I would be in favor of reducing witness rewards proportionally with any other reward decreases, but keep in mind that the witness rewards are pretty small in the scheme of things.
Even if witness rewards were not decreased, I would likely donate funds on a regular basis to the pool and I'm guessing many of the other top witnesses and projects on the Steem platform would do the same.
I'm against reducing the witness rewards. They've already been massively reduced in HF16 and are making up only 10% of the total rewards in the pool.
However, with that said, I don't mind supporting some projects on a project to project basis (e.g. the 150+ STEEM bounty for the multi-sig implementation).
There's 2-3 witnesses in the top 20 that I haven't seen do anything meaningful in the last 1.5 years since I've been here. At least I haven't seen them do anything. I don't think it's fair to be taking the money away from stakeholders instead. By increasing the inflation rate, you are diluting the price of steem, which decreases the money of stakeholders.
The job of witnesses is to: a) faithfully sign blocks (not to sign blocks which would serve to impair the good functioning of the chain); and b) exercise good judgement in the interests of the blockchain and its stakeholders to vote to activate hard forks and set witness parameters (block size, APR, account fee, etc.). As far as I know all top 20 have been doing this. One could certainly question judgment in some cases, but that is pretty subjective.
Perhaps by "do anything meaningful" you are expecting witnesses to go beyond the above and provide some sort of bread and circuses, but that is not the job of witnesses, nor should it be. To the extent that witness elections devolve into a contest over who can do the most or spend the most, it destroys the security margin of the blockchain.
As a stakeholder I will vote against witnesses I see doing this. Likewise, I recommend that stakeholders focus their witness voting on evaluating the suitability and performance of witness candidates in performing the critical and irreplaceable functions described in the first paragraph of this comment.
I fully recognize that many stakeholders do not understand this and will vote otherwise, (most likely) unintentionally undermining blockchain. This makes me not all that optimistic about DPoS unfortunately, but wishing it were not so will not make it not so.
To bring the topic back to this post, I'm told that the very reason Bitshares implemented worker tasks was to ensure a clear division between witnesses (who do the essential witness tasks, see above) and workers (who "do" all sorts of things, as defined by worker proposals). (Bitshares breaks down the role even further into witnesses and committee but that's a discussion for another day.)
Interesting point with witness voting by stakeholders for me because how can someone MEASURE the performance in a very easy and transparent way? Because this is the basis for securing the chain. But if a stakeholder (regular user) can just do this based on gut feelings great marketeers will win which could be fatal long term in my point of view if the silent witnesses just do the crucial and most important things right (how to value for non-techie?) but seem lazy in the public view. It seems there is something wrong with perception of this task, how to solve this? How to value a good witness, reputation.. big no, could be fake due broken rep system, good posts, guess no because not the task, big stake.. big no because Intention not clear.. any useful key measures and numbers for that in a way everyone can easily evaluate to make the right decision without circle jerking and similar bads.
You are right. Big flaw in DPoS IMO. As you say marketers who have no idea what they are doing may win (and we seen that on Steem) and worse buying votes, cartels, etc. It seems that other DPoS chains have had more problems for whatever reason, but you are right to identify this as a concern.
What i wanna say is for the regular user it is almost impossible to get a full understanding why he chooses a witness or not. In my opinion you must be an Steem expert (just like a witness) with much time to dig deep with steemd, SteemWorld or direct data request from the db to get a comlete picture of the person you voting for. I guess many like myself just voting because we read something, heared something about one, which looks good without any deep knowledge and maybe we are often wrong with our votes for someone and there are much better choices, people who really deserve our witness vote.. but who knows? What is a good witness? How is a good witness defined in a objective manner?
We have this blockchain, all the data right around the corner, BIG data.. basically this is wonderful and because it could be fully transparent but it isn't because of the massive data which needs to be visualized, aggregated to get something like a short profile.
If you think of a profile sheet with some bars, key numbers (which is already too much) and finally like stars valuation but with key numbers which cannot be manipulated like the reputation value (which is insane btw in my eyes, when i came here i was saying "wow what achievement, he got 72.. but after a while i realized that there are many individuals which achieved that not with reputation more like badupation.. but the public view can't see that).
