Proposing A Worker Proposal System For Steem
As I’ve watched events unfold in the last week or so in the Steem community, I’ve become convinced that we urgently need a worker proposal system like the one that exists in BitShares, both to speed up and to decentralize the development of the Steem blockchain.
Yesterday, our team took a hard look at what it would take to implement a similar system in Steem (with some improvements based on our experience with the BitShares implementation), and we believe we can deliver a fully tested worker proposal system in 1-2 months at a cost of between $50K-$100K USD (this wide range on completion cost may seem strange to someone who hasn’t been actively involved in software development, but estimating the time to complete a software project is extremely difficult in most cases).
Last night I contacted @ned to see if Steemit would be interested in funding the proposal and he liked the idea, so we decided the next step to get a conversation going would be to write this post to describe our team’s initial idea for how the worker proposal system would work. I’m also planning to attend the Steem alliance meeting on the 27th to have a live discussion of the potential benefits of a worker proposal system.
What is a worker proposal system?
A worker proposal system allows Steem users to publicly propose work that they are willing to do in exchange for pay. Steem users can then vote on these proposals in almost the same way they vote for witnesses (stake weighted votes, but voters can vote for as many proposals as they want). The proposals that get a sufficient amount of vote weight get funded from a special Steem account controlled by the blockchain. For the purposes of this post, I’ll refer to this as the “funding account”.
Disclaimer: this is just a rough spec
A worker proposal system represents a reasonably complex system, both from an economic point of view and from a detailed implementation in code. In this post, I’m skipping some details involved in the actual implementation to keep this post as readable as possible for anyone who has a general interest in how such a system would function.
Who pays for worker proposals (how do funds get into the funding account)?
One of the most potentially controversial aspects of a worker proposal system is “Where does the money come from to pay for worker proposals?”.
Our proposal is to add a small amount of inflation to Steem (e.g. 1% annually) that is paid into the funding account. This ensures long term funding for the blockchain and it also allows for that funding to grow as the blockchain itself becomes more valuable. If we assume that Steem’s market cap remained constant over a year’s period at its current value of $121 million, that would mean 1.2 million SBD would be generated over that period to potentially pay worker proposals.
In addition, anyone can make donations to the funding account and Ned has indicated that Steemit would likely be interested in making such a donation.
[EDIT: After having to make this clarification in at least half a dozen comments, I want to point out that 1% was an e.g. (an example amount of inflation) rather than an actual proposed amount. Also, I am personally completely fine with those funds coming from the reward pool versus a new source of inflation. I'm somewhat neutral on the source and I expect there will be many opinions on what that source should be. That said, feel free to express your opinion as to where the funds should come thru in the comments below, but please let's not forget to think about the rest of the system as well.]
As a side note for any economists reading this post: more properly, I’m talking about increasing the supply of SBD in the same way that new SBD is created to pay for posts, instead of “real” inflation, which refers to the value of a currency relative to physical goods. In Steem-related posts, the term “inflation” is used so often to refer to this creation process that I decided to stick with it for this post. Just be aware that it’s not valid to compare this meaning of inflation to its common meaning with regard to a fiat currency like the US dollar or the Euro.
Worker proposals paid in SBD rather than Steem
Instead of paying workers in Steem, I strongly believe it’s better to pay them in SBD. In practice, SBD maintains a much more stable value versus Steem with regard to external goods (e.g. food). This allows a worker to have a more predictable income from their work and it also makes it easier for stakeholders to evaluate the worth of the funds being asked for.
A large part of my belief that paying worker proposal in SBD will be better than paying in Steem is based on lessons learned from BitShares. In BitShares, the worker proposal system in its “natural state” paid out in units of BTS instead of in one of it’s more stable currencies like BitUSD and BitCNY. This almost always led to one of two problems: 1) if BTS dropped too much in value, the worker was no longer getting paid enough to do their work or 2) if BTS went up too much in value, the worker was getting paid too much for their work, leaving stakeholders unhappy with the deal.
To resolve this problem in BitShares, a third party organization was ultimately set up that collects funds in BTS, but instead pays out BitUSD instead, and most worker proposals on BitShares nowadays operate under the oversight of that organization. But this adds a bunch of overhead and requires trust in a 3rd party organziation to properly handle the funds, so I think it’s much better to design the Steem WPS to natively pay in a more stable currency.
