Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 51. (Read 448462 times)

Guys, here’s my pie in the sky proposal. I wanted to throw it out there as a starting point in how to get this project back on the tracks and moving forward. I invested time into this proposal, as well as discussing it with my business partner, so I would highly appreciate if someone from the board would take 10 minutes and speak to me directly about it, even if the answer is a "no".
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I think we can pretty much all agree that the 900lb problem with things at the current point is that there is no dedicated dev team, and there is a lack of process control/procedure. The current devs we have have done a great job getting us to this point, but they are only working part time (due to their perfectly understandable need to sustain themselves and pay their bills). We sorely need a dedicated team that can work on the core part of Mastercoin, and serve as a lynchpin over which the community ecosystem can form.

Our background

I happen to be an entrepreneur that runs a 15-20 person company (exact size fluctuates and it’s been rapidly growing lately) that both provides services and software for medium to large enterprises. My company has a demonstrable and proven history -- which I can disclose at the proper time, if this gains interest -- in developing software products for numerous Fortune 100 companies and the government, and managed services that we sell for 400-600K per year per client, with very high quality and up-time requirements, and very stringent process control (we play with the big boys). We have a dedicated dev team of 3 developers, and around 10 other engineers. We are entirely self-funded and profitable, with no debt.

I have over 18 years of professional software development experience, and have experience building and running numerous development teams (both on-site and distributed). I have written and sold software and IP that is in use by companies like Samsung, Nestle Waters, US FAA, US DOD, Cisco, etc. (the latter being an actual Cisco product that I developed for them). My business partner, with whom I have worked with for over 14 years in a variety of capacities, is a Cisco CCIE with experience as a CTO for a 1000+ person company, as well as at a number of startups. We have been watching and have both formed quite an interest in virtual currencies.

The proposal

In the interests of taking action and keeping Mastercoin at the forefront, I’m going to put forward a somewhat aggressive proposal here to the community and the board. For the right incentive (which I will get into), we will do the following:

• Hire and incubate a small dev team. Probably start with one team of 2-5, then grow. I have a highly qualified dev I could assign over full-time from my ranks immediately (as well as another one I could enlist as-needed). I am also in touch with a highly talented bitcoin developer in the community that is interested, plus we could utilize the existing mastercoin developers if they are interested (Tachikoma, zathras, etc). My company has a talented in-house recruiter as well if we need to bring in other folks. The goal is NOT to take over mastercoin development, or shut out the current developers, but to give Mastercoin that dedicated "core-team-in-a-box" it needs at least at this time, to allow it to move forward. Like I said, existing developers are welcome to join, if full-time makes sense for them.
• Dev team would utilize scrum (e.g. sprint.ly and github). I could serve as the team lead if the board and community desired. We could fold the PM that Ron is bringing on into this team, or if necessary assign one of our own existing PMs over to it.
• We take my masterdaemon I'm working on, convert zathras or tachikoma's code to python and strap it in (or use the integration with zathras’ library itself that’s already built-in), and make that the reference client. It would work just like bitcoind for bitcoin -- docs in development are at http://masterdaemon.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html, code is on github).  Existing library development would continue as-is, but I believe the team needs a reference library/client to focus on at least for now, to avoid duplication of efforts (do not confuse this with me trying to pick favorites among the developers - the choice would be purely what makes the most technical and time sense)
• The team will focus on this client/library and other core tools first, and whatever else makes sense second.
• We would institute coding standards and QA standards, have 2-4 week dev cycles, burndown chart, community feedback procedures/policy to get and order items on the task backlog, etc.
• We would also implement the recommendations killerstorm made (in our client and working in conjunction with the other devs). I noticed the same problems he did and they are good recommendations.
• It would take probably around 3-4 weeks to get this in place if doing it full-time. I have a lot of it already done for our existing dev team.
• A separate LLC would probably be formed to do this. Team salaries could be paid for from the existing Mastercoin fund, or we may even pay our own internal guys ourselves for this initial period, if the incentive was generous enough.
• Our team would work off of the task list ordered by the community and the Mastercoin foundation members, in a democratic process. Beyond this, we would have final say over the running of our own team (as well as the people chosen). This is non-negotiable -- we need latitude to best run our team without a heap of politics -- let the performance speak for itself. However, what we work on is largely dictated by the community and board, and the Mastercoin foundation would of course be free to form a second dev team to work on complementary efforts, as they see fit. Our teams would coordinate via the PMs.

We actually specialize in getting into really messed up multi-million dollar projects/situations and getting a handle on them. I can point to several examples, with large hospital chains, commercial banks, etc. I have made all of these recommendations earlier, but it fell on deaf ears. I am bringing this up again now because I look at where this project is at, and straightening things out is something that could easily be handled with the right approach. We should have a bitcoin expert on the team, but beyond that, we can utilize developers with more commodity skillsets, since they will be building on standard interfaces such as JSON-RPC and SQL. We deal with this stuff every day, day in and day out.

What do we get out of it?

