After the huge success of my post Vote for your witnesses 3 weeks ago, I'm happy to present you the sequel today.
It was exciting, seemed dire at times, and finally there was a happy end. But the story is not finished.
The successful effort to boost the original consensus witnesses has led to a huge spread in witness voting. Everyone piled their votes on the top, and the lower ranks now have difficulties catching up and produce way less blocks than before. It hasn't been profitable lower than 40 before, and the situation got worse.
The voting wars are over, it's time to make educated choices again.
First off, there's no more reason to use all 30 votes. You don't lose out on anything, and why would you want to support someone you don't know much about? Use your votes for witnesses you trust and who align with your ideas for the future of Hive only.
Second, if someone is high "enough" up in the list in your opinion, they don't need your vote. Use it to support those who are underappreciated, not those who are famous and in a top position already.
And if you don't want to bother with keeping the votes up to date, at least take the time to choose a proxy whose voting you understand. As we have seen with steemchiller, just because they have a good standing in the community doesn't mean they make good choices all the time.
Should you think about proxying to me: I regularly update my own votes to support lower ranking witnesses, and only those who provide value for the chain without primarily filling their own wallets.
As setting a proxy also delegates your SPS votes: I vote on very few SPS proposals right now, as I think most are way overpriced. I think it's only @anyx for his public node.
It was amazing to see how the whole community can come together to save the chain. Now let's spread a bit again to advance decentralization!
So, I like to use my witness vote very carefully and consciously. I take that duty seriously. I am a political person, in the classic definition of the term 'politics', not the current muddled usage, which changes meaning depending on what is favorable each day.
My view about the topic is witnesses should make their thinking visible on what their purpose is on the chain. Why should I vote a witness?
Yes, I understand, it is like writing about yourself and can get fairly boring for some and can get just bunch of flowery words. But I think people can understand what is real and what is not.
Just my personal thoughts...
Well said Azircon.
I promise to improve my communication with the outside world as soon as I get rid of huge technical debt which is required for security and reliability of our new home.
I'm around, working hard. I will get back to campaigning for votes as soon as possible (not very soon).
That would be great. You are actually one of the witnesses that I supported during "the wars" but didn´t know much about. On the other hand, I am sure it´s mostly because you techy guys are simply too busy with making our chain as great as possible that you don´t have much time left for some ordinary blogging. So take is easy :) And thanks for everything you have done for Steem/Hive. I really really appreciate what you guys top witnesses did for us during all those tough times. And boy were they tough...
He is very knowledgeable, doing great (and in addition a very friendly guy)! :)
However, as I am trying to support 'small' witnesses these days, and he is safe on top of the witness ranking list anyway, I may temporarily withdraw my witness vote for him. :)
Trying to catch up with at least comments here and there ;-)
I thank you! Take you time. I told you, that you are my pilot and I trust you! I am very serious about what I say... Take your time
Catching up in progress.... ;-)
I'm not a moderator or sheepherder. I'm just highly voted most likely because I'm focused on building hive 24/7 without spending much time on drama.
That doesn't give any power, only more work.
Why are you engaging in all that drama and adding fuel? Why don't you focus on building stuff, you do it great so just keep doing it.
Thank you for posting this.
Witness voting should be an educational info pinned to the walls of hive blockchain like a mural. It should be plastered everywhere because it is part of the basic and foundation of decentralization. Will recheck my witness voting very soon and click that around upward head to those that are deserving.
There's too many people voting for 'dead' witnesses that pushes good people down the list.
There will inevitably be accounts that are abandoned, and as people die or no longer actively use their accounts for other reasons, under the present mechanism witness votes or automated voting will remain in effect.
The only means I can see of addressing this distortion of governance affecting witness votes is to require current action to effect such votes (regarding automated voting otherwise, I submit this proves automated voting deprecates humanity, because automated algorithms are immortal and people die, at the very least. Therefore only human beings should be permitted to vote manually or society becomes a mechanism subjugating actual people by devices), at least periodically.
