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About BitShares
Key Points
- BitShares Blockchain is a decentralized “Blockchain as Organization” (BaO) that enables its core utility token (BTS) holders to decide the Blockchain’s future direction.
- BitShares Blockchain is a technology that supports digital generation entrepreneurs, investors, and developers with a common interest in building and participating in free market solutions.
- BitShares looks to extend the innovation of the Blockchain to all industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services.
- BitShares has gone through many changes and has done its best to stay on top of Blockchain technology.
Core Token (BTS)
- BitShares Blockchain core token (BTS)
About BitShares: Empowering a Decentralized Economy
Unveiling the Power of BitShares: A Revolutionary Blockchain Ecosystem
BitShares Blockchain is a decentralized “Blockchain as Organization” (BaO), an industrial-grade, open-source platform designed to support high-performance financial technology operations. As the first decentralized autonomous community, it empowers its core utility token (BTS) holders to shape the Blockchain’s future direction, driving the development and maintenance of a diverse range of decentralized financial technology products, features, and functions. By permanently recording financial technology operations between different Blockchain accounts, BitShares Blockchain facilitates a wide range of access controls, safeguarding users’ financial means.
BitShares Blockchain is a pioneering technology that empowers digital-age entrepreneurs, investors, and developers to converge on a shared vision of fostering free market solutions. By harnessing the collective potential of globally decentralized consensus and decision-making, this innovative platform unlocks the full potential of human collaboration. Much like the internet revolutionized the dissemination of information, consensus technology has the transformative power to reshape the economic landscape. By aggregating real-time knowledge and coordinating the allocation of resources, it can unlock unprecedented value and productivity.
BitShares seeks to revolutionize industries that rely on the internet by harnessing the power of blockchain technology. From banking and stock exchanges to lotteries, voting, music, and auctions, a digital public ledger enables the creation of distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs) that provide superior services at a fraction of the cost of their traditional, centralized counterparts. The advent of DAOs heralds a new paradigm in organizational structure, where companies can operate autonomously, free from human intervention, and governed by an incorruptible set of business rules. These rules are encoded in publicly auditable, open-source software distributed across the computers of the company’s shareholders, who effortlessly secure the company from arbitrary control. By leveraging distributed consensus technology, BitShares replicates the success of Bitcoin in the financial realm, creating companies that are inherently global, transparent, trustworthy, efficient, and, most importantly, profitable.
BitShares has undergone numerous transformations, consistently striving to remain at the forefront of Blockchain technology. The platform leverages Consensus as a mechanism, enabling organized individuals to converge on unified, rational actions. Although not traditionally considered technology, consensus “technology” forms the foundation of democratic governance and the coordination of free market activity, a concept first introduced by Adam Smith as the “Invisible Hand.” The consensus decision-making process allows all participants to consent to a resolution, even if it’s not their preferred course of action. Bitcoin pioneered the integration of a fully decentralized consensus method with modern internet and peer-to-peer network technologies, facilitating efficient value transfer through electronic communication. The proof-of-work structure, which secures and maintains the Bitcoin network, is one approach to organizing individuals who may not inherently trust one another, yet still act in the best interest of all network participants. In contrast, the BitShares ecosystem employs Delegated Proof of Stake to find efficient solutions to distributed consensus decision making.
Introducing BitShares Blockchain’s Core Token: BTS
At the heart of the BitShares Blockchain lies its core token, BTS, which serves as the operational utility facilitating transaction submissions. Additionally, BTS is utilized for development purposes within the BitShares ecosystem. Notably, core token holders wield significant influence over the blockchain’s future, exercising their power through a decentralized voting mechanism integrated into the blockchain. This mechanism enables the issuance of utility to developers in recognition of their approved proposals, as well as the appointment of committee members responsible for maintaining dynamic blockchain parameters and electing witness nodes that validate live transactions.
The Visionaries Behind BitShares: Meet the Founders
BitShares Blockchain was launched on October 13, 2015, culminating from a concerted community effort that began in 2013 to develop an industrial-grade, decentralized blockchain platform, designed to facilitate high-performance financial technologies that empower individual financial freedom.
BitShares Blockchain was co-founded by a prestigious ensemble of cryptocurrency luminaries, including:
Daniel Larimer, a visionary software engineer and co-founder of several esteemed blockchain ventures, including EOS.IO, Block.one, and Steemit, is a luminary in the cryptocurrency realm, renowned for his innovative prowess and widely regarded as one of the space’s leading pioneers.
Charles Hoskinson, a visionary entrepreneur and mathematician, is one of the eight pioneering co-founders of Ethereum, the second most successful blockchain platform, surpassed only by Bitcoin. Currently, Hoskinson serves as the CEO of Input Output HK (IOHK), the innovative research and development company driving the growth of Cardano (ADA).
