A Conspiracy Theorist Vindicated:

[bytemaster]

I agree with the premise shunning people for the harm they have done as this is in-fact the premise of a just society and non-violent resolution. 

I also agree with shunning those who associate with someone who has done wrong.   It serves as a way of discouraging association with that individual. 

So shunning ethereum for working with ex-GS employees is perfectly legitimate way of expressing your disapproval of GS and encouraging others to avoid GS in the future. 

Whether it is 'fair' or not to the 'ex-GS' employee is not actually relevant as all individuals have a right to shun others for any reason. 

[gamey]

One can state fake beliefs without any real repercussions.  Thats why you judge people on their actions or you are  asking to be misled in life. 

Actions usually have a cost associated where lying doesn't until you are caught.

Look at politics....

I have no beef with Ethereum.  I think it is a neat project.  Don't really care to promote conspiracies.  However, if someone wants to go around claiming a Goldman Sachs tie-in, then shrug.  That is to be expected and not unreasonable.  You reap what you sow.

Most people don't get how small actions of such a large entity can negatively impact so many people.  Far more than criminals doing life behind bars.  It requires actually quantifying the damage, which is hard for anyone to do.  If the only tool we as a society has is to ostracize these people, then it seems reasonable and just to me.

[bytemaster]

People can change so it is not wise to judge someone by their past beliefs.   Just their current beliefs. 




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[gamey]

As much as Goldman Sach's provides incentives for people to work for them to do their evil deeds, it is a moral thing to ostracize all current and former GS employees to create an incentive in the other direction.  So even if it isn't fair to a particular person who was innocently "putting food on the table", it is quite reasonable in my mind to call out Ethereum and any former Goldman Sach's ex-employees for what they are.

Whether I would do it or not?  Not sure, but it sure wouldn't be beneath me.

[Empirical1]

mental note: never work for a bank if you don't want to be ostracized by crypto community. even if it frees you to work on crypto full-time afterwards.

It's one thing to work for a bank...and quite another to work for criminal enterprises that pose as "banks" because it gets them closest to the centralization of power they need to be above the law.  Goldman Sachs is one of the largest of these institutions and the fact that anyone from GS is a part of Ethereum should call them into question.

Wow really? GS has 30,000 employees, you're saying they should all have quit for moral reasons by now right? So when someone finally does you blacklist them and don't try to work with them...

Should I stop trying to recruit my friends from any big banks or hedge funds? Too late, they've joined the dark side and their programming and mathematics skills have become CORRUPT by the illuminati!

I'm suggesting that anyone intelligent enough to work for an institution with Goldman's track record is also intelligent enough to know what they are signing onto.  For this reason, they are either incapable of seeing the big picture and question the "dark side" of their institute's actions and naive enough to believe what they are doing is truly for the greater public good, or they are complicit in the crimes themselves.  Noted, it is not always easy to see what is going on behind the scenes but once the 2008 crisis occurred EVERY employee should have started asking some damn questions.

I think your visual comparison of the pyramid in the dollar (Which does have the origins you infer) to the Ethereum pyramid is very thin/flimsy and therefore over the top. (As a result it slightly clouds/undermines your later valid points.)   

As for the rest of the debate I guess I come out somewhere in the middle. I don't think every employee knows what is up. I also think that employees that are around Toast's age can be excused by their youth and/or ignorance. However I do think that the majority of employees over 30 that could be described in any way as 'talent' would really have to be walking around with 'eyes wide shut' not to understand that they have to some degree made a specific moral choice working with Goldman/JPM in particular. The incentive structures are there for a wide range of abhorrent activities in this world but that's not a valid excuse for participating in them. I think your suggested reading of 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' is a good one. 

[fuzzy]

I honestly don't consider it a showdown between myself and nikolai.  It just scares me that people actually put Goldman Sachs in the same place as smaller, "not-too-big-to-bail" institutions.  That is a misinterpretation of my statement so I had to explain. 

