With every action, there is a lesson.
Yesterday, a soft fork was put in on Steem that froze account of 8-10 large stakeholders. The justification was that these accounts were "attacking" the Steem network. How where they doing that? By downvoting on the platform according to the announcement.
Two of the accounts, @blocktrades and @steempress, are businesses. This means their stake that they spent years building up was suddenly frozen.
In response, Blocktrades closed down a portion of its business, the trading of STEEM and SBD tokens.
DPOS was already coming under some fire for what took place. Many on the outside are questioning the effectiveness of the structure. At the core of the issue is obviously centralization.
This all stems from the ninja-mined stake of Steemit Inc.
To make matters worse, many of the Witnesses were against the fork, thus opting to run the old code. In this instance, Steemit Inc (Tron) jumped in and took control by removing the Witness votes from those who were against it.
Any decentralization that DPOS might have offered with the Witnesses was shown to be not in effect by their removal. The stake held by Sun is all that matters.
This carries a lot of weight throughout the entire cryptocurrency industry. POW versus POS was long debated. We saw how POW networks are not 100% secure with a number of 51% attacks taking place. DPOS, in the eyes of many, offered a better system yet that is not exactly panning out. There are vulnerabilities which are being exploited.
This is a serious issue. For Steem, it is horrific. What business is going to want to build on there knowing that, at any time, the stake could be frozen? All the accusations of theft are indeed coming to pass.
Of course, this is a major opportunity for Hive. Governance needs to be addressed. This is something that must take place in a public forum among all the community members. The idea of each account having 30 full votes in a system with 20 consensus Witnesses is not working. We need something different.
In short, we must structure a system which eliminates the possibility of what is taking place on Steem happening on Hive.
Fortunately, there are a couple of factors already working in Hive's favor. The first is the fact the distribution of the tokens is much better since the Steemit Inc stake was not airdropped to anyone. At present, it resides in the DAO to support the proposal system.
The second is the fact that any tokens bought must wait 30 days before they can vote on Witnesses. Thus, there is a bit of time to prevent an attack.
These are good starting points but not enough. Our governance system needs to be the best in the industry. Once again, all eyes are on Hive. Since the situation is so fresh in everyone's mind, plus with Steem making news with their antics, it is time to leverage that with a much improved system.
Ultimately, Hive needs to be a business friendly chain. And no, I am not talking about businesses that hang an app or put together a little game for Hive members to play. Instead, I am referring to the type of system that will attract some heavy hitters. If we want larger websites/businesses engaging with Hive, we must make sure it is a business structure they can trust.
This all starts with ensuring people's money is safe.
Think about it. If you were starting a business, after what took place yesterday, would you start it on Steem knowing that a soft fork could freeze your holdings?
We must make sure there is a marked difference between how Hive operates as compared to Steem. While we already have it to a degree, we need to make sure that it is evident to all within the crypto world.
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@edicted has been talking about how crazy it is for all accounts to have 30 full weight witness votes. Hopefully we can change to a different witness system in the coming months or year.
Good thing I wasn’t planning too heavily on receiving hive in exchange for my Steem, looks like Sun screwed that one up now too.
@cmplxty you're not on the censored list yet... so you can still power down and convert your STEEM to HIVE. I guess the question is for how much longer will STEEM have any value and not be entirely frozen?
Yeah but if blocktrades isn't converting any Steem to hive I won't be able to.
@ionomy is another possibility... less convenient and less liquid, but better than getting stuck holding the bag.
Cool thanks for the tip, I'll check them out! Have 12 more weeks to figure it out lol
You can use steem-engine.
steem-steemp-hivep-(hiveswap) -hive.
True, I didn't think of that, thanks!
My steem account is totally inaccessible to me today with the remainder of my steem tokens in the wallet there. Error 404. What's that all about?
steemit.com has been pretty unstable lately, if that is what you are using. Try steempeak.com, much better uptime.
For years Facebook, Google and Twitter have been destroying businesses built on their platforms that they didn't like.
People move to decentralised platforms to get away from this but, as we've seen founders stakes remain a key weak point of DPOS blockchains.
Hive has made a good start on fixing this issue and Justin Sun is Hive's gift of free positive publicity because of his idiotic negative behaviour on Steem.
I thought that hive might drop out of the news but Justin Sun's outrageous behaviour continues. He is like some mad Roman Emperor.
I totally agree that it is high time to change the number of wittnessvotes to a smaller quantity than the number of signing witnesses. It may disrupt the current situation of power but every later point in time will do this equally. The additional benefit to do it now is the positive marketing aspect associated with it.
i cannot even contemplate the ramifications going forward for what Mr. Tron has done.
And here, his first line item to the Koreans was "tokens are to be sacred".
