What has happened in BitShares?
I was once heavily involved with BitShares. It was an interesting time trading, and working with a unique worker team to create the DexBot -a trading and market making bot on the BitShares platform.
There have been some major changes in the past year. I would like to summarize a few of the changes that have happened within the BitShares community from a fairly neutral way or at least my perspective.
As the crypto winter hit, spring 2019, trading and liquidity dried up. Usage fell. This caused BitUSD and BitCNY to both go into Global Settlement. Fake Pegs were set.
Near the end of 2019, CryptoBridge and OpenLedger, the two biggest gateways failed. (This is a straight up business failure or an exit scam.)
Instead of having power spread out among about a dozen proxies, Various political parties started to develop in the BitShares EcoSystem. BEOS was the first. CN-Vote was the second, Developers were are the third.
BEOS was a group led by Stan to bring in a new platform and regain power in BitShares, CN-Vote was a Chinese group which held a lot power and bad debt by issuing BitCNY. Developers were just that, making the code happen.
Cn-Vote cut off almost all paid development in Fall 2019; saying it was too expensive.
In July 2020, Abit a developer, put in a new 4.0 version of BitShares that changed voting rights. It was widely claimed to be a trojan, with both sides fighting intensely.
The longest running telegram channel was censored and then destroyed.
CN-Vote is now suggesting a fork NBS New BitShares to take place Sept 10, 2020.
Every one of these statements is incomplete and do not offer an accurate picture of the complexities of the situation, because it can not be done in a concise way.
For example:
With the 4.0 upgrade, one can argue a developer -abit- did a Robin Hood move, to make critical changes necessary to move forward. He gave power back to the people as a large group of underwater holders were in a subprime financial crisis situation where their holding of unbacked assets gave them voting rights disproportionate to their interests. They were effectively stealing from holders of bit assets. Large portion of votes have also been cast and abandoned, giving non-active groups power, which hurts the ability of now active groups to get needed workers and development done. Because public discussion has not been working; he addressed long standing problems with long standing solutions implementing changes everyone knew needed to be down, but no one wanted to do.
On the other side, it can be viewed that Abit stole power and money from the stakeholders who are critical to BitShares an are invested in the outcome of the blockchain. He stole the whole blockchain. His code was a trojan, snuck in, in a last ditch attempt to continue to milk the blockchain of overly expensive development fees that he does not have political support for. He stole the blockchain, abused trust and has opened the door to continued future mischief.
Why can't they just work it out?
Like a bar fight, both sides have gone into an all out brawl. This can include deleting various messages in Telegram. Deleting telegram rooms (if we can't have a fair room I will delete it). Did I mention name calling? Both sides have done mean things. Both sides are in the wrong, but in different ways. Measuring the extent of which one is more wrong, what was a necessary wrong, and really happened verses what allegedly happened is "complicated." Which wrongs can you do to justify what is right? Censoring the other side in a discussion is one way to appear bigger, more popular, better, more in the right and build a consensus behind you.
What is the future?
Honestly, this type of behaviour is why I have lost a lot of faith in Crypto. I am emotionally 98% out the door. Lots of other people are too based on active user data. I am spending time in non crypto related activities. I may be back.
What should you do?
Get a bird feeder or watch cat videos... They are happy.
My prediction?
Well I don't really like the options presented. That said, I think the 4.0 (abit) route going forward seems like the lowest risk. CN-Vote forking could be great as two BitShares might be better than one. That said, I have little faith that CN-Vote is going to be able build anything. They had 9 months in control and could have put together an amazing cheap core team of Chinese programers building out new BitShares features; but it didn't happen. Forking is easy. I expect the NewBitShares to be pumped and dumped and then failing. They will probably come back to BitShares and keep fighting. BEOS might be the biggest winner in the fight, because the other two sides have used up ammunition.
It can be really hard to go into the 6 way Syrian Civil war and say "Who is right." It is difficult going into every Africian Civil war when bad people are fighting bad people and saying who is right. In almost all situations there are a lot of involved people who suffer when wars go on.
On a positive note, many times out of the forest fire comes new growth. When poop is buried long enough, it becomes new flowers. Dead projects, can rise from the ashes and become great again. I would like to see that happen.
Hmm. It does appear there is a revival happening. At least in price. There are signs there is work taking place in the background and power may be in the hands of a benevolent dictator. With Bitcoin shooting up in price there is a new interest in crypto as a whole. With Eon Musk taking an interest in Bitcoin and Bitcoin moving up to $50,000 a coin there are new possibilities.
Thanks for the info. Interesting to say the least. Is the benevolent dictator Beos and Stan?
It is emotionally, very hard to let go. When one has put a lot of time and effort into something, they want to see it succeed. Even if it is against the odds. I imagine many old factory workers feel this way. They spent years making machines work, maintaining and running them, they hate to see the factory shut down. I suppose old rail road people feel that way. They built a magnificent system of railroads, depots, and systems. They want to see it be used and want to see it thrive. Yet, at times they don't. They shut down. The modern interstate is better. Many a sailor probably spent time on a ship taking it across oceans. Those old engines moved freight and men and cargo, yet there is a time when one questions if it is time to just let go. And when it is time to let go, people still want it to be appreciated. Many have put time into building BitShares, the dream of decentralized finance is here. Yet, it may be time to let go. But they still keep coming back. Dreaming.
The things about bts just like we all know it has a tumour in its body, but no one wants to cut the tumour off in such a long time, now someone cut the tumour off, but someone don't like the way to cut off the tumour, they think should get the permit of tumour first.
