MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address”

[djohnston]

I've just posted a separate thread detailing my proposal to "Standardize the Distribution Rate of Dev MSC via the MSC Protocol"

I hope anyone that wants to discuss this topic will come over to this thread and offer me their feedback.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=342431.0

Partial Sneak Peak of my post:

I propose we formalize the distribution of "Dev MSC", to mirror the amount of Dev MSC generated each month. Further more that these Dev MSC be distributed in proportion to the amount of BTC won by participants in Mastercoin bounties that month. With the intension being, that this distribution process will be fully controlled by the Mastercoin community via the existing Bounty system and up coming Proof of Stake voting.

Lets talk some simple math here.

Simple Dev MSC Distribution Equation:  A / B = C * D = E
(A) Amount of awards an individual earns in BTC during a 30 day period, divided by,
(B) the total amount of BTC awarded during that 30 day period, equals
(C) his or her individual award percentage, times
(D) the total Dev MSC generated during that 30 day period, equals
(E) the amount of Dev MSC awarded to the individual in addition to his BTC awards during the 30 day period.

Example #1 (using round numbers):
A (100 BTC) / B (1,000 BTC) = C (10%) * D (1,000 MSC) = E (100 MSC)

There are 56,316 Dev MSC that will ever be generated.
28,158 Dev MSC will be generated this year or 2,346 MSC each month.
So if a developer won 10% of the bounties this month he or she would earn 234.6 Dev MSC (worth 35.19 BTC / $24,633 USD at current MSC / BTC / USD prices).

[bitwhizz]

Well then if takichoma wants an awesome offer, give takichoma an awesome offer ! we really need people like him working on this full time

[zbx]

This project *absolutely* needs multiple full time developers. Mastercoin foundation needs to make that happen ASAP. At my business, I can hire 3 developers to work full time for me (as well as around 13 other assorted full time engineers) and we pull in less each year than the mastercoin foundation has sitting around. Not sure why this can't be done with Mastercoin as well. Run it like a business. Priority number 1.

I strongly agree. Let them work alongside the current developers, if need be.

I think that it would probably be a good idea to pick one implementation to be the reference implementation *eventually* (to avoid forks).

[dacoinminster]

I think that everyone agrees we need to hire some of our developers full time. Tachikoma and I talked about this awhile back, and we realized that (like me) he was really expensive to hire full-time. However, the Mastercoin Foundation has a LOT more money now than it did then. I see no reason why we can't get at least two of our four devs into full-time positions. Ideally, I'd like to get all four. The payout from the upcoming bounty ought to make any transitions much less difficult for them.

[Ola]

I think that everyone agrees we need to hire some of our developers full time. Tachikoma and I talked about this awhile back, and we realized that (like me) he was really expensive to hire full-time. However, the Mastercoin Foundation has a LOT more money now than it did then. I see no reason why we can't get at least two of our four devs into full-time positions. Ideally, I'd like to get all four. The payout from the upcoming bounty ought to make any transitions much less difficult for them.

+1000

I vote for 4 dedicated developers with a project manager or scrum master-like entity to get this organized into a focused effort and interface between the devs and yourself, while you focus your efforts on overall strategy  and this is very important. Maybe you too should consider taking up a similar offer to work on this full time too?...This type of minimal business organization will definitely increase the efficiency of the full time staff several multitudes over. Also I think the main developers should get the awesome offers they are asking for...that is how you get awesome talent to leave and join new companies and we definitely want the best...what happens if tachikoma and others gets a promotion at his job with more responsibilities?

Great points. I'm no bitcoin expert obviously, but I know with bitcoin there are blockchain parsers (such as https://github.com/znort987/blockparser) that can run through and compile stats on the block chain (e.g. simple aggregate metrics, a list of addresses with balances and their balances, etc). Obviously, the rules behind mastercoin are a very good deal more complex than bitcoin, but perhaps some kind of parser could be written (not necessarily in C) that could run either as a one-shot (parse through the chain and output) or resident (with streaming output).

