In a recent post by the BlurtOfficial account, several "issues" where mentioned briefly regarding the infrastructure of voting for witnesses.

Issue 175: current status, open to consensus debate, IMO

Issue 175 - Remove Governance Proxy
https://gitlab.com/blurt/blurt/-/issues/175
It has been observed on Steem that an attacker can reward the community with upvotes in exchange for users setting their witness proxy to them. This is essentially vote-buying and preys on desperate users and developing nations. Removal of the proxy will ensure that this form of centralised vote buying cannot occur.

Source: https://blurt.blog/blurt/@blurtofficial/blurt-second-anniversary

My current perspective is that removing this function will actually centralize power to the already over controlling spectre rather than "decentralizing" it. But I want to see what everyone else thinks about it.

To understand this, we'll go over about what a proxy is and what voting for a proxy actually does and where those benifits lay.

I will use already existing explanations found in the FAQ section of this website, and add additional info where necessary.

Witnesses

By now, those who have been here active for longer than a month should have a basic idea of what a witness does. Simply, they run "things" to keep "Blurt" functioning.

The Blurt blockchain requires a set of people to create blocks and uses a consensus mechanism called delegated proof of stake, or DPOS. The community elects 'witnesses' to act as the network's block producers and governance body. There are 20 full-time witnesses, producing a block every 63-second round. A 21st position is shared by the backup witnesses, who are scheduled proportionally to the amount of stake-weighted community approval they have. Witnesses are compensated with Blurt Power for each block they create.

By "full time" they refer to the top 20 whose responsibility falls to be full time.

Anything after the fact of 21 position and onwards are considered backups.

It's the top 20 who run the show overall.

Whomever partakes in the top 20 should also take into account the consensus opinions and facts layed out by the community at large.

Which brings a different issue, YOU, the non witnesses aka the average Blurtopian user.

You need to speak up and get involved in the consensus if you wish to have some influence in what our witnesses do. After all YOUR the check and balance for them, should they ever get too carried away.

We had a major dilemma about freezing accounts and frankly very few got involved in defending the rights of these accounts, or in not defending and going forward with it. Either way, YOUR OPINION MATTERS.

Luckily "Batman" made a stop to "Mr. Freeze" when he posted the "No's" and talked Mr. Freeze from making winter in mid summer.

There shouldn't be a problem of being critized for your position in power, and this is also why I am advocating these issues forward so that we may speak up on what is to be done with blurt. The chain doesn't belong to one small group, it belongs to everyone.

And just as we must be vigilant on who we vote for to run the show, we too must be vigilant on who we proxy vote for aswell.

How Where can I vote for witnesses?

Visit https://wallet.blurt.blog/~witnesses.

How to vote for witnesses:

You must be logged in to use this part of the tool. And it will not authorize without your private active key. You can use whalevault and blurtkey apps to easily store these keys safely for easier access when needed.

To vote, once logged in properly, you will see orange upvote buttons on the side of each witness account. Example:

Just click on your desired witnesses upvote button to vote. We get 30 votes per blurt account in total. More on vote weight regarding this further below.

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The Proxy

There is no clear definition for what a proxy does in the FAQ so I will gladly fill in this space here.

A proxy can be anyone with a Blurt account. And it is not required that you be a witness to be a proxy. All you will need is to have the voluntary vote made to you rather than on a witness.

Where and how to vote for proxy?

How?:
Visit the same website for witness voting to vote for your proxy. SCROLL to the bottom of the page. There you will see the pink elephant. Write the username without the "@" symbol on the elephants back and click submit. Once it processes, your votes would be automatically set to what the proxy has voted for as witnesses. Now both you and your proxy have a comvined strength and there will be less stressed about figuring out who to vote for.

Let's be honest here, not everyone has the time or interest to what the witnesses are doing behind the scenes of keeping this machine steady, and that is ok. We each got our lives to do.

