Here's a draft article I've had laying around for a while.
I haven't published it anywhere yet because:

1.  I got busy and forgot about it until some other current threads made me think of it.
2.  It mentions many other chains and that always generates controversy.
3.  I've been saving it for just the right occasion, perhaps my retirement from the industry in 2037.

So, at the obvious risk of upstaging myself if and when I actually do publish it somewhere, I'll preview it here (just among friends) so you can:

1.  Use it to stimulate the discussions going on in the other threads here and here.
2.  Tell me where I've missed the mark or have risked offending some other community.
3.  Suggest where I might best be published - if anywhere.  (Newsletter, Blog Article, Inner city graffiti wall...?)

Stay tuned, it will take me a minute or two to format it for this venue...

[Introducing Cryptonomex International]

Introducing Cryptonomex International

The dawn of a new era in cross-community blockchain partnerships.

Cryptonomex (CNX), a Delaware company based in Blacksburg, Virginia is pleased to announce the first of several new Joint Ventures. 

Cryptonomex, International (CNI) will be based in Amsterdam, Netherlands as an independent consulting and engineering services company for blockchain applications leveraging multiple leading blockchain technologies for public and private applications as well as providing training, local governance, and regulatory compliance services. 

CNI will be cofounded by CEO Manuela Krull-Mancinelli and CFO Ronald Kramer who are seasoned experts in Finance and IT. They will be bringing strong business development expertise, contacts and resources to the task of proliferating blockchain technology and the global Cryptonomex brand.   Some of our best known European BitSharestalk.org heroes have already joined in the ground-floor founding activities.

Manuela and Ronald will leverage Cryptonomex expertise and focus on finding investors, clients and partners for new blockchain applications, with an emphasis on forging partnerships with other blockchain communities interested in cooperation more than competition.

So, what does this mean to you?

•   If you are a talented developer (or team) looking for full or part time employment leveraging multiple blockchain technologies, CNI wants to know all about you.

•   If you have a mature idea looking for funding, CNI may want to team with you to find funding for your project.

•   If you have funding and are looking for good investments, CNI will be preparing a portfolio of ready-to-go projects ranging from small but lucrative Fee Backed Assets (FBA) to full-scale multi-chain startup companies.

•   If you have a funded idea and are looking for someone with the skills to implement it, CNI can put a team together to make it happen on a contract basis.

•   If you are a steely-eyed BitsharesHODLer, you finally have a funded group of full time professionals looking to leverage the Graphene ecosystem while seeking synergies with other leading communities.

•   If you have a nose for business leads and the ability to refer potential clients to us on commission, CNI would love to have you out there scouring the globe for opportunities.

•   And if you just wanted more decentralization and professionalism in the management and marketing of BitShares and the Blockchain Universe Writ Large, grab some popcorn and a cold beer!

Meanwhile, Bytemaster and the original Virginia team of Core Developers at CNX will serve as an independent common technology laboratory for CNI and other startups on our drawing board.  They will be working on new breakthroughs and serving as mentors and reinforcements to the new profit centers that CNI will be incubating. 

This upgrade permits private transfers between accounts.

Fees paid to do these stealthy transfers go to holders of the "STEALTH" Fee Backed Asset (FBA).

Rumor has it that the investing sponsor of this FBA will be putting some of them up for sale, so be watching for that.

Discussion occurs here:  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21500.msg279820.html#msg279820

Stan

[The Benefits of Proof of Work]

The Benefits of Proof of Work

Posted by Daniel Larimer on  Jan 4, 2016.

I have long been of the opinion that proof-of-stake is superior to proof-of-work. Today I would like to challenge my own beliefs against the lessons I have learned from over a year of experience with proof-of-stake. In the past I have argued that proof-of-work is wasteful and that the same end result can be achieved much cheaper with proof-of-stake. Today I would like to consider if there is some value to proof-of-work.

Read the rest here...

[Why I like Ethereum]

Why I like Ethereum

Posted by Daniel Larimer on  December 30, 2015.

I have said many negative things about Ethereum in the past, but today I would like to change that. Due to recent disputes within the BitShares ecosystem I have come to appreciate a certain qualities of Ethereum that the BitShares community could learn from.

