Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 52. (Read 448462 times)

Tachikoma I agree that his execution was in poor form. Try not to let the negativity get to you. This project just seems to be going through its first crisis. Most any startup will have this experience. What matters is not as much that it happened, but how the leadership reacts, pivots, and adapts in response to it. If the board is open to outside views, bringing in some experienced hands, and listening to the community, then I am fully on board with a bright future for Mastercoin. If it does not change or adapt, then this will have been an interesting, but failed, experiment. Ball is in their court right now.

And what I said about the project lacking technical leadership has nothing to do with you or any of the other devs. You guys are doing about as great a job as part-time volunteer devs could do. I am more speaking about the fact that it needs a full-time team. That full-time person that executes along on a solid quality control process for the core components is lacking right now. That's all.

You're one of few people who gets it.

Seriously this is so childish. Mastercoin is one big experience and we are still trying to figure everything out as we go. I really don't get why you, Killerstorm, are on such a witch-hunt to bring so much negative attention to the project. What do you think to gain by this?

I'm out. I just want to build cool technologies, I don't feel like being sucked in to your negative spiral of attention. I have enough going on in my life not to be soaked in by internet-drama.

Perhaps Killerstorm would be interested.  As it is, he appears to already be dedicating more time to mastercoin than colored coins anyways.

I agree completely, (except perhaps w.r.t. killerstorm himself, of whom I would probably be more critical).

Killerstorm had some valid concerns around it. Unfortunately, this project seems to lack the technical leadership at this time to have adequately responded to his questions and factored his concerns into the development process. He probably got a bit miffed and then took it publicly.

There is development process control that is sorely lacking on this project currently (and I say that as a dev with 18+ years professional experience that has been working with the existing mastercoin code as I structure a new tool around it). I have several ideas how this can be improved, and would be happy to speak with David or Ron, or anyone else on the board about it if they are interested.

Basically, in the end it's reason #5,490 for hiring a full-time team. On the operational side, this comes down to effective delegation...hiring decisions are the absolute most important decisions one can make. How Ron is running around clearly overwhelmed reminds me of how I used to be before I learned how to effectively hire, delegate, and train new employees. Now my business largely runs itself. Not a critique of Ron himself, and I cannot assume I know exactly what is going on on his end...more just saying that the board needs more dedicated folks with previous operational-level business leadership to help Ron scale out, which I see as Mastercoin's main problem right now. 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?

Anyhow, we need someone like killerstorm leading the charge on the core protocol implementation, to ensure stable growth and backwards compatibility as required. With the budget of this project, why is this so hard to do? If it is really that hard to find people to work for MSC, then offer fiat or BTC at first. At this point, we just need the right talent. It's good to see David in there attempting to diffuse the situation, but we're playing reactive damage control here.

EDIT: I was asked my bitexch if I would be interested in applying for a board seat. Initially, my response was no, however at this point I would be open to it. I do have an active business, but I could contribute around 15 or so hours a week most weeks, and act as an advisor if there is value seen in that. My goal would be to help get things back on track in a solid way, and then look to reducing my involvement/stepping out. Ron has my resume/linkedin. If there is interest, feel free to reach out. That, or I'd be more than happy to not be on the board, and just volunteer my services in an advisory/sounding board manner. I would even potentially be up to meeting you guys in person in Vegas on the 10-12th, however, let me know in the next few days.

And, I must say that any criticisms I offer on this project come with the intention of making it better. I still strongly support this project, I think it just needs a few more experienced hands to help the existing dedicated devs and board members.

This is absurd. Traditionally, one's boss does not ask one how many hours he would like to work, why should Mastercoin be an exception to this?!

This is also why I am uncomfortable with your suggestion that you and JR not get paid; if there is no salary involved than expectations become less rigorous. I would love for both of you to continue to work on the project, but I think that only salaried employees should be counted as full-time developers, as it will make things less ambiguous.

Many venture capitalist and private equity firms expect 60-80 hours a week from their employees, and they often have much less money and much less room for growth than Mastercoin.