All a proxy is someone who is voting for witnesses but with delegation via proxy voting from other accounts or individual users. When you vote for a proxy you are allowing said account to do the vote for you, and thus you are lending your power, at no loss to your voting capabilities via curation. The power delegated via proxy voting is the voting strength you have via vests multiplied 30 times for each vote. Meaning each vote is equal to your current vest strength. (This latter bit may not be true for long, See issue #119)

A proxy can be very useful for small account users to gather their consensus and focus their strength together.

It only requires x amount of minnows to make a difference together, and that could mean a big difference in consensus voting when a witness or more tries to go rogue against the betterment of the chain and the freedoms of the people most of all.

I don't want to say what side I am on this, I do know that we should talk about such big changes together before we decide this. We have to mid August or September to decide what we want because the Hard Fork #8 is inevitable.

And the moves are already being made before any wide discussions from the "blurtopian crowd"

Its not "official", but its written and just sitting in pending. I would want to know what EVERY active witness thinks about the removal of proxies and debate it seriously being that we still have an open window of time.

The excuse from the foundation is the "attack" that happened on steemit.

Should it or should it not be removed and why?

These issues are rarely discussed deeply by the majority, the consensus count from the regular joes and janes here in blurtopia is small in comparison the amount of people.

Open Poll: All you need is to include a minimun of one character as a comment reply for each vote section. A period or a comma or any other symbol is enough. Your comments existence will be counted as a vote even if you state it isn't. Please do not vote the comments for the pole vote. There is no obligation to say why or give any reason.

You may openly discuss each issue in your own posts or as a reply to this post and even include links to your opinions regarding these matters. Or not.
You may be the type that just doesn't want to get involved. That is ok too. Consider voting for a proxy then, so that maybe someone who is more involved can direct your witness votes where its most needed. Or just blindly vote whatever as so many already do.

The three voting options and linked to each one.

• Vote here to keep the removal of proxy.

• Vote here to pause/postpone the decicion for a different HF in the future. This will allow more discussion time.

• Vote here to not remove proxy voting.

There is nothing "official" to this, but it can show where the majority stands on each issue. You can change you mind and change your vote whenever.

Remember just because something changes in the code doesn't mean it cannot be unchanged and thus giving up discussing it to be better. On the contrary, any issue can be talked about and if it holds merit, changes can be unchanged.

If you have any questions or ideas feel free to ask and answer where you see it fit to give answer. Help esch other out. If you know an answer, say it. Express your ideas.

So what will be the outcome of removing proxy voting, ie no more proxies?

Well I can think of few off the top of my head. I have found that proxies can actually help small accounts get noticed as the proxy can take responsibility and gain a wide opinion from the crowd. They can be like the bridge from the too busy witnesses and the too busy people who are just here to socialize, blog and invest in this "free market."

A proxy that works for the people can also be a major influencer in the consensus despite not being a witness, by simply voting or not on the witnesses. They can serve as the check and balance of a large group of supporters. This doesn't mean mal intent. It's cooperation. If you don't like the proxy, remove your vote.

There is nothing wrong with organizing organically to create a balance of powers from the powers that be in Blurt, and I think proxy voting is the way to do it.

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Opinion:

This is essentially vote-buying and preys on desperate users and developing nations.

Its delegation essentially too. The service for your buy is the proxy will allocate your vests to appropriate witnesses.

If this is bad, remove vts too. But what also of the small accounts? Is it expected for every user to keep up with the details of every witness? Not everyone, if not mostly everyone is dare willing to make sure their witness votes are in their best interest. Most are just here to socialize and win something along the way. Voting for a proxy who will undertake that task is the alternative option and can be a great solution for that.

And who is "praying" on "desperate" users? Who is desperate to vote on witnesses? Last I seen there is a lack of interest for voting witnesses that best represents them.

Removal of the proxy will ensure that this form of centralised vote buying cannot occur.

And will ensure that large accounts cannot be contested fairly by a large user base who are mostly minnows or lower.

If we really want to have this place decentralized, then maybe we should have more of these discussions more openly and more often or else our silence may very well be our downfall.

Thank you for reading this through.

Till next time

Cheers,
@yayogerardo

Did I forget anything? Let me know.