What would be measures, key numbers (pro community, pro chain stability, pro curation) to build a Top 100 of witnesses based on hard blockchain data, not bought votes or something, simply a mix of real proof. Maybe i missed such things 1.5 years because i'm blind, but to me it is very geeky to vote for a candidate because i would end up searching all day long for proof of witness of hundreds of accounts. If i missed something because i'm blind please let me know. It is not about nobody wants to vote but how it should be done for a regular user who just give his 2 cents with a post, comment for vote.
If i look to my voting list, i realize some witnesses are gone, but i found this by accident and my vote is still active. Nobody cares about after chosing the witnesses or thinks about, it would be nice to have something like a monthly report about witness activities (whatever they are) in different categories to see the real facts on the chain and not assumed facts.
With the grow of the chain witnesses should become "institutions" rather then "people".
Imagine a country where 19 people are gaining 10% of GDP, that doesn't looks right.
So later on I expect to see a witness to be a team of marketers, tech people and so on, later on it might even become something like some political party
I'm not sure you can equate 10% of inflation with 10% of GDP. At most it would be 10% of growth in GDP, but that assumes that the economy doesn't grow any faster than the money supply.
Anyway, I agree with witnesses being institutions in a large system. As for what form institution, I wouldn't even venture to guess.
Forgive me if I'm wayy out in left field with this, but isn't it fair to compare Witnesses to basically what the miners do for the POW chains, (but witnesses are for 'brain-chains'??)
Witness rewards are already likely on a trajectory to be much too small in Steem unfortunately. The way the system was set up, total inflation declines and witness rewards remain a fixed percentage of the total. So in the end state (18-ish years from now), witness rewards will be 0.09% which is a tiny security budget by the standards of most cryptocurrencies (excluding the ones with fixed supply but there continues to be more and more skepticism about that model working, for example see recent BIS Bitcoin paper).
For now, trimming off a bit of the roughly 0.85% witness rewards might be okay but as you said they're still pretty small in the scheme of things (and this is true both an absolute and percentage terms). I would not support a long term reduction in witness rewards though, as I think long term they are already on a path that is too low.
What about witness rewards being paid in SBD instead? The witnesses would prob like it under these conditions, but would be against it if steem ever went to $8+ again.
Part of witness pay (arguably the bulk of it) is for faithfully serving and securing the chain. If you have (hypothetically) $10 billion chain and witnesses being paid say $30K/year, that is a recipe for disaster not only in terms of scaling costs but also security. It may be fine when the value is only $100 million. But as the amounts of value at stake scales up, witnesses can easily be corrupted by outside influences worth more than their $30K/year position, but with significant negative costs for the success of the chain. You really want witnesses to be very well paid if the chain is worth a lot, ideally with more to lose from losing their witness position than to gain by acting against the interests of the chain/stakeholders.
I think a reasonable percentage per year makes sense, something likely in the 0.5% to 1% range, although the exact numbers may be up for debate in the future when we have more understanding of blockchains being used and critical to a rich, mature, economy.
Maybe there would be a way to cohesively integrate witness rewards into the proposal and steem rewards economy. Witness rewards were always an incentive to for the infrastructure donation that witness have to make just to be witnesses on the blockchain. Maybe those rewards could serve more than one purpose that can be used to offset inflation.
It could possibly address the stale voting issue of witness votes by replacing the top X witness system with rewarding witnesses through funding appropriations instead. Without getting too specific, witnesses would be rewarded through successful projects that they fund through steemit appropriations. This would basically turn witnesses into angels. The more projects you lead to success, the better witness you are, and the more you will be rewarded.
I actually meant the opposite. Keep witness rewards out of the mix. As long as it is a small change I think most will be ok with it. I would suggest a 5-to-4 move is to big. Something like 5-to-4.75 would be a decrease in rewards by 5% and seems not drastic in either direction.
I would be in favor of reducing witness rewards proportionally with any other reward decreases, but keep in mind that the witness rewards are pretty small in the scheme of things.
Even if witness rewards were not decreased, I would likely donate funds on a regular basis to the pool and I'm guessing many of the other top witnesses and projects on the Steem platform would do the same.
I'm against reducing the witness rewards. They've already been massively reduced in HF16 and are making up only 10% of the total rewards in the pool.