What does a worker proposal look like?
A worker proposal is created by submitting a transaction to the blockchain (a process similar to writing a post or voting) that has the following information:
- account_being_funded (generally this will be an account owned by the person or group creating the proposal, but not always)
- daily_pay (the amount of SBD that is being requested to be paid out daily)
- start_date (when the proposal will begin paying out if it gets enough vote weight)
- end_date (when the proposal expires and can no longer pay out)
- subject (a very brief description or title for the proposal)
- url (a link to a page describing the work proposal in depth, generally this will probably be to a Steem post).
Worker proposal fee
To avoid frivolous proposals that waste the time of stakeholders, we are suggesting that a fee of 10 SBD is required to create a worker proposal. This fee will pay into the funding account.
Capping daily expenditures to ensure proposals get properly vetted
To prevent someone with a high stake from voting in a proposal that drains the funding account before other voters have a chance to vote in favor of other proposals, we’re also proposing a daily budget limit on how much of the funds in the funding account can be spent in a given day. The proposed formula is as follows:
daily_budget_limit = funds_in_funding_account/100 + daily_worker_inflation
Taking a look at the Worker Proposal System in action
Let’s consider an example where we have multiple competing worker proposals:
A) Blockchain Curation Worker: wants 300 SBD per day for 14 days to improve the curation code
B) Marketing worker: wants 100 SBD per day for a year to run ads for Steem on a cryptocurrency site
C) Refund worker: represents stakeholders who don’t want to spend funds on any proposal with less stake weight than the refund worker. It wants 100,000,000 SBD that will “refund” the SBD back to the funding account (effectively, any funds this worker receives don’t get spent but are instead held in reserve in the funding account for possible use in the future).
- Assume funding_account starts with 1000 SBD
- assume daily_inflation = 350 SBD
- daily_budget = 1000/100 + 350 = 10 + 350 = 360
Sorting the active proposals by highest voting weight, if the order is A, B, C, then A would receive it’s entire requested budget (300 SBD), B would only get 60 of the 100 it requested (because only 360 was available in the daily_budget and A gets paid before B starts to get paid). No funds are left for C, so none of the funds for the day are kept in the funding account.
On the other hand, if C (the refund worker) got the highest vote, all the funds for the day would go back to the funding account and neither A or B would get paid that day. The funding account would end the day at 1350 SBD. And the next day’s daily_budget would be 1350/100 + 350 = 363.5 SBD.
Alternatively, if stakeholders want to fund A, but not B, then they would vote for a stakeweighted ordering of A, C (refund worker), B. In this case, A would get 300 SBD, and the rest of the daily_budget would be recycled back to the funding account, B would receive no funding, and the funding account would have 1050 SBD at the end of the day (assuming no new funding was added via a donation).
Don’t like inflation being used to pay for worker proposals? Vote in a “burn” worker
If stakeholders at some point decide they don’t like inflation being used to fund worker proposals, they can create and vote in a “burn” worker that pays a roughly equivalent amount of SBD back to the “null” account. SBD transferred to the “null” account is effectively destroyed since no one can access it.
GUI wallets will need to support the worker proposal system
BlockTrades is proposing to do the blockchain level work for this system and to make the required changes to the command-line wallet, but GUI wallets (e.g. steemit.com) will also need to implement a voting page for proposals similar to the page where users vote for witnesses. This is necessary to give all stakeholders a way to vote for their preferred proposals as soon as the worker proposal system becomes active. Because the process of voting for a worker proposal is very similar to voting for a witness, this shouldn’t be a difficult task.
@blocktrades kudos to you for really stepping up over the last few months to contribute to the development of the Steem blockchain (and for all of your past contributions as well, of course).
I feel like we are at a turning point for Steem right now and what we as a community do, in addition to Steemit, Inc, will determine whether Steem will ultimately succeed and grow exponentially or slowly die off.
I really, really hope that Steemit, Inc steps up and funds the development of this system and then also makes a very significant donation to the funding account and I will do what I can to push them in that direction.
I'll simply +1 this!
