Regarding Changing the Gridcoin PoS Protocol -- Active Poll
From my response found the thread regarding changing the Gridcoin PoS incentive structure from % interest to fixed block reward. Thread found here:
https://github.com/gridcoin/Gridcoin-Research/issues/106.
Join the discussion!
EDIT ADD:
Interest earned on coins does not require the coin to stake within a specific time period. The 6 month limit is related to DPoR and beacons. This doesn't change much of the proposal outline's purpose, but it is misinformation. My apologies!
Thank you @tomasbrod for bringing that error to my attention.
Gridcoin has been developing at a record pace over the past months. I have seen very little obstruction when it comes to this progresses. I would hope, however, that when we start to crack open the base protocols we will slow down and take our time so we don't need to fix them again in a month. I would also hope that we try to include as much of the community as possible and provide ample time for counter-proposals and discussion. If we don't, we run the risk of forking GRC just like SegWit forked bitcoin. SegWit did not really give enough time for dissenters to form counter-proposals, so when SegWit activated without serious consideration for alternatives, those who dissented forked the coin so they could implement their own solutions when they are ready (I think in November). I do not think that anything discussed here is serious enough to cause a fork, but we should learn from the mistake of bitcoin and attempt to fix the process now instead of when a serious change is proposed. We should do this for the security of Gridcoin, not in favor of any one proposal or another.
That said, I have been working on the whitepaper along with a proposal over the past months. I was hoping to release everything together in a nice, neat, and accessible format. Because there is now an active poll regarding one of the base protocols, I can not wait. Here is a rough outline of what I have been working on with regards to proposals. I apologize for the format but I simply will not have enough time in the next 21 days to complete and refine the content. Also, if there is a better way to display pages of text without having to reformat everything, I'm all ears = ). I'm still new to GitHub.
Is there a way to delay this vote? It would be nice if the dev community were unified behind a way to implement this before putting it to a vote. It feels like we are being too hasty on what would be a major change to the coin.
I'm not sure if we can delay the poll. But since the poll isn't very detailed with its proposal -- what's the block reward if this proposal is approved?! and so on -- I doubt it will be acted on. I will be voting abstain as I neither support nor reject the idea of the poll, I just think the poll is premature and a little confusing/lacking in details.
Good writeup. Any proposal should include examples of expected changes so that people can get their head around it. Detailed formula and algorithms are great, however charting out what people can expect to earn in terms they can understand based on current wallet holdings is important. So before a change is implemented, earnings should be charted for users with: 10 GRC, 100 GRC, 1000 GRC, 10,000 GRC, 100,000 GRC, 500,000 GRC, 1,000,000 GRC, 5,000,000 GRC, and 10,000,000 GRC as investors and at a common magnitude of say 50 and expected earnings with the current system, and the proposed new system(s). Then people can really grasp what effect the changes will have to them personally.
You've had a year to join the discussion, read the poll's linked github issue.
I'm sorry not all of us have been with Gridcoin as long as you have CM. I did follow the github link and read through some of the discussion, but thats all I saw, discussion. There is no clear proposal for how this is being done as evidence by this post offering up multiple ways to implement this. My concern isn't that this hasn't been discussed enough, it's that the poll is being created without any information on how the team plans on implementing fixed block rewards. I'm new and maybe this is how things are done but it seems like polls should be linked to a proposal instead of a github discussion page.
No, sorry, but that is wrong.
First of all GitHub is and was never the place where people were send to get information or discuss things.
GitHub also is not the center of the world. It it some outlying, fringe medium most people - if at all - know that you can download stuff.
Also if you send people to "read it" and point them to this thread they see something ONE YEAR old and close it. Or if they read on they see Rob saying "this is not important right now".
And so on.
This thread is NOT how people can make an informed decision. And no, it is also not a broad discussion with "the community". it is a throwing of thoughts from GitHubers.
For example has anyone here addressed the question WHY people are not staking their wallets 24/7? If you want to change that, you should know the reason, don't you think?
I also have one of those big wallets that is not on most of the time. Why? I don't have seen ONE of the three main reasons here. (And I wont tell you know, because you may start thinking about it and come up with other reasons then mine.)
The PoS outrunning the PoR is actually a small problem, since we have only 1,5% inflation.
That means even after 10 years the PoS will only be ~20% higher then PoR. Under "ideal" situation, not counting those who don't stake (especially exchanges) and coins that get lost (there are always some).
But yes, we could decrease the PoS, but I am against any big change at one point. People have invested, counting on their interest. I won't argue about how many that actually are, but it is still a valid stakeholder group and should not be "robbed".
Regarding this my proposal (as I have written similar at the start of the coin) would be to slowly decreasing the interest.
We could decrease the interest by 0,1% roughly once per year until we are down to 0,5% yearly. Then in 2028 we could think again about that topic in a (I am sure) completely new environment. Of course that road could still be changed, but by this you are both reigning in interest and showing that you don't break promises. Gridcoin is a long term coin, so we both CAN do long term plans and have people planning with it long term.
I am full into not-consecutive staking.
Why aren't people staking 24/7? One thing could be that they don't have to since the interest is given out regardless of the wallet being online or not. One suggestion, this one, is to make the reward based on actual work done. That is, benefit brought to the ecosystem. You mint a block and get rewarded for it.
The amount rewarded isn't really the problem. We can stick with 1.5% if that 1.5% is for securing the network.
Yeah, you are giving the only one point I have ever seen.
So now the REASONs why people don't stake all the time?
Because your point is not a reason, since staking 24/7 and once a month is not a difference for interest. So why are people choosing the once a month option?
Fear of getting hacked? Super expensive electricity? I don't know. Maybe it's easier if the people keeping cold wallets actually speak instead of just tossing out cookie crumble trails.
Why run a client that consumes cpu power and must be managed when i can set a monthly/quarterly/yearly schedule to stake for a day and collect my interest?
I would also love to hear from cold wallet investors.
I asked when it was first posted and got told 'lol' by the poll initiator. So, I take that as a no.
But hey, why not make more hasty changes? Wallet stability and paying miners aren't so important ye? /s
I had not heard of this proposal until now. So thanks for pointing it out. However, after having read most of the thread at github I have decided to vote yes, since I believe that the changes would be an important first step to addressing the challenges that GRC is currently facing. As others have pointed out in the github thread though: I think that you should carry on with the work on your whitepaper and with furthering the ideas around zero PoS reward. The changes that are currently proposed would be a quick fix and do not have to mean that your proposals are off limits for future adoption.
Thank you for taking the time to present some feedback = )
I agree that FBR is probably the best path forward right now and I think a detailed proposal would pass with flying colors. I am very much looking forward to that discussion.
I also hope that in the future these types of loose proposal polls will be presented as opinion polls while only detailed proposals will be considered actionable.
I agree that given the state of technologies that are at our disposal, the only truly actionable polls should be regarding hash-secured specific pull-requests (one exception may be with how specific constants in the code have to be; depending on the pending types of changes gambling the market for upcoming changes may have to be prevented). It is that easy. Everything else is simply an option, or an opinion.