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

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

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

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 canā€™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 donā€™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.

Weā€™re still very young. Everything weā€™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. Thereā€™s still a lot to discuss and debate regarding the implementation. I think it can be improved. Iā€™m just a bit troubled to see the discussion turning to ā€œthe death of Nuā€. I donā€™t think @JordanLee or anyone on the team would support an effort that lead to such an outcome. I certainly would not.

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I feel the same way. What weā€™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. Itā€™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 think itā€™s more that people want to know whether there will be basic support from the team. I donā€™t believe Jordan or anybody from the team would want to abandon Nu.

I believe that Jordanā€™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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

Thatā€™s awesome. Everyone is aware that thereā€™s more value to Nu than just NuShares/NuBits. Theyā€™ve been discussed for quite some time and once NuBits has its legs we can branch into other assets/services. Weā€™re not there yet.

Youā€™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 didnā€™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.

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 donā€™t have those same problems with our client. Letā€™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. Thereā€™s also the possibility they both succeed beautifully and thereā€™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 theyā€™re using the same blockchain does not matter at all. Ownership will be represented proportionally the same whether itā€™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. ā€œNu tried to make a NuExchange and they failed. The project sucksā€. Thatā€™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.

Iā€™m not sure what business sense youā€™re talking about. I would love for you to expound upon that. As Iā€™ve stated before itā€™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?). Letā€™s hear the official reasoning behind the split:

ā€œAs weā€™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.ā€

I think thatā€™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 thatā€™s itā€™s a bit more relevant to the discussion.

ā€œfocused strategic flexibility and an ability to move quickly and decisively in this changing crypto environment.ā€

Separate parts that can evolve at their own pace while still functioning together is a strong schema. While I think thereā€™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.

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I was pushing along with Joe to merge B&C into Nu, but I have to admit that CoinGameā€™s arguments here are all very convincing. Therefore I submit to these arguments and will be voting in favor of Jordanā€™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, Iā€™m not sure if youā€™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. Itā€™s very important that Nu shareholders keep in mind Sunnyā€™s wisdom in blockchain design.

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).

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. Whoā€™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.

So letā€™s instead fund projects that give Nubits legs?

I donā€™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 ā€œone blockchain to rule them allā€? Iā€™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.

Nu is not bitshares. We donā€™t have the same code, we dont have the same developers, and we wont have the same bugs.

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 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 customersā€¦ this is not synergy and would not last. I stated above why I think the exchange and Nu are a perfect pair together.

Side chains are on the eve of emerging, because it is easier to run things on different chains, that are separated from each other, yet in some way tied to each other.

In terms of scalability it would be unwise to integrate the B&C block chain into the Nu block chain. Itā€™d pose difficulties and security dependencies - each time you need to update the protocol, because you want to fix, update, add or remove something, both NSR and BKS are at stake; if THE block chain fails, all might fail.

By having two separate block chains with two protocols which can be altered independently from each other this is obviously easier and safer. Admittedly Iā€™m no programmer and have only my common sense to asses this; I might be wrong, so please correct me if need be.

One other thing if you want to to project both Nu and B&C into the future is the block chain size.
If you only want to own NSR xor BKS, you only need to download and store the relevant block chain.
Have you recently tried to download the behemoth of Bitcoin block chain?
I did, because I wanted to test Emethā€™s beta of Peermessage.
To be frankly, itā€™s a pain in the ass!
Iā€™d be very happy not to download more than necessaryā€¦

There might be approaches to prune unnecessary information from the block chain in the future. I donā€™t know what message types are saved in the block chain at B&C and which are only processed in the memory pool. But I can imagine several message types to be pruned from the block chain after conditions are met (an order that is filled or canceled doesnā€™t need to be saved in the block chain, right?) or enough time has passed.
Once again itā€™s easier and safer to have separate block chains. If you mess up the pruning, you might wreck all.
If you apply the pruning to the block chains independently, you canā€™t affect the other!
Iā€™d be very happy not to download more than necessary.
Once NBT are used frequently we can expect the block chain to grow faster than in the last months.

