Hive Governance Vote Expiration Simulation and Expiration Checking Tool

[deathwing]

What is "Governance Vote Expiration"?

As you may or may not know, @blocktrades team has been developing a "governance vote expiration" system. This system will serve blockchain users to prevent inactive accounts (or even in situations where the account owner has passed away) having a say in the governance. Whether it be witness votes or DHF proposals. You can read the image below for an explanation on vote expiration, written by @blocktrades here.

_{Blocktrades's comments about governance expiration.}

Currently, the plan is to have this feature released with the next hardfork, sometime later this year. (2021)

The way this code works at the moment (per repository inspection) that if you do not have any governance action, such as voting a witness, voting a proposal or setting on a proxy for a whole year -- all your witness votes, proposal votes and proxy will be automatically disabled.

Lets say you voted deathwing as a witness on June 14th 2020 and after that, you never voted anyone as a witness nor participated in DHF proposals (you never supported/unsupported any) that means, your witness vote for deathwing will expire on June 14th 2021. (Please note that this will happen after the hardfork should the period be 365 days (which it is at the moment))

If you don't want your witness/proposal votes to be automatically removed, all you have to do is keep track of what is going on around the chain and regularly updating your DHF and witness votes. Remember, voting for disabled or stale witnesses or proposals whose owners are not justifying their DHF payment, is a bad thing to do.

Vote Expiration Tool

To find out right now (or even at a later date) whether or not your votes will expire, you can check out governance.deathwing.me where you can input your username and see when was your last governance action.

_{If your last governance action is currently valid.}

_{If your last governance action is invalid and has expired.}

Governance Expiration Simulation

To see how the current Top 200 witness list would look like, myself and @rishi556 have simulated a "governance expiration" please keep in mind that this simulation only takes into account votes done on or after July 1st 2020.

If by July 1st 2021 (Deathwing's assumption of the hardfork date™) no one updates their witness and DHF votes nor set a proxy, Hive witnesses would look like the following list. Please do note that users marked with an "X" under Disabled/Stale column mean that their witness was disabled or consecutively missing blocks/on an older HF version (stale) as of when this post was written.

List of witnesses on July 1st 2021 With Vote Expiration Applied: (again, Deathwing's assumption of hardfork date™)

Please note that the following list does not take "30 day vote delay" into account.

