Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 107. (Read 448462 times)

The right developer will find us if it's needed. As for now, I don't see anyone better qualified than J.R. yet to lead. Development has been very organic and liquid thus far.

Although one thing that I am missing is a weekly update thread by Willet.

There's so much going on, and so I think that summarizing last week's progress in a short post that only Willet can update to would be terrific for communications.

+1000 MSC

I just noticed this question on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1o5cfb/investments_similar_to_bitcoin/


Of course I went to suggest MasterCoin in the comments, except I found that TWO other comments beat me to the punch.

That suggests to me that we don't need to do ANY marketing. People know about us. We just need to execute on our plan!

Good to hear, the quick progress of this project has made me think that searching for new talent wasn't an  issue, for the record

The talent we have attracted has far exceeded my expectations, and the progress they are making is way more than I had hoped for. I'm not looking for new talent at all (although more are welcome to join if they are interested in participating).

I figured it would take us maybe three or four months to get as far as we have gotten in one month. I couldn't be happier. Our guys are absolutely rocking this project, and I think everyone invested in MasterCoin should be glad we have them.

I agree with what your saying, yes of course marketing matters..... But the point which your not getting is that first you need a product to market (not an idea), before even thinking of spending funds on marketing. Right now its kind of obvious that  allocation of funds should go primarily towards master coin protocol program development, not marketing. After theirs a functioning mastercoin, then sure marketing expenditure should definatley be considered. And yes i know an introductory video is a marketing tactic, my point is really that i believe thats the only marketing tactic that is needed at this stage.

Edit

When you stated 'There is a serious lack of talent' (from what i've read on this thread, their is definately talent working on this) thats not such a marketing issue, thats more of a headhunting issue which shouldn't require marketing, it requires incentives such as monetary gains and other rewards, which JR willet is doing through competitions etc. Perhaps J.R willet should be speaking to universities and announcing the competition  within computer science graduates to help develop this protocol, or other ways of fishing more talent apart from bitcoin talk forum (i'm not sure if he is doing this or not), thats my suggestion in getting more talent involved

Marketing might be useful once there is an it.
At the moment there is nothing but a set of ideas.

Mastercoin is to XRP as Ripple is to ...?
At some point someone will need to fill in the blank.

I  have to agree with this, no marketing is needed if this works in my opinion, its usefulness will market itself, after its working, then marketing can always be an option but i think funds would be better spent on mastercoin development and just let the power of free journalism and word of mouth spread be the driving force for a viral effect (which i'm sure will happen). However a good introductary video for master coin is imperative such as the one's made for color coin, bitcoin and ripple.

JR - Please don't listen to this nonsense.  Zero marketing is correct.  If it works, it works.  That is all.  It will be wildly popular without marketing if we get it working.  Just get it working.  We don't need a fancy logo and a pretty paint.  Save that crap for project without merit.

I don't think that is a good answer at all.

So, we can make new currencies with new wonderful functions based upon this 'mastercoin' protocol.  But there are only 500000 MSC.  So, what currency is going to be based upon something only having a unit of 500,000?  Of course, one MSC is very highly divisible - so you only need one MSC to make a million CoolCoins - each worth about $100 lets say.  Then another guy takes 1 MSC and makes two million SuperCoolCoins with even better functions - these are worth $500 each.  Well, there isn't much demand at all for the other 499,997 MSC because CoolCoins and SuperCoolCoins and maybe two or three others are all we really need.  Nobody wants the other MSC.  OK - now we have 'smart properties' and 1000 companies each buy 1 mastercoin, divide it into 1 million shares, and use that for their stock issue.  I am still holding my 100 MSC and nobody wants them because there are 499,000 still doing nothing.  They are easy to buy until they become scarce.  But because we'll never have 500,000 projects each of which consume one MSC and divide it down to one million (or more) pieces, they will never be worth much.

Specifically, MSC holders do not own this sexy protocol being developed.  The protocol will be free to copy by anyone and they can run their copy right on the same BTC blockchain.  Even if demand for MSC does finally get high enough to make them worth $5 - Anyone can 'relaunch' an identical protocol and create a Billion MSC2 leaving MSC holders with nothing.

It is important to note - MSC holders bought those coins with good money and that money is being used to devo the protocol.  When it is all wonderful and developed, JR has done nothing to maintain ownership of that protocol.  A competitor will just come in, scoop it up, restart it on a parallel effort and MSC holders will have nothing.  

JR says the big guys won't be able to do that because they will be too 'far behind'.  Ask Microsoft how they felt when everyone laughed at Internet Explorer in view of Netscape.  Netscape was sure that Microsoft was just way too far behind.  Netscape was out of business about ten minutes later.

Great answer - got it!

Great questions, I added an answer to the FAQ.

Where does Mastercoin derive its value from? Why is it valuable?

The initial value for mastercoins came out of the fundraiser "anchoring". People were willing to "sacrifice" 1 BTC in exchange for about 100 MSC, so it anchored the initial value of MSC in at least 0.01 BTC per MSC.

The more general answer is that Mastercoin provides a set of features that only work with mastercoins or Mastercoin-based currencies, and there is a limited number of them. So, in order to enjoy these features, you have to own some mastercoins, giving them an independant value. The more real world usage Mastercoin sees, the higher the value of each mastercoin can get. In addition, as always, a lot of its value is currently driven by speculators executing a price discovery process.

Can escrows / backed currencies be made using any currency? Why are mastercoins required?

Backed currencies work with mastercoins or any currency derived from mastercoins. The value of the backing currencies must be high enough, or the backed currency will fail. Mastercoin are required as the root of the new hierarchy of currencies, bitcoins themselves cannot be used as the root, and since the backing-backed relation requires a root currency, a "mastercoin" root is needed.

I've tried searching this thread for the answer to my question so apologies if this question has already been asked or indeed answered in the specification but..

I'm not savvy enough to understand the technical concepts so I'm happy to ask the dumb questions so - where does the Mastercoin itself derive its value from?.  I.e. what role does it perform - if I understand the spec correctly the parent currency can be any currency?  Can an escrow be any currency?  Why does this very promising protocol need Mastercoin currency?

As usual these days I sadly have little time to following the super exciting progress you guys are all making...

I did want to share a small idea of my own, regarding to the backed currencies feature.

Implementing IndexCoin on top of MasterCoin

(Please reply on that thread so we can track it, I'm copy-pasting here to save you a click)

Nah. Pay dividend will just be something like "Pay X amount of currency Y evenly distributed among people holding currency Z"

Yes, I think this would be very important!

I'm wondering how much information should be embedded in the genesis of a smart property. E.g., when creating a new property, would we need to have a "pays dividend" field? And do we need to define the currency in which dividends are paid right from the start when creating the smart property?

vokain made us a nice ledger of expenses from the Exodus Address so far: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtCyUJvk_IyNdGpVcnpBN2tOczFmbVRnck5TWjZuRFE&usp=sharing

Let me know if you see any problems. I'll link to it from the OP.

0.0002 MasterCoins seems like a plan. Let's do that