As of January 2021, the BitShares core team comprises 17 permanent members, bolstered by a network of over 60 long-term contributors, whose diverse expertise spans economics, law, systems administration, and highly specialized development.
Decentralized Products Powered by BitShares Blockchain
- A decentralized exchange (DEX), facilitating trustless trading.
- User-issued assets (UIA), empowering individuals to create customized tokens.
- Market-pegged assets (MPA) and smart assets, leveraging the power of smart contracts.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi), revolutionizing the financial landscape.
- Liquidity pools (LP) and automated market makers (AMM), optimizing market efficiency.
- Prediction markets (PM), harnessing the wisdom of the crowd.
- Non-fungible tokens (NFT), representing unique digital ownership.
What is the Circulating Supply of BitShares (BTS) Utility Tokens?
In the genesis block of the BitShares Blockchain, a total of 2,412,042,197.37963 BTS were distributed to individual keys accordingly. These BTS tokens, boasting a limited supply, can still be claimed by providing proof of ownership of the corresponding private key. Notably, the total supply of BTS differs from its circulating, or liquid, supply.
A maximum supply of 3,600,570,502.10207 (BTS) has been hardcoded into the blockchain, rendering it immutable. The initial allocation of approximately 1.1 billion tokens was set aside for future project funding and rewarding block producers, accessible only with the approval of (BTS) holders through the worker system. This designated working budget, also referred to as reserves, ensures the continued development of the project. Notably, revenues generated from transaction fees are not distributed among (BTS) holders, but rather reinvested into the working budget to fuel future growth. It is essential to recognize that holding the core (BTS) token does not yield any rewards.
As of January 2021, the circulating supply of BTS stood at approximately 3 billion, which represents a staggering 83% of the maximum BTS supply, thereby rendering it highly diluted.
BitShares was initially capitalized through community investments, which totaled 5,904 BTC and 415,000 ProtoShares (PTS) in 2014, equivalent to a valuation of approximately $3.6 million at the time.
The comprehensive tokenomics of the Core Token (BTS) is transparently disclosed and verifiably recorded on the blockchain, accessible through blockchain blocks.
The Security Mechanisms Underpinning the BitShares Blockchain Network
This innovative system significantly diminishes the necessity for multiple transaction confirmations, thereby enabling BitShares transactions to be finalized at an exceptionally rapid pace. In this framework, delegates, referred to as witnesses, assume the responsibility of generating and broadcasting blocks, with a multitude of safeguards in place to guarantee that these witnesses operate in the best interests of the network, ensuring a secure and reliable environment.
The cornerstone of Blockchain technologies is the Blockchain protocol, which dictates the behavior of the entire system, encompassing consequences and side-effects that arise during transaction processing. By crafting transactions that incorporate specific letters-of-interest (also known as operations), users can leverage particular features.
Notably, the Blockchain, as a storage mechanism, only records incremental changes, such as transfers, necessitating the separate tracking of each account’s final balance, along with other pertinent information, in what is referred to as the current state. It is crucial to recognize that the protocol is deterministic, meaning that the identical state is generated when the same sequence of operations, as dictated by the Blockchain, is applied. This inherent property renders Blockchain technologies both tamper-proof and auditable.
In BitShares, a plethora of over 50 operations are at your disposal (as of early 2018). Each of these operations seamlessly integrates with the Blockchain protocol a minimum of three times, fostering a robust and efficient ecosystem.
Validation: During this crucial phase, the raw instructions, commonly referred to as the payload, undergo a thorough examination for consistency. For instance, in the case of a transfer, we verify that the amount to be transferred is a positive value. Evaluation: In this subsequent step, the operation-specific instruction is meticulously validated against the current state of the Blockchain. For example, in the case of a transfer, we ensure that the sender’s account possesses sufficient funds to facilitate the transaction. Application: This pivotal step brings about tangible changes, modifying the current state. In the context of a transfer, we accordingly decrement the sender’s account balance and increment the receiver’s account balance by the specified amount of tokens transferred. Example: Transfer operation
Consider a straightforward transfer operation, wherein funds are transmitted from one account to another. In this scenario, the protocol establishes validation rules that preclude negative amounts, thereby ensuring that the sender cannot transfer more than their available account balance. When executing a transfer from Alice to Bob, Alice is debited the transferred amount, while Bob receives the corresponding credit. Here, “transfer” denotes the operation type, whereas “sender,” “receiver,” and “amount” constitute the operation-specific instructions. It is evident that diverse operation types are accompanied by distinct instructions.