Since the beginning of november, bitshares has been supporting paid DPOS delegates. Our marketing is simply still so terrible that no one knows what it means and why it's the biggest new development in crypto since the invention of POW. What paid delegates mean in practice are that the blockchain is now completely self funding, fully controlled by the stakeholders who own BTS. It's just like a public company, except shareholders hire and fire all employees, not just the CEO. This decentralized funding model means that over time bitshares will be able to scale its development team infinitely and eventually implement all features of all other blockchains. Additionally it will be possible to fund professional marketing enabling us to finally crack open the difficult problem of getting mainstream adoption of blockchain tech.
Over time all good developers in the cryptocurrency industry will be working for bitshares in some capacity, since it's obvious that due to metcalfes law it makes more sense for developers to collaborate on the same blockchain rather than constantly create a new blockchain for every new feature. Since bitshares is the biggest second gen blockchain, developing a new feature on bitshares will always create more value than only developing it for whoever buys into a new altcoin. ICO's and premines have simply been the only way to fund development so far, which is why we've observed hundreds of alts spring up, each bringing their own new piece of innovation to the table (deliberately non-innovative scams don't count as real altcoins). With paid delegates, the age where the oldest coins are the least innovative will finally end.
Right now the main new feature bitshares is working on is fully implemented gateways that will enable it to work just like ripple (but with a non-volatile market pegged asset as the liquidity token, allowing for lower spreads than with XRP). There's also ambitious plans for decentralized DNS, and a blockchain powered bitbazaar in the medium term. All of this will be funded by paid delegates, fully decentralized, fully transparent, fully controlled by all owners of BTS.
If you're a developer with any skills applicable to cryptocurrency, bitshares wants to hire you. A 100% paid delegate position currently pays around 2500 USD per month, so can be considered a decent part time job.
Here's an interview with toast, the first 100% delegate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrif9uThwSY (
http://www.bitshares.tv/ has a bunch of other videos explaining other parts of bitshares)
Bytemaster (the lead dev of bitshares) has a blog that explains some of the concept of bitshares pretty well.
http://bytemaster.github.io/The most important part is probably explaining how market pegged assets work:
http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2014/12/18/What-are-BitShares-Market-Pegged-Assets.htmlIf you're a talented altcoin developer, but tired of working on pump n dumps with no clear system for funding longterm development, then you should consider becoming a delegate. No matter what your skillset is, as long as you are good at what you do then we need you. What bitcoin did to money, bitshares aims to do to everything else. The people who become delegates early and begin to build up trust with stakeholders will find themselves employed by a stable, decentralized, indestructible and very generous employer: The blockchain itself.
Join the community and make your delegate application at
http://bitsharestalk.org/
