I have been reading a lot of critical questions about decred recently in this thread. Its good that people are discussing the coin with critical thinking and it has helped in fleshing out finer points about various aspects of decred especially the airdrop. I thank all the critics
Although i have seen lots of rehashing of same arguments despite detailed answers from the project team. I would suggest to critics that if you are not satisfied with the answers or still convinced that this could be a scam and want to inform the community about it, you can create another thread for specially this purpose and post a link in this thread. Its crowding out other discussion IMO.
Another thing i wanted to discuss is that people have been asking about utility of this coin. Its quite clearly stated in the announcement that main purpose of this coin is to test a new governance system that is more community oriented & innovate other tech that might be used in bitcoin's development. I would suggest both community and dev team to focus on testing this out for first 6 months on real blockchain of the coin instead of trying to focus on adoption/use.
I find it funny that people want the latest coin to be used widely or they are pushing for widespread use right from start. I think we should first test the coin in real world before asking people to accept it. Bitcoin was the first coin and it had to wait for 2-3 years before somewhat wider adoption & that was without any competition. Pushing for wider adoption in first year only leads to high expectation and mediocre to disastrous results in my experience. What we should be focused on in initial months is testing the tech & building required "infrasturcture" for the coin which includes
* first and foremost, support forums/IRC/slack, although i think this is already in place thanks to lot of helpful people intersted in this project.
* block explorers i.e. more than one & preferably at least one that is hosted by third party.
* mining pools including a p2pool based pool.
* exchange presence & liquidity with help of market makers in community.
* other services community members want to build around the coin.
* community members accepting decred instead of pushing other merchants to accept it. Organic growth and if project is successful others will come.
IMO there are two major use cases for any coin in its first few months
1) speculation by markets & accumulation by supporters
2) testing out the technology that is promised to the users.
For first point we should try to include some members in the community who can help with reducing the fluctuation in price which is inevitable result of speculation i.e. we should seek investors who can play market makers role.
For the second use case, in decred's case it will totally depend on the community and how much importance it gives to nuanced discussion rather than "turning up on the voting day". Its same as democracies which are supposed to run by "consent of the governed" but real question is whether governed are making a "informed decision" by engaging in discourse or not.
I would like to warn anyone who is thinking that this project is a get rich quick scheme. It could turn out to be that but there is always a risk/reward calculation involved. I am very optimistic and i believe in competence of dev team but you never know how things will turn out. I am taking my airdrop & remaining neutral, I will mine & invest more but not without weighing risk & considering any loss that might occur. As we can see that some people are not that optimistic & want others to know, that i think helps in balancing the debate for general community & keep the unwarranted enthusaism in check.
I would say to everyone who wants to bet on success of this project, that be invloved like a shareholder will be in a company, learn the technology & how it works, ask question, see for yourself how main features like voting works and then only if you think this thing can work in real world invest more. Until then keep your airdrop & enjoy. I think airdrop is great way to let people test the tech without risking any money. People want to get in early which is high risk/reward game. I would personally prefer to buy at say, 2-5x a year from now rather than risking it right now or atleast buy on dips what i can afford.
Now people are not very happy about dev's taking half of premine. I would say that it is totally fair for them to do this as they have already invested time and money. Also they are doing it by informing everyone in advance rather than a hidden premine. It makes speculation predictable, if you think they would need to dump some coins then instead of buying at market price set some low orders. If you dont trust them to keep working & dump the premine & vanish then as i said it dont buy it & open a thread to alert others.
The other point about premine that was brought up regarding the premine & staking it, i think its a legit concern. just to float ideas, i would suggest that devs put 50% of their share ie 25% of coins in a publicly viewable multi-sig address. Distribute the keys to some community members who are willing to take that responsibility along with representatives of c0/devs and put a contract, smart if possible, in place to lock it for an agreed upon time based on funding requirements for the project. This way devs will still have half of their money if needed and still they wont be undermining the voting process by having 50% share out of 66% needed for consensus.
Those are my thoughts about various discussions going on right now. I hope this will help in arriving on some solutions/understanding about these issues.
Regards
Sam
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