While off-chain solutions (such as foundations) are also an important asset, we absolutely need on-chain worker proposals. Now, I'm not in favour of increasing the reward-pool, but rather redistributing some of the 75% for posting rewards to it (for example 75% to 65%).
And regarding the implementation, the price sounds reasonable. Would be 125k - 250k at the current 40c STEEM price.
I'd take from the curators if from anyone, the content producers long term are going to be what matters. We can see this issue already with Youtube, all the content producers are complaining about the company taking too large of a share and content producers not being profitable enough. Long term, I don't think the average user will value their curation reward all that much, because most content consumers will not have much SP anyway.
But 10% is way too high, the 1% makes more sense. 10% is huge and a danger to decentralization long term, while 1% is not something I would worry about.
I agree with you. I think taking from existing inflation is better than creating more inflation. I would push for a little higher than 10%. Maybe around 20%, pushing posting rewards to 55%. Witness and interest payments shouldn't be reduced.
Gauging from responses in this post. Using existing inflation appears to be the preferred option.
Donations would be great but they are less of a guarantee. Beneficiary rewards are another way of adding to the fund. An initiative similar to what @steem-plus are doing could help.
Yes! love this! keep it decentralized I also understand that this would ensure the steem token would not be able to be classed as a security by the SEC since we will have a community distribution mechanism instead of a centralized group of people deciding where the money goes.
It's really hard to say what the SEC will deem a security and what it won't, but I think the biggest issue for Steem w/r/t being a security is Steemit, Inc's large, privately-controlled stake, which this system won't change or resolve at all. Even with this mechanism, Steemit, Inc could use their stake to decide where the money goes. The fact that they choose not to doesn't change the fact that they could.
Absolutely, and I appreciate that this solution does not fix the steemit inc stake problem easily, however the same proposal system could be used to autonomously delegate steem to projects from steemit inc's stake. This would ensure a decentralised decision process as well as allow the steemit inc stake to be distributed / diluted over time, while making it difficult for authorities to demonstrate that there is a central group of people treating the coin as a security. So as long as Steemit inc put some process in place to show that they don't or can't decide where the money goes, and that there is a wider community decision where an autonomous system, that they / no central party controls, I am sure (but not certain) that it would be difficult, (maybe impossible) to prove that steemit inc or anyone is treating steem as a security
As long as their stake is not vested it doesnt get counted in the voting?
Only sp votes.
I'm all for this, my only concern is the issuance of additional SBD's. What happens when we hit a cap of 10%? Does it stop paying in SBD. The more SBD's we have in existence creates a lot of risk if the price of steem tanks to under 20c or 10c, because then a ton of steem has to be created if people trade up to steem, which they will do because they get a good price, which decreases the steem value for all the stakeholders.
This is a good question for @blocktrades to answer as this is their proposal, however in the event that the price of STEEM drops such that the debt to equity ratio falls below 10% again, then SBD will no longer be convertible to $1 worth of STEEM. So the same mechanisms that are in place to prevent the debt from going over 10% will still apply and function.
If SBD is still being printed in this new scenario, then that will just mean that projects get less funding in fiat terms than they asked for (which is bad but unavoidable) and that it will take a larger increase in the market price of STEEM to get back under 10% since new SBD will continue to be printed.
In my opinion, this is ok, and as discussed in the post if it becomes a problem, the STEEM Power holders can vote to burn the SBD instead of use it to fund projects if they feel that this is better for the overall platform.
That all sounds fine, but I'm not a big fan of SBD going below $1 to fund all the extra printing. Non crypto outsiders that I talk to, look at the price not being pegged as another reason to not invest in Steem because it's not working properly.