Witness votes should expire after a while, but then people who are not interested may power down anyway. I was just trying to encourage some real engagement.
It's a good idea to review witness votes from time to time and I did so yesterday.
Even though as a backup witness, saying so is in one way against my own interests, I disagree with this. As we just saw on Steem, the network's security is higher when top 20 consensus witnesses (that are worthy of being there) have a high amount of stake voting for them.
Only in situations where an extremely high stake is able to attack. Don't forget that it cost $~15M to do so, and the piling of the community didn't manage to prevent the attack with its stake alone.
This happening again just became a lot less improbable, and at the same time more costly. Thus I see it as a very theoretical threat even if votes get spread a lot.
Exactly and these people weren't voted in bc they're the best at anything. They were a means to an end, to topple or counter attack a potential threat.. They didn't save their precious "earmarked" ninja mine they saved their assess and time will tell if this ecosystem can hack it out there in the real world. Thus far naming a place hive was dumb af and not well thought out. These people didn't accomplish anything substantial and celebrate what's IMHO not a victory.. We now have a real shit coin with no purpose whatsoever except for within the confines of this weird self absorbed platform.
Oh man, could've made it clear in your other reply that you're a troll and I would have saved my time.
Lol, buy something with you hbd?
Lots of people will be selling stuff once moving days are over.
It's not even on any exchange that I care to find. It's still in the realm of delusions of grandeur and fantasy..
Homesteaders co-op takes it, I bet.
So stating the obvious and having an unpopular opinion is being a, troll? You're just a third tier wanker that has no usefulness. Fuck off
It's a lot less probable now, yes. But the incident proved that DPoS security should not be taken for granted (even if we all saw the piano hanging over our head in Steem).
I agree, It's important to actively manage the votes and adapt to the situation. When the vote delay is implemented the risk will be a lot easier to assess. The obvious threat is gone for now though.
The vote delay does not address the risk of a stealth attack where a malicious actor can spread his stake and wait for the right moment to overtake consensus. Of course it would be more costly to do it on HIVE than on STEEM (you actually have to purchase the coin on the open market).
Sure it is still possible. But easier to detect, even if it's spread.
For folks like us that did not inherit fortunes, nor run central banks that can conjure money out of thin air, this threat is indeed largely theoretical.
It is not theoretical at all on the ground, because people that can spend $100M at will without experiencing any lessening of their economic power demonstrably exist.
We also cannot reasonably fail to note the censorship and propaganda that increasingly is being undertaken by those very people on every platform extant in the world today. Given what just happened to Steem it is extremely foolish to neglect to secure Hive from such a Sybil attack immediately.
I am confident that unless we limit the influence on governance of stake, Hive will be centralized because far more money than is necessary to censor this community is demonstrably being spent to censor people today.
The central banks are creating and dumping ~$1T/day on the stock market on an ongoing basis. What possible reason can you give for that kind of financial mechanism not being used to censor Hive? Sun Yuchen did not earn wages with which he gained the funds to centralize Steem, ostensibly gaining those funds speculating on BTC.
I will not be surprised if Sun Yuchen is already accumulating a massive stake in Hive in order to do the same thing to Hive he has done to Steem. In fact, I will be shocked if he is not.
The 1/3+1 minority attack is incapable of forcing a HF, but Sun Yuchen proved that DPoS is vulnerable as presently in effect on Hive with inactive accounts votes remaining effective, and the 30x multiplication of stake weight on governance, to effect that attack with less than 1/3 of stake extant.
I hope that VP is soon applied to witness votes such that SP is depleted 100% without recharging, so that 30x weighting of substantial stake no longer enables one stakeholder to gain such a Brobdingnagian advantage over other stakeholders. Further, this single mitigation is insufficient to prevent centralization of governance of DPoS, and additional mechanisms are necessary to prevent our voices from being silenced by the CCP, central banks, or people like George Soros.
I'd appreciate hearing some ideas from you guys, who have the most experience in efforts that have been undertaken to wield excessive influence on DPoS governance, in a timely way.
Thanks!
If someone can spend $100M for fun, we will have to fork again no matter what the voting does.