Read the rest here...

[Winter Storm Warnings]

It's been a bit quiet lately.  How could anyone be expected to know what we've been up to behind the scenes with the BitShares Real Time Blockchain Platform?

As a public service to remedy this, we now give you Winter Storm Warnings.

These are projects we have cooking likely to take you by storm in the coming year as serious entrepreneurs deploy their long labors of love.

Watch this thread.  Winter storms are unpredictable and one could come blowing in at any time.

[Here are some new opportunities to own individual features and the revenue they earn. You can keep all the feature's profits for yourself or sell some of it off as a Fee Backed Asset (FBA) that gives the holder(s) a share in that feature's profit stream. Forever. Or until you sell them in the decentralized market.]

Here are some new opportunities to own individual features and the revenue they earn.  
You can keep all the feature's profits for yourself or
sell some of it off as a Fee Backed Asset (FBA) that gives the holder(s) a share in that feature's profit stream.  
Forever.
Or until you sell them in the decentralized market.

This emphasizes that BitShares has evolved into a general purpose platform for quickly implementing new business models that take advantage of the products and services offered by other businesses that have located on the same platform.  That makes it more than a coin, more that an exchange inside a coin, and more than just the OpenLedger.info network of decentralized exchanges.  Now other business models can play too.  All on one real time blockchain based business platform.

We've only been talking about this for a week or so and are already starting to get a nice set of FBAs up for sale (although not quite millions yet).  Once this gets going, I expect there will be a lot of new revenue streams to own. Each FBA seems much more interesting than a typical meme-based altcoin that pays nothing but hope of speculative appreciation.  

You can jump into the whole discussion here:  Millions of Features, Features for Me

It starts out as follows:

There are far too many opportunities out there and prioritizing new features for BitShares becomes very challenging.  Polls/Voting, etc are not good means of prioritizing. Profit is perhaps the most important means of prioritizing.

So I would like to take some time to outline a plan I am devising for getting features lined up and prioritized based upon the concept of Fee Backed Assets (FBA).  For each of the following features I will create a UIA that represents stake in the future fees generated from that feature.  Community members / "investors" can place bids in an open auction to buy stake in these features.   These bids will represent current demand for the feature and help establish a price.   Once the price and depth get to a level that we feel justifies building the feature, we will sell the UIA into the buy wall.    We will keep the proceeds of this purchase locked up until the feature is delivered.  When the feature is delivered, the UIA will be converted into a FBA and the proceeds of the sale will become our private property.  

In addition to creating the UIA we will also create a corresponding worker proposal that is symbolic of shareholder support for enabling the feature.  The worker proposal must be funded before we will sell into the buy wall of the UIA.  

BitShares stakeholders will now have price information that indicates how the market values each potential feature.  This price information can in turn be used to inform them on which features they should vote for.   A highly valued feature means that the market believes that feature will generate significant ROI and therefore be profitable for BitShares holders.  

As a company, Cryptonomex is interested in working on the most profitable features.  Those features that we can sell for the highest price will get the highest priority.  

Examples of features for which we will be creating a UIA and/or worker:

0. Stealth Transactions
1. Bond Market (Poloniex Style Lending)
2. Prediction Market (Auger Style)
3. Ethereum (or something similar) VM integration
4. Liquidity Incentivisation
5. Gambling Systems

The assumption for all features is that a working reference GUI will be provided to make the features accessible.  Each feature will be fully documented with a detailed design complete with UI wireframes prior to Cryptonomex taking any money.  We want to ensure that the community knows what they are bidding on and to maximize the price we can get for each feature.   Bidding can start early (prior to detailed documentation), and users can cancel their bids if they change their minds prior to us locking them in.  

So to get this started, please place your bids for the MAKER asset which will earn 20% of all liquidity incentivization rewards if the Liquidity Incentivization proposal is approved and executed.  Lets see how the community actually values this potential feature and then move on from there.

Millions of features, features for me
Millions of features, features for fees

Look out!

