Well, the talk is still all out there about governance, How to make our governance better, What needs reviewing and possibly changing and still, after three years we are still where we were in many ways. At least that is the general feel of things when looking at all the comments and suggestions and even ‘complaints’.
One of the things still being brought up is the validity period of a witness vote. Namely, how long does it for, or should I say, ‘How long is it valid for’.
Many of us have touched upon this before, from various different angles and here are a few pointers on what all has been concluded from different people out there:
Witness votes should not be valid for infinity because:
- People do tend to die sooner or later, lose keys etc etc etc
- Witness votes need to be in line and kept up to date with the needs and state of affairs of the alt scene (the alt scene is very dynamic)
- Because the “total voter” numbers are misleading when listed
- Because as time passes it potentially leads to a dictatorship (long term game of numbers with dead voters)
Now I do need to make some notes on this:
The talk of decaying vote value is not acceptable as it undermines the value of a persons investment. The persons investment is what it is, otherwise DPoS loses its fundamental purpose. The time (term) for which the vote is valid for can change, i.e. “count down” from the moment the vote is cast (or until unvoted) i.e. 365 calendar days. This does not affect the foundations of DPoS.
Now as for the points against any changes to the infinite witness votes:
- It could lead to not enough votes being cast at any one given time and the stability of the chain being put into question.
- Many of those wanting changes to the witness voting system are doing it for the wrong reasons.
- It isn’t causing any disasters now, so why mess with it.
Notes: These are the predominant three points made by those who have not been for and who are still not for a “vote decay” of any kind.
There are probably 100001 other reasons out there, as is the case with those “for a vote decay” but as stated many of those reasons are irrelevant to the grand idea of a fair, just, reasonable, logical and stable voting system.
Me personally, I am definitely for there being a timer added to witness (and proxy) votes.
For the sake of arguing the topic, I shall not play ‘devils advocate’ and argue both sides of this topic, but rather in a clear cut debate style of discussion, go through the “anti vote decay” points and then leave it to others to contribute or just simply think about it.
We all saw that the awareness of the people voting to save our chain when needed has now risen to a level where if needed people are willing to vote for witnesses that they may not usually vote for, for whatever reasons, but when needed, will vote for those who they believe or are convinced could serve the immediate needs of the chain if the stability of the chain is put in danger.
We saw this recently on Steem, with the events during the hostile takeover.
I do have to agree that many of the argumentative style conversations to date on the topic do seem to suggest that some people are wanting to make it “harder” for the existing top20 to stay in the top20.
As for their motives, I do not wish to say that they are all lead by the same ideals, but what I shall state is that in the event that ensuring a means for those in the top20 (the deciding body within our governance) can never fall into a position of “the untouchables” that is by no means a “bad thing”.
Do we really want a governing body that feels it is “untouchable” for whatever reason!
So, that to me personally is reason enough to not place emphasis on the reasons some people have for wanting “vote decay”, but rather a view of “what it brings with it” as far as decentralization and insurances that our governance will not become an “oligarchy” who feel like they can get away with anything they wish to do.
As for the current voting system not being a direct disaster now theory, well, if it gets to the point where it is a disaster, do we have to go through the “fork” process again?
Why? Because foresight of what the issues are leading to was ignored! Seriously.
Do we simply sweep it under the rug again? As was seen to be the case in the eyes of so many people out there when it comes to so many things, including but not limited to witness vote decay!
Looking long term and at the given moment in time that we are in, facing the current realities of Hive, there is no better time than the present to add a countdown timer to witness votes (and proxies).
Think about it. If this is ratified now, it won’t become an issue in the future.
The people who look at the statistics will not be mislead by the figures/numbers of votes cast for individual witnesses and all the potential issues are resolved.
However, as for the “stability of the chain” topic, even if thrown out again as an argument against it, all I shall say is the following:
DPoS is what it is.
If you keep leaning on DPoS as an answer to all your other arguments justifying the ecosystem, then this is again the answer to the point you wish to put out there about the stability of the chain.
We have at this moment over 100 active witness nodes out there.
What, will all 100 of them go down in a terror of fire and brimstone simply because some people may decide not to vote for whatever reason?
Or because one stakeholder forgets to recast a vote or certain votes once a year.
Are we to believe that those people running witness campaigns won’t quickly contact those people to build up their awareness of their responsibilities as stake holders!
Seriously!
