Hate to tell you, but I was an exodus investor as well. I'm honestly a bit confused why you're so fired up over this all. Wow, relax.

I've already answered your other rantings earlier. I'll keep it at that.

Thanks for the balanced opinion, which you stated without namecalling. I agree with you. Nothing I had said was to imply JR's coins should be snatched from him. Only that he may see the benefit of contributing some to help his project become a reality. Especially if he plans on not becoming involved full-time in the project.

Please go back to your troll-hole with those ad-hominem attacks. I'll let the last 5 pages of conversation in this thread speak for itself.

If I had a shit attitude about things, I would be whining and complaining and calling people names, and not offering any solutions to help. I'm not doing that.

At the end of the day, I think we all have the same goal, which is to have this project be successful for the future of digital currencies, and make money in the process. Like I said, JR bought those coins fair and square. That bit after that was my opinion (I even prefixed it as such). Everything else I've written on this thread has been my opinion as well. But, I have put forward solid solutions for some of the issues the community has seen. What have you done, beyond trade your MSC around and call me names?

David, this is a good start! Thanks for the website updates, and adding in the additional resources.

Beyond this, the main failings of this project (as I see it) is how it's currently organized. Here's what else I would suggest:

* The board needs to be run like an executive committee. This means that each individual has a title, e.g. CTO, CEO, CFO, VP of Partnerships, etc. with clearly defined responsibilities. This allows for very clear lines of delineation of responsibility, and prevents people "hiding" behind some generic "Board Member" title. If I'm the CTO and the project is lacking clear technology leadership, it will show, and the fingers will be pointing at me. For the given role the member has, they need to be seen as the "captain" of that ship. By this I mean, that even though the captain may have a boss in the admiral, the captain is boss of his ship, and if an admiral gets on a captain's ship, it's still the captain calling the shots (while the admiral controls the overall strategy). If you have muddy rules and roles, problems in the human organization are hard to isolate and fix. This sets the stage for mediocrity.

* Consider compensating board members in MSC for accomplishing set quarterly goals and objectives, based on the community's perception of their performance. Not everyone in this community is a "bitcoin millionaire" yet. ... That will help us better find the most motivated people, and really get them involved. That will also ensure this group stays beholden and reasonably responsive to the community.

* As some others have brought up, let's move from this provisional board to a permanent board. Let's hold new board elections, and have the best and brightest apply. The community votes. As you know, this is exactly how it works in corporations as well, with the stockholders voting in the board of directors. Board seats should last 6 months maybe at first, since this project moves so fast, before a new re-election. (Maybe this could be boosted to a year after the first few years.)

* Speaking of executive committee, this project NEEDS a CTO. That is the huge sore thumb with Mastercoin at this time. The project needs someone experienced with technology to decide and execute over the technology direction. This person needs to be given latitude to accomplish the implementation and feature goals set forth in the high-level strategy, in the way that their judgement and experience (and rough community consensus) deems best. (I am not convinced I would be the best person for this position BTW, so this is not about me tooting my own horn. I believe there may very well be others more suited than I am -- I have the leadership experience, but my bitcoin technical experience is lacking.)

* This one will no doubt be controversial, but I'd at least like us to entertain discussing JR's horde of Mastercoins. He did buy them fair and square, but there are those 50-some thousand he got as a bonus. That kind of irks me, because as an exodus investor, one of my main risks was sending my bitcoin to someone I didn't know at all. JR did not have that risk, as he managed the fund. Thus his risk was much less. My view is that he does not deserve most or all of that bonus, due to his significantly reduced risk.

Beyond that, there is the issue of his participation in this project. I'm not calling for a socialist-style redistribution of wealth, just saying that if I'm going to work my ass off on this thing, it won't be so that JR can sit around and become a trillionaire. I think I'd feel differently if he was in here working his butt off along side us, but he's not. His current holdings makes a huge liability, as he essentially controls the market. Him stepping up and using a good chunk of that bonus money towards incentivizing this group towards meeting pre-defined goals would go a huge way, and would ensure that he wasn't sitting on a pile of 153,000 or so beanie babies a year down the road (as 100,000 MSC at 1:1 BTC sounds a lot better than 153,000 beanie babies).

