About the Gridcoin Problems
Everyone that participates in Gridcoin knows that it is a fantastic idea. Instead of wasting power for useless hashes as in Bitcoin, you get paid for doing scientific work. That is so great!
But Gridcoin also has problems. It part they are based on the simple fact that Gridcoin does not have the allure of all the get-rich-quick coins out there. Gridcoin is serious “business”. It is science. And science takes time and effort.
(btw: This article is no blame game. I just want to point out problems I see, which is a sort of personal illness. The goal is to work on those problems.)
The Gridcoin community is also split around the world, most members haven’t met a single other Gridcoin participant.
At the same time we have a “Foundation” with (thanks to the increase in worth of Gridcoin in the last 2 years) relatively huge funds. From this compensations for devs are payed.
But what sounds like a great thing to have also puts up questions: How is decided who gets paid how much, who has the control?
Currently there was a “test” period for paying 30$ for programming hours. This has run out and a poll was made – for 60$.
WTF? Probably most people seeing the poll thought. Why double? Where is the discussion?
And what about the programming-related stuff that is not coding?
We all know that the last big update didn’t went that well. Heavy forking for weeks and downed exchanges are poison for the coin and the idea behind it.
At the same time not even the wallet updates were announced in the important channels (not to mention that there are a LOT of channels).
Also I cannot remember that people were asked to join Testnet to test the new version. Maybe I have missed it or it was not even done. Either way, more people in Testnet may have prevented this forking disaster.
And there are a lot of other things. Just now this was on slack:
Peppernrino [12:47 AM]
how do the people in here feel about our tweeting schedule? i feel it's a bit anorexic, and could use some more content...
looking for suggestions on how to beef up our social media presence.
this is a community endeavour, after all.
the voices of the underlings get ignored all too often.
would you like to see more contests?
BOINC challenges?
other cool science articles not involving gridcoin?
open source development initiatives?
There are a lot questions, and I am sure there are more.
There is a lot of stuff that is unknown to the average user if you aren’t hunting it all the time, for example: Who has access to the twitter account? Or even: What is the name of the account?
I have quite a bit of experience in internet-only volunteer things, and I can assure you, if it weren’t for our greed ;) this project would already have crumbled.
I don’t want this to happen. I want Gridcoin to boost science, make a more eco-friendly coin than the PoW coins are and, which would be really nice, pay my retirement.
What problems do you see and what questions as a Gridcoin miner do you have? (I could have written more but decided to wait for feedback.)
Being A SteemStem Member
The foundation is a farce and does not exist but in name. I keep saying we need to create a voted on by the community real Gridcoin Foundation with checks and balances , currently its just a wallet with a name. The current forced on the community " trusted community members " and " leaders " are a joke. It's' just when the last person left handed it over to CM-Steem and he is a horrible leader and just a condescending punk heck I don't even think he is 18 with how much his voice squeaks and cracks when he is doing the mumble sessions , and he was just as disliked as I am when he joined we could go back to 2015 CCT posts and bitcointalk when he was first trying to sync his wallet and had issues and see the back history and how disliked he was and has been. You have to be part of the slack GRC8 get along gang high-school clique and kiss ass and put up with slander in order to be a part of Gridcoin and its pure BS.
Problems I see:
Testnet needs more work to make it mirror production behaviour.
Voting need to become more robust and visable with more information at hand to users.
The UI needs an update to simplify it in some areas and also deplay more relevant information.
The NN needs to be ported to C++ (currently underway)
Builds and verison control needs to be made more robust, The codebase and GitHub repo is a mess. Lots of obsolete and conflicting information.
Gridcoin needs cleaning up and a proper build system putting in.
(I think they are planning to use auto tools or something, Its half implemented as far as I know)
The way Devs are paid isn't the most ideal way, given Devs submit their own times which can be falsified, I'd prefur fixed bounty amounts on specific coding tasks. Like port the NN to C++ £1200 in GRC bounty. Seems reasonable, then we can vote on the bounty amounts.
What I'd put as priority 1 (after getting network stable again) would be getting the development cycle, testing and building streamlined and automated as much as is reasonably possible.
Since the unstable Release there are more People running the Testnet.
Barton is now Testing Coordinator so there is movement to get the Wallets tested befor Release.
https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@ravonn/gridcoin-test-coordinator
If i understand it right we have started with using the Foundation Funds to Pay the Devs that are working on the "Core Wallet"
I think there is a Need for something to get the Community paid for the Work they are doing to make the GridcoinNetwork more usable.
Maybe something like a Bounty-Bot can help(first paid by the Community but we can think about to use some Funds of the Foundation for that too.)
https://github.com/gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Tasks/issues/211
notice to myself: Small rewards wallet, to be loaded with Foundation funds for agreed stuff/budget
Great post.
The poll is sudden similarly to a recent Moo! Wrapper de listing poll. The cause of a stir is lack of proper governance rules. There is Gridcoin 2018 Budget task, but it has found very little interest in the community.
There are other areas of non core wallet development, that are very important, for example light wallet, road map, website, wiki, translations, official graphics, whitepaper etc. So why core development only? back to square one - no governance rules and policies and no general budget.
There is no clear vision for a future shape for the project. Minting new tokens to signed up BOINCers is just a start of the coin economy. A larger picture is needed.
I see two main reasons for several weaknesses. One is lack of governance (a set of system governing rules, not Mr X elected as CEO), second is lack of the budget. On the positive note, there are some improvements - whitelisting / greylisting rules for BOINC projects have been introduced recently, there is a 2018 Budget task on github.
Thank you for your valuable input!
notice to myself: good list of items
Great points, the lack of a clear vision is a problem. I know many have worked hard on the current roadmap but the objectives are more incremental rather than any leaps forward. Removal of the team requirement would probably be the biggest leap forward if we were to successfully implement that.
