Why Steemit looks broken - an analysis

I haven't been posting much these weeks, I'm very busy with real life which is still very exciting outside of of Steem! But also, the responsiveness of the Steem interface hasn't been great. Performing, posting, commenting or voting doesn't always work, it feels like a big mess..

So I decided to take a step back and try to come up with some answers on the questions on my mind:

• Who was/is behind the DDOS attack on Steemit.com?
• What could have been the motive?
• What can we expect moving forward?

This is my analysis, much of it is hypothetical and a matter of personal opinion. I have very limited knowledge of facts, so chances are that I'm wrong. If you see false argumentation or invalid logic, please leave a comment. Being wrong is how we learn things, right?

Taking a step back

The whole space of crypto-currencies is moving extremely fast with developments. New coins, ICO's, forks, problems and solutions arise almost every day. It seems impossible to understand for the common man. Even the most experienced and seasoned crypto-veterans don't agree on things. So which technologies are promising, which currencies will survive the tumultuous conditions that define this space?

Well, in the end for every blockchain technology I've identified 4 groups with different interests:

• Development Team
• End-Users
• Investors
• Contributors

Depending on the use case of the currency or technology and depending on which system it uses for making decisions on protocol changes and rewards (Proof of Work, Proof of Stake or variants of these) it is possible to make a prediction to which extent the interests of the different groups are being served or aligned. For example, in a Proof of Stake system, the contributors (witnesses or voters) are the investors (those that hold high quantities of the token), so in that case their interests are perfectly aligned.

We see many issues for Bitcoin and Ethereum, the leading Proof of Work currencies. Scalability for instance is a big problem that is difficult to solve. This is because the interests of the Development Team and the Contributors (the miners) regurlarly don't align. This is logical because most significant miners have invested huge amounts of money to build and run their mining equipment, so they want to be paid and rewarded for that. The end result is often a fork, the community splits and each goes its separate way.

Personally, it looks like Proof of Stake, and more specifically Delegated Proof of Stake is a much more elegant way for the decision making process in a crypto-currency. It's also very light-weight in terms of computing power necessary to run, so it can run much faster and handle transactions many times quicker than a Proof of Work system. Bitshares, Steem and the upcoming EOS are examples of this. To me they look very promising.

But on the internet and in different fora I find a lot of negativity towards DPOS. I watched youtube a lot these weeks with interviews with Vitalik Buterin, the guy that started Ethereum. But also, I looked at Dan Larimer, who created the blockchain backend of Bithares and Steem. There's a huge and interesting discussion on the systems like PoW and PoS going on and then I stumbled on this video, it's seven minutes long and I recommend you watch it now:

This is Andreas Antonopoulos, a tech entrepreneur heavily involved with Bitcoin since 2011. And he's pretty recognized as a bitcoin and blockchain expert. This video is from June 2017. He gives a couple of arguments for Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake:

You have to invest energy, a real-world asset, into Proof of Work and therefore it's perceived as more valuable

I don't think that there is a reasonable basis for this, as this is not the case for fiat money. That's just created out of thin air, but the worldwide agreement on using fiat money defines the value. So I think value can certainly derive from community consensus, we see it in the real world and we see it in crypto-currencies. You're not scoring points here Andreas!

With PoS, if you have much coins, you get more, the rich get richer

I somewhat agree with Andreas here. This is also what we see on Steem, if you have a lot of SteemPower (the so-called whale), you curation rewards are always higher. So yes, a lot of value tends to gravitate to users that already have a lot of Steem.
Then again, in Proof of Work it's sort of the same thing. If you invest a lot of money into mining rigs, you get bigger rewards and you have more decisive power as well. So where I agree with Andreas that maybe PoS or DPoS isn't perfect, it sure as hell isn't worse than PoW on this aspect.

With PoS maybe cheating is rewarded, with PoW you commit electricity so you lose that

I don't think so. If you try to cheat as a witness, you probably won't succeed and you can forget your witness position. Just look at what happened with Jerry Banfield. He made a mistake in one of hist posts, asked for more money then reasonable for a service (I don't think that was as serious as the things that Andreas talks about here, but still, an error in judgement nonetheless) and now Jerry can probably forget about reaching the top 20 witnesses. DPoS doesn't reward cheating.

Proof of Work costs a lot of energy and resources, but that creates safety and immutability, just look at the market cap and see how many billions are secure

What?? Did you just say that the centralized fiat money system is safer because there's more money in that then in crypto?? Are you just spreading fear without reasonable arguments? Are you scared that Bitcoin will lose to DPoS technologies, because you know that no miner will ever want to use DPoS, Andreas? Don't you really think deep down that DPoS is just a better system?

Andreas 'sort of' agrees at that moment that PoS is very interesting and suggest usage of 'hybrid' forms, with parts of PoW and parts of PoS. But he knows already that the Bitcoin community will never agree about that. Again, the interests of the 4 different groups don't align there with the PoW as bitcoin has it. So he resorts to this, and this is how the video ends:

What about security?

PoW has been secure for over 70 billion dollars worth of investment, DPoS for only a few hunderd million. Both DPoS and PoW will grow and we will see what each can do, when put under pressure. You can think you have the best plan in the world, but the better system will prove itself when it's really attacked.

Who was/is behind the attack on Steemit.com and what could have been the motive?

Every blockchain technology, startup or currency wants to know which underlying system (PoW or PoS, or a specific variant) is the best suited for the future requirements and interests of users, dev teams, investors and contributors. Delegated Proof of Stake is looking extremely promising, certainly with the upcoming EOS, that promises complete new levels of speed and capacity. They promise a difference so big, that it will feel like the difference between a 2017 PC and one from 1950... Cool, but is it safe? Is it secure? Can we expect our property to be safe enough, even in wallets that have simple account names? Only a huge, prolonged and heavy attack can prove it.

So I don't know who is behind the attacks. But I think the results of the attacks will help to determine to what extent DPoS based blockchains will prove to be the better underlying system for crypto technologies and currencies.

What can we expect moving forward?

There are some people out there that have quite a lot of hash power and a big interest in PoW systems. Mass adoption of DPoS is a threat to their future potential rewards. They would like to see DPoS systems fail. And what better publicly known blockchain to attack than Steemit? Breaking Steemit's security or interface performance is seen as a positive thing for radical PoW believers and miners that have much invested into PoW.

Getting hammered by attacks only means they are scared that in fact, DPoS will become bigger (and as a result more valuable) than Bitcoin or Ethereum, with Steem and Bitshares as leading platforms.

So I think that crappy performance of the Steemit.com website only points towards the massive disruptive potential of Steem. Yes, it's a pain. Posting, commenting and voting doesn't work at all sometimes. Having to resort to different channels like busy.org isn't acceptable. But bear in mind you are now only expression the needs and interests of 1 group: the end-users.

It just might be the case that a DPoS based blockchain like Steemit is the best suited for social media interaction in the future for all 4 groups. If this is proven by surviving the worst attacks ever experienced we Steemians are all heading for beyond moon.