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

[zbx]

I don't know how many times our management needs to prove its incompetency before we actively try to do something about it. I am reiterating my support for rbdrbd as a board member, and whoever agrees should explicitly say so.

+1 this if you agree. It's important that at least *someone* from the board sees it so he can notify the other board members, and if enough people show their agreement, we might actually get the board to engage.

+1

I say so: rbdrbd should be a board member, and the board should be watching this thread and actively engaged in this discussion.

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[vokain]

Hang on, please give us some time to collect our thoughts so we decide the best decisions together. I know I have been. Robby and Alex (killerstorm), I want to apologize for any seeming inattention or hesitation on our part. The exchange of ideas in truth it has been somewhat  one-sided as you guys reach out to us and we spend time mulling over it among the literal hundreds of other messages we get on the mailing lists in addition to it being a holiday week. Please please give us time, even if it is less than ideal to do so. We are reorganizing and reaffirming responsibilities with the newly hired professional help  as you guys have pointed out. An important point is that not all discussion of decision making is done here, for better or for worse... I hope that this won't be blown out of proportion in the mean time and I truly thank you all the time effort and concern the community has for this undertaking.

Mastercoin needs its community. This will work out. We're all learning here and being more receptive is at the top of the list. Every single one of you taking part in this, you're all vital.

PS: personally I'd like to see Robby as one of the lead developers if it's not too late. I will await Taariq's and Robby's discourse of course.

[tlewis]

Hey Robby. An excellent proposal and thanks for sharing.

If you're not yet talking with anyone on the Mastercoin team, will you please email me at taariq@mastercoin.org so that we can have a quick chat about your proposal?

I'm helping the Mastercoin team get a handle on operations and getting quality engineering support is key.

I want to make sure that no one is ignored and I'm trying to bring some focus/organization to the Mastercoin effort while I'm here.

Thanks and congratulations on your depth of expertise and generous offer to help..
Taariq
Smart Property Lead

Taariq,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Robby

Thanks Robby,

I emailed the Board and Ron directly. I also will be monitoring Skype over the next few hours to speak with Ron before I get some sleep on PST.

I will try to get a response and publish a follow-up here.

Your time and efforts on Mastercoin are not trivial and we need more developers not less.

Thanks,
Taariq

[W2014]

Great posts - Vokain and Taariq.

 

[bitexch]

Please please give us time, even if it is less than ideal to do so. We are reorganizing and reaffirming responsibilities with the newly hired professional help as you guys have pointed out.

Mastercoin needs its community. This will work out. Every single one of you taking part in this, you're all vital.

You seem to be glazing over the fact that whatever recent hiring that Ron and the rest of the board have done has not been discussed on this forum, and to that extent lacks transparency. Is there a place where all of this is well documented? In any case, it should certainly be posted on this thread as well!

How do you reconcile the community being vital with its lack of involvement in the hiring process?

[djohnston]

Robby,

Mastercoin Foundation Board member here : ) Ask me what ever you want.

I really like your proposal and I've just caught up on this thread.

I've been distracted fighting FUD all day on the Bitcoin Sub Reddit. J.R. is offline for the weekend, Sam was on a plane from Turkey and Ron is asleep given the time in Israel.

Shoot me a PM and lets connect. My email is David at BitAngels dot co (yes its co not com) I'd be more than happy to talk with you about your proposal. I actually think a reference client would be an awesome way to do the implementation of the Spec.

Sorry I didn't see any email to Info@Mastercoin.org it must have been down, I know Aric was switching things over to the new email accounts.

While I'm here let me address a few of the other comments made earlier in the thread.

1. Like all of you I want to see things move quickly, but lets remember things are very early stage and we are just gearing up. Its great we have a bunch of Bitcoin, but that doesn't instantly translate into a fully assembled team. I believe Ron is making some good additions and J.R. is actively talking with the current developers about how we can make it easy for them to come full time.

2. Folks are asking for a road map and plan. My understanding is that the Spec is our development road map. Starting with the Decentralized Exchange the idea is to offer a bounty for each of the features one by one (obviously some can be done in parallel) until all the features are built. I know the developers have estimated its going to take another 3 or 4 weeks to knock out the kinks in the current implementation.

