Greetings!

Our previous post that discussed the Blurt roadmap demonstrated something that is significant. It showed everyone that the Blurt community is dedicated and vibrant with ideas to improve the blockchain. Things to say that the ultimate goal is shared by everyone, and the horizon is becoming clearer than ever before. We were also amazed by the community involvement and hope that it will continue.

The goal of this post is to vote for the possible alterations that will be included for HF 09. So the community is highly encouraged to take part in the voting process. If anyone does not know what this is about, consider checking our previous post discussing the Blurt roadmap with the blurt community.

Suggested changes for HF09

The role of having a reward curve is to transform the votes into potential rewards based on several blockchain parameters such as the reward pool and other parameters that can be found in the config.hpp. To understand the current curve, we could take a closer look at that specific quadrant and introduce a proportional line (depicted in green) for comparison, we gain a comprehensive understanding of its impact on voting. The horizontal axis illustrates the rShares produced by a vote, while the vertical axis demonstrates the conversion of these rShares into recent claims. These claims play a pivotal role as they ultimately metamorphose into BLURT rewards.

One can observe how the curve currently runs parallel and in close proximity to the linear curve, indicating a convergence toward linearity. It is important to note that even though the curve is becoming linear, this does not necessarily imply proportionality. The convergent-linear nature of this curve consistently remains slightly below being fully proportional. Additionally, paying attention to the horizontal axis, reveals that we are now operating in the vicinity of approximately 100 trillion rShares.

The original "convergent linear" curve is actually one arm of a hyperbola. One can see the whole curve by zooming out. The part of the curve of interest has three distinct zones. It starts off linear for low values of r, with a gradient of approx c=0.5.r. The factor 0.5 comes from the ratio of 2s/4s=0.5. Then for very high values of r the curve converges to a different linear curve with the gradient approx c=r. In the middle, the curve slowly bends from the initial gradient of 0.5 to 1.

One of the effects of having a growing Blurt supply is that we currently have more Blurt power that is active and more individuals who are willing to partake in curation as a way to generate profit. Since there is currently a lot of liquidity, it is now in theory possible to have 100 million Blurt power as a single or cumulative votes on a single post. The new curve came in part to deal with this.

The calculation is fairly simple. e.g. 1M Blurt Power cumulative votes generate 20e9 rShares, which yields c=0.501r, whereas 100M Blurt power generates 2e12 rShares, which yields c=0.6r (assuming s=2e12), whereas, if s=2e15, then the cumulative votes still generate the same rShares. In the given context, when the parameter s is adjusted to 2e15, the results of the calculations show that with this change, 1 million Blurt power (voting power) yields c = 0.5000r, and 100 million Blurt Power yields c = 0.5001r. This indicates that the relationship between the voting power and the resulting rewards (c) is very close to being linear. In essence, as the voting power increases from 1 million to 100 million Blurt Power, the change in rewards is minimal, suggesting a nearly linear progression.

In other words, with the new curve, the community should expect the following changes:

• The reward pool is set to experience growth.
• Posts with medium to low value will witness a modest rise initially, which will then gradually level off to establish a new baseline.
• Posts characterized as high in value are expected to undergo a decrement in their valuation, followed by a subsequent marginal increase.
• The claim values associated with all posts are projected to approximate a state of proportionality relative to the corresponding Blurt voting power.
• The adjustment in claims will still rely on the activity on the chain, just as it always has.
• Votes will continue to receive a small boost for those with higher Blurt Power, aiming to motivate more people to engage in staking.
  
  

In the config.hpp file there is a section of code that deals with the reverse auction period:

#define BLURT_REVERSE_AUCTION_WINDOW_SECONDS_HF21 (60*5) /// 5 minutes

The conventional wisdom states that the role of the curation window is to promote the proof of brain concept and lower the use and advantages of automated tools on the blockchain. Votes that are served before 5 minutes are penalized proportional to the distance to 5 minutes, and this reward returns to the reward pool. For instance, one vote at time 0 is penalized at 100%, at 1 minute 80%, at 2 minutes 60%, at 3 minutes 40%, at 4 minutes 20%, and at 5 minutes there is no penalization.

The idea was to encourage users to find unique gems and posts on the blockchain, if a user, then votes on a specific post, then that post later receives more rewards. The user will leave a high presentation from the rewards compared to people who voted later. The curation window, which was set in the past to 15 minutes and then lowered to 5 minutes, was added to make sure that there will be enough time for the post to be discovered by real readers. The windows also acted as a way to penalize users who vote on posts that are already highly rewarded.

While this idea is good in theory, it did not really help. Bot owners were able, via basic pattern rules set and the calculation of prior votes on the blockchain and reward accumulation, to have a decent understanding of what was going on. The data was good enough to predict with a certain level of certainty whether a post or author is going to receive votes or not. So the bot owners were still benefiting highly from the situation.

