Quote from: nanobit on November 03, 2013, 09:25:33 PM

Quote from: Luckybit on November 03, 2013, 03:11:07 PM

Quote from: nanobit on November 03, 2013, 12:47:33 PM

Quote from: mah87 on October 31, 2013, 05:11:18 PM

Quote from: dacoinminster on October 31, 2013, 05:00:39 PM

I think that Ripple is a powerful idea that has been badly mismanaged, and yes, it competes with MSC. Their focus on Peter owes Paul owes Sam owes Jake debt chains causes their true killer features to get lost in the noise. Nobody cares about collapsing debt chains, but distributed exchange is incredibly important. Perhaps they have fixed this marketing snafu (I haven't checked lately).

I also disagree with their XRP distribution model, and I am doubtful about the case for long-term appreciation of that currency. (Trivia: the MasterCoin giveaway thread was funded with MSC purchased with BTC I got for selling XRP I received from an early Ripple giveaway)

Finally, I think their system is way too complex, not sufficiently decentralized, not sufficiently open source (this may have changed since last I looked), and not flexible enough for other cool things people want to do with distributed currencies.

Other than that, I love Ripple.

You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be distributed enough to be fair and honest.

New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.

XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).

I've been reading a lot about MSC, and my concern is that communication-wise we're repeating the same mistakes Ripple is blamed for in the quote above. Perhaps the concept is clear to everyone deeply involved, but I'm willing to bet there's heaps of people like me on the forum and Reddit who, even with their best efforts, just can't find a simple explanation about what MSC is, why do we need it and what are the practical, real-life use cases. How do we expect people to get excited about weekly newsletters if these basic things are not explained anywhere? Either MSC can't be explained in a simple way, in which case I'll become even more concerned about its feasibility, or people who truly get it are not trying hard enough to explain what's it about.

As an example, I tried to find a ELI5 for Mastercoin. There's two requests for that I found (here and here). To me neither explains much; they only demonstrate how bad the situation with common-sense introduction material is. If the mindset is that ELI5 request can be answered with a link to the whitepaper (read: technical system specifications) then we really, really need someone on board who understands communication.

It was good to read that a PR company will start working with MSC. Perhaps that will solve this issue in a month or two. In the mean time I would like to hear do you people agree what I say about the lack of ELI5-like material, or haven't I just been able to find it?

I have some posts with some thoughts on what a finished Mastercoin protocol could do. Honestly I think we need a series of videos just as there is with Bitcoin. Text can only explain so much.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3429661#msg3429661
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318610.msg3436731#msg3436731
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3435101#msg3435101

If you don't want to read all those different overly wordy use cases. The main categories of users will be traditional users and issuers.

Traditional use cases:
If you're a traditional user then you'll want to do stuff you already can do but in a decentralized way. Maybe you want to do decentralized betting. Maybe you want to trade Bitcoins for Litecoins on a decentralized exchange built into the Bitcoin blockchain. Maybe you want to buy crypto-equity/stocks or bonds without having to worry about whether or not Burnside will shut the site down.

Issuers:
If you're an issuer then perhaps you're a business owner and you're issuing virtual stocks. If you're an issuer you might offer bonds or somethings similar. Or you might offer your own currency, voucher, credits, backed by your goods and services or backed by another currency.

So for example if you issue a currency you can back it by another issuers currency called goldcoins to back your currency by gold. This allows for redeemable cryptocurrencies and that is a game changer. Currently when people ask what Bitcoin is backed by we have to say it's not backed by anything. New currencies will actually be redeemable and backed by the goods and services of the issuer. This will provide long term stability.

I hope my explanation was of some help but I know it probably does not help. A visual illustration is needed and this will mean videos showing how it all can work.

Thanks for the links and the short summary, Luckybit. There's material that I'm sure helps people understand MSC's capabilities better, though some of the examples are a tad abstract.
I like the idea about video. That'll take time though, even if that idea goes forward. Perhaps as a first step the summary you wrote could be elaborated and copied to a suitable place where it's easy to find?

Currently when someone would like to learn about Mastercoin his options are limited to reading this 85+ pages of MSC discussions, and try to pick out all the right comments among the questions, answers, suggestions, criticism, decisions, and changes to previous decisions made 6 pages ago.
That's ironic as dacoinminster said Ripple is "way too complex". I wonder what people's first impression about Mastercoin is?

I'm going through the same process myself. It took me a while to understand the inner workings of Mastercoin enough to send them and because it's constantly changing I haven't been able to even find a specification to even consider helping with development. I intend to wait until after the dust settles and there is a basic foundation to see what can be built on top of it. It is a protocol and nothing stops anyone from building on top of it once it's complete.