B&C might not be the last technology funded by NSR holders.
How many projects/DACs do NSR holders want to include into the Nu block chain until it becomes obvious that running different block chains and granting the funders (initial) ownership of the new DACs might be a clever, fair, convenient and safe way to go?

If the main reason for having all in one block chain is because of the control of the newly created DAC, I can only recommend to the NSR holders to hold the shares of the new DAC :wink:

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Just because the services complement each other does not mean that their goals are the same. The goals are not the same. The goal of one is to be the most decentralized crypto-asset exchange that has existed. The other is to maintain stable crypto assets for transaction use. They are complementary, but not the same goals. Youā€™re conflating the two.

My apologies if you were insulted. Let me rephrase it. I think itā€™s entirely possible for the valuation impact to be greater were only one unit to exist. Having multiple units could even be seen as a hedge against failure to each service. Theyā€™re both entirely experimental but we know they both resolve issues within the crypto-asset ecosystem. I donā€™t believe NuShares would drop to zero at any point. Nobody would literally give the units away. Paycoin has done nothing more than regularly fail meet the goals of the project and itā€™s still trading with a marketcap higher than NuShares. I think what could also happen if one aspect for the project to fail in a major way, and they were linked together, it would reflect poorly on the entirety of the project.

Given that the intent and goals are very different for each project, the valuation impact of failure would be less localized per service (whether itā€™s the exchange, or transnational units), and the large benefit of focused development to optimize the protocol simply for the specific service being offered (to me) it makes way more sense to have them separated.

So would BlockShares.

I disagree. I think people would hear about a project with significant problems that they donā€™t want to get involved with. Isolating them as two separate projects offers some insulation to that perception.

The only reason iā€™m making these replies is because I wholeheartedly disagree. Well, maybe not entirely with your language. Is it necessary? Not completely. Are there significant marketing and development advantages in doing so? Totally.

That would be well within their right to do so, and a prudent decision. Iā€™m not sure how closely youā€™ve followed the BitShares project but theyā€™ve had many spin-off projects result that even had people calling out conflicts of interest. Itā€™s a result of their ā€œlets try to do everything and be everythingā€ attitude. It has not served them well and their marketing has never had a consistent identity because of it. I would prefer people had a democratic way to move a project forward that was in the best interests of that specific project. Whatā€™s best for the Nu blockchain may not be best for a blockchain which intends to facilitate trading of assets. Every NuSharesholder will have an opportunity to be invested at the start, and I imagine they would want to see a positive return and cooperation between both projects. Ideally they would continue to complement each other, but if thatā€™s not what allows each solution to be successful then why try to force the issue?

The points youā€™ve shared are still all discussion pieces, and theyā€™re still highly debated. Even the Bitcoin ā€œroadmapā€ is riddled with weasel words. There is nothing concrete. Even if I concede the that they can resolve their issues scaling youā€™ll notice a common denominator between the resources you shared. They have the benefit of only trying to scale the blockchain for one purpose (unit transaction service). Why would we want to potentially derail our ability to optimize our own blockchain for providing better transaction services by including asset exchange services which may require a different development direction? NuBits blockchain should be focused on transaction services. B&C can be focused on asset exchange.

Totally agree with you. Weā€™ll have different code with different bugs. I would not like to see the services impact each other.

I disagree with this mentality. I would love for Nu and B&C to complement each other forever, but I donā€™t believe there are any guarantees in the crypto space. Even if you have six confirmations on a transaction the blockchain can be rolled back. Letā€™s be a bit more open minded to the realities of a fast pace development ecosystem. We have to be responsive to changing needs and separating the projects allows development to act quicker with fewer variables to consider. The proposal as designed allows all NuSharesholders to have a direct seat at the table for a partnership between the projects. If they choose not to accept this proposal and Jordan finds funding for the project otherwise we may not be able to ensure such a close relationship. I would prefer to see the immediate relationship form.

