An Appeal to Holders of BitShares
It appears that my BitShares witness, verbaltech2 was voted out yesterday. This is an appeal to those of you with a stake in BitShares to please cast your vote for this witness and reinstate it as a block producer.
I have been a BitShares witness since before graphene existed until yesterday. When graphene was launched I worked with witness wackou, writing a deployment shell script to facilitate setting up new nodes. I also added 3 seed nodes which can also be switched in to serve as an active witness in the event the primary witness node fails.
I was unaware of the events contributing to my slide from 3rd ranking of 27 witnesses a month or 2 ago to being voted out on Jan 11th. I am currently ranked 26 and 3rd in line to become active as the votes stand right now, behind xn-delegate with 314M votes and spartaco with 298M votes. Spartaco is also a valued member of the BitShares community and provides an interface between the BitShares blockchain and telegram which notifies witnesses of missed blocks and other useful info. These changes do not appear to have the best interests of the BitShares ecosystem in mind.
These changes in the BitShares ecosystem are disturbing. The number of witnesses has also been reduced to 23 from 27. Several witnesses such as myself have been replaced. Do the replacements even provide price feeds? I recently responded to a question on the BitSharesDEX Telegram channel about voting in witnesses, saying we should vet witnesses to seeing if they can actually do the job by observing them as a standby witness rather than blindly voting them in. The suggested witness was unknown to the BitShares community members I spoke with.
This demonstrates how quickly a DPoS blockchain can change. I don't know if my campaigning here will amass enough votes to reinstate the verbaltech2 witness but I appeal to those of you have clout in the BitShares ecosystem to consider helping me get reactivated my casting your vote for the verbaltech2 witness.
Those of you who are familiar with me know my reputation and abilities. For those who don't and wish to I am Thomas Freedman, a.k.a. Thom on the bitsharestalk.org forum, and Thom or Thomas on mumble. I am known as full-steem-ahead here on Steemit, and have been writing about the history of BitShares here. I have been active on the bitsharestalk forum since September of 2014 with over 1200 posts. If you wish to research my work or my principles that is the best place to mine your data.
Also note that I am 1 of only 3 witnesses that are providing price feeds for the Bit Twenty index fund (assetID: BTWTY). Now that asset has only 2 witnesses providing feed data, as only active witnesses are allowed to publish price feeds.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Thom has been a very valuable member of the BitShares community for years. He has my full support.
Completely agree! He has been around and active since pretty much forever, and has been maintaining nearly half of the online seed nodes for a very long time now.
He has also always been a fervent proponent of the core values of liberty and freedom that underpin BitShares, which I believe we should not forget about if we want the project to ultimately realize its full potential.
Thank you both for your support, AND all you two do for BitShares.
More seed nodes, players!
i need some bitshares
The things the causes these issues in Bitshares for the most part is that a large percentage of holder (nearly 50%) are China. Since most things can be done so much cheaper in China it makes it hard for them to understand value of paying for things in the west. It cost more to pay people in the west but the cost of living is much higher in the west.
Indeed that is correct and very understandable. The west and Chinese cultures have more than language to divide them however. It's interesting to observe how the east influences the west and vice versa.
Look at how dramatically the culture in China has changed as restrictions on property ownership have been reduced to give individuals more power over their own lives, or how Buddhist philosophy has crept into popular western values. The cross-cultural blending is good in that diversity of perspective has value, but it also can foster difficulties if people are too set in their ways and unwilling to consider new ways of living.
I have no qualms with voting for Chinese developers. Google Translate exists.
I suspect that Steem Power helps protect Steem from being controlled by the exchanges which hold liquid steem without voting rights.
On the other hand Steem operates with just 21 witnesses in any given minute but does have about 50 who are paid something every day.
Thanks for your attention sir, it's greatly appreciated.
Lessons learned hey? Hopefully we can get BitShares heading back up in the right direction this year. Vikram will certainly help as will the release of Stealth via BitShares Munich, but we need more whales to come on board that are aligned with free market principles that you seeded the project with.
The core of us still adhere to these important aspects of freedom, that many around the world still don't comprehend. Now is the perfect chance to get a big stake in BitShares, but time is running out as we begin to see other graphene competitors come into being. Without things to differentiate BitShares from such contenders, and without marketing to help get the word out, BitShares could just fade away despite having first mover advantage.
I wonder if BitShares would be in the state its' in now had there been more tools to facilitate communication across the language barrier between the Chinese. Food for thought, not just for BitShares but also for any world-wide open source project. I'm curios to see how busy.org will address this. What do you think of an integrated approach that includes translation built in, to separate chains as in Golos?
Bitshares seems to be in a bad shape. But now that the market cap is so low, maybe somebody could make a big investment and get things done with the stake.
This was not a whimsical removal. It appears your witness was producing incorrect price feeds. Please visit the Bitshares forum and join in the discussion there. You must remedy your witness behavior and convince voters you will do better in the future.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23614.msg301306.html#msg301306
As Bitshares usage grows, a witness can no longer be justified by a grandfathered role. As a witness you must remain attentive and responsive to the needs of the network, the community, and the markets.