It's not for fun. Censorship is a weapon. People die as a result of being misled, or for defying censors with the power of governmental force. You might recall the terminal censoring of Jamal Kashoggi not too long ago.
I have been shot at, beaten, and physically attacked with the intent of ending my life by thugs associated with crooked cops - snitches and drug dealers, and their minions. The lives of my sons have been threatened, and as a result I no longer dare publicly act to reveal specific criminal acts.
Maybe those thugs that have sought my life were psychopaths and thought it was fun, but that wasn't why they did it.
They did it to protect their money and power, and that of their overlords whom they serve. Sun Yuchen's takeover of Steem seems likely to have been done for those same reasons, rather than for fun. Since those reasons to takeover decentralized DPoS blockchains and censor their users continue to exist and apply to Hive as they did to Steem, I am certain effort is underway to do to Hive what was done to Steem.
If all we can do is fork, this community is doomed to fail.
I do not agree that all we can do is fork if someone buys substantial stake, or accounts hodling substantial stake, and it is easy to demonstrate myriad mechanisms we can undertake that can prevent mere money from seizing total control of our community.
I don't like most of them, and bet you don't either, but I am incapable of either understanding every possible mechanism that could secure Hive from such a Sybil attack, or of implementing any of them. Therefore I strongly urge discussion of potentially acceptable mechanisms nominal to prevent centralizaton of Hive governance before that centralization is effected.
We're only doomed if we don't.
I have made countless attempts to discuss myriad issues with you, and am finally going to concede defeat. If you're going to talk to the pretend people in your head, please no longer address me while you do.
Go talk to someone that said anything like the quoted line above, which you will not find here.
That is absolutely not true.
Let's say that we have 1 account with 100k vests and 20 accounts with 10k vests each. In theory the bigger account should be able to determine only one third of the witness positions but if the smaller accounts only vote for a few of them it becomes very easy for the large stakeholder to control the top 20.
That is the reason why the freedom account was determining the top spots before and why Justin Sun was able to retake control with only 10%+ of the coin supply (the amount held by Binance).
Suggesting that there is nothing to lose by not using all of the witness votes is short sighted at best (in light of the recent events).
So what's not true in
?
Of course there is the known attack vector, but there's no current threat and no reason to keep the big spread between the top and the bottom witnesses. 35% are voting for #20, not even 7 for #40. The stake necessary to topple the top20 probably isn't even available on the market. Suggesting to keep voting for people just because what happened in the past is paranoid at best (in light of the most recent events)
Suggesting to not use all the available votes does not help the lower ranked witnesses. Using only a portion of your potential voting power opens the door for big stakeholders to control consensus in excess of their effective percentage of the total stake.
How do you mean that? A lower ranking witness produces more blocks with more votes. When someone above him has more votes, he produces fewer blocks. The top20 are exempt from this, but when they have more votes it's harder for the lower ranking ones to get in there.
Big stakeholders exert more influence, but the amount of votes doesn't have anything to do with that. The only case where it does is what happened on steem. On the contrary, when someone doesn't know who to vote for down the list and just adds votes on the top instead, they effectively add to the power of the big stakeholders. Do you see anyone near the top who doesn't have a freedom and/or blocktrades vote right now? How would they get more influence when those witnesses had fewer votes?
Please, take a bit of time and calculate the numbers of the risk you talk about, and you see how incredibly far away we are from any further takeover attempts. And if you don't want freedom and blocktrades to decide the witness list, vote on the bottom - no matter how many, it's more important who you vote on than using all 30.
Of course you are correct that adding votes to a witness improves the ranking but only at the expense of other lower ranking witnesses. Let's say that I remove all my votes for the top 20 and only vote for 5 that are not on that list. Those five witnesses will improve their position but will push down another five who are not on my list. In the meantime the top 20 can vote trade and amplify their influence.
I am with you on distributing the voting but I don't agree that we should be advocating for using only a few votes.