Rank	Witness	VESTS	HIVE Power	Disabled/Stale
1	blocktrades	85.649b	44.081m HP
2	gtg	83.028b	42.732m HP
3	steempeak	82.949b	42.691m HP
4	roelandp	79.671b	41.004m HP
5	good-karma	78.260b	40.278m HP
6	ausbitbank	77.741b	40.011m HP
7	steempress	74.496b	38.341m HP
8	yabapmatt	74.453b	38.318m HP
9	arcange	72.437b	37.281m HP
10	stoodkev	72.424b	37.274m HP
11	anyx	72.031b	37.072m HP
12	themarkymark	71.438b	36.767m HP
13	pharesim	71.423b	36.759m HP
14	therealwolf	70.716b	36.395m HP
15	aggroed	63.818b	32.845m HP
16	cervantes	63.573b	32.719m HP
17	someguy123	62.833b	32.338m HP
18	ocd-witness	62.771b	32.306m HP
19	emrebeyler	62.064b	31.942m HP
20	followbtcnews	56.317b	28.985m HP
21	abit	55.360b	28.492m HP
22	quochuy	52.145b	26.838m HP
23	drakos	51.705b	26.611m HP
24	leofinance	49.847b	25.654m HP
25	curie	48.771b	25.101m HP
26	lukestokes.mhth	42.550b	21.899m HP
27	threespeak	41.837b	21.532m HP
28	mahdiyari	41.707b	21.465m HP
29	jesta	41.667b	21.444m HP
30	smooth.witness	39.725b	20.445m HP
31	netuoso	39.251b	20.201m HP	X
32	holger80	37.912b	19.512m HP
33	guiltyparties	37.074b	19.081m HP
34	deathwing	31.348b	16.134m HP
35	timcliff	28.119b	14.472m HP
36	neoxian	26.686b	13.735m HP
37	thecryptodrive	26.599b	13.689m HP
38	riverhead	26.057b	13.411m HP
39	pfunk	25.864b	13.311m HP
40	actifit	22.464b	11.561m HP
41	fbslo	21.663b	11.149m HP
42	roomservice	21.393b	11.010m HP
43	klye	20.669b	10.638m HP
44	engrave	20.294b	10.445m HP
45	steemitboard	19.571b	10.072m HP
46	gerber	16.832b	8.663m HP
47	bhuz	16.339b	8.409m HP
48	r0nd0n	16.285b	8.381m HP
49	c0ff33a	15.854b	8.159m HP
50	enginewitty	15.700b	8.081m HP
51	bobinson	14.578b	7.503m HP
52	nathanmars	14.447b	7.435m HP
53	stem.witness	14.189b	7.303m HP
54	patrice	14.164b	7.290m HP
55	ats-witness	13.278b	6.834m HP	X
56	liondani	13.215b	6.801m HP
57	apshamilton	12.968b	6.674m HP
58	innerhive	12.833b	6.605m HP
59	qurator	12.045b	6.199m HP
60	oflyhigh	11.038b	5.681m HP
61	hextech	10.721b	5.518m HP
62	dbuzz	10.638b	5.475m HP	X
63	bdcommunity	10.316b	5.309m HP
64	cryptobrewmaster	10.078b	5.187m HP
65	ura-soul	9.750b	5.018m HP	X
66	kevinwong	9.655b	4.969m HP
67	crowdwitness	8.990b	4.627m HP
68	jackmiller	7.807b	4.018m HP	X
69	firepower	7.801b	4.015m HP
70	primersion	7.054b	3.631m HP
71	cadawg	6.681b	3.438m HP
72	dragosroua	6.287b	3.236m HP
73	satren	5.911b	3.042m HP
74	discovery-it	5.587b	2.876m HP
75	blue-witness	5.405b	2.782m HP
76	fernandosoder	4.136b	2.129m HP	X
77	reazuliqbal	4.126b	2.124m HP
78	isnochys	3.989b	2.053m HP
79	cervisia	3.983b	2.050m HP
80	tazi	3.628b	1.867m HP
81	mintrawa	3.384b	1.742m HP
82	rotfl	3.185b	1.639m HP
83	delegate.lafona	3.114b	1.603m HP	X
84	helo	2.974b	1.530m HP
85	ihashfury	2.870b	1.477m HP	X
86	jamzed	2.677b	1.378m HP
87	techcoderx	2.658b	1.368m HP
88	steemychicken1	2.499b	1.286m HP
89	lapingvino	2.473b	1.273m HP
90	kristall97	2.438b	1.255m HP
91	dmitrydao	2.153b	1.108m HP
92	hagie	2.119b	1.090m HP
93	danielsaori	1.892b	973.879k HP	X
94	elindos	1.887b	971.034k HP
95	c-squared	1.722b	886.259k HP	X
96	blockbrothers	1.693b	871.275k HP	X
97	weedcash.network	1.588b	817.214k HP
98	lootkit.witness	1.567b	806.638k HP
99	veteranforcrypto	1.423b	732.177k HP
100	nextgencrypto	1.357b	698.433k HP	X
101	coingecko	1.347b	693.062k HP	X
102	whiterosecoffee	1.266b	651.663k HP
103	busy.witness	1.265b	651.170k HP	X
104	battlegames	1.232b	634.242k HP	X
105	b0y2k	1.119b	575.846k HP
106	adsactly-witness	1.111b	572.032k HP	X
107	dsound	1.077b	554.282k HP	X
108	steemgigs	1.005b	517.190k HP	X
109	dpoll.witness	948.284m	488.052k HP
110	clayop	815.179m	419.546k HP	X
111	shmoogleosukami	794.170m	408.734k HP
112	aizensou	759.061m	390.665k HP
113	disregardfiat	748.863m	385.416k HP
114	wise-team	714.557m	367.760k HP	X
115	justyy	678.723m	349.317k HP	X
116	complexring	665.251m	342.384k HP
117	partiko	613.956m	315.983k HP	X
118	yehey	592.756m	305.072k HP	X
119	utopian-io	576.763m	296.841k HP	X
120	thealliance	576.016m	296.457k HP
121	fyrst-witness	497.041m	255.811k HP	X
122	krnel	465.429m	239.541k HP	X
123	prc	433.783m	223.254k HP	X
124	swisswitness	387.709m	199.542k HP	X
125	helpie	373.058m	192.001k HP	X
126	thekitchenfairy	372.451m	191.689k HP	X
127	reggaemuffin	369.025m	189.925k HP	X
128	teamsteem	339.775m	174.872k HP	X
129	travelfeed	325.819m	167.689k HP	X
130	fulltimegeek	320.212m	164.803k HP	X
131	oracle-d	313.845m	161.526k HP	X
132	steemcommunity	307.463m	158.242k HP	X
133	blueorgy	300.351m	154.581k HP	X
134	lux-witness	296.799m	152.753k HP	X
135	demotruk	296.096m	152.391k HP	X
136	yoodoo	271.818m	139.896k HP	X
137	steem-bounty	270.797m	139.370k HP	X
138	pcste	265.638m	136.716k HP
139	blockchained	261.614m	134.644k HP	X
140	felixxx	242.304m	124.706k HP	X
141	untersatz	238.871m	122.939k HP	X
142	steem-id	229.667m	118.202k HP	X
143	markangeltrueman	225.220m	115.914k HP	X
144	chbartist	224.919m	115.759k HP	X
145	idnit	224.834m	115.715k HP	X
146	theprophet0	222.586m	114.558k HP	X
147	silversteem	217.460m	111.919k HP
148	pjau	213.134m	109.693k HP	X
149	jatinhota	199.882m	102.873k HP	X
150	justinadams	199.687m	102.773k HP	X

