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

[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?

[1715200475]

1715200475

[1715200475]

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[1715200475]

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[1715200475]

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[1715200475]

1715200475

[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!

[solex]

...
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!

Makes absolute sense.

[rbdrbd]

[...]

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.

Thank you Ola, this is a great post.

When you get down to it, most people are risk adverse. This includes 90% of the developers I've employed over the last 8 years. That's why they get a job with me, instead of starting their own business.

As others have mentioned, if you are employing developers, instead of entrepreneurs (which usually look for a different kind of payout with higher risk, but potentially higher reward), then a steady paycheck in fiat or possibly even BTC will do wonders. Bounty money is so nebulous and unreliable in comparison for someone that has kids and a mortgage, as zathras and Tachikoma have brought up earlier. It's great it got the project this far, but you guys may want to consider a slightly different approach moving forward as this thing gains steam.

As far as the dev team, here's my two cents:
* Start with two full time devs, then look at moving to 4 as things settle in and it makes sense (i.e. scale up once you have the basic structure and workflow in place)
* One of the devs is given the team lead role
* Pay devs in fiat/BTC, as 1099 contractors if possible (check the IRS checklist on this)
* Utilize Scrum development practices
* Sign up for sprint.ly and use that to manage your development process / product backlog...integrates directly into github, awesome interface & product (Pivotal tracker is another one -- Trello is a good tool, but not well suited for this at all...)
* Ron/JR possibly share the Scrum "product owner" role, and put items on the backlog for the devs to work off of
* Backlog and burndown chart are public, and the community can vote/influence the items on the backlog
* Bounties, etc still exist for non-core-team devs, who can run independently with their own efforts

If you do it this way, and your devs are of high enough skill, you don't need a dedicated PM role. I find that role not very useful with small, talented dev teams (your team lead will be half dev, half PM/interface anyhow).

I would still *strongly* consider at least one of these devs working on the "mastercoind" concept I outlined earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3666117#msg3666117) for the reasons I listed earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3667049#msg3667049). It just makes sense and will move this project along SO much quicker, especially in regards to enabling non-core devs to build products and tools around mastercoin....I mean, just think of what bitcoin would be like without bitcoind???

And...this probably goes without saying, but don't get too glib that Mastercoin will maintain this current front-runner position. That's the classic downfall of every front-runner...complacency. A healthy dose of paranoia is always good

[dacoinminster]

[...]

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.

Thank you Ola, this is a great post.

When you get down to it, most people are risk adverse. This includes 90% of the developers I've employed over the last 8 years. That's why they get a job with me, instead of starting their own business.

If you are employing developers, instead of entrepreneurs (which usually look for a different kind of payout with higher risk, but potentially higher reward), then a steady paycheck in fiat or possibly even BTC will do wonders. Bounty money is so nebulous and unreliable in comparison for someone that has kids and a mortgage, as zathras and Tachikoma have brought up earlier. It's great it got the project this far, but you guys may want to consider a slightly different approach moving forward as this thing gains steam.

As far as the dev team, here's my two cents:
* Start with two or three full time devs, then look at moving to 4 if it makes sense
* One of the devs is given the team lead role
* Pay devs in fiat/BTC, as 1099 contractors if possible (check the IRS checklist on this)
* Utilize Scrum development practices
* Sign up for sprit.ly and use that to manage your development process / product backlog (Pivotal tracker is another one -- Trello is a good tool, but not well suited for this at all...)
* Ron/JR possibly share the Scrum "product owner" role, and put items on the backlog for the devs to work off of
* Backlog and burndown chart are public, and the community can vote/influence the items on the backlog
* Bounties, etc still exist for non-core-team devs, who can run independently with their own efforts

If you do it this way, and your devs are of high enough skill, you don't need a dedicated PM role. I find that role not very useful with small, talented dev teams (your team lead will be half dev, half PM/interface anyhow).

I would still *strongly* consider at least one of these devs working on the "mastercoind" concept I outlined earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3666117#msg3666117) for the reasons I listed earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3667049#msg3667049). It just makes sense and will move this project along SO much quicker, especially in regards to enabling non-core devs to build products and tools around mastercoin....I mean, just think of what bitcoin would be like without bitcoind???

And...this probably goes without saying, but don't get too glib that Mastercoin will maintain this current front-runner position. That's the classic downfall of every front-runner...complacency. A healthy dose of paranoia is always good

No kidding. I'm always telling the board how worried I am that we will screw this up somehow. We've got competitors, detractors, and a lot of work ahead of us. Complacency = death!

[Ola]

[...]

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.

Thank you Ola, this is a great post.

When you get down to it, most people are risk adverse. This includes 90% of the developers I've employed over the last 8 years. That's why they get a job with me, instead of starting their own business.

If you are employing developers, instead of entrepreneurs (which usually look for a different kind of payout with higher risk, but potentially higher reward), then a steady paycheck in fiat or possibly even BTC will do wonders. Bounty money is so nebulous and unreliable in comparison for someone that has kids and a mortgage, as zathras and Tachikoma have brought up earlier. It's great it got the project this far, but you guys may want to consider a slightly different approach moving forward as this thing gains steam.