I think it should be possible to vote proposals that fund in either STEEM or SBD. For example:> If stakeholders at some point decide they don’t like inflation being used to fund worker proposals, they can create and vote in a “burn” worker that pays a roughly equivalent amount of SBD back to the “null” accountIn the circumstance when SBD is overvalued and in short supply it would be preferable to burn STEEM rather than SBD and in some cases vice-versa (although less important since the latter can already be addressed with conversions). There may or may not be other circumstances (apart from burn) when funding STEEM is acceptable or preferable. Possible examples: 1) advertising spend which can be easily ramped up and down in fiat terms, 2) a fund which can accumulates up to some desired balance, and the rate of accumulation isn't that important. 3) donations, prizes or other sorts of promotions where the fiat value doesn't matter much.This proposal depends on SBD functioning well, so it should take care to help contribute to the successful functioning of SBD rather than potentially add further strains on it (e.g. burning SBD when it is overvalued).EDIT: I have withdrawn the above comments after reading @yabamatt's reply which points out that proposal can simply be written which sells SBD then burns the STEEM (or can even do this conditionally based on the SBD price), much like my @burnpost project. Given that observation, the added complexity of selectable payouts isn't needed.
On the matter of inflation, I am totally against increasing inflation under almost any circumstances i.e. when not absolutely necessary. I do not believe it is absolutely necessary in this case. Such workers can easily be funded out of the existing reward pool, especially if they are only 1%. This amounts to reducing the reward pool from about 5% to 4% currently, which is hardly a catastrophic decrease (given how poorly the existing reward mechanism works, I'd be happy to reallocate even more to something that works better, but that's another discussion). It also could be feasible, I believe, for worker proposals to be voted that send funds back to the content reward pool, if that is what voters think is their best use (somewhat complicated perhaps by the fact that the existing pool doesn't have an allocated "system account" name like @null, although probably it wouldn't be all that hard to add one).
The reward pool has always (going back to the white paper) intended to reward contributions which add value to Steem, and the existing 7-day content-item voting method is only one way of doing so, not the only one (and not one that is even working all that well). Such worker proposals would amount to adding another method of awarding the same fund for the same (broader) purpose.
Reallocating rather than increasing inflation, apart from long term investor credibility issues, is as a practical matter by far preferable to adding even more supply and selling pressure into the market which has already struggled to maintain a non-declining price for Steem.
One last thing. I understand the historical context of Bitshares workers but I would strongly suggest to rename this to something like a funding or treasury or budget system. "Workers" is somewhat confusing and less compelling of a message to anyone who doesn't come from Bitshares, since the mechanism can fund actual workers but can also fund other things that aren't workers at all (including as you mentioned burn).
I would also prefer to reduce the reward pool to fund worker proposals rather than increase the overall inflation rate. I definitely like the idea of paying out in SBD rather than STEEM though for the reasons described in the post.
Regarding a situation where SBD is overvalued and in short supply, I assume in that case we can just not vote for the "burn" worker proposal, and vote in another proposal that instead will sell the SBD on the market for STEEM (assuming there aren't other proposals to do actual work that we want to fund).
Good point. The latter could be some worker version of @burnpost. I will edit my comment to note this.
Does reducing the reward pool include reducing payments to witnesses?
I would be in favor of reducing witness rewards proportionally with any other reward decreases, but keep in mind that the witness rewards are pretty small in the scheme of things.
Even if witness rewards were not decreased, I would likely donate funds on a regular basis to the pool and I'm guessing many of the other top witnesses and projects on the Steem platform would do the same.
I'm against reducing the witness rewards. They've already been massively reduced in HF16 and are making up only 10% of the total rewards in the pool.
However, with that said, I don't mind supporting some projects on a project to project basis (e.g. the 150+ STEEM bounty for the multi-sig implementation).
There's 2-3 witnesses in the top 20 that I haven't seen do anything meaningful in the last 1.5 years since I've been here. At least I haven't seen them do anything. I don't think it's fair to be taking the money away from stakeholders instead. By increasing the inflation rate, you are diluting the price of steem, which decreases the money of stakeholders.
The job of witnesses is to: a) faithfully sign blocks (not to sign blocks which would serve to impair the good functioning of the chain); and b) exercise good judgement in the interests of the blockchain and its stakeholders to vote to activate hard forks and set witness parameters (block size, APR, account fee, etc.). As far as I know all top 20 have been doing this. One could certainly question judgment in some cases, but that is pretty subjective.
Perhaps by "do anything meaningful" you are expecting witnesses to go beyond the above and provide some sort of bread and circuses, but that is not the job of witnesses, nor should it be. To the extent that witness elections devolve into a contest over who can do the most or spend the most, it destroys the security margin of the blockchain.