I can't emphasize enough that Mastercoin is *not* the only project of its kind, and that the other projects are catching up!

Mastercoin is a $100 million project with lots of room for growth. It's absolutely ludicrous that we should have to beg an important member of the community to devote time to it.

EDIT: Ron, my general point is that you are not considering things as wholly from the perspective of the success of the Mastercoin project as you ought to. You are certainly entitled to the belief that Mastercoin devs don't have to commit to working a minimum number of hours each week, but it's possible that one of the projects competing with Mastercoin *does* have more stringent demands of its developers, and will accordingly complete its development first. If you are willing to maintain your principles, even when they endanger the success of the Mastercoin project, that is your decision. However, you (and the rest of the board) owe it to the investors to say so explicitly, that way we can decide whether we want to invest our money elsewhere.

EDIT 2: I am sorry to double-post, but so far only vokain has answered rbdrbd's question, and I think it is in the interest of the Mastercoin community to know the background of its board: "Do we have anyone on the board that has "boot on the ground" operational experience growing profitable software/tech startups with more than 5-10 employees?"

"Mastercoin is a joke": http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rpx26/mastercoin_is_a_joke/

Would someone knowledgeable please care to limit damage?

Hmm, I'm not 100% sure if electrum is supported (same with blockchain'info's bitcoin RPC interface). Since I am using zathras's masterchest lib, that's a good Q for him.

In the meantime, I added this part to the docs. I am saying they are not for now, but they may work fine (definitely something to test when I release, and then let me know and I can update the docs):


Zathras: I left you a number of questions/todo items in the masterdaemon thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=344229.new#new

This is awesome news!!! you rock! I can't wait. This-->"masterdaemon listens on port 8339, and binds to localhost only" from your docs if i wanted to use one of electrum public servers here: http://electrum.qc.to/ or change public server Ip's dynamically based on connectivity Is this accomplishable in your "masterdaemon.conf file" ? if it is would you mind including the code commented out?  and in server.socket_host: "0.0.0.0"..

"0.0.0.0" would be server ip correct?

I am a Chinese, i want to say:BitShares is coming!  come on ,my mastercoin!

Ola,

I will have it out in beta in less than a week, unless I run into major complications (which I don't anticipate at this time). Put a lot of work into it already.

Here's my docs:

http://masterdaemon.readthedocs.org/

Reading through them should give you an idea how I am writing it to work (i.e. pretty no brainer, especially for the binary install on windows).

Note that these docs are not final (several script names need to be updated for instance). I have code on github but it is not in running condition in any way (still working through bugs/adding functionality) -- so don't start messing with it until I release in beta. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up though.

If somebody wants to evil then yes, he could write his own Mastercoin messages for distributed exchange, send them over the network see how they are interpret by the different sites and then see if he can somehow use that in such a way that he can invalidate a later send Simple Send. However at this moment the knowledge only exists with the developers and there is no guaranteed way to safely do this as the evil doer since there is no way of knowing who currently has the right way of implementing a feature.

In the future this might become a problem, but as of right now I see nothing wrong with it. I agree that in the future it's better to discuss a block at which a certain future will be enabled to prevent evil-doers from abusing it.

Who doubted JR's right to spend time with his family? Of course he can spend time with his family, but that certainly does mean he will spend less time on Mastercoin. Rather than invoking high-flown words like "rights", just ask yourself the following question: if there are two developers of comparable skill who are competing for the same job and salary, and one of them says he is willing to work 60 hours and the other says he is willing to work 40 hours, which one will you choose?


This is absurd. Traditionally, one's boss does not ask one how many hours he would like to work, why should Mastercoin be an exception to this?!

This is also why I am uncomfortable with your suggestion that you and JR not get paid; if there is no salary involved than expectations become less rigorous. I would love for both of you to continue to work on the project, but I think that only salaried employees should be counted as full-time developers, as it will make things less ambiguous.

