Below are my positions as a top 20 witness, independent developer on Blurt, and travel blogger. I invite people who support my witness to also express their opinions in comments.
HF09:
- BIP 0001: agreed
- BIP 0002: agreed
- BIP 0003: agreed
- BIP 0004: agreed
HF10:
- BIP 0005: disagreed but remains open to discussion
Since 2018, I have observed a lack of substantial engagement from the majority of witnesses on both the Steem and Hive blockchains in utilizing their rewards for the betterment of the network. Rather than actively contributing to the architecture through the establishment of full nodes or engaging in developmental efforts, witnesses seem to treat their rewards more as a straightforward mining incentive, akin to what one might find in any Proof-of-Work (POW) system where profit maximization takes precedence. In my view, redirecting funds toward witnesses holds limited value.
I don't claim to have a miracle solution, but I believe this issue is a crucial aspect of independent development, which, like any system, has its flaws (as evident in some approved proposals on Hive). In the event of DAO fund removal, I see more merit in reconsidering the blockchain's inflation rate as a viable alternative, ensuring that any adjustments align with the removal's equivalent impact.
- BIP 0006: partially agreed
Operating a witness node costs around twenty dollars if using a VPS or almost nothing if hosted at home on a repurposed PC with a reliable internet connection, yielding a monthly reward of 15,000 BLURT (equivalent to approximately $50 at the current exchange rate) for those in the top 20, and 3,000 BLURT per month for the 30th position (equivalent to approximately $10 at the current exchange rate). Thus, there is a noticeable disparity that needs to be addressed.
Therefore, if a modification to the witness reward takes place, I advocate that it should exclusively affect witnesses outside the top 20. In the event of a downward reevaluation of the reward for the top 20 witnesses (up to a maximum of one-third), to enhance the reward for witnesses outside the top 20, I also agree.
To connect with the preceding BIP, the operating cost of my witness server, the BeBlurt RPC, BeBlurt, and the Testnet is currently $120/month, using a minimal architecture. Also, please consider that BeBlurt utilizes the official Blurt system for image management; otherwise, the cost would easily double.
The distinction between basic witness activity, deeper investment in the Blurt architecture, or the role of a decentralized application developer is not easily comparable, especially considering that roles such as a developer and a system administrator are entirely different professions, and there is no requirement to have a witness server (or knowledge in system administration and networking) to develop a dApp for Blurt.
HF11:
- BIP 0007: agreed
- BIP 0008: agreed
- BIP 0009: agreed
I would also advocate for penalizing underperforming nodes through a penalty system, where missing a block would incur a cost for the witness. The amount of the reward the witness should have received could be deducted as a penalty, paid in fees by the witness through a transfer to @null.
HF12:
- BIP 0010: agreed
- BIP 0011: agreed
HF13:
- BIP 0012: Agreement in principle, with the solution needing to be tested to ensure that its implementation doesn't present any actual issues.
- BIP 0013: Agreement in principle, with the solution needing to be tested to ensure that its implementation doesn't present any actual issues.
- BIP 0014: Agreement in principle, with the solution needing to be tested to ensure that its implementation doesn't present any actual issues.
HF14:
- BIP 0015: agreed
- BIP 0016: disagreed but remains open to discussion
HF15:
- BIP 0017: no opinion at this time
- BIP 0018: point to be developed for better understanding
- BIP 0019: agreed
HF16:
- BIP 0020: agreed
- BIP 0021: point to be developed for better understanding
I would also like to see the re-establishment of a WebSocket system (as it still exist on Bitshares: https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares-core/wiki/Websocket-Subscriptions) to enable better synchronization between the layers of the blockchain.
Hi, @nalexadre,
The discussion about the introduction of a system to fund development on Steem (DAO) was actually preceded by a considerable cut in witness pay on Steem, around 80% less. The idea presented was that witnesses will no longer be obliged to use their witness pay to fund blockchain development, or any other development oriented toward providing services for the community. The DAO was intended to be used instead to fund all development related things, in addition to other initiatives. Naturally, due to the competitive nature of witness ranking, witness made sure despite the introduction of DAO to provide infrastructure, services, and engage with the community as a way to differentiate themselves and attract more witness votes.
The Blurt DAO, if DIP passes, will not be scraped, the code will stay, but the inflation will be diverted. Future changes to the witness parameters will hopefully make it easier for witnesses to rearrange funding without having to organize a fork each time a change is needed.
