RE: In Defense of Consortium Blockchains
What are your thoughts on the level of influence large SP holders have over the top 20 witness ranks? The @freedom / @pumpkin account comes to mind. I've been doing a monthly report on witness voting engagement, and I've left out the SP from the Steemit account or Steemit employee accounts because they aren't currently involved in the voting. That said, if they were to vote in 11 witness to support a fork they wanted but the community did not (as an example), that would be bad, right? If they have the power to do that, but choose not to, then we are still somewhat stuck in terms of trusting they will act in the best interests of their investment (and the community). Until there are a lot of developers working on the STEEM blockchain outside of the Steemit company, they do represent some level of systemic risk, correct? At the very least, they (and other high SP holders) need to be trusted to make decisions which align with the community under a DPOS model.
But, as you said, maybe this is the best we can do right now and nothing can be evaluated in a vacuum. If there's nothing better, I'll be happy with what we have, but I'll still push to make improvements where we can.
At one point there was a proposal to technically allow accounts to permanently forfeit their right to vote for witnesses. I presume this was to reduce the need for trust, but it looks as though it may have been implemented, but never actioned.
Oh, that's a great idea. I've heard similar suggestions about having massive SP accounts lock up their funds in timed smart contracts so they physically couldn't dump on the market, even if they wanted to. I heard someone say the Ripple organization is doing something along those lines. Stuff like that may help increase trust and transparency for Steemit.
It's called 'Decline Voting Rights':
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/324
I checked a few weeks ago though, and none of the big accounts have opted to use it at this stage.
Interesting to see the comments there. With the 13 week power down (instead of the previous 2 years), it does seem like SP could just be moved to other accounts to get around this quite easily, but yeah, in theory it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I think it's a shame they felt the need to reduce the power down period. It encourages short-term thinking all around.
13 weeks is still an eternity in the cryptocurrency space, but yeah, I signed up and invested with a full understanding of the two-year commitment. I would have been okay with keeping it in place. Others argue it scared investors away.
It definitely made me not interested. Too much commitment. I came back when the time frame was shortened.
Because you were penalized with an increased rate of dilution (aka debasement) for not powering up for 2 years (1 year weighted average for powering down)?
See my other reply to @smooth about this.
This became a lot less useful when the power down time was changed from two years to 13 weeks. Now even if an account has permanently given up voting rights, the stake can be moved to a new account that hasn't (and it isn't even necessary to wait until all the stake has been moved; a potentially-large amount of influence can be regained in just one week).
Yes, I see what you mean.
I was going to mention that, but I had already gone off on too many tangential points. But since you mentioned it…
And readers note we’re referring to STEEM on this particular power-down delay issue, not EOS.
Remember at BCT I was strongly objecting to that change, both because it allowed some whales to cash out faster and because it changed the incentives and game theory.
I remember one of the arguments in favor of the change was that those whales who were not interested could get out and that it would stop penalizing short-term speculators which were deemed necessary to support the price and marketcap. I felt the argument conflated two separate concerns: the lockup of minted tokens and the debasing of those who were not powered up. I felt instead the debasement could be taken from everyone who was powered up also. Most of those who are powered-up received free (minted) tokens and get voting and curation rewards power from powering up. The design was too asymmetrical in my view. But one of my blog posts pointed out that I came to realize the entire voting paradigm was a design flaw. So then I punted on the debate and started to think about other paradigms for accomplishing the goals of onboarding and such.
I reiterate that IMO Steem has been a very valid and important experiment. I am happy it was created and that I was able to participate.
P.S. It’s an aspect that I would want to restore in any altcoin project I may launch, but it will be done with quite a different method which is going to surprise everyone I think.
Flies always come to honey. It's impossible for whales' stake to remain honest, because if they do not grab the power vacuum, then someone more ruthless will step into their place and dilute their stake. I explained one possible attack mechanism in my blog for the most ruthless to take over the chain. This is a inviolable fact of political economics.
What you do not understand is they are already doing the attacks, but the attacks are obfuscated such as using socket puppets to hide how they are siphoning the minted STEEM to themselves and taking over the blockchain even more so than is evident from your analysis. Of course no one can prove or disprove it, because that is the nature of sockpuppet (i.e. Sybil) attack on the resources.
It is forever a risk and a reality, and no amount of diversity of developers will change it, because the power-law distribution of wealth and resources is inviolable. There is plenty of research on this. Google can help you find it.
That would not mitigate the problem because power-law distribution is fractal, meaning it will reappear in the remaining stake that was not forfeited. Period.
Also presumably the stake when spent would lose that restriction, otherwise fungibility is destroyed. So permanent revocation of voting rights is impossible (or foolish).
What I don't understand is how is this better in PoW blockchains? I think that's what @dan was getting at, primarily.
I answered that already in my other comment.
bees come honey, not flies . . . at least as the expression goes!
: )
"Like bees to honey!"
Where I’m from in the South where there are a lot of flies (and ants) at picnics, it’s “flies to honey”.
Normally we’re not using honey to attract bees. We using honey to attract prey, e.g. ‘honeypot’, or there’s some annoying thing we don’t want to attract which wants our honey.
A nice piece good job @dan
@lukestokes as you said "maybe this is the best we can do right now and nothing can be evaluated in a vacuum. If there's nothing better, I'll be happy with what we have"
It obviously the case
Not for much longer. 😉