As we grow, there is a STEEM storm coming on the horizon. We can avoid it, if we are careful now!
Whether it be a DDoS by an evil blackhat, a domain name seizure or suspension, or corporate and legal bureaucracy, we should not get too complacent with only four (4) major roads that lead to the steem blockchain.
Right now, there is only four major, popular ways, to read/write from the steem blockchain:
- steemit.com, busy.org, chainbb, and eSteem app
There's more new ones being built and tested, like:
- Zappl, Webapp being made by eSteem, Wordpress plugins, and more.
HOWEVER, AS OF TODAY, WE LOOK LIKE THIS:
We're not the resilient to disruptions, like these:
- DDoS
- Government
- Corporations
- Courts, Law
- Large social media giants
- Media & Press
....that's because we only have four (4) major and popular ways to read/write steem.
Now, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank eSteem.ws for having the forward thought of registering a .ws domain instead of a .COM or .ORG. Even youtube was smart enough to register a ".be" domain youtu.be
If you are a developer, entrepreneur, and angel investor, or someone looking for a business opportunity, now is the time to build some more interfaces to the STEEM blockchain.
- We don't need 4 main ways to talk to STEEM. We need a minimum of 40, maybe even 400
See, you CANNOT take down the whole internet very easily, because of the number of networks, domain extensions, and servers running the whole thing.
But if the internet was limited to only 4 domain names, with 4 clusters of servers, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
So now is NOT a time for us to be complacent. I know @ned is excited about his SMT (Smart Media Tokens) but I'm of the opinion we should walk before we run.
These are tender times at the moment, and if you lose sight of the bigger picture by focusing on new features, or what new and cool things you can do... you get complacent with what you have.
We're not resilient enough to withstand every type of storm that will hit us at one time or another. Let's build a stronger ship, before we set sail in unchartered territories with SMT.
The more popular STEEM gets, the more reasons you give for the existing establishments, both political and corporate to create new challenges.
This is where the old wise man on the top of the mountain who climbed up long ago, would give great advice to the young, eager, and somewhat impatient energetic climbers ready to start the same journey.
- AGREE, DISAGREE? YOUR COMMENTS? Upvote and then reply. :)
If this is an equal concern for you, please consider re-steeming or sharing this post with others. I love this place just like you do.
Fundamentally, what we need is a client to browse the blockchain. Basically a blockchain browser. Centralized website will always suffer DDoS, regardless how many.
Well we're going to have https://vice.org in the future. :)
Sigh, a .org domain? I recommend two different domain extensions lead to the same website at a very minimum.
I think many of us are tired of bouncing around social platforms and found Steemit to feel most like home - until we became a minnows in a teacup. I personally don't like busy.org and I'm not really interested in signing in through 3rd party sources (which are just as vulnerable).
There has been so many users attacked and phished lately that it has caused uncertainty - that isn't good. When doubt begins to shroud the platform, we're in trouble. I agree, now is the time (if ever) to be resilient and to build a stronger platform.
My issues with the platform are not so much technical but rather with the 'inner-circle' dilemma and how discouraging it is to new users.
The fact that certain users get autovoted for shit-content is killing this platform in tandem with those abusing it completely. Sure, autovotes are great but not when it promotes empty content. When I came here a few months ago I saw "quality matters', but it truly doesn't. Social circles are the only matter.
Pimp yourself to the inner circle and you might have a fighting chance. Otherwise, set your expectations to zero and post away - you might get lucky.
It doesn't help that we have serious abuse going on, plagiarism gets rewarded, attacks on the platform and power users dumping steem into the market while promoting to get new people on board. It's a sick, sad little world here lately. Greed is strangling this platform, but that is just my 2¢ for what it's worth. A conversation worth having, so I resteemed to get some more thoughts here.
You've really highlighted what I've observed and suspected all along... especially about the inner circle...
Well said.
I hear what you're saying. However, even inner circles implode. There's evidence of this type of carnage if you hunt and seek it out.
Some join inner circles only to be booted from them, and have to show up in another inner circle until that one is short lived too. So it's a constant fight that way as well.
I think we need to focus on uptime and availability first.
Next, we focus on inner circles and greed
Finally we can talk about SMT after the first two are addressed (which is going to be an ongoing effort over the next year, for sure).
I agree, uptime and availability should be the ultimate focus at this point. And yes, it'll take time - likely through next year. At this point I just do not think it's the focus. It seems that Ned has his sights set on the next project, while the platform is at a critical juncture.
The SMT should be back burner and I agree with you that reprioritizing is vital at the moment.
@ned seems to be following in @dan's footsteps - on to the next best thing.
I wouldn't put Ned and Dan on the same level, Dan has paid a very steep price for making Steem FOSS...