It is really hard because people who have a background that took them into war zones get to see uncut footage of the aftermath.  Unfortunately, most of the world lives in a bubble and the television programming is produced by people who are paid by the very interests who benefit from war...the result is a framing of reality that separates us from the broader consequences of our system.  People should read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman": http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081

I only suggested to Nikolai (and everyone here) that Satoshi Nakamoto's work was meant to give us a way to rise above the current system of economic slavery...and to see people in the industry (potentially) working the most dangerous institutions back into the fabric of this new and wonderful technology is concerning on its own, but terrifying when one sees the business models growing around the tech that wants to do so.  I'm not saying Hang people who worked for Goldman Sachs...I'm suggesting we not include them in the construction of the base layer of the new system that is intended to move us away from those centralization of power issues.  I'm also suggesting that as intelligent as the Ethereum people are with regard to marketing their product, it is hard to believe they would overlook this obvious connection with symbolism that has largely become unpopular with a growing portion of the population.

 If people are honest here, they would realize that I say very similar things about bitcoin and all POW "coins" in general.  The difference is that Ethereum doesn't just want to be a cryptocurrency, but wants to be the base platform to which all crypto would be chained. Others have railed against the prevailing currents in the crypto-ecosystem for quite awhile with similar points, and have started to make an effect--I recently read a tweet with Adam B. Levine noting the importance of moving away from POW.  Only problem is that in large part much of the damage is already done if we still consider POW schemes to be in line with the general tenets of crypto.

When I see Dan working on DPOS it brings to mind the long hours of consideration and (often heated) deliberation that was the toil of writing the Bill of Rights (the meat of what we call the U.S. Constitution).  And the best thing about Dan, is that he is trying to set it up so others can build upon it in a way that competes with other interpretations.  When Ethereum's proponents speak it brings to mind a far different system--much closer to the one we see today, where the Bill of Rights is "Outdated" and to be a part of the system you have no alternatives.  There are many more intelligent than I who have been called upon to speak on this topic, including the founder of the GNU project himself--Richard Stallman, so it is hard to see how people think that these considerations are ridiculous...though they will naturally be divisive (@Domsch). 

Of course we all have the right to our own opinions, but I for one am glad to have brought it up. 

As for Delulo.  100% agree.  If this project starts looking like it's intent has become corrupted, you will not walk away from it alone. 

“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” ~ Mark Twain

[JoeyD]

I  don't think anything needs to be anywhere near perfect but would say I think the brand image is quite important in the beginning and I think the first DAC's have to be pretty strong.(so for example I was a bit concerned about the Zenith Music thing which has since been sorted out. Also if we were given shares in really weak DAC's and we sold heavily, it may reflect badly on the idea that PTS & AGS are good supporters and donors.) Most of the DAC's in the pipeline look really strong + exciting though so it shouldn't be a problem and Bitshares XT is a great one to start with imo.

Well I agree that I'm very impressed with many of the choices Dan Larimer and his team have made, such as how he setup the AGS-fundraiser and his flexible approach to problem solving instead of just putting out crap and see where it floats. Also his solution in the shape of bitsharesX was very clever if also very ambitious for a first DAC, but I can see how it is an essential one to help get loads of other decentralized projects up and running and a brilliant way to circumvent subjective gatekeepers and reinstate free traffic.  I'm also hearing some other so called "2.0" projects starting to repeat a lot of things that Dan Larimer has worked out, so I hope he gets his ideas up and running before some of the others beat him to it and take credit for his work.

Yeah that seems like it's true, I brought up a similar thing

[...]

It's one of those things that seems obvious now, but tbh I think I was around at the time and I didn't pick it up that something different might have been better.

Yeah hindsight is 20/20 and seeing how new I am to the crypto scene I probably wouldn't have been outspoken enough even if I had known earlier.


@Delulo: Sorry man I missed your post, didn't want to ignore you, but the showdown between Toast and Fuznuts made your remark a bit harder to notice.

I'm not trying to drive a wedge between Ethereum and Bitshares working together, hell Ethereum's smart contracts are a very nice fit for an idea of a DAC. But, I do take offence to a lot of things Hoskinson has been saying and repeatedly so. I'll give you a couple of examples.

On several occasions he has described alt-coins and free experimentation as bad thing and signs of a disease, which is one of the most used FUD rhetorics used by convicted monopolists and patent trolls to counter open source software and licensing. This tells me he either doesn't understand how open-source software and business works or that he is not of the open-source mentality. When he then starts to muse about being a Microsoft stake holder and being the new app-store, that does not give me confidence that this man is focused on decentralization and removal of gates, walls and restrictions.

