Why people do not keep their wallets open all the time
There is a "fight" going on regarding the PoS rewards of investors in the Gridcoin system. The question is: Why are people (especially whales) not staking all the time?
I finally have a few minutes to write down some reasons, and I am sure I miss a few.
You are free to ask yourself if those reasons will evaporate if a fixed staking amount is introduced, as discussed on Github and completely unknown to people who only read "the thread" on Cryptocurrencytalk, you know, the one where everything important should stand because that is what that thread is for.
Reasons for not staking all the time
- The easiest: Computer is not on all the time
- it's bothersome to always start the client
- I don't want to have another program run all the time (CPU usage or simply another fucking item!!!)
- I don't want to have all those micro transactions in my wallet (may be seen as solved if fixed amount is big enough)
- I do not want so many transactions in my wallet, I need to be able to look through it without a thousand "spam" transactions
- wallet bloating - does the wallet still gets unstable (i.e. unusable and GRC unreachable) when bigger then 1,5MB?
- Why should I do that anyway? (no knowledge about "network security" etc.)
- orphans showing up (I think not normally, so this can be ignored then)
- I don't care
- I am an exchange or similar, or using it for day trading, and never stake (even if I would like to)
- I think having a wallet run (with naturally tells a lot of people my IP) for days without anyone looking at it is insecure. Especially if they know they can catch something that is worth 6-figure.
Does that get solved when there is a fixed amount per block?
Any other reasons I didn't think of in the spur of the moment?
EDIT: One thing I forgot but wanted to really say:
If you have a large coin amount and a fixed stake reward, then your payout goes down even if you are online 100%. Because you simply cannot stake fast enough. Your coins will be in stake and unable to get another block most of the time.
That means that people would have to split up their wallets onto several computers. Or you somehow enforce a maximum stakeable amount, which lowers user's possibilities of control. And may be buggy. We had that in the past, where Rob didn't wanted to believe me and others for more then a month that the staking halved the amount that stakes the next time.
I'm sorry, but I do not see any of these as valid points to not integrate fixed block rewards. I know this is your list to show why people aren't staking, but this started in the fixed block rewards thread. On the contrary, I see this as 9 points of reasons why we should use fixed rewards so only those who do network work receive payment for work done.
This is not about pro or contra fixed rewards.
This is about the discussion that, even if Githubers think different, did not happen in teh community.
In all that thread that had a comment about once a week for a year now, there is one thing missing.
But nobody ever talked about the simple question: Does that solution solve the problem? Does it make the problem worse? Is there a better solution? Or none at all?
Here you have 10 reasons why this problem may exist.
How many of those go away with the proposed solution?
No. Changing, or keeping for that matter, the stake reward will not change any of those problems. In fact, out of those 9 only #2, #5 and #7 can be dealt with while the rest are just personal reasons. However, the assumption is that since you have to start your computer and open the wallet in order to get paid for actual work done you are more likely to do so, so I guess that fixes 1-3?
I agree. If you don't run the wallet because it is not comfortable for you, or you flat out don't care about the network you should not be rewarded.
No need to use other computers or wallets. You can just split your coins to multiple outputs. There will be tool to do this in wallet, and also split the stake output to two halves when you stake (if larger than x grc).
Staking simply split-ed the input (+rewards) to two outputs. This is necessary to keep the network weight up during the 16h cool-down. Rob then foolishly changed the code to spit to 0.01GRC and rest, which effectively crippled the networks security.
You raised valid concerns with the wallet getting too large with so many "spam" transactions. However that is a client-side problem which will be fixed later.
That would make chain attacks more likely, won't it? If you can stake 5 blocks in a row with 5 "parts" of your wallet.
It is already easy for the attacker. He can always modify their wallet to do what they want. It is up to network to reject such activity. Or he can just split the coins manually.
This is also reason why we want higher difficulty. You can't just say I want to stake this 5 txes now. The outputs must satisfy some crypto formula to stake.
I don't care what happened (it's past), and I certainly do not want to attack Rob. Fact is there was an easily reproducible bug in the wild for 2 month that heavily affected the output of blocks. KISS ;)
Do you remember the time when this was exactly ?
Another point that I forgot and now added:
I think having a wallet run (with naturally tells a lot of people my IP) for days without anyone looking at it is insecure. Especially if they know they can catch something that is worth 6-figure.
Right, but you can e.g. use TOR also
If you like getting watched by NSA, you can ;)
I would think that leaving this wallet open 24/7 would be less secure because now you have a program (written by mostly junior/incompetent devs) leaving a port open to the public internet. Doesn't it have to do this to keep the network running? I have a feeling at some point a vulnerability will be found and this wallet will get hacked and my machine will be compromised. But I still leave mine open anyway. Or maybe we'll get lucky and our devs won't touch the networking code. Best to leave that to the experts.
Right, another one I forgot that was on my list lol.
Although I leave the wallet open 24/7, I do see 3 other disadvantages:
I especially "like" the surrounding chatter for that pic ;-)
https://twitter.com/GridcoinIRC/status/910117874194370560
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
point 2 -> see also:
Typo? Just beneath the picture: "Reasons for staking all the time", forgot the word 'not?
Ahaha, yes.
That is always when you don't have time to put it down for at least 30 minutes before you read again. Your mind jumps over it.
Mostly because it takes a lot of cpu and RAM. i dont know how the hell it uses so much RAM.
Not great design, that is why it uses so much ram.
Fix it then :-)
I guess the chain rests in RAM?
profitability?
huh? Sorry, I do not understand that at all.
Oh you mean someone could day trade and make more profit then interest?
Okay, that would also a reason - and one that is not fixed by fixed interest. I think that is a sub-part of another reason I forgot. Exchanges.