HF20 Equilibrium Reached: Problem #1 - How To Deal With Wallet Spam?
So all the dust has settled and the blockchain is stable once more. Stemit accounts can be created, small stakeholders can vote, post and comment, the HF20 message has changed from red to blue, and all is well!
Of course there are still issues to address, however we are part of a disruptive technology movement here on Steemit and so a lot of these issues are in brand new territory for everyone.
If you use Steemit it means that you are a part of this growing community. Therefore you are contributing by using the system and by making suggestions and voting for witnesses who you feel improve the community with their actions and suggestions.
So with that in mind, I'd like to put out a question to the witnesses I support with my vote, and the wider Steem community.
Dealing With Blockchain Frustration
Before I continue, I'd like to just briefly touch on the best way I believe to deal with the inevitable frustrations that you will encounter from time to time.
HF20 represented a massive overhaul to the STEEM blockchain, and it had to happen whilst allowing us to carry on as normal.
In previous hardforks I have let these frustrations get to me. However I realised that once the dust has settled the blockchain just carries on and everything returns to normal. Sometimes the changes will work, sometimes they won't.
Everybody is different and deals with frustration in their own way. However I can guarantee you that the best way to deal with it, is not by getting into arguments and shouting matches.
I've done it myself . . .
and it get's you . . .
absolutely . . .
NOWHERE!
Defining The Wallet Spam Problem
First things first, let us define the problem of wallet spam. Exactly what it is, why it needs to be stopped, and exactly what to about it.
What is wallet spam?
There probably aren't too many Steemit users who have been around for more than a week who don't know what wallet spam is. However it is important to define it before we go any further, in order to make sure that we're all reading from the same playbook.
Wallet spam is (at the moment) entirely dominated by the resteem/bidbots. These are accounts who have seemingly gained a large following and whom offer to resteem your posts if you send them the link and some money.
The messages are always the same and they are pretty much sent everyday. In my wallet at the moment, the biggest culprits are [at]byresteem and [at]big-whale, who seem to have gone on some kind of spam frenzy. There are others, however these two are the superstars of the spam world in my wallet.
I say my wallet, because of course a lot of these spammers configure their messages to go to account holders of certain SP. So if you have more than say 10,000 SP, you will get different spam to somebody who has 1,000 or 100,000 SP.
It seems that I am in the resteem spam sweet spot, so I will mainly be referring to these guys.
Does Wallet Spam Matter?
Live and let live right? I mean, does it really matter that your wallet gets spammed? You are only ever on that page to collect rewards, make transfers and maybe link to the internal market. The wallet messages are 'below the fold' and so you don't even have to scroll down to read them; so who cares?
Well I for one think it does matter, for a number of reasons:
They drown out messages you may actually want to receive. - Now and again somebody you want to hear from might reach out to you via your wallet memo. If you have tuned out the messages because you can't stand the spam, then you'll miss them.
Perhaps you are part of ongoing competitions and Steemit programs that require you to send and receive wallet memos. In that case the spam just gets in the way, and as above, may cause you to miss a crucial message.
You are providing an advertising service for scam services. - This is a big one for me. I personally believe these resteem services are by and large a scam. The users that they have garnered are either bot accounts or simply follow-for-follow low value, and low usage accounts.
Therefore I don't see why you should be forced into advertising something that you don't believe in, or know to be a 100% scam.
The fact is the wallet pages are probably amongst the most viewed pages on Steemit. It is no secret that the more SP you have, the larger your vote will be. Hence users both new and old alike, tend to go to the wallet page of a user that they haven't come across before.
I don't think that new users should be exposed to this, as they are more susceptible to Steemit spam than say someone who has been around for a couple of months.
Eventually the new user will realise that they have been scammed out of their cash and it potentially leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Leaving them to spread bad vibes about our beloved community.
How Do We Deal With Wallet Spam?
In the latest @steemitblog post, (linked below) they talk about how the new system has moved from bandwidth to resource credits.
