A Subtle, Yet Important Change In How The Steemit.com Site Talks To The Blockchain
As I was posting my regular market snapshot, I spotted a slight inconsistency in the way the post metadata was shown, specifically the "time since the publishing" value. Instead of seeing the standard "2 seconds ago", I saw something like: "in 1 minute".
See the difference? It's like the post is actually due to be published in 1 minute.
Strange, huh?
I started to look at the comments too and here's what I saw:
The post was published 1 minute ago, but the first comment appears to be due in 1 minute. It's like although it's there, and I can read it, it's not really there.
I waited 1 minute, and here's how the comments panel looked like:
After 1 minute, the first comment was shown as published 2 seconds ago, while the next one is waiting in an invisible queue to be public in 31 seconds.
It is my understanding that this means the Steemit.com (Condenser) is talking to the blockchain in a different way:
- if a transaction is present in (or before) the last irreversible block, it is shown in the past.
- if a transaction is present in a block after the last irreversible block (according to the current node interrogated by the UI) it is shown as being due in a time interval equal to the time from the last irreversible block.
I suspect this is due to the increase in the witness numbers and / or the hivemind development (which is the code name for communities). I didn't look at the code yet, but I plan to dig in during the weekend and we'll keep you posted if I see something supporting this assumption.
All in all, this shows again that Steemit is not your regular, monolithic, centralized and controlled social media website, but it is ruled by a decentralized consensus, which, in this case, requires around 1 minute to synchronize across all block producers.
Hence, the importance of having consistent, regular witnesses.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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I know the feeling. That's why I created steem.supply, an easy to use and accurate tool for calculating your Steemit rewards |
I actually had this happen to me and it was a computer clock issue, if you change your clock a couple of minutes back, it will show that for all recent comments.
Yes, but the gap will remain, and, compared with the "blockchain time" there's still a gap.
I was just 30 second late in that post... 😚
Wouldn't that be interesting, if after all the talk about virtually everything else, somehow, someway, Hivemind/Communities suddenly appeared. :) Anyway, that's still kind of weird to see, and odd that it would appear if it's really counting down. Maybe that feature comes next, where it takes the actual minute to appear, which would cause it's own set of issues. "Where's my comment! It used to be instant! Now it's in a queue for a minute! What gives!"
Yeah, better the in a minute notice and have it appear. That way I just scratch my head. :)
Great analysis because sometimes we can miss these kind of small changes, but you've done analytical thing, and good to know that how you've you matched this situation with the Increase in witnesses or Hive mind development. And yes, it's decentralised Platform and sometimes we can face these kind of things and in my opinion on Steemit sometimes we face small issues but it never stay for long lasted.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Thanks for letting us know about the change. I'm thinking that it might also have to do with giving users a small grace period where they are able to edit or delete their post/comment before it is recorded on the blockchain - because once it's on the blockchain, it's there forever! Even if it's edited after this point, anyone can use a block explorer to go back and see the original content, but this is different if the content is stored locally on a Steemit server for a few minutes before it is transferred to the Steem blockchain.
Let me check it :p lets c what happens to my comment :p
Working fine here without any delay
God bless you. https://steemit.com/@biblegateway
Let me verify here.
Modified
Could this be peculiar to certain accounts? This very comment of mine was published without delay.
Not an issue. Working fine . Just my internet speed ..😥