Maybe a return to the bounty system for specific objectives is the best way to move forward? Apart from the core developers working on the wallet.
I still currently see the problem of ease of entry, new users are sort of lost and also require an initial investment (for solo mining) but i believe this will be flipped around once new protocol technologies are made (such as TCD, manual rewards, etc).
As stated, science takes time and effort and we all hope for the best, but most importantly, keep up the crunching!
Read and agreed upon.
Bit more transparancy couldn't hurt the project.
Like for example the 'in your face' poll of doubling the pay is quite sudden and the timing of it is, in my opinion, ill chosen after a long period of forking and way too soon: we're not sure if the update fixed it all.
The problem is we don't know that well how much effort people have put in the fixes, not everyone reads the github technicalities, I sure don't.
The thing is that the time-keeping and prior announcing of things does not work, or more correctly has never happened. If you didn't join the channel something was talked about at a certain time, you always got the surprise after the fact.
The programming stuff is a different topic, some things are just not understandable if you aren't a programmer.
But even then they need to be explained. In part that happens here on steemit, but there is no reliability.
Part of the issue here is that someone has to step up to make those announcements. Who is going to monitor the channels constantly, and release info? Do you really think it's the best use of a developer's time to have them stop coding, flush their mental buffers, and post a status update daily?
Marcos posted weekly. Play by Play, minute by minute communication takes a dedicated communications resource. All GRC has right now are random people deciding to make posts here or there. Sometimes someone makes posts for several months at a time, and then they stop.
Consider what it would take to make you personally commit to that effort, long term. It's likely, that is a starting point for making it happen. Right now operations is pinned posts in slack. Does all of that need to be on the public wiki? Does there need to be a team of communicators? How do you authenticate that they are truly communicating on behalf of GRC?
The most simple things are often the most complicated to make happen.
Lately I've been trying to communicate the dev's work to the community more effectively in my new position. Let me know how I can improve. Current plans are weekly or every other week postings about dev happenings (unless there is an update that week which takes priority).
Yes, indeed, I thought the same. There is no reliability and that is bad.
This is not the "fault" of the volunteers, it is just how things work in a crowd of volunteers with no strict goals.
Maybe something like a Report "Development of the Month" could be Interresting to inform the User(The Devs write that anyway to get the Payout of the Fundation. So it only need to make it readable for normal User)
Good idea.
We should use the voting functionality to test the waters for different ideas. For example, instead of having a poll to raise the compensation from $30 to $60 we should have had a preliminary poll asking users what their ideal compensation is for devs, with choices for $30, $40, $50, $60 etc. prior to the official poll to raise compensation.
For example, yes. Or a different model. Or...
Yes, perhaps a different model for non-core tasks. Do we have official bounties still?
Should be, I didn't retract my 30K, even if I cant remember what the 10K one was about. Or was it only 5K?
2 years ago :D
Ya the twitter looks like ick...as a twitter freak I find the official twitter to be..lacking. Allegedly the issue is a hold up on deciding on what gets posted at all..which has somehow become such a process that they're lucky to get a post out every few days..which is death for twitter. I personally think gridcoin having an official twitter at all that doesn't update at least 3-10x a day is a waste and looks bad. twitter is all about the constant updates. A tweet lives for 25 minutes before it dies unless you retweet it later.
I also know it's not for lack of trying from community members. The issue is a strange block on what gets posted...it would seem the qualifications to post something on the gridcoin twitter are...extreme. I'd say get posting more on twitter [figure it out be more lax on what gets posted etc] or scrap twitter entirely. It looks brutal to have it dead in the water which is kind of what it is right now.
As for the vote on $60 dev wage increase? the # isn't the issue I think it was the suddenness. No one felt there was much discussion with anyone. It just happened..also apparently its worded all messed up like "if this doesn't pass NO ONE GETS PAID AT ALL" which is kinda fucked up imo...like $60 or bust basically. I could be wrong about that but that is what I have come to understand which IS messed up. That's some weird ultimatum shit. They don't get paid at all if we don't agree to double their wage? whack! XD
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Things we need IMO:
A Nicehash style one click solution to get new users on board. This could be either for pool miners or solo miners but preferably both. This solution could auto select projects based on (A) Profitability (B) User's interest
Light wallet for web based and/or android/ios. I know crt is working on this and things are progressing nicely. But maybe there should be an official bounty on this?
More goods and services to be traded with Gridcoin. MarketGrid is a nice start. A dedicated website for trading things with Gridcoin this could be useful.
Commercial projects whitelist.
BOINC projects directly integrating Gridcoin. Gridcoin finance was a nice start. Could there be other projects that we could set up to perform useful work?
i'm a new user. i have not gotten my wallet to sync in the 3 days since i signed up. i'll continue to BOINC as I have for the last 6 years, but I've about lost my patience with getting this POS (not talking about staking) to work. I agree with the OP that this project only appealed to my personal greed. I think your project will die a slow death if you can't even make it stable for new users. But I'll continue to BOINC. Don't forget that gridcoin is not the be all end all. BOINC will survive and grow without gridcoin because there will always be people like me who will contribute to the advancement of science for free.
We've had some bad syncing/forking issues lately. Are you on the v3.7.8.0 or higher wallet? If you can't resolve I recommend waiting until we get a more stable wallet in place.
Unfortunately the new user onboarding process has never received much attention. We should really have some type of wizard set up for new users that is directly integrated into the client.
it is 3.7.10 already ;)
There were some bad issues letely. The current 3.7.10 version should work fine. Please download it again from gridcoin.us (if on windows, delete earlier .msi files) and try again.