Proposal to Fork Mastercoin and Burn a portion of JR's immense stash.

[EvilDave]

Large stakeholders can be both a blessing and a curse.
On the downside you have nervous investors who may be reluctant to invest because of the fear that a whale may dump his/her/its holdings and kill the price, and, of course, the vocal cries of 'unfair distribution' from the cheap seats. 

On the upside: it's good to have large quantities of a currency in safe hands, providing you can trust the whales in question, and it is very useful to be able to rely on large holders to cover some of the development and marketing costs.

I think Nxt got lucky with its initial distro, we had 73 stakeholders, most of whom have supported Nxt development pretty well. 
Many Nxt whales have remained anonymous, but I've never seen that as an issue.....we know how to find them, even if we have no clue of their IRL identities. 

[TinEye]

While I certainly can admit that our team’s communication with the community can be improved, the talk of forking the protocol likely takes us down the wrong path.

I agree that forking will end in disaster. But its headed into disaster anyway.

Mastercoin is finished in its current format, you can quote me on that. Either try something different which doesn't represent a challenge to Counterparty directly and tries to solve a different problem, or abandon it entirely.

[crazy_rabbit]

While I certainly can admit that our team’s communication with the community can be improved, the talk of forking the protocol likely takes us down the wrong path.

I agree that forking will end in disaster. But its headed into disaster anyway.

Mastercoin is finished in its current format, you can quote me on that. Either try something different which doesn't represent a challenge to Counterparty directly and tries to solve a different problem, or abandon it entirely.

It could be extended to do something beyond what counterparty is doing. But I'm skeptical if anyone is really interested in that, or just busy with other things. It's hard to tell.

Is JR ever going to chime in?

[crazy_rabbit]

Here is an idea- what if by forking Mastercoin we attempted to do something different than what Mastercoin 1.0 and Counterparty are trying to do? What if Mastercoin 2.0 was reborn using Litecoin? That is a project that has major hashing power behind it, but it's own existential crisis of purpose. Perhaps the two could make a nice fit.

[mishax1]

Here is an idea- what if by forking Mastercoin we attempted to do something different than what Mastercoin 1.0 and Counterparty are trying to do? What if Mastercoin 2.0 was reborn using Litecoin? That is a project that has major hashing power behind it, but it's own existential crisis of purpose. Perhaps the two could make a nice fit.

I just canceled my Titan batch1 order and filed a lawsuit against KNC, so NO. 

[TinEye]

Here is an idea- what if by forking Mastercoin we attempted to do something different than what Mastercoin 1.0 and Counterparty are trying to do? What if Mastercoin 2.0 was reborn using Litecoin? That is a project that has major hashing power behind it, but it's own existential crisis of purpose. Perhaps the two could make a nice fit.

Counterparty inspired project beat you to that too. Check out Dogeparty.

I wouldn't put to much faith in Litecoin now. With Scrypt ASICS out there its basically a faster, lower network effect version of Bitcoin.

[dexX7]

Here's another question then- if something like maidsafe choose not to move over to counterparty, could we still use Vennd to port the tokens over to Counterparty so we could more easily buy/sell/whatever with them on counterparty, and then 'cashout' to move them back to mastercoin?

A gateway that allows to move between both protocols? This is interesting. Politics aside, like erasing JR's stash, I'm more interested in the technical side of things.

Because there is no fixed conversion rate of MSC/XCP and XCP/MSC, proxy tokens on each side would have to be created.

So how are tokens transfered between both protocols? I guess the easy way is to use a third party (e.g. Vennd) that has knowledge about both sides and acts as mediator, but I'm wondering, if there is an alternative without a centralized, single point of failure.

I'm just going to tiptoe into this topic and mention NXT a few times.......the above exchange scenario can be run effectively using Nxts Asset Exchange and/or MultiGateway. There will need to be some coding done to get MSC and XCP gateways up, but nothing major. Could be up and running before the end of the week, if you feel the need to rush.

Nxt will release its Monetary System feature with the coming update, allowing you to issue custom made Nxt-backed currencies.
Of course, there is a natural desire for MSC to stay within the BTC eco-system, but take a good look at Nxt. It's in a strong position right now, and the underlying technology has proved to be rock-solid over the last year.

Did I mention that Nxt is committed to open-source principles ?
If MSC/Maidsafe/whoever decide to move over to the Nxt blockchain, they are completely free to do so.
No need to ask permission from anyone, just do it. The Nxt community will be happy to provide support.  

Edit:
Heres an MS overview from our Devs:
https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/issue/136/monetary-system

Thanks for the input!

I'm impressed by what the NXT community has developed over time, you guys got my attention with the MultiGateway project some time ago..

Nevertheless, and this is just my personal opinion, I believe moving away from BTC is not an option, because that's one of the key properties.

[JohnnyBTCSeed]

Thank you for the response Craig.

If the issue is with JR’s holdings, remember that the bulk of the funds used in development came from JR in the form of BTC during the crowdsale last year.  Those are legitimately purchased tokens.  The same can be said for large NXT holders, where it appears this is less of an issue (although why large anonymous holders is better, from the community’s perspective, is a mystery to me).

