[Passed] Motion to provide seed funding for B&C Exchange - a decentralized exchange built on the Peershares platform

[cryptog]

I think the potential benefits that B&C could bring to Nu shareholders outweigh the drawbacks, even under the financial conditions proposed.

Potential benefits:

• making liquidity provision a profitable activity
• increasing liquidity drastically
• bringing a source of revenues for nu shareholders

B&C is likely to stay owned by Nu for a large part for a long time, I feel.
Also, I feel using a separate blockchain is simple and makes sense.

Drawbacks:

• dilution of 12.5%
• 100 m NSR possibly given to second waves investors at a similar price as early investors (although it is possible that the auction avg price goes beyond say 0.3 a share because the auctions sells two ownership at the same time, which could cause some overexcitement)
• putting pressure on the buy side of Nu later on this year, since those 200k raised would be converted to NuBits, and later on converted back possibly to BTCs by contractors.

Overall, I feel that a stable crypto-currency depends on its liquidity provision.
Liquidity provision depends on whether or not LPCs think such an activity is profitable 1) and if they are fine with depositing money into exchanges 2).
Decentralized exchanges are intended to be much more secure 2) than centralized exchanges.
So we can expect much more depositors.
Also, decentralized exchanges are intended to be very cheap to maintain (they live on a blockchain, except for the Web interface that is served by a centralized server). Therefore, LPCs would be able to set a decent spread that goes beyond the exchange fees so that they can profit a bit from each trade while at the same time keeping the spread cheap enough so that traders are happy trading their liquidity.

Therefore, I will be voting for this motion very soon if nothing changes my mind in between.

This is only my opinion.

Tks for reading.

[MaVo]

B&C is likely to stay owned by Nu for a large part for a long time, I feel.Also, I feel using a separate blockchain is simple and makes sense.

I totally agree. The scenario that the current holders of Nushares (which will still be at least 87.5% after the dilution) are going to sell major parts of their Nushares anytime soon is highly unlikely to me. As I really see a lot of potential in the idea of the DecEx, I will definitely not sell for quite some time.
If the exchange becomes a success and Nushares increases significantly in price as well, I will for sure consider very well whether to sell my Nushares or not because I would be afraid to not get a chance to buy back cheap enough at a later point in time.

As for the drawbacks you mentioned: dilution is a term that is understood as something negative per se. I am not sure whether the common characteristics of dilution really equally apply here. We are still in a very new and exciting field and we are talking a lot about attracting new people to cryptocurrency and giving them a reasonable chance to enter promising projects like this. On the one hand, we all want to protect our investments. On the other hand, we all have to think one step further and maybe dismiss ideas that we might intuitively come up with. Giving other people a chance to join our baby and thereby increase competition for the auctioned shares might be something we don’t like. But the opposite should be the case. Every new member joining the community will give the network value. That is why I actually don’t like that there is a maximum of 30 million per bid. It should be less in my opinion unless certain circumstances are given.
We should definitely put some effort into marketing the auction (in case the motion goes through) to the public as good as possible. If we can help increase competition significantly, those people who won’t be successful during the auction might still try to get shares on the market.

Not sure if that is possible but what about locking a percentage of B&C shares for some time until they can be sold (12 month or so) in order to keep the majority during the most important early phase of the exchange? If after that the majority is still desperately trying to get rid of all their shares, then there is probably a reason for that anyway…

[crypto_coiner]

That is why I actually don’t like that there is a maximum of 30 million per bid.

I tend to agree.
Btw, how does the team come to this 30m figure?

[Nagalim]

30mil is only 3% of the total coinage. Maybe 1% would be better, but I’m not super worried about this personally. I would vote for a 10 mil cap amendment, but I wouldn’t particularly rally behind it.

[tomjoad]

We’ve had some new questions asked on page 2 of the pre-announcement thread on Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1033773.20 .

If you can, please help us keep this thread bumped if you have questions that can be asked there. Bitcointalk has a large audience that will be interested in the project if we can generate enough awareness.

