Not a winess update: I am sticking with steem v0.19.6 for now
Let us dig into the upcoming fork for now
references:
- https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-velocity-hardfork-hardfork-20
- https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-19-10-officially-released-appbase-rocksdb-unlimited-content-editing-and-more
I am still trying to figure out what Steemit, Inc is trying to push with the next hardfork. I generally don't like the direction of the platform. I feel like they don't do enough (do they actually try anything at all) to push quality content and interaction here.
One review I really like is this one: https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-velocity-hardfork-hardfork-20
Should I stay a witness?
Good question. I never target ROI since I started. I just wanted to help on the decentralisation and build the community. I had to stop my sponsor activities which was a bummer. I am still developing quite a bit on my spare time (currently working on improving steem-messgenger) but I miss interacting with people here. So this is an open question for the time being.
I think you should keep running a witness node (as long as you are able). Right now Steemit Inc is focusing on scalability of the blockchain and the issue of quality content is not there main concern (at least at the UI level).
There are a couple of things in HF20 that will help the quality of the content produced on the blockchain:
Both implementations will curb down on the creation of new bot voting rings which is a major source of spam content since the steem used for new accounts will be burnt instead of being powered up.
The other source of bad content comes from auto-voting. Here is were Steemit Inc falls short in there other proposal: "Self-Voting Rewards". The main issue is that Steem Power holders do not have a financial incentive to look for quality content...they can just vote on themselves and maximize their rewards.
Their proposal falls short because it can easily be bypassed by voting with alternate accounts. So how can this be fixed? From my point of view two things need to be modified in addition to the "self-voting rewards":
Author rewards need to be split 50/50 by default. This way it will be indifferent to either auto-vote or to curate content from other accounts. Since creating quality content is more labor intensive than voting, SP holders will follow the path of least resistance and lean towards curation instead of "creating content", thus cutting down on the publishing of bad content (in theory).
The 50/50 split of rewards can also be gamed by using alternate accounts so this needs to be coupled with some sort of proof of identity that can be used as a condition to receive rewards either author or curator rewards...but not both.