 

Peaches == Features

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvAnQqVJ3XQ

Movin' to the country,
Gonna get a lot of features
Features come from a can
They were put there by Dan
On a farm far from town
If I had my little way
I'd get more features every day

[BitShares Roadmap]

This unofficial roadmap was put together by leading community members showing a lot of the pending projects and who is working on them.

BitShares Roadmap

It's still a work in progress, but it already collects a bunch of info in one place.

One of the BitShares witnesses got voted out for some reason.
Here's his swan song...

Now that I'm voted out I can share a secret  

Graphene has been so rock-solid that I was able to scale back my infrastructure to running a single t2.micro (plus a physical machine at home and another t2 ready to spin up in seconds).
Even on this low-end setup CPU utilization is close to zero, RAM is safely at around 60% and no latency issues.
During the two-months I've only had 33 missed blocks, all before the vesting-pay-bug fix. I now only scale up the machines during build.

Now, some witnesses are maintaining several four-core, 8GB machines, and you might think that it's somehow more secure, stable or scalable but the thing is, they have to dump their earned BTS to pay the bill. Meanwhile, I've never sold any BTS and am still able to easily scale up if/when blockchain usage picks up.

Graphene has exceeded expectations in terms of stability and footprint so much, that we ended up overpaying the witnesses. We can easily have twice as many witnesses or slash witness pay by half. And if the Blockchain starts demanding more resources we can always reevaluate.

NOTE:  This was originally published in another thread as part of our ongoing troll-spray program, but since most serious folks probably don't even look at those disinformation threads, I thought this was worth repeating here in slightly expanded form.  Apologies if you've seen a shorter version of this already.




It's been a gradual process but, I think we can say the BitShares is now sufficiently independent of its Cryptonomex developers to be treated as an emancipated adult company.  

Over the past weekend, the elected governing committee handled a hot issue without even involving Cryptonomex.  (This is not to say that everybody is happy with how they handled it, but that will always be the case in the course of human affairs.)  

Bitshareholders are now free to explore all sorts of exciting new ways to grow their business.  Cryptonomex is still available to provide support, but bitshareholders make the decisions about what gets done.  Two more software companies recently announced their availability as developers so BitShares is no longer dependent only on us.  That means we can be fired from our various upgrade projects if the owners aren't happy.

There are now several ways BitShares the Unmanned Company can raise funds to keep adding polish and features:

1.  The referral program encourages entrepreneurs to add features that attract new users.  Entrepreneurs who use this method are eligible to keep 80% of the revenues from the new users they bring in.  The business they grow is the business they own - and for this the BitSharesholders charge 20% for maintaining the world's most cost effective blockchain platform.

2.  The new Fee Backed Assets allow an entrepreneur to add a new feature and have 80% of its fees automatically routed to them and/or to the folks who paid for it's development. The other 20%, once again, go to the BitSharesholders' Reserve Pool (i.e. the company savings account).  Fee Backed Assets then trade like any other asset, giving their holders a share of the revenue earned by the feature(s) they helped to build.

3.  If there is a feature everyone wants for the General Good, BitSharesholders can vote to take it out of a blockchain-controlled Reserve Pool.  All blockchain revenue goes into this pool (and out of circulation) increasing the value of the remaining shares.  So far, this pool of savings has been growing since 2.0 was released, meaning the BitShares is now a profitable enterprise.

And all the source code is open for use by any third party developer to extend the platform or build businesses on top of it.

So, whatever those poor troll's may think of us is of little consequence.  
BitShares is an emancipated adult unmanned company.
It will become whatever the investors and entrepreneurs of this industry make it.

In this case, I'm talking about developing or investing in a developer to add a new revenue generating application to any one of the several general purpose blockchain platforms you can probably think of.

The general idea is that the investor/developer builds the DAPP and offers to plug it into the platform and share its revenue with the platform owners.  If the platform makes it easier for entrepreneurs to do this, then all kinds of new business models are likely to get implemented on that platform, making it more attractive for others to use and therefore more attractive for other entrepreneurs to take up residence there.

You can either propose your own DAPP or implement one that is already on the platform's to-do list.

