Fees
Blurt recently implemented fees to stop spam.
Blurt's fees flow to the blurt foundation because the people attacking Blurt did not like the Blurt Foundation, so we figured that for now, that would be better than burning them. I'm pretty sure that overall, there's consensus that burning fees is the right thing to do.
Blurt's default fees are:
- 0.05 BLURT per transaction flat-fee
- 0.01 BLURT per kilobyte
every transaction costs at least 0.05 + bandwidth.
Our developer, @baabeetaa, wanted to make fees a bit more adaptable and dynamic, however, and none of us three in the triumvirate felt right dictating fees. Because of that, the fees were made into witness parameters, which witnesses can set.
the flat-fee is a parameter known as: operation_flat_fee
the per-kb fee is a parameter known as: bandwidth_kbytes_fee
So, yeah, there are now fees for everything you do on Blurt: post, vote, transfer funds-- everything. And this has stopped the cock spam fully. If you stream the API of any graphene chain without fees, you're going to see a shocking amount of spam, and that's because transactions are free.
We don't really want to become a Great Big Garbage Patch For Data.
On Steem/Hive, witnesses subsidize the notion of "free" transactions. -- and in fact, that may happen on Blurt again one day, as well. But for now, we've built a framework for experimenting with fees.
How are we thinking about fees? Like this:
I'm also thinking about this like an anarchocapitalist.
Witnesses provide storage and availability to blurt, and are paid by blurt for that. But load (transaction volume) can vary greatly from time to time. So now, they have the ability to determine fees on their own.
That's Tuan setting his witness parameters there.
flat_fee = "0.001 BLURT" to "100.000 BLURT"
bandwidth_kbytes_fee = ".** BLURT"
That's what witnesses get to choose now. For current witnesses, here is how you can begin setting fees on your node.
Setting Fees as a Witness
wget https://gitlab.com/blurt/blurt/-/jobs/634199115/artifacts/raw/build/programs/cli_wallet/cli_wallet
chmod +x cli_wallet
mv cli_wallet /usr/bin
cli_wallet
unlock yourwalletpassword
Now that you're in the cli_wallet
, steps be like:
import_key YOUR_BRAIN_WIF_KEY
then:
update_witness_properties "jacobgadikian" {"key":"BLT8StBSKPD9o9rKZaPkyaxkKZHjEqftTfUKrRshWKUqixRjsGhsJ", "account_creation_fee":"10.000 BLURT","maximum_block_size":65536,"account_subsidy_budget": 797, "account_subsidy_decay": 347321, "operation_flat_fee":"0.001 BLURT","bandwidth_kbytes_fee":"0.100 BLURT"} true
Remember that you'll need to change the username, public brain key, operation_flat_fee, and bandwidth_kbytes_fee, and remember that BLURT always has three decimals after the zero.
Strategy
There is not clear consensus on this point, but @baabeetaa and @megadrive have decided to give it a run, as have a few other witnesses. I think that it's best that there are fees on every transaction, because every transaction has a cost to the witnesses. However, I think that transactions vary in size, and therefore in cost, so they should be priced based on size.
I am personally advocating:
"operation_flat_fee":"0.001 BLURT","bandwidth_kbytes_fee":"0.100 BLURT"
This means that small transactions like votes will still be quite cheap, but posting 64kb of cock will be very expensive: 6.4 BLURT! Witnesses are free to adjust these settings as they please. The network will chose the median of them and charge users based on that.
@jacobgadikian thanks for the detailed post! 👊 I've also updated my witness to implement the above suggested fee structure. I will take a look around to better understand the kbytes used on an average post and adjust accordingly.
I'm a fan of low fees and low barrier to entry. I think quality short post format with a couple of images and text should not cost much [but again need to understand the bandwidth used here], then scale the fee to larger posts where we can prevent spam that can potentially fill up blocks. Its work in progress and will be monitoring closely as we go.
What I'd like to do with this and where I'd like to go is to really look into how much it would cost for for example a custom JSON based app like Hive engine or splinterlands To use blurt, with fees. Even, relatively high fees like 0.1 BLURT/kb.
I suspect it would be acceptably low, but this is something that we need to actually do in order to get an answer to.
Mainly I am a Photographer so in my post, I try to use a lot of pictures so I create some sort of visual impact. So maybe I pay more on my post as I consume more Kilobyte. But no worry if I am satisfied with my work than it is ok. Also, introduce some parameters of how much KB every post use and how much we pay.
This seems like a deterrent to small accounts that have very little resources to pay for the fees.
The big accounts who are trying to spam Blurt don't really mind these fees. These are minuscule fees compared to the resources that they have.
I don't think that it is, but it might be.
I openly recognize that it might be.
I think that this system is more fair to everyone. The reason that I think that this system is more fair to everyone is because storage is priced by consumption. So like if you store 1 kB you pay for one kilobyte no matter if you're a whale or a minnow or somewhere in between.
If anyone wants the RPC call that returns the current state of median values for the fees:
curl -s --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"condenser_api.get_chain_propertiesproperties" "params":[], "id":1}' http://beasty:8091|json_pp
{
"id" : 1,
"jsonrpc" : "2.0",
"result" : {
"account_creation_fee" : "10.000 BLURT",
"account_subsidy_budget" : 797,
"account_subsidy_decay" : 347321,
"bandwidth_kbytes_fee" : "0.025 BLURT",
"maximum_block_size" : 65536,
"operation_flat_fee" : "0.001 BLURT"
}
}
So if someone has a load of blurt power.
Posts every 5 mins
Upvotes himself for 1 blurt and pays a fee of 0.05
He is still in massive profit
So how is this a defence mechanism against spam?
It is a defense mechanism against spam that causes blockchain, but not a defense mechanism against shall we say, milking.
kind of trying to figure out what the right defense mechanism is against milking.
I know, I know downvotes.
However, I just don't think that they were the right design.
Awesome to see. Going to do some changes to mine and see how it goes
I agree with this decision it incentivizes people to do things orderly and not take advantage of the platform. I will be updating the fees on my server today.
This is nice idea...Weldon
Thank you so much for your detailed and candid feedback. please let us know if there's anything else that we can do to improve the platform.
That's our job.
We listen.
If they are using the same code as Steemit, isnt 10% already going to a developer fund? If so, this template will fail...
We are using about 90% of steemit code, and 10% of inflation goes to a dao fund controlled by the blurt foundation.
Within 3 months, fees will be either eliminated or set to burn.
Currently, fees go to the foundation as an additional anti-spam measure.
Want to spam blurt?
OK pay the blurt foundation.
SMMFH
Blurt doesn't have a chance with morons at the helm...😂😂😂
In that case, I strongly encourage you to sell your Blurt.
https://ionomy.com
Lol, it's not worth selling😂😂😂
Do you mind sending it to me then? Thanks in advance.
People like this reinforce my belief in the future of this project.
I will pay roughly 1.5% of one cent so I can reply to your post. It seems a reasonable price to pay. Something I would like to see for email. Winning users from Steemit wont happen by being the same as Steem. It will happen by being different. This is the only graphene chain that does this. You could get some quantitative hardening this way for the foundation doesn't need to get so much through inflation.
Meanwhile me as a new user was reading in the FAQ page that I need zero Blurt in order to start using the platform and would pay zero fees for everything doing here