What services are people currently investing into / making?
I'm doing some development work to merge gaming with crypto with DGB as the primary currency system. I want to keep it DGB to encourage growth etc but depending on the first 2 months use i may have to branch out to BTC or LTC not because of lack of DGB faith but more adoption. I will be pushing DGB hard though. I'm prolly 1-2 months off completion. Will announce when close to release.
DigiByte has had some real cash investment and when people mine on the official pool 3% goes to support development. You are right that it is the community that will make or break this coin tho, with or without outside influence. ELPDCC has some work going on to help organize some community action and knowing him, I'm 100% sure this will be above board and transparent.
There have been lots of interesting comments here in the past day.
o0o0 ... I think that the gaming project sounds really interesting. I don't know exactly what you're working on. I'm not into gaming, in either personal or professional contexts. But, I've always felt like there are lots of possibilities for integrating digital currencies into gaming. I believe there are two really strong foundations for that integration ... (1) as a primary means of exchange in large MMORP environments ... and (2) as a rewards system in smaller mobile-based gaming. I had a student - about a year ago - who developed apps and games for mobile devices. He developed a game that integrated DOGE (and DOGE mining) into the play. I've been out of touch with him for a few months - but I had considered getting back in touch with him sometime this summer. Regardless, I hope your project goes right and good ...
As far as my own project goes - the one Jumbley referenced above ... I'm putting together a website where we can (as a group) organize and fund mini-promotional projects ... sort of like a cross between crowd-fundind and the BTC foundation (without the crazy). Initially, this is about developing some advertising campaigns. But, I'm hoping that as time goes on, we can organize additional projects - combine ideas - develop applications, hire models to stand around in yoga gear?, etc.. Last week I posted about if people wanted to contribute some DGB to buy a banner advertisement on CoinDesk. That's where this started, because I quickly realized that I'd need a more tangible structure to implement the idea. So, that's the first project - but hopefully just the first of many. I'll provide an update in the coming day or so.
I'm hoping to have at least the foundation of the site online by the end of the weekend. I just need a few hours.
1. I do have a couple of general responses about the levels of involvement and suggestions. I don't believe that anyone's DGB balance matters. We all work with DGB as part of this community.
2. In my mind, the greatest strategic opportunity for DGB is to provide an e-commerce solution for people whose current product is not easily monetized trough traditional e-commerce. How do you monetize social media posts (not how does Facebook do it ... how do users or companies do it within Facebook ... not how does Instagram do it ... how do Instagram users do it? How do you monetize small-scale web traffic and advertising? A couple of days ago someone suggested monetizing technical support ... stuff like that. Clearly, DGB works within traditional e-commerce as well (Jumbley buys a shirt from 24Hraltrade). But, the real opportunity is to provide solutions to monetize non-traditional e-commerce. I'm looking forward to seeing these projects develop. None of this is easy or quick ... it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a long time. (see next) ...
3. We need to let the infrastructure for exchange develop and emerge with time. We could create payment gateways and plugins and games, etc.. But, unless there is an easy, seamless, and widely available backend to exchange DGB - it will limit the use and adoption by consumers. Broadly speaking, this is the current struggle that is going on in digital currency. Exchanges weren't set up to act as banks. They were set up to act as exchanges. Banks are for withdrawals and deposits. Exchanges are for trading. Many exchanges are currently working to move closer to banking (or investing) to attempt to solve the problem. It's not an easy problem to solve. It's expensive, it has different complications, regulations, etc., for each country. I don't know the status of the DGB exchange project. All this is to say ... we need to move forward as we move forward. We can't leap into the future - we've got to push and crawl, we've got to work and develop, and eventually, when we get there it will be worth it.
4. My assessment of the DGB development and core team is that they are great. They are engaged, devoted, and committed to the project. But, they aren't magic. There are obviously improvements and ideas that will happen ... I actually have a list of things that I would like to see implemented to help professionalize and develop DGB. I'm not going to give the whole list here, but it's stuff like annual letters to stakeholders and interested parties, weekly/bi-monthly development blogs, maybe even annual financial reports, and annual development strategies published publicly. DGB already stands out as one of the most professionally managed coins. I think we could easily push that a bit further, and I believe it would result in fantastic benefits. One of our jobs (that is one of the jobs of this community) is to help contribute to the forward progress ... not to just come in here and chat, complain, gossip, etc.. For instance, If Jared is busy doing management and developing ... we can and should be willing to pick up the other stuff if he is willing to delegate to us. We work with DigiByte.
Gaming is a funny thing with regard to MMORPG's and mobile games. Its hard for them both to succeed with integration because apple, microsoft and the google stores want direct payments. They don't want to let people earn outside their ecosystem and rightly so you'd be piggy backing off their market population without their cut, they want control of their monetary system. MMORPG's are the same. The companies want you to buy your ingame credits. They don't want you buying them elsewhere then bringing them in to use.
A way around it would be that they could take cuts of transactions. However players start doing payments outside of their network for services. I can see possible future crypto integration with games but i believe the game networks will have their own crypto api's that intercept payments to get their cut.
. Thanks for keeping it warm.