He uses mud-slinging on other projects (just like he did with his comment here) to promote his own, while at the same time stealing the ideas and results of those "diseased" experiments and trying to take credit for them. I also find his use of the term Turing-completeness disturbing in the way that he's trying to suggest other projects are not or incapable of being "complete". This rhetoric trick to try to suggest that other projects would be lacking (Turing completeness) is very misleading if not a complete deception. I've also heard him put words in Satoshi Nakamotos mouth and twisting it as if the plan behind bitcoin was to make Ethereum all along, while that is most definitely not why the deliberate choice for limited scripting options in bitcoin was made. Instead of informing potential investors of the risk, this instead pulls away attention of the big security and stability issues that a Turing complete scripting language introduces.

And before I receive flack about this, I have tried to point out the things I've said above and a few others repeatedly on several public channels (I do not have a personal connection to anyone on the Ethereum team) and even in a personal discussion with one of Ethereum core developers on bitcointalk. But after me personally pointing out this behaviour to one of his colleagues who's so close to him that he has assured me he's shared the same sleeping quarters with Hoskinson on several occasions and then seeing that post by Hoskinson here, that really rubs me the wrong way and does not look like he has any intentions of changing his methods.

So my take on Ethereum is that I like some of their ideas, but I'm not convinced that everyone behind the project has freedom and decentralization as their main goals. I don't believe the world needs another monopoly and I'm certainly not willing to subsidize the exact same problem that I think the decentralized blockchain-invention is supposed to solve.

When I hear Dan Larimer talk about making it as easy as possible to fork, compete and experiment to your hearts content and even describing solutions in the event one blockchain gets taken over by a single (hostile) power, then that inspires me with a lot more confidence about his motivations and focus. I also like that there is a social contract instead of a walled-garden/vendor-lockin/patent-troll "solution". Also other than pointing out the risks of mining and centralization I have not heard Dan Larimer talk shit about other projects or dismissing them as inferior concepts in public interviews or channels.

But should Dan Larimer ever turn into Gates or Windows or some other form of limitation or this community ever stray from the path into a beautiful closed compound, then I'm out no matter how profitable it may be or how many losses I'll concur.

[Empirical1]

Be sure to really study the proposed distribution model, the first one was rather tilted in favour of a select few.

I'm not saying that great projects showing results don't or shouldn't get media attention, I'm saying that Hoskinsons remark was utter BS. Ethereum is not getting more media attention because it is better or greater, it has also not produced any more results than bitshares.

If it weren't for Hoskinson and his remarks I'd probably still be enthusiastic about Ethereum, but everytime he opens his mouth he's putting me off more and more.

But I digress, any thoughts on my marketing proposals and critiques?

Yeah that first distribution model was... 

I'm getting the impression there is too much focus on being perfect and getting the perfect looking message out there, like some business trying to sell an image. The points made in the interview by the podcaster in the video and also by Adam Levine on the forums a while ago about how the messages is being delivered are echoing my own thoughts on this matter. Before starting the fundraiser the message should have been clear and some web framework should have been in place first such as a blog.

I  don't think anything needs to be anywhere near perfect but would say I think the brand image is quite important in the beginning and I think the first DAC's have to be pretty strong.(so for example I was a bit concerned about the Zenith Music thing which has since been sorted out. Also if we were given shares in really weak DAC's and we sold heavily, it may reflect badly on the idea that PTS & AGS are good supporters and donors.) Most of the DAC's in the pipeline look really strong + exciting though so it shouldn't be a problem and Bitshares XT is a great one to start with imo.

Also like the podcaster rightly emphasized more effort should be made to prevent confusion. An ugly site with a blog and some clear explanations would have made a hell of a difference. The choice for the word "bit", "bitshares" and the b-logo were major faux pas and part of the marketing now needs to focus on clearing that up as well, before even getting to the message. That alone makes me so frustrated that I only learned about this project so late in the game, since there was no longer any chance to voice my opposition to this choice of brandname.

Yeah that seems like it's true, I brought up a similar thing

...it it was interesting to hear how layman link Bithsares & Bitcoin together and that they think Blockchains are tied to Bitcoin too. I think it would be worth working on a real laymans sales pitch to make clear how Bitshares is different.

It's one of those things that seems obvious now, but tbh I think I was around at the time and I didn't pick it up that something different might have been better.

[fuzzy]

I agree with Charles. If Bitshares was making waves in crypto currency he couldn't ignore it.

Bitshares could (I think will probably) be a tsunami, but the truth is it hasn't made any big waves yet.

