I highly disagree with the worker proposal system!
EDIT: I've further explained my argument in 2 videos on dtube:
It's good in theory, but not in practice. History is full good examples of why it doesn't work:
BTS had the best tech for years, and look how far they came? They are barely in the top 50... all this because of "worker proposal system" that has hindered their progress. Because their governance is "too decentralized" they are at major risk of becoming obsolete, while newer more centralized versions of BTS are popping up left and right. Look at IOST, they are almost in the top 50 and their mainnet wont even launch until next month.
Furthermore, BTS doesn't even have a working mobile app! Why? Because of worker proposals that are "attempting" to make one for ages now...
The only people that would benefit from a worker proposal system are "hired guns / contractors" like you @blocktrades
Nothing personal, I respect your proposition and work, but your opinion is very biased in this matter.
I hate to say it, but for the good of the ecosystem and ultimately the price of STEEM, there MUST be some level of centralization like Steemit, Inc. offers.
I highly disagree with your comment. We have learned over time that we can't trust a centralized entity like steemit to take care of everything. Especially when there is no clear line as of where community dev should start and when steemit inc dev should stop. A simple example is steemit.com. This website is terribly outdated and is supposed to be the flagship of our blockchain. Or what about communities or smts ? Or marketing ? Also having a centralized entity means that we all sit and wait while steemit inc does the lifting because they have the funds. If the company has a huge crisis (like if they laid off 70% of their employees). And we know that they will be delaying smts to reduce costs what do we do ? Well this is where we as the community will be able to pick up the slack thanks to the proposal system.
Right now the current situation is "do things and get high up enough in the witnesses to get paid for it" but this is flawed as witnesses should be elected on trust and their capacity to keep the network secure not side projects. The worker system would allow us to clearly separate things.
On the bias issue: I haven't operated a worker proposal on BitShares for a number of years now, nor did we ever spend much from the ones we ran. The majority of the funds from the primary worker proposal we ran mostly sit idle to this day, because we haven't seen a strong need to do anything to justify spending them.
As far as your "in practice" argument, we apparently have a completely different view of the situation. I see lots of positive work done by the current contractors being paid by worker proposals. I think the worker proposal system has done a lot to sustain BitShares when it's core team left the coin. Without it, I don't think BitShares would have its current marketcap ranking. Along these lines, it's useful to note that BitShares was actually higher ranked than Steem until the recent and mostly unexplained pump in the price of Steem.
I really disagree with your argument on centralization of the development process. Taking a look at the results from Steemit and from BitShares workers over the past few years and looking at how much money was spent by both groups, I think it's obvious that BitShares funds have been spent much more efficiently.
@blocktrades, by the way, the real "bias" I was talking about is the fact that you already do some work by requesting funds and this system will make it easier for you to do so.
Sure, but the same could be said of anyone who makes a similar proposal to do the work. Should the proposal be ignored because anyone who could propose to do it is potentially biased?
Why not just say that this proposal is biased to all programmers? 😆
Is the work being done not more important than who is doing it?
@blocktrades I agree that the worker proposal system is an effective plan B.
However, It is not something we need at the moment since the steem core team is not leaving.
Effectively, they left around the end of 2016, which was the last time that anything was being accomplished at a meaningful rate.
Since then we have had a change to the reward curve (mostly a coding tweak), some other minor blockchain coding tweaks, a few UI tweaks in steemit.com, a few security patches, and the RC system. As well as total non-performance on the 2017 roadmap, and non-completion and non-delivery of SMTs which was essentially the 2018 roadmap. And finally obstructionism mixed with outright hostility on outside involvement with the development process. The security patches are important and the RC system was significant development but none of this is remotely close to two years of work for a team (and also rolled out poorly).
I do not even remotely share your confidence in the "core team" whether they have explicitly announced their departure or not.
Agree, we are "stuck in a rut" ...
I share your non-confidence that anything will be accomplished at a meaningful rate in the future ...
I wished there was someone that could convince me otherwise.
I would say it's rather late to think about such things at the point when a core team exits as a substantial drop in price could result before things stabilize. Also, lately there's been a pretty overwhelming desire by the community to bring in more outside developers. This proposal is really about trying to decentralize that.
I think this sort of skepticism is healthy and I would like to see a more detailed debate with pros and cons supporting their arguments in detail. One could also look at some slightly different systems such as Dash and try to make the case why they work better or worse than the Bitshares model.
@smooth I'm not an expert on the Dash ecosystem (it's still on my list), however I can say with certainty that I have researched the BTS ecosystem and spoke to many people over there and the the proposal above is just a step backwards.
As I said I very much like your input but I would like to see more specifics on how, when, and why the Bitshares system has not been productive. I don't know much about the Bitshares system but I've been watching the Dash system for a few years and have been impressed with how much it has accomplished and also how it has evolved. But that is not to say it too hasn't had failures and critics.
