It's become clear in this long thread that a year of "Fibs and Fud" from people who have little personal honor have left many fair minded folks with deep misunderstandings about BitShares. Rather than continuing to answer them piecemeal, I've decided to author a series of posts that explain everything from the beginning. I hope some of you find this useful.The Origin of BitShares
Part 7
BitShares Sharedrop Theory
Albert Einstein spent most of his career in search of Unified Field Theory. Today’s physicists are closing in on their Theory of Everything. We, on the other hand will settle for nothing less than Grand BitShares Sharedrop Theory!
Each of these Grand Unification Theories seeks to describe their field with one simple explanation, preferably no bigger than
e = mc2. In our case, we’ve been seeking a simple way to explain BitShares PTS, AGS, BTS, snapshots and virtual mining all in one relaxing elevator ride.
And just like Newton’s apple, and Archimedes’s bathtub, or Fleming’s Petri dish,
we found our solution in one blazing flash of the obvious.
Our breakthrough in clarity came when a new altcoin decided to target its promotional coin give-away to a specific demographic: employees of leading firms in Silicon Valley. Rather than give their coins to the general population, most of who would either ignore or quickly sell them, Silicon Valley Coin developers were trying to get them into the hands of people who might appreciate them more by targeting specific Silicon Valley postal codes. This was much better than simply dropping them from a helicopter somewhere over southern California. Targeted airdrops were the now obvious answer to getting a fair distribution to likely users!
“That’s it! That’s what we’ve been doing all along!” We have been designing coins to represent demographic groups that developers would rather give their promotional shares to than the general public. There was now a new reason, perhaps the most important reason, for all altcoins to exist!
Enough altcoins have distributed their shares through, ahem, “fair” mining
that we no longer need to use mining to fairly distribute shares!
Instead, we can “sharedrop” them onto holders of one or more existing coins whose demographic profile matches the group of users we want to become our new customers. Whether your coin represented dog-lovers or permaculture enthusiasts or Mars colonizers, air dropping your coin to the holders of their coin represented the perfect bootstrap operation. Just take a snapshot of the account balances in their block chain and use the same public keys for their corresponding accounts in your block chain.
An altcoin blockchain is a mailing list for reaching a specific demographic group.
(The group of people who, for whatever reason, are currently holding that coin.)
Now we could describe our first products using the targeted promotion paradigm:
ProtoShares
is just an altcoin you could mine or buy from others (not us)
to try to get targeted by developers
who see promotional advantages in a free airdrop of their new product samples
to a demographic of people who liked mining and understand DACs.
AngelShares
is just a public ledger of donors you got on by donating to a development trust,
to support the industry and maybe get targeted by developers
who see promotional advantages in a free airdrop of their new product samples
to a demographic of people who have donated to developers!
BitShares
is an unmanned company with a decentralized exchange as it's core business model.
You own it to share in the value it generates - like any traditional company.
And, as a bonus, try to get targeted by developers
who see promotional advantages in a free airdrop of their new product samples
to a demographic of people who are active customers/owners of a decentralized exchange!
We think these are three demographic “mailing lists” that every savvy developer will want to honor as airdrops replace mining as the preferred way to get a fair (but targeted) distribution of new give-away samples. Targeted sharedrops to finely tuned demographics are far better than tossing your samples into a few zip codes or to all the uncaring masses of a typical currency.
Companies pay big money for focused mailing lists.
We have generated three outstanding lists – and make them available for free. Savvy developers want to give free promotional shares in their new digital companies to people who will appreciate them – the kind of people who will hold onto and promote them so their value goes up, rather than crashing prices by dumping them on the market.
These shares work like “sign-up lists” for more free shares
ProtoShares (PTS) – The original grandfather prototype . Having PTS in your wallet means you are a “holder” not a “dumper” – presumably because you think long term and value owning a stake in the BitShares industry. Whether you mined them or bought them on the market, the fact that you still have them proves you are a long-term supporter.
AngelShares (AGS) – The original grandmother prototype in reference to the patron “angels” who once funded the performing arts. That’s why AGS are not liquid. (No one can trade the proof that you were the one willing to donate to this cause.) But you can imagine why developers will want to give an industry donor free shares more than anyone else!
BitShares (BTS) - The first child of ProtoShares and AngelShares. It's a mailing list of people who are currently interested in DACs of this type - and actively engaged as its customers and/or owners.
A final word that many altcoin developers know instinctively:
It’s not about imitating Bitcoin.
It’s about attracting an affinity group. And once you’ve motivated that group to hold onto your coin, you have eyeballs to sell. In this case, the value of your coin is tied to the value of your group as a target for other developers’ promotional shares. This is exactly what PTS, AGS, and BTS holders are: A demographic MUCH more likely to be good supporters. These block chains are like mailing codes that let you target your shares to the people you want to reach much, much, much more precisely than using Silicon Valley mailing codes!
You can see the control this gives a developer to build a reliable constituency and minimize the amount of shares wasted on people inclined to quickly sell them! BitShares Sharedrop Theory offers a much better option than conventional mining for achieving a fair but smart distribution of new coins or shares. We think many clever targeting mixes will be devised and this will become a preferred initial share distribution approach in the days ahead.
The following block chains have or will be using this Sharedropping technique: BitShares, LottoShares, MemoryCoin, PLAY, Music, RandPaulCoin, and Sparkle.
Ordinary altcoins now have a big new reason to exist: to attract a particular sharedrop demographic!
We think this fair distribution method will be adopted widely in the next few years. There are many possible options. For example, here is the distribution chosen independently by the Chinese developers of the PLAY DAC:
35 % will go to BTS holders on December 8, 2014 12:00 PM (UTC).
10 % will go to AGS holders on July 18, 2014 12:00 PM (UTC).
10 % will go to PTS holders on November 5, 2014 12:00 PM (UTC).
15 % will go to the R & D team to cover development costs.
10% will be held in reserves
20% will go to a public PLS sale
You can read about other third party DACs here:
Third Party DACs Newsletter(To be continued...)
