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RE: Steem Alliance proposals... time to vote!
A useful summary and analysis i think, although I'm a bit more of an idealist and less of a pragmatist than you.
What's this about a 'test run', is there another actual vote?
I'm really struggling with stake mattering more than people. It just feels like a massive affront to human dignity, then again maybe that's a good thing, may as well reflect the underlying truth of the platform's economics.
There was a pre-registration that was supposed to provide advance warning of the upcoming vote, and then only the preregistered voters would count at this stage.
The preregistration resulted in only a small number of accounts registering, so they working group decided that the actual vote should be opened to everyone. I called the preregistration a 'test run' and the actual vote is happening now (the dpoll link at the top of this post).
It's not that stake matters more than people. Stake-based consensus is a protocol-level solution to the byzantine generals problem (an attack vector that any trustless protocol must have a good answer for in order to be considered 'secure' and 'immutable'). The idea of stake as a consensus solution is that anyone with enough stake to influence the consensus will have more to gain from upholding the blockchain than they could potentially gain from sabotage. While less important when the consensus mechanism is a step removed (political discussion in an open forum, with decisions being reversible instead of immutable), it's still the backbone of over 100 years of shareholder rights law (1 share = 1 vote).
It's not a perfect system, but it provides a lot more resilience in a decentralized world than can be achieved with a 'permissioned' protocol. Counting people instead of stake requires 'oracles' to verify that each account has a unique pulse behind it; essentially making a permissioned blockchain instead of a truly decentralized blockchain. As seen with EOS, permissioned blockchains are terrible about maintaining immutability.
All potential technical solutions are subject to constraints, and the pros/cons depend on the actual objectives to be attained - what problem is this protocol actually trying to solve? One of struggles with Steem is that there are different perspectives on the actual objective, with key stakeholder groups unable to come to terms on what the purpose of Steem is.
If the objective is different than what is coded into the protocol, then it has to be solved at protocol-level, which requires establishing a new consensus among the top witnesses.
one of the objectives we, meaning the working group, had was to involve as much of the community with say as possible. In order to do that in a stake weighted environment it meant reducing the influence of the top level of the stake holders to give more of the other stakeholders say. As long as we hold SP, we are stakeholders, it's just a matter of how much influence that has.
Our solution was to put a cap on the upper stake with reduced influence beyond 250k SP... it has been interesting in the earlier stages to watch the changes in standings when switching between the full stake based and the modified. It was clear at that point our efforts were having the desired effect.
To go one account, one vote it means we then have to figure out ways to eliminate bots and sock puppets. It also opens the door for people being more inclined to voting based on the name(s) on the proposal. Some of the smaller accounts are not as invested (interest wise).
Yes I understand there's a cap after 250K SP and that all of this is done to prevent bots, i'm just saying it makes me feel uncomfortable.
I'm also convinced it's one of the main barriers to the mass adoption of steem. If I feel this disempowered with 11K SP, it's a feeling that's only going to be magnified for the 95% of people who have less of a stake than me.
There is a solution.... verified voting, it's either that or the effective disenfranchisement of 95% of users. There is a choice.
I do have some sympathy for the view that the more invested someone is the more of a say they should have, but that's 'cos I'm reasonably well invested.
It's just one of things on steem that I struggle with.