Topic: Proposal for Standardizing the Distribution Rate of Dev MSC via the MSC Protocol - page 3. (Read 5740 times)

I think the dev salary discussion is completely out of scope. This is a project built on top of Bitcoin, funded entirely by Bitcoin, and thus, salaries are paid in Bitcoin. If you don't like that, you can instantly cash out to USD as soon as you get paid. What currency you end using is not one of the Foundation's concern, and nor should it waste time accommodating for the desires of devs who don't believe in BTC ( ffs, am I still on Bitcointalk ?? ).

Also, I don't follow your reasoning on why we would rather hold funds in anything other than BTC. Everyone here knows BTC is the fastest appreciating currency of the three discussed (of all, for that matter..).

What would we gain by getting out BTC that will compensate for the (probable, given the btc rising trend) loss of total value ??

I can only think of a little stability as the answer for that, which brings me to what Ron said a couple posts ago: I agree when he says we need some kind of hedging, but still, given the current trendline I wouldn't go 50/50 MSC/BTC but maybe a bigger stake in BTC instead.

Why not have a vote where each msc holder determines where their portion and in what proportion of the boards holdings gets held?

If you wished a 50/50 split, you could split up your msc into 2 equal portions and vote accordingly......

That's a really good point (about the devs wanting something stable). However, they will be able to immediately sell their MSC for BTC and cash out to fiat if they desire, which is not true of startups paying stock options.

What it comes down to is that if the foundation is going to hold money in a wildly unstable crypto-currency, I'd rather it be MSC than BTC. If we want stability, it should be USD in our bank account, not BTC.

Likewise.

Is the purpose of the Foundation really just to "serve the holders of Mastercoins", or is it something broader such as shepherding the protocol so that it gets developed and adopted?  This proposal might accomplish the former by bumping up the market price of Mastercoins in the short term, but I think it sacrifices the latter.  It seems shortsighted as a bounty structure moving forward. 

Right now in the main Mastercoin thread there is a parallel discussion about how devs with spouses/kids/mortages find BTC bounties scary enough.  Isn't shifting to pure MSC bounties -- an even more speculative form of remuneration -- counterproductive? 

Or, to put it another way: so many startups lack the kind of funding that the Foundation has acquired, by accident AND design, through its deep BTC reserves.  Trading away too much of those BTC reserves for MSC is sort of like putting the Foundation back into the position of the disadvantaged startups that have to say: "sorry, can't pay you a real salary right now, but if we make it big some day your stock options will make you rich!"

Whatever the actual motivations, the optics are just bad.   This smells like a decision motivated by greed.

This proposal gives me a horrible feeling. This is too large of a deal to leave up to the board members. I'd prefer to take is slowly and delay and decision until we can vote on it. Or vote on alternative proposals. I believe a balance between msc and btc holdings can be found and potentially "managed", ie actively balancing a 50/50 position between btc/msc.

Actually (to answer my own question) this is already possible under the current spec. I could set up a savings address which is rate limited, and make the guardian address for removing the rate limitation something like 1fakeaddressblahblahblahnotreal

That would provide absolute confidence that those MSC would not be dumped (and it would be pretty good security, too)

Interesting idea! I bet we could build something like this into the protocol - some way of locking up my MSC so that I CAN'T sell them quickly?

Of course, there are dozens of other huge investors in MSC, and I doubt they would agree to have their funds all locked up like this . . . or would they?

J.R.,

When an investor or executive has a significant share of stocks, the way this is commonly handled is for the executive to contractually agree to a certain schedule for the sale of his stock to be executed by a third party trust.

With this mechanism in place there isn't any appearance of "conflict of interest", given the amount and timing of the sale are predetermined and publicly known and the actual sale is executed by a third party.

Its your personal funds, and there is no MSC company, and you aren't an executive in this non-company. Plus you were the biggest funder so its perfectly fair, but this type of mechanism might help again establish a predictability in the market about the amount of MSC that will be in the market at any given time.

I know you have already publicly said the amount of MSC you want to sell and the price at which you are willing to sell them and so this is a similar public discussion mechanism, just less formal than how they typically work.


 

I'm working through my email overflow, I will post a more detailed response later.

However I just want to say this:

We need to maintain a healthy budget that is split between BTC and MSC.
This is not related to "attracting people interested in either BTC or MSC". Everyone can convert one to the other, and we can do it ourselves before paying.

This is related to making sure our budget and funds are balanced and hedged correctly.

Going 100% MSC right now is irresponsible IMO. We need to decide on some percentage that we strive for between these two currencies (and perhaps add a little bit USD into the mix as well).

I'll write a more detailed response later (in the meantime, please don't commit to any particular plan until I had a chance to review). Thanks.

J.R.

Thanks for the modified proposal.

I'm open to the idea of converting a portion of the Bitcoins held by the Exodus Address to MSC in order to increase the MSC vesting / bounties primarily denominated in MSC.

Let me suggest that if we do take such an approach that we put in place a predictable, quantifiable, stable plan for such MSC purchases (both pricing mechanism and timing) in order to give the market confidence that there won't be any unpredictable purchases of MSC for BTC by the Exodus Address.

So let me respond to your proposal line by line.

1) Keep only the 1000 BTC we've already moved into offline wallets.

I think this is a reasonable about of BTC to keep for unexpected events. Agreed.

2) Use the remainder of our BTC to purchase MSC over the next few months on the distributed exchange.

I'd propose spreading out these purchases over the next 10 month period (year 1 of Dev MSC generation). Purchases once each month on the last day of the month. Buy orders set and then filled over time at the market price.

3) Pay all future bounties exclusively in MSC

Agreed. This will attract the most developers interested in MSC, if they sell the MSC it still ends up in the hands of the person that values it the most highly.

4) Keep half of our MSC money for a rainy day and/or future distributed bounty system.

Again, over the next 10 months, if we do mirror the Dev MSC generation rate, for our Dev MSC Distribution rate than only 50% of the MSC will be vested the first year. Thus we achieve your goal of having "half of our MSC" in reserve for use by the future distributed bounty system by the start of the second year (September 1st 2014). If we finish development of the bounty system before then even more MSC can be transferred to that system.

5) If our rainy day fund becomes excessive, we can always vote to lower the ratio later

Again I think it wisest if we set the numbers in stone in the protocol and have to agree a protocol change via consensus to alter the plan or rate of distribution. This can all be part of the future Distributed Bounty system and Proof of Stake system discussion.

Let me know what you think of these suggestions.

Possibly. The "dump" side could come if the devs who receive MSC bounties decide to sell all of what they received, or if a big investor decides to cash out. There's really no way to control that.

Companies do this all the time (buy back stock from investors), and I suppose they have a similar set of risks.

I expect that as long as we are completely transparent about what we are doing, the market will do a fine job of sorting out the liquidity and price. For instance, the knowledge that these MSC are being purchased only to be given away to others who might choose to sell them may prevent the price from going up as much as you might expect if we were buying them to sit on.

Brutal honesty: As an Exodus investor I love the idea, BUT.. it really gives me a weird feeling. Could this not be easily misrepresented as a huge pump and dump by outsiders and contrarian?

Ouh that seems interesting. How many Mastercoin should I have so to be wealthy soon?

I approve. +1

I approved

I'm totally for this if it makes dacoinmaster and the other devs to be 100% devoted to MSC (quitting their day job, etc.)

define absurdly wealthy 

1002

1001