3. Centralization. I'm highly in favor of DECENTRALIZATION. This is an open source project. The Mastercoin Foundation doesn't control this project and you are free to suggest anything you want to the developers and seek to develop consensus. You are free to build your own implementations, websites, suggest bounties on the Trello, in fact I encourage you too! Bitcoin is strong because it is decentralized, I'm seeking to build the same thing here. The less that requires the Foundation to do the better. If you have ways to hand off tasks your input is very welcome.

4. Boards don't operate anything. Boards are there to require transparency, set policies and keep people accountable. Ron, Taariq, Aric, all the awesome Devs are the ones making things happen day to day. PLEASE if you want to get something done talk with these guys, they are great (when not overwhelmed) and are in a better position to work with you than the Board members.

5. Someone pointed out that the Board is getting old. As in its just a temporary structure left over from the formation. I COMPLETELY AGREE. Its time we had our first board election. If someone wants to suggest how we do the Proof of Stake (maybe sending a transaction from their MSC wallet to prove they own those MSC) then we can get this done. I'd say the 7 people who have volunteered a ton of their time have done well so far, but if we have people who can devote more of their time than that would be even better. Let me point out though that we don't need a ton of Directors, a board of more than 7 or so is a nightmare and is super slow because you can never get everyone together at the same time (already we have to deal with 3 continents). We ought to be electing more than Board members, those that want to be Liaisons of education, regulation, industry, and what ever should step forth and propose those positions.

We have all come a long way in a short amount of time. Lets keep pushing forward with development and take things to the next level.

You guys are the ones that make this thing work. So thanks for keeping the discussion healthy and keeping everyone accountable.

Best Regards,

David A. Johnston
BitAngels / Mastercoin

[bitexch]

vokain and djohnston:

Thank you for your engagement. Regarding JR: Do you really think it's acceptable that a board member is not active on the forum *at least* 2 out of 7 days of the week? Please answer this question directly.

[vokain]

Please please give us time, even if it is less than ideal to do so. We are reorganizing and reaffirming responsibilities with the newly hired professional help as you guys have pointed out.

Mastercoin needs its community. This will work out. Every single one of you taking part in this, you're all vital.

You seem to be glazing over the fact that whatever recent hiring that Ron and the rest of the board have done has not been discussed on this forum, and to that extent lacks transparency. Is there a place where all of this is well documented? In any case, it should certainly be posted on this thread as well!

How do you reconcile the community being vital with its lack of involvement in the hiring process?

David was placed in charge by Ron for the hiring process of the smart property lead. candidates  were selected from those 7-8 guys that have took the initiative to reach out to us from the smart property lead callout thread. David then interviewed them, gave us his recs, and we voted for his best one. I'll let David fill in the details.

Dominik (prophetx) has been with us since the beginning and he has considerable value to us, so he was hired upon his proposal which we voted in approval of. He can speak for himself if he'd like. Peter Todd, yes, this was rather in the dark but I think he preferred it this way (no announcements or fanfare). His job description is quite unique however. Ron can fill us in on this.

[vokain]

vokain and djohnston:

Thank you for your engagement. Regarding JR: Do you really think it's acceptable that a board member is not active on the forum *at least* 2 out of 7 days of the week? Please answer this question directly.

Not EVERY week, but this week is a big family week in the US.

Edit: wow, week is such a weird word

[bitexch]

vokain and djohnston:

Thank you for your engagement. Regarding JR: Do you really think it's acceptable that a board member is not active on the forum *at least* 2 out of 7 days of the week? Please answer this question directly.

Not EVERY week, but this week is a big family week in the US.

Hasn't JR said that he can't be involved with Mastercoin on the weekends? That's 2 out of 7 days...

[djohnston]

______________
Please please give us time, even if it is less than ideal to do so. We are reorganizing and reaffirming responsibilities with the newly hired professional help as you guys have pointed out.

Mastercoin needs its community. This will work out. Every single one of you taking part in this, you're all vital.

You seem to be glazing over the fact that whatever recent hiring that Ron and the rest of the board have done has not been discussed on this forum, and to that extent lacks transparency. Is there a place where all of this is well documented? In any case, it should certainly be posted on this thread as well!

