Something New. Or just a team of masters.
Within in all of this there are many things to be looked at, I am sure not to cover every aspect in this post. Before I dig into my mind of thought, I do not say that I have all the answers, I do strongly feel that I do hold opinion to part of the solution though. I also strongly feel it will take more than just one approach to find a solution but an integration of several solutions to prevent a single or group of people from holding the chain hostage to their will.
I will add this note here, because of a very recent conversation I had with someone I hold with high respect as a person. (not too many of those around right now):
Not using the chain because of who holds power. A dislike for the way they do things. The self centred ambitions that take over the good for the population and success of the chain are held to reason for not using it.
I will say that by those same people not using it reduces the voice that we can all combine to be heard. The rewards not earned by you weaken the voice we can bring together to make the changes the mass population would like to see take place and provide a better community over all.
Doing nothing achieves Nothing! If you want to see a change get involved and help make that change happen.
The 30 day power up for any new stake powered up should increase to two or three month as the amount of the stake increases. Yes I know dispersing it through multiple accounts.
Governance Change
I think everyone can see that something needs to change. For the security of the chain long term. Methods to prevent a sole entity or a group of people taking control over the chain for self benefits. One example of this is the new reward curve put in place to reward those already at the top with higher rewards for themselves and less for those at the lower levels. Basically taxing the majority from a reduced reward pool to compensate for the loss their loss with rewards taken from the reward pool for the SPS/DAO. (just opinion)
In an effort to show they want an equal opportunity for the community as a whole they should reverse that curve and return the value of stake to equality. This might begin to restore some faith in the governance that hold power at the present moment. A low level account gives a lesser reward not just by equivalent stake ratio, also be a reduced value to the Hive Power held. So any benefits from gained by the 50/50 split to the rewards have been voided. At the same time giving higher rewards to High level Hive Power. We have a two class system at work here, Not close to equality.
While I can agree that there is many things being worked on in the background the general population might not be ware of. Discussion should be organised and not popping into general chat at random times to mention something. A time needs to be set when all users can have knowledge in advance of disclosure of what is happening, This thing of keeping a majority in the dark, needs to stop. Transparency is needed.
A trust-less code cannot be trusted if those controlling the code cannot be trusted. Maybe we need to incorporate a KYC (Know Your Customer) or in this instance KYW (Know Your Witness) system were any witness entering to the top 20 needs to perform a KYC so accountability can be held. KYC will also prevent to some degree the ability of one person running multiple witness to gain control.
Voting a witness
I have had a open discussion about this for a long time on various servers not just recently with the Justin Sun drama. (of which that bollox needs to stop and progress on our own chain begin, Leave Steemit to Steemit.)
I have meditated on the thing of infinite witness votes and it brings me back to the same thing, A method easily available for control to be taken over the chain by a select few or one massive stake holder. One of the key things which is said to be wanted is this ability to be stopped.
While it does provide a greater overlap of who can be voted to, The reality is. Those at the top will not share that vote out to others. If the case was that they would, the gap between witnesses would not be so vast. Shown in the two Screen shot below taken from the witness page through Peakd.
Alternatively, Reducing the amount of witness a vote can go to. maybe some will think more about were their vote is placed. With a vote as low as three. Six times more power is need to maintain control over the top 18 witness. While it might make it harder for other witness to enter the top twenty position and gain a say in what goes on in governance. Opportunity does open up if just one high stake holder wants to give a chance to a lower ranked witness, maybe even three of them.
I already hear the yells about this is because maintaining control to prevent.... I echo that back as part of the problem we want to change a select few maintaining control is what we are trying to avoid.
The concentration of votes through agreement of I vote for you, you vote for me and we can stay in power will happen, This has been done before and will again and the voice of the population once again be dismissed if votes to a witness are not reduced below the consensus level. Simply because we can vote to more does not mean those with controlling Hive Power will.
Changes
One of the first things to be put in place for a change to the governance is a reset. This is not such a complicated thing to do on face value. The coding side is something else. For the first reset I suggest a vote of to last for 1 month.