As a stakeholder I will vote against witnesses I see doing this. Likewise, I recommend that stakeholders focus their witness voting on evaluating the suitability and performance of witness candidates in performing the critical and irreplaceable functions described in the first paragraph of this comment.
I fully recognize that many stakeholders do not understand this and will vote otherwise, (most likely) unintentionally undermining blockchain. This makes me not all that optimistic about DPoS unfortunately, but wishing it were not so will not make it not so.
To bring the topic back to this post, I'm told that the very reason Bitshares implemented worker tasks was to ensure a clear division between witnesses (who do the essential witness tasks, see above) and workers (who "do" all sorts of things, as defined by worker proposals). (Bitshares breaks down the role even further into witnesses and committee but that's a discussion for another day.)
Interesting point with witness voting by stakeholders for me because how can someone MEASURE the performance in a very easy and transparent way? Because this is the basis for securing the chain. But if a stakeholder (regular user) can just do this based on gut feelings great marketeers will win which could be fatal long term in my point of view if the silent witnesses just do the crucial and most important things right (how to value for non-techie?) but seem lazy in the public view. It seems there is something wrong with perception of this task, how to solve this? How to value a good witness, reputation.. big no, could be fake due broken rep system, good posts, guess no because not the task, big stake.. big no because Intention not clear.. any useful key measures and numbers for that in a way everyone can easily evaluate to make the right decision without circle jerking and similar bads.
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double post deleted
In other words, witnesses should not speak out in favor or against worker proposals? Even if proposed a decrease in rewards for the witnesses?
Interesting, you should spread your opinion more often.
Forgive me if I'm wayy out in left field with this, but isn't it fair to compare Witnesses to basically what the miners do for the POW chains, (but witnesses are for 'brain-chains'??)
what about producing blocks?
not meaningful enough?
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As a witness in the 90+ region I can tell you that I am burning money every month. My server cost me about 180 a month and I make 4-5 Steem a day.
Witness rewards are already likely on a trajectory to be much too small in Steem unfortunately. The way the system was set up, total inflation declines and witness rewards remain a fixed percentage of the total. So in the end state (18-ish years from now), witness rewards will be 0.09% which is a tiny security budget by the standards of most cryptocurrencies (excluding the ones with fixed supply but there continues to be more and more skepticism about that model working, for example see recent BIS Bitcoin paper).
For now, trimming off a bit of the roughly 0.85% witness rewards might be okay but as you said they're still pretty small in the scheme of things (and this is true both an absolute and percentage terms). I would not support a long term reduction in witness rewards though, as I think long term they are already on a path that is too low.
What about witness rewards being paid in SBD instead? The witnesses would prob like it under these conditions, but would be against it if steem ever went to $8+ again.
I don't think a fixed witness pay makes sense.
Part of witness pay (arguably the bulk of it) is for faithfully serving and securing the chain. If you have (hypothetically) $10 billion chain and witnesses being paid say $30K/year, that is a recipe for disaster not only in terms of scaling costs but also security. It may be fine when the value is only $100 million. But as the amounts of value at stake scales up, witnesses can easily be corrupted by outside influences worth more than their $30K/year position, but with significant negative costs for the success of the chain. You really want witnesses to be very well paid if the chain is worth a lot, ideally with more to lose from losing their witness position than to gain by acting against the interests of the chain/stakeholders.
I think a reasonable percentage per year makes sense, something likely in the 0.5% to 1% range, although the exact numbers may be up for debate in the future when we have more understanding of blockchains being used and critical to a rich, mature, economy.
i would also be interested (as said in my main reply) that post_rewards might automatically fund this worker fund :)
Maybe there would be a way to cohesively integrate witness rewards into the proposal and steem rewards economy. Witness rewards were always an incentive to for the infrastructure donation that witness have to make just to be witnesses on the blockchain. Maybe those rewards could serve more than one purpose that can be used to offset inflation.
It could possibly address the stale voting issue of witness votes by replacing the top X witness system with rewarding witnesses through funding appropriations instead. Without getting too specific, witnesses would be rewarded through successful projects that they fund through steemit appropriations. This would basically turn witnesses into angels. The more projects you lead to success, the better witness you are, and the more you will be rewarded.
