Quote from: profitgenerator212 on September 06, 2017, 08:52:07 AM

Hey that's kind of racist. There are tons of good Indian software developers out there

Yet I was writing about those who are joining Steem and not about s/w devs who work predominantly for Westerners.

Eventually India will be a huge market, but go to App Annie and study where the revenue on apps comes from. India is huge on downloads, but irrelevant on sales. 10 years from now, it will begin to shift significantly enough to matter.

Marketing analysis is not racism.

TIP: btw, there is need for better buy/sell websites for example in the Philippines because someone monopolized the main ones and stopped for example accepting vitamin ads (perhaps the drug importers are involved). The markup on vitamins imported from abroad is 200 - 300% of costs, because they have a monopoly. But the problem for making your Peerhub exclusively for STEEM remains that the filipinos do not have STEEM tokens and they will not buy them. I suggest you support all cryptocurrencies, work with rebit.ph/coins.ph, MyBenta, and also allow for other payment methods. Sometimes filipinos will deposit in a bank account or send cash via remittance (padala) in order to buy by mail. More often though they just meet up since most commerce of that sort is in the Manila capital city area.

Quote from: profitgenerator212 on September 06, 2017, 08:52:07 AM

In fact I did a research on gambling a while ago and it's mostly indians and chinese.

Then you should know it is but a fraction of MMORPG in terms of revenue.

Another important datum is that Facebook earns on average only a measily $0.05 for the 50 minutes per day that the average N. American is on Facebooks properties daily.

Quote from: profitgenerator212 on September 06, 2017, 08:56:44 AM

Donation models are always strugling, and it's kind of demoralizing to always beg for money.

I proposed donations only for the original core devs, not for the apps. Re-read my prior post more carefully.

Quote from: smooth on September 06, 2017, 08:04:12 AM

Quote from: Hyperme.sh on September 06, 2017, 07:02:22 AM

Quote from: smooth on September 06, 2017, 06:40:39 AM

I'm pretty sure we have discussed before that if the developer can really stop ongoing development (also whatever other "efforts") and have the platform succeed then it seems plausible. That's a big 'if' though.

Why cant it shift to a donation model (a la Monero) when the corporation exits. The key developers who were employees of the corporation, then continue to work for donations (or because they have so many tokens).

I can't rule out that it is possible but it is a very difficult transition. The cultural shift from being employed by a corporation (steady job, benefits, etc.) is enormous. Many people literally won't be able to do it because they are supporting families, etc. and really do need the stability that comes from being funded by investors. If the corporation shutters they will likely go get another such job where they can be paid a steady income by investors (or customers in the case of a non-startup).

Volunteer/donation/etc. projects like Monero sometimes work because they self-select up front for people interested in working in that structure (the rest never join)

At least it seems we agree that the dilemma is due to economics. So any solution must be profit (opportunity cost) based.

Tangentially, there is a huge and growing demand (in the form of excess supply of cash) which is outstripping the supply of private equity, so providing a viable alternative to ICOs is critically needed.

Apparently I didnt convey clearly the stated point that the app ecosystem is driven by a profit model (and one better than Steems debasement via voting model). As for donations, I was only intending to refer to those self-selected core devs who have every incentive to see their baby conquer the world, so they will behind the scenes talk to the whales and make sure there are donations paid in public to give the illusion that they are working in a decentralized ecosystem. They may even be donating to themselves to fool the securities regulators, but who can prove that and besides the app ecosystem would presumably be highly competitive if there is significant profit to be made.

Daniel Larimer was never really ideologically focused on changing the world. His focus is much more pragmatic. Thus ETH cookie jar opportunity cost and other cookie jars before it, were irresistible. As for the rest of the developers, I dont know them, but I presume they lack a holistically driven leadership and commitment. Ned is much too inexperienced to lead it. My cogent refutations of @profitgenerator212 may be representative of their mistakes.

Quote from: smooth on September 06, 2017, 08:04:12 AM

In a sense I think the problem you are running into here is the same sort of problem that a lot of ICO/token projects run into (Steem included) when tying themselves in knots trying to avoid being 'securities' and in the process ending up with very distorted incentives.

Given other information you may not be privy to, I do not see the conflicts. I think its very well thought out and planned out. If only as an early investor, you were privy to internal documents then one could have a more informed discussion of the issues.

Quote from: smooth on September 06, 2017, 08:04:12 AM

It is important to recognize that the models that fit into 'securities' exist and have been codified by securities law precisely because those are actually very effective models to pay for investment (by which I mean actual work which produces something of longer-term value) while generating a return for the investors (those who pay for such work).

Yes but ecosystems can mature and outgrow the need for core developers. The key is that the decentralized ledger has to solidify and not require a consensus to attain further improvements. I mentioned that technological innovation in my prior post. Seems youre not factoring that into your analysis, because no details about it have been provided.

Given a stable protocol, then the ecosystem of developers competes within that stable ecosystem.

Bitcoin cant achieve it because theyre still mucking around with the block size and scaling issues, but for someone who has already solved all those issues

Quote from: smooth on September 06, 2017, 08:04:12 AM

Everything else is quite Rube Goldberg-ish by comparison, and most will fail. For every 10 (or 100) claims of "disruption" of anything, say 9 (or 99) are just broken models that don't work.

Experimentation is certainly fine though. No other way to find that one truly disruptive model.

Indeed. It is figuring out which are the truly disruptive which is absolutely essential.

How many people wish they had been mining on their laptop when Satoshi launched Bitcoin.