Output would be in a simplified JSON-formatted structure, that comprise "absolute actions" that have been validated through the spec-derived rule set encoded into the parser itself.

e.g "address A sent address B 50 MSC". In this case, the parser has done all of the difficult parsing and validation (such as, the sending address having the balance, the transaction being a valid Class A/B/C one, whatever else)...it outputs this in JSON format, a higher level web tool can either read it from a file (streamed or as a static/batch run) or maybe attach to the process's event interface via TCP/IP and get it that way.

other examples:
"address C put out an offer for 50 MSC @ .50/ea. offer ID is 1234".
"address D bid on offer 1234 for 20 of the 50 MSC"
"address E created a smart property named 'foobar' with currency ID 4567"

This way, all higher level utilities could hook into this Mastercoin daemon, which would take care of implementing the guts of the spec and take it out to a higher level streamed, JSON encoded "absolute" API, which would focus on things that have actually happened, after all of the parsing and rule validation have been taken into effect. The daemon could be available for windows, linux and mac OS X. A JSON RPC-driven query interface would also be available to allow querying of specific smart properties, transaction IDs, etc.

Hell, write the thing in ruby and use Tachikoma's work as a base for it. Or make it in python (everyone loves python, and that way I'll want to hack on it! :p)

....We shall call it.... "mastercoind" (*pinkie over mouth*)

Maybe I am smoking crack here and this won't gain us much. Just thought I'd put it out there to get the ball rolling for potential solutions. If doing the above makes sense, it would bring us in line with the way bitcoin does things (e.g. bitcoind hooking into exchange sites, armory client, p2pool, pushpool daemon, bitcoin-qt, etc), and speed new development efforts up 20x, as what we're doing now seems a bit similar to forcing everyone who wants to build their own computer to create the CPU from scratch, instead of just buying the parts and slapping them together.

I agree with you rbdrdb, even though I am formally trained with c++ I generally  avoid any headaches from tinkering with lower level engineering. We DEFINITELY NEED a "Master Daemon", your recommendation is needed and I don't think that it should be treated as an after thought , rather to have a small number of developers working along side main devs on the "Master Daemon" which opens up the platform to everyone just like bitcoin  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/API_reference_(JSON-RPC).

[littleblue]

I think that everyone agrees we need to hire some of our developers full time. Tachikoma and I talked about this awhile back, and we realized that (like me) he was really expensive to hire full-time. However, the Mastercoin Foundation has a LOT more money now than it did then. I see no reason why we can't get at least two of our four devs into full-time positions. Ideally, I'd like to get all four. The payout from the upcoming bounty ought to make any transitions much less difficult for them.

+9999

[ripper234]

Here are (the slides) from yesterday's meetup of the Israeli Mastercoin Foundation.

Don't forget to hit Play, there are animations.

We'll upload the full video in the following days.

[ripper234]

I just posted this to the Opportunities thread:

1.
I've opened a new Spreadsheet that will always contain the latest bounty amounts.

2.
I have written this blog post describing the bounty process. We need more participation in order to keep accelerating - your input is welcome.

3.
Also, I increased the bounty of the Budget Website from $500 to $1000

4.
and added this new bounty:

Spend from Multisig

https://trello.com/c/ftjuT9gH/57-1500-spend-from-multisig

Bounty: $1500

Using Bitcoin multisig addresses, you can send MSC or any MSC derived currency to a multisig address today.

However, today, there isn't a way to spend money sent to such addresses.

Acceptance Criteria

Alice, Bob and Charlie share a multisig address. Alice should be able to "initiate multisig send" from her wallet. This pops up a notification on Bob's and Charlie's wallets. One of them "confirms send", and the funds are now sent. The notification can be hidden if nobody confirms it within a certain amount of time.

What is required for this bounty is adding a UI to at least two Mastercoin clients, and demonstrating the above flow on the real production network. The bounty would be split between the developers of both clients.

FYI - I believe no spec changes are required to make this work.

[zathras]

In a perfect world, I would happily devote more time to Mastercoin, I've lived and breathed it pretty much whenever I'm not working my day job & am of course 100% behind it - there is however an issue I haven't seen discussed which for me at least is significant.

There are real-world financial burdens (mortgage, bills etc) that have to be paid.  My full time earnings are in fiat - and that's a critical factor.  Cryptocurrencies are still a very new and volatile way of transferring monetary value (for example I had a fairly substantial bitcoin transaction earlier this week that was worth significantly less to the recipient in the time it took to confirm it in 6 blocks).  Consider if you will, being paid in bitcoin & mastercoin only for the next {x months/years}.  The ups and downs of these values will determine the amount of fiat you would have that month to pay the bills.  It could be fantastic and you become very wealthy.  It could also end in tears if a crash in value restricts your ability to pay said bills.  My number one priority over anything else will always be providing for my family (and stably).  

