The thing I find frustrating about all this is, let's say you get everything you want. By some miracle, Ned throws in the towel and decides to just voluntarily hand over the keys, basically.
No mess. No problems. Great.
Now the you are in charge of the keys and direction of the platform. But I have not seen any plan after that, e.g.:
- No key management plan. Although, I'm sure this is a simple task involving multi-signature or something. Boy, it's a good thing this was documented so nicely right before PR#1. That's a relief. I'm also glad nobody's into conspiracy theories.
- No commitment plan. As much noise is being made over whatever commitment Steemit, Inc. may or may not have made, you have also not created a commitment plan either.
- No prior code. There's nothing, apart from PR#1, that leads me to believe you are capable of developing the blockchain. I saw some mention that the somebody expects Steemit, Inc. to continue operating and producing core blockchain work. Is that the actual plan?
These are just a few of the things that are bugging me about this ordeal so far.
I'm going to respond narrowly only to this point. Nothing I write should be construed as responsive to any other portion of your reply and is not intended that way:
That alone should be a significant improvement to the status quo. You speak of 'developing the blockchain' but that for the most part has not been happening for the better part of two years, nor the (steemit.com flagship/reference web site), etc. Roadmaps have repeatedly failed and resulted in few or no significant deliverables. Blockchain releases have been few and far between with few substantial changes (often little more than parameter or formula changes), and have been late and buggy.
In the case of an emergency there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind there are developers within the community (and who can be hired by people within the community) who can address the problems, just as there are for every single other blockchain (few of which ever fail or have failed and are not fixed). Likewise in the case of exploits which are reported or 'stress tested' by external parties (which has happened a couple of times this year) I still have no doubt that interested and capable community members are up to the task of accepting these reports and acting upon them.
There is plenty of precedent (i.e. hundreds or thousands of blockchains) which do not have a Daddy Steemit cashing out hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to add basically no value beyond some some sort of sense of warmth and protection that everything is being taken care of to people such as yourself who seem to want this.
Again, I am not responding to any other part of your post nor suggesting that this be done. I am solely disagreeing with your claim that there needs to be a plan for such a thing to end up being a benefit to the future prospects of Steem, if it actually happened. There are other reason why it might not turn out well or might not be desired. But it takes a lot to balance out 800K STEEM per month selling pressure if one is to be purely utilitarian about it.
I'll get narrow too because this one is pretty glaring, in my opinion:
If it weren't for the fast action of Steemit, Inc. during the latest blockchain halts, there would have been much more disruption.
No matter how experienced a hired team would have been, I believe that team would not have had a solution in time to avoid being delisted from exchanges. Would they get up to speed eventually? Sure, I don't see why not. But I do not understand why all of a sudden we must eject the only team known that's capable of pulling it off in favor of: no plan what-so-ever.
You might argue that Steemit, Inc. created the conditions that lead to these halts. That doesn't change the lack of a plan for yanking development from the only team that's currently established.
What's so important? Why the urgency, apart from the powerdown schedule?
Disruption does happen, yes. I've never claimed there may not be some. However, I would point alternately to the HF20 rollout which also resulted in severe disruption caused by the poor work of the Steemit team.
That entirely contradicts my experience with exchanges on coins with technical issues. They are very willing to accept that fixing these problems can take time and are not anxious at all to abruptly delist. In fact, doing so creates more work an hassles for them (due to the need to eventually return customer's deposited coins if at all possible). Their strong preference in my experience is that the blockchain gets fixed even if after some delay.
To me, your argument about "we need a plan" is portraying things as if the existing process is an exotic and highly fine-tuned competition race car and we need a plan to replace it with a comparable race car. In fact the reality is more like a broken-down jalopy that barely runs and bleeds money. We can dump the jalopy and head to the car dealer with reasonable confidence of obtaining replacement transportation, likely better at a far lower cost.
The power down is a valid point, but apart from that, I would not argue for urgency, I would argue that there has been no urgency and the problem has festered and only gotten worse on most dimensions for the better part of 2-3 years. We can dismiss urgency to an extent, but also dismiss holding change hostage by creating impossible barriers to it such as expecting or demanding that there be no disruption, or suggesting that only the existing team is sufficiently competent or acceptable as you do above, a model which I absolutely reject.
Change is absolutely disruptive, and may result in problems, potentially significant ones, but slowly bleeding to death is not preferable, and will cause problems, most certainly.
BTW, if only the Steemit team is "capable of having a solution in time" as you claim above, as I reject, then what happens if that Steemit team is affected by: further layoffs, personal health, accident, management mistakes, career decisions to move on, etc.? Even if one believed your view that the Steemit team is irreplaceable, that only introduces more urgency for a process to replace it (due to low "bus factor").