The current scheme is not representative of the actual stake if you do not use all of your votes. I better setup would be to redestribute your voting weight e.g. if I have 100 vests and vote for 1 block producer my vote is worth 100 but if I vote for 2 then my vote is worth 50. Our current governance model favors those that use all of their votes. That's why the amount of votes matter.
There is no 'pushing down' in backup witnesses, they get assigned blocks related to the votes they have, not the position. More votes for one means a bit less rewards for all the others and a bit more for him.
The idea that more votes split the weight wouldn't solve anything, as that'd affect everyone. Theoretically, everyone could even have unlimited votes and the system would work fine. I won't get into the details about that now though because I'm pretty annoyed by your way of trying to explain me I'm wrong when you don't grasp half of what you talk about.
I am not trying to annoy you, I apologize if I did. When I have the time I will make a post about this (including the math behind it). Thank you for taking the time to respond.
I hope many people will read your post and vote wisely :)
Good post here pharesim.
I'd love to see some votes shifted around.
(I am a witness, please vote for me)
Agreed this is basically how I see it also and especially on the proposals Anyx is good, I do like the Peakd one because I use their service but think I may have to review that again especially if we can get some good competition going for said "services"
Already done! Good call.
Yeah, I'am already doing this.
Thanks for reminding us.
Good to see this and I'm in complete agreement with your sentiments. I'll strongly consider making you a proxy or at the very least voting for you again. I dropped all but 2 witness votes weeks ago and before that had no more than 13.. I'm really not a fan of many of the consensus witnesses.. If any.. Are you aware of this cease and desist order against the use of hive ? I must ask because whether or not the case has merit, which it likely does,the fact remains that it's extremely incompetent to hastily push a project through without consulting professionals or a legal advisor. Especially after the confusion of steam/steem/steemit in the past.. Adding yet another easily avoidable failing does nothing to rekindle any faith in the governance that landed us in the outer belt of blockchain.. As of now steemit is ranked 17k on Alexa and I can only imagine the hive sites such as peakd are abysmal.
Also please understand I've been rightfully bitching n moaning about the lack of mobile first design approach on this antiquated platform and any support would be contingent on a witness also realising the futility of creating anything without easy to navigate mobile dapps. Thanks for not being like the other morons.
It takes quite some effort to really get to know each individual witness. Judging groups doesn't make sense, they are all individuals.
Of course I heard about the naming conflict. I don't really care though. The company was brought up when the name was investigated for a moment, but quickly deemed irrelevant. They do different things (and are failing hard when you look at business activity and stock price), they only have a trademark on their full company name, and there's nobody they could sue to bring Hive down anyway. They got some news coverage, us too, win-win. Nothing else will happen with this.
I'm not a mobile developer and prefer using full size screens and keyboards myself, so I'm not the right person to talk about mobile really. Would certainly be nice to have, but for my limited needs the websites work fine.
Hey @pharesim,
Yeah, not the biggest fan of some of the top witnesses either, but voted them based on a common 'enemy'... will definitely be relooking all my votes.
P.S. Please rethink your mobile dev stance (I believe you'd rustle up a lot of witness support if you did)... mobile-friendly is long ago not a "nice-to-have" anymore.
I'm so over all these out of touch losers
Thx for the reply..
Well he is a moron so.....
This is well written!
After the recent debacle on steem, I guess everyone realized the power of their votes. But the responsibility continues as community participation will have a profound effect on how hive moves ahead. I hope everyone reads and understands this post.
BTW @pharesim (with my other account @norbu) was one of the first witnesses I voted for way back in 2016, and have continued to do so till now!
Agree, and the right thing to do in terms of our votes. The strategic-save-the-chain voting is over. I've moved a few of mine around. Would be good for some of the witnesses to update their Witness links as well. Many of them are out of date and still talk about Steem or are a even couple of years old (I realize there's a lot going on and not priority at the moment, but it should be kept up to date). Good advice - thanks!
My witness website also still needs to be updated. Got other priorities right now though. Most people are very busy at the moment!
Absolutely. Getting the chain stable and this damn pandemic thing are the priorities now for sure. Just another house keeping item to put on the list ;-)
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you witnesses are doing and dealing with at the moment!