[JordanLee]

• putting pressure on the buy side of Nu later on this year, since those 200k raised would be converted to NuBits, and later on converted back possibly to BTCs by contractors.

As development funds are converted to NuBits this will place liquidity on the buy side. It will be placed in tier 4 as needed to balance the liquidity walls. Later, it will be moved up to tier 1 as needed as NuBits are paid to contractors.

[JordanLee]

how does the team come to this 30m figure?

I agree that all other things being equal, more distributed ownership is better. The issue is that the lower the limit is, the less money the auction will yield. Perhaps an amendment to this motion could be advanced that says something like:

If a bid size limit of a does not reduce the money raised by more than b, it shall be imposed.

Several such conditional limitations like this could be associated with different maximum bid sizes, such as 20 million, 10 million and 5 million. The question is, how much money should we leave on the table in exchange for a better distribution?

[creon]

What if we fund the first part of the development (until blockchain launch) using an NSR grant and the second part using a BKS grant?

If really all BKS shareholders are the same people as the NSR shareholders after the BKS launch, then it won’t be any different.

NuBits are paid to contractors

This is a very important detail. So its not sure that the 35-50k per month will be required on the buy side?

I’d still like to see B&C partly to be funded through a BKS grant. I still would be in favor to burn your proposed amount of NSR, but then to use the additional development capacity for Nu related development efforts.

[Cybnate]

After having absorbed and thought about all the discussion and arguments I’ve decided to add this motion to my datafeed.
I’ve enjoyed the discussion and I had to adjust my opinion a number of times in some areas.

My conclusion:
As said earlier I’m in the camp who would have liked to see a single set of Shares for both Nu and B&C. I think it is not a great thing when you weigh up:

• the dilution of attention across inevitably two different communities,
• the dilution of NuShares and
• the risk that B&C might distance itself from Nu in the mid to long term and with that removing an excellent opportunity for another stream of income.

On the other hand:

• I see an opportunity and a vision which is to good to let go as I haven’t seen any concrete alternatives for potential investments to improve the Nu business model (in this case lowering the costs) besides the one I’ve issued myself (Android wallet). At the end of the day the others had to do with maintaining the peg for liquidity or assuring listing on exchanges. My apologies if I missed a motion worth pursuing for the Shareholders.
• A chance to have a stake in an exciting an innovative development which I think is crucial for the robustness of the crypto ecosystem
• Continuation of a good and proven development/test team with Jordan in the lead and with that a better chance of further developments on NuNet then when the team would fall apart or focus on unrelated activities.
• Improving the time and reducing the risk to deliver by forking Nu

So in the balance I have come to the conclusion that it is worth voting for.

BTW I would back a motion to reduce the maximum from 30 million to 15 million with terms as Jordan raised in his post to improve decentralisation of ownership, but won’t be leading it.

@Creon, with the strong focus on the Bitcoin community there will be new investors who don’t own Nu. Given the difficulties with the previous auction I wouldn’t be so sure that we would be able to raise this amount within our own community

[mhps]

Building the exchange directly into Nu provides a permanent home for trading and a permanent revenue stream for shareholders.

You seem to assume Nu is safer than B&C, and current shareholders will own Nu forever. Neither is necessarily true. If BTC has an epic crash, to save the peg Nushare owner could be forced to print hundreds millions NSR to pay high fees for the loss of NBT/BTC LPCs. The NSR ownership will be full of new members, mostly speculators. There are ways to change the peg operations to avoid this scenario but generally, as long as new Nushares will be created to sell on the market, there is no guarantee that the current Nushares owners will be among majority even for Nu.

[Cybnate]

@JordanLee, would you and the team still be available for Nu after the B&C motion has passed. Especially to maintain the repo when new issues come up, accept commits and contributions. And even for funded motions/grant from the NuShareholders? Or would you 100% dedicate the team and yourself to B&C Exchange?

I think it is important for NuShareholders to clarify what they can expect and what not realistically.

[mhps]

If you can, please help us keep this thread bumped if you have questions that can be asked there. Bitcointalk has a large audience that will be interested in the project if we can generate enough awareness.

