd better stop here, I'm having a hard time grasping why anyone even superficially familiar with software development in general, let alone projects like bitcoin would make claims like this. I suggest a thread be created where all these kinds of misunderstandings and myths or seeds of FUD are gathered and answered once and for all.

Maybe in a FAQ format, sort of like:
Why not (just) use (hashcash)PoW for a prediction-market blockchain?
A1 - Market manipulation: Because even with the simplest of attacks of just turning some miners on or off you can already influence the market by affecting the reaction-time of the participants on the prediction market. If you time it right with a good FUD campaign you can really make a killing.
A2 - Cost: Because developing and maintaining a "new" PoW-system tailor made to address all the issues, is at best just as hard, but more likely than not much harder as developing a more effective PoS system and a lot more costly in several ways.
A3 - Centralization: Has up till now not been solved with PoW-solutions, but is more disastrous in case of xchanges and prediction markets.

Might actually be a good community project to create such a FUD-buster list, although unfortunately core devs seem to be best suited to fill out the technical details, or would at least need to review it, which would cost more time and effort that they can't spare at the moment.

Good idea!  In fact, I believe we have already respectfully and painstakingly cleaned up most of these recurring FUDballs somewhere on the forum, multiple times - usually in response to the same chronic FUDslingers.

It didn't seem to keep the slung FUD from being FUD-raked and re-slung, but collecting them in one place might still be useful to newbies who would otherwise retreat in disgust and disillusionment -- missing out on any chance to learn the Truth and become sources of much needed market demand.

I do hate to see the harm that recycling used FUD does to demand for the products that everyone here is counting on for an early retirement.  Perhaps putting a thread of FAQs (FUD Attack Quenchers) in one place for easy reference would make it easier for everyone to intercept and mitigate that damage without dragging the poor core developers down into the FUD over and over again.

Sounds like a worthy cause for some Super-Hero Champions for Truth, Justice and Civility!

 

[bitmeat]

Something as simple as ability to digitally sign over AGS/BTSX to another address if only for security purposes could have easily been done without slowing down Bytemaster. Currently those are held hostage by Invictus anyways pending release of the solid software. Why couldn't they just allow digital signatures that are stored in some side chain until software is done? Seriously this would take just a weekend to do. May be I'm oversimplifying it but the "snapshot" doesn't have to be "set in stone". Once close to a release Invictus can announce freezing of transfers since their software has passed the tests. But until then we are all held hostages. Again I'm not advocating Bytemaster stop doing what he's doing. I'm advocating that the snapshot could be traded prior to the official release. Of course every step of the way I've been told to be patient but now I want to move my AGS to a different private key for security reasons.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JoeyD]

Ok Fuznuts, I shall not use the A-word again on this forum. Is there a word I could have used to describe the contents of the post in that particular case, without it immediately being linked to the person making the post? Or should I make a disclaimer signature, with the declaration that my posts are only reactions on the words not reaction on the persona placing them?

The interconnectedness between the wallet and the blockchain cannot be ignored.   These things cannot be built in isolation.

I think this point should be elaborated upon and is one of the crucial misconceptions AdamBLevine seems to have been perpetuating as well.

You cannot change (hard-fork) something as complex as a distributed concensus system like the blockchain as if it's nothing, if only for the bolded parts. You also can't just switch from one blockchain technology to the other, just like that. Actually if you could, it would mean bitcoin and the invention of the blockchain is a joke and the rubbish most sceptics have been spewing on the mainstream is actually true, that you could just change things on a whim.

Also designing, coding, bugfixing/maintaining all those different systems at the same time is not nearly as easy, trivial or cheap as has been suggested in this thread, nor does it solve the problem of the PoW-model not being able to work for bitsharesX in the first place. Who in their right mind would waste everyones time, energy, money and his reputation on releasing a product which he is certain will fail just to prove that it will fail?

I think I'd better stop here, I'm having a hard time grasping why anyone even superficially familiar with software development in general, let alone projects like bitcoin would make claims like this. I suggest a thread be created where all these kinds of misunderstandings and myths or seeds of FUD are gathered and answered once and for all.