This initial first vote would be the witness that are in place at the moment. So any witness that is in place right now will effectively hold that position for one month after code is implemented. Members of the platform would then have one month to cast their vote to the witness of their choice. During this transition phase of voting to witness each vote cast would last from the moment the vote was cast for a maximum of 1 year or 365 days.
This would null all the votes from non-active accounts to each witness and level the playing field for all witness a small bit.
Increase the consensus witness
An increase to the consensus witness might also be included to improving the defences of the chain. Increasing this from 17+1 of 21 to 21+1 of 25 would also reduce the control that can be taken over the chain.
Requirements of being in these positions might also be looked at. Not just any witness can become a consensus witness. The need to facilitate a full RPC/Seed node could be a requirement to be a consensus witness.
Witness duplication
Should a witness be able to be involved in more than one witness through the creation of a community account which then becomes a witness itself. Just to give an example that does not exist and Excuse me @aggroed for using your name here.
What if Splinterlands was to become a witness on the chain. Would that be considered okay? Should situations like that be allowed to happen?
Should a witness be limited to investment to only one witness. While I do not think Splinterlands would be considered a sock. It would give a greater control over the chain to an individual. KYW (Know Your Witness) might go some way to preventing this. Although it is easy enough to set up an account for a husband/wife. opening another question, Should wife husband situation be able to run a separate witness. What about the children and grandchildren.
There are other things that need to be considered too along with governance and how things work. This is probably not the best place to bring those things up so I will leave this post with just about the governance. I welcome all opinions on the content of this post opposing the views set out within it and complimenting what has been written. The aim of this post is not to cause a dispute but to open doors to other lines of thought and away from the tunnel visions of one way or the other.
Sincerly.
The Hive.
Crypto Excahnge: https://ionomy.com/en/aff/d0afaf8f56804ce181c5ef5db43d4a21
Discord Servers
The Alliance Discord Server: https://discord.gg/mqvYNuA
Hive Block chain Server: https://discord.gg/QxbgScK
No in my view. Witnesses should require KYC and be unique to persons. Otherwise it is not decentralized governance.
A reset of the witnesses does need to be done. This is Hive Block Chain not Steem Block Chain, and all votes for witnesses should be from a Hive Block Chain front end. The one month time frame I think is a very reasonable time frame for this to occur. This allows time for the witnesses to get run a campaign and let people know what their qualifications are and what their intent is.
I vote for the one month campaign time to start on April 11th, 2020, on May 11th, all votes not voted via one of the front ends for Hive Block Chain are all null and void. This will remove all the dead votes, and yes we need a yearly at the max re-vote/re-validation of the witness votes.
Or simply deploy vote decay... which I think is more useful long term and would automatically solve the problems you refer. For me, you either are here or your vote should count less and less.. the more people is not around.
I think vote decay is a good idea. Have a vote valid for 1 year and then let it decrease to 0 over a few months.
I would say 1 year is too much, but up for discussion.
The reason is simple... after 1 month of not being around... you are already not updated... but then, I understand that most people don't have patience to vote if they have to come every month here to vote. So... the question is tricky to answer.
Maybe we can start with something like an inverted exponential curve for 1 year kind of thing. To make it easier to use long periods of time and still empower voting in the first weeks for anyone wanting to play in the governance.
I think most are not interested in voting that often. We should move past constantly talking about our own stuff and get on with blogging. Monthly voting basically requires that a large part of posts will be lobbying by witnesses. How boring is that going to be?
My guess is that most will probably find a proxy that is willing to put in the work or do it occasionally themselves when important issues come up and they see how witnesses are dealing with it.
I wont be putting out monthly witness updates myself. There will be topics coming up from time to time where I can voice my opinion as witness.
Yeah... my previous last paragraph was assuming long periods = 1 year... but using the so called inverted exponential curve.
Missed the 1 year mention there... now adding.
While I do like exponential stuff it's again a concept only appreciated by nerds. It would be yet another thing that makes this place not intuitive.