I mean, seriously!
I base this upon all the events seen over the past years and am not by no means trying to sound like someone who is condescending towards anyone who thinks otherwise.
Is 365 calendars days enough time for stake holders that do not like voting for new people to sit back 10 minutes and recast their votes?
Is it not realistic to expect that witnesses will not reach out to those people when they want their votes?
Or when they feel that those stake holders may need a friendly reminder to not forget to fulfil their responsibilities as Stake Holders/voters!
Is that not what has been happening all along! I dare say we only need to look at the 0.001 transfers and memos to see that this is constantly happening in plain site on the chain, not to mention off the chain via various communication portals too.
So, I personally, do not see a reason why this should be ignored or not done in the very near future.
& my reasons are simply because it is for the good of the chain and all stake holders.
It is more transparent, it helps build awareness and responsibility and it ensures that there are no misleading figures out there which may affect stake holders when casting votes.
I leave it up to those who are against vote decay/timers to state their arguments for their positions on this topic, if they wish to do so.
Yours truly
@jackmiller
Voting for witnesses is a problem. From what I understand, anyone can run a witness node and any witness node connected to #hive can witness and 'verify' #hive blocks on the blockchain. Doing so earns you an amount of $HIVE which is drawn from the pool and paid to you. Sounds great and not that much different from mining cryptocurrencies.
The "voting" process where a vote is assigned by a hive user to any witness nodes is where the unique problem seems to arise with DPoS. Each hive user can assign 30 individual votes, one to each of the many witness nodes out there. It's a pain in the arse and I still don't know how much of a difference it makes to my experiences on here.
I don't mind the idea of an assigned votes' voting power diminishing/ decaying over time but it still wont change the fact that each user being given the option of casting up to 30 witness votes is exploitable. I think that problems down the line will be inescapable with such a setup with so many votes per account. But I don't think changing the maximum witness votes from 30 to say 3 per account will make that much of a difference in the long run.
It's worth a shot still - anything to make the experience of using these blockchain platforms in an easier way is welcomed. I still think that a considerable amount of hive accounts will just not vote as a new account. Or if an account has assigned 30 votes to 30 existing witnesses whose vote decays to 0% of 365 days, they just wont bother re-voting or refreshing their existing vote.
One could muse whether the option to vote could be somehow incentive-driven for the voter. I have enough of voting in real life and having to mimic the same iniquity here is not appealing at all.
Unless you can hardwire a trustless modus operandi for any governance that's required, I don't believe there will be an effective measure to ensure decentralization or to prevent 'oligarchies' from forming. The linked article makes a similar point: Social consensus and governance is an incredibly tricky problem on a blockchain and I don't really know of any other DPoS blockchains which are doing crash hot now either.
So yeah, I waffled on with much ado about nothing. I have no answers and I assume that witnesses host & run a witness node so they can predominantly make an income by doing so. I don't think votes matter much except in the context of how many votes a witness node has which then enables it to process and verify the #hive blockchain faster. I know votes are a problem (much like in real life) because the illusion of power that voting gives is the power which will allow for oligarchies to form.
Yeah so i'll just end on this paradox from the article I linked and it's concluding thought:
Perhaps a more accurate way to describe blockchains is not as “trustless,” but as built on the basis of distributed trust, We are trusting everyone in aggregate
Can we really trust everyone in the aggregrate?
There are definitely many more things that need to be discussed and reviewed apart from the issue with infinite votes.
Any system out there can and probably will be gamed, yet as far as discussing them, it is my sincere thought that they should be approached one topic at a time.
For in the mass confusion, if we stray from the focused topic at hand to other important topics of discussion, that still may need a viable solution to yet be defined, then the issues that do have legitimate and viable solutions, such as adding a countdown timer to voted from the moment they are cast somehow have a tendency to be lost in all the noise and smog.
The scary part is, that we hear that being cheered on by some out there who enjoy the inaccuracies that exist.
So, although your point is a fully valid point for discussion, I feel that it should be a post all on its own, as it does not affect the case for nor against the need to fix the "infinite votes" that have been an issue for the past four years.
Let me put it this way:
Nothing can legitimize an active vote that is valid til the end of time, from a person who is physically six ft under in a graveyard.
It really is as simple as that and if anyone wished to legitimize that, then to hell with their true intentions and morals.
appreciate ur response & consideration, sorry for the late reply too lol.
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