Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 48. (Read 448462 times)

There should be at least one board member on the threads at all times - if only to speak on behalf of the board. As rbdrbd has said, a CEO serves his investors. It's unacceptable that we should have to wait several hours at a time in order to discuss questions of great importance to the project.

When we next have votes for board members, I think that we should require that they each be online and interactive for some minimum amount of time a day or week.

Whether "the greatest solutions come from late night hacking" shouldn't be what determines our decision whether or not to hire full-time developers (which again need not replace bounties, but supplement them). In a long-term project a sustained time commitment is absolutely essential, and while "some company that has it's moment on architecture" does indeed sound a lot less romantic than late night hacking, it may nevertheless be the better option.

Also, some (if not all) of our main developers and board members (ripper being the exception) have full-time jobs; for almost all of our major developer and employers Mastercoin is a side-job. So I don't know what you mean by "externally hired people" if you mean to contrast that with "internally hired people". If we got some full-time developers then, even if they have not been associated with Mastercoin up to this point, they would certainly be less "external" than most of the current people in power.


I believe there are 3 questions: (1) whether we need PR right now; (2) whether we got the right PR firm for our money; (3) whether we paid too much money for our PR firm. I was addressing (2) whereas you seem to be answering (1) and (3) affirmatively. Thus, regarding (2): Do you think it would have been better to have gotten a PR firm with technical competency, that way what time our board can devote to Mastercoin doesn't have to be devoted to "PR fights", or are you satisfied?

My thoughts exactly. Without a responsive face for the board working with the community and listening to the community, the community will not take this project seriously. And if the Mastercoin community itself doesn't take its own project seriously, why would the Bitcoin community or the general public take it seriously? As the community on this project, we *are* the investors. A CEO serves his investors/shareholders, and is graded on his performance in doing so.

Learning how to effectively delegate is one of the most challenging aspects of running an organization (as least it has been for me). It one of the main reasons why you see all of those companies that have been around for years but still just have one (or barely two) people. Ron may want to consider that as the board chair in an organization like this, he is akin to being the President/CEO of a company. Normally, CEOs really focus on the following things only:

• Relationship with the investors (i.e. community). Reading bitcointalk should be one of the most important things on the plate here. Your community is your funding source, and, if communicated with properly, can be your biggest asset. Don't forget that the value of this coin is (especially at this early point) 95% based on how the community sees this project. The community will make or break this project. Right now, us peasants are a bit restless here.
• Forming the high level, strategic vision: I can't comment on this one much, because to be honest, I am not sure what the high level strategic vision is for this project, beyond the obvious "grow big and get PR". The blog offers me some details, but with the rest of it, but many decisions seem to be made without the community (i.e. investors) being consulted much. Contrast this with Peercoin (which I have done numerous times), where the strategic vision is very much communicated with regular interviews with Sunny, as well as an active forum where community members can pick up tasks and run with them, as well as regular newsletters. Mastercoin is a young project and I think is moving in that direction (blog, talk of forum software, etc), but the community needs to be seen as what can make or break this thing, especially if you want to recruit developers out of it (and *pay* them in your coin) to work on the project.
• Hiring the best team, and delegating to them: A CEO often hires his executive team, and delegates to them for all day-to-day activities. He does not deal with the nitty gritty of configuring software, etc. because he can have an IT person do that. When you become CEO, you need to leave the past life of an IT guy behind and put on a different mask. If your IT person isn't cutting it, fire him and get a new one.
• Serving as the primary spokesman for the company: Again, working with both your investors (i.e. community) and the outside/general public. PR people can handle the nitty gritty, the CEO should be mostly concerned with the general message being delivered, and how it communicates the strategic vision.
• Exploring strategic partnerships/"deals" and serving as an ambassador: This is why I wanted Ron to contact me directly. What I was proposing was about as core a strategic partnership as you could get, and as core to the future health (or failure) of Mastercoin as you could get, at least on the development front (which is what this is, right? a software implementation of an idea). Definitely more important than forum software, and this is something that it would make sense for the CEO not to delegate, because it's exactly about "hiring the best team" above.
• Structuring the budget in line with the strategic vision, and deciding how funds will be spent