-Robby

I can't commit to running as a full time dev for obvious reasons (have my own business), and I'm not sure that proposal I put out about running a dev team out of my company to bootstrap things still is open (too much risk for me based on what I'm seeing, plus I don't think we could build the consensus for it). However, if I can see enough turn around in this project, I'd be happy to continue masterdaemon development, as well as put my name in the hat for a board seat.

Um, I was working on masterdaemon in my own time, without a dime of funding from the project. It wasn't "over-comitment" from the foundation, it was "no commitment".

Jesus guys, software development does not require an act of God. You just need to attract and motivate developers that believe in what you're doing (or who you pay to believe in what you're doing). Part of this is keeping great relationships with your community (i.e. investors), and at least giving the notion to listen and to care. And I am not talking about this "holiday weekend" -- I understand folks are busy with family now, but this has been a recurring theme among this project almost from the start.

I have about 5 solid days of work left in masterdaemon and I was doing it without the promise of the board awarding me with anything (or giving me any bounty) in return. I started it because as an investor, I saw the need and I felt that this project has the potential. So here you have a developer taking it upon himself to create one of the biggest needs mastercoin has at this time (based on the overwhelming approval for it from the community, see the poll at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=344229), and *not once* was I contacted by any one from the board (although to his credit, Ron did leave a one or two liner in the forum post I made for it -- which helped out).

Here's my point guys, if you properly focus on and enable the freaking community, you will be amazed what happens. Look at colored coins...those guys are making commits all over the place (https://github.com/bitcoinx/ngcccbase/commits/master) without a budget. The money this foundation has is only the start. This is not about us thinking the board needs to work 24/7, it's about the time that they do spend on this project being put towards the right priorities, with having a responsive voice to the community being one of the biggest priorities (if not the biggest). If you get your community behind you with high morale, they will be happy to do a lot of the work you are doing yourself now, for you. The delegation will become natural. Again, look at Peercoin: http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?board=36.0

My thoughts exactly. Without a responsive face for the board working with the community and listening to the community, the community will not take this project seriously. And if the Mastercoin community itself doesn't take its own project seriously, why would the Bitcoin community or the general public take it seriously? As the community on this project, we *are* the investors. A CEO serves his investors/shareholders, and is graded on his performance in doing so.

Learning how to effectively delegate is one of the most challenging aspects of running an organization (as least it has been for me). It one of the main reasons why you see all of those companies that have been around for years but still just have one (or barely two) people. Ron may want to consider that as the board chair in an organization like this, he is akin to being the President/CEO of a company. Normally, CEOs really focus on the following things only:

• Relationship with the investors (i.e. community). Reading bitcointalk should be one of the most important things on the plate here. Your community is your funding source, and, if communicated with properly, can be your biggest asset. Don't forget that the value of this coin is (especially at this early point) 95% based on how the community sees this project. The community will make or break this project. Right now, us peasants are a bit restless here.
• Forming the high level, strategic vision: I can't comment on this one much, because to be honest, I am not sure what the high level strategic vision is for this project, beyond the obvious "grow big and get PR". The blog offers me some details, but with the rest of it, but many decisions seem to be made without the community (i.e. investors) being consulted much. Contrast this with Peercoin (which I have done numerous times), where the strategic vision is very much communicated with regular interviews with Sunny, as well as an active forum where community members can pick up tasks and run with them, as well as regular newsletters. Mastercoin is a young project and I think is moving in that direction (blog, talk of forum software, etc), but the community needs to be seen as what can make or break this thing, especially if you want to recruit developers out of it (and *pay* them in your coin) to work on the project.
• Hiring the best team, and delegating to them: A CEO often hires his executive team, and delegates to them for all day-to-day activities. He does not deal with the nitty gritty of configuring software, etc. because he can have an IT person do that. When you become CEO, you need to leave the past life of an IT guy behind and put on a different mask. If your IT person isn't cutting it, fire him and get a new one.
• Serving as the primary spokesman for the company: Again, working with both your investors (i.e. community) and the outside/general public. PR people can handle the nitty gritty, the CEO should be mostly concerned with the general message being delivered, and how it communicates the strategic vision.
• Exploring strategic partnerships/"deals" and serving as an ambassador: This is why I wanted Ron to contact me directly. What I was proposing was about as core a strategic partnership as you could get, and as core to the future health (or failure) of Mastercoin as you could get, at least on the development front (which is what this is, right? a software implementation of an idea). Definitely more important than forum software, and this is something that it would make sense for the CEO not to delegate, because it's exactly about "hiring the best team" above.
• Structuring the budget in line with the strategic vision, and deciding how funds will be spent