For example, over on the BitShares platform, we just had an investor offer to pay $45K for a developer to build a general purpose stealth transfer utility.  His proposal was to have it charge a fee for using that individual function and to share that fee with owners of the network (BitShareholders).

Others immediately started innovating, and there are now quite a few other ideas ranging from (a) automated crowd funding that funds a function and returns its profits to the crowdfunders, to (z) special purpose bonds to be sold by a developer that return a yield earned by the feature to the bond holders with interest.

You can see the whole discussion on these threads:

New Stealth Transfer Worker
The General Theory of Privately Funded Blockchain Features

Anyhow, if you are a single developer or a small investor looking for byte-sized ways to do or fund a piece of work you think will earn you a long term revenue stream, the options available to just got more interesting. 

Now you don't have to build and launch a whole new blockchain just to realize your vision of a single killer feature.

Develop your DAPP for one platform, then expand to others just like Adobe develops for Windows and MacOS.  Or leave it to others to reap those revenue streams from other platforms, if you are more tribally inclined.

Listen Right Here

Adam sits down with Daniel Larimer, leader of the Bitshares project. They talk about the new release, the lessons learned over the last nearly three years and what comes next.

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-260-new-growth

Only halfway through.. great discussion so far. Great primer for anyone looking to catch up on recent developments!

[BitShares 2.0 Worker Primer]

Thanks to maqifrnswa for the inside story

BitShares 2.0 Worker Primer

BitShares 2.0 Worker Primer
This is a primer for those interested in being a worker or want to know what one is.

Introduction:

BitShares 2 separates responsibilities and incentives activities that are beneficial to the network, thus acknowledging different skill sets and interested community members to have incentives to contribute in the most appropriate way.

• Witnesses are paid for maintaining the back-bone of the network.
• Committee members are unpaid volunteers that organize the community and propose changes to the network.
• Marketers are paid in referral fees.
• Workers are paid for whatever they propose and do.

Each of the above (except Marketers) requires users to vote for the people, proposals, and/or changes. Those with sufficient approval will be compensated.

Workers are the "catch all" group where if you have an idea for something that could improve the network, you can get "paid" by the network to do it. Organizing meet-ups, developing a new tool or feature for the community, and maintaining websites and infrastructure (e.g. the mumble server team or linux distribution) are all examples of things workers may do.


How to Create a Worker

Workers are currently created with the cli_wallet with the following command syntax

Code:

create_worker owner_account work_begin_date work_end_date daily_pay name url worker_settings broadcast

example, awesomebitsharer is creating a one day worker starting Oct 28 and will get paid 1 BTS/day (vesting in 1 day) to make an android app. The first command won't broadcast, this will just check:

Code:

create_worker "awesomebitsharer" "2015-10-28T00:00:00" "2015-10-29T00:00:00" 10000 "BitShares Android App Development" "http://bitsharesandroid.org/worker_proposal.html" {"type" : "vesting", "pay_vesting_period_days" : 1}

Notes:
the url should point to something describing your proposal: what will you do, by when, and for how much?
for the worker properties you can choose:
"type" can be "refund" (return your pay back to the pool to be used for future projects), "vesting" (pay that you pay yourself), or "burn" (destroys your pay thus reducing share supply, equivalent to share buy-back of a company stock)
"pay_vesting_period_days" is the integer number of days you set for vesting. Some people don't want workers to withdraw and sell large sums of BTS immediately, as it puts sell pressure on BTS. Also, if you require vesting, you have "skin in the game" and thus an incentive to improve BTS value.
Pay is pay per day (not hour or maintenance period) and is in units of 1/10000 BTS (the precision of BTS)

To generate a worker proposal, add the word "true" to the end of the command as in:

Code:

create_worker "awesomebitsharer" "2015-10-28T00:00:00" "2015-10-29T00:00:00" 10000 "BitShares Android App Development" "http://bitsharesandroid.org/worker_proposal.html" {"type" : "vesting", "pay_vesting_period_days" : 1} true

How to see proposals on the chain

Since there is no support in the UI yet, go to http://cryptofresh.com/ and look at the worker proposal chart.
You also can inspect all the objects 1.4.* (e.g. "get_object 1.4.0")