Now this doesn't happen overnight. At my company, I had to learn (and am still learning) how to effectively do this....and as we ourselves are bootstrapped, I am growing into this role as our budget allows (i.e. hiring people to replace me, and training them how to do my job(s)...I'm 70% there). But, don't underestimate how important this is. This is the reason why many VC-backed tech startups boards fire their founders (I have oodles of examples here). It's also why many, many companies fail. And it's a contributing reason why one of my first big attempts at business failed, so I know it well.

Definitely not trying to be condescending with the above. This project just needs its perceptions shifted a bit in my 3rd party view.

-Robby

One up. This system would fit me perfectly as a stakeholder.

Exactly.


I think decentralized exchange is the most important thing at the moment. Once it's out there, it's something tangible, and also market itself will control price of mastercoins, following board decisions etc. Could be a good thing.

Up for decentralization. People shouldn't express requirements to get something from the Mastercoin Foundation before starting their development. At this stage I favour the bounty system JR started. Once feature is coded and it works - you get a reward. There's plenty of funds available - not many open source projects are happy to have that incentive.

A proposal like mastercoin daemon is a great idea, just if we can't it get running without some overcommitment from the Foundation, maybe it's not time for it yet. Call me naïf, but if someone would show up with some excellent implementation ready, wouldn't he be rewarded even without an upfront bounty? I would vote for him for sure. Heck I would even reward him with my own funds.

My belief is that greatest solutions come from late night hacking, not externally hired people with 9-5 jobs, even if it's slower/less professional that way. The least thing I would like to see in Mastercoin is it being tied with some company that has it's momentum on architecture.



I think it's a good decision, it's not a huge sum for PR. And saying that I'm in no way connected to the BitAngels.

JR's wife is ruining this project.  $100 million down the drain because some woman can't live without her hubby mowing the lawn on Sunday.  What a drag.

Thank you for answering me directly. Now, let me ask you a further question: do you think it is OK for a board member to be completely inactive 2 out of every 7 days of the week, AND not active during the night AND have a full-time job - so that he is basically forced to deal with urgent Mastercoin decisions when he has free time at work?

Our difference of opinion regarding the role of a board member should be separate from the actual duties that someone agrees to  undertake when becoming a board member. The fact that there isn't a list of expectations means that in every case they can construe their behavior as in line with their position. This is not to say that the duties shouldn't be fluid and dynamic, it's only to say that they should be there!

I don't know the personal MSC holdings of the board members, but in any case there is at least $50 million of other non-board-member's money invested in MSC, it's not reasonable to be so wishy-washy about what is required of our board!

There ought to be a discussion among the community regarding what we expect of our board members.

5. Someone pointed out that the Board is getting old. As in its just a temporary structure left over from the formation. I COMPLETELY AGREE. Its time we had our first board election.
+1

Ok, so we need a way to count votes based on ownership of MSC (someone let me know if others have already figured this out).

I propose the following to implement a simple version of our Proof of Stake system.

1. A yes or no question is posted.
2. All those with MSC make a small BTC transaction from their address to prove they own a certain number of MSC.
3. If the MSC holder posts a transaction for 0.0001 BTC than they are answering Yes.
4. If the MSC holder posts a transaction for 0.0002 BTC than they are answering No.
5. In the case of multiple choice questions each choice is given a number, a vote for the corresponding number is counted as a vote in favor of that choice.

This is a fairly limited system, which only supports one vote during a specified time period.

This said it would get the job done and I believe we have all the tools to code this up as a simple script.