Don't get me wrong I'm not that great of a conspiracy theorist, I'm much to naive for that. I believe just about everything can be explained by people being lazy and egocentrical (which is what the word idiot actually means). But the remark about great projects getting media attention is just a load of BS. Also talk about tooting ones own horn. I would have been less arrogant when you look at the project that got even more attention than Ethereum and was on the same show on the same day, Neo Bee and bitcoin on Cyprus,  that didn't turn out to be such a great a project either.

Ok yeah I don't think great projects getting media attention is BS. But that's not to say I don't also agree with you that a lot of shit can get media attention too. I missed that he was referring to Ethereum in that post, yeah that's funny  Ethereum seems pretty mediocre & unappealing to me, technically Daniel has also pointed out some weak spots that haven't been addressed yet as far as I know but I will probably reluctantly get a small hedge in it.

Be sure to really study the proposed distribution model, the first one was rather tilted in favour of a select few.

I'm not saying that great projects showing results don't or shouldn't get media attention, I'm saying that Hoskinsons remark was utter BS. Ethereum is not getting more media attention because it is better or greater, it has also not produced any more results than bitshares.

If it weren't for Hoskinson and his remarks I'd probably still be enthusiastic about Ethereum, but everytime he opens his mouth he's putting me off more and more.

But I digress, any thoughts on my marketing proposals and critiques?

Might bring you heat by giving this to you JoeyD, but your post is deserving:

[JoeyD]

I agree with Charles. If Bitshares was making waves in crypto currency he couldn't ignore it.

Bitshares could (I think will probably) be a tsunami, but the truth is it hasn't made any big waves yet.

Don't get me wrong I'm not that great of a conspiracy theorist, I'm much to naive for that. I believe just about everything can be explained by people being lazy and egocentrical (which is what the word idiot actually means). But the remark about great projects getting media attention is just a load of BS. Also talk about tooting ones own horn. I would have been less arrogant when you look at the project that got even more attention than Ethereum and was on the same show on the same day, Neo Bee and bitcoin on Cyprus,  that didn't turn out to be such a great a project either.

Ok yeah I don't think great projects getting media attention is BS. But that's not to say I don't also agree with you that a lot of shit can get media attention too. I missed that he was referring to Ethereum in that post, yeah that's funny  Ethereum seems pretty mediocre & unappealing to me, technically Daniel has also pointed out some weak spots that haven't been addressed yet as far as I know but I will probably reluctantly get a small hedge in it.

Be sure to really study the proposed distribution model, the first one was rather tilted in favour of a select few.

I'm not saying that great projects showing results don't or shouldn't get media attention, I'm saying that Hoskinsons remark was utter BS. Ethereum is not getting more media attention because it is better or greater, it has also not produced any more results than bitshares.

If it weren't for Hoskinson and his remarks I'd probably still be enthusiastic about Ethereum, but everytime he opens his mouth he's putting me off more and more.

But I digress, any thoughts on my marketing proposals and critiques?

[Empirical1]

I agree with Charles. If Bitshares was making waves in crypto currency he couldn't ignore it.

Bitshares could (I think will probably) be a tsunami, but the truth is it hasn't made any big waves yet.

Don't get me wrong I'm not that great of a conspiracy theorist, I'm much to naive for that. I believe just about everything can be explained by people being lazy and egocentrical (which is what the word idiot actually means). But the remark about great projects getting media attention is just a load of BS. Also talk about tooting ones own horn. I would have been less arrogant when you look at the project that got even more attention than Ethereum and was on the same show on the same day, Neo Bee and bitcoin on Cyprus,  that didn't turn out to be such a great a project either.

Ok yeah I don't think great projects getting media attention is BS. But that's not to say I don't also agree with you that a lot of shit can get media attention too. I missed that he was referring to Ethereum in that post, yeah that's funny  Ethereum seems pretty mediocre & unappealing to me, technically Daniel has also pointed out some weak spots that haven't been addressed yet as far as I know but I will probably reluctantly get a small hedge in it.

[fuzzy]

After the "leak" that brought Greg Palast all this attention:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/larry-summers-withdraws-name-from-fed-consideration/2013/09/15/7565c888-1e44-11e3-94a2-6c66b668ea55_story.html

[fuzzy]

mental note: never work for a bank if you don't want to be ostracized by crypto community. even if it frees you to work on crypto full-time afterwards.