How do you reconcile the community being vital with its lack of involvement in the hiring process?
_______________

Bitexch,

Thanks for the input. I'm under the impression every "hire" (role based bounty) has been a fairly open affair. Ron called for applicants for the Smart Property Lead to give us more engagement, 7 people applied, after a ton of interviews Taariq won the bounty. Same with the current Project Manager role Ron has called here and on the Trello for candidates and we are interviewing, this is still open you if have candidates. We are trying to get the Developers full time, that whole process has been open as well. Want to offer more candidates please do.

What I think we need is to list a bunch of this stuff on either the Mastercoin.org or MastercoinFoundation.org websites where people can find all this stuff.

We have public expenses / budget, we have a public role based bounties list, we have a public Dev MSC calculator, we have public open position listings, we have a Trello full of bounty cards, we have a Quora full of questions / answers. Does everyone know where these are at? I know it would be hard for me to track them down between the forums, Google Docs, Trello, and so forth.

  

[W2014]

Please add the Bitcoin Magazine article on Mastercoin to the press section of mastercoin.org

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7961/

this is a very good article that should be on the website!!

[djohnston]

Bitexch,

I'll answer you directly. Yes its ok for J.R. to have a weekend. Being the founder of Mastercoin doesn't mean he has to work on it 24/7.

I'm not quite sure why we would want him to. I certainly don't want J.R. to be the bottleneck of this project. He needs to weigh in on a regular basis about the protocol and review pull requests and vote on Board issues of course.

However the whole idea of this open source project is that we aren't waiting for direction or one person's say so. Many of the best ideas have come from the community (Contract for Difference) being a great example. Robby's current push for a Reference Client. Ron's push for the Proof of Stake. My push for the standardizing the formula for the Distribution of Dev MSC.

The goal here is to remove the need for J.R. and the Board step by step so the community can drive all aspects of the Mastercoin development process.

[bitexch]

I've been distracted fighting FUD all day on the Bitcoin Sub Reddit.

You guys spent $18,000 on a PR firm. Shouldn't they be handling fighting FUD. I would think that for $18,000 they should be willing to do this...

2. Folks are asking for a road map and plan. My understanding is that the Spec is our development road map. Starting with the Decentralized Exchange the idea is to offer a bounty for each of the features one by one (obviously some can be done in parallel) until all the features are built. I know the developers have estimated its going to take another 3 or 4 weeks to knock out the kinks in the current implementation.

Presumably it will take less time if we hire full-time developers!?!?!?!

3. Centralization. I'm highly in favor of DECENTRALIZATION. This is an open source project. The Mastercoin Foundation doesn't control this project and you are free to suggest anything you want to the developers and seek to develop consensus. You are free to build your own implementations, websites, suggest bounties on the Trello, in fact I encourage you too! Bitcoin is strong because it is decentralized, I'm seeking to build the same thing here. The less that requires the Foundation to do the better. If you have ways to hand off tasks your input is very welcome.

But ultimately the board has control over the funds,and since the board is disquietingly inactive on the MSC threads, where the community discusses what it wants to spend money on, this is not a trivial "detail".

We have all come a long way in a short amount of time. Lets keep pushing forward with development and take things to the next level.

I don't know how useful it is to point out that we've come a long way; it seems much more important that we have a long way to go with the most fundamental levels of management.

[djohnston]

W2014,
Thanks for the excellent suggestion.
I've added the article from Bitcoin Magazine to the press section of the website.
http://www.mastercoin.org/

[bitexch]

Bitexch,

I'll answer you directly. Yes its ok for J.R. to have a weekend. Being the founder of Mastercoin doesn't mean he has to work on it 24/7.

You're not addressing the point: I am not suggesting that JR needs to commit more time because he founded Mastercoin, but rather that he needs to commit more time because he's a *board member*.

For the record, I agree that in the capacity of the creator of Mastercoin JR doesn't need to be available on the weekends. See my post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3750182#msg3750182

I'm not quite sure why we would want him to. I certainly don't want J.R. to be the bottleneck of this project. He needs to weigh in on a regular basis about the protocol and review pull requests and vote on Board issues of course.

Which he has failed and is currently failing to do...

You may be interested to know that Ron explicitly called JR a bottleneck, and not in disapproving terms: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3759797#msg3759797.