Regarding the reward curve for witnesses. The ranking in itself should serve a role which is significant, but is not necessarily the case right now on Blurt. One thing that we lack on Blurt is competitiveness among witnesses. The design theory is that in their aim to rank higher, witnesses will multiply their efforts in various ways to attract votes from stakeholders. Once they reach the top 20 or a favorable position, they will have a considerable incentive to stay there. So it is a system that makes sure that top witnesses are always aware that they could lose the premium pay at any moment if they do not do a proper job. When tweaking the reward curve for witnesses, we need to ensure that the new curve is not going to minimize the difference to a point where making an effort to advance becomes useless or less rewarding. If you pay the top 100 the same pay then no one will innovate because it is pointless, if you pay the top 20 50% of the reward share, then the 80 will provide a lot just to get there. On Blurt right now, we are in an entrancement situation where efforts made are not necessarily an influential factor. We hope that this will change once more faces join the blockchain.
Diverting the DAO does not seem like a good permanent solution, but we are reaching a point where stakeholders are willing to bet on this change. Maybe the community will learn through change and finally understand why the DAO was introduced in the first place. It can be time-consuming, but it is the most transparent way to go with it.
Thank you for the comprehensive response,
Oh on the point of being penalised for missing blocks, I thought you don’t earn rewards on blocks missed? If so isn’t that penalty enough?
I’d be wary of penalties when witnesses already earn low, also in HF’s lots of blocks may be missed if things aren’t smooth, so really don’t suggest it.
This is primarily a concept and a reflection that requires careful study, as it may not be straightforward to implement and addresses the following situation. Yes, a witness missing a block doesn't receive a reward, but I don't believe it's sufficiently deterrent. The issue of missing a block or responding late involves microforks, collisions, block delays, all of which degrade the network's quality.
A system that evaluates witnesses while also considering their performance can foster healthy competition to maintain reliable operations.
Agreed a UI tool that shows detailed historcal performance would be usefull to add to voting lists, I don’t think we need any complicated blockchain enforcement, losing votes should be enough.
I don't think we are paying enough for chain security, currently top20 witnesses only earn $42 per month which barely covers just a cloud server, there is no room for security resillience at lower prices and does not cater for redundant geolocated backup servers. I am a strong believer that infra workers have a right to make fair profit running witness and full nodes on Blurt.
We are currently very far below market with many chains offering rewards of 20k to 200k per annum and greater for chain security. Higher pay breeds higher competition and more community projects to attract votes.
Currently the only incentive to run a Blurt witness is for hobbyst pleasure and that isn't enough in my opinion and looks like a poor chain to invest in, consider an investor whether they would be comfortable that they funds they are investing are only secured by witnesses earning less than $50 pm.
The problem isn't the number of BLURTs received by witnesses (in the case of the top 20, in the case of the outside top 20, I agree 100% that it's undervalued, a difference of a coeficient of 3 being far too strong with top 30), but the price of the BLURT itself. To see this, we need only compare HIVE and STEEM, where the number of tokens received depending on the position of the witness is already higher on BLURT (HIVE Witness Earnings Monthly Report - October 2023). I think we agree on this point.
My intention is not, of course, to penalize BLURT witnesses, of which I'm one, but to warn against handing out assets that are difficult to take back later and above all to pay attention to their distribution.
As it is on HIVE when you are under the top 25 or top 50 when ultra hobbyist LOL
clarification: for STEEM, it's a process of extrapolation, as access to up-to-date data is much less available and easier to access than HIVE, due to the total lack of development on this blockchain, which is surviving by some miracle 🤣
In the hope that this resurgence of activity, coupled with the definition of a roadmap for various hard forks, providing Blurt with a clear objective and purpose, will lead to an increase in external marketing and communication efforts. This would restore the deserved appeal to Blurt and positively impact its price.
I fully agree on this point. What @nalexadre notices also came to my mind while reading this post @megadrive. It's easy to give the 10% extra, but later it will be more difficult to remove this 10% from the witness. Perhaps, however, as @ctime advises, part of it should be allocated to reducing inflation by burning DAO tokens - in this way, 50% could always be more easily redirected both as funds for another purpose and as funds back to the DAO if the blockchain grows.
This is something to consider.
Hi, @khrom,
in the sense that you mean not to create new tokens for the dao pool?
Yes I’m with you on those points, what are your thoughts on directing to BP stakeholders who earn only 2.2% for powering up?