For example:
A. Use which ever of the Mastercoin Explorers / Client implementations in order to look up the Mastercoin Addresses.
B. Check recent transactions at the public address of all those holders of Mastercoins.
C. If a recent transaction meets the voting definition, then count the answer and add the # of Yes' or No's based on the the number of MSC held by the public address.
D. Add up all the answers for Yes or No from all the Mastercoin Addresses and determine the majority decision.

This sounds fairly simple to implement. Anyone want to come up with a simple script to test this out?

There are a couple edge cases we need to think about when it comes to dust rules and the rest, but this is important and would facilitate a lot of community input and is much more accurate than a poll who anyone on Bitcointalk.org can participate in. The first thing we can use it for is holding the first Board elections.

While we are on the subject here is the Mastercoin Legal Repo is any wants to help improve it. We just started with a fork of the Bitcoin Foundation by laws. https://github.com/DavidJohnstonCEO/Mastercoin-Foundation-Legal-Repo

+1

You shouldn't be trying to get a *Forbes article* written about Mastercoin when people don't have well-defined Mastercoin balances in their wallets! The fact that the board *unanimously* thought that hiring a PR firm at this point in the project was a good idea speaks volumes about their ability to direct the project; and is indicative of a gross misunderstanding of priorities.

One question: Has the PR firm that we paid a large sum of money to actually done anything yet? I think it has already been said but why are the board members 'fighting PR battles' in the first place?

Yes, they have done a lot of good work, and when the first article lands I'll be sure to post it here. Reporters are slow on holidays and weekends. The best time to get an article is early in the week when people aren't off doing things offline.

+1

Who said anything about 24/7? I asked a very specific question which neither you nor vokain has answered: Do you think it is OK for a board member to be completely inactive 2 out of every 7 days of the week.

More importantly: What does the community think? Is everyone satisfied with JR's level of commitment to the project?

I'll answer you directly. YES. I think it is OK for a Board Member to be completely inactive 2 out of every 7 days of the week.

I think we are having a difference of opinion over the "role" of a board member. At a typical company (which Mastercoin is not) "Board Members" typically show up to 6 meetings per year and vote on a few critical decisions, which new CEO to hire, the size of employee vesting, auditing of financials, projections and so forth.  In contrast the Mastercoin Board gets emails and takes votes every day of the week. It just takes a majority to approve something, so we aren't even inactive over the weekend, even if J.R. or someone is away.

No one on the board signed up to work on Mastercoin 7 days per week (almost everyone is running a company of their own), everyone is a volunteer who participated in the Exodus Address and wants to see Mastercoin succeed and wanted to provide balance and transparency so that this wasn't the "J.R. project", but took in lots of community input.

Now when it comes to someone that has singed up to spend his full time effort on Mastercoin such as Ron he has been working 16 hour days from the time he wakes up to the time he falls asleep in front of his computer 7 days per week since taking on the Executive Director of the Foundation role. Now Ron is getting more help and bandwidth from others and thats a good thing. Volunteers are great, but you need people's full time efforts to get things done.

One question: Has the PR firm that we paid a large sum of money to actually done anything yet? I think it has already been said but why are the board members 'fighting PR battles' in the first place?

For the record, according to this post, JR is "completely off the internet evenings, weekends, and vacations".

This is a fast-moving, global project, and those involved in it need to be able to keep themselves reasonably up-to-date, at least.

I think we need to give it a rest. This has been under heavy dicussion these last weeks. Lets give it some time for the solution to come forward. If we only ever force speed on everything we'll tire ourselves out pretty fast. And however much I want MSC to move forward, I'd rather not see JR or others involved sell their souls for MSC.


On another note, I want to thank the foundation and the developers for all their work. I think you have been great and I especially like how you all conduct yourselves even in high-pressure situations. It gives me much faith in you guys. I know I put my money in the right place when I sent my coins to exodus.

Im sending you all my good thoughts, espcially to the board members since you are constantly fighting the rough PR battles.