Code:

unlocked >>> get_object 1.14.4
get_object 1.14.4
[{
    "id": "1.14.4",
    "worker_account": "1.2.22517",
    "work_begin_date": "2015-10-21T11:00:00",
    "work_end_date": "2015-11-21T11:00:00",
    "daily_pay": 1000000000,
    "worker": [
      1,{
        "balance": "1.13.235"
      }
    ],
    "vote_for": "2:73",
    "vote_against": "2:74",
    "total_votes_for": "14632377015617",
    "total_votes_against": 0,
    "name": "bitasset-fund-pool",
    "url": "https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19317.0.html"
  }
]

How to Vote for a Worker

Currently the GUI doesn't have an interface, but you an vote using the CLI:

Code:

update_worker_votes your-account {"vote_for":["proposal-id"]} true

for example:

Code:

update_worker_votes "awesomebitsharer" {"vote_for":["1.4.0"]} true

you can also vote against or abstain (remove your vote for or against)

Code:

update_worker_votes your-account {"vote_against":["proposal-id"]} true
update_worker_votes your-account {"vote_abstain":["proposal-id"]} true

How Workers Get Paid

Every hour the worker budget is processed and workers are paid in full order of the number of votes for minus the number of votes against. The last worker to get paid will be paid with whatever is left, so may receive partial payment. The daily budget can be estimated by inspecting the most recent budget object 2.13.*
for example:

Code:

new >>> get_object 2.13.361
get_object 2.13.361
[{
    "id": "2.13.361",
    "time": "2015-10-28T15:00:00",
    "record": {
      "time_since_last_budget": 3600,
      "from_initial_reserve": "106736452914941",
      "from_accumulated_fees": 15824269,
      "from_unused_witness_budget": 2250000,
      "requested_witness_budget": 180000000,
      "total_budget": 1520913100,
      "witness_budget": 180000000,
      "worker_budget": 1340913100,
      "leftover_worker_funds": 0,
      "supply_delta": 1502838831
    }
  }
]

So the daily budget is worker_budget*24=1340913100*24=32181914400 (in units of 1/10000 BTS, or 321,8191.44 BTS). There is currently a maximum daily worker pay of 500k BTS, and this can be found using the "get_global_properties" command in the cli_wallet

Here are the full details
Every second, [ 17/(2^32) * reserve fund ] is allocated for witnesses and workers. The reserve fund is maximum number of BTS available less those currently in circulation. This is defined in:
https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/blob/f85dec1c23f6bf9259ad9f15311b2e4aac4f9d44/libraries/chain/include/graphene/chain/config.hpp

Every hour the total available reserve fund is calculated by finding how many BTS are available to be distributed and how many BTS will be returned to the reserve fund (i.e., "burnt") during the next maintenance interval.

First find how many BTS have not been distributed:

Code:

from_initial_reserve = max_supply - current supply of BTS

from:
max_supply: get_object 1.3.0
current_supply: get_object 2.3.0


then modify it by adding the accumulated fees and witness budget remaining (i.e., 1.5 BTS per block is budgeted, so budget remaining is 1.5 BTS * (number of blocks left in maintenance period+blocks missed by witnesses))  in this maintenance cycle (they will be added to the "reserve fund" permanently at maintenance)

Code:

updated reserve fund = from_initial_reserve +  from_accumulated_fees + from_unused_witness_budget

variables all from: get_object 2.13.* (choose the most recent one, for example)

Next calculate how much is available to be spent on workers and witnesses is:

Code:

total_budget = (updated reserve fund)*(time_since_last_budget)*17/(2^32)

rounded up to the nearest integer

Ok, now to find how much workers will get in this budget period (1 hour), you find the smaller of the available pay AFTER subtracting witness budget from the total_budget OR the worker_budget_per_day/24 from "get_global_properties"

Code:

worker_budget=min(total_budget-witness_budget,worker_budget_per_day/24)

That is how much per hour allocated for all workers. NOW you rank each worker and pay them one hours worth of pay in order or # votes.

[What do you guys think of this? (Relevant for BTC, NXT, ETH etc.)]