Now this doesn't happen overnight. At my company, I had to learn (and am still learning) how to effectively do this....and as we ourselves are bootstrapped, I am growing into this role as our budget allows (i.e. hiring people to replace me, and training them how to do my job(s)...I'm 70% there). But, don't underestimate how important this is. This is the reason why many VC-backed tech startups boards fire their founders (I have oodles of examples here). It's also why many, many companies fail. And it's a contributing reason why one of my first big attempts at business failed, so I know it well.

Definitely not trying to be condescending with the above. This project just needs its perceptions shifted a bit in my 3rd party view.

-Robby

Taariq,

I really appreciate the response, and thank you for showing interest. I understand that Ron and the board members are busy people, but for something as big as the future direction of Mastercoin development, I had honestly hoped that someone from the board would have reached out to me and given me 30 minutes of their time. So far this has not happened yet.

I wrote this proposal. I've spent about a week so far developing masterdaemon (and working with zathras to lend suggestions on enhancing his library). I've spent hours and hours commenting and trying to add value to the forum posts and plan for Mastercoin growth. I even volunteered to fly out to Las Vegas to meet Ron and David at the conference on my own dime. And I am a busy person as well, already working 50 hour weeks on growing my own business. I emailed info@mastercoin.org ...twice I believe. Ron's last reply totally ignored what I had written, along with the community feedback provided in support of it. No reply in the forums, no PM, nothing... not even anything to say "let's talk later, I'm exhausted". You have to understand the risk that I was willing to take on to see this project successful. However, based on this (lack of) response from the board, I can't say I'm very interested anymore at this point in time.

That being said, I will be stopping masterdaemon development until I see something that helps me regain my faith in this project's ability and interest in leading a professional development effort. Ron calling me would be a good start. He has my number. I'm sure he can find 10 minutes in his schedule.

Nonetheless, the current (largely written and largely not tested) masterdaemon code is at: https://github.com/rbdrbd/masterdaemon
The documentation is at: http://masterdaemon.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html

Someone can feel free to fork it and continue development (I will even do knowledge transfer). I really think Mastercoin needs this project to really build a basis of a solid ecosystem, for reasons I have outlined at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=344229.0. Hopefully the board sees this too, although I am not sure that's the case, to be honest.

You have to understand that I still do want this project to be successful very much, and I believe in the idea behind Mastercoin. However, at this point, my faith in the ability of the leadership to handle this task is lacking, although I would absolutely love to be proven wrong. I'm not upset, just disappointed.

Thank you again for reaching out. I will be monitoring developments and may become involved again at some point. Best of luck.

-Robby

I appreciate the positive feedback. Like I said, we build products and services for a living. Mastercoin is not magical. The same approaches used to successfully complete a project for a large financial or healthcare client, for instance, can be employed here. In the end, it's about having solid people, process and tools (in that order).