I actually meant the opposite. Keep witness rewards out of the mix. As long as it is a small change I think most will be ok with it. I would suggest a 5-to-4 move is to big. Something like 5-to-4.75 would be a decrease in rewards by 5% and seems not drastic in either direction.
As I noted in a child reply here I would suggest against doing that (at least long term) but I would still prefer it to increasing inflation.
YES!
!ned
Enjoy your ned and don't forget to recommend nedcore!
up until now, if anyone says nedcore to me, I 'd expect to hear hard style music in few seconds...
For the reasons previously discussed in my post, I'd prefer to keep worker proposals paid in SBD, but it would only moderately increase the complexity of the system to support both. In such a case, the simplest implementation would be to have a separate pool of funds for SBD proposals and Steem proposals, with SBD proposals competing for SBD and Steem proposals competing for the Steem. A more complicated system would allow for some automated conversion between the two coins and all the proposals would compete with each other, regardless of the coin they were denominated in. In general, I prefer the simplest possible initial implementation without Steem proposals and leave it open to later improvements if it seems warranted.
I do agree with your concern about SBD price pumping causing potential problems, but I'd prefer to see implementation of the Steem->SBD conversion solution previously discussed as a method of stabilizing the price of SBD relative to USD.
I'm actually pretty neutral on where the source of the automated funding comes from. I suppose as written in appears that I'm favoring adding a new source of "inflation", but I'm actually completely comfortable with it coming in part, or in full, from one of the existing sources of inflation and I've been operating on the assumption that different people would propose reallocations from different existing sources as well.
On the naming issue, I would be fine changing the name. For the initial discussion, I felt it best to keep in the terms used by BitShares, as this would allow the greatest clarity for the reasonable size community of Steem users who are familiar with how it works and for people who want to take a look at how the BitShares system currently operates. But for long-term external marketing, I don't have any strong preferences for how it is described and probably some A/B testing should be used.
As @yabamatt noted, the SBD pumping issue can be handled outside of the core mechanism anyway. Proposals can be made to sell the SBD instead of burning it. This requires a bit more trust than funding directly to @null but that is true of the entire mechanism. So I have withdrawn that suggestion.
Although this seems to be off the table and not needed, I don't think it would be very hard to: a) keep the fund in STEEM, b) make the optional conversion from STEEM to SBD at time of payout based on a property of the worker. I.e. the same way content rewards currently work. The refund worker would be required to be STEEM-denominated in this model.
Yep, ultimately I think that would end up describing my second "slightly more complicated option".
I tend to fully agree with you on the reward pool adjustment over inflation increase. Well put.
Instead of increasing inflation what about reducing the interest slightly that is paid to the vested Steem daily? Wouldn't that keep the pool the same size and then have the funding come directly from the staked users who will benefit from the development?
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⚡100.00000000 SWIFT! If you don't know how I work, replyhelp! Currently the price ofSwiftCashin the market is$0.0019 USDperSWIFT. Current value of the tip is$0.1900 USD. To find out more aboutSwiftCash, please read our whitepaper!That still effectively increases inflation since inflation that goes back to existing stakeholders isn't really inflation, it is more like a stock split. (In this case it is also done with the intent of incentivizing people to power up for various reasons, but economic effect once they do is as I described.)
couldn't some of that stock split be reallocated though instead without changing the available reward pool at all? I am just thinking that (I agree reducing the reward pool is a better option than increasing) reducing rewards might become a point of contention with smaller users whereas using a small percentage of the 'stock split' means that it will be funded from already staked users, meaning the largest will effectively pay the most even though on the same percentage cut.
Not my area though obviously.
The bottom line is that shifting from vesting rewards to anywhere else increase inflation on Steem Power holders. On what some other commenter noted is already a high inflation system, this is not a good idea.
I'm actually not a huge fan of the whole vesting system and I'd like to see it scaled back (for example, power down being 7 days instead of 13 weeks). If vesting rewards are reduced (or eliminated) then to avoid increasing effective inflation that should just go away (reducing nominal inflation) rather than reallocating it (increasing effective inflation).
None of the other current uses of inflation have this property so they would be fair game to reallocate, from the perspective of not increasing effective inflation. Which should be reallocated is obviously a matter of debate, even if we agree on not increasing effective inflation on an already-high inflation coin.
