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RE: Questions from a BitShares Newbie
Most problems with Bitshares are not in the technology but in the community. There have been or still are some toxic people involved. That's why the marketing sucks, that's why Dan was pretty much forced to leave the project.
Probably the best thing would be if BTS price would go really low so a group of real business people could buy a large stake and then they could control the development.
I've seen some examples of "toxic people" here on Steemit as well.
Would you be brave enough to name them, based on your perspective? Are they witnesses or committee members? Without an authoritarian hierarchy which can smash opposition or make it exceedingly uncomfortable for them to remain in the community, bad apples will always show up and bother others. The trick, I think, is figuring out how to build safeguards into the protocols themselves. That, and the entire community taking a stand against abusive behavior through naming, shaming, and ostracizing those who do it.
Maybe the worst group was – and maybe still is – the people I called "antidilution gang". When the price was going down, they wanted to stop all worker contracts so that less BTS would be liquid. That was a big reason why the development has been almost non-existent after Dan left. And a big reason for Dan leaving was that he (and Cryptonomex) had used all the initial funding and they had even funded some of the development with their own money. There wasn't anything left and they couldn't get more from Bitshares DAC or community.
Those people didn't understand that Bitshares was supposed to function as a DAC and fund its own development. Bitshares is doomed with individuals like them as big shareholders. They had too much power and probably still have (I haven't checked for a while).
I don't think I'll remember all the names anymore without searching a lot of old topics at Bitsharestalk, but here are a few:
I was quite vocal against them year ago when things got heated. But unfortunately in that point a lot of good people had already left the project so nothing happened. Then I left, too, because Steem was launched.
Thank you so much for sharing that with me. It's hard to summarize years of experience within a community, but I think you did a great job.
When I look at the price charts of bitshares, I can see why so many people were so against causing further dilution in their time and investments. Some people think really strategically and long term while others are interested in the here and now. If so many people were angrily losing money, I can see how it would get very difficult to keep doing things which cause them to lose even more money. It's not an easy situation at all.
As a business owner, I realize not everyone wants to be a business owner. Some people prefer to be workers who enjoy a stable paycheck and security. They'd love to share in the profits but have no interest in being on the hook with risk for losses.
If I try to put myself into a similar situation... I wonder what I would do. If Steemit INC, for example, was to sell a lot of STEEM to fund development driving the price of STEEM down around a penny or two, I'd be pretty frustrated by that. Also, another hard thing to consider, is once a cryptocurrency gains a perceived value, due to the psychological effects of anchoring, it can be very difficult to re-value that token without significant investment. That said, if that low price of STEEM was relatively temporary (maybe a couple years max), I can see the long term vision enough to think it would be a good buying opportunity to double down and hope for a big win in the future.
What are some worker contracts (or work in generally) that you feel needs to happen to really take BitShares to the next level?
Thanks again for your time. I really do appreciate hearing the back history without having to spend weeks reading through the forums. :)
Most of the antidilution gang are Chinese which caused a lot of communication problems. Their English was bad and they just couldn't articulate their points or plans so clearly that other people would have understood them. That prevented the community from making any coherent plans that everybody could stand and act for. The system got paralyzed.
There were lots of great lessons to learn. Decentralization is not a miracle drug that makes everything magically better. It makes cooperation and decision making much harder and that can cause serious harm for a project.
I'm not sure what would be the best way to get Bitshares rising again, I haven't been following what's happening in there. Now that Dan is working on a new platform, I'll wait and see what it will be about. If it's a general smartcontract platform that can easily implement financial contracts, it might make sense to use it to replace Bitshares.
Wow! I have been looking for answers for the reason behind Bitshares problems for months now. No one was brave enough to explain it like @samupaha did here.
So, I thank you very much, @samupaha. And I thank @lukestokes for openning the subject.
BTW, I know I am writing this 5 months after the article was published, but it seems that the same problems mentioned here are still valid.
This comment has received a 5.40 % upvote from @bellyrub thanks to: @sadekj.