Author Topic: Crowdfunding using AGS?  (Read 5417 times)

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Offline gamey

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You don't have to believe me, just like another random choirmember came to the amusing conclusion that because I invited the Beyond Bitcoin show built on the forums here (as my repeated suggestion and with my guidance) on our platform with thousands of new listeners, that this is somehow bad for Bitshares. 

I surely hope you are not referring to me, because I would expect you to at least give the simple decency to respond to my opinion directly since you asked for it.  I never said anything about moving the show to your network as being a bad thing for Bitshares or any such nonsense.  So if I am the "random choirmember" in question, then you have completely misinterpreted my opinion. 

FYI, I think the exact opposite of what this "random choirmember" apparently said.  In fact I conveyed as much multiple times. I just said I don't want to work with you on centralized media, and so if this actually happens to be directed at me I think it is ample evidence why my opinion might be the case.  Hopefully this was some other "random choirmember" though, because surely you're not one to be so petty.

One thing is for certain though, this "random choir member" in question probably doesn't sing in the Sunday LTB choir.  ;)
I speak for myself and only myself.

Offline AdamBLevine

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No need to defend me Asenki,  if I wanted to "plug" my projects it seems obvious I'd do it somewhere more useful than here.  If they can't see I was illustrating the non-unique and urgent nature of that particular type of project, they're not listening.

Some of the posters on these forums are hilarious.  Daniel and Invictus make a big deal about how the best idea and execution should win, and yet choir here on the forum just can't help but prickle every time one of the broad archetypical ideas is implemented faster by someone actually concentrating on the problem.  I'll say it again: I'm helping everyone I can to launch a platform and succeed because the more competition the better the featureset of whoever wins the race will be.   

You don't have to believe me, just like another random choirmember came to the amusing conclusion that because I invited the Beyond Bitcoin show built on the forums here (as my repeated suggestion and with my guidance) on our platform with thousands of new listeners, that this is somehow bad for Bitshares. 

Of course, LTB doesn't ask for any ownership, written agreement or rights besides that the content be open sourced.... Once again, not about reality - only about the fact that the choir percieves a threat and attacks.

Email me at adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Offline bitmeat

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Just to clarify I did invite Adam to comment of any platforms he knows about that are doing something similar in this space. Again the thought was more platforms - healthier competition. I was not aware of coin powers prior to this post, but I have no problem with the plug. All I'm saying is I don't view it as a shameless plug, since it is directly related to my request.

With respect to scams I believe the next major funding platform will take this very seriously and find a way to limit that. I am now invested in most of the platforms and am technically at quite a loss. In fact I hold almost no BTC since I have put them all in AGS, XCP, NXT, MSC, MaidSafe you name it. None of these platforms are entirely to my liking, but are the best that's available. I'm also perfectly well aware all of them could flop.

Offline JoeyD

Disclaimer: Before being labeled as echo-chamber or groupthinker, because I dare to disagree, I'm not pro/contra any coin/share and I'm probably one of the persons with the least amount of stake in bitshares compared to other projects, including some of the direct competing ones.

While I am all for competition, the fact that you are advertising your own competing products does not make your comment sound very objective even if you say you are doing so per invitation.

The very first DAC to come out will do exactly what Adam B Levine is apparently trying to create a competitor for and it's called bitsharesME and it will be released before DPoS-pts and way before bitsharesX(T).

Adam did you also provide a number of trustworthy contacts that would have been able to do what you blame Daniel Larimer for not doing? Seeing your concerns, have you tried applying for that position in the Invictus-team yourself? Talk is cheap especially if you are not doing any of the technical work yourself. Imo, you are making light of how difficult it is to find trustworthy people in this scene and I really, really hope it is only because of you being naive. Especially considering how many people are actively trying to scam the Invictus/bitshares-team already and one even successfully making off with their brand and website, which seems to be one of the driving factors of needing to rebrand into bitshares.

I've seen quite a few scammers target your platform(s) or you personally in order to catch a larger amount of people in their plans. For someone who has helped give scammers a voice in the past, you don't come across as being particularly concerned about it, nor does it seem to have made you any more humble or reserved in your statements. I've had people come up to me and boast about how they were able to mislead the stupid masses, proudly explaining in detail a number of successful strategies they pulled of in the past, and I see your platform and you personally as prime targets for people like that. So when you talk about spending funds as lightly as you are doing, that does not particularly inspire a whole lot of confidence.