As part of doing this, we would commit to at least 6 months to 1 year of working on Mastercoin, and, upon the condition of this period being fulfilled, as well as multiple established milestones set by the community being reached during that period, our group would be entitled to some amount of MSC (and possibly BTC) from the dev MSC fund and/or JR as a reward. Depending on where things are at after this period, we can continue to move things along for much more modest pay, or collect our check and transition out of it -into the Mastercoin's foundations own dev teams and/or the community development community (which will be much more mature by that time, no doubt).

If there are any 3rd party devs on our team, a similar deal could be set up with them.

According to this link: http://mastercoin-explorer.com/addresses/15WrQhYhHts7jTMoGJ9rDCD12JuCTKy7MM

JR received around 53,000 mastercoins as a bonus alone (which, in itself is controversial to some members of the community – given he controlled the wallet he sent the funds to and thus had an arguably lower risk). Moreover, the Mastercoin dev fund will have 50-something thousand vesting on top of that. There is both ample Mastercoin and bitcoin here to carry this out and ensure that that Mastercoin retains and grows value in the long run. JR will still have way too many mastercoins () and the community gets a solid effort with a good chance of success.

As entrepreneurs, we are motivated by upside. This is risky, and I am potentially putting the health of my company up for grabs because I so believe in this idea. Thus, I want a large upside.


Benefits

The benefit from the community is clear:

• A dedicated dev team backed by individuals with proven experience is immediately formed
• The team quickly moves forward on keeping Mastercoin’s first-mover advantage
• If the team does not perform, it does not get paid
• The risk to the community is quite low (definitely much lower than the alternative of doing nothing)
• The community retains say over the order of features implemented, and the general development direction of Mastercoin

At the right time (i.e. if the board is interested in this proposal), I would be open to naming my company, and allowing the community to look us up.

-Robby

killerstorm, why don't you just ignore DGulari? He hasn't made a substantive attack against Colored coins (which, from what I know of it, seems like a very interesting technology, and I find it admirable that you're not seeking a proft), and you guys are just flooding the thread...

How about we keep this thread to making MasterCoin better, not calling each other names and being childish.

Nice try. Well, colored coins are not supposed to be worth anything, it's just a concept, a technology.

When people will issue securities using this approach, those securities will be worth something. But I won't get anything from it, of course.

It isn't about "market cap".

FYI currently I'm financing colored coins project out of my own pocket now. And it costs a lot. Say, developers got 7.5 BTC for the last week. A problem with funding just doesn't exist. (I have to thank Bitcoin price for it: it wasn't possible when it was $100.)


I've spent two months on making a new client, and it is almost ready...

FYI at some point J.R. proposed to make Mastercoin-style colored coins, and I killed that proposal.

I don't think it's constructive to psychologize as to why killerstorm is pointing out flaws with Mastercoin. The point is that those flaws are real.

And, incidentally, whether Colored coins is a bad idea has nothing to do with whether Mastercoin is a good idea.

I mentioned it in the last paragraph, didn't I?

If I was mean I would not write an article, I would write code and demonstrate exploit in practice.

You gotta understand the context: I tried to explain this politely first. See here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3734731

If I was malicious, why would I explain how to fix issues? Note that it was 1 day ago.


Well, you should try, that would be hilarious.

While I agree with the generally hopeful sentiment of your post, I think it is couched in gratuitously crude terms. Even if killerstorm's posts were unnecessarily aggressive, he made concrete criticisms of the Mastercoin project, which regardless of how they were phrased, need to be addressed.

That said, I don't think you should be completely certain in the success of the Mastercoin project. Even if the technical difficulties we run into are ultimately surmountable, we will still need effective management in order to deal with them, and that is precisely what we are lacking now.

Isn't the thread starter the same guy that is developing colored coins, the competitor? LOL

I suppose we should create a thread "Colorcoins is a joke" but we are better than that.

People are simply jealous of the funding and/or implied market cap of Mastercoin. Otherwise, why pay attention to us?

Having said that, I think it is abundantly clear that we need to get our leadership in order. We cannot lose developers like Tachikoma. He's been doing a fantastic job.

We have the funds. Now we need to execute on the promise. The board needs to be decisive and make decisions for the good of the project and all Mastercoin holders/investors. I am confident that they will do so.

First order of business is to hire someone to manage the technical side of the project.

 

I'm out. I just want to build cool technologies, I am not sure what this means...but this is what happens when bounties are our core competency...our make shift lead cannot not take the chaos anymore...

Tachikoma will you reconsider under a better structured organization comprising of a lead, a more organized dev team, salary, perks and clear goals??

I believe the following comment is pretty unambiguous, though if I have misinterpreted it, I apologize.

+1!

+10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

I too support rbdrbd nomination as long as he promises to continue to be persistent, transparent with his efforts

He hasn't quit. Or maybe I missed something?