Maybe in a FAQ format, sort of like:
Why not (just) use (hashcash)PoW for a prediction-market blockchain?
A1 - Market manipulation: Because even with the simplest of attacks of just turning some miners on or off you can already influence the market by affecting the reaction-time of the participants on the prediction market. If you time it right with a good FUD campaign you can really make a killing.
A2 - Cost: Because developing and maintaining a "new" PoW-system tailor made to address all the issues, is at best just as hard, but more likely than not much harder as developing a more effective PoS system and a lot more costly in several ways.
A3 - Centralization: Has up till now not been solved with PoW-solutions, but is more disastrous in case of xchanges and prediction markets.

Might actually be a good community project to create such a FUD-buster list, although unfortunately core devs seem to be best suited to fill out the technical details, or would at least need to review it, which would cost more time and effort that they can't spare at the moment.

[fuzzy]

I don't really care if you value my comments or not, I'm putting my complaints and suggestions on the record.   You can read my entire posting history and see all the context of my current irritation with Invictus.   If you have specific questions I'm happy to educate.

Nice.

For the record I did try asking nicely with sugar on top and this is your response. Sorry if I'm not part of your little club, but why in hell should I be bothered wasting my time researching each and every posts from someone who can't be bothered to explain his current comments or respond in a normal way. So if you don't care if your points come across, you consequently can't blame people for ignoring what you write.

Why would I want to be "educated" by you anyway, are you some computer science super genius or Nobel-price winner for economics? The whole reason I wanted to discus things with you is because I think you made some factual errors and that there are some actual real technical reasons why things can't work the way you want them to. I'm not particularly interested in a lesson in arrogance, I had my fair share of that in university.

It seems like you're taking things really personally, what exactly did I say that offended you?  I assumed you didn't want to take the time to get the full picture, which is why I offered to answer any specific questions you might have had.  Answering your question about stuff that I've taken the time to learn about and you haven't sure seems like education to me and yet you bristle at the term.   

Did you actually have any question, or do you just like complaining about me?

I'm not a native English speaker and was neither offended nor addressing you personally, which I think is impossible to do via forums anyway. It seems I completely failed in trying to communicate what I was trying to say, so I'll try again and add some specific examples, even-though I still think it would have been better to do so in a separate thread, instead of in response to a completely unrelated topic.

In your comments you assume too much and that is the very definition of arrogance (google translate assumption -> latin) and it gets in the way of some of the valid points you make and in the discussion afterwards.

I agree with most of your points about Invictus dropping the ball in regards to marketing, stimulating community involvement, attracting investment etcetera. However at the same time you completely destroy those points by stating as facts some of your personal assumptions that are dubious to say the least.

For example the statement that everything would have worked out fine if Invictus would have stuck to the plan. This is however not corroborated by any facts. Plans fail the moment you execute them and you are supposed to adapt after that. What you most definitely should not do, is stick to the plan after it failed. While you might have missed the statements Dan Larimer made regarding this and I agree that Invictus could and should have done a better job at communicating the reasons for the change of plans, your alternate, oversimplified and personal version of the situation does more harm then good at clearing things up.

Your proposed solution of going with some multi-staged, patch-work, unmaintainable, easily attacked and guaranteed to fail pow-blockchain and then migrating to a new POS-system, sounds completely ludicrous. If Invictus had gone that Dr. Frankenstein route I would have had no faith in their abilities and walked away laughing. Talk about waste of time, effort and resources and suicidal pr move.

Also I don't get what your beef with the AGS fundraiser is, especially seeing how PTS is still there. I have yet to see a better solution for a public fundraiser anywhere else. I have not seen any evidence as of yet of Invictus being particularly frugal or irresponsible with those funds, but I'd be more than happy to be enlightened if you have some information we mere forum-dwellers do not.

Again I'd rather have the discussion about the past, present and future failings of Invictus in a dedicated thread with all information easily accessible, instead of having to tell people to read someones entire post history, expect them to wade to an unholy amount of incoherent and irrelevant rubbish and then suggest to enlighten them should they prove to be too stupid to know what I mean. Your posts should stand on their own and not need to be unlocked by your own personal "expertise", because as you say your person should be completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Arrogance is considered a very harsh word in America.  But if you change that word, I do agree on a great deal of what you are saying. 

I honesty think I and many others have contributed to this "divide".  Though it is not always necessary to have 100% agreement, it is good to consider the criticisms--though many are repetitive and are largely based on opinion.  My concerns are not based on an ill intent for any specific technology--in fact I'm for multiple solutions competing fairly in the market based on the protocols' power.  I do like the philosophy of BTS, though, and the stated protocols seem to reflect the tenets of crypto very well and this is why I am primarily here and helping build.  It seems that they get much more negative press than positive from the actual cryptocommunity and I suspect it is because they do not go with the grain on what the rest of the crypto-community seems to be seeing as the appropriate path.  Am I right or wrong?  Who knows...and I suspect most will not state their biases openly (and everyone has a bias--despite what they say). 

