Frustration with Mastercoin is understandable but I am not convinced by what has been suggested above.
OP's major objections appears to be JR's holdings. I'm unclear what is being suggested for others holding MSC but it would be odd to resolve that problem without JR's input.
Having a coup and grabbing the utility and community, is all very well as a simple idea but what about developers? Developers are the most fundamental element but nothing in the OP seemed to address what development team any new fork would have.
If there is value in Mastercoin's utility; its developers; and its community, then it would be better those assets are retained and the frustration with JR's holdings is resolved directly. Mastercoin could easily come alive on the back of interest in other Bitcoin2.0 projects. Everyone seems to overstate where we are right now - there's a long way to go, I expect at least three years before mainstream.
To be clear- this thread is about discussing the idea. These days precious little seems to draw anyone who is working on Mastercoin out to speak with the community at length or indepth. The updates on the blog are great to see, but the "great things are happening with mastercoin" updates leave a lot to be desired when Judith keeps linking to projects that don't have working websites, (
http://www.coinproz.com/) or are down right silly (
http://www.thefestivalofhope.org/).
Thus far JR seems very unwilling to talk about the frustration with his holdings. If you look back at the thread you'll see I was always highly supportive of JR's holdings and had no issue with it. The truth of the matter is though that while things are indeed happening with Mastercoin, I think very few people seem to see any indications that anything has been learned from the mistakes of the past, or that better processes are put in place for the future. Indeed, I think many of us know hardly anything about what is going on with the project. The last feedback that we had on the official mastercoin thread here was that they were going to close the thread and thus end the discussion entirely. A week goes by with no activity on the git-hub, no one shows up on the thread to reach out to the community and mastercointalk is a near ghosttown. I think in many people's minds the shop certainly seems to be empty.
OP appears more concerned about the value of OPs stake to be talking for Maidsafe
> It would be terrible to let the failures of Mastercoin impact projects like Maidsafe.
but has Maidsafe expressed such concern. They might well be wise to the long term potential of project's like their own and Mastercoin.
There seems little doubt mistakes were made with Mastercoin's use of resources to date; and its PR sucks but it's not easy to market before there is real utility - even BitShares understands that.. there is huge potential here and the OP appears to be suggesting a nuclear option that is perhaps coming far too soon.
I'm an original Exodus investor, but I'm also an Maidsafe holder and I'm concerned for both. I've been directed to a few things regarding Maidsafe's plans for a possible mastercoin collapse, and I'll read those.
I don't think it's a question of just the mistake of Mastecoin's use of resources, and PR sucking, at this point it becomes a question of is anyone at the helm, and if there is- is there even any crew left to speak of? CIYAM posted a perfectly resonably offer to be involved in a cross chain transaction project and no one gets in touch with them. There's plenty of time to update us on nonsense "gold hope coins for world peace global concert series" mastercoin projects, but no one can send an email out to a project that actually a) has a bounty and b) could prove a seriously viable use case for our existence?
For all other offering having a larger market cap, the market cap is an illusion until mainstream are on board and there isn't the utility anywhere yet for that.
Even if there was clear evidence that the whole dev team less JR was on board with such a radical idea, then there would still be a question about the sense of it in the absence of JR's input. It seems JR's input has been substantial to date, I think there remain better ways to resolve this and JR should be provided opportunity to respond to these concerns.
Market cap doesn't really enter into it for me. As for JR's input, I think I would phrase it best: After Counterparty was rebuffed, they went ahead without JR's input and look what it's done for them.
I do indeed think JR has an opportunity to respond and debate- indeed I hope he shows up!
Looking for short term profits, tends to prompt short term answers to what appear to be difficult problems - but those answers are not always the best.
Also don't let envy of big stashes get the better of you. In the event that JR evidenced use of his holdings for the benefit of Mastercoin, then there would be no problem. Indeed the way Mastercoin was setup, was exactly expecting that such holdings would be used in this way, so I wonder that the OP mistakes the reality of the way that Mastercoin IPO worked. Remember there have been many different approaches to IPOs, and really noone can say yet which has worked and which has not. Again, market cap is an illusion until the point that mainstream consensus is behind a project, all value is an illusion - you cannot sell more than a small fraction of any marketcap, including Bitcoin without the market collapsing.
It's not stash envy, nor pursuit of short time profit (that time passed for mastercoin a long time ago!) it's a question of the management of such a large stash of coins, and the commitment of the person holding them. If JR was on the forum day in and day out, and making commits day in and day out, I wouldn't be asking the community to debate this. But where is he? Where are the commits? Where is the community outreach? It's great that Mastercoin had all this funding from the outset, but at this point even ColoredCoins are much farther down the road than we are. It's fantastic we raised all this money to pay PR agencies and developers, but if no love was given to building a community that would keep the ship sailing even without a captain and strong winds- whats the future now that we are out of money and out of community? JR has wielded his giant stash to negative effect on the community, creating confusion, doubt and disappointment. It's not a question of being envious of his stash, but why should a community coalesce around a project that will most benefit one individual, an individual who has proven they will dump large amounts of coins early in the game when speculation is high, and an individual who simply isn't acting like he stands to gain monumentally from any incremental positive development. Like I said, if he was out and about drumming up support, day in and day out, engaging the community, commiting on github, etc... even if he was making all bad decisions, we wouldn't be at this point. We're at this point because it's been a litany of questionable decisions and he's, nor anyone else, is anywhere to be found.
The core question is properly when will Mastercoin have utility and what can be done to support that. Then there is another concern about that relative to other offerings and mainstream users coming on board. Remember how large the potential market is. Forking for forking sake as the OP appears to encourage, does not convince me.
I'm tempted to think the core question maybe- is Mastercoin a great idea with a bad team? Counter-party seems to have settled that question, which the begs, what can be done to fix this and turn things around? The other concern is that with the track record the project has, maybe our main impediment is JR at the helm- despite it being his baby. By forking mastercoin we don't destroy his mastercoin, we simply take those who are still left, and still interested and build our own project. I don't think I'm the only one here.
Anyway, thanks for posting. I saw your cross post at mastercointalk, no one had read it but me, but it would be nice if developers, JR, Judith, anyone, from the project would really enjoin a serious and critical debate about the future of Mastercoin.