This in itself is fairly technical and I won't go into it here. Suffice to say that every action has a cost on the blockchain, from posting, right through to transferring
even the smallest amount (0.001) of SBD or STEEM. Those costs used to be covered by bandwidth allocated to each individual account, now they are covered by Resources Credits (RCs).
As far as I understand it (please more technical people correct me if I'm wrong), there is an algorithm in place that allows the blockchain to work out the cost of all these actions.
Remember, the STEEM blockchain also houses other decentralised applications (dapps) and so it is not just the cost of actions on Steemit it has to take into account.
So moving on we can see that sending a wallet memo along with a small amount of currency will cost.
The question is:
Can we make the cost of sending a memo such that it makes it prohibitive to spam. Without impacting on the experience of either current, or future legitimate users?
Things To Consider When Tackling Wallet Spam
So who might want to send legitimate wallet messages?
Standard users who wants to message other users on Steemit.
Competition holders who need to message details about their contests, including rules, winnings and announcements.
Legitimate Service Providers who want to deliver and advertise their services. Some of these have not even come to the Steem-o-sphere yet, however we need to have them in mind.
Witness Invite
OK so that's the problem as I see it, in a nutshell.
Can we make the RC cost big enough to stop spam, but not so much so that it impinges on honest users?
Below is a list of witnesses I support and I would very much like to get their opinions on this matter. Plus of course anyone else in the community that would like to add their voice to this in the comment section.
If you would like to do a post answering these points, then of course by all means please do. However I would really appreciate it if you place a link, and short summary in the comment section so as to keep this particular debated focused.
Further Reading:
@cryptogee witness votes
@aggroed
@anyx
@arcange
@ausbitbank
@chitty
@clayop
@curie
@helpie
@lukestokes.mhth
@pfunk
@pharesim
@roelandp
@sc-steemit
@steemed
@steemychicken1
@themarkymark
@utopian-io
WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS THIS A PROBLEM WE CAN SOLVE? IF SO WHAT ARE YOUR SUGGESTIONS TO ALLEVIATE THE PROBLEM? OR PERHAPS YOU DON'T EVEN SEE IT AS AN ISSUE?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Title image: KS KYUNG on Unsplash
I've given the wallet spam problem a lot of thought and the only solution I can come up with is to create a cost increase with a condition of follow.
Let me see if I can explain my crazy logic here... between you and I there is trust, I follow your account, you follow mine, so maybe our cost of transacting should be small due to this very reason, we have a trust system. (indulge me for a second).
But I was a spammer and only followed you, but you did not follow me back, then the cost in RCs could be considerably higher for the same transaction, or the minimum amount for the memo could be higher.
Lets make it min memo 0.1 SBD or something, then unless its actually an important message or a thank you note or something people won't be throwing away dimes left and right.
This could be implemented on a UI level, but in order for the spam bots to also be cut at the knees it would have to be implemented on the actual blockchain.
So two separate costs:
(established trust) = cheap
(non established trust) = expensive
Good idea, but why not just raise the minimum amount?
its possible, but i guess the only reason why i dont default to that is because there at apps, like the Chat Wallet developed by @therealwolf which in my opinion would suffer in functionality a bit.
Exactly, we have to make sure we don't hurt legitimate users.
Cg
Could be great if each user could set his own minimum level personaly, for each "huge-whale" SPAMer. Depending on how bad that spamer behaves.
smart idea this one meno.
thank you Roeland... :)
Actually @meno, I've just thought, would that effect the transfers out of Steemit to exchanges?
Cg
not really, unless people are just exchanging .10 cents or less which is unlikely.
Most exchanges have a minimum amount they allow for any transaction, and bittrex if im not mistaken is about 5 USD or so.
Cool, that's good. Let's do that then! @meno for President :-)
Your witness is @helpie right?
Cg
Correct my friend :)
Posted using Partiko Android
Really good idea! It sounds like it would be relatively easy to implement as well. Though not sure about the blockchain mechanics.
