Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 56. (Read 448462 times)

I honestly don't see why you are so certain JR is the "brain and soul of the project". Mastercoin was his idea, but it doesn't follow that his full-time commitment is necessary for its success. There are similar projects to Mastercoin in which JR is not involved, which should be evidence enough that the idea can be executed without his full-time help.

Also, it is by no means the case that JR has more incentives than a "for hire" developer to make Mastercoin succeed. JR has a well-paid job, and he has said that his wife doesn't consider any money that is not in their bank account real. A "for hire" developer, whose livelihood depended directly on the success of Mastercoin, however, would be highly incentivized to do a good job.

Thanks for the fast reply! I need to read more about the basics, still does not understand it well how they are identified and how for instance i could sell them. but good to know that they are not gone....

He is the brain and soul of the project - additionally, he is also the major holder of MSC. It's clear as water that he has much more incentives than any "for hire" developer to make MSC to succeed. Still, there are real-life concerns that might refrain him for quitting his well-paid job to commit to such a venture as MSC. IMO we should just work for him to commit.

Many people have said that they think it is imperative for JR to be on the project full-time, yet I have not seen anyone provide a reason as to why his full-time commitment to Mastercoin is necessary. Presumably the community feels that since JR conceived Mastercoin it follows that its development is dependent on him. But it's one thing to conceive an idea and it's another thing to develop it. Does anyone have reason to believe the JR would be such an exceptionally good developer? Are we really so sure it would be impossible to find a developer of comparable skill?

I find the community's attitude towards JR untenable, and I partially blame JR for not being more direct with the community: either he believes his full-time help is necessary for the development of Mastercoin, in which case, if the community and the board agree, we should do what we can to get him on board full-time. If on the other hand JR doesn't think his full-time commitment to Mastercoin is necessary for development, he ought to say so explicitly, that way we can stop focusing on how to get him to commit to the project, and start focusing on the project itself!

In my opinion, JR obviously doesn't think his full-time commitment to the project is necessary for its success, otherwise, he wouldn't have published his white paper without any code, and wouldn't have explicitly said that for two years he tried to convince someone else to undertake this project.

JR, however, has publicly stated he will spend more time with his family.

MSC have nothing to do with your bitcoins. It just relies on your btc keys. As long as you have access to the private key you purchased the MSC with, you are ok.

I think the right choice is the one that makes JR to commit 100% of his time to the project. You can bet that competition will commit full resources of their founders to their project.

Half-measures are not good for such a project. If the "buy back" is needed for JR to go "all-in" in MSC, then I strongly vote for the buy back.

I have a question regarding MSC in a BTC wallet. I bought some MSC a while ago and kept them in my BTC wallet (togehter with some BTC). unfortunately i used that wallet recently for transactions and spent nearly all the balance there to tx to exchanges. What does that mean now to my MSC? did i lost them? the exchanges are prob. not even aware that they received MSC.

Well, that's what happens when you create profit incentives. Efficient allocation of resources tends towards efforts that yield the highest return.

voted in the poll.
I've never seen so much time + effort been meted out for an open source digital project.
it's mind-boggling.

Why not found a start-up company and hire 2 - 4 full time developers and 1 project manager? Moreover, I believe MSC could attract many capitals too.

For open-ended ongoing tasks like this, I believe what David proposed could be effective, to have x percentage of the new coins released in some length of time. To keep on receiving the flow of funds one must do a satisfactory enough job to the community to justify keeping someone on. Open communication in this case will be vital.
Edit2: I have rethought my position. See my post in the poll, I do not believe this is a good way of evaluating worth of work without clear objectives, and even harder to evaluate the worth of x PERCENTAGE of MSC in l time interval.

Edit: at the same time, do we need a project manager? I'd like to ask the current developers their thoughts. Do self-organizing teams need/benefit from a top-down type of manager to get clear-cut objectives completed? I like to think that we just need the element of competition for truly grand prizes  to speed things up fastest.  If a manager indeed would help development, I would imagine a good manager would offer up their talents to a dev talent pool and put together a team. Bounties split as they're earned and as the team likes.

Again, thoughts?

The next 6 months are critical. I believe a project manager is needed, someone with technical knowledge and management skills, who can hire and motivate the right people. A lot is at stake and the existing resources should be deployed intelligently and narrowly (i.e., not to fund every idea, but to use the bulk on the fundamentals) to hire the very best people to lead this project. Success at an early stage will create valuable dev MSCs that can fund the project for years going forward. The board needs to take decisive action to get the right people working on this project full time. 

Why can't we do it in the same spirit as the first contest? Objectives laid out, prize is there, and developers are allowed to form coalitions as they liked. I like to think that coin distribution within the one partnership that the contest had (I forgot who) worked out fairly, as well as to the full body of the contestants. Let's let the contestants decide what's more important, their day job or a fixed bounty that rises day by day for creating a truly awesome life changing tech? It works because it's a race to claim the greater piece of the pie!

Discussion please!

Edit: tl;dr I think that for most objectives, core development wise, it is better to pay upon satisfactory completion vs paying up front.

LETS GET THESE GREAT DEVELOPERS FULL TIME ON MASTERCOIN

In my opinion the best way to do this is reliably and predictably vest the Dev MSC generated each month and we would have $312,500 USD in BONUSES, to add to the already great BTC bounties we offer.

If that's split between the current four Devs they would have made $78,125 USD in Dev MSC EACH MONTH the last three months = $234,375 USD and they would have quit their jobs by now. It really is that simple.

Even if we have 12 full time Developers working right now they would still be making $26,041 per month each just in bonuses from Dev MSC!

There would have to be 36 full time developers splitting the Bonus evenly to equal $8,680 USD per month and they would still be better off to work for the BTC and Dev MSC than take a $6,000 per month salary.

I say we unleash our most powerful weapon, thus far left neutered and under used for lack of a specified "Distribution Rate" in the MSC protocol.

I hope you will all vote in this poll going on right now and support the idea of actually using this Dev MSC that sitting there unused right now, for the most important purpose of all. Actually developing Mastercoin features and rewarding those who are doing just that.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/poll-should-the-dev-mastercoin-distribution-rate-be-fixed-by-the-msc-protocol-348028

I think buy back is good thing for msc, "if it's done right". But it might also strike some people as google ceo would want to buy a few yachts before start coding search engine. Let's focus on making msc take off first, and after that I'm pretty sure folks will see it's a good idea.

Yeah apparently scheduled to launch at the very beginning of January, 2014.  I don't know too much about NXT as I've only just looked into it, but their forums and users seem to be extremely active.

+100. Nxt is just around the corner, and may beat Mastercoin to launching the D.Ex.

JR,

Even if you think the buyback is the right thing to do, I really don't understand why it's such a high priority of yours. Do you not think it's more pressing that we hire developers? Do you not think that by delaying this decision Mastercoin's "first-mover advantage" is jeopardized?

Someone from the board should answer this question publicly and directly, as not doing so indicates that the board is unwilling to heed concerns from the community, and may also indicate a lack of transparency.

Mastercoin's market capitalization is about $100 million, and the Exodus address has millions of dollars. This project is simply too big to be developed part-time.

I wouldn't go as far as call the stuff behind the link "instructions" on how to use Electrum to send MSC.
If a user has MSC in address A, and would like to send some of it to address B, and Exodus address is C, how would one in practice do that? I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate step by step instructions, in case someone has figured out the process.