PR Materials March 2020 #7
Conversation
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I made some changes that I felt are non controversial and straight improvements. Please review them in this commit: 6982485 Note that we can revert any of them. Below is rationale for some of my changes.
I changed to "ported and launched" to be more specific and harder to interpret as under-crediting enormous work on LN done by Lightning Labs.
I changed to "non-Bitcoin Core" because "btccore" is not a commonly used name.
I updated text to reflect the above.
Only ticket holders can explicitly and directly vote. I reworded this. |
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I don't like the emphasis on "buy DCR". I cannot say I want people to just buy it. I want people to understand how money works and how Decred works, and figure what's best for them. I'd replace "buy DCR" with "use DCR". This includes both SoV, MoE and the rest, and also doesn't have the needy/desperate "please buy" vibe.
This is debatable, e.g. for me the most reputable exchange is Kraken. I suggest to drop "most".
May not happen. Like all software development, Decred is bad at projecting release dates. I would replace with just "2020".
Too speculative, due to hardcore UX it may not add significant liquidity, at least initially.
If by "secure" we mean attack cost, it is only more secure than Bitcoin given enough hashrate and market cap. Today Decred is less expensive to attack.
This may not be correct and needs checking. IIRC at least Litecoin has LN and it may predate Decred's LN. In any case, I would reword this to remove the "only". This statement is repeated mutliple times throughout the doc.
I don't want to work for the soulless blockchain, I want to work for like-minded people. Deemphasizing people in favor of fancy tech makes no sense to me.
This may come across as an overpromise. Contributors are required to demonstrate a fair amount of persistence and risk tolerance before they get their first payment. And then, it depends on location ofc, but in some cases developers are paid below market rates.
I think this is true but personally, "rock stars" has a vibe of this weird modern bs hipster culture where people call themselves "rock stars", "ninjas", "samurais", "gurus", etc while they are not really good enough (at least in my rankings). Speaking of culture I'd like Decred to associate with is the hacker culture, and I'd like Decred to stay humble.
Yes! Let's have more of this!
btcsuite is also a very readable (compared to C++ Bitcoin Core code) and well-documented codebase that can be used to educate how Bitcoin works.
This is debatable but personally I am turning against the promotion of delegated custody services. Not your keys not your coins. For Decred this can go especially bad because coin holders control consensus.
I don't think we should target this group. Decred has direct voting which requires intelligent coin holders who can think independently. If someone is looking for "use cases" for money and doesn't see the "money" use case, they need to learn more before buying DCR.
Candidate.
What does "borderless" mean here? Needs some clarification.
A link would be nice.
Not sure how "attracted dark markets" is connected to measures other privacy coins have taken. I would remove this or clarify. This "dark markets" thing is also in "Unique Value Proposition" section.
Not necessarily, not all contributors are paid contractors. Perhaps "contributors" is better.
Not sure we need this one. Decred is building a better, alternative. opt-in system. It is not directly fighting existing system.
This is not too bad but sounds a bit "wanna-be". When I hear "top" I imagine "top 5" or "top 10". Arguable ofc.
I don't think this is true and I'm sure it will backfire. If keeping this, it must be backed by a link to strong evidence.
Theorized, not proven. There was no real test yet.
It may be true but also it may be not. For example, if pure PoS coins like Peercoin or masternode-based ones like Dash had coin-holder-driven hard forks before Decred's first vote in Apr 2017, Decred is not "first in the history". This claim must be checked and backed, and/or clarified, or removed.
Not yet. This is repeated in "Unique Value Proposition".
Decred's numbers represents ~16% and ~25% of circulating coin supply because roughly half of the supply participates in PoS and has tickets to vote. I would note this because some projects talk about their turnout in terms of the entire circulating supply. Comparing apples to apples is a fair way to compare projects, or even the only way that makes sense.
Zcash numbers need to be updated, they are making efforts to improve the private %.
Atomic swaps before that DCR-LTC swap may have happened. Ideally it needs to be clarified what exactly was "first", i.e. publically available and maintained code for doing the swaps.