Guys, here’s my pie in the sky proposal. I wanted to throw it out there as a starting point in how to get this project back on the tracks and moving forward. I invested time into this proposal, as well as discussing it with my business partner, so I would highly appreciate if someone from the board would take 10 minutes and speak to me directly about it, even if the answer is a "no".
---------------
I think we can pretty much all agree that the 900lb problem with things at the current point is that there is no dedicated dev team, and there is a lack of process control/procedure. The current devs we have have done a great job getting us to this point, but they are only working part time (due to their perfectly understandable need to sustain themselves and pay their bills). We sorely need a dedicated team that can work on the core part of Mastercoin, and serve as a lynchpin over which the community ecosystem can form.

Our background

I happen to be an entrepreneur that runs a 15-20 person company (exact size fluctuates and it’s been rapidly growing lately) that both provides services and software for medium to large enterprises. My company has a demonstrable and proven history -- which I can disclose at the proper time, if this gains interest -- in developing software products for numerous Fortune 100 companies and the government, and managed services that we sell for 400-600K per year per client, with very high quality and up-time requirements, and very stringent process control (we play with the big boys). We have a dedicated dev team of 3 developers, and around 10 other engineers. We are entirely self-funded and profitable, with no debt.

I have over 18 years of professional software development experience, and have experience building and running numerous development teams (both on-site and distributed). I have written and sold software and IP that is in use by companies like Samsung, Nestle Waters, US FAA, US DOD, Cisco, etc. (the latter being an actual Cisco product that I developed for them). My business partner, with whom I have worked with for over 14 years in a variety of capacities, is a Cisco CCIE with experience as a CTO for a 1000+ person company, as well as at a number of startups. We have been watching and have both formed quite an interest in virtual currencies.

The proposal

In the interests of taking action and keeping Mastercoin at the forefront, I’m going to put forward a somewhat aggressive proposal here to the community and the board. For the right incentive (which I will get into), we will do the following:

• Hire and incubate a small dev team. Probably start with one team of 2-5, then grow. I have a highly qualified dev I could assign over full-time from my ranks immediately (as well as another one I could enlist as-needed). I am also in touch with a highly talented bitcoin developer in the community that is interested, plus we could utilize the existing mastercoin developers if they are interested (Tachikoma, zathras, etc). My company has a talented in-house recruiter as well if we need to bring in other folks. The goal is NOT to take over mastercoin development, or shut out the current developers, but to give Mastercoin that dedicated "core-team-in-a-box" it needs at least at this time, to allow it to move forward. Like I said, existing developers are welcome to join, if full-time makes sense for them.
• Dev team would utilize scrum (e.g. sprint.ly and github). I could serve as the team lead if the board and community desired. We could fold the PM that Ron is bringing on into this team, or if necessary assign one of our own existing PMs over to it.
• We take my masterdaemon I'm working on, convert zathras or tachikoma's code to python and strap it in (or use the integration with zathras’ library itself that’s already built-in), and make that the reference client. It would work just like bitcoind for bitcoin -- docs in development are at http://masterdaemon.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html, code is on github).  Existing library development would continue as-is, but I believe the team needs a reference library/client to focus on at least for now, to avoid duplication of efforts (do not confuse this with me trying to pick favorites among the developers - the choice would be purely what makes the most technical and time sense)
• The team will focus on this client/library and other core tools first, and whatever else makes sense second.
• We would institute coding standards and QA standards, have 2-4 week dev cycles, burndown chart, community feedback procedures/policy to get and order items on the task backlog, etc.
• We would also implement the recommendations killerstorm made (in our client and working in conjunction with the other devs). I noticed the same problems he did and they are good recommendations.
• It would take probably around 3-4 weeks to get this in place if doing it full-time. I have a lot of it already done for our existing dev team.
• A separate LLC would probably be formed to do this. Team salaries could be paid for from the existing Mastercoin fund, or we may even pay our own internal guys ourselves for this initial period, if the incentive was generous enough.
• Our team would work off of the task list ordered by the community and the Mastercoin foundation members, in a democratic process. Beyond this, we would have final say over the running of our own team (as well as the people chosen). This is non-negotiable -- we need latitude to best run our team without a heap of politics -- let the performance speak for itself. However, what we work on is largely dictated by the community and board, and the Mastercoin foundation would of course be free to form a second dev team to work on complementary efforts, as they see fit. Our teams would coordinate via the PMs.