As far as the dev team, here's my two cents:
* Start with two or three full time devs, then look at moving to 4 if it makes sense
* One of the devs is given the team lead role
* Pay devs in fiat/BTC, as 1099 contractors if possible (check the IRS checklist on this)
* Utilize Scrum development practices
* Sign up for sprit.ly and use that to manage your development process / product backlog (Pivotal tracker is another one -- Trello is a good tool, but not well suited for this at all...)
* Ron/JR possibly share the Scrum "product owner" role, and put items on the backlog for the devs to work off of
* Backlog and burndown chart are public, and the community can vote/influence the items on the backlog
* Bounties, etc still exist for non-core-team devs, who can run independently with their own efforts

If you do it this way, and your devs are of high enough skill, you don't need a dedicated PM role. I find that role not very useful with small, talented dev teams (your team lead will be half dev, half PM/interface anyhow).

I would still *strongly* consider at least one of these devs working on the "mastercoind" concept I outlined earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3666117#msg3666117) for the reasons I listed earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3667049#msg3667049). It just makes sense and will move this project along SO much quicker, especially in regards to enabling non-core devs to build products and tools around mastercoin....I mean, just think of what bitcoin would be like without bitcoind???

And...this probably goes without saying, but don't get too glib that Mastercoin will maintain this current front-runner position. That's the classic downfall of every front-runner...complacency. A healthy dose of paranoia is always good

No kidding. I'm always telling the board how worried I am that we will screw this up somehow. We've got competitors, detractors, and a lot of work ahead of us. Complacency = death!

+1000 rbdrbd This is a very implementable logistic to improve productivity in no time I absolutely agree with you...and JR you have spoken like a true strategist..I think this is an urgent matter and people reading this thread should vote to make this happen as soon as possible. I don't know if this is already in the works or not. But put up a + and or echo this if you feel this needs to be approved asap. 

[ripper234]

Hi all,

I know a lot has been going on in the last few days, I am still processing my email backlog.
In the meantime I just want to post the meeting notes from our last board meeting this week.

Here they are, for your viewing pleasure.

[W2014]

How about posting some of the jobs/bounties on some of the websites in this link?

http://bitcoinexaminer.org/looking-to-work-and-get-paid-in-bitcoin-here-are-six-websites-that-can-help-you/

I noticed several jobs developing for Ripple Labs, Inc. and Coinbase at Coinality:

http://coinality.com/

https://coinality.com/jobs/

[W2014]

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

The Mastercoin Foundation has 4,500 BTC. At the current market rate that's almost $4 million dollars. The Foundation could sell some BTCs and pay guaranteed, decent (but not outrageous) salaries in fiat currency on long term contracts for select lead developers. As a bonus, MSCs could be rewarded according to amount of time employed or milestones achieved for potential massive upside and motivation of the developers.

[hmmmstrange]

Trace Mayer gave a shout out to mastercoin yesterday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TZwmgeeFB-E#t=2300

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

I never see a start-up buyback shares 2 month after "IPO"...
I dont think it's a good idea to spend all bitcoins now at this early stage of the "bubble"
Also we need to interest new brains in to the  MSC project.
BTC it's a better incentive for now
If some bounty winner want some MSC, they just can buy it at market price, like everyone
My 2 µMSC

[ninjaboon]

I never see a start-up buyback shares 2 month after "IPO"...
I dont think it's a good idea to spend all bitcoins now at this early stage of the "bubble"
Also we need to interest new brains in MSC projet.
BTC it's a better incentive for now
If some bounty winner want some MSC, they just can buy it at market price, like everyone
My 2 µMSC

do you mean: introduce new brains to the MSC project.

[ninjaboon]

Trace Mayer gave a shout out to mastercoin yesterday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TZwmgeeFB-E#t=2300

great. will post on my FB page. thanks.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

I never see a start-up buyback shares 2 month after "IPO"...
I dont think it's a good idea to spend all bitcoins now at this early stage of the "bubble"
Also we need to interest new brains in MSC projet.
BTC it's a better incentive for now
If some bounty winner want some MSC, they just can buy it at market price, like everyone
My 2 µMSC

do you mean: introduce new brains to the MSC project.

Yes indeed !
thanks

[Luckybit]

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!

Interesting plan to ponder upon...  I think this would have a much greater effect if there were ways for new money to get into MSC after the buyback process is over. Demand for MSC has to stay high. One mistake I think we shouldn't make is the mistake Bitcoin is making where people believe you can only buy 1 whole BTC at a time. MSC should be priced in such a way that people are most accustomed to buying fractions.

So what is the lowest unit of an MSC going to be called? We should give that lowest unit a name and price all Mastercoins in those units on all exchanges which follow the standard. The lowest unit for Bitcoin is a satoshi but the Bitcoin exchanges are making a huge mistake by pricing everything like 1.0 -> 0.0000001 when they should just say it's 100,000,000 satoshi. So if a whole Mastercoin is 100,000,000 units then we need to be selling in the hundreds of millions of units of Mastercoin for psychological purposes.

That is my suggestion and I hope people understand the importance this change could have.

[ripper234]

I still haven't had time to process everything, but wanted to give you another update:

The URL budget.mastercoin.org now redirects to the Google Spreadsheet where we manage our funds.

This will be replaced (hopefully sooner than later) by the new Budget Website. FYI the budget website will eventually be useful to any Decentralized Application running on top of Mastercoin to manage its funds, not just to us.

The new budget.mastercoin.org URL will take place shortly (DNS records need a bit of time to propagate).