A community-based open development model, while perhaps chaotic and uncertain, is also far more robust to the mistakes or mishaps of a handful of individuals operating under a single hierarchy (with an atrociously bad track record).
The car analogy is great. I would say it's more like you have a working vehicle. You're unhappy with it. It has problems that need to be addressed as soon as possible. Grand Solution: lets pull over, put it in park, leave the engine running, unbuckle, and get out of the vehicle. And that's it. That's the entire plan. Done. I guess we'll walk from now on. But you know the engine is running, so everything is ok.
I didn't say that. I even said, "Would [the replacements] get up to speed eventually? Sure, I don't see why not." It's almost like you're saying that there can only ever be one or zero development teams. I don't get that at all.
What model? Oh, you mean the one that gets hired after the problems are discovered. Got it. So that team, the one that doesn't exist until after the previous team is fired, is robust because why?
I do get that one development team is easier to deal with. Add an independent team and complexity mushrooms. But that should be our goal, not planned abandonment, then hope for the best.
I also get that maybe you witnesses aren't cut out for this idea. Maybe all you should do is decide which hardfork from which team should be implemented and that's it. Maybe we expect too much from all'y'all.
You seem to expect some sort of model with two independent teams.
First of all your comment about "complexity mushrooms" ought to doom the idea right there. Added complexity = risk and often leads directly to failure (particularly when one anticipates "mushrooming", especially when it comes to blockchains and even software in general.
Second is the fact that there is no viable funding for the idea. You are expecting other stakeholders on the blockchain to not only accept that Steemit is extracting hundreds of thousands of dollars per month from the blockchain and giving little back (save for one blockchain resuscitation four months ago) and then, at the same time, pay even more for a second team which would likely not actually be able to do anything because the first team would refuse to work with it (as it has largely refused cooperation with other outside development efforts, has specifically expressed a desire to keep all of the work in house, and has threatened witnesses supporting unauthorized work with being voted out).
Third, there is no viable path given historical experience with Steemit's largely-closed development process for such a second team to integrate or even particularly interact in any manner (even if, hypothetically, the mushroomed complexity of doing so could be managed, a tall order).
A precondition to any sort of second team getting off the ground is to get the first, obstructionist team, out of the way or convince it to significantly alter its methods to be far more open to shared, collaborative development. The latter has been requested numerous times (including, but not only, by me), only to be repeatedly rejected.
In short, your envisioned "safer" model, just makes no sense at all, and to the extent it involves "mushrooming complexity", most likely isn't even any safer. I still can't decide if you are this unrealistic or are just trying to obstruct any change to the status quo.
Yep, I pretty much agree with the particulars of what you just wrote. Either two parallel teams (hard) or one team basically replacing another (less hard). Or something even more clever.
In fact, what you outlined above is not a bad set of criteria for the kinds of goals and opportunities I hope can be explored, moving forward. They're not all insurmountable obstacles, after all.
Something other than, "Hire people when we get in trouble."
On the other hand, if the entire plan is "Phase 1: Stop powering down and selling 800k STEEM per month," that amounts to, "Phase 1: Collect Underpants."
Please read carefully. I did not say that was the entire plan. I said that plan alone would be a significant improvement to the status quo.
For the umpteenth time there have been numerous plans which involve various forms of community governance and that, in turn, clearly involves more than "hire people when we get into trouble" although that too could be part of what happens under such a model. In particular, it involves attracting, building, and supporting a team (how tightly or loosly coupled that team might be is TBD, though both can certainly work) as quickly as possible which, unlike the current one, will actually be accountable to stakeholders (or, indeed, to anyone at all).
One can not entirely rule out an "orderly" path from here to there via radical reform of the processes and policies if the incumbent team, but experience gives reason only to be hopeful, not optimistic. Failing that, the precondition to building a replacement team is ejecting the current one, which has been both obstructionist and ineffective. Yes, that may involve disruption, as an unavoidable cost. I do not seek such disruption but I also do not seek to avoid the unavoidable.
(emphasis yours)
Well then I misunderstood the part where you said:
(emphasis mine)
I think you're still missing the point @inertia .
There will be a standby team always , not one that will be organized when a problem is found.
Basically a community of devs, -whether part of them be witnesses or not- , that are always at the ready, checking the blockchain , making sure things are good.
What happens when steemit inc sells off all their steem?
Do they move on?
800k steem, now increased to whatever their full powerdown is worth, is a death sentence tocthe steem price.
More so if traders get wind of whats happening .no one will invest in it, no one will buy it.
There are a lot of things here that are way out of line and off topic. Where have I ever asked for keys? Where have I even made any requests in terms of "everything I want". Frankly, whatever it is you are proposing that I am pushing for here is so far off from where I am at that I don't even really know what to say.
To simplify my point to the most distilled form: What was your plan if your heist had worked?
That's the thing. I personally (as a stakeholder and witness) have had no plans of a heist.