Dash's proposal site may have been first. IIRC it was just a regular forum-like site. I think where Decred's proposal system was "first" is by having open data (stored in public Git repo, not in a private MySQL database -> anybody can get a copy and detect games), integrity protection (anchored to blockchain, extremely hard to quietly alter) and a way to prove censorship. Perhaps @RichardRed0x can comment on the Dash site.
I think decentralizing the Treasury is more important than automating it.
Our release images are not infographics, they do not visualize data or insights.
I would add "and get paid anywhere in the world without the banking hassles" and replace "work for the blockchain" with something more human (as noted earlier).
This may read like the community will control DEX servers, which is not true. DEX servers will be controlled by their operators. The general direction and construction of DEX software is approved by the stakeholders though.
Decred is not the first to send a portion of block rewards to a treasury. |
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This document seems to copy a lot from foundational messaging. It also contains multiple repetitions of certain fragments. I would like to avoid the duplication of information but not yet sure how to approach it without losing the desired properties of the document, or keep it as is. |
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@lindseymmc sorry I forgot to mention one important thing: while I maintain this repository and try to keep the docs organized, I'm not a PR or Marketing lead and I will not block the merge of this document. I shared my feedback because it may serve as a useful input for PR, but it is just one personal opinion among dozens of others you might hear in the community on this subject. Let me know when you think the version in this branch looks good for merging, and any remaining items we can move to the next iteration. |
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Also, despite my long list of suggestions above, I didn't mention that the doc got a lot of things right and is already very helpful in its current form. |
@xaur I reviewed all of the text changes and everything looks great, thank you for fact-checking and reviewing this so thoroughly! This is the link I was referring to for the stats: https://dcrdata.decred.org How do we update the document with these changes, is this something I do or you? |
Agree that this would be a good change. Let's update it to 'Use DCR as a SoV, MoE etc.
Will do
Our reason for mentioning this is to address audience pain points/concerns about ease and convenience of acquiring DCR.
Again this point is to address audience concerns of few fiat on-ramps, no Coinbase listing
It would be good to give a rough indication of timing - Spring/Summer 2020?
Secure in terms of attack cost and also fork-resistant
Okay I'll remove 'only' and look into this
I'll update all of them
Thank your this feedback. How about this: 'Decred has privacy-respecting decent SPV based on "compact filters, which makes storage requirement small enough to run on a mobile device, enabling payments from mobile wallets.'
@Dustorf I think you added 'work for the blockchain' what's your perspective on this?
@Dustorf could you please share some perspective on this? Was it to address other projects where it not guaranteed or work is unpaid?
I guess this is pretty subjective, what would be the best way to quantify this? A team of the most skilled, dedicated software engineers, marketers, creatives etc. in the blockchain space?
Good to know. We can include this point about culture.
Thanks I will add this
Where?
DCR being a borderless cryptocurrency would be attractive to these countries - @Dustorf is that correct?
@Dustorf is this the link you were referencing? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoins-wild-ride-60-minutes-2019-05-19/
Okay I'm not sure which doc this was pulled from so I'll remove
Thanks I'll update
Okay I'll update
Okay, I can remove unless there are other arguments to keep it
I see your point. My thinking is that given there are nearly 3,000 cryptocurrencies, it's adds instant credibility to highlight that we're in the top 35/50.
It's probably best to remove this then.
I will change to "Decred is a fork-resistant store of value, which would be twenty times more expensive to attack than Bitcoin due to its hybrid PoW/PoS model"
I will look into this
What about "Decred is a decentralized organization"
Thank you I will add
Thank you I will add
I will update
I will check this
I'll get clarification on this
Is the end goal to build a truly decentralized exchange?