You are quite right. I simply point out that @dan went on from Steem and no longer is working on making it better, and that now, @ned seems to be giving all his attention to SMT, and letting Steemit be practically unusable.
I didn't mean to imply that they are united in purpose or sentiment, merely that their actions are similar and similarly sequential.
I agree! I came here a few months back i love it here but after a while i realized that unless i understand the crypto market completely and buy alot of steem at a very low price to actually see real money. I mean dont get me wrong im not leaving theres a lot of great people helpful people and getting what ever it maybe 10 cents or 2 dollars for sharing my thoughts or writing about something that i like and am interested in is better then nothing but i can see the abuse could make the platform crash hopefully theres a way to be fair for newbies and people that have been there and helped make this platform what it is also
I'd upvote you, but I'm getting error messages... proving your point.
Yep, lately i have to upvote like 5 times to finally get the upvote done...
Exactly! Why are there no big articles on the trending page talking about all the DDOS attacks and the fact that I have to try and leave a comment 2-3 times before it takes lately? It's a mess? WHY? Why is nobody talking about why? Forget about smart media tokens...when is the ship going to be stable? Frustrated.
Exactly, I know. This was my 3rd attempt at trying to post this article. Just give it an hour, or two, and come back. :)
Really? I had no problems on busy.org... So there too?
way to pump some fuel! great post... lets get this fixed you geniuses you!!!
A peer to peer backup platform would be great
Yes, just like torrent sites can feed each other files peer-to-peer. I like it.
Something like a "hot" gui downloadable software, that only reads posts in the last 48 hours from other steemit users via peer-to-peer. No need for it to know or save the entire historical chain.
(Electrum wallet could teach us some good ideas)
This way we could lighten the load on centralized servers like steemit's interface, but still reward them automatically by linking to their api for post transactions only. (Not reads, just writes)
It's good to start thinking outside of the box (or the barrel) in this case. :)
Indeed, by going this route the Steemit users could take a huge load as well as Cost off the servers. Lets hope this idea grows legs.
Awesome idea! A torrent blockchain. That is decentralization!
Imma try to resteem this, just for that comment.
He's talking about the GUI the blockchain is already decentralized of course.
Well, not so much, since you can just buy the top 20 witnesses with cash, and run whatever code you want.
But, you're right. Imma big fan of torrent tech to decrease server loads, and this seems like a great way to decentralize the GUIs, which so far, are quite centralized.
Well that would be;
Why would the top20 not still be the functional witnesses?
Completely agree with you. Until we can rely on the foundations, there is no sense in adding new features. It is good that third parties start working on new "windows" to the blockchain. The more people start contributing to the growth of the whole service, the better for everyone.
Thank you. I just visited @lukestokes post on this. And there the topic also was discussed in depth and length. I like your explanation on that a lot:
"We don't need 4 main ways to talk to STEEM. We need a minimum of 40, maybe even 400"
because people refuse or got annoyed with other gateways. I myself haven't used the alternative options because it worked, though it worked as a stubborn donkey:)
I hear people saying they want to quit and what else. From my point of view frustration is a bad counselor. I am here little over a months but it has a lot potential for me. I do think of it as a long term investment. For me it is not money but energy and time. I put A LOT of effort in my postings and had roller coasters of emotion.
But I do not understand the impatience so much. Of course it is annoying - I felt the same as everybody else. But then I leave and come back later or just discipline myself or think: Well, that is a good exercise not letting yourself being influenced by the negative talk.
I mean: What do I want here?
As far as I did not have put fiat money in here and am a small fish, this is just fun. Of course, I'd think differently if there was a lot of money at stake, but it's not.
For me it is clear when I join a platform like this - called "beta" - there is uncertainty and I am partaking in the game of risk.
But meanwhile: What happens? I make experiences I wouldn't have made otherwise. I get to know very interesting people I wouldn't have got in touch with. For whatever this is good: I will see that in the future, doing some retrospective analysis.
For those who are afraid to lose money, of course, this is painful. If I were in those shoes I would probably need some basic information to make my decision. Probably that is one of the painstakingly considerations one has to make. And the discomfort that no one seems to be around who will give certainty and an outlook that everything is going to be fine.
Take the investment and leave or stay? That is a very personal question no body can answer other than I myself.
I feel okay. I am patient or I decide to be:)
Stay optimistic & get the things out of steemit you love and appreciate!
Lately, easier said than done. 😂
I don't know if this is meaningful, but this guy seems to be developing an android app
I can't upvote you at the moment, it fails every time I try it. I'll try it again tomorrow because I totally agree with what you wrote!!
Distributed version controlled front-ends where you can test new features as well?