Or as @blocktrades originally proposed in the post, inflation (effective and/or nominal) could indeed be increased, but I'm personally very much against this for both long term and short term reasons.
Thanks for taking the time.
Has there been any talk of decreasing the powerdown duration of 13 weeks? It should be 2 weeks tops, or at the most 4 weeks.
It has been discussed several times but there is no broad agreement on it. My own view is one week.
I think 1 week is a little short, but 2 weeks seems good. 13 weeks is just crazy.
Maybe if you have some time I could walk you through what we’ve developed for eosDAC so far. We’re creating a worker proposal system managed by elected custodians and includes an escrow account, arbitrator per WP, and a review process to ensure work is paid only when there is agreement it was completed as speced.
I really do like the idea of using SBD, but I’d want to also fix the peg. Maybe create some automated way to convert in both directions for users who opt in (i.e. funnel some payouts, if configured per account, into a conversion either to or from SBD when someone claims their rewards to keep the peg working as it should).
I also echo comments here about using some of the rewards pool instead of further diluting investors with an increased rate of token creation via SBD. Have we found the sweet spot for posting and curration rewards to increase everyone’s value? Would taking some of that funding and put it toward projects help us all? Maybe.
All these details could get worked out, and we have a number of projects to look to for ideas (Dash, SnartCash, BitShares, etc). One thing we may need to figure out is the joint and several liability for the Steem community if someone sues people involved or some governments get upset about employment law stuff. We’ve spent months working through these complexities with our lawyers for eosDAC. Would be happy to chat about it sometime if you want.
Thanks for looking into this.
Getting the price of Steem past $1 shouldn't be to hard. I offered @ned to help raise the price of Steem to around $3. He never took me up on my offer. I will offer again once the Alliance is up and running.
What would your strategy be to get STEEM to $1 and $3?
I will offer up a proposal to the Alliance once they get up and running.
@lukestokes
The worker proposal contract is still being designed, but the idea is when a WP is submitted to the custodians for approval, it includes an EOS account name as the arbitrator. Custodians will factor that in to their decision to approve or not (is that person an expert in the subject matter, are they trusted by the community, etc). By default the arbitrator would just be the custodian board, but that gives them two seats and the two of three mutisig escrow contract. The point of the arbitrator is to ensure the DAC and service entity avoid legal drama if someone feels they should get paid as promised but a new custodian board is elected and refuses to pay.
Thank you for the reply. The arbitration role is very important and in bidding portals etc where escrow feature is currently used the release often ends up in disputes.
The governance and voting based on the Blockchain technology sounds like an important application of the technology. Ie as important as disruptive as the currency use case.
very good idea blocktrades! sure needs to have some additional thoughts but the basic idea is good and should be really really considered.
and i think as well that reducing the current reward pool makes more sense than increasing inflation.
Personally speaking, I also would be fine with the funds coming from the current reward pool or some other existing source of inflation. Where exactly to get that funding is probably going to be the biggest discussion point going forward, but I'm hoping that while that discussion goes on, we can still get agreement about other points about how the system would function.
Thank you team @blocktrades for this proposal including researching a draft with your team to actually create this.
I think it is a great step for the Steem blockchain to add a worker infrastructure. I'm quite a fan of the BTS worker structure because it enables people to work on all kinds of Steem related tasks and get paid through a more "stable" payment, provided their proposal gets enough votes, then having a one time writeup about it.
If it is not to much work, would it be possible to have this "funding of the fund" also added to the options to choose from post_rewards? Iaw: 100% of these post rewards automagically go to the Worker fund. Ofcourse one can always do that after payouts, but I think it would be good to have.
Having a "refund worker"-concept in place is essential I think, just to have some "virtual vetting bar" before projects receive funds. At least that's how the 400K-refund worker feels in BTS :)
+1 on using SBD.
Totally agree on the importance of the "refund worker" concept. It's critical for setting a voting threshold.
I like your idea for the post_rewards setting that pays to the funding account. It's pretty orthogonal to the worker proposal system itself, so it could easily be implemented afterwards (and the work could be "bid" on by competing parties via the worker proposal system itself).