[bitexch]

vokain and djohnston:

Please look at the thread I created devoted to hiring full-time devs. Suggestions have been made, and the board ought to be aware of them.

Here's the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=351077.0

[djohnston]

I've been distracted fighting FUD all day on the Bitcoin Sub Reddit.

You guys spent $18,000 on a PR firm. Shouldn't they be handling fighting FUD. I would think that for $18,000 they should be willing to do this...

Not so much. The flame wars (which I hope are over, I talked with Alex about ways to cooperate instead of lob grenades at each) are pretty much up to those in a position to speak to the technical issues to answer. Ron, me, JR, Taariq, and so forth.

The "PR" firm, read Michael Terpin of BitAngels is helping the Foundation line up Conference speaking spots, talk with major non-Bitcoin media, assemble press kits, and write thought leadership stuff. Its not so much post things on social media, its more how do we get this story into Forbes. Michael is a really experienced guy and knows Bitcoin well having co-founded BitAngels and works with lots of Bitcoin startups. I'm confident he is the right Media Director for Mastercoin.

Quote from: djohnston on Today at 07:36:10 AM

2. Folks are asking for a road map and plan. My understanding is that the Spec is our development road map. Starting with the Decentralized Exchange the idea is to offer a bounty for each of the features one by one (obviously some can be done in parallel) until all the features are built. I know the developers have estimated its going to take another 3 or 4 weeks to knock out the kinks in the current implementation.

Presumably it will take less time if we hire full-time developers!?!?!?!

I completely agree brother. Lets get these awesome guys full time. I've seen the email back and forth. Its easier to say though than to extract yourself from a job you have been at for 5 years, 30 notice is normally a minimum.

Quote from: djohnston on Today at 07:36:10 AM

3. Centralization. I'm highly in favor of DECENTRALIZATION. This is an open source project. The Mastercoin Foundation doesn't control this project and you are free to suggest anything you want to the developers and seek to develop consensus. You are free to build your own implementations, websites, suggest bounties on the Trello, in fact I encourage you too! Bitcoin is strong because it is decentralized, I'm seeking to build the same thing here. The less that requires the Foundation to do the better. If you have ways to hand off tasks your input is very welcome.

But ultimately the board has control over the funds,and since the board is disquietingly inactive on the MSC threads, where the community discusses what it wants to spend money on, this is not a trivial "detail".

I hear you. That's the idea behind the Distributed Bounty system. The sooner someone helps code this up the sooner we can hand these issue over to the community. Though I want you to know I read every single single comment on this thread, the Dev thread and other MSC threads I'm aware of. Ron and J.R. are here often as well. Taariq is here and as we get more people full time we can have more and more bandwidth to respond. You all have my email. Hit me directly. I read everyone that comes in and try to respond very quickly.

Quote from: djohnston on Today at 07:36:10 AM

We have all come a long way in a short amount of time. Lets keep pushing forward with development and take things to the next level.

I don't know how useful it is to point out that we've come a long way; it seems much more important that we have a long way to go with the most fundamental levels of management.

Agreed. We do have a long way to go. I'm in this for the long haul.

[djohnston]

vokain and djohnston:

Please look at the thread I created devoted to hiring full-time devs. Suggestions have been made, and the board ought to be aware of them.

Here's the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=351077.0

Very cool. Thanks for creating that thread. I agree this is the project's top priority is increasing bandwidth on development.

[zbx]

3. Centralization. I'm highly in favor of DECENTRALIZATION. This is an open source project. The Mastercoin Foundation doesn't control this project and you are free to suggest anything you want to the developers and seek to develop consensus. You are free to build your own implementations, websites, suggest bounties on the Trello, in fact I encourage you too! Bitcoin is strong because it is decentralized, I'm seeking to build the same thing here. The less that requires the Foundation to do the better. If you have ways to hand off tasks your input is very welcome.

But ultimately the board has control over the funds,and since the board is disquietingly inactive on the MSC threads, where the community discusses what it wants to spend money on, this is not a trivial "detail".

This.

It is the funds held by the Foundation that pay developers to implement the Mastercoin protocol. Indeed, there has to be some centralisation in the development of the Mastercoin protocol itself (as there is in Bitcoin).