Cg
I'd say it's a display issue. Muting users should include hiding the transactions in the wallet. There could be a notice like "4 incoming transactions by muted users, click here to reveal"
Yes, I thought that that was a problem, seeing as when the mute function came in it never worked in the wallet.
Any idea how difficult it is to implement?
Thanks for your feedback by the way!
Cg
Shouldn't be hard at all for anyone knowing their way around condenser
Eh, you don't need to mess with RC for this. You just need a tweak on the interface: mute transfers.
Add a little arrow next to each transfer where you can choose to mute transfers for that user. And a couple of form boxes you can fill to mute/unmute users by inputting their username. This would stop them from appearing at the website's wallet.
But this should be done on the website's interface only! Anyone with the proper tool (maybe steemworld) or knowledge (CLI wallet or something) should be able to see every transfer as usual.
This means any newbie would easily access this feature, while veterans would still easily verify other people's transfers as necessary, all without changing the blockchain code at all.
First, I was going to suggest a new simple " Mute Transactions" button, next to MUTE (which I use every day) on the SPAMers front page.
But then I came to this great suggestion by @felipejoys. Mute the spaming TX memo on the web UI only. I would Let the spam'ers keep sending in their 0.001 SBD as long as it not disturbs me.
Or , we could go even one step further , if this SPAM is to harmfull to the network computational recources. After MUTE TX button is pressed, next to it a small entry window pops up, where everyone of us could set the minimum amount of SBD/ STEEM, below which all transactions would be completely refused to him, just if like my user ID does not existed at all. I would set it to 0,5 SBD, and totally forget about this spamer. i.e. all default 0.001 unconditional trannsactions remain possible, unless recipient has not set his personal higher threshold level to a particular sender. How does this sound ?
Thanks! Idk about the advanced config. If he's a spammer, then all he'll send you is spam, even if the transfer carries 0.5+ steem, right? The simpler the better, specially when the focus is giving zero visibility to the scammers.
If each msg will cost to Spamer 0.5 SBD, they will stop it in no time. 0.001 cost is the true reason why they are sending out Thousands and thousands of them
I like it, though any solution should have as few steps as possible. I personally don't see why when I mute someone from their page, that doesn't extend to the wallet.
Cg
That's true, the simpler the better.
@felipejoys,
This sounds like a quick and easy-to-implement solution. Simple but effective.
Quill
Thanks. Anti-scam cheers!
@cryptogee,
We downvote spam in out comments section so why not extend a downvote button to the wallet? Or how about a "block button" ... users could block all incoming messages from blacklisted accounts.
I don't know the IT requirements behind these suggestions but presumably they wouldn't be that hard to implement.
Quill
Good idea Quill. Flagging might be the easiest and quickest answer, though I do like the trust solution from @meno at the top of the page.
When we first brought in muting I thought it would answer the problem, but for some reason it doesn't extend to the wallet. I have an inkling why now that I have started to code, however I'm not at the level to write a solution yet.
Cg
There is a simple way to do this....
The sender cost to wallets has to be on a semi arithmetic to geometric scale in rcs for a 24 hour period. Essentially a use Tax. Just like a interstate highway, the further you the more you pay.
i suggest
first 10 transfers - 0 units each transfer
11-30 - 1 units each transfer
31-80 - 3 units
81-200-6 units
and so on...
so if you started say with .0005
now a common user or a bot giving out a reward or an app reminding someone is not affected.
adding muted individuals to the wallet display is a great resource to use in conjunction!
I'm not sure how this would work, because the spammers typically send 0.001.
I think it has to be like someone suggested, the block simply has to extend to the wallet. It's just how to do that which I guess is the problem.
Cg
Upvoted.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, but tbh i am confused: Isn't that resource bar there to limit the amount of transactions you can do, thus limiting all these spam? So is there anything left to change?
The blockchain algo has decided that transactions should be cheap, so as not to mess you up if you want to legitimately transfer funds. So it is about keeping the cost low, but at the same time stopping the spammers.
Cg
I dont see the point of these micro transfers. Lets make 10 cents the min and be done with it.