I am aware they started as separates entities. I think youā€™ve helped to prove my point. They were not working well together and it was a stifling relationship. Whatā€™s best for one was not best for the other, and it made sense to break apart. Bitshares has been through the same thing numerous times. Letā€™s not go through that with Nu.

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Nice PR phrasing

I agree

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If the state of cryptoasset development was sufficiently mature and innovations like sidechains were production ready, Iā€™d be the first to advocate their use in projects like the one B&C represents. Unfortunately we arenā€™t at a point in time where this can be done.

B&C is a proof of concept. I see no reason for the decision of todayā€“to split it into its own blockchain and protocolā€“to be the decision of forever.

The world will ultimately need more than one decentralized exchange. It is my belief that the learnings gained from the work done on B&C (or Mercury, Ethereum, OpenBaazar, SuperNET, etc.) will become the stable base of knowledge that allows the Nu protocol to be extended in significant ways to support a variety of on- and off-blockchain activities, safely and cleanly in the future.

Iā€™ve spent a considerable amount of time over the past year+ working with @JordanLee, @sigmike, and @erasmospunk and trust their judgement on matters of how best to proceed. While I still have significant questions about the functional details of B&Cā€™s design and its scalability (in particular the reputation system), I am absolutely sure in my belief that directly appending the proposed changes to Nuā€™s code base, while keeping Nuā€™s functionality the same would be an unnecessarily high-risk undertaking.

Letā€™s follow the KISS philosophy at this point in time to minimize the chances of a cascading failure if something goes awry and then keep talking about what needs to happen to allow Nu to absorb the aspects of B&C that make long-term sense once theyā€™ve been proven in the field.

On a personal note, my time on the Nu team as a full time contributor is coming to an end in the middle of May. I do not plan on joining the B&C development effort if the motion passes, but I do plan on continue development activities on a part-time basis within the Nu network. Iā€™m not a core protocol developer, and donā€™t know enough C++ to pick it up, so I can only work on the ā€œlow-hanging fruitā€ but know that my commitment to the project is unwavering. I will assist where I can and have lots of ideas floating around my head for ways to improve, extend, and build the Nu ecosystem.

The future is bright. Nu combines two exceptionally powerful concepts together in a way that hasnā€™t been done before ā€“ the blockchain and direct democracy. This mentally excites me to no end.

The Nu Community is building something awesome and Iā€™m proud to say Iā€™m a small part of it.

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In my mind separate development paths are inline with the Unix Philosophy, including: make each program do one thing well, build a prototype as soon as possible, choose portability over efficiency, and make every program a filter.

Modularity and isolation are good things in large, distributed, complex systems. If the necessary compromise is a separate blockchain, so be it.

Or looking at it another way, suppose there is a flaw found in either Nu or B&C ā€“ what is a more manageable state: handling an issue isolated by product, or globally?

Confidence in NuBits would plummet overnight if we had to roll back / deal with forks in NuBits transactions because of a trade gone bad in B&C, and vice-versa.

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This is awesome! Especially that instead of creating blockshares out of thin air they would be forked from nushares. I donā€™t have any extra funds to invest in blockshares but I have a lot of nushares that I would like to use to support the development of B&C.

This is pretty much the where Iā€™m at as well. As it stands I wonā€™t be voting for putting B&C on the Nu network.

@assistant motion vote 20e1ec16c5527c3873699e702c96a980c22faed9

Hi @cryptog

Here are the details for the Motion Vote on 20e1ec16c5527c3873699e702c96a980c22faed9:


##20e1ec16c5527c3873699e702c96a980c22faed9
Blocks: 3323 (33.230000%)
Share Days: 1387366510 (34.598584%)


I am a bit late. Voting in favor of the motion.

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As @cryptog suggested, shareholders need some picture of the share distribution per shareholder to answer that question.
Could you give us some statistics?