We actually specialize in getting into really messed up multi-million dollar projects/situations and getting a handle on them. I can point to several examples, with large hospital chains, commercial banks, etc. I have made all of these recommendations earlier, but it fell on deaf ears. I am bringing this up again now because I look at where this project is at, and straightening things out is something that could easily be handled with the right approach. We should have a bitcoin expert on the team, but beyond that, we can utilize developers with more commodity skillsets, since they will be building on standard interfaces such as JSON-RPC and SQL. We deal with this stuff every day, day in and day out.

What do we get out of it?

As part of doing this, we would commit to at least 6 months to 1 year of working on Mastercoin, and, upon the condition of this period being fulfilled, as well as multiple established milestones set by the community being reached during that period, our group would be entitled to some amount of MSC (and possibly BTC) from the dev MSC fund and/or JR as a reward. Depending on where things are at after this period, we can continue to move things along for much more modest pay, or collect our check and transition out of it -into the Mastercoin's foundations own dev teams and/or the community development community (which will be much more mature by that time, no doubt).

If there are any 3rd party devs on our team, a similar deal could be set up with them.

According to this link: http://mastercoin-explorer.com/addresses/15WrQhYhHts7jTMoGJ9rDCD12JuCTKy7MM

JR received around 53,000 mastercoins as a bonus alone (which, in itself is controversial to some members of the community – given he controlled the wallet he sent the funds to and thus had an arguably lower risk). Moreover, the Mastercoin dev fund will have 50-something thousand vesting on top of that. There is both ample Mastercoin and bitcoin here to carry this out and ensure that that Mastercoin retains and grows value in the long run. JR will still have way too many mastercoins () and the community gets a solid effort with a good chance of success.

As entrepreneurs, we are motivated by upside. This is risky, and I am potentially putting the health of my company up for grabs because I so believe in this idea. Thus, I want a large upside.


Benefits

The benefit from the community is clear:

• A dedicated dev team backed by individuals with proven experience is immediately formed
• The team quickly moves forward on keeping Mastercoin’s first-mover advantage
• If the team does not perform, it does not get paid
• The risk to the community is quite low (definitely much lower than the alternative of doing nothing)
• The community retains say over the order of features implemented, and the general development direction of Mastercoin

At the right time (i.e. if the board is interested in this proposal), I would be open to naming my company, and allowing the community to look us up.

-Robby

Hi jeroenn, can you buy in a larger sized lot? i.e. at least 30? Was looking to not split it down too much.

Selling 150 at .168

All good recommendations.

Tachikoma I agree that his execution was in poor form. Try not to let the negativity get to you. This project just seems to be going through its first crisis. Most any startup will have this experience. What matters is not as much that it happened, but how the leadership reacts, pivots, and adapts in response to it. If the board is open to outside views, bringing in some experienced hands, and listening to the community, then I am fully on board with a bright future for Mastercoin. If it does not change or adapt, then this will have been an interesting, but failed, experiment. Ball is in their court right now.

And what I said about the project lacking technical leadership has nothing to do with you or any of the other devs. You guys are doing about as great a job as part-time volunteer devs could do. I am more speaking about the fact that it needs a full-time team. That full-time person that executes along on a solid quality control process for the core components is lacking right now. That's all.

Killerstorm had some valid concerns around it. Unfortunately, this project seems to lack the technical leadership at this time to have adequately responded to his questions and factored his concerns into the development process. He probably got a bit miffed and then took it publicly.

There is development process control that is sorely lacking on this project currently (and I say that as a dev with 18+ years professional experience that has been working with the existing mastercoin code as I structure a new tool around it). I have several ideas how this can be improved, and would be happy to speak with David or Ron, or anyone else on the board about it if they are interested.