Personally interested in having some specific answers to some of the specific questions asked Adam.  There are some very viable points covered in this thread, and they are important in that progress is measured in different ways.  There seems to be some crabby patty tossing competitions on this forum (and sometimes I wind up as well!), but Delulo Joey, agent, trog and zeus are making valid points imo that are far too often ignored.

If PTS failed and became part of the antiquated mining method you so truly despise, why did you decide to up their stake in BTS from 10% to 50%?   Was this not counterproductive to your stated goals?  Essentially you said, "damn, PTS didn't stay true to the CPU only and the GPU farms have started taking over mining.  Why don't we just give these GPU miners 50% instead of a measly 10% of the BTS-X shares and then sell the other 50%?"   I can only imagine this conflict of ideas was overlooked so Invictus could put money in their pocket.

Your altruistic attempt to save the user from the "large farms" that have taken over other coins and the systematic waste of energy is misguided and doesn't fall in line with your past behavior. You have merely switched the "large farm" for "big money" and taken away the "little guys" ability to determine their own opportunity cost.  You also continue to let PTS chug along forcing your Investors to waste $8 million since I first posted on PTS difficulty problems March 3rd. This $8 million is based on this; https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1397.msg14794#msg14794 .

To Newmine, I can specifically remember the day that bytemaster made the decision to switch from 10% honoring to 50%.  It was because he believed a change to the social consensus should not hurt those who originally invested, but would be much more acceptable to those who the consensus was established to protect if he improved the deal somehow in the change.  I actually remember stating something about this concept of changing the social consensus but always improving the deal for those who believed in the project from the start if it was necessary.  bytemaster responded that he would keep that concept in his mind moving forward--apparently he did.  Just wanted to help clarify this for you man

[bytemaster]

The interconnectedness between the wallet and the blockchain cannot be ignored.   These things cannot be built in isolation.

[neotheone]

Yes, and the least-risky gamble, given what we have learned along the way.   

Part of the issue is that real money has to be at stake to get a valid test of how market behaviors drive the fundamental theory of operation.  Since real money is at stake, we must be vewy, vewy, careful. 

The other options have known unacceptable flaws. 
We can't responsibly release real money applications with known unacceptable flaws.

Stan, I think Adam agrees with you on not releasing a product with unacceptable flaws and real money applications. His point is why not focus on first creating the upper layer like the BTS exchange first and then worry about transactional system. example like having a wallet with all the "wallet" type features and then worrying about how will it be parsing the blockchain.
In that case, we could have Lotto, BTS, DNS out as pre-alpha to show I3 can really deliver on its promise. The current situation is that Keyhotee and Bitshares have been delayed.

[liondani]

Both are a great deal knowing just what you can see developing in parallel already.  And you know we won't stop there!

Good to hear read that!

[Stan]

I agree 100% with the goal of a fair distribution. But mining can not help to realize this! The only thing that helps is that many people know it! In reference to your statement about the early mining of Bitcoin: Super little people know about it --> Super uneven distribution of Bitcoin today. That has nothing to do with technology. Many people know about it like today -> Increase in demand for Bitcoin -> arms race -> economies of scale (like you said) and super high barriers for entry which is horrible for gives big money an advantage.

  to the above

PTS has long been planned for an upgrade to 2.0.  The time for that is early summer.  Meanwhile all the DACs in the pipeline make PTS the screaming deal of the century.

Why PTS which is produced by mining is the screaming deal of the century and not AGS which is helping for the development of these DACs is not the screaming deal of the century? If that is the case, a more clear direction would be nice  because I am starting to feel like an idiot having donated all my pre 28th snapshot expensive PTS for AGS recently.

I must be the guy with the worst decisions here.
Kept PTS instead of AGS pre snapshot ==> Less BTS X
Donated PTS after snapshot ==> PTS the screaming deal of the century..


 

I treat them equally, since they are designed for different purposes they will have different value for different people depending upon how they value liquidity.  Both are a great deal knowing just what you can see developing in parallel already.  And you know we won't stop there!  No further guidance is necessary or possible since the deterministic scale factors between the two are public and the market response is unknowable.