It's one thing to work for a bank...and quite another to work for criminal enterprises that pose as "banks" because it gets them closest to the centralization of power they need to be above the law.  Goldman Sachs is one of the largest of these institutions and the fact that anyone from GS is a part of Ethereum should call them into question.

Wow really? GS has 30,000 employees, you're saying they should all have quit for moral reasons by now right? So when someone finally does you blacklist them and don't try to work with them...

Should I stop trying to recruit my friends from any big banks or hedge funds? Too late, they've joined the dark side and their programming and mathematics skills have become CORRUPT by the illuminati!

I'm suggesting that anyone intelligent enough to work for an institution with Goldman's track record is also intelligent enough to know what they are signing onto.  For this reason, they are either incapable of seeing the big picture and question the "dark side" of their institute's actions and naive enough to believe what they are doing is truly for the greater public good, or they are complicit in the crimes themselves.  Noted, it is not always easy to see what is going on behind the scenes but once the 2008 crisis occurred EVERY employee should have started asking some damn questions.

As far as your point to working with them...I suppose they COULD be insiders who would like to help society overcome the crimes of their old employers--but I'm sure that would have been part of their "headlines" campaign if it had happened.  On top of that, comments like "specialized ASICs", "Oil to bitcoins Gold", the choice of logo...and Hosk leaving his first "boy genius" (Dan) behind and picking up a NEW "boy genius" (Vitalik)...any of these by themselves, ok--but all of them together?  Come on man...and I don't care if it brings ostracism to ask these questions because the stakes are high.

Once again Nikolai, you are no dummy, but you are sorely mistaking Goldman Sachs for a real "bank".  Banks and Hedgefunds are not evil...in fact most of them serve vital roles in the economy.   But anyone who does even a little research into the "too big to fail" banks will see they are not in any way performing functions that are in the public good.  What I suggest is that all the brilliant people working for these institutions have the means of actually helping the world and making far more money if they bypass the system that has been proven to be corrupt.  Maybe this was not the case before cryptocurrency, but now it is. 

If Ethereum REALLY cared to subscribe to the tenets of crypto (why Satoshi made bitcoin in the first place), they would be looking deeply at what Dan is doing and trying to build upon it...or find an alternative that accomplishes the same effect.  Instead they want specialized frigging ASICs and GS ties. 

Just for a little taste of what i'm talking about here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogc-LRWByhY


@Domsch,

My point is not that "we are better".  If you pay attention to these things it is clear that Hoskinson in every way implies this--not I.  I simply call this "bullshit" out.  And yes, you are right--Some things are subjective, but international crimes against humanity are not one of them--and I for one would not invest in bitShares if they were tying themselves to groups like these. 

Do I want these techs to work together?  Yes... but all this shit adds up to--nothing?  come on bro...yeh, I'm sure those fellas in the board meetings talked about in the video above "have no clue" what's going on in the crypto-currency scene.  In fact, I am sure it's "bullshit" that they would ever attempt to coop this absolutely wonderful technology to make sure they secure the first-mover's advantage when this market becomes massively adopted.  Contrary to your point about me working based on my investment (Adam Levine has done the same), I am amply invested in NXT, Peercoin/Primecoin, Ultracoin and Counterparty.  I invest in projects whose founders seem to be working toward what (I perceive) as the intent of crypto in general; I do not invest in projects that I think would turn our world, once again, toward a more robust version of what we have today. 

I remember reading how many people thought the internet was incorruptible when it first began.  I remember reading people making these exact same statements you make toward me regarding NSA spying and a number of other malevolent forces at work on the internet.  "this is a wasted conversation topic" is easy...Look at what we have today.  News flash...sometimes progress needs to be stunted so we can ask ourselves tough questions--which is precisely what Bytemaster did before coming up with DPOS for christ's blessed sake man! 

Sorry for offending you Domsch.  I have respect for you man and appreciate everything you are doing...but it is precisely when a way of thinking becomes unpopular that we should look at it a little more closely.   

[domsch]

Max Keiser:  I've already been working on trying to get Dan on Keiser's show for a few months now.  Its not easy to get ahold of Keiser and although Ethereum got on the show, I think in general Keiser's people had a hard time understanding Ethereum and perhaps for that reason aren't interested in any other next gen crytpto technologies like bitshares.  We're still working on several angles to get an interview on Keiser's show.

