Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 55. (Read 448462 times)

This has nothing to do with an unfair advantage..This has everything to do with TIME spent on mastercoin. We need developers to spend more time developing mastercoin core and its features than they do at their Jobs..I don't think anyone will advocate an unfair advantage..You really believe that a bounty will provide the right incentive for a developers to spend more time working on mastercoin than a full time salary will? If this is your line of thinking and the resistance plaguing the board I think we are in trouble. We are dealing with centralized issues while trying to solve decentralized problems all over...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posting from my phone, real quickly all, I'd like to point out the current devs have already earned a substantial amount of money...likely enough to live off for at least a few months/years/decades... They do not need the extra advantage, and it is up to them how much time they wish to allocate between the rest of their lives and Mastercoin considering the future reward. I do not support an ongoing salary for them until some sort of objectives are laid out for such a salary that cannot be better accomplished via bounties.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Edit: board members include
Antony Vo (me)
JR
Ron Gross
David Johnston
Brock Pierce
Sam Yilmaz
Jonathan Yantis

I think this perfectly explains why both full-time devs and bounties are necessary for the success of Mastercoin, and the respective role that each should play in Mastercoin's development. I also think the analogy with Facebook is apt, and is how we should be thinking.


+1. Would love to see similar engagement from the other board members!

I think there is a greater variety of personalities among programmers than you're acknowledging. Of course *some* programmers won't want to get involved in the managerial and political side of the project, but it doesn't follow that there isn't a good programmer who not only won't mind this side, but may actually enjoy it! Not every full-time programmer needs to be a manager, one or two, who could represent the interests of the devs in discussion with the board would probably be enough. In any case, it seems bizarre to let your suspicion that developers won't want managerial responsibilities stop you from searching for them. What do you think?


Thank you for engaging my question, hopefully the other board members will also respond. Is there a place I can find an exhaustive list of the Mastercoin board members?

+1000



+100000000000





This has nothing to do with dev mastercoins and it doesn't provide the right incentives…I do not see why the board is not heeding the advise of the community and hiring full time developer ASAP!!

This is not an issue of competition. Its an issue of how much time these devs have to commit to the project after doing their main jobs that pays their bills and living expenses. Bounties are paid after devs complete work, what are they supposed to do in the mean time while they are not getting paid? : They are already doing it: working other jobs.  All they have left to give is free time after work. My suggestion: pay them in FIAT. You already have a bank account…Like I stated previously:






and






If you continue to ignore our concerns, It would mean that now you are not doing whats in the best interest of mastercoin, its investors and mastercoins SUCESS!! and this would be indirect sabotage    Voting on this issue should be a no brainer and I think the boards interest should be properly aligned to accomplish this minute task. I do not think "voting" is a proper excuse!!

JR,  RON,  DAVID respectfully , we need full time devs ASAP! Please. In business you never outsource your core competency..Right now Mastercoin's core competency is to rely on bounties and if this is not fixed now it will bite us in the back later. We can take a page from bitcoin itself and follow the example of the hiring of Gavin Adresen, Only we actually have the ability to hire 12 potential "Gavin Adresens" but we are not taking advantage.

Competitive bounties are still needed but Not as a core strategy for development. Bounties play the proper role as supplemental to mastercoin projects and discovery of new talented developers, why is this so hard to UNDERSTAND???

We have Nxt, Bitshares on our heels and most will agree that first mover advantage is PARAMOUNT!

For your information I grew my last company to 12 employees to develop a fully functional product..funding and success aside. We need our suite of Mastercoin features built and saying this current harp hazard strategy is not going to cut it is a serious understatement !!

Echo this post if you 100% agree with this!!

bitexch, I'm in agreement with you 100% on that last response. In my mind, the full time devs should focus mostly around implementation of the base libraries and services of Mastercoin (e.g. mastercoin-explorer, web wallet, masterdaemon, etc), as well as leading the charge in specing out (and working through any ambiguities of) the Mastercoin spec. This all is the part that requires that full-time level of coordination, focus and persistence, to "get right". The community needs stable and solid base tools to build on that are well-maintained. These full time devs form that "solid ground" of base tools and services that the community can build on top of. It is exactly this reason why I made such a fuss about the "mastercoind"/"masterdaemon" idea, and have spent a lot of my time to work on this. I really see it as crucial to enabling future community-driven growth.

Then, the Mastercoin foundation, beyond enabling its fulltime team of devs to persist and providing long term vision for the project as a whole, should work within the community (via bounties, etc, much like they already are) to encourage businesses and efforts to form around this base Mastercoin stack. Without that crucial community involvement (and involving and investing outsiders into Mastercoin via generous dev MSC bounties and rewards), Mastercoin will end up just being an insider pet project and sideshow. These MSC need to get out into the community and into capable and talented new hands for Mastercoin to have an impact.

This is very much akin to Facebook cementing its place in the social media industry by building a base platform with full SDK/APIs, and establishing a thriving 3rd party development ecosystem around it. That's a great model for Mastercoin in many ways, I think.

