RE: Just the Facts (EOS Proxy by eosratings.com)
Excellent reply, thank you.
I should have clarified that I was more interested in how you collect data on things that are not easy to obtain via existing data feeds. For example, me commenting on this post may have directly impacted the knowledge readily available to you which then impacted eosDAC's rankings.
How many other projects across how many other BPs might similarly have unrepresented projects are attributes?
This is a big challenge for any of these BP ratings systems since they have the potential to send both noise and signal. If the "best" BPs are the ones that spend time contacting ratings groups to convince them of the value they bring (instead of actually putting that time into bringing more value), then we get a repeat of the types of tactics that lead to "triple A" rated mortgages, the subprime mortgage crises, and many similar centrally-controlled financial system debacles we're trying to avoid in this space.
The "controlling hand" may end up being those who run ratings websites. ;)
Thanks again for a great reply and the work you're doing to help voters and proxies make better decisions. It's not an easy task at all, but with openness, persistence, and continued effort, I think we can all continue to improve and, hopefully, get more voter engagement going to get the best BPs securing the chain.
wow excellent point. I think only the VAM is manual when it comes to adding the tools. I have no way to automatically add tools that BPs create. However, if we proposed that BPs add to their bp.json all the tools they have created I could automate that piece.
So... with that said. If we could somehow have the tools BPs are creating in the bp.json or into a contract on the chain then I could be 100% out of the picture. Which I would really like :-).
Just some thoughts. Thanks for the input.
That's a fantastic idea! I just created an issue ticket on the bp.json repo for it.
I agree, it seems only the WAM is a bit subjective / manual. I agree, this could be improved. As a proxy voter, I think about the deliverables a BP supports as being quite important beyond just technical excellence as a block producer.
Unfortunately, in my 2+ years of DPoS experience, I have not yet seen a good way to measure technical excellence when it comes to block production. It's easy to become a popularity contest or a "how many whales do you know" activity. Measuring the technical competency of a block production team at doing the actual job of running reliable, secure nodes and properly evaluating code changes and (importantly) protocol consensus changes as they come up is not something very easy to score. When Block One is pushing out emergency security updates in closed conversations, for example, the wider world doesn't know which BPs have the expertise necessary to evaluate those change requests and respond to them in a timely manner. Due to the nature of those situations, the details of how they are handled should not be made public because of responsible disclosure and the importance of getting consensus witnesses patched and upgraded quickly before a vulnerability is exploited. It also means voters don't have all the information needed to make well-informed decisions.
Again, I applaud your efforts to improve the transparency of the whole ecosystem.
I just update some of my views on your post to github. I think it would be better if we had someone create a smart contract much like the eos-proxyinfo. https://github.com/AlohaEOS/eos-proxyinfo
Here are some of my thoughts:
A smart contract that BPs can use to register tool/app/education/resource etc. I'm thinking this could be something in the vain of how proxy account register today
I would like to see something like