The foundation I'm sure would look at adjusting payments along with market values but just as volatility affects conversion to fiat, so does it affect the resources of the foundation.  A crash in bitcoin value is also a crash in foundation resources.  For the sake of debate, what happens if bitcoin for example crashes to $50?  How would the foundation cover it's payments to its hires?  I think that's an unlikely scenario, but unlikely enough to put 100% of your income on is the question.  My apologies if this comes across as negativity that's not my intention at all - I'm simply considering (out loud) the potential risks.

Mastercoin is a project I thoroughly support and believe is going to be something that really starts to attract 'big money' (corporate) to cryptocurrencies.  I currently spend as much time developing as I can, but I have a full time job which takes up the lion's share of my time.  I still do endeavor to be responsive to any issues with any of my Masterchest software.

As they say 'never close a door' & I'm not ruling anything out, but as nice (I'm guilty too) as it is to get swept up in the incredible growth in just our first few short months when it comes to things like employment and where your income comes from (and how reliable that income is) a longer term perspective is needed.

Thanks

Note, I'd be happy to read any info anyone can provide on a precedent for full-time work paid in cryptocurrencies.

EDIT: for clarity

[prophetx]

CALLING ALL WRITERS: MASTERCOIN DOCUMENTATION CONTEST – $5000 BOUNTY

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=336454.msg3610871#msg3610871

http://blog.mastercoin.org/2013/11/22/calling-all-writers-mastercoin-documentation-contest-bounty/

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

When i use MastercoinAdvisor
The consol shut down right after enter the receving address
i have to make a quick screenshoot for save the information needed
I'm alone with this problem ?
Thanks
Also how to copy/past in the console ?

[maxmint]

When i use MastercoinAdvisor
The consol shut down right after enter the receving address
i have to make a quick screenshoot for save the information needed
I'm alone with this problem ?
Thanks
Also how to copy/past in the console ?

You have to start MastercoinAdvisor from a terminal window ("Command prompt") then it won't quit.

[zbx]

In a perfect world, I would happily devote more time to Mastercoin, I've lived and breathed it pretty much whenever I'm not working my day job & am of course 100% behind it - there is however an issue I haven't seen discussed which for me at least is significant.

There are real-world financial burdens (mortgage, bills etc) that have to be paid.  My full time earnings are in fiat - and that's a critical factor.  Cryptocurrencies are still a very new and volatile way of transferring monetary value (for example I had a fairly substantial bitcoin transaction earlier this week that was worth significantly less to the recipient in the time it took to confirm it in 6 blocks).  Consider if you will, being paid in bitcoin & mastercoin only for the next {x months/years}.  The ups and downs of these values will determine the amount of fiat you would have that month to pay the bills.  It could be fantastic and you become very wealthy.  It could also end in tears if a crash in value restricts your ability to pay said bills.  My number one priority over anything else will always be providing for my family (and stably).  

The foundation I'm sure would look at adjusting payments along with market values but just as volatility affects conversion to fiat, so does it affect the resources of the foundation.  A crash in bitcoin value is also a crash in foundation resources.  For the sake of debate, what happens if bitcoin for example crashes to $50?  How would the foundation cover it's payments to its hires?  I think that's an unlikely scenario, but unlikely enough to put 100% of your income on is the question.  My apologies if this comes across as negativity that's not my intention at all - I'm simply considering (out loud) the potential risks.

Mastercoin is a project I thoroughly support and believe is going to be something that really starts to attract 'big money' (corporate) to cryptocurrencies.  I currently spend as much time developing as I can, but I have a full time job which takes up the lion's share of my time.  I still do endeavor to be responsive to any issues with any of my Masterchest software.

As they say 'never close a door' & I'm not ruling anything out, but as nice (I'm guilty too) as it is to get swept up in the incredible growth in just our first few short months when it comes to things like employment and where your income comes from (and how reliable that income is) a longer term perspective is needed.

Thanks

Note, I'd be happy to read any info anyone can provide on a precedent for full-time work paid in cryptocurrencies.

EDIT: for clarity

Would the Mastercoin Foundation be willing to pay developers in fiat?

[addzz]

When i use MastercoinAdvisor
The consol shut down right after enter the receving address
i have to make a quick screenshoot for save the information needed
I'm alone with this problem ?
Thanks
Also how to copy/past in the console ?

You have to start MastercoinAdvisor from a terminal window ("Command prompt") then it won't quit.

here is a screenshot:
http://imgur.com/J2J5yiN

[Ola]

In a perfect world, I would happily devote more time to Mastercoin, I've lived and breathed it pretty much whenever I'm not working my day job & am of course 100% behind it - there is however an issue I haven't seen discussed which for me at least is significant.