Now is the perfect time to put this issue to rest. Maybe we aren't aware of all of the development that JR has paid for. Can you please go over the funds that JR has spent on development.  I don't really think that large holders even if anonymous are necessarily bad, satoshi being one of the most famous, however all we can go by are actions. Has JR ever crashed the market by cashing his MSC out?

With regards to the progress on the platform and protocol, including new issuers, let me provide some recent news, as it appears the really good news doesn’t get spread (all of our /r/Bitcoin links get deleted shortly after being posted….):

If your updates are getting removed then this is unfortunate. Over here at bitcointalk, mention of mastercoin has evaporated. Maybe there is a PR person at mastercoin that can post updates to the altcoin section and spur some discussion on. Several projects are doing this right now. Can you re-introduce to us who the current developers are?

Some of the other items being discussed are which smart contract technologies to leverage going forward, and how we can coordinate interop with other technologies such as Ethereum, Sidechains, etc.  Our focus is not to be an isolated island of functionality, but instead to be a bridge between complimentary technologies.  The partnerships we have made are extremely strong, and as they get announced the rest of the community will see the results

I'm glad to hear that you wish to continue to evolve mastercoin. Can you start a discussion thread about the "bridge to complimentary technologies"? Have you atleast had a chance to talk to CIYAM?

In short, adoption of the platform is growing, but most of it is occuring quietly in the background.  Our progress has been dictated by making sure what we release is rock solid, as the possibility of disabling features after release due to problems is unacceptable.  This may not happen as quickly as everyone would like, but it’s prudent and I firmly believe that the platform is being adopted by so many third parties because of the quality of the work in each release.  We are constantly told how easy it is to complete an integration with Master Core.  The same can’t be said for other platforms.  As we continue to become integrated with other large partners (again, several of which are unannounced), it should become evident how strong of a platform we have.

This would be a perfect time to talk about the ease of Master Core. Do you have any quotes or references from people who are quite happy with how easy Master Core is? Has there been any third party reviews of Master Core vs CounterParty?

Do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions.

Craig

Yes, we have lots of questions and obviously still care about this project due to the passion that posters still have. Thank you for starting a dialogue with us.

[CIYAM]

I'm glad to here that you wish to continue to evolve mastercoin. Can you start a discussion thread about the "bridge to complimentary technologies"? Have you atleast had a chance to talk to CIYAM?

Please note that I did get a few PMs from @udecker about AT and Mastercoin (I assume this is the Craig that you mention as that is the name he used in the PMs).

Whilst I don't know how easy it would be to implement AT on Mastercoin I am willing to help out where I can (if devs such as Craig are interested to pursue this avenue).

[crazy_rabbit]

Thank you for the response Craig.

If the issue is with JR’s holdings, remember that the bulk of the funds used in development came from JR in the form of BTC during the crowdsale last year.  Those are legitimately purchased tokens.  The same can be said for large NXT holders, where it appears this is less of an issue (although why large anonymous holders is better, from the community’s perspective, is a mystery to me).

Now is the perfect time to put this issue to rest. Maybe we aren't aware of all of the development that JR has paid for. Can you please go over the funds that JR has spent on development.  I don't really think that large holders even if anonymous are necessarily bad, satoshi being one of the most famous, however all we can go by are actions. Has JR ever crashed the market by cashing his MSC out?

Yes he has, it was back at one of the earlier peaks in MSC price. He announced he would be selling and the market tanked. I still supported his holdings at the time, but I think it left people permanently a bit suspicious.

[crazy_rabbit]

I'm glad to see that the suggestion to fork Mastercoin seems to have put a little bit of a fire under the seat. :-)

Still no word from JR though, I would still want to hear what he has to say.

[bitcoin_bagholder]

Fork it.

[crazy_rabbit]

Too little too late I suppose. I'm glad the MSC guys are a bit more communicative on the other thread. The failure of JR to make any comment at all though seems to indicate to me that nothing has changed, and nothing will change. I expect good development will continue, the MSC guys are obviously good coders and I wish them the best. The recent price bump was a nice little opportunity to get out, so I'll be watching from the sidelines from now on. It's a fantastic idea, Mastercoin, but the truth is, you invest in teams- not ideas. Ideas are nothing without execution.

So long and thanks for all the tokens!

:-)

[mishax1]

Who's JR ? 

[littleblue]

  JR have 2# wife? so he sell  msc again?

[JohnnyBTCSeed]

Who's JR ? 

[JohnnyBTCSeed]

Are there any reviews of masteromnicore vs counterparty?

Craig claimed omni was better. Is there any teeth to this?

[mishax1]

It's better. shut up! 

[JohnnyBTCSeed]

It's better. shut up! 

Yes sir...

[crazy_rabbit]

Well MSC is at 303rd place on Coinmarket cap and has ZERO volume. It's not just illiquid right now, it's worthless. JR hasn't appeared at all- despite the threat of forking Mastercoin which inclines me to believe that he just doesn't care one way or another.