However, with that said, I don't mind supporting some projects on a project to project basis (e.g. the 150+ STEEM bounty for the multi-sig implementation).
There's 2-3 witnesses in the top 20 that I haven't seen do anything meaningful in the last 1.5 years since I've been here. At least I haven't seen them do anything. I don't think it's fair to be taking the money away from stakeholders instead. By increasing the inflation rate, you are diluting the price of steem, which decreases the money of stakeholders.
The job of witnesses is to: a) faithfully sign blocks (not to sign blocks which would serve to impair the good functioning of the chain); and b) exercise good judgement in the interests of the blockchain and its stakeholders to vote to activate hard forks and set witness parameters (block size, APR, account fee, etc.). As far as I know all top 20 have been doing this. One could certainly question judgment in some cases, but that is pretty subjective.
Perhaps by "do anything meaningful" you are expecting witnesses to go beyond the above and provide some sort of bread and circuses, but that is not the job of witnesses, nor should it be. To the extent that witness elections devolve into a contest over who can do the most or spend the most, it destroys the security margin of the blockchain.
As a stakeholder I will vote against witnesses I see doing this. Likewise, I recommend that stakeholders focus their witness voting on evaluating the suitability and performance of witness candidates in performing the critical and irreplaceable functions described in the first paragraph of this comment.
I fully recognize that many stakeholders do not understand this and will vote otherwise, (most likely) unintentionally undermining blockchain. This makes me not all that optimistic about DPoS unfortunately, but wishing it were not so will not make it not so.
To bring the topic back to this post, I'm told that the very reason Bitshares implemented worker tasks was to ensure a clear division between witnesses (who do the essential witness tasks, see above) and workers (who "do" all sorts of things, as defined by worker proposals). (Bitshares breaks down the role even further into witnesses and committee but that's a discussion for another day.)
Interesting point with witness voting by stakeholders for me because how can someone MEASURE the performance in a very easy and transparent way? Because this is the basis for securing the chain. But if a stakeholder (regular user) can just do this based on gut feelings great marketeers will win which could be fatal long term in my point of view if the silent witnesses just do the crucial and most important things right (how to value for non-techie?) but seem lazy in the public view. It seems there is something wrong with perception of this task, how to solve this? How to value a good witness, reputation.. big no, could be fake due broken rep system, good posts, guess no because not the task, big stake.. big no because Intention not clear.. any useful key measures and numbers for that in a way everyone can easily evaluate to make the right decision without circle jerking and similar bads.
Posted using Partiko iOS
You are right. Big flaw in DPoS IMO. As you say marketers who have no idea what they are doing may win (and we seen that on Steem) and worse buying votes, cartels, etc. It seems that other DPoS chains have had more problems for whatever reason, but you are right to identify this as a concern.
What i wanna say is for the regular user it is almost impossible to get a full understanding why he chooses a witness or not. In my opinion you must be an Steem expert (just like a witness) with much time to dig deep with steemd, SteemWorld or direct data request from the db to get a comlete picture of the person you voting for. I guess many like myself just voting because we read something, heared something about one, which looks good without any deep knowledge and maybe we are often wrong with our votes for someone and there are much better choices, people who really deserve our witness vote.. but who knows? What is a good witness? How is a good witness defined in a objective manner?
We have this blockchain, all the data right around the corner, BIG data.. basically this is wonderful and because it could be fully transparent but it isn't because of the massive data which needs to be visualized, aggregated to get something like a short profile.
If you think of a profile sheet with some bars, key numbers (which is already too much) and finally like stars valuation but with key numbers which cannot be manipulated like the reputation value (which is insane btw in my eyes, when i came here i was saying "wow what achievement, he got 72.. but after a while i realized that there are many individuals which achieved that not with reputation more like badupation.. but the public view can't see that).
What would be measures, key numbers (pro community, pro chain stability, pro curation) to build a Top 100 of witnesses based on hard blockchain data, not bought votes or something, simply a mix of real proof. Maybe i missed such things 1.5 years because i'm blind, but to me it is very geeky to vote for a candidate because i would end up searching all day long for proof of witness of hundreds of accounts. If i missed something because i'm blind please let me know. It is not about nobody wants to vote but how it should be done for a regular user who just give his 2 cents with a post, comment for vote.