There are real-world financial burdens (mortgage, bills etc) that have to be paid.  My full time earnings are in fiat - and that's a critical factor.  Cryptocurrencies are still a very new and volatile way of transferring monetary value (for example I had a fairly substantial bitcoin transaction earlier this week that was worth significantly less to the recipient in the time it took to confirm it in 6 blocks).  Consider if you will, being paid in bitcoin & mastercoin only for the next {x months/years}.  The ups and downs of these values will determine the amount of fiat you would have that month to pay the bills.  It could be fantastic and you become very wealthy.  It could also end in tears if a crash in value restricts your ability to pay said bills.  My number one priority over anything else will always be providing for my family (and stably). 

The foundation I'm sure would look at adjusting payments along with market values but just as volatility affects conversion to fiat, so does it affect the resources of the foundation.  A crash in bitcoin value is also a crash in foundation resources.  For the sake of debate, what happens if bitcoin for example crashes to $50?  How would the foundation cover it's payments to its hires?  I think that's an unlikely scenario, but unlikely enough to put 100% of your income on is the question.  My apologies if this comes across as negativity that's not my intention at all - I'm simply considering (out loud) the potential risks.

Mastercoin is a project I thoroughly support and believe is going to be something that really starts to attract 'big money' (corporate) to cryptocurrencies.  I currently spend as much time developing as I can, but I have a full time job which takes up the lion's share of my time.  I still do endeavor to be responsive to any issues with any of my Masterchest software.

As they say 'never close a door' & I'm not ruling anything out, but as nice (I'm guilty too) as it is to get swept up in the incredible growth in just our first few short months when it comes to things like employment and where your income comes from (and how reliable that income is) a longer term perspective is needed.

Thanks

Note, I'd be happy to read any info anyone can provide on a precedent for full-time work paid in cryptocurrencies.

EDIT: for clarity

Your concern is reasonable and valid especially considering fluctuations in btc prices which equates to real life consequences...However I do feel that this risk could be offset by the foundation, by paying developers or "long term contractors" (because there might be additional implications for classifying devs as employees) in fiat. I heard over trello that the foundation now has a bank account. I see no reason why long term fiat payments payments couldn't be structured for long term contractors "Devs" without addition legal burdens of "full time employee" classification. "long term contractor" is also a convenient title or classification because you would be working from your own space and you will not be sharing any physical resources.


With all due respect Bounty's work very well, but it comes as an afterthought to full time employment. Bounties foster competition and it is good for getting to see what potential candidates for a project are made of. How how about in a situation where we already know the skill and ability of said developers? Bounties in these cases become counter-intuitive because the ability of the skilled developer to produce quality work is not based on actual skill, but on actual time he can afford to give after his first priority which is the other job that puts food on the table. We seen several instances when tachikoma had to sleep and go to work.

The long term hiring works way way better for developers who we already know have the desired skill, competence and drive from a track record.  It would mean that Mastercoin is priority for developers and they already love working on mastercoin why not enable them to give their all to mastercoin? We have several of these guys from the previous bounties and I think it best to do everything to "poach" them while we can. Don't forget there are competitors and this is also a race to the top of who can achieve a network effect for success. Not only do we want to achieve a network effect, but increase the switching costs by having such rich and intuitive system that makes it hard for users of mastercoin to find any other comparable platform. And what we need right now is to  get the  devs to focus full time on developing essential mastercoin features than to worry about two things at once.   : "Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

what does everybody else think?

[stereotype]

In a perfect world, I would happily devote more time to Mastercoin, I've lived and breathed it pretty much whenever I'm not working my day job & am of course 100% behind it - there is however an issue I haven't seen discussed which for me at least is significant.

There are real-world financial burdens (mortgage, bills etc) that have to be paid.  My full time earnings are in fiat - and that's a critical factor.  Cryptocurrencies are still a very new and volatile way of transferring monetary value (for example I had a fairly substantial bitcoin transaction earlier this week that was worth significantly less to the recipient in the time it took to confirm it in 6 blocks).  Consider if you will, being paid in bitcoin & mastercoin only for the next {x months/years}.  The ups and downs of these values will determine the amount of fiat you would have that month to pay the bills.  It could be fantastic and you become very wealthy.  It could also end in tears if a crash in value restricts your ability to pay said bills.  My number one priority over anything else will always be providing for my family (and stably). 