What do you guys think of this?  (Relevant for BTC, NXT, ETH etc.)

Hi everyone,

Metaexchange is the original bitshares gateway, so far we have processed 2720 BTC across 5 markets and we are the first and only instant exchange to offer limit orders, and the only instant exchange with integrated market makers to offer you the best prices.

We are now offering a chance to share in our success: METAFEES UIA!

The METAFEES asset represents the fees we generate from running metaexchange. Each share is worth 0.005% of the fees we generate. There are 12000 in total, 2000 are held by monsterer and shentist and backed with the already existing liquidity of 40 BTC. We hope to raise 200 BTC in total, pricing each share at 0.02 BTC.

We will buy back the METAFEES asset monthly with 50% of our collected fees, thereby raising the value of asset.

The fundraiser will run for 60 days, starting today!
 
Fees
To date we have processed 2720 BTC of transactions, resulting in fees of 8.16 BTC and we expect this to increase dramatically as we add extra liquidity, more markets, Bitshares UIA coin tokens and margin trading.

With only 40 BTC of bootstrapped liquidity we made trading fees of 8.16 BTC, so we're very excited about what we can do with 200 BTC!

Buyback
Every month we will publish the earned fees and we will announce in advance how many METAFEES we will buy back in BTC, NXT, ETH etc. This will lead to a constant buy pressure for the METAFEES asset, raising its value.

Our plans
We will use the funds raised only to increase the liquidity in the markets that we offer and to add new Bitshares UIAs representing each of the coin types we support, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Nxt, to give you a chance to trade these tokens on the Bitshares DEX with full redeemability to the real thing. So each investment that you make is investing in Bitshares itself as well as metaexchange. Further, we will add Bitshares DEX market markers (using our propitiatory technology) to these new UIA token markets adding the liquidity that traders demand. For example we will create (BTC, NXT, ETH and any new coin we provide as an UIA) along with a market maker in the primary BTS market for each one.

We aim to become the number one instant exchange. We will achieve this by offering the best available liquidity in the markets we serve, combined with ground breaking features. We are already the only instant exchange in the world to offer limit orders and relative limit orders without requiring an account or registration.

In the future we plan to offer leveraged margin trading, which will allow anyone posting collateral to go long or short on their favourite coin with leverage without requiring an account. The funds we raise will allow us to achieve this by lending out our liquidity to margin traders, for a small lending fee (which will be paid, in part to holders of METAFEES) and our standard trading fee.

We will also share 50% of the fees we generate through UIA trading, any withdrawal fees, and Bitshares referrals.

Competition
Our main competition is shapeshift.io who recently raised £1.2M in funding for 30% of their business, valuing them at £4M. They work using the reseller model, buying their inventories from major exchanges after each trade. This model relies on the liquidity of the exchanges they use and also has the associated counterparty risk of having a float in the exchange's wallet. Metaexchange works by making markets - we are a liquidity provider and as such, have the potential to offer far superior spreads without the associated counterparty risk.

Risk
As with any investment, there is associated risk. Particularly with digital currency services, the risk of being hacked is the primary concern. We use best practices in security, particularly with site/wallet separation and server hardening and have a running $500 bounty available for any discovered exploit. Even so, this risk is still present. Also, the regulatory environment could change unfavourably towards crypto-currency only exchanges. There is also market making risk; if our losses from market making exceed the amount we charge in fees, there will be a gap in fee payments.
If for any reason, metaexchange shuts down, we will use our liquidity pool to buy outstanding METAFEES back.

How to invest
You can purchase the METAFEES asset which represents our shares, initially on the Bitshares DEX (priced in BTS) and later on metaexchange itself priced in ETH, BTC and NXT, once we finish out Bitshares 2.0 integration.

The price of METAFEES in each market is calculated to have the same value as if you purchased from the BTC market. We have multiple markets to buy from because we have multiple market makers in metaexchange - for example, if you buy METAFEES using BTS, you will contribute toward ours BTS/BTC market.