Actually that's not true at all. Max and Stacy love Ethereum and the bitcoin 2.0 space as a whole. Don't blame your inability to procure interviews on the knowledge of the interviewers. Great projects make the news not ask to be on it.

Very easy to get on big media outlets run by big money when you have "ex" "low level" Goldman Sachs advisers bro..  It isn't the people, but the network to which they connect.   

A Hoskinson quote:  "Ether will be like Oil to bitcoin's Gold."  ---hmmmm sound at all like the petro-dollar scheme?  It does to me...

Here are two images of the same pyramid structure are associated with the secret society(s) behind the petro-dollar:   


Can I be wrong about allllll of this?  Yes...and I'd love to be.  I would love a place where all these 2.0 techs work together to create something that benefits the investors in their construction and uplifts all of humanity while giving no central authority to anyone without them first competing against each other for it.  But the things that turn me off about Ethereum are all little and add up to something else behind the scenes...

As always, prove me wrong so I can say I'm wrong...and start with getting rid of "specialized ASICs" that breed patent monopolies and long-term barriers to entry at the "currency creation" level.

In the future, I suggest you to refrain from posting such bullshit. You are making yourself look silly and your hostile position against Ethereum does not help to further your dreams of " I would love a place where all these 2.0 techs work together". Exactly because of people like you all of these community-wars evolved that help us in no way and are a huge waste of resources.
Get your facts straight and start to perceive things more objectively. Instead of tying your opinions to very subjective matter (such as personal investment) and ridiculous conspiracy theories, actually become part of other communities and understand what their intentions are. Only through this way we can hope that some of these amazing 2.0 teams work together on not just returning an investment to its investors, but in actually creating a system that appeals to the 7 Billion around us. But if people keep going on with the same bullshit of "no, we are better!" we are getting nowhere and the dream of a better world vanishes.

Fully agree with Nikolai.

[JoeyD]

I agree with Charles. If Bitshares was making waves in crypto currency he couldn't ignore it.

Bitshares could (I think will probably) be a tsunami, but the truth is it hasn't made any big waves yet.

Don't get me wrong I'm not that great of a conspiracy theorist, I'm much to naive for that. I believe just about everything can be explained by people being lazy and egocentrical (which is what the word idiot actually means). But the remark about great projects getting media attention is just a load of BS. Also talk about tooting ones own horn. I would have been less arrogant when you look at the project that got even more attention than Ethereum and was on the same show on the same day, Neo Bee and bitcoin on Cyprus,  that didn't turn out to be such a great a project either.

Also the fact that Bitcoinmagazineum is getting more attention in the very, very tiny crypto-pundit-scene is hardly surprising, given that the majority of the crypto pundits are founding members and have a far greater interweb-presence than anyone of the bitshares team.

That doesn't mean that bitshares marketing doesn't leave anything to be desired. I'm also not so certain that that is only because of the lack of things to promote. If that was true Hoskinson would have shut up months ago.

I'm getting the impression there is too much focus on being perfect and getting the perfect looking message out there, like some business trying to sell an image. The points made in the interview by the podcaster in the video and also by Adam Levine on the forums a while ago about how the messages is being delivered are echoing my own thoughts on this matter. Before starting the fundraiser the message should have been clear and some web framework should have been in place first such as a blog.

Also like the podcaster rightly emphasized more effort should be made to prevent confusion. An ugly site with a blog and some clear explanations would have made a hell of a difference. The choice for the word "bit", "bitshares" and the b-logo were major faux pas and part of the marketing now needs to focus on clearing that up as well, before even getting to the message. That alone makes me so frustrated that I only learned about this project so late in the game, since there was no longer any chance to voice my opposition to this choice of brandname.

Not all opportunities are being used to engage and involve the community more even without needing to pay them or put up bounties. And if a bounty is put up, it could be advertised more clearly or made into a competition and communicated to the crypto pundits or crypto watering holes.

Community building is one of the hardest things to do in open-source and when there's money involved it doesn't get easier, but I do think there could be more effort made on the grass roots bottom up community building front. In this regard having a single central entity in the form of Dan Larimer and the perception of a single dev-team/company and the community treatment or attitude as customers is holding things back. The same holds true for bitcoin as well by the way, with the bitcoin-core-devs being treated like a company, but with the size of this project it's hurting it a lot more.