I guess Mr. Tron has failed at keeping his word / keeping to his own argument points.
He just says what people want to hear. The Korean community seems to be very fond of him so he's just giving them lip service so they keep buying Steem.
"Do as I say, not as I do."
The Sun Shun
I think voting for a maximum of 10 witnesses would be appropriate.
30 makes almost no sense. 1 is too few.
Why not just do one vest = one vote and let accounts distribute their votes however they see fit?
If it is 1 vote 1 witness, you only need 20% of all SP to get 4/20 witnesses and paralyze the network. In this situation you can block all hardforks till you get your way.
Now you need 51% to do this which is at least a majority.
That is a good property. If a change is too contentious, it shouldn't occur. Everyone on the network agrees to the current protocol. But we shouldn't force changes that are against the will of a large portion of the network.
Tron seemed able to control a considerable number of witnesses with just the 20% (STINC stake). Also to need a majority to block a change is ridiculous. That means a change opposed by 49% of the network could be implemented.
Tron with the help of exchanges and proxy.token had 50% of witness voting SP. It doesn't matter if they only actually had 20% of all Steem. This just shows how we don't want to make things any easier to abuse.
Although in theory less than 50% of people should be allowed to block an undesirable change, in reality this will be abused. So it's important to consider the following:
Firstly, let's imagine they block changes just to make unrelated and unreasonable demands before supporting any changes. It happened on Steem when Justin started adding Proxy.tokens' demands for economic changes. Do we want this my way or the highway tactic to be easier?
Secondly, let's imagine they do something like when a needed change is urgent so it cannot be well debated.
Do you really want hostage situations to become easier where an urgently needed change is blocked to blackmail in an unrelated change?
Want to secure the Hive block chain against an immediate threat? Oops it looks like proxy.token wants downvotes removed before this can happen.
Want to introduce the long awaited SMTs? Oh looks like you will have to agree to make love to Jusin, or they will block it.
No thank you.
Human nature means it will definitely be abused. It was already abused. Lets not enable more proxy.token scenarios.
That doesn't solve the issue of a Malicious party threatening the governance of the network... What do makes sense to me is that one party is capable of voting for a non determinant number of witnesses... What non determinant means? Well for preventing a hardfork you need 4/20, then each account must not be able to vote more than 3 witnesses to prevent that in the scenario some urgent update on the code is necessary no party could hold the network at ransom as the Koreans did.
Also, this voting proportion make it more expensive to push 11 witnesses into top 20 spots (I was told that this is the number needed to run a softfork).
Yes, I picked 10 because it is a nice number, but anything between 4 and 16 makes an attack quite expensive.
I am not sure of the number but less than the 17 Witnesses needed for consensus.
Very well put. Indeed effective governance coupled with security and above board communication with current and future major steak holders will prove absolutely necessary to Hive's long-term success. I must imagine that the Hive team is monitoring the situation with the Steem blockchain very closely and are contemplating measures that mitigate the risks associated with the current DPOS and witness model. Based on their actions thus far, I prefer to believe that this is likely the case.
I cant say for shure @jaalig but I know some have it on the radar.
The fact that the 30 day delay was put in the original code that was forked shows some attention was paid.
How does anyone ever trust Tron or Sun ever again?
How does anyone ever trust Steemit or steem token ever again?
How does anyone ever trust DPoS ever again?
They don't.
I can't even access my Steemit account neither via Steemit nor Steempeak frontend. It takes me almost there but then says error 404 page not found. So all my steem tokens in my wallet there are lost to me at this stage. I thought it may be my poor internet connection, but then why can I still access Hive easily?
Download vessel from github?
Then they can't lock you out, you do the transactions yourself.
I am not sure. Now, 2 hours after you posted, I do not seem to have a problem.
It could be the Steemit API which all use...it has been causing a lot of problems.
so there is no way in selling steem currently?
Poloniex, Bittrex , Ionomy...
The more we build hive as a community and not as a centralized company, the more resilient the project will be. This is a great opportunity to learn from the weaknesses of DPOS and work together to introduce the new government rules to make the chain much more resilient and user/business secure.
We should start a campaign to delist steem
Not now, we still have some to be disposed... May later after a 13 weeks mourning with steem. Let give our old home a good burial.
To make it even more decentralized, one user could only allowed 2 votes and increase the 20 block producers into hundred for the code to take effect. It makes dpos become po decentralized in my opinion.
How many businesses run off facebook ebay etc.
They are centralised and can screw you over anytime everyone is aware of that yet jump on them given the chance.
So maybe the reason behind people not adopting steem or hive is more than that maybe they are just poor scammy looking systems that make zero sense. Tokenomics are floored and social aspect is none existent unless you offer a vote 👍