Blind witnesses: Should there be more top witness transparency?
You know what is hard to come to terms with at Steemit, witnesses. I have been here a year and I don't really know what they do other than get paid to run servers and supposedly discuss consensus issues. But, whether or not they actually care about the platform, I am unsure. I know that some do but that is because I know them, most of the witnesses however seem too busy setting up, delegating to and running bidbots. Is this what is really best for the platform?
There is not much to be done even about it as they witness voting is stake based and many of the accounts with the most stake are selling their vote to the highest bidder. That means they are also going to support keeping their good thing going which means all they have to do is vote each other into the top 20 and, with their exponentially growing wallets due to vote selling, they have plenty of power to keep each other there. We are essentially held hostage by the people who should be witnessing the crime. A strange predicament really that the gatekeepers of the decentralized nature of the network are potentially conspiring.
Maybe they don't go out into the community and witness the reality. Sure, I know that there are a lot of people who talk about a lot of things that they know very little about but, what about the real content producers and dolphins that do have a fair idea about what is going on. The people who have been on the platform a year or two and see the decline while people who talked big games about the future seem to have fallen down the same slide as corrupt politicians.
In some ways here, the middle class is in a type of limbo situation as they are too small to really do anything or earn anything significant enough to bump them up but, too big and invested to just walk away. Too small to have a voice with those higher on the food chain, large enough that some people smaller will listen. Now, I understand that Steemit Inc. is working on the blockchain capabilities but, what are the witnesses doing?
Firstly, is it possible to get a list of the top 50 witnesses and whether or not they support bidbots in anyway either through delegation or development projects? I think that with something as contentious as that on the platform currently and the importance of the witnesses, every top 50 witness should be transparent about this topic publicly. We are told that it is important to vote for witnesses who have our best interests at heart but, how do we know when so much of what they do is camouflaged and so much of what they say is doublespeak?
But, perhaps it is like the police say, "Can't trust an eye-witness" and by the lack of response to community concerns, many seem blind anyway. The fallback position is always the same, 'the blockchain allows it'. Yes, but it is the witnesses who can change that.....
Now, perhaps I am just a little frustrated by it all at the moment, perhaps they are working their level best to make this place work for the community but again, this has to come with some transparency as they are in elected positions and if I am having trouble seeing what is going on, I can't imagine what so many thousands of others are struggling with.
Yesterday, a good friend of mine who is here now said how it is hard to continue developing content when he sees people just paying for their positions, paying for their reps, paying for their profits.
I had nothing I could say to him. Anyone?
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
you're brave to put your name on the line to take witnesses to task over practices that you consider to be unsavory. Whether or not what you say is correct is not relevant, the fact that he conversation happens is the main thing you're achieving by this post.
But I do agree with a lot of what you're saying. I've made no secret of my use of bots over the past few months (though I've slowed down a lot in the last couple of weeks), So I'm not going to sit here and talk about the evils of using bots, but it is certainly one of those cases where , when you're in a position of a relatively small stake, the way the platform is geared now, it is almost impossible to get a decent share of the reward pool when so many others are using bots.
Bots do come with risk too. Bid bots are almost always unprofitable these days. Market bots can be unprofitable depending on the fluctuations of the price of steem - but it is never unprofitable to those that set up the bots.
At the height of my use, I only put a relatively small amount - maybe 15SBD maximum. That doesn't get me into the trending, but it does push me a little higher in the "hot" pages. It does get my content seen by more people, it does get me more other upvotes, and more comments, and more people to engage with, more followers, etc. It's sad that this is what it takes to get that kind of exposure. I put effort into my posts, so I'm not paying to promote rubbish.
On the flip side you do often see people pouring 100 or even more SBD into posts that look like they took about 15 seconds to compose, or the well documented cases of people posting 10 times a day, with relatively minimal effort, but huge rewards.
My vote value has gone down to 0.04. What would it be in a fair and equitable platform? without bots, without "reward pool rape" - 0.40?
On the other hand, of the people that are misusing the platform - how much of them have invested significant capital, and how much has this pushed the actual price of steem up?
I don't know exactly, but I do sometimes wonder if Steem is like what MySpace was to Facebook. A fresh approach, a new idea, that takes the world by storm, until somebody comes and does it better.
There's so much to like about steem, it's that 90/10 rule.. where 90% of it is right, and 10% needs improvement.. but that 10% can be make or break if it doesn't get the improvement it needs.
In the end of the day I'm not complaining too much because I haven't invested money - just time - and over the years I've invested more time in things that were just a waste of time - ie. Clash of Clans, FIFA, etc. So I'm taking my time on steem as time invested when it could be otherwise wasted anyway.
It is unprofitable for those who can't afford to bid high enough. Most of the bids seem to go to a small circle.
Doesn't this concern people?
If my understanding of how bidbots work is correct - then it's unprofitable regardless of how high you bid.
if the sum of total bids exceeds the value of the 100% upvote, then everyone that bid loses out.
if two people bid for an upvote, 1SBD and 99 SBD, the total being 100 SBD, and the total value of the upvoate is 50 SBD, then they both lose.
Probably not - because people don't really think of it.
and even if they do - it's probably one of those things that people disregard out of perceived necessity.
ie. I don't mind if you make $10 as long as I have a chance to make $1
It's the same way gambling agencies, casino's, etc, have prospered for so long.
What if the bidbots are vote trading and bidding on each other. The bid makes a loss but what about overall?
The house always wins.