I was going to wait for a week more or so before switching some witness votes from Top 20 to lower ranks. I might do it sooner after all, it seems no one is trying to overturn the consensus on Hive after the split.
True, because there are those people who didn't care about the value of their votes. Just by voting anyone seems fine to them. In my case I voted it myself but I changed it when I saw a worthy proxy who loves the platform.
Good points and good for thought!
Thanks for all your excellent effort!
Cheers.
Thanks for reminding, do we have a page where we can vote directly after logging in once using the active key ? I did review some of my votes, but I had to use the hivesigner each time.
Never thought of that before. I guess I'm going to unvote those few on top for the underdogs I love.
Readjusting my witness votes is one of the first things I did after the fork.
I want to start doing more due diligence in choosing whom I vote for. I kind of do already, but I'd like to be more thourough.
Regarding the "overpriced" proposals, the way I see it, I would like for those working on important projects to be paid enough to make it their full time job (depending on what the project is). If something needs a full time dev, then I think it makes sense that the proposal would be equal to a full time dev's salary.
I note this is mathematically incorrect. The stake of voters influences governance only when it is deployed. Users that do not cast 30 votes influence governance less than they can, and this effectively increases the relative influence of those that do cast 30 votes.
While you are absolutely correct that casting votes for witnesses you know nothing about is potentially harmful, that potential can be eliminated by learning about 30 witnesses. Not casting 30 votes is actually harmful by increasing the relative power of other voters over yourself.
I assume you are talking about HPS.
Also, if I delegate my witness votes to a proxy, when I vote for a witness directly all of the proxy votes are withdrawn. Does voting on an HPS proposal directly also withdraw proxy?
Thanks!
It's not harming anyone except you assume an attack to be going on. It's not necessary to exert the maximum influence, you do not lose anything as there's nothing to be gained from voting witnesses. Or do you see the amount of vests you contribute to the total voting as some form of currency or badge?
From another reply:
It's definitely possible to find 30 underrated witnesses, but it takes time. It's better to avoid voting when not informed, and add votes one by one.
I would expect that.
I believe that we will need a hard fork, eventually. We still have lots of witnesses who are on the old network (Chain ID issue) that showing up in ours. We have thousands if not ten thousands of accounts voting for witnesses who stopped being a witness long, long time ago.
Decaying Witness Votes
It is a controversial topic for most, that is for sure. Is it necessary? Yes. I believe so. There are many witnesses who just went away, there are witnesses who announced they are retiring, there are witnesses who publicly supported the old chain. There are people who know this and revoked their votes, there are people who know this but didn't or forgot to revoke their votes and then there are inactive accounts. The latter being the most prominent, as far as I know.
As you said @pharesim, voting for someone who is already in the top 20 might not make so much difference in comparison to voting for someone lets say placed in somewhere 100-120. Due to the inactive account votes, old chain witnesses and votes they are placed far, far lower. Even though they are actively supporting the network with the latest version. If, in the first place, there was a hard fork decaying these votes. Those people wouldn't even be in spots 100-120, to be honest.
I agree, vote decay is something i want since years
After talking with @gandalf today, even if vote decay doesn't become a thing. I definitely advocate for automatic witness disabling, as in; A witness does not produce a block (missing them) for 14 days, does not update the price feed, is on an old version of the chain (HF20-21-22 for us) just, disable the witness.
If a witness isn't able to find a solution to these problems in 14 days, 2 weeks, half a month. There is no need for them to be an "active" witness per se. If they, however, fix their issues. They can return on being an active witness.
I still think vote decaying is a better option but... this is somewhat a middle-ground.
It's time to review our witness mission and vision to Hive. Perhaps, they prepare a new introduction post for Hive Blockchain.
It's hard to know, or even imagine what a witness may choose to do in a controversial situation from my perspective. Is there a short path to gaining insight on how the witnesses have handled things lately? What they've supported or possibly "overlooked?" These are the things I want to be educated on before voting for witnesses here on hive.