Many venture capitalist and private equity firms expect 60-80 hours a week from their employees, and they often have much less money and much less room for growth than Mastercoin.

I can't emphasize enough that Mastercoin is *not* the only project of its kind, and that the other projects are catching up!

Mastercoin is a $100 million project with lots of room for growth. It's absolutely ludicrous that we should have to beg an important member of the community to devote time to it.

EDIT: Ron, my general point is that you are not considering things as wholly from the perspective of the success of the Mastercoin project as you ought to. You are certainly entitled to the belief that Mastercoin devs don't have to commit to working a minimum number of hours each week, but it's possible that one of the projects competing with Mastercoin *does* have more stringent demands of its developers, and will accordingly complete its development first. If you are willing to maintain your principles, even when they endanger the success of the Mastercoin project, that is your decision. However, you (and the rest of the board) owe it to the investors to say so explicitly, that way we can decide whether we want to invest our money elsewhere.

I'm sorry, I don't quite get you...

Does this mean that it is possible to fool person who uses something other than mastercoin-explorer.com to check whether he received transactions?

I tried a couple of mastercoin sites on this address: 1EAuHj8Z6rTCHPxXfaGzzPsZevC2mg1XAj

1. mastercoin-explorer. com shows its balance as 0.2 MSC (http://mastercoin-explorer.com/addresses/1EAuHj8Z6rTCHPxXfaGzzPsZevC2mg1XAj)
2. masterchest.info shows that it is 0 MSC (https://masterchest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=1EAuHj8Z6rTCHPxXfaGzzPsZevC2mg1XAj)
3. masterchain.info show it as 10 MSC (https://masterchain.info/Address.html?addr=1EAuHj8Z6rTCHPxXfaGzzPsZevC2mg1XAj)
4. mymastercoins.com shows 0.7 MSC

I understand that distributed exchange is in development, but the problem is that it affects people who think that they receive mastercoins via simple send: even if you receive a transaction via simple send, it is possible that at some point in history balance was influenced by a distributed exchange transaction, and from that point discrepancy can propagate.

How are people supposed to user mastercoins? Should they check all 4 available sites?

What should they do if they received a payment and after that they see a discrepancy?

From what I see, it is currently impossible to use Mastercoin in a safe way. (Even if one tries to use only simple sends.) Am I missing something?

Ron I know mastercoin board is a non-profit..but are there bylaws that govern the board? and whats the policy on transparency to those that have a vested interest in mastercoin??




rbdrbd this is NXT's api..this should motivate you:    https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/nxt-api-of-nxt-313082

They will probably have hundreds of apps at their disposal when the launch their exchange..I hope you are trucking on I am 100% behind you...heck Ill toss a few mastercoins your way if you manage to crank out something functional.

Your second argument is valid.

Ehm, what's this then: http://mastercoin-explorer.com/order_books ?

You say that transactions other than simple sends will be enabled at a certain block in future.

This means that they aren't valid now, and won't be ever valid. But mastercoin-explorer.com show them as valid. Does this mean that mastercoin-explorer.com is broken (as in, shows fake information)?

Let's consider an example again:

1. I create mastercoin distributed exchange offer
2. buy my own mastercoins
3. use same address to make a simple send as if mastercoins were not sold

There are two possibilities:

1. distributed exchange offer is incorrect (because it was included before a block which enables distributed exchange), thus simple send is valid
2. distributed exchange offer is correct, then simple send is invalid

Which is it?

Has anyone considered actually starting a company for Mastercoin? There is certianly enough money in the chest to run it like a real finacial business. Look at ripple/opencoin: maybe that's the way to really develop mastercoin further. While there is probably enough money already, might be helpful to get a few more million that's attached to VC's that can really help push mastercoin in the "meatspace" world. Not to mention people with real experience managing development of projects, hiring talent, etc.... I think we would all hate to see a brilliant project derailed because the people involved are genius in writing code but not geniuses of human resources or project management.

Simple Sends. We are working on distributed exchange right now.