If humans count their age in years, is it ok for blockchains to count it in hard forks? I guess it's yes and no, because according to such a metric, the bitcoin network would still be a baby, while Hive would be an adult already, if we were to link the number of hardforks a blockchain went through with the human age.
At the same time, each hard fork is a milestone in the evolution of a blockchain, which may not correspond well to how much time has passed between them, but they do show technological progress that network went through from the initial version to a stable, mature product, often on what may resemble a logarithmic curve, with more hard forks in the beginning, and fewer later on (at least that was the case with Hive).
I know the consensus changes needed on Hive have taken a background stage compared to development of non-consensus tools and infrastructure, but sometimes I wonder if we should keep having relatively regular hard forks for a number of reasons:
- it's a way for core devs and Hive witnesses to collaborate to make sure the HF is successful (as this one seems to have been—congrats for that!); I know it's hard work for a period, so they can't be too often either
- it's a way for newer Hive witnesses to experience a HF and be "baptized through fire"
- I tend to believe that—although I have no evidence for it—they attract attention of the crypto community more than non-consensus development
There are also risks. A hard fork that goes wrong could be bad publicity, plus the inconvenience for the existing users. Exchanges need to update their nodes too. But still, it could be worth it.
I'm sure by now you know what the main changes introduced by HF28 are. I'd like to go over them with my impressions too.
Voting Mana Depletion Change
How it was before? Voting mana depleted with a fraction of the full vote value, depending both on the vote weight and the current voting mana. That means that a 100% vote at 80% mana had a lower value than a 100% vote at 90% mana.
How it is now? Voting mana is depleted only based on the vote weight, disregarding the current voting mana. That means that a 100% vote at 80% mana has the same value as a 100% vote at 90% mana.
My impression about this change: makes things much easier to understand and explain to newcomers and voting mana can be easier managed by depleting it to lower levels if you expect not to be active for a couple of days, without losing any curation.
Inflation Reduction
How it was before? HBD in DHF was included in the calculation of inflation for all types of rewards, which increased inflation the lower HIVE price went compared to HBD.
How it is now? HBD in DHF is excluded from the calculation of inflation for all types of rewards (including curation and posting rewards), which effectively reduced inflation by ~25% at the time of the HF.
My impression about this change: it was necessary! Whether or not this will lead to less selling pressure, the stabilization of the HIVE price and later turning back up we will see. Right now, it is hard to see its effects on the price when the crypto markets are still going down. But likely you see the effects on your rewards.
Stricter Key Enforcement
How it was before? Someone could sign a transaction that required the posting authority with a higher authority key, like the active key or even the owner key.
How it is now? Someone can only sign a transaction with the private key type required (i.e. posting key if the posting authority is needed).
My impression about this change: Very good for security reasons. It makes no sense to sign a transaction with a private key with a higher authority than needed.
Multiple Recurrent Transfers to the Same Account
How it was before? From my understanding, if you wanted to add a 2nd recurring transfer to the same account, it simply edited the existing one.
How it works now? You can now have multiple recurrent transfers set toward the same account.
My impression: The way it worked before was very restrictive. With this update, it finally makes sense for businesses (or even individuals) to set up funnels using Hive recurring transfers.
Extending the Transaction Expiration Time Limit
How it was before? A transaction not broadcasted after 1 hour expired.
How it is now? The transaction expiration limit was extended to 24 hours.
My impression about this: This change was specifically introduced to make Hive multisig transactions easier to handle by key holders located across the globe. It is both a security enhancement (since more Hive businesses may start using multisig), and an ease of use feature for existing users of multisig accounts, thus a welcomed feature. I imagine this could be useful for something like Magi too, and also for the 2nd layer protocol Blocktrades will work on.
I think it was you who told me about the voting change, a long time ago. I returned after over a year of being away. Came back shortly before the HF and felt like I was one of only a few people who knew this was happening.
I like the change. "Curating" was far too confusing and rigid, acting like a deterrent. Community treats it like a duty, but often forfeit the opportunity to directly support anyone by using automation or outgoing delegation. From there the audience is depleted and wisdom of the crowd sits in the hands of a few.
Very few have signed on to become curators (impossible to market since it sounds like a job) in the nearly ten years I've spent studying this space.
Maybe that'll change now and everyone can finally experience a real audience consisting of thousands of members here with small votes all wanting to support the things they like, organically, leading to actual curation based upon wisdom of the crowd.
Actual consumption. Actual supportive consumers. The people that make up the majority on the internet. The types not interested in posting. A key ingredient that's always been missing here and I think the complexity along with rigid guidelines had a lot to do with that absense. People want to be free to choose, not be told how to choose, when, why, so on and so forth. That's how you lose customers. And with no customers you lose producers. Inevitable death spiral.
Though this change alone might not be enough to turn things around, it sure is a nice touch. Comes with a lot more freedom, flexibility, and it's about as simple as a battery meter.
I approve.
I haven't thought about it this way, but you are right. By giving users more flexibility to use their votes whenever they feel like or when they find something worth their votes, it does encourage more manual curation instead of delegating the stake away to curation projects or following curation trails.
There are other benefits too, one of which was remarked by someone in the comments section. Downvote trails from people without any stake in HIVE anymore (or minimum), who DV left and right automatically run out of voting mana much quicker. That makes the entire space less toxic in my opinion, even though their DVs didn't have much of an influence, other than psychological for the readers and sometimes for those being DV-ted.
