[ANN] BitShares 2.0

[StanLarimer]

BitShares announces its industrial grade blockchain.

BitShares 2.0

[StanLarimer]

Highlighted links for this forum...

Lessons learned from BitShares 0.x

[sumantso]

I'm disappointed, Stan. I was hoping for catchphrases, centre aligned text and some gifs.

[StanLarimer]

Remember, you heard it here first...

BitShares Barbecue and Possum Roast Attendees

Pitchforks.
When hard forks just aren't enough...

[Yaremi]

Wow! good work BTS team. I will buy more

http://bitshares.github.io/technology/ 

Please retweet https://twitter.com/YaremiRoman/status/607986527495458817

[box0214]

Why not join forces with NXT and create a even better platform together instead of competing head on? Clearly nxt is leading on the 2.0 front. Why waste resources when you can work together.

[StanLarimer]

lso, Stan, I'm going to have to sue you for naming the number 4 cryptocommunity on planet earth after me (my last name).

No, BitShares' last name is
" 2.0"
yours is
"2.0"

They don't show up anywhere near each other when listed alphabetically.

(Don't feel bad.  It was an easy mistake to make.) 

[Trouble821]

Is there an official Bitshares thread here because I cannot find one?

If there is no thread and Bitshares doesn't bother with bitcointalk then why post announcements about new features here?

If there is/was a thread you could post announcements there.

ps

I don't count this as an official thread.

BitShares Loves Puppies

[Bisha]

I believe this is the official thread from now on lol. Finally!

[brekyrself]

Is there an official Bitshares thread here because I cannot find one?

If there is no thread and Bitshares doesn't bother with bitcointalk then why post announcements about new features here?

If there is/was a thread you could post announcements there.

ps

I don't count this as an official thread.

BitShares Loves Puppies

Most posts are on the BitShares board.  This is a quite impressive list tackling real world adoption issues compared with some other alts only going after what people of bitcointalk want to see.  Significant step forward in crypto if all this comes to life.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16780.0.html

[StanLarimer]

Why not join forces with NXT and create a even better platform together instead of competing head on? Clearly nxt is leading on the 2.0 front. Why waste resources when you can work together.

Actually, that's not as inconceivable as it first seemed.

The software that BitShares 2.0 has been offered by Cryptonomex.com has enough excess block signing capacity to sign every block currently produced by all leading chains on coinmarketcap with enough left over to handle the current transaction load of Visa or Master Card.

So nothing says NXT and BitShares couldn't agree to move in together on the same neutral platform while maintaining our independent financial, biological and technological distinctiveness and those of all other chains who join us.  This would allow all our existing assets to work together with shared network effect, market depths, interoperable smart contracts and instant atomic cross-asset trading among all partners.

In fact, I expect more than one leading developer to decide to do exactly that this summer.  (!)

Once each lead developer realizes that almost every penny they are paying their current block signers could go to fund their own team, some are going to Carpe Diem.  This will grow with its own network effect - like a rolling stone.  With three teams working together on the same neutral industrial grade platform, it won't be hard to get four.  You get the idea.  

Bitcoin itself could solve most of its current problems with such an upgrade and instantly become the unstoppable force it aims to be.  Think of what the Bitcoin core devs could do if they had the hundreds of millions of dollars they are paying miners added to their ecosystem development and marketing budgets.  (!!)  With Cryptonomex putting that kind of money out there on a silver platter for them, somebody is going to re-evaluate whether their business model is about security nuances or about market share and revolutionizing the global financial system.

The only question is which two of the top chains will first realize that the competition is not about proof-of-manhood anymore.  There's a whole global financial system to conquer together!  Combined network effect.  Independent market caps.   And an incredibly more profitable field of competition!

Olive branch anyone?

[StanLarimer]

OK for the  slower guys like me ...

after figuring out that Cryptonomex   is actually Crypto + Economics . And is pronounced like Crypto + Economics

Cryptonomex.com is the developer of the Graphene Toolkit^TM which is what makes BitShares 2.0 possible.

[Nxtblg]

Why not join forces with NXT and create a even better platform together instead of competing head on? Clearly nxt is leading on the 2.0 front. Why waste resources when you can work together.

Actually, that's not as inconceivable as it first seemed.

The software that BitShares 2.0 has been offered by Cryptonomex.com has enough excess block signing capacity to sign every block currently produced by all leading chains on coinmarketcap with enough left over to handle the current transaction load of Visa or Master Card.

If you don't mind, could you point me to an illustration of the system architecture? I don't want to reflexively use the word "centralized," but you have to admit...the typical suggestions for blockchain "improvement" rely on the recipe "all we need is a little more centralization."

At least, after they've been modified subsequent to the debunking. 

[StanLarimer]

BitShareholders get to vote on how many witnesses (signing nodes similar to low cost miners) they want to pay for.  In BitShares 1.0 that was hardwired to 101 which meant that every node was guaranteed to be signing less than 1% of the blocks, in a rotating random order.