Upvoted, resteemed and followed you now, @intelliguy. I agree with your comments. Cheers!
Well said. The system is just too fragile at this time to make any further introductions. More paths are a natural progression. This will simply take time.
Agree, wee need more sites to run over steem blockchain... But what we need the most is a SOFTWARE to make transactions, that way we dont depend on any site to get our steem or SBD in or out of our accounts... Im thinking something similar to software wallets...
Try this wallet built by @jesta:
https://github.com/aaroncox/vessel/releases/tag/v0.0.8
I keep trying to upvote you, but it buffers and buffers and buffers... 😖
~bluerocktalk🖖
Thanks for your work as well! Followed @intelliguy I'm starting to read it now. I wish you continued success. I will continue to follow you. Take care of yourself, my dear friend.
We definitely need some alternatives and then users need to know about them. If the main site is struggling then there should be a static page to direct people to other places they can use Steemit. Twitter had the Fail Whale, we need the Steemit Slug or something.
Perhaps Steemit Swordfish, as alliteration always agrees about ... ah ... anything? :)
Ahem, no, I meant, in keeping with the "fish" idea, but the alliteration attacked all attempts at ... stop that.
A puffer fish that puffs steem...
It looks like the cards are stacked against us, but 40 different ways to access STEEM? Oy vay!!
You would get an opportunity to pick your own top 3.... someone else might choose a different top 3....
In that case we're all connected anyway so I think you're onto something! My worst glitch moment was when someone who is my friend, who has almost 10,000 followers and who has a great reputation tried to resteem one of my posts that was very near and dear to my heart. It didn't go through or show up on his page and he wasn't able to retry because Steemit was confused and said it was already resteemed. Some people put their best into their posts and we don't need more glitches and outages than we already have.
cant upvote at present. This is BS I just posted and we lose the votes because of this errors
Steemit is running slow today. Whats going on?
Normal loads (which are heavy), and maybe some abnormal loads (which are evil).
I agree completely.
Personally I am very bullish on the SMT idea and think it makes STEEM into a $100 coin.
However, we need the foundation in place. The attacks of late show we are on someone's radar. I agree, we need to triple the number of ways to access this blockchain immediately. There simply is too much at stake.
I certainly hope the developers are getting the nodes in order from the attacks and putting the system together. The wider in scope this becomes, the harder it is to take down.
What about some things registered under the .io?
Isnt that the safest?
It's SAFER. Not necessarily safest. Having a piece of legitimate and trusted software run on your computer that doesn't even need DNS would be safest.
I don't think we need 10s of sites to access this platform, that will just add cognitive dissonance for new users, which would result in not joining at all. We do, however, need one very robust and fast website that can handle the volume and security well. Bigger investments from steemit into this area would go a long way.
Like steemit.com ?
Let's say due to political lobbyists the government enacts a task force, which seizes the steemit.com domain name.
What just happened to your very robust and fast website if it can't be found anymore?
I don't really get this logic. Take pirate bay as an example. It had more than one domain. They didn't really go after the interface but the source (which didn't fully work anyway). Would they really be that naive to seize steemit.com and let's say busy.org leave untouched? The bigger threat might be a lack of investment killing the platform (due to poor user experience) at the current state. Longer term, who knows - if steemit gets big enough, then it could attract attention.
That is exactly the whole point of the post. Deal with it now, rather than later.
Yes, and it made it tougher, a LOT tougher, because of that single reason.
It's a place to start. A really good place to start. Having multiple mirrors has proven to work well. Why do you think that most sites (like any downloadable software, has mirror 1, mirror 2, mirror 3) -- they do that for load reasons, and even DDoS reasons.
More mirrors is more stability. Then after you've done that, you have more obstacles to tackle, but that is the easiest and most frequent method that we can deploy now.
Steem is in its infancy, we are still in beta, new projects come up every day. It is going to be revolutionary
uped,resteemed. we need a stronger ship . period.
I keep trying to upvote you, but it buffers and buffers and buffers... 😖
~bluerocktalk🖖
This is some good forethinking.
Agreed! Also, most people only know about one option.....
I totally agree with you. Let's see if I can upvote you...
It is not suprise I don't know why is this happening with Steemit considering that there is almost no post about it on Steemit. Sorry for this question, but I don't know the reason...Are this problems with with Steemit last 10 days all attack on Steemit or Steemit has it own problems?
Thank you for the post, really is good to get information.
Another issue is witnesses. An attacker only needs enough SP to vote in 20 top witnesses to take over Steem.
As long as that remains the case, I will be relatively confident that, sooner or later, it will happen. It would take little more than lunch money for Zuckerburg et al.
and @ned, and the rest of the mined stakes, would walk away rich.