PS: Also, thank you vokain for being so open to other views and opinions, and working with us in this way on this forum. Very much appreciated.

I'll just leave this here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3734731

I really don't know. I'm split on this issue, honestly, as you can tell from my posts. I have favored full-time employees before because I know the talent is excellent and I know they will get the job done, but at the same time, I now realize this subtle difference in mechanism of motivation could mean a lot down the road, on a systems level. It also forces those developers to become an authority and would probably burden them with managerial responsibilities than they normally have to. I know at least one developer that does not want to deal with that kind of stuff. I asked for their input in the Dev Thread to come in here in order to voice their side, but I like to think these guys simply wish to stay out of the politics and just do what they do best by solving problems when presented clear cut objectives with a very clear cut reward. But I don't know, I wish they spoke more on this topic.



I do not. The quieter board members like Brock Pierce and Jonathan Yantis I do believe so. I will let the others who have accounts here speak for themselves. Anyway, looking into it some more, I found this interesting article that involves both Brock and Jonathan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGE

Let me first make a general comment, and then I will address each of your reservations individually. The question isn't whether there are some virtues to a bounty system that will be lost by hiring full-time employees, but whether on the whole having full-time employees is better than having exclusively bounties. I don't see why we can't have a mix of bounties and full-time employees. It seems to me that if the full-time employees act in concert, then they could decide, with the approval of the board, what specifically . I can't emphasize enough that we have millions of dollars at our disposal, and we ought to use it intelligently and effectively.

Regarding (1): It seems a little misleading to call hiring full-time developers "favoritism". Full-time employees don't play the same role in a project as developers who work for bounties. Again, why can't there be a mix of bounty-employees and full-time employees? The idea that previous experience should always and unequivocally be irrelevant is untenable, and in any case it shouldn't be maintained if it hurts the project.

Regarding (2): Not to sound insensitive, but the development of the Mastercoin project is the essential thing, not whether some potential developer is at a disadvantage. Of course, innovation may suffer somewhat by putting anyone at a disadvantage, but innovation may suffer much, much more if it is no one's *job* to work on Mastercoin full-time.

Regarding (3): The problem is that you're forming an dichotomy where there isn't one. Some tasks will be better as bounties, and some tasks will require the full attention of developers over a long period of time.

In short, it's not either or; I see the opportunity for a combination of different kinds of developers which, in my view, will lead to a quicker and more fruitful development of the Mastercoin protocol.


I appreciate your interest in discussion. Unfortunately you seem to be the only board member who is willing to seriously engage in such important policy discussions.

On that note, I think it is important that the board members explicitly answer rbdrbd's question: "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?"

I think a great use of some of those Dev MSC is as a "carrot" to entice and fold newly bubbling ideas into the Mastercoin ecosystem.

For example, right off of page 1 and 2 of this forum:

Distributed identity and reputation database: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/identifiorg-address-book-with-ratings-130137
Developers Wanted - combination of Bitcoin and Napster: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/developers-wanted-combination-of-bitcoin-and-napster-338080

Some of these kinds of ideas are things that could be actually folded into Mastercoin. However, we need to incentivize these folks to consider doing this, or it makes no sense for them to try because they are probably not vested in Mastercoin itself. Thus, the prospect of pursuing their idea or effort as a component of Mastercoin would only make sense to them if in doing so, they were rewarded with MSC and became invested in the system, when that idea becomes a reality in the form of an actual product or service based on Mastercoin. This is similar to the concept of how a big company (like Google) will buy up smaller startups showing promise (with stock options) and integrate them, to take the best ideas and avoid fragmentation/competition in the future.

I'm thinking this is what David has started doing to a good extent and if so, I commend him for this! But I think, to keep our advantage in this exploding field, we need to be 1990's Microsoft-like aggressive in picking up and integrating new ideas, and getting new talent behind mastercoin, instead of working on their own fragmented things.

I think this allows the dev MSC to be used in a way that promotes growth and value. Let salaries and bonuses (including some dev MSC, but not all of it) sustain existing growth/capacity.

Ron did have a proposal that for those who seek security, they can be paid a salary and either they'd be entirely unincluded from bounties or their salary amount would be deducted before the award (which makes more sense)

At the same time, these are my reservations:

1. It is favoritism. Every should have the same chance at the same prizes, disregard any previous history or expertise.
2. This favoritism places later contestants at a greater disadvantage than they already are. Aside from having to play catch up already, they now have to compete against those that don't have to work their day jobs through Mastercoin salaries, for a smaller portion of the pot that has already had slices allocated away for such salaries.
3. What do you think is more effective? Paying someone(s) a salary so they may forget their other financial obligations and focus full time, or placing a large enough bounty with good enough directions so that anyone can begin developing as they see fit, work together as they see fit, and quitting their jobs as they see fit? I lean towards the latter.