I don't like the way of abit did，but i like the content，we can talk and improve something on this more fair rule.
Just like salvery，then have the American Civil War.
The problem of bts is no one cares about the fair, the consensus，the real development，develop the more fair and decentralized design of vote/witness system，what they care about just is how to gained power under the rules and endless abuse.
At the last，the witness should control the chain，let the holders to control the chain is a very stupid idea, we have seen the fact from steemit.
Appreciate the comment. Yeah. There is a lot of truth in what you say. So many people are playing for power it becomes a problem if people are not building. The civil war destroyed the country. Many people were wounded, hurt, killed, homes, farms, bridges and roads were destroyed. So many people in BitShares are fighting for power it does not help it they do not build and create.
So there has been a lot of drama, I am not really so active but for old times sake I am taking a passive interest in seeing what is happening. I would like to see good outcomes and if the situation changes might put more effort in. One September 10, NBS New BitShares was launched. Many have expressed skepticism that it is not going to work. Today, I saw an explorer link shared and took a look. At first glance it it not really a fork, the history is not there, the prior accounts are not there. It is basically a new start with coins being given to those that proxied them on the old chain. Looking at things like the witness names, they are all the same. This means there are not legitimately enough people behind the new fork to have unique names, unique people, unique thought power. I have see other fake copies of the entire exchange, and this is in fact another fake copy of the entire exchange. I look for a bunch of pumping and dumping. Some say fake it until you make it. It is crazy though. I also noted similiarity in lots of the names. This means account names are fake in order to create the appearance having more people sign up. The true number of people behind the CN-Vote group is unknown. Obviously, they had enough voting power to stop development, but while I saw some 700 accounts early on proxying CN-Vote I suspect the group is more smaller 25 folks. I really lack good ways to know. There may be 55 members in the New BitShares Telegram group but only 25 members with unique photos. Obviously, there are some that support them in chat, but there are some people who are very vocal-and annoying- and some who are silent. It becomes hard to gauge public opinion. One smart person can set up hundreds and thousands of crypto accounts on both the exchange and on telegram. I saw this in the past on both BitShares and a blockchain game where the telegram group had created like 4,000 or 40,000 fake telegram accounts to join the channel to make it look popular.
I have a love/hate relationship with BitShares. I love the potential, I hate the drama and the time wasted. I guess one could compare it to various countries around the world where corruption has impeded progress. In America, we have built some really great things, like the electric system, yet this has to happen with a limited number of people and everyone need to pay the electric bill. Overseas in rural India people don't pay and steal electricity and it gets complicated to successfully build something. In BitShares, one wants to build and create, yet the complications, drama and people involved make it intensely complicated to get anything done. You can build, but it can also be destroyed. I can only try to imagine the difficulty of running businesses in the third world countries.
So the Cn-Vote contingent rolled out NBS New BitShares and it was generally called a scam and was unsupported. With Version 4 not working version 5 rolled out which further eroded voting rights, you have to lock up BTS in order to vote. Still there does not seem to be much in real workers or real exchange taking place. There is a still a core group of people that may one day build something and still some core groups of scammers around. BTC is sorta back in the news. Just not seeing too much happening that is driving value.
Wow, End of the Year. It has been a crazy Covid 2020. I would have thought things would have worked out better for BTS in 2020. Crazy but real. Well that is what happened.
Thanks for the info. Interesting to say the least. Is the benevolent dictator Beos and Stan?
No. Abit and DL (Digital Lucifer)
BitShares is completely under the control of Abit. He staked his BTS and voted for himself. Few others were willing to stake their BTS and they lost voting power. Most of the Dexbot worker proposal end of life funds were involuntarily pulled back into the general fund. It appears progress is being made. New BitShares has languished (as many expected) most excitedly BTS has increased significantly in value. It was under a penny and is now more than a dime. BTC has also rallied from 5-7K to 50K. Things are happening. DL spent a lot of time working on a corporation in Thailand. Community discussions seems to calmed down. There is talk of some new features and offerings. Time marches on.
Abit and DL seem to be carrying BTS forward. Websites are up, but nothing is running anywhere near the previous levels. Transactions are still happening in the blockchain. This project could easily revive anytime enough critical mass forms around it. There is very little patience for anything critical in the Telegram rooms. People get banned all the time. You had better not challenge that status quo. While before the telegram rooms went rampant with vulgar comments, unprofessionalism and bad behavior now they simply ban things. There have been some new features and product rollouts, but there is also a simple lack of use and may not be enough catalyst to really do what needs to be done. Momentum is less than before and with fewer programmers working on features and ideas the ability to execute is less. Previously there was a lot more fighting over the direction of the blockchain, but professional leadership has always been lacking. It is a bit like a ghost town where so many have moved on. I have not really been active myself but check in the forums from time to time to watch.
Looking at volume the top 5 traded pairs, on the BTS have $54,000 USD in volume over the last 24 hours. Less than 1 BTC. That is two thirds xbts exchange, and one third on gdex. There is no way to know true volumes verse bot or fake volume. BitShares 6.0 Mekong just rolled out. DL is still working on Thailand corporation stuff. There are a few people around the chatrooms, but not a whole lot. I remember back when volume was 20X the current level. I would really like to see more statistics for measuring the lifeblood of the blockchain, but don't want to invest a lot of time. I do wonder if this will come back or go to zero. I do understand the life cycle of blockchain projects so much better. It is curious as I see more and more blockchain stuff in everyday life.