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RE: Will BitShares Breathe Again?

in #bitshares9 years ago (edited)

BitShares is still evolving at a decent speed in my opinion. It's matured from an experiment where radical changes were being made, to a practically useful platform being enhanced for stability and usability. A number of 3rd parties have started building on top of the infrastructure now that the code base is more stable and rule changes are slower and more predictable.

I also don't agree with the thesis that's been advanced by the Forbes article mentioned elsewhere on Steemit that decentralized management isn't possible (I'm not sure what BM's stance is on this) . This idea that decisions have to be made by one man or some elite team is commonly thrown around, often with the excuse that paralysis results from anything else, but I consider it utter nonsense. More people analyzing a problem and discussing solutions almost always yields better results, in my opinion. And this extends to the final decision making process as well. Most of the worst decisions made about BitShares development and marketing were unilateral ones made with limited or even no input from the community.

In my opinion, the problem for BitShares in terms of funding new projects is mostly just a disagreement between Cryptonomex and the largest stakeholders. Please note that this is just my opinion gleaned from reading posts on the forums, even though I'm just going to make statements without prefacing each one with "In my opinion" :-) The largest stakeholders feel that Cryptonomex didn't manage the money it was given well and that tentative proposals for future enhancements put forward by Cryptonomex had high price tags or limited utility. Some people have stated that Cryptonomex didn't put forward any new proposals, but I saw a number of them, some of which I thought were useful but many of which didn't seem to be worth the required investment. Please note I say this despite being a shareholder in Cryptonomex. The last worker proposal made by Cryptonomex (formally proposed by BlockTrades, but with much of the work performed by Cryptonomex employees) was the blockchain maintenance worker proposal, and I think this was the most valuable proposal in terms of results and costs. It's true that this proposal ultimately got voted out after operating for a while, but I think this was more a side-effect of general voter unhappiness, and I suspect it could get voted back in with some campaigning. But it's problematic to do at this time as both Cryptonomex and BlockTrades are currently tied up in other projects.

The other problem for getting a new proposal for modifications to the Graphene code base by anyone other than Crytonomex employees is one of credibility. Graphene is a reasonably complex piece of software and it requires very experienced C++ coders to comprehend it's nuances in order to successfully modify the code. So if someone other than Cryptonomex wants to put forward a proposal, they need to convince the stakeholders that they have the required skillset.

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Decisions not only can be decentralized but can be delegated to AI or machine intelligence. SO not only can you distribute authority away from the human singleton but you can move information processing capability to AI in a personal exocortex scenario. Collaborative filtering can work only if all the humans involved have intelligent agents to help them process information at an enhanced rate (intelligence amplification).

So you do not need to rely on human expertise as long as something in the system has expertise, and you do not need humans to sign off on everything because intelligent agents can be delegated with authority. Some of us already believe properly implemented intelligent agents can be trusted more and reliable than people.

I've liked this idea for governance ever since I first read about something like it a few decades back in Raymond F Jones' Man of Two Worlds (also titled as "Renaissance"). I don't remember much of the story at this point, but this idea has always stuck with me. I'm not a big proponent of representative democracy after seeing it's weaknesses and failures and I think we need to experiment with truer forms of democracy that can be enabled via technology.