I’m currently a contributor on the project for a small number of hours. Right now, my primary tasks are monitoring/updating the Bitcointalk thread, and running a set Twitter posting schedule I developed. The Twitter schedule was broken down into five strategic goals, with various messaging supporting these goals occurring on different days. For example, here is a page from the playbook showing our “Feature Focus” tweets that support our goal of providing education on B&C Exchange features: http://i.imgur.com/xTAkNCn.png
I plan to continue providing updates to Bitcointalk and Twitter, especially now that the pace of development has increased. There isn’t much of a marketing budget beyond this right now, because our limited development funds must be prioritized for features that improve the exchange. Given the choice between creating an infographic video or completing a web UI for the exchange, most shareholders will prefer the latter option.
The one activity I plan on completing soon is quantitative analysis of the decentralized exchange space, namely running a few different marketing engineering analyses (such as conjoint analysis and positioning) to better identify our target segments. The results of those surveys will inform B&C Exchange’s social media messaging, as well as its eventual full-scale trading website. I hope that these efforts will answer your next question about the best ways to publicize B&C to Bitcoin users.
I agree that the NuBits countdown was successful in driving substantial website traffic. Once a more concrete date is set, I’ll look into adding a countdown timer.
Assuming the exchange works as expected, I think there will be two criticisms:
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The trading speed is slower than centralized exchanges. The response will be to point out that we are not marketing our product to high-frequency micro trades and that B&C prioritizes safety over speed. We can also point out that as blockchain technology advances, our trading times can speed up too. BitShares users will undoubtedly throw out their NASDAQ comparisons (“our platform is faster than the NASDAQ!”), but that’s simply not true, not to mention they use artificial proxy assets that are inferior to native assets. It’s quicker for me to mail someone $50,000 in monopoly money (that I promise can be redeemed by a local monopoly enthusiast for $50,000 US) than executing a wire transfer through a bank, but I’m sure most people would prefer receiving $50,000 US in legal tender. Redemption counterparty risk is a real problem that B&C Exchange avoids.
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The signers might steal funds. The response will be to point out that centralized exchanges are effectively 1-of-1 multisig, often with unknown operators (such as BTC-e). B&C Exchange will have 6+ signers required, all of whom have built reputations for honesty in cryptocurrency communities. The longer B&C Exchange operates without a theft, the less effective this attack vector will be.
One feature that I hope is prioritized is an automatic BlockCredit (BKC) transaction fee. So, if I wanted to trade 100 NBT, I could “pay” a 1.00 NBT transaction fee. A conversion from 1.00 NBT to 1.00 BKC would occur behind the scenes; either by purchasing 1.00 BKC from a B&C Exchange custodian, or else using an external service like ShapeShift. This will be a key aspect of improving the simplicity of user experiences, along with an intuitive and attractive web UI.
Long story short: all BlockShareholders should be marketing the exchange in the external communities they are active in. My goal is to provide strategic messaging that everyone can use to convey the benefits of B&C Exchange to our target users.