I'll update to "first to decentralize treasury"
Got it
Will do
Okay I can take this out
I'll update. Thank you again for taking the time to review this - much appreciated! |
The purpose of the messaging section is as follows:
I will be using this document to draw up press releases, media pitches, reactive statements, talking points etc. so It's important to have things like key stats, credibility points etc. together in an easy-to-reference place, even though they've already been mentioned throughout the doc. It means I don't have to comb through the entire document each time picking them out. It's not a public-facing brochure or a document I'm going to be sharing in entirety to anyone externally. |
Sounds great. It's important we're sharing factual information so I appreciate the feedback. I'll share in the marketing channel to get some additional feedback, update the agreed upon changes then check back in with you when it's ready to merge. Thanks again! |
Good to hear thank you! |
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Transferring this over from Google Drive
.md extension is necessary to signal that the file has Markdown syntax. GitHub, for example, uses this extension to determine file type and show it properly. File names with all lowercase characters without spaces look prettier in URLs and are more convenient when manipulating the file on the file system.
Markdown needs this to show headings properly.
Markdown needs this to show headings properly.
They are not illegal Markdown syntax but they add clutter.
While not an error, they add clutter.
Markdown requires a blank line between paragraphs. Without a blank line, adjacent lines are joined together into a single paragraph. Also, blank lines before and after a bullet list are nice to have.
Unlike top-level bullet lists that are not indented, nested lists (sub-lists) need to be indented with a certain number of spaces. This number depends on the with of the bullet mark of the parent list. For example, if the parent list uses bullet marks of width 1 and a space, nested bullets must have 2 spaces at the beginning of the line: - parent item - child item If the parent list uses numbered list with items of width 2, child items must be indented with 3 spaces: 1. parent items - child item Finally, this fixes one instance of a bullet item not aligned with the rest.
The syntax of Markdown links does not have a space between the link text in square brackets and the URL in parens: [link](url)
While GitHub seems to render this properly, it is a good practice to add a space between the URL and anything that follows it, to avoid the next character being included in the URL and leading to a broken link.
Non-ASCII punctiation characters may look like better typography but unfortunately they are not standard across all software. Some users (like Mac users) may be able to seamlessly enter these characters, while others may not. This may lead to inconsistent formatting after different people make edits to the document. Examples of such characters: - right and left single quotation marks ‘’ - left and right double quotation marks “” - Em Dash —
Underscore character (_) is used in Markdown syntax to encode italic text: _example_. When underscore is required in the text itself and is not intended to be used as formatting, it should be "escaped" by adding a backslash before it: \_example. While it may work just fine in most cases, sometimes the text after a non-escaped underscore may contain another non-escaped underscore and the whole text segment between them will be shown as italic while the underscores will be not shown. Example: first let's type a word with an _underscore not intended to mean italic text. Next let's have _another word. Now some software may render the whole segment between the two as italic.
Within a repository Markdown documents can link to one another by just the file name without specifying the full URL.
A proper document must have one main title that uses level 1 heading (with a single #). All other headings are actually sub-headings and must use headings of level 2 and higher. Headings of higher levels are actually nested deeper and shown in smaller fonts. Proper hierarchy of headings enables automatic generation of table of contents.
It is useful to have basic metadata like primary author and published date somewhere in the document. A nice standard for this is called "front matter" which originated in the Jekyll static site generation software. The format is very simple but is also very powerful by allowing to include arbitrary data structures.
Increase visual clarity and minimize diff with foundational-messaging.
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Pulled some formatting tweaks from the foundational messaging. This also reduces the diff with it. |
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@lindseymmc I made some changes on items I think we've agreed upon that you can review in 51c8403 (use Rich Diff to easier see them). Again, anything can be reverted or tweaked further if needed. Change summary, in the order they occur in text:
This is my personal vision and I don't see any community members talking about it... yet (btw one thing to know about hackers is you don't call yourself a hacker).
Yes, the end goal/aspiration is a truly decentralized exchange. But we're pragmatic and realize it may take years and years to achieve. Direct trustless trades is a huge step nevertheless. |
Transferring this over from Google Drive
PREVIEW: https://github.com/lindseymmc/pr/blob/patch-1/pr-materials-march-2020.md