Basically, in the end it's reason #5,490 for hiring a full-time team. On the operational side, this comes down to effective delegation...hiring decisions are the absolute most important decisions one can make. How Ron is running around clearly overwhelmed reminds me of how I used to be before I learned how to effectively hire, delegate, and train new employees. Now my business largely runs itself. Not a critique of Ron himself, and I cannot assume I know exactly what is going on on his end...more just saying that the board needs more dedicated folks with previous operational-level business leadership to help Ron scale out, which I see as Mastercoin's main problem right now. The fact that he just ran off and found someone additional for the board and mentioned it in passing on this thread really irks me. And, if there are people on the board that are "too busy", why are they on the board to begin with?

Anyhow, we need someone like killerstorm leading the charge on the core protocol implementation, to ensure stable growth and backwards compatibility as required. With the budget of this project, why is this so hard to do? If it is really that hard to find people to work for MSC, then offer fiat or BTC at first. At this point, we just need the right talent. It's good to see David in there attempting to diffuse the situation, but we're playing reactive damage control here.

EDIT: I was asked my bitexch if I would be interested in applying for a board seat. Initially, my response was no, however at this point I would be open to it. I do have an active business, but I could contribute around 15 or so hours a week most weeks, and act as an advisor if there is value seen in that. My goal would be to help get things back on track in a solid way, and then look to reducing my involvement/stepping out. Ron has my resume/linkedin. If there is interest, feel free to reach out. That, or I'd be more than happy to not be on the board, and just volunteer my services in an advisory/sounding board manner. I would even potentially be up to meeting you guys in person in Vegas on the 10-12th, however, let me know in the next few days.

And, I must say that any criticisms I offer on this project come with the intention of making it better. I still strongly support this project, I think it just needs a few more experienced hands to help the existing dedicated devs and board members.

zathras,

Got a few Qs/todo items for you:

* with balances, what is the difference between CBALANCE, CBALANCET, ubalance and ubalancet???

* it appears you clear out the transactions_processed table totally every run. If I have an API query going on during this time when it's cleared and being regenerated, I would return bad data. Can you regenerate into a temp table and rename, or come up with another way? I can pause transactions for now when this is being regenerated, but that's kind of ghetto.

* masterchest-engine sql versioning - have a version table or a way for me to deduct the sql schema version....auto schema upgrades in masterchest-engine would be best... worst case, if blow away the DB on schema upgrades, if necessary, and regenerate...

* have a way for me to query the masterchest-engine version

* an abundance of magic numbers -- makes the code confusing to read. e.g. what does "If .Item(6) < 999998 Then" mean??? What is that 999998 lack of comments around these kinds of things. Also, things like "curtype = 1" -- maybe use enums instead? A future task I'm sure...I know you're busy getting Dex working (and my sqlite integration )

* what timezone does masterchest-engine store -- we should probably force UTC time. Or, the timezone must be stored with it

* you have no indexes on any rows, columns of your database. This greatly can impact performance. Do you have plans to add indexes?

* from transactions_processed, how do I tell what kind of transaction it is (multi-sig, class A, etc)?? can you add this into the schema?

* also, for transactions_processed, does "VALUE" include the bonus amount for txns in the exodus period, or not?

Hmm, I'm not 100% sure if electrum is supported (same with blockchain'info's bitcoin RPC interface). Since I am using zathras's masterchest lib, that's a good Q for him.

In the meantime, I added this part to the docs. I am saying they are not for now, but they may work fine (definitely something to test when I release, and then let me know and I can update the docs):


Zathras: I left you a number of questions/todo items in the masterdaemon thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=344229.new#new

Ola,

I will have it out in beta in less than a week, unless I run into major complications (which I don't anticipate at this time). Put a lot of work into it already.

Here's my docs:

http://masterdaemon.readthedocs.org/

Reading through them should give you an idea how I am writing it to work (i.e. pretty no brainer, especially for the binary install on windows).

Note that these docs are not final (several script names need to be updated for instance). I have code on github but it is not in running condition in any way (still working through bugs/adding functionality) -- so don't start messing with it until I release in beta. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up though.

Since I'm developing for mastercoin as well, can I get added too? Is there a way for others who are interested in mastercoin development to be added as well?