The foundation I'm sure would look at adjusting payments along with market values but just as volatility affects conversion to fiat, so does it affect the resources of the foundation.  A crash in bitcoin value is also a crash in foundation resources.  For the sake of debate, what happens if bitcoin for example crashes to $50?  How would the foundation cover it's payments to its hires?  I think that's an unlikely scenario, but unlikely enough to put 100% of your income on is the question.  My apologies if this comes across as negativity that's not my intention at all - I'm simply considering (out loud) the potential risks.

Mastercoin is a project I thoroughly support and believe is going to be something that really starts to attract 'big money' (corporate) to cryptocurrencies.  I currently spend as much time developing as I can, but I have a full time job which takes up the lion's share of my time.  I still do endeavor to be responsive to any issues with any of my Masterchest software.

As they say 'never close a door' & I'm not ruling anything out, but as nice (I'm guilty too) as it is to get swept up in the incredible growth in just our first few short months when it comes to things like employment and where your income comes from (and how reliable that income is) a longer term perspective is needed.

Thanks

Note, I'd be happy to read any info anyone can provide on a precedent for full-time work paid in cryptocurrencies.

EDIT: for clarity

Your concern is reasonable and valid especially considering fluctuations in btc prices which equates to real life consequences...However I do feel that this risk could be offset by the foundation, by paying developers or "long term contractors" (because there might be additional implications for classifying devs as employees) in fiat. I heard over trello that the foundation now has a bank account. I see no reason why long term fiat payments payments couldn't be structured for long term contractors "Devs" without addition legal burdens of "full time employee" classification. "long term contractor" is also a convenient title or classification because you would be working from your own space and you will not be sharing any physical resources.


With all due respect Bounty's work very well, but it comes as an afterthought to full time employment. Bounties foster competition and it is good for getting to see what potential candidates for a project are made of. How how about in a situation where we already know the skill and ability of said developers? Bounties in these cases become counter-intuitive because the ability of the skilled developer to produce quality work is not based on actual skill, but on actual time he can afford to give after his first priority which is the other job that puts food on the table. We seen several instances when tachikoma had to sleep and go to work.

The long term hiring works way way better for developers who we already know have the desired skill, competence and drive from a track record.  It would mean that Mastercoin is priority for developers and they already love working on mastercoin why not enable them to give their all to mastercoin? We have several of these guys from the previous bounties and I think it best to do everything to "poach" them while we can. Don't forget there are competitors and this is also a race to the top of who can achieve a network effect for success. Not only do we want to achieve a network effect, but increase the switching costs by having such rich and intuitive system that makes it hard for users of mastercoin to find any other comparable platform. And what we need right now is to  get the  devs to focus full time on developing essential mastercoin features than to worry about two things at once.   : "Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

what does everybody else think?

I think thats a well made, and considered post.
A fixed and agreed monthly/weekly wage for a given contracted dev, should not really be a problem for an organization serious about developing the benefits and claims, made for Mastercoin. Managing it is a challenge, granted, but a necessary step-up in operations to achieve current goals and expectations, i would have thought.

Fully understand the leap of faith felt, jumping out of the ability to provide for commitments consistently, into something not so known and reliable, but thats what its going to take.

[prophetx]

I'd like to go on the record stating that Luke-Jr is NOT an idiot. He's a very respected community member that has had involvement in a ton of different bitcoin projects.

Sorry, Luke. You know how it is around here . . .

 Focus on getting the core functionality and community that you think makes MasterCoin worthwhile up and running now rather than getting distracted. You gotta remember that MasterCoin transactions will tend to be more valuable per transaction than Bitcoin ones, so it won't be your users that are outbid first in the transaction fee auction.

+100 to that

satoshi dice will get priced out lol

[prophetx]

I have a few questions related to smart properties:

From the spec, it looks like the unique factor used to differentiate one property from another is the Property Name, in which one may put up to 21 characters, correct?

Question 1: What’s to stop people from spamming new smart properties? This could be like the domain name system, without any pricing required to reserve a name. Someone could reserve a smart property like “dog”, or “House Deed”, in perpetuity. Is any MSC required to be consumed to create a property, or is it just the BTC transaction costs to send the transaction?

If we are just limited to 21 bytes for property names in this kind of wild-west scenario, without any kind of payment requirement beyond the minimal BTC fees to keep away spam, I can see all of the intelligible choices for this filling up quickly. People would then be forced to use names like “HouseDeed_348dF” or even some kind of odd hash value. This may not necessarily be a ‘bad’ thing…worse case we could see Mastercoin property names devolving to the level of implicit legibility as Bitcoin addresses (i.e. a long string of numbers and letters).