Offline AdamBLevine

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Commenting at Asenki's request


Asenki has correctly identified my concern - Invictus is the gatekeeper and specifically Daniel is the bottleneck.   I had hoped the Angelshares fund would be used to catalyze the ecosystem by making it clear there was financial incentive for people to build for it. In practice what we've seen it's used to fund company operations, lots of team members attending lots of conferences and the few people who met with Invictus at those conferences and who wanted to fit into a slot Daniel had already defined in his head then get some undefined amount of funding on non-public terms.     How's this working?  Look at the ecosystem, there isn't one.  Just Invictus.

These types of crowdfunding platforms are going to be coming out of the woodwork shortly, I'm working on one myself that uses the Angelshares daily crowdsale model (which is a great incentive structure) at http://coinpowers.com - There is another one that just raised a decent first round (mid six digits) that'll be launching soon.  All of these platforms (the "centralized ones") will have their own coins that give the holders of the coins a share of all successfully launched coins on the platform.
Email me at adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Offline bitmeat

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I disagree that the funds must be entirely in control of Invictus. But that's just me. My point is they have not actually decentralized the funding itself.

Ok, so if not invictus, then who gets to make the final decision about where the money goes?  Should it be you?

Should we do a poll on the forum for who to entrust with the money?  I can make 1000 sockpuppets if you like and send all the money to me for my "project".

Should we just give back the funds to the people who donated?  Ok then, I guess I can donate as much as I want because I get it back anyway.

Bottom line:  People donated with the understanding that Invictus would be managing this money for the benefit of the community on behalf of the community.

Well. I guess what I am proposing is a paradigm shift from what I3 is doing. There is no right or wrong. You are right that AGS works exactly as they set out to do it.

In what I am proposing, you would be voting with your coins and investing in each DAC in portions you are comfortable with.
(fact PTS is closer to that since it is liquid, but you still have no say in which DAC you want to devote funds to)

Then the coin itself which would be liquid and % of the profits for each DAC would go towards development bounties through assurance contracts.

Also to answer your question - DPOS. In fact if you remember originally it was going to be only ONE trustee. I am glad BM moved away from that idea, perhaps partially because of this thread I started:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.msg49002

In fact I have proposed DPOS above before BM "coined the term".
« Last Edit: May 21, 2014, 07:34:23 pm by asenski »

Offline bitmeat

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I disagree that the funds must be entirely in control of Invictus. But that's just me. My point is they have not actually decentralized the funding itself.

Ok, so if not invictus, then who gets to make the final decision about where the money goes?  Should it be you?

Should we do a poll on the forum for who to entrust with the money?  I can make 1000 sockpuppets if you like and send all the money to me for my "project".

Should we just give back the funds to the people who donated?  Ok then, I guess I can donate as much as I want because I get it back anyway.

Bottom line:  People donated with the understanding that Invictus would be managing this money for the benefit of the community on behalf of the community.

Well. I guess what I am proposing is a paradigm shift from what I3 is doing. There is no right or wrong. You are right that AGS works exactly as they set out to do it.

In what I am proposing, you would be voting with your coins and investing in each DAC in portions you are comfortable with.
(fact PTS is closer to that since it is liquid, but you still have no say in which DAC you want to devote funds to)

Then the coin itself which would be liquid and % of the profits for each DAC would go towards development bounties through assurance contracts.

Offline Agent86

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I disagree that the funds must be entirely in control of Invictus. But that's just me. My point is they have not actually decentralized the funding itself.

Ok, so if not invictus, then who gets to make the final decision about where the money goes?  Should it be you?

Should we do a poll on the forum for who to entrust with the money?  I can make 1000 sockpuppets if you like and send all the money to me for my "project".

Should we just give back the funds to the people who donated?  Ok then, I guess I can donate as much as I want because I get it back anyway.

Bottom line:  People donated with the understanding that Invictus would be managing this money for the benefit of the community on behalf of the community.