SmartCash has a similar system. They have 70% of the rewards for the projects. Each Smart counts as a vote. The project is managed by three wallets who approve or reject the projects in the last hours of voting no matter how many people have supported or rejected it. The same thing can happen here if a system is implemented that is not only based on the amount of SP
Who gets to do the approving or rejecting and how are they chosen?
All those who have Smart in the official wallet can vote. Each Smart equals one vote. The more Smart you have the more you can influence the results of the proposals.
There came a time when proposals were no longer approved and the community realized that there were only 3 wallets that rejected with negative votes, with few hours left until the voting time ended. I speak of proposals with more than 90% acceptance and from one moment to another they happened to have 80% rejection. Many have left and that project is almost dead because the founders have the greatest power to vote and do not want to approve because they lowered the currency and do not want to spend
I'm all about having yes and no's about this proposal but imho a coin not being in top 50 should not disqualify it's infrastructure of in this case a decentralised worker proposal.
Furthermore IMHO BTS worker system is not hindering it's progress? I feel it is a great example of a truly decentralised organisation. All development is paid by the blockchain itself. The alternative would be a centralised authority paying developers, but there is no such thing (anymore?) on BTS.
For example:
I think Steemit Inc and this worker infrastructure can co-exist.
Imagine Inc would actually get paid through a worker :)
In reality, the BTS worker proposal system is just recently displaying some good movement with the BBF and (yet another) mobile app which will hopefully work this time. But in general, the WP system should still be a plan B if Steemit Inc completely turns is back. For now it doesn't make much since, and BTS WP system hasn't been too good in the longer history.
@aggroed has discussed how Hardfork 20, and a few other updates ultimately cost 10 million Steem in 2018 (Steem traded in a range of $1.00 to $6.00 USD for that year, so they sold about $10,000,000 to $30,000,000 USD worth of Steem, give or take).
I think one of the concerns is that @steemit Inc. might be somewhat incompentent in terms of getting their money's worth, and developer groups outside of Steemit Inc. (I.e. @blocktrades) might be able to do a better job, faster and for a cheaper price - if @ned @elipowell and @steemit Inc. agree to this proposal, I think it would confirm that. It would ultimately be a wise choice for them though, to admit their short comings and hire outside talent if it gets a better bang for their buck - Afterall, they have quite a large stake, and whatever is good for the Steem blockchain and Steem, would reflect in their net-worth.
I also think it's foolish to create a Plan B once Plan A is unworkable. The whole point of having a Plan B is to prepare, in case something unexpected happens to Plan A!!!
It doesn't work in practice. Like democracy.
Large SP holders will push their proposals and collect money. Like we can see with witnesses.
I think the jury's out on democracies, since I suppose we've never had a true democracy to my knowledge (yes, I hear some people try to argue that California functions that way, but I never find their argument terribly convincing). In my opinion a republic (i.e. a representative democracy) like what we have in the US is quite a different animal.
Technology is finally reaching the point where it might be possible to experiment with true democracies, but I think it's unlikely to happen in a major country because of inertia and automated responses people have like "it'll be mob rule".
I'm personally interested in what kind of structures could be setup for a "modern democracy" based off improved decision making that's possible with widespread access to computer technology.
My feeling is that we will see such democracies form in the future, but via associations formed via member consensus, that will exist as super-national entities where the members still reside in "nation states".
Cryptocurrency communites are, in my opinion, one initial form that such associations can take (although they're frequently not democratic, they are do form via member consensus).
My long term hope is that exploration of such communities will lead us to discover new and better forms of government based off democratic principles that ultimately displace existing governments based on narrow-minded nation state boundaries.
Don't get me wrong here. I totally agree with your point of view but I think that our so-called western society is just not ready yet. We're still many, many years away. The third-world countries are even further.
Just look at the farse with the US or any elections. And yet 90% of people follow their crap.
Thank you for your response and time.
You're a great asset to steem community.
Thanks for writing this comment @blocktrades I have thought about blockchains like Steem, and their possible role in creating new forms of Governmemt.
I am not sure that Steem or any of the other blockchains will ultimately lead to new forms of Government, but I think it's possible, and I'm intrigued with the idea of it 😊
This is exactly what sparked my interest in DPOS. My trading of some BTC for STEEM was not done as an investment but to have a greater voice/stake in this social experiment.
Because of this philosophical alignment my support for @lukestokes.mhth has been re-assigned to @blocktrades.
Obviously my Dolphin vote is not going to make or break you; yet it is my feeling that the greater the individual votes a witness has (as opposed to stake) affords a witness greater credability.
Readers are invited to decern for themselves that premise in the following link...
http://steemreports.com/witness-voters/
Thanks for your vote, they are always appreciated, regardless of the stake weight.
On the topic of consensual organizations, we're just beginning to look at development of a new kind of reputation system that I think may help make such cooperation become more efficient. It's too early to say much about it yet, as it's in a very earlier design phase and we haven't even started writing any code, but I hope to have something to report in a few months on the progress.
Will be following with interest. 👍