If MSC is required (or you are considering this), you could have two options here: pay to the Exodus address (further enriching that, although I don’t know how necessary that is), or destroy the funds, similar to Peercoin transactions.

If destroying the MSC, to offset the deflation this causes, a future proof-of-stake type system could be even initiated that would inflate the supply at a low level (e.g. fixed 1%, or a variable rate derived periodically based on the MSC value destroyed over the past X period of time) to offset and attempt constant, or very slowly growing supply. I think that this idea is probably heretical and overly complex, since MSCs were created as a fixed supply (sounds kind of like a central bank, coded into the software, hah!)…just thought I’d throw it out there if in the future we find ourselves needing to allow for some controlling feedback to be applied to several aspects of the system (smart properties, bidding, etc) by allowing Mastercoin to require at least a small amount of MSC for most actions, in a way that didn’t unfairly enrich one specific party, or disrupt the balance of wealth in the system. Whether it would cripple the usefulness of Mastercoin in the process is up in the air though. If the fee was low enough, it shouldn’t.

Question 2: I see where dividends can be paid against smart properties. Can Smart properties be transferred? (I do see “Listing something for Sale” and “Initiating a Purchase”, but I’m a bit confused whether these have anything to do with a smart property, as their identifier is a 11 byte category and a 16 byte subcategory. If not currently, why not? Perhaps that’s an area of the spec that needs to be added.

If these were covered somewhere else, forgive me. Thanks for any answers.

1) Adding some sort of cost to reduce spam is a great idea. Thanks for bringing that up.
2) Yes, each new property gets its own currency id, so anything you can do with a currency can be done with a property (buy, sell, transfer, bet, etc)

Regarding 1), this is a tricky problem, which I have thought about some already. There are several ways to add cost. I prefer a sliding fee scale which targets creating X properties per day. If more than the target are being created, the fee goes up, otherwise the fee goes down.

I think the fee should destroy MSC, not send them to the Exodus Address.

I'd be interested in hearing other opinions about this. I'd be really happy to see a pull request about this once we've got some consensus.

I haven't added anything like this to the spec because everything I came up with seemed a bit too complicated. For instance, the number of properties created per day might need to go up once MasterCoin is getting widespread use, and it's hard to make the right formula for adjusting that automatically.

which party loses when a lot of spam is created? this is the party which should be compensated.

[romerun]

Let me get this straight, JR won't quit his job unless he's worth $100M,  . After btc rally last week I guess many of us here are already millionaires, real jobs are getting less and less relevant, we should be doing this for passion.

[dacoinminster]

Let me get this straight, JR won't quit his job unless he's worth $100M,  . After btc rally last week I guess many of us here are already millionaires, real jobs are getting less and less relevant, we should be doing this for passion.

My wife doesn't care one fig about internet money which isn't in our bank account. That's the real hurdle. The other half of the problem is I don't want to sell MSC at today's prices.

I think I have found the ideal solution though, which I just posted in David's thread about project money this morning:

I think perhaps it is time to convert more of our BTC to MSC. I'd rather have MSC in a rainy day fund than BTC anyway. As you say, giving away BTC attacts people more interested in BTC, and I'd rather the foundation hold MSC than BTC.

Here's my crazy proposal:

1) Keep only the 1000 BTC we've already moved into offline wallets
2) Use the remainder of our BTC to purchase MSC over the next few months on the distributed exchange
3) Pay all future bounties exclusively in MSC
4) Keep half of our MSC money for a rainy day and/or future distributed bounty system
5) If our rainy day fund becomes excessive, we can always vote to lower the ratio later

I realize that this would potentially make all of our existing investors absurdly wealthy, but, well, the stated purpose of the Mastercoin Foundation is to serve the holders of Mastercoins, and I'm having a hard time seeing this course of action as anything but a huge positive for them, as long as we do it transparently and over a long enough period of time that nobody who wants to sell to us is left out.

Also, MSC prices would probably go up to the point where I'd sell 1% and quit my job to work on MSC, which I hope would also be in the best interests of our investors.

If you guys think that's a good idea, please go there and help me convince the board that:


1) It's not market manipulation, it's a stock buy-back over a long period of time, with complete transparency
2) It doesn't make MSC more centralized, because we'll be giving this money away in bounties rather quickly

Thanks!