Getting bitcoin community on board is very important. Any question that is not closely related to Nu should be posted at bitcointalk.

[crypto_coiner]

What if we fund the first part of the development (until blockchain launch) using an NSR grant and the second part using a BKS grant?

If really all BKS shareholders are the same people as the NSR shareholders after the BKS launch, then it won’t be any different.

That seems to balance the risks more upon the success and value created by BKS. Sounds fair.

[CoinGame]

I will state for the record that I have no intention to remove my efforts from advancing the interests of Nu whether or not compensation is offered for those efforts. I can’t speak for everyone else involved but this is a project which I have a strong affinity for.

I can say that there are many Nu related projects cooking in the background but they will take time to be ready for consumption. I really don’t think B&C is intended to move the focus away from Nu, but rather the intention is to build a complementary service that exemplifies the true potential of NuBits.

We’re still very young. Everything we’re doing is evolving especially thanks to the rogue efforts of people like @creon and @woolly_sammoth with their trustless liquidity apps, and other efforts such as @Teehe (even though it did not meet its goals) . I know some people are looking at returns from month to month, though for me this is a project that I see years worth of efforts to realize the true potential.

I hope others see the complementary nature of B&C instead of a shifting focus. This is an opportunity to show NuBits as a viable base pair on one of the most needed technologies in cryto. There’s still a lot to discuss and debate regarding the implementation. I think it can be improved. I’m just a bit troubled to see the discussion turning to “the death of Nu”. I don’t think @JordanLee or anyone on the team would support an effort that lead to such an outcome. I certainly would not.

[Sentinelrv]

I know some people are looking at returns from month to month, though for me this is a project that I see years worth of efforts to realize the true potential.

I feel the same way. What we’re doing here is no simple task. It was easy to allow one or two LPCs to manage most of our liquidity operations using shareholder funds. We saw how that turned out though. Now we seem to be getting back on track with shareholders taking a more active role and responsibility in decentralizing our liquidity operations. It’s going to take a lot of time to get to where we need to be at, but at least we have a pretty good idea of what our goals are.

I’m just a bit troubled to see the discussion turning to “the death of Nu”. I don’t think @JordanLee or anyone on the team would support an effort that lead to such an outcome. I certainly would not.

I think it’s more that people want to know whether there will be basic support from the team. I don’t believe Jordan or anybody from the team would want to abandon Nu.

[Joe]

I believe that Jordan’s vision of the B&C Exchange will be a boon for Nubits and Cryptocurrencies in general. I believe that B&C and Nu will work together for a long time to come. However, I have not heard a compelling reason why Nu cannot fulfill the exact functions required of the B&C Exchange.

I’m just a bit troubled to see the discussion turning to “the death of Nu”. I don’t think @JordanLee or anyone on the team would support an effort that lead to such an outcome. I certainly would not.

If the Nubit experiment fails (remember this disclaimer?), Nushares are worth nothing. I accept that risk because I believe that Nushares can become more than just Nubits. If we build B&C into the Nu blockchain where dividends are distributed to Nu shareholders than this allows for Nubits to fail and Nu shareholders to not be left holding the bag. This is not greed, it is common business sense.

[cryptog]

As development funds are converted to NuBits this will place liquidity on the buy side

Is the totality of those funds gonna be converted in nubits in a one-time sell or would it be done gradually?

If a bid size limit of a does not reduce the money raised by more than b, it shall be imposed

How can we get to know b in advance without actually setting first a?

I would be more comfortable with a bid size limit of 15m NSR and I would vote for such a motion but such motion would need to pass before or very quickly after this motion to be applicable, I guess.
Can anyone create such a motion?

By the way, @JordanLee, if it is possible, can you share with us the distribution of shares yielded by the previous auction?
In other words, a corresponding question would be: did 90% of the 100m NSR go into the hands of 10% of the successful bidders?
I think revealing this info does not infringe the privacy of bidders and would be very helpful in order to convince shareholders that setting certain bid size limits is useful or not, for this present auction.

Tks.

[CoinGame]

If the Nubit experiment fails (remember this disclaimer?), Nushares are worth nothing.

