Why do these guys feel the need to issue 500 different cryptoassets? Bitshares, Bitshares-X, Bitshares PTS, AGS, I mean for fucks sake.
ROFL. What a complex and wonderful question.
The basic problem is that due to innovation chains need to be separate. If they were all the same chain it ends up like Bitcoin or Mastercoin/XCP. The blockchain is seen as a metaphor to a company, so these are all individual companies that you can invest in.
Protoshares allows you to have a stake in any future DAC (Where the DAC honors the social consensus.) AGS was a way for them to do crowdfunding. You keep your private key to redeem stakes going forward. It is never intended to be made liquid.
Bitshares X is the first and most ambitious product. Unfortunately the genesis block was already been decided, but shares will be on the open market soon enough. Bitshares X has market pegging of assets using something akin to a prediction market.
Next we will see p2p that implements namecoin.
THere is no crypto asset named Bitshares. Thats pretty much just the term to refer to the ecosystem as a whole, which will be based off the bitshares toolkit and completely open source.
The point here is every asset has its own function like a company. If they were all on the blockchain nothing would ever get done because of competing requirements. Also, it would never work with the distribution of shares. This lets entrepreneurs innovate just like a real company.