_{This is the current status of witnesses.}

When we look at our current votes, we can see that @blocktrades went fown from approximately 135 billion VESTS votes to 85 billion vests, same thing with @gtg moving from 135b to 83b @peakd (@steempeak) rose from 8th to 3rd in the simulated results as we can see other changes throughout Top 20 with @good-karma and @ausbitbank and others changing their spots while @emrebeyler becomes a consensus witness once again as @abit loses his spot.

Closing Thoughts

Off-Topic: Remember to never click on any suspicious links you receive as a comment, promising you free money and airdrops. Do not give your private keys for airdrops. There's been a lot of these going around lately.

If you receive suspicious comments/Discord DMs/Telegram DMs from "Hive Official Accounts" of some sort, it is very likely that they are attempting to scam, make sure to verify on Hive Discord/Hive Telegram before proceeding with anything, for any official announcements, please follow @hiveio account.

Make sure to check your witness votes, proposal votes, recovery account ever so often to verify their current status.

If you like what I am doing consider supporting me as a witness, also, I'd be happy if you can support my friend, @rishi556 who has been working together with me in various different projects!

You can do so using the following links:

Vote for Deathwing.
Vote for Rishi556.

Comments

[rxhector]

should be a little longer than a year - maybe more like 2 or 3 years ???

i can barely keep up with the internet , having to check on something once a year is really gonna slow me down LOL

[lunaticpandora]

I actually think 1 year is too much time, should be halved. 6 months is better.

[selfhelp4trolls]

I think one year is perfect to start. If things ever get weird or crazy maybe better to make it shorter. I just want a reminder that I'm gonna expire

[whatsup]

People who aren't paying attention should continue to hold, but likely do not have a valid opinion on current blockchain events.

I think a year is a good start.

[foxon]

This is awesome! Close to what I was expecting, but there are more vest falling away than I thought there'd be. A change in top 20 also surprises me. Thanks a ton for doing this

[v4vapid]

Voting expiration is a good initiative, in my opinion, and happy to see it being implemented in the next HF.
But, is the site up and running yet?
I've entered 4-5 usernames including @deathwing and they all turn up as not having voted in the past year. Just fyi.

[rishi556]

The site should be up. It is working for me as of now. Any chance you might be putting in a @ before the username maybe?

[v4vapid]

Yeah, my bad. Cheers!

[deathwing]

Write the usernames without an @ for example deathwing instead of @deathwing -- Will probably improve the handling of @ later.

[v4vapid]

My bad, just a habit of typing usernames with the @.
Works great now, nice tool!
Cheers

[foxon]

Mine checked out ok, but I didn't check any others

[v4vapid]

Thanks, just a dumb error on my part. Works great!

[mintrawa]

🤣 I'm gonna gain 5 places, from 86th to 81st! More Seriously, thanks @deathwing for this nice idea of post and tools. Very interesting! And for my part, I'm betting on 1st September for the HardFork 😉

---

@mintrawa: Witness FR - Gen X - Geek 🤓 Gamer 🎮 traveler ⛩️
Don't miss the Hive Power UP Day! more info here

[enforcer48]

Darn. Need to keep up with my proxies.