That is a fantastic reason why we should not tie these two ventures together. Not only are the goals of the projects completely different, the value of one could impact the other if they are hermetically attached and one fails to meet its goals.

I accept that risk because I believe that Nushares can become more than just Nubits.

That’s awesome. Everyone is aware that there’s more value to Nu than just NuShares/NuBits. They’ve been discussed for quite some time and once NuBits has its legs we can branch into other assets/services. We’re not there yet.

If we build B&C into the Nu blockchain where dividends are distributed to Nu shareholders than this allows for Nubits to fail and Nu shareholders to not be left holding the bag.

You’re thinking about this totally backwards. If both services are operating on the same chain and NuBits dies the entire project/blockchain has to carry that weight. It will be a marketing issue as well as a development issue.You didn’t respond to any of the criticisms I offered regarding utilizing a single chain before, so I would submit my previous post as the first place to start from.

I think this is totally disregarding the fact that there are significant technical limitations on the blockchain already. Bitcoin is struggling with how to scale their own blockchain, and everyone has a different opinion on what exactly their blockchain should be optimized for. The "one blockchain to rule them all" is clearly unsuccessful. It's the very reason so many altcoins and appcoins exist. Bitcoin cannot do everything. Expecting that the Nu blockchain can do everything is foolishly disreg…

Projects that try to do everything have struggled. Trying to integrate a concept that nobody has implemented before into an existing project that is still finding its legs is only asking for trouble. BitShares has been around for much longer than Nu has and people are still complaining about endless bugs in their infrastructure. We don’t have those same problems with our client. Let’s not introduce them now.

As the proposal states all NuShares holders would have an exact parity stake into B&C exchange. If B&C fails but Nu succeeds they have lost nothing more than the 12% dilution of shares to fund the project. If Nu fails and B&C succeeds they have a stake into the next generation decentralized exchange that could support every crypto project going forward. There’s also the possibility they both succeed beautifully and there’s champagne bottles popping all around, or they both end up miserably with everyone dumping at a loss.

Were the current proposal accepted the majority of individuals voting on B&C policy would also be NuShares holders. Their best interest would be to pursue (incoming buzzword) synergy between the projects. Whether or not they’re using the same blockchain does not matter at all. Ownership will be represented proportionally the same whether it’s in NuShares or BlockShares. If NuShares become worthless all NuShares holders will have the exact same amount of units in a bag related to a potentially more successful venture. Certainly nobody hopes that to be the case. I just want to refute your assertion that the only way to prevent individuals from being bag holders requires a merger of the projects. The perception impact of that failure (for either project) would have far more impact were they tied together. “Nu tried to make a NuExchange and they failed. The project sucks”. That’s a bit hyperbolic but putting all our eggs in one basket would leave yolk on all the other eggs even if only one egg broke. Having multiple baskets is not a bad idea.

This is not greed, it is common business sense.

I’m not sure what business sense you’re talking about. I would love for you to expound upon that. As I’ve stated before it’s very common for businesses to split apart. Take for instance E-Bay and PayPal splitting into two separate traded companies. You have two companies who thrived off each other from the start. One is an online exchange of assets (sound familiar?) while another company is an online payment and transaction service (again, familiar?). Let’s hear the official reasoning behind the split:

“As we’ve continued our annual assessment, looking forward three to five years about how we can best position eBay and PayPal, we think the competitive position and the competitive environment of commerce and payments are going through accelerating change. That creates new sets of opportunities and challenges for both eBay and PayPal and (we believe) that operating independently will give eBay and PayPal focused strategic flexibility and an ability to move quickly and decisively in this changing environment.”

I think that’s a pretty profound statement from individuals who have fairly strong business sense. Let me edit what I believe to be a very important sentence so that’s it’s a bit more relevant to the discussion.

“focused strategic flexibility and an ability to move quickly and decisively in this changing crypto environment.”

Separate parts that can evolve at their own pace while still functioning together is a strong schema. While I think there’s more to discuss regarding the implementation, I think the idea to separate the projects is prudent and fully aligns with other examples of good business sense.