Though I rarely used them, that was first thing I tested. Found a reasonable place to drop downvotes nonstop. 100% sure they wouldn't mind. Didn't take me long before I was already chewing up my upvote mana, using downvotes. Gets to a point you're hitting yourself, rather quickly. I didn't drain everything but I know if I had kept going, I'm putting myself in timeout.
The incentive to be responsible exists.
Curating manually has always been my method. So I can say from experience, this is better. No thinking involved. No strategy needed. Something catches my eye, I enjoy it, I vote. Done deal. Simple.
Now if more were actually out there doing this, the incentive to create attractive content exists.
And if you don't like doom scrolling, simply mute all the repetitive creators that seem to get in the way and clog up the feeds. Don't want to be ignored? The incentive to be responsible exists. Creating content too difficult? Relax. Stick around. Voting and commenting yields rewards, and it's easy.
Still new and everything is fresh but so far, feels like things are a lot more fair and balanced. Time will tell, of course. I hope to see an improvement. It's up to everyone else to decide where they want to go with this.
It's great to have options. The 7-day window for rewards still incentivizes (forces?) authors to write often. It would be fantastic if in a future HF or on a 2nd layer, a solution would be found to reward evergreen pieces. Until then, it's up for curators in the system we have now to better surface both time-sensitive and evergreen content.
People have been able to support creators directly for a very long time. That's a rare occurrence. Without a sizeable consumer base roaming around, people are unlikely to find that support. Even if curation placed it front and center.
I'll return to rigid guidelines. Not many think outside of that box. If the content creator wants long term support, all they have to do is ask. Set up a subscription model for yourself. If people see value in that, they'll pay for it. It's not up to the system to do these things for people. The tools and options exist. Pick them up and use them.
People also have the ability to leave a comment under an old post, then upvote the author's response. Wouldn't be wise to upvote 5 year old content. Don't even know if that author is there anymore, until they respond.
I'm not sure what makes people think every upvote needs to contribute to curation. The upvote is curation, the rewards are support. That button performs two things, not one. It's flexible. But again, it's up to the people to think outside of the box.
Any system offering long term rewards first needs money coming in the door to pay for those rewards. I've been stressing the importance of building a sizeable consumer base locally for nearly a decade.
People forgot how to busk and build an audience. It doesn't require advanced technical solutions to solve a simple problem.
Your reply is upvoted by @topcomment; a manual curation service that rewards meaningful and engaging comments.
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We discovered a lot of things, but what he says is that he is going to create another platform like when Hive splits from Steemt, I wonder?
If you ask about what Blocktrades will do at the 2nd layer, then no, it's not a new blockchain, it will be something that will allow the creation of Hive lite accounts at the 2nd layer with their own set of keys (among other things, probably), for example, via social media accounts. We already could have something like that via Inleo, but it is restricted to Inleo's infrastructure, as far as I know.
I like the vote change, as you say it's easier to understand and explain to someone... The problem is I'm even lower now than before as mana 😂
Yep, mana depletes much quicker! You could use smaller weights, to compensate, if you prefer to keep it at a higher level. I had the opposite issue: since I stopped posting daily and upvoting commenters, I hit 100% way too often.
Yeah I don't use 100% but I do at least to match above dust value, but apparently I can't afford it 😄
You have a big enough stake to be well above the dust threshold, even if you use a weight (you'll have to see exactly where the limit should be, as that depends on the price of HIVE too - the lower the price, the higher the weight needed to be above the threshold). If you vote often it's true you will deplete your voting mana quicker with the new changes than before.
Yeah I vote pretty often 😄 at least your friends downvoters seems to be depleting the mana quickly too
I was wondering why there's no more downvote trail... That's a nice side effect of the voting mana change. I wonder if it was an intended consequence, or just a happy side effect.
Thanks for summing up the key changes in HF 28.
You're welcome!
Voting mana changes actually make more sense now and being able to set multiple recurring transfers could make things way easier for some accounts. Hard fork is good I just updated my ecency and good changes
Yes, I like the changes. I'm curious if recurring transfers will be used more, now that this limitation is lifted.
Yes let's see what happens
It's with this hardfork that I learned how Inflation is calculated. Previously, I thought it was only staked Hive that inflation is calculated from lol. Didn't know it was broader than that but it does makes sense now.
Getting used to the voting mana change, noticed that when VP is below 80%, voting mana tends to deplete faster, 2% depleted per 100% vote.
Few know the details about how Hive works and that's normal, in my opinion. Drivers of a car rarely know how it is built or how it works, but they drive it nonetheless. It's the same with users of a network like Hive. Devs and witnesses know more than regular users, but even them don't know as much as the core devs of the network.
Yes, every 100% vote depletes the mana by 2%, regardless of the level the voting mana is at, which means it goes down quicker than before HF28, when the depletion was attenuated the lower the voting mana was. Since 20% VM is recharged every day (up to 100%, obviously), it also means that 1% is recharged every 1.2 hours.
Those are quite a few changes, but I didn't know about a few of the changes. It's nice to see this post as it explains everything in a simple way.
Here were a number of fixes and intermediary changes too. Here's the full list.
It seemed to go very smoothly and these will be useful changes to those affected. I remember issues with some back on the old chain. We need stability as well as evolution.
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Yes, that was my impression too! I needed to focus on other things on the day of the HF, but from what others said and my own limited experience throughout the day, it seemed very smooth for the regular user, which is a sign of maturity.
Hard forks like Hive’s 28th really show how the blockchain is evolving. The changes to voting mana and inflation sound important.
They both impact the economic side of Hive, while voting mana change can be regarded as a feature to make Hive easier to use as well.
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