Well it's possible - I've considered that - but I don't really see the incentive in bidbots trading bids - they aren't really making any extra money that way, they're just passing money around at the expense of bidders, and it damages their product.
they really only make money money money than their bid value if the genuine bids that come in just happens to exceed their vote value.
Personally, I believe it is unethical to accept bids above and beyond the value of the upvote - but I guess not many people would just hand back free money.
Stupid, not brave.
My thoughts exactly.
Purely on the earning money thing, I can see how some people are doing it hard (for effort vs reward) if they're "working" for steem. For people like me it's no big deal as we're doing what we would be doing anyway (both the content creation and the posting somewhere, it's just that we get financial benefit as well as interactive ones which is a nice bonus from other much better equipped and longer established sites we could be/are also posting on).
On the witness front, considering that people vote for witnesses for different reasons, think someone would have to write something or other that scrapes their feeds for whatever they write about in their witness reports (if they even do them) and sort/filter the results so that people who are looking for witnesses who support or do specific things would be able to see who's doing what, if such a thing hasn't been done already. Then people can vote accordingly.
From some of the witness node specs I've seen around the place, and knowing how hefty mining rigs have to be, I don't know if any of the witnesses are earning millions by being witnesses, some of them are probably running at a loss.
Some are I know running at a loss I know.
I am thinking about putting such a list together at some point but I don't have the tech skills yet.
I post a weekly "Reports of the Witnesses" series that has all the witness reports for the past week. It is a good way to see what some of the witnesses are up to.
Thanks Tim, will have a look.
The vast majority of witnesses don't sell their votes.
That is a good project.
I understand your frustration. We're all trying to do our best. Witnesses are elected. Like I said most don't sell their votes.
I have done my best to explain Steem, writing a series of post that explains it in depth and 2 posts in particular that explain Steem in all its details. Yet most people didn't read those posts even if I've linked them very prominently in all my posts and explicitly stated what they were. Most people don't understand how Steem works but many of them still think they can fix it.
As for some of the isssues with Steem, I think most of them Steem from the linear reward curve.
I've talked about the economic incentives of Steem in depth all over the place. Here's one of them.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemit-winter-update-2017-reflection-our-vision-statement-and-mission-and-a-look-forward#@teamsteem/re-steemitblog-steemit-winter-update-2017-reflection-our-vision-statement-and-mission-and-a-look-forward-20180221t053905349z
Do you follow most witnesses?
Did you read the whitepaper?
It's not always obvious to speak for or against anything on Steem. That's one of the feature of decentralization.
nice to see you here :)
I follow several and I also have a fair bit to do with a few of them directly across chat channels. Several of the top 50 at least do support/operate bots, including a few of the top 20.
Yes, the change to linear brought out lots of issues or at least, emphasised lots of issues but many of them were there before, just more hidden.
I have read quite a few of your posts and it would be handy perhaps to have all of these collated but, everything gets buried so fast. On top of this, each witness has their position and 'how Steem works' seems at times opinion based rather than fact based and teasing the reality from the ideal can be quite difficult.
For many, the experience of the platform is Steem so when words spoken don't match that reality, there are conflicts.
It is not just that people think they can fix Steem, but they want to be part of the conversation or at least, witness some of the conversation considering the idea of transparency. That isn't happening so much now and on platform, the transparency centres around the lack of cohesion among the largest players.
Will it get there in the future? Who knows but for now, i am still powering Up.
IRL work calls.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply again mate :)
btw, you are one of my witness votes and have been for a very long time.
I know you and follow you since you've approved my witness or maybe prior to it. I'll just paste part of a comment I just left seconds ago.
I have been thinking about this lately too. @jerrybanfield mentioned he proposed lowering witness rewards among his peers and was shot down quickly. He has started a bid bot but is paying out a good percentage to delegators and he is also spending money promoting steemit through youTube ads. I have voted for him as witness since he has more transparency then most. I also think at @aggroed does a good job to help minnows out through the various PAL projects he is involved in. The minnow support bid bot is completely free to use and disperses votes/rewards wider than anything thing else. We really need a witness review site that helps compare options for voting.
From what I've read EOS will look to solve the issue of over paying Witnesses(Block Producers "BP") by allowing them to bid 0-5% reward. An average of the top 21 BP bids will then be the payout. It still relies on people to vote for BP's but in theory highest bidders should lose votes. Overtime the payout should trend toward operational cost of the node hardware.
I like this paragraph it sums up so much
Did you ever feel like doing something but the only way to do it is to do what you don't want to do in order to do what you want to do
The struggles of a mans character
yes, it is some kind of catch-22 test but unfortunately for me I fail it.... Or pass it depending on how one looks at it.
Instead of lack of witness transparency I'm missing a bit of sum up what those people do for the community. If we go thought all of theirs post I'm quite sure that all the answers would be found, but who has the time needed for that?
yes, this needs to be collated and more easily found and updated.
I was talking with someone about this just the other day. I have almost no clue what any of the witnesses do. Seriously. I did know that they mine blocks or something, but other than that... no clue. I've heard they get paid a lot of money, but I don't know how much. I don't know there's a way to check.
I wouldn't imagine they would want things to change. They're getting paid right now. If things change, that could mean they're not getting paid. I don't really think that the witness format is effective, but I don't have alternatives right now. I am interested in reading other people's ideas.
I wish I knew. Still not at the point I understand the witnesses and picked a few then decided to wait til I got it better. I do understand what you are saying. Not sure that's a good long term thing as it seems it would just get more solid and they will know what to do to solidify these positions. It's one of many issues that could end it. I hope it can be sorted.