This is an excellent idea. Actually, given that Steem has already far exceeded BitShares in market cap and is based on the exact same technology, there would be a case for turning BitShares into a Steem sidechain. This would allow cross-chain atomic transactions and give to Steem instant access to a rich ecosystem of gateways and fiat onramps as well as a diversified basket of stable assets tracking key currencies from CNY to Gold. The benefit for BitShares would be an overnight explosion of its user base, a flood of liquidity flowing in from Steem, and overnight fame. The relationship would be so massively mutually beneficial that the simple prospect of it makes my mind boggle. Being both a Steem and BitShares holder, I'd be thrilled to see something like that happen.
This has nothing to do with using sharedrops to create stigmergy so I am only partially on topic, but since you have proposed the idea of having Steem sidechains, I thought I'd share this view here anyway. If you agree, it would be nice to have a well researched article on the topic, you are a much more convincing writer than I will ever be.
Always happy to have some awesomeness served up. Reposting this over on some bitshares channels to see if anyone can add/assist.
Many thanks recursive
I will work on that. I have to give it some thought first though. Can Bitshares really be a sidechain? Technically it can be, but first you would have to culturally integrate the Bitshares community with the Steemit community which might not be so easy. Also Steemit source code isn't really open while Bitshares is.
Maybe you can talk Dan Larimer into doing the initial explanation on the technical details of how sidechains will work. Having him explain the code snippets would be enough for me to better formulate my articles with greater technical understanding and detail. I do know the capability exists to do it but I also know Atomic Cross Chain Transaction capabilities exist in Bitshares. So you can do it in many ways but it's about finding the optimal way which is mutually beneficial and which doesn't take away the blockchain independence from the Bitshares community if they want it because Bitshares is a sharedrop target which means it's part of a stigmergic operation in itself (evolved from Protoshares). Steemit is not.