I agree, but not much has been done until today despite all the discussion. I have no idea who you are, have we spoken before? Do you participate in the Friday morning mumble sessionS? If so what name do you use? If I would hazard a guess it would be user "kani" from the thread you linked.
Wackou updated his feed script and I followed suit shortly after. Note the version I posted above is newer than that. I will be asking questions in tomorrow morning's BitShares mumble. Perhaps it's simply a matter that some whale(s) have decided they want other witnesses in, which has caused a lot of activity. Alt may have voted me out but that wasn't the crucial vote, as I was still voted in after that.
Alt is one of the few BitShares community members that act as a communications path between west and east participants. btswildpig was another, but he has been less active recently. Why didn't alt post his concerns in a more appropriate place, like the BitShares Witness or Alerts channels on Telegram? And why was the thread on the bitsharestalk.org forum titled so poorly, not giving any indication of the importance of the issue being discussed or the real issue it was addressing (NOT the price of gold asset but accuracy of feeds)? It also wasn't posted in the forum under witnesses where I might have seen it.
These decisions don't appear to be in the best interests of the BitShares platform IMO. They also appear to be hasty and narrow minded, focusing on price feeds and not the other things witnesses need to do. You claim decision wasn't whimsical, but it wasn't exactly well reasoned either. User alt led the charge in that thread but has not taken into account the feed source issues all of us have seen. The 2 sources alt mentioned may not be available everywhere or may require a subscription.
I am very attentive to alerts and discussions. No major concerns have been raised in the media witnesses rely on for news. Like most of the witnesses I rely on others to produce a feed script. I choose wackou's bts_tools scripts because they have far more comprehensive functionality than any other scripts I have seen. I use wackou's tools as you can see from this post. If the sources are unreliable so will the feed be. This is what has been discussed in that thread and on Telegram lately.
I do not expect special treatment for being involved a long time, but I do expect feedback from anyone that perceives an issue. If issues are not raised explicitly, not just saying "the feeds are wrong" without plenty of evidence as to why, or expecting great attention to be paid with a question like "What's the price of Gold?" it IS whimsical or at the very least not helpful. There have been other witnesses that have neglected their duties far more egregiously than is claimed I have. How many of the new witnesses are producing feeds? Who is going to provide feeds for Bit20? Was that even considered when votes were cast? I doubt it.
The thread you linked above is for A SINGLE asset, gold. That thread is also almost 1 month old. I read it when alt posted the OP, including xeroc's replies which gave me the impression alt was being hasty in his conclusions.
You wanted explanation. I searched and found best evidence of vote removal. Yours from here.
OK, thanks, and for comment below. Perhaps your right. It may just serve as a lesson to alt and myself to change how we go about things.
You're welcome. And sorry I didn't answer the rest of your questions. You don't know me. I'm not active in any Bitshares communities. I have BTS and interest.
If alt has influence in China, maybe he convinced others that this best way to bring attention to his issue? I don't know, only speculation. Maybe you're the best guy for this to happen to? Because maybe you have the connections and channels to be louder.
This
Good luck! I upvoted this post. I don't own any bitshares anymore.
Reallllly recommend you don't exit at what really may be the actual bottom.
I just didn't own any Bitshares anymore. I never hold much either.
Yes, its the 'any' part that concerns me. As in, absolument rien n'est absolument fou.
Sorry to hear that. It's great you posted this here, as I imagine there are quite a few of us from the Bitshares community who'd be willing to help.
Can I still vote on witnesses if I've delegated my voting power to a proxy?
Can't log into OL at the moment..getting a connection error with all of the API connections, but I'll check into it later.
Thanks for the support, it's greatly appreciated.
I'm afraid not. Using a proxy agent makes them your representative and gives them your entire voting stake.
OK well I'll message my proxy to get his thoughts and see if he's already supporting you. Good luck!
Thanks!
Hi Thom,
Just saw this post now and will cast my BitShares vote for you tomorrow.
All the best and don't despair!
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
yes I never considered BitShares/Steem/Graphene with that witness system as very decentralized (I mean e.g. who even decides things like "The number of witnesses has also been reduced to 23 from 27"), but as opposed to Bitcoin Maximalists I do recognize there is a niche and demand for such approaches in order to prototype applications until better scalable (while still actually decentralized-distributed-p2p) blockchains are available.
Actually, the number of witnesses required is itself a voter selected parameter. Looks like a whale changed its voting pattern overnight. Hopefully we can get an explanation. Thom is certainly a valued long-term member.
Thanks for that info and your endorsement Stan. If you should turn up any new info please post an update here if you would please.
Take care, Namaste.
if i wont forget i will give you a vote today or tommorow.
do you know who actually voted you out?
The only clue I have is the comment from @asmalltree who I don't know. His claim doesn't sound accurate. There is much discussion about feeds and finding good sources for them. I use the EXACT same feed script that at least one other witness uses and he is still voted in.
even thought i been to BTS before STEEM i dont get it that good. so unlike here you cant see who actually votes or unvotes people? its more anonymous there?
No, the cryptofresh block explorer shows which witnesses the proxies vote for, but that doesn't tell me who changed their vote. I don't keep track of individuals that way. It may have been a combination of large stakes that changed.