We need to compete with Hive’s 20% APR passive income on HBD.
it's a hard question. on the one hand, a higher APR encourages people to hold funds and could encourage some people to make purchases on stock exchanges just to keep these funds with us, but on the other hand, the phenomenon, from the user's point of view, in HBD is the fact that it is a stable stock, i.e. I invest PLN 1,000 today $ and tomorrow I still withdraw $1000 (+/- 10%). This convinces many people to invest in such a coin because they are afraid of fluctuations in regular coins. In the case of Blurt, unfortunately we would have to compete heavily with some coins because various coins offer the same as hbd and even better conditions with a similar risk to the Blurt investment.
However, it seems to me that going in the direction of playing "savings account" is not the way to go. Most such coins eventually become shell coins.
We should rather move towards giving our metal the characteristics of investment metals. Especially since we now have a high inflation environment in the world, close to recession, and we have even come close to stagflation. Moreover, the history of BTC has been showing for years that this path works best for coins.
I hear you on the fact that once given it is hard to take back, but we seem to both agree that witnesses that are lower ranked need more pay subsidy.
How about the idea of shifting some of the DAO inflows rather to BP Stakeholders as an incetive to powerup Blurt, we only have a 2.2% staking APR which is competitively low across most stake-based chains where double digits are even common.
I would add a condition that to earn the APR you need to vote for at least one witness to participate in chain security, non-voting stake is worthless to security and should not get APR rewards.
I agree regarding the 2.2% staking APR, and I really appreciate the idea of gamification/investment in governance actions that unlock benefits for those who actively participate with their voice in the life of the blockchain 👍
i agree with gamification idea. People like to be rewarded and appreciated for their contribution. It just works - endorphins and the reward center.
From the investor level, I do not agree with this idea. Anyone who has bought even 1 BLURT on the market should have proportionally same return on investment as millionaires.
Let's activate "vote staking", currently, accounts that have Blurt Power and do not vote, lose their curation rewards because vote value reaches 100% and stops. Let it go to 500% or even 1000%+. This solution should eliminate vote trading services, reduce spam and encourage everyone to Power Up
Hi, can you clarify which idea you don’t agree with, there may have been a misunderstanding.
I am with you that every Blurt holder should earn the same rate regardless of how much they hold.
What I was saying is that currently anyone that has powered up (staked) BP is earning 2.2% APR which is currently lower than bank and treasury interest rates for a far riskier speculative investment, we could redirect 50% of DAO inflation to help increase this to be more competitive.
But I would like a stake-voting system where users only earn APR on their stake if they help secure the chain with at the very least one witness vote, stake that isn’t securing the chain should not earn staking rewards.
Could you elaborate on the higher vote power and how it would eliminate vote trading? I’m just thinking “bottled up” super votes could be used as an attack vector to boost content to the top of trending that otherwise shouldn’t have been there, it also reduces the need to purchase BP to propell content to higher visibility as you can purchase less and wait for VP to build up to 1000+ % and then supervote.
I don't know if this is what Mariusz meant, but Supervote has its +.
Less spam - if someone spams for votes anyway, instead of posting crap and random photos every day for money, they will only spam every week.
Greater opportunity to reward very good content. Everyone has probably come across an article on which they would be happy to allocate even the equivalent of 10 of their votes from the entire day, when most of the content is at a level that makes it a shame to vote at all.
Gems, on the other hand, come along so rarely and are passed on between people as good content for so long that the 7-day billing period for such articles is a sin, because if they were to earn money for views, they would earn money for a year or longer. The possibility of rewarding such content with a larger voice should also exist in some way.
Decrease in fake activity in favor of real activity.
And I think it doesn't end there.
Yep, this is a real concern, as many posts don't have a 7-day lifespan and can keep/gain interest over time. This is currently a handicap when compared with what the social web2 has to offer.
Basically, I have an idea how to solve it, but I don't know what it looks like from a technical perspective... does the blockchain somehow record votes allocated after the settlement time or is it just a frontend?
Like @megadrive, I believe there has been a misunderstanding. The goal is not to charge something extra to gain more, but we must recognize that involving people in governance has not been very successful. Without a counterpart or incentive, people find it challenging to engage in governance. That's why I think gamifying the process could be beneficial. However, if an investor doesn't want to participate in something free, there's not much we can do for them. This concern, I believe, applies more to small investors than large ones, as the latter are more attentive and responsive to governance and its involvement.
Similarly, I would be very interested if you could further elaborate on the "vote staking" theme. At first glance, I don't see a direct connection with spam reduction, or with trading services and its potential elimination. Regarding the latter, I currently only see the removal of the delegation system, which could have significantly detrimental collateral effects. Therefore, I am keenly interested in exploring alternative avenues for addressing these concerns.