Tachikoma's decision to quit further once again proves that we need to have a developer who wants to engage with the political side of the project and represent the developers as a community, so that those who are not interested in politics and managing can simply develop. Tachikoma just wanted to create cool programs, but instead he had to, at least indirectly, get involved in a political debate, and this has made him decide to quit.

Tachikoma's decision to quit also shows why we absolutely need salaried workers: if a full-time developer quit, we would have two weeks to find new developers and mitigate the damage, whereas now the damage is immediate and probably much more serious.

JR's last post was November 27, and that was only to champion his pet-project of selling 5000 of our Bitcoins to buy Mastercoins! His last post that directly addressed the Mastercoin protocol was November 25! The fact that anyone needs to be convinced that JR is not fulfilling his duties as a board member just shows that the point has not been seriously enough addressed.

rbdrbd is consistently engaged and alert regarding both the managerial and tecnhical aspects of the Mastercoin project. I fully support his nomination to the board. I recommend we have a formal - though unofficial - vote on it. If the community is interested, I will set it up.

The thing is to learn from the community. Learn what is wrong and do something about it. The Bitcoin community is quite negative about Mastercoin at the moment. Some are openly hostile. The thing is to not get stuck on the FUD, but real concerns like some things killerstorm has pointed out.

+100000000000000000





+1000000000000000000


I am just going to echo and support all the point of view I believe now, because writing is getting a lil futile...maybe this little flame will get the board in general moving on hiring, organization and efficiency. Like it was stated on that thread: "First and foremost you need to improve your process, not the spec and not software." we need a better structure even Tachikoma is getting tired of the harp hazard process. Even killerstorm is working against his best interest to help out. Listen, we can take the criticism use it to learn and build to improve what we are doing or we can.....do the opposite is not even an option. Again Ron...If other things need to be forfeited for a little to organize hire and structure please do so.


and this----------->"The fact that he just ran off and found someone additional for the board and mentioned it in passing on this thread really irks me. And, if there are people on the board that are "too busy", why are they on the board to begin with?" 

I think we deserve to know.

Sorry, but it's you being childish. It was the only way to get your attention, otherwise you just dismissed me.

Also, it was a very bad idea to enable distributed exchange on real MSC. Now there are transactions in the wild, so you can't retroactively enable the rule like "only simple sends are allowed before block 300000, other Mastercoin transactions are ignored" without pissing somebody off.

I hope you understand that enabling something on mastercoin-explorer.com can have dire consequences, as it's probably the first site people look at. You're playing with other people's money.


Most likely I won't get anything, but Mastercoin project now has a chance to make security the top priority, which can prevent people from being scammed, and thus can prevent PR disaster.

Let me tell you something: there is a lot of very clever hackers, finding a way how to scam people using this distributed exchange thingie is pretty much trivial for them. What they normally do is much, much more complex.

There are people who know both the tech side and social engineering. It is only a matter of time before they notice this.

All good recommendations.

Everything is already disabled.

How would you propose restricting it? Currently none of the clients allow it. That should be restriction enough. I opened it up once to get some test results into the blockchain, this gave us a lot of valuable information and I'm still happy I did it.


We should have done this from the start. Register a handful of MSC addresses that are 'allowed' to do these transactions before the protocol officially supports it. It's the only way to safely develop new features.

Full transparency; I already suggested this to J.R. I asked him if somebody, perhaps even me, could get the rights to make the decision on trivial things that are unclear in the spec and if I (or somebody else) would be allowed to create a portable reference implementation that could be comparable to bitcoind.  


I believe this was always the plan.

I will give you one thing. We are quickly getting to the point that we need more leadership. I've tried to fill in where I could but it's just not doable anymore. The worst thing about Mastercoin is that it already has value. If it was up to me I probably would have done that differently but it's too late for that now. It is out there, people gave it value and we have to work with what we got. If Mastercoin wouldn't have any monetory value nobody would have given a rat's ass about how it was all handled.

I'm not interested, but I have few recommendations on how to fix the immediate problem, see below.


I was temporary distracted by mastercoin for a couple of days (I wasn't very productive with code anyway, for a couple of reasons). But three other developers are working on colored coin software now (NGCCC), so it's not like we aren't making progress...

So, recommendations... First of all, try to hire security people (practicing cryptographers, basically) and ask them to help to fix surface problems.

Something like this:

1. disable everything except simple send and decentralized exchange. as few as possible things need to be enabled
2. if possible, restrict decentralized exchange
3. compartmentalize distributed exchange feature: people should be able to tell whether coins came to them only through simple sends, or whether decentralized exchange was involved. paranoid people would want coins of the first kind.
4. introduce a notion of a reference implementation, say, Tachikoma's one. if people disagree about how to implement the spec, they should look into how it is implemented in the reference one. (This is how it works for Bitcoin: Satoshi's implementation is the reference, and people who make other implementations had to read its source code.)
5. make it versioned. Say, current rules are guaranteed to be valid until block 300000. At that point old version of instalable clients will stop and ask user to upgrade. This way you can enable more and more features gradually without compromising the security.

Then it is at least workable...

HTH