[Sentinelrv]

I was pushing along with Joe to merge B&C into Nu, but I have to admit that CoinGame’s arguments here are all very convincing. Therefore I submit to these arguments and will be voting in favor of Jordan’s current proposal to keep the two separate. If eBay and PayPal can both separate and work together, then we can as well. It makes sense to me that the goals of each project are completely different, therefore we should allow each project the freedom to move at their own pace while having the ability for shareholders to make their own separate, but focused decisions based on two different business environments.

Also @Joe, I’m not sure if you’re from the Peercoin community like most of us were, but in that community we praised Sunny King for having the foresight to design Peercoin in such a way that would keep the blockchain as tiny as possible. This meant not bogging it down by building lots and lots of things on top of the blockchain. We looked down on projects like Ethereum that wanted to build one blockchain to rule them all. Sunny King preferred a modular approach to design. Many of us are still waiting to see if he eventually builds sidechains for proof-of-stake. This would allow all these services to be built as sidechains, rather than on top of the main chain, preventing Peercoin from becoming too large and heavy. It’s very important that Nu shareholders keep in mind Sunny’s wisdom in blockchain design.

[Joe]

Not only are the goals of the projects completely different, the value of one could impact the other if they are hermetically attached and one fails to meet its goals.

Nu will always needs an exchange for all of its currencies to trade on that is also safe and cheap. The exchange wants currencies for people to trade to collect fees. The two projects have very much the same goals. Also as far as the value of one could impact the other, the same is true the opposite way as well. When Nu successfully complete projects that value of both go up (more confidence -> more volume -> more nubits sales -> more fees).

You’re thinking about this totally backwards. If both services are operating on the same chain and NuBits dies the entire project/blockchain has to carry that weight. It will be a marketing issue as well as a development issue.

This is honestly insulting. My thinking is not backwards, it is different. As i said before:

If B&C Exchange is implemented into the Nu blockchain then the value of Nushares go up in relation to the value and utility that the B&C Exchange provides. In the future if the Nubit peg fails, the value of nushares will drop until nushares are worth the value of the B&C Exchange. Splitting the value into two separate markets is completely unnecessary.

Additionally, if Nu is the sole owner of the B&C exchange, shareholders would still have a source of revenue to hopefully try to pay off any debt remaining for failed projects. Who’s to say in the event of nubits failure current Nu shareholders would want to associate with Nu? Nu shareholders who own bks could just silently vote to disassociate from Nu.

Everyone is aware that there’s more value to Nu than just NuShares/NuBits. They’ve been discussed for quite some time and once NuBits has its legs we can branch into other assets/services. We’re not there yet.

So let’s instead fund projects that give Nubits legs?

Bitcoin is struggling with how to scale their own blockchain, and everyone has a different opinion on what exactly their blockchain should be optimized for. The “one blockchain to rule them all” is clearly unsuccessful.

I don’t think bitcoin is struggling to scale and this is the opinion of many core developers as well. Look up the lightning network and the bitcoin foundation scalability roadmap. Also what blockchain are you referring to with “one blockchain to rule them all”? I’m not asking for every project Nu is involved with to be attached to the blockchain, only ones that make sense. For instance a Coinbase for Nubits would make sense as a separate entity.

BitShares has been around for much longer than Nu has and people are still complaining about endless bugs in their infrastructure. We don’t have those same problems with our client. Let’s not introduce them now.

Nu is not bitshares. We don’t have the same code, we dont have the same developers, and we wont have the same bugs.

Their best interest would be to pursue (incoming buzzword) synergy between the projects.

It will be in their best intereset until its not. Such as say, when Nu will need the revenue the most (ie: if nubits fails). If you can guarantee that the B&C Exchange will always and forever work in the interest of Nu then I will shut up!

You have two companies who thrived off each other from the start.

You are aware they started as two separate entities? Also, Ebay as a business wants to have as many payment processors as possible to attract more customers. Paypal wants Ebay to push using Paypal so paypal can have more customers… this is not synergy and would not last. I stated above why I think the exchange and Nu are a perfect pair together.