If i look to my voting list, i realize some witnesses are gone, but i found this by accident and my vote is still active. Nobody cares about after chosing the witnesses or thinks about, it would be nice to have something like a monthly report about witness activities (whatever they are) in different categories to see the real facts on the chain and not assumed facts.
With the grow of the chain witnesses should become "institutions" rather then "people".
Imagine a country where 19 people are gaining 10% of GDP, that doesn't looks right.
So later on I expect to see a witness to be a team of marketers, tech people and so on, later on it might even become something like some political party
reasonable enough
thanks
Posted using Partiko Android
I'm not sure you can equate 10% of inflation with 10% of GDP. At most it would be 10% of growth in GDP, but that assumes that the economy doesn't grow any faster than the money supply.
Anyway, I agree with witnesses being institutions in a large system. As for what form institution, I wouldn't even venture to guess.
double post deleted
In other words, witnesses should not speak out in favor or against worker proposals? Even if proposed a decrease in rewards for the witnesses?
Interesting, you should spread your opinion more often.
It sounds remotely plausible to me but I'm not entirely following your reasoning. Please elaborate.
Forgive me if I'm wayy out in left field with this, but isn't it fair to compare Witnesses to basically what the miners do for the POW chains, (but witnesses are for 'brain-chains'??)
It is similar yes.
what about producing blocks?
not meaningful enough?
Posted using Partiko Android
As a witness in the 90+ region I can tell you that I am burning money every month. My server cost me about 180 a month and I make 4-5 Steem a day.
Witness rewards are already likely on a trajectory to be much too small in Steem unfortunately. The way the system was set up, total inflation declines and witness rewards remain a fixed percentage of the total. So in the end state (18-ish years from now), witness rewards will be 0.09% which is a tiny security budget by the standards of most cryptocurrencies (excluding the ones with fixed supply but there continues to be more and more skepticism about that model working, for example see recent BIS Bitcoin paper).
For now, trimming off a bit of the roughly 0.85% witness rewards might be okay but as you said they're still pretty small in the scheme of things (and this is true both an absolute and percentage terms). I would not support a long term reduction in witness rewards though, as I think long term they are already on a path that is too low.
What about witness rewards being paid in SBD instead? The witnesses would prob like it under these conditions, but would be against it if steem ever went to $8+ again.
I don't think a fixed witness pay makes sense.
Part of witness pay (arguably the bulk of it) is for faithfully serving and securing the chain. If you have (hypothetically) $10 billion chain and witnesses being paid say $30K/year, that is a recipe for disaster not only in terms of scaling costs but also security. It may be fine when the value is only $100 million. But as the amounts of value at stake scales up, witnesses can easily be corrupted by outside influences worth more than their $30K/year position, but with significant negative costs for the success of the chain. You really want witnesses to be very well paid if the chain is worth a lot, ideally with more to lose from losing their witness position than to gain by acting against the interests of the chain/stakeholders.
I think a reasonable percentage per year makes sense, something likely in the 0.5% to 1% range, although the exact numbers may be up for debate in the future when we have more understanding of blockchains being used and critical to a rich, mature, economy.
i would also be interested (as said in my main reply) that post_rewards might automatically fund this worker fund :)
Maybe there would be a way to cohesively integrate witness rewards into the proposal and steem rewards economy. Witness rewards were always an incentive to for the infrastructure donation that witness have to make just to be witnesses on the blockchain. Maybe those rewards could serve more than one purpose that can be used to offset inflation.
It could possibly address the stale voting issue of witness votes by replacing the top X witness system with rewarding witnesses through funding appropriations instead. Without getting too specific, witnesses would be rewarded through successful projects that they fund through steemit appropriations. This would basically turn witnesses into angels. The more projects you lead to success, the better witness you are, and the more you will be rewarded.
I actually meant the opposite. Keep witness rewards out of the mix. As long as it is a small change I think most will be ok with it. I would suggest a 5-to-4 move is to big. Something like 5-to-4.75 would be a decrease in rewards by 5% and seems not drastic in either direction.
As I noted in a child reply here I would suggest against doing that (at least long term) but I would still prefer it to increasing inflation.