Furthermore, ordinary users were no longer able to compete with bots owners since they rarely discover a post in time, or just do not have the time due to life obligations. This can be considered highly penalizing because the curation should be something enjoyable for users and not stressful or a source of struggle and conflict.

It was also observed from previous activity on other blockchains in the past that many users also tend to vote for authors that receive plenty of rewards in the hope of front-running each other. Which leads to a considerable concentration of rewards.

In reality, this is not about resolving the issue related to manual curation and proof-of-brain in general. Because users who are willing to abuse the reward pool mechanism will always find a way to abuse it to a certain extent. The goal here is to make it fairer by design and level the ground for everyone by removing the window. People who are finding gems will no longer benefit from a discovery bonus, but they will have a guarantee that they will no longer be outpaced or out-earned by bots. Combined with the new linear curve, Blurt Power stake will be the true denominator of worth.

Initially, this change was introduced in the past to similar blockchains to complement the negative voting feature. The goal was to prevent people who are farming rewards from voting in the last few seconds on posts to avoid being caught by abuse fighters. This means that posts that were broadcasted before the final twelve hours will be more visible and thus more subject to negative voting by the community. However, as anticipated, farmers adapted their strategies by focusing on posts with lower reward values positioned just above the dust level to circumvent unwanted attention.

Users can still farm in the last twelve hours with a net benefit compared to normal because the penalty is not constant but a curve. If a vote was done twelve hours before the payout, then the reward shares are decreased proportionally to the remaining time for the payout. In other words, the reward shares are halved when there are six hours remaining, reaching zero at the exact moment of payout. This means someone could still vote for himself and accept the penalty in exchange for higher rewards than 50% than they would usually get from curating other users.

The removal of this feature would result in significant benefits by extending the timeframe available for curation by an additional twelve hours. Communities relying heavily on manual curation would consequently have more time at their disposal to support and reward contributors. Platforms would be relieved of the need to develop solutions explaining to users why voting in the last 12 hours is either not possible nor advisable. Furthermore, the elimination of this constraint aims to mitigate the impact of farming activities on the trending page. Users engaging in farming on Blurt often exhibit a lack of concern regarding detection, as the absence of a reward regulation solution and the negligible importance of reputation in their considerations diminish the deterrent effect.

Since the changes to the proposal system on Blurt. Several bugs were found and detected by the community. Proposals were being removed, and users who voted for proposals saw the value of their vote value halving even after the proposals were removed or deleted.

A solution was already worked on in the past, but the Blurt community never had the chance to do final testing and implement the fix.

Defined under the new BIP0022, this change was added as an emergency change based on feedback from the community. The exchange Bittrex has officially stated that operations will be shut down on Monday 4 December 2023. While this news could seem surprising to many. This was actually expected to happen after its parent company and other affiliates filed voluntary petitions for relief under chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

While this news is not really something that any crypto enthusiast would not like to hear. There are, however, other repercussions that go beyond the exchange itself. Since the creation of the Blurt blockchain, the Blurt community hoped that exchanges would honor the initial airdrop to their customers, which unfortunately did not happen due to various factors. While the roadmap clearly states a way to deal with the exchanges that did not honor the airdrop. The prospect of having millions of BLURT in the hands of an unknown person from a company that will no longer exist is not appealing to the Blurt community nor anyone who is investing in Blurt.

For this one, it was decided to branch this exchange as a new DIP proposal due to its urgency. We believe that the Blurt community should be aware of such a situation and the possible harm that can be caused.

In a similar situation, a normal procedure that should be taken before dealing with exchanges that did not honor the airdrop includes reaching them and giving them enough time to officially respond to the request of the Blurt community. But because such a request would require time and a technical solution from the developers team. Expecting that Bittrex will spend resources to work on a custom solution to honor the airdrop is not something that we feasibly expect.

In either case, the decision is up to the Blurt community.

• Three comments will be left under this post, and each comment will have a specific bundle of changes. Users then should only vote for the comment that contains the bundle of changes that they would like to see implemented in HF09.

• If users vote on more than one comment, then all their votes will be voided and not taken into consideration in the final calculation and decision-making.

• We would like to invite anyone who rejects all proposed changes to please consider adding a comment under the rejection comment to help organize feedback and start another voting cycle in case of a majority rejection of the changes.
  
  

• A snapshot of the votes will be taken after 360 hours or fifteen days. Everyone is free to change their vote before this deadline.

• The stake of the accounts who voted on each comment will be calculated and summed to have a final value.

• If the final value favors the implementation of a specific bundle, then a decision will be final. If, however, the value favors rejection. Then nothing will be changed and a new cycle of discussion will start.

• If the final value is equal in the two comments, which is highly unlikely, then another session of votes concerning the two comments in question will be initiated.

Thank you,

The Symbionts Team,