[rishi556]

I've gotta go through and do something with each of mine too. Though luckily most of the balance is in just a few.

[jacobtothe]

At the library, we set expiration dates for library cards to clear our database of deceased, inactive, and non-resident accounts. As such, I see the point here. My only thought is a change to check for activity in general, and not just governance, but perhaps people not paying attention to their governance activity should not be involved in governance at all, too.

[apshamilton]

This is very interesting but I don't understand the raw numbers.

My witness has only been going for a few months so all my votes would be less than 12 months old on 1 July 2021. I currently have 17,418 MV but this simulation would have me with only ~13,000 MV.

Is this saying there is 4,400 MV worth of proxy votes that would expire?

[deathwing]

Exactly. One of the voters who vote for your witness has an inactive proxy, which will expire on July 1st unless they update it.

[ocupation]

Those who don't care about our governance, and have shown to give zero fuck, should be excluded in general.

[selfhelp4trolls]

@jarvie Can we get automatic notifications 2 months before expiration? 😊 sounds like something you can do

[jarvie]

All our notifications come from api provided by the hivemind database. So that would need to be developed on that end. I don't think it's gonna be high priority considering someone who would get a notification is not likely the same person who would ever be in jeopardy of having their votes drop off. People who get notifications are active

[borislavzlatanov]

Great tool! It highlights one disadvantage of the proposed governance change - it becomes easier to take over the chain because the whole decentralized body is much slower to act than any potential hostile centralized entity. With this change, the decentralized body becomes smaller because now only those of it who have been active in governance over the last year are counted.

It would be awesome if we can find a way around that, so as not to weaken the chain's resilience. After all, the simulation shows a big drop in witness support. It becomes easier for sophisticated folks to bulk-buy millions of Hive at a huge discount (or even coordinate an attack on large stakeholders) and do a 51% attack.

If we want to exclude people who have died or become inactive, then wouldn't counting any activity (as opposed to only governance activities) do the job?

[lacking]

I think that this is going to shake up the entire governance structure of Hive and I love it. Can't wait to see who is propped up by holdover votes from 2019 and prior. Compared to who the people are truly supporting on the platform in the year 2021.

[gatticus]

Fantastic idea!

[vegeta]

I support this, makes total sense.

[howo]

Very cool ! I was pondering doing a simulation but didn't have the time to actually do anything.

It's interesting to see that all in all, not much changes in the top 20 rankings.

[rishi556]

I feel like once we actually have vote expiration, some people might do something governance related from their alts(I haven't touched some of mine since I set them and I'm assuming people with a larger amount of stake haven't either) so it might shake things up some more.

[seckorama]

That's a good initiative. I support it. It's completely fair. To all.

[hivebuzz]

Congratulations @deathwing! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You received more than 15000 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 20000 upvotes.

_{You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP}

Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:

Feedback from the March 1st Hive Power Up Day

[tracer-paulo]

This is great news, very useful, hope to see it running in the next HF, and a year seems like good time frame, you have just earned my witness vote, keep up the great work...

[urun]

wait. If I proxy my vote to someone and do after this nothing, the vote still expire?

This would proxy votes pointless. If I proxy to someone that cares, makes sense right?

As long the proxy cares and does something it should be ok IMO, because the holder trusts the proxy and as long he is active, its IMO the same as the Holder is active.

Or do I oversee something?

[rishi556]

That'd allow someone to get around the vote expiry rule by just proxying to someone else and forgetting. This is meant to be so that if the account owner doesn't interact with hive governance anymore, then they don't have an influence on it.

[shmoogleosukami]

I'd personally prefur it be like 3-6 month expiration, is it really to much to ask people to check every 3 months their votes and perform some action on the governance side of things?

[deathwing]

Some people prefer to having multiple alts, even if they are not abusing anything. Multiple projects etc. and end up having tons of them. So I too believe 3 months is too short (even though I have no alts) -- 6 months is definitely ideal. But for majority, I think 1 year is a nice sweetspot.

[rishi556]

I think 3 months is a bit too short since I don't exactly manage the accounts that I proxy to my account frequently. Once a year is a good solid point for me to go through all my accounts and reproxy. Least I'd say is 6 months.