Offline bitmeat

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I foresee a platform that would allow investors to control their funds. That is fully decentralized, and goes beyond what's in the link as in it protects how much the funded DAC can spend per day and allow investors to pull out at any point they like. I suppose there is no point in me trying to convince I3 to go towards that, nor the investors since you appear to be happy with the current setup. I've been putting this off for some time, but I will have to write some white papers and do some presentations. Ideally I am looking to create a workgroup to get together and solve all these issues if there is enough interest. I have worked out a lot of the details and started as a joke but as I was diving deeper I saw it was all possible.

Offline bitmeat

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I disagree that the funds must be entirely in control of Invictus. But that's just me. My point is they have not actually decentralized the funding itself.

Offline Agent86

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So what I was getting at and I believe what Adam is getting at is something along the lines of this:

http://www.coindesk.com/new-decentralized-crowdfunding-platform-reshape-bitcoin-landscape/

Invictus has captured the PTS/BTC funds, but has FULL control over what gets funded. However I was hoping this would be a platform where if someone has an idea and the investors believe in it, they would be able to crowd fund it with the allocated funds represented by their AGS/PTS.

I do understand that's not how Invictus business model works. But it is food for thought.

I think ‘assurance contracts’ may be useful for some things.  Such as a very large project or expense.  If you want to do a project, you still need to convince people to give you money and trust you with it, you are just promising if you don't raise enough for the project you will give everyone back their money.  You probably don't need any special technology to make this happen if people take you at your word.

For instance you can say "I want to buy TV spot for bitshares during the super bowl"  Anyone who supports this can send money here: XXXX.  If I don't raise the $500k needed by this date: X/X/X, I will send everyone their money back.

That is all there really is to it.  An automated way of sending back the money if the goal isn't reached is nice, but I don't think it's earth shattering.

Here is my suggestion for community fund raising:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=4660.0

BTW:  The funds donated to the AGS address must stay in control of Invictus.  I'm not sure if this was what you were getting at or not, but if everyone who donated could independently decide to take back the money that they donated to give it to whoever they want or spend it however they thought best it wouldn't work at all

Now if AGS became liquid then you could give away your AGS shares to support projects because they are yours to give.

Offline Simeon II

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To summarize, aside from DACs which could have their own funding methods, we are going to need a ton of tools through an assurance contract.

e.g. MaidSafe has set aside 15% of the funds they raised for that.

We could do better if we let people direct 15% of their investment towards efforts they feel are most vital.

+5%

Offline sschechter

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"In case anybody is wondering, I went by Lighthouse on the forums........... "

This sounds like AdamBLevine has hands involved with this.  A technological based solution to gripes with AGS.  Congrats!
BTSX: sschechter
PTS: PvBUyPrDRkJLVXZfvWjdudRtQgv1Fcy5Qe

Offline bitmeat

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To summarize, aside from DACs which could have their own funding methods, we are going to need a ton of tools through an assurance contract.

e.g. MaidSafe has set aside 15% of the funds they raised for that.

We could do better if we let people direct 15% of their investment towards efforts they feel are most vital.

Offline bitmeat

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http://www.coindesk.com/new-decentralized-crowdfunding-platform-reshape-bitcoin-landscape/

This is quite inspiring approach.

I think Invictus should allow some % (if not most) of the funds raised by AGS holders to go towards tasks the community wants done. It is their money, they should be allowed to invest in projects they feel are important for the bitshares community.

e.g. If I am a developer and create a fancy UI trading platform that handles BTS X and need more funds to finish it, AGS holders should be allowed to fund me.

In fact there is always space for more than one implementations of the same problem, and it would breed a healthy competition.

Instead we wait for I3 to hire the right person, and *hope* it turns out well. Which even if they do everything right, it's nice to hedge our bets and again - to have a competitive environment.

Again I know I may sometimes come off criticizing or FUD (or even frustrated), but it's only because I have a vision and designs that are major improvements and I would like to see happen. I actually have huge respect for what I3 is doing, I just think that they are somewhat limiting themselves by trying to build an eco-system while maintaining full control of its funding.

This would also really raise confidence in the ecosystem and attract talent, who otherwise might not be interested in participating.

Thoughts? Comments? Would you like to be able to vote with your AGS on what gets developed to help the ecosystem?