For clarity though we don't have anything 'stable' - not even close. Rapid prototyping (RAD) is the order of the day for now.
I hope you do not recommend people to trust their money to something which "don't have anything 'stable' - not even close" and is in "rapid prototyping" stage.
Not at all, I do believe the Mastercoin community understand the message that as of the time of this posting, simple sends are the only safe and 100% supported way to transfer Mastercoins.
I have a working wallet right now which it could be in my financial interest (ie better my position in the contest) to release sooner & get everyone using it but there are still discussions happening around certain specifics and not all implementations yet agree on DEx states - when we're done and we have consensus among all devs & implementations, then I'll think about releasing.
Note, I'll be doing limited releases to the other devs and some of the board members, but that's only for testing & comparison purposes at this stage.
So I said that we'll likely get a usable colored coins usage way before usable Mastercoin exchange. But Ron and Taariq pretend that it's non-issue, like, we have a spec on github, hence consensus is guaranteed.
I've made it a rule to try not to get involved in discussions comparing Mastercoin to other projects, simply because it's impossible for me to be objective on such a topic.
Really? This spec is nothing. It is way too vague. You haven't even tried to formalize interpretation of the spec or anything like that.
Whilst I do agree the spec has areas that need clarity and further defining, I don't think I'd agree with the statement that we aren't trying to formalize the spec. Where we come across areas of ambiguity a consensus is reached between the devs with the idea that decision is then locked into the spec.
This is done in an incremental fashion, rather than all-at-once however, and perhaps that contributes to your perceived lack of control. From my experiences to date the process has largely been to define a 'feature', prototype it, compare across (4 I think it is now) independent implementations, discuss areas of ambiguity / differing interpretations of the spec / differing states in the various implementations, define / clarify / lock-in those issues so we have a clear set of rules we all agree on and code to.
For example I took on transaction storage as my first real push for a spec amendment (I thought it fairly fundamental) - there was lots (and lots) of discussion and once I was happy we all agreed on all the necessary bits I wrote an appendix and asked JR to include it in the spec, which he did
here.
TL:DR; I believe the spec will continue to be formalized with each feature rather than all at once.
For example, it defines that rate-limited address cannot be used for decentralized exchange. This makes sense, of course.
But what if a command to make address rate-limited is sent after an offer on decentralized exchange is made? Will it cancel the offer, or will command be ignored?
If implementation X cancels the offer, while implementation Y ignores a command to make address rate-limited, it is possible to double-spend.
Understood, and this essentially reflects my comments above - that's the type of question that gets identified as an area of ambiguity, raised during prototyping said feature, discussed, agreed and a decision made & locked in.
I would completely agree that the Bitcoin core dev team likely do have more structure and rigorousness applied, but that's a project (worth multiple billions) that has had ~5 years to get to this point - I believe a startup phase looks different but that's just my view.
Actually, no: Satoshi released a complete version of a client, and Bitcoin developers were always reluctant to change things which can affect consensus. Almost no features were added to the protocol in these 5 years. If anything, many features were disabled.
I actually didn't know Satoshi released a complete client along with the white paper - I thought (assumed) that came later. I wasn't around for the beginning of the cryptocurrency revolution sadly!
Personally I will say I see huge potential in Mastercoin - that's why I got involved in the first place. I think the features it targets are exactly the kinds of things needed to attract big finance/corporate to cryptocurrencies.
I should also say that that's just my personal take on the points you've raised. This is just how I've chosen to approach things as an individual. My views are my own and may not necessarily reflect those of the foundation/project. etc etc.
JR/Ron/Taariq would need to comment for any formal/official views.
Thanks again for the feedback