To become a signer you need to earn a public reputation in order to get elected.  To get fired, all you have to do is get caught breaking the rules once and your reputation is destroyed.  Now you have to start over, earning a new reputation.  So nodes can be fired and are limited to only one function:  faithfully include transactions and sign blocks.  Failure to do that is 100% visible to everybody.

Compare that to Bitcoin. The top three or so companies sign over 51% of the blocks and therefore their three CEO's effectively control the whole network.  You can't fire them because they still control all that hash power.   Pools don't distribute control, they just distribute workload.  Not the same thing.

Which is really more decentralized?

Decentralization has its costs so arguing that you have more independent nodes has diminishing returns. BitShareholders must decide how many independent node reputations are enough to secure their network.  We think it will turn out to be somewhat less than 101, but that decision rests with the voters and their elected expert delegates.  It's a simple question of marginal utility, what is the incremental cost vs payoff of going from 101 to 102? 

Here are two articles that provide more detailed answers, although they have not been updated to reflect BitShares 2.0 advances.

Decentralization, Scalability, and Fault Tolerance

The Minimal Requirement for Decentralization

Here's an excerpt so you can decide if you want to read the rest:

We tend to get three different attributes mixed up causing endless confusion even among men of good will.

• Throughput Scalability
• Fault Tolerance
• Decentralized Control

These are three different concepts.

Fault Tolerance

We are saying 101 highly-reliable, tested and proven, hand-picked parts dispersed across the globe and selected by the entire owner population is sufficient redundancy to achieve reliable fault tolerance. The only thing those parts can do is – do their job to spec. We can observe their performance and swap them out in ten seconds if they don’t perform to spec. So, really, they are just interchangeable slave machines. Producing the blocks is a mindless task.

Selecting which parts make up the machine is where the power lies.

Decentralized Control

The total decentralized population of the all owners participate in selecting the most reliable machines to run the network. Those 101 parts have no power over the owners. 101 dispersed redundant parts is a decentralization red herring! That’s not where control lies. Those 101 chosen nodes can be completely reconfigured or replaced by the fully decentralized participating owners in 10 seconds.

BitShares has decentralized p2p control
of a distributed, fault-tolerant computer
implementing an autonomous unmanned company
running a decentralized crypto currency exchange
which produces stable smart-coin products.

Throughput Scalability

Any of the 101 nodes can scale up by adding parallel machines, side chains, and a thousand inventions we haven’t dreamed of. When we get to a billion owners and need a thousand machines per node, we can do that. It will still be decentralized enough to ensure that the 101 (now bigger) parts that make up the distributed, fault-tolerant machine will perform their mindless slave jobs reliability - from positions scattered across 24 time zones.

Those million decentralized owners do not want to have to think about managing more than 101 redundant parts to their machine. 101 is plenty, maybe too many, for the average owner to keep track of how they are performing. Adding more parts reduces the degree to which each part can be vetted and therefore reduces the system’s reliability. Total reliability is a combination of node redundancy and node reliability via reputation-based vetting.

In BitShares, absolute control is fully decentralized down to the votes of every single atomic BTS satoshi. You can’t get more decentralized than that.

[StanLarimer]

BitShares 2.0 Dedicated Articles

This is a list of articles that are part of "the June announcement" (more to come):
Each link below will lead you to a dedicated discussion thread for the corresponding technology.

• Announcing BitShares 2.0
  The BitShares development team is proud to make their biggest announcement since launching one year ago: the upgrade to BitShares 2.0.
  
• Migrating to BitShares 2.0
  Upgrading to BitShares 2.0 will require some network downtime. On an appointed date/time, a snapshot will be taken of all BitShares balances in all asset types. The new chain will then launch within 24 hrs of the snapshot that discards all transaction history. This snapshot will not be announced until we are 100% confident that the migration can occur in a timely manner.
  
• Community Questions for the Development Team
  Prior to the announcement, the BitShares community was asked to collect a set of their concerns that they would like answered together with the announcement.
  
• Lessons Learned from BitShares 0.x
  There are many reasons for starting over from scratch and producing a new toolkit and this article hopes to shed some light on what we learned from BitShares 1.0 and the many advancements that BitShares 2.0 allows.
  
• Measuring Performance - Throughput and Latency
  Great claims require great evidence and the claim that BitShares is capable of 100,000 transactions per second has probably raised a few eyebrows. This post should help clarify how we measure performance. It should be noted that we are talking about the capability of an individual computer which is the ultimate bottleneck and *not* the current P2P network.
  

BitShares 2.0 Technologies

This part serves as an overview for the BitShares 2.0 technologies:



Each link below will lead you to a dedicated discussion thread for the corresponding technology.