I've been in favor for 6 months or so. Thanks for a proposal to actually build it. I wouldn't want to see new inflation, but I do think a haircut to rewards inflation to support code and market development would do wonders.
So far as I can tell, the consensus opinion of stakeholders who've spoken up so far to is put the haircut on rewards inflation, which I'm fine with personally.
But the actual percent would have to decrease over time @blocktrades @aggroed, since I am pretty sure that the inflation rate of Steem is supposed to decrease to 1% in 20 years, or something like that.
(I forgot the actual numbers)
We always say that the community is the strength of this blockchain - Implementing something that will help to strengthen and support influence from the community therefore seems pretty smart from my technical-noob perspective!
What happens if the majority of the Community don't want a proposal but a single heavy stakeholder upvotes it to the top of the list?
It appears to me that one must always lean towards the assumption that the greater the stake one has in the project then the greater the motivation to see the project succeed. This does not always mean that their path to success is the correct one; yet the concept of the whale boogy man seems of minimal concern to me.
A single heavy stakeholder can't upvote it to the top of the list against the wishes of other stakeholders unless that stakeholder has more stake than all other active stakeholders combined.
Based on witness voting statistics, the only possible stakeholder that could do this given the current distribution is Steemit Inc, and I'm not sure even they could do it if there was a truly concerted disagreement on the part of all other active voters.
Also, when I spoke to Ned, he assured me that Steemit would not vote on worker proposals and while Steemit could always renege on that, I think the resulting damage to trust would never make it worthwhile to do so.
but what if 3 big stakeholders make a deal or 5 of them? i know that 1 vote for 1 acc would not be fair for all the people that invested a lot but this also has a lot of space for abuse. as someone who's vote means nothing i wish you all the luck.
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The potential downside to such behavior is a reputational loss to the system which affects the value of their Steem holdings. In practice, I haven't seen this abuse vector happen in BitShares.
Looks great, thanks for all the work you've put into this so far.
What about the bounty proposal system? With it I refer to tasks that someone (coop, alliance, individuals,...) deem beneficial and are looking for workers to carry them out. Like a contract proposal...
Also, who / what decides that proposed work is completed and of adequate quality?
Yes for the funding source being the existing reward pool.
In the end, even with this system put in the action and working, we still need some common authority to oversee, direct, guide, govern,... it. And we are back to governance 😀
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Bounty proposals can easily exist outside such a system and doesn't require an on-chain solution. In BitShares, they use a process called "BSIPS", for example, as a way to develop ideas for tasks that the community would like to get done.
If it's code that requires a soft or hardfork, then the decision to use it is up to elected witnesses to decide if they will use the code or not. For other tasks, there's no real decision maker, it's just everyone's opinion. If the community feels the worker didn't really complete the task, they likely won't hire them for future work, and the worker will likely suffer a loss of reputation (and of course, the worker has the option to return some or all of the funds if they want to avoid some of the reputation loss).
I don't think there's any need for a single common authority. Such an authority doesn't exist in BitShares to my knowledge.
But just because it's not necessarily needed, there's nothing to prevent the creation of one or more companies that do oversee projects, if stakeholders consider it a reason to support or not support a proposal (3rd party oversight by an experienced manager/company/etc). I think @xeroc runs one such company for BitShares, although I don't know the extent of what his company does besides escrowing and handling payouts in bitusd rather than bts.
Thanks a lot for the thorough answer. I appreciate it that you take the time to answer such ramblings like mine. Good luck with your proposal. I will certainly support it.
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Hear, hear!!!
Will be awesome to have it happen but things have to be well thought out. Which I am sure will be the case. I am just not the one to understand some of the details.
For now, asking out of curiosity...
What about taxes on any such work payment?
What about varying daily work time schedule?
Can it vary and how much?
What spheres of work would be eligible? All of them since the beginning?
For a worker paying the taxes on his work, it's going to depend on where he resides. In the US, it would be treated as income, just like receiving fiat payments.
The worker proposal doesn't impose any limits on how/when someone works.
Worker proposals can be for any time of work. For example, someone could propose to run a charity.
Thanks for the reply! I am thinking of something and I would like to learn as much as possible.
I guess you meant Type instead of Time. Correct?
yes