METAFEES are listed on the Bitshares DEX, market: METAFEES/BTS

https://bitshares.openledger.info/#/exchange/trade/METAFEES_BTS

Any questions, please post them here, thanks for reading!

monsterer/shentist

[MUSE]

Our second real-time Graphene^TM powered blockchain makes its debut on Monday.

MUSE

A BLOCKCHAIN Specifically Tailored For The Music Industry

brought to you by PeerTracks and

I just made it back from the Blockchain Summit in Shanghai to Half Mile High Meadows in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia last night.

First off, the part of Shanghai I saw, from the airport to the Hyatt on the Bund, is spectacular.  It reminded me of New York only more colorful and friendlier.  

I also concluded, based on an exhaustive scientific sample, that China has more smart people than we have people.

I would like to name all the folks who made my visit there so pleasant, but I'm afraid I might leave someone out!  Nevertheless, special thanks to the DACPLAY team and "David Lee" for escorting me everywhere and making me feel like a visiting dignitary.  

I also much appreciate the efforts of Bo Shen to give me opportunities to raise the visibility of BitShares and Cryptonomex with, egad, four opportunities to speak:

Day 1, AM:  A panel discussion on Scalability in front of an ocean of attendees in the main auditorium.
Day 1, PM:  A panel discussion on Digital Assets in front on that same beach.
Day 2, AM:  A invitation only technical session on scalability co-moderated by Vitalik.
Day 2, PM:  A invitation only session with commodity brokers co-moderated by, um, me.

I couldn't have even hoped for more exposure.

My unifying theme for all four sessions was that industry growth would be greatly enhanced if we started moving onto common blockchains rather than continuing the "altcoin" mentality of a separate stovepipe blockchain for every asset.  Community Brands should be free to upgrade to shared Platforms that serve like "operating systems" for digital assets.  This would allow them to interact on a common ledger with all the infrastructure services provided for the same reasons that Windows/MacOS/Linux operating systems exist.  I used Ethereum and Graphene as examples of two such OS platforms - one focusing on rapid prototyping flexibility and the other on industrial strength performance.  

In the next two posts, I'll provide a transcript of my remarks during during two panel discussions on October 15, 2015.  These are taken from a pocket recorder I sneaked onto the stage which unfortunately only picked up my own powerful, orator quality voice.  So the other panelists have not been transcribed and my recollection of the actual moderator questions is only approximate.

Enjoy.

[Forbes on OpenLedger:]

Someone (ok, Toke) asked how BitShares was going to attract users earlier this week.
I told him to watch for a Forbes article on that subject by the time I get back from the Shanghai Blockchain Summit next week.

None of these are what I was talking about.  

Forbes on OpenLedger:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2015/10/10/openledgers-crypto-financial-platform-officially-launching-as-central-bank-interest-revealed/

CCN on Identabit:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/entrepreneurs-plan-identabit-identity-based-bitcoin-alternative/

Baystreet on Remittio using the bitshares backbone:
http://www.baystreet.ca/viewarticle.aspx?id=432621

EDIT: BUT THIS IS!

[OpenLedger Forbes Article]

OpenLedger Forbes Article
provides lots of links and details.

We got lucky last Friday when Bytemaster went into an extended riff on the reasoning behind a whole lot of the thinking behind BitShares.

Here's the whole delightful transcript of his global press conference (aka hangout) which is even more edifying than usual.

Many thanks to thisisausername for the effort to produce this transcript from the recording at beyondbitcoin.org.
Original Post

WARNING:  Only open minded people should bother to read this impromptu magnum opus.  You are sure to have your horizons expanded.  
If you already are committed to the groupthink of some other cryptotribe, no worries.  We're from an alternate universe.

[Migration Guide]

This documentation is under development and may be helpful to you in the upcoming October 13 Pitch Fork.

(It should be ready by then.)

Your constructive comments on how we can improve it will be appreciated.

Stan

Hey there,

As some of you already know, I am currently writing some documentation. I would love some input with respect to the
Migration Guide here:
http://docs.bitshares.eu/migration/

In the end, we should have this thing finished a few days before the launch.

Please tell me:
* what is missing
* what needs to be stated more clearly
* how the migration can be made easier for the people to understand
* is everything correct?

Thanks for your input