• High Performance and Scalability
  Over 100,000 transactions per second
  
• Referral Rewards Program
  Rapidly grow network effect by incentivising mass adoption
  
• Price-Stable Cryptocurrencies
  The freedom of cryptocurrency with the stability of the dollar
  
• Dynamic Account Permissions
  Permission handling for the corporate environment
  
• User-Issued Assets
  Issue stocks, bonds, or other tokens while being compatible with KYC and AML regulations
  
• Decentralized Asset Exchange
  As fast and flexible as any traditional centralized exchange
  
• Collateralized Bond Market
  Lend or borrow anything on your terms
  
• Recurring & Scheduled Payments
  Give direct debit authority or limited withdraw permissions to anyone
  
• Delegated Proof-of-Stake Consensus
  A robust and flexible consensus protocol
  
• Stakeholder-Approved Project Funding
  A self-sustaining funding model
  
• Transferable Named Accounts
  Easy and secure transactions
  

[markm]

This stuff is starting to sound interesting enough that it might even be time to go digging around in old archives looking for those Protoshares wallets that we were all mining into long long ago that purportedly were going to give us all shares of all these new developments.

Is there some kind of import functionality in one of these new wallets whereby once we manage to find our Protoshares wallets we can tell these new wallets the filepaths to our Protoshares wallets and have them import or whatever it is that they do to get our appropriate shares?

I seem to recall though some flurry of noise/rumour some time back claiming that the developers had done some kind of ripoff or dilution or breach of agreement or something so that maybe our Protoshares are not actually worth much if anything anymore? The percentage they were supposed to be of the new chain(s) was changed or something maybe?

It was all kind of hard to follow, let alone to figure out which was trolls and which was genuine bad faith by the developers, or even whether in fact any dilution did actually occur.

Which is why it seemed best to just archive all the wallets until some future time when things became clearer and some clear path to moving forward to the newest systems emerged...

Has that time come yet?

Have Protoshares (or more correctly, the value they give in all the later chains derived from them / following them) finally become worth enough that it might be worth someone's while to look into moving forward with them into the new systems?

-MarkM-

[tokeweed]

It's looking good tbh.

[testz]

Is there some kind of import functionality in one of these new wallets whereby once we manage to find our Protoshares wallets we can tell these new wallets the filepaths to our Protoshares wallets and have them import or whatever it is that they do to get our appropriate shares?

Has that time come yet?

Also you can check your shares in other BitShares DAC's here: http://www1.agsexplorer.com
Go to Balance menu and put your PTS address, or PTS/BTC address if you donate to AGS.

[StanLarimer]

Shortly after our (first) Big Announcement on Monday, Bytemaster held a live global town-hall meeting to answer everyone's questions.  It went on for two hours.  Here's Part 1:

Part 1

https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-developer-hangout-with-bytemaster-2-0-announcement-part-1-june-08-2015/

[StanLarimer]

Transcript for the above can be found here:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16695.msg215374.html#msg215374

Sample:

Hangout Transcript - Part 1

...

51:23: fuzzy : Can you talk about the economics of each model and bond markets.

51:46: bytemaster : It's designed to be profitable and the cost of user acquisition below the lifetime value of each user and in the long run should be deflationary, there is a fixed supply and spending limit. It should bring future fees into the present from users upgrading accounts. It should bring economic incentives to migrate users in bulk for merchants.

52:49: bytemaster : You want to own BitShares because it should appreciate as a result of being a profitable system on the whole.

53:21: bytemaster : The new bitasset model creates a lot of new incentives for new users to create their own bitassets with price feeds. Private bitassets can be backed by another bitasset which should increase predictability of the markets.

54:06: bytemaster : Under the new system all bitUSD will have a value of at least $1 plus the value of the option contract. This means companies like CCEDK can accept bitUD to Mastercard payment directly without qualifications or extra fees. And it means that traders have a lot more reliability and liquidity around bitUSD.

55:01: bytemaster : Dilution. We have taken all dilution that BTS could ever have and put it into a reserve pool and all fees collected go into this pool, each day there is a spending limit of 5BTS/sec. This keeps system closed with predictable supply. Stakeholders have direct control on spending every day. Even with no fees, would take 8 years to drain pool.

56:14: bytemaster : Bond Market. The bond market allows use any asset in the system as collateral to borrow another asset at interest for a min/max period of time. If you repay loan with interest you get collateral back, if you don't you forfeit collateral.

57:22: bytemaster : Interest Rates. They are set on each user. You can now short against anything. You can even borrow BTS to short BTS without creating new BTS.

57:22: bytemaster : This allows the bond system to function without having to do margin calls.

58:16: bytemaster : bitUSD is created as always, shorted into existence, requires 200% collateral. Other versions of bitUSD can be created. Possible to have bitUSD without forced settlement and with annual global settlement. These permissions can be enabled.

58:56: bytemaster : The side effect is we now have built in support for prediction markets.

1:01:23: bytemaster : We're trying to provide incentives for any coin to abandon their coin and move it to an asset on the BitShares platform. There is one major altcoin going to be doing that some time "This Summer".