Ideally, I would like to see:
1. Open contestation for bounties, to put contestants on a level field. Regarding how to design them, honestly I would like to see JR more visible on this front as the first contest was designed and handled very well imho by him (his decision of course, because Mastercoin is his baby and of course he'll do what he has to to make Mastercoin succeed. We all will). Though bounties should be more of a volunteer's job ie the board's, we may see fit to contract bounty creation and management out to the community. Taariq Lewis, our top candidate for heading development of the smart property milestone, I could see as a top competitor for bounty creation if he can design the best incentives and directions to guide such development (right now there is some discussion on how to best utilize Taariq's talents, still ongoing with the board. Personally I think objective-based bounties are best suited for this). Obviously anyone can contribute proposals, collude, and/or critique each other. If the proposed bounty, open to the community, is approved, a bounty would be paid out to the creator(s). A further or "second half" bounty could be made for bounty designers or anyone to make sure the bounty is managed and executed well. Bounties and bounties for bounties would be developed during the time the developers are working on the as of current milestone, so that upon completion, we already have the next bounties ready to go.

2. Use nice fixed BTC/MSC prizes for the major milestones, the market can decide what that is worth monetarily, and the contestants can decide whether or not it is worth it to them as well.
a. The fixed BTC/MSC prizes will tend to increase in value. High value will increase profitability for those that spend their skills and efforts on development, and the incentive for efficient work will increase.
b. I think this is where we'll see self-organizing coalitions as it almost always more competitive to team up than it is to be a lone wolf going against teams. Encourage strategization by increasing the stakes at hand.

3. More open discussion and exchange of ideas! Keep this going gentlemen, it is refreshing to have each other to bounce ideas off of.

+1

You have to be careful here with that kind of blind "firehose" strategy. As the developer behind "masterdaemon", which will soon be released, I will probably soon be the "5th" or "6th" developer. Why, in that case, should any of the other developers help me at all, if all I'm essentially doing is pulling money away from them? This kind of distribution scheme has a negative incentive to grow the dev community.

I mean, hell, I'd love to get this product out, sit around, and collect a "paycheck" in MSC dev funds, but I don't think that's very effective (speaking against my self-interest here). I would pay the active developers a smaller amount of MSC on an ongoing basis (on top of what you pay them in any kind of full-time salary, etc), and save at least half of that new amount every month for devs that release something NEW into the
community. This will incentivise people to develop new products and services for Mastercoin, and it will encourage new devs to join up (or existing devs to develop additional products/services), instead of making some un-inviting "money club" where all you're doing when you join up is taking away money from someone else. Coins awarded would be a subjective measure of how valuable the community finds this new product (we could even have a voting thread of mechanism for it).

I learned a lot of lessons starting and growing companies. I see a lot of these same mistakes being made (or being proposed) in this project. Especially when it comes to compensating and motivating developers/employees. Do we have anyone on the board that has "boots on the ground" operational experience growing profitable software/tech startups with more than 10 employees?

I think he has revised this. He will now quit bus day job when he sells 1% of his MSC holdings for .7BTC.

No one should be surprised that JR once mentioned that he *may* quit his day job when BTC reached $1000 - I am sure many of us said something like that in passing. Similarly, no one should be surprised if JR doesn't make good on such an equivocal comment. Even if the comment were unambiguous and insistent, JR is a guy with a family and responsibilities, and if he puts those things ahead of some comment he once made on some forum thread, we shouldn't be disillusioned.

If, however, people are disillusioned, that should only reinforce a lesson that we need to learn: not to turn to JR as to some higher authority. JR himself has stated that his interest in Mastercoin is primarily as an investor, not a developer. The degree of esteem in which the Mastercoin community holds him is detrimental to the project. Again, I am calling on JR to directly encourage the community to look elsewhere for leadership and developers.

While responding to my request that we hire more developers, the board seems to have gotten stuck on a peripheral point again: at what rate to roll out the dev Mastercoins. I am thus asking the board to reorient itself and answer the question directly: Will you either call a head-hunting agency or do some networking and find full-time developers? I am aware that the 300 BTC bounty was meant to help find full-time developers, but thus far it has not been successful, and other projects are catching up with Mastercoin's progress (for exampe Nxt, as Pouncer pointed out).

I would like the board to have a vote as to whether we should hire full-time developers. If the board doesn't feel this is the right course of action, I would like to know why.

He also said he'd quit if Mastercoin could provide his family with $564.6K.  What of it JR?  Let's do it.  That amounts to less than 1/10th of the Mastercoin bank today.  Good deal for your wife, good deal for you, good deal for Mastercoiners.

JR:"$1000/bitcoin won't make me filthy rich, but I might be rich enough to quit my day job"
Note：it is  Maybe。。。

Ouch. Good find.

JR??

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.116229

It seems JR said in 2011 he would quit his day job and concentrate on his own project if BTC reaches 1000.
That is today.

I will go so far as to say that if JR doesn't think he needs to be committed to Mastercoin full-time in order for it to succeed, he should be stating more emphatically and more loudly than anyone that we need to hire full-time developers, as he is undoubtedly aware of the influence he holds within the community; he is surely aware that many people are waiting for him to commit himself to Mastercoin, and thus by maintaining his non-committal attitude, he is slowing down its development.