Thoughts on HF 20 "Velocity"- Yes to tokens, but no to mining.

in #hf207 years ago

HF20 will come eventually and with it the need for a new way to onboard people into steemit. The standard faucet hasn't been a great solution as several have taken advantage of it. There may be some 40,000 accounts that existed simply to drain 6 steem each from the opening. In order to combat that in the short run wait times have been increased and onboarding people may take as long as two weeks and still costs steem. It's less than ideal.

A great solution

The Steemit team has come up with a plan to create tokens that can be used to create new accounts. They note in the blog in order to reach the heights of Reddit they will have to climb the mountain of new users that would come on board. To bring 100 million people they would currently need hundreds of millions of steem. Considering only two hundred and fifty million steem even exist the challenge is formidable. And so they thought up a token system and would use those tokens specifically as a way to add people to the platform.

We want to add a daily quota of discounted accounts. These accounts can be paid for with a combination of STEEM, bandwidth, and mining. Yes, mining. We believe that the ability to mine an account into creation was a fantastic feature of our hybrid proof of work system that was lost when we removed proof of work. Mining will use Litecoin's scrypt algorithm as it is battle tested. This will only be used for creating accounts through the discount system and not for block production.

The level of discount will be dynamic based on current demand to prevent all of the accounts from being created instantly. Witnesses will vote on the daily quota so that we can scale this system alongside our growth. This system will run in parallel to existing account creation.

That's great, but I have a concern

The approach they envision now to generate and distribute those tokens is through mining. That to me is a great travesty. While I myself mine and enjoy it quite a bit I'm not inclined to believe it is an approach that leads to equality and a healthy distribution of steem on the system. This is especially important on a platform already plagued by a terrible distribution.

My article on @freedom helped me reach this conclusion. If those that mine have the ability to make 6M steem and those that don't know can't mine then it creates an inherently dangerous situation for equality. Maybe some folks aren't concerned, or would share that it's a problem that Cryto has always had, but those people aren't working to grow 3,000 minnow accounts. My concern is for the everyday people of this platform. We need to appeal to Joe the Plumber and not just Linda the Linux admin. If you want to grow and you want to grow fairly then I don't like this aspect of the plan.

When I asked about it one answer was that's it's easy to just go through cli_wallet and mine. For a dev that might be easy, but for the moms and dads of facebook you're trying to bring over you might as well ask them to rewire their house. I have minnows that can't register with a Discord bot after 5 attempts and who couldn't figure out if they had successfully voted for my witness when I was below 50. While a handful of people may be able to figure mining on the platform the result will be a new avenue for distorted wealth creation will arise. Even worse there's the potential that Steemit may pick which groups will be able to use these tokens or make them non-transferable so that only those who mine may benefit perpetually excluding those that aren't born or trained to the technocracy.

An alternative: Stake weighted voting a la Witness Voting.

Stake weighted voting is one of the greatest ideas that's come along in governance. It's far better to allow the community to decide where the tokens should go than to allow the limited few with mining competence to bear all the benefit. The chain and the witnesses can tweak how many new tokens need to be created to have a healthy supply, and a new group of token generators can be voted on to decide who will receive the tokens. I imagine a system where some 1000 or even more people could be voted in and earning a stake weighted proportion of fungible new account tokens.

Instead of having these in the hands of just a few miners and developers these tokens could be in the accounts of thousands of users who can then grant access and use their network to invite new users. This could be a decentralized system for account creation. Otherwise you're allowing a handful of web developers to have access to account creation which by your own math you value in the hundreds of millions. How is that in the best interest of the Minnows in the Pond?

We expect the majority of accounts to be created by Steemit and our partners cheaply using stake. The account creation process will appear similar to what it is today with a fee and proof of work field. To create an account via stake, all the creator needs to do is not include a fee or a proof of work. If the creating account does not have enough stake they will need to include an adequate proof of work or STEEM fee to cover the difference. We will provide APIs and tools to calculate how much of a fee is necessary. To create an account without a creator, no creator will be specified in the operation and will include a proof of work adequate to cover the entire fee. If the dynamic cost is too high, regular account creation will be an option. To end users, this will appear identical to what it is today and only affects developers wishing to sign up new users.

Can we please explore other methods of token creation than mining?

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I'm sorry, I have no much time at this moment to read all of this and tons of comments but I think you are misinterpreting the idea.

"I'm not inclined to believe it is an approach that leads to equality and a healthy distribution of steem on the system."

It has nothing to do with distribution of STEEM. That mining is for sole purpose of account creation, nothing more.
Ability to mine your own account through mining (as I did with mine) is an awesome feature that's currently missing because there's no longer PoW on Steem.
Mining would be back but only to be able to create an account, not to get rewards in STEEM.

Right, but new accounts are worth something. So, those that can mine can make new accounts and those that can't wont' have access. Eventually you're putting 100 Million new account creation tokens in the hands of miners and not in the hands of the general public. That's how steem will get involved. You'll either pay for the new account or you'll pay for the mining. One group will get rich a la Freedom, and the other group will get left in the dust.

Who said those accounts were going to get something?

Mining is not the only way to create an account. You can pay with STEEM or, if you have enough Steem Power, your stake can create an account without losing anything yourself. Adding mining is not about funneling account creation through a single method, but opening it up through multiple methods.

How does that favor non-texhsavy new users? You are stating the obvious that we already know and missing a relevant point here which is, we need to ensure an ease of account creation for users. Steemit must be user friendly, otherwise ... Its weird how the devs are just not getting the general point.

sighs .. I know nothing about mining
that's sad news
but maybe they'd post tutorials?
oh who am I kidding we don't have time to do that either
more sighs and deeper ..
am one of those "no tech- genius" here

Yeah even with the right tutorials I'm not sure I'd make it there. And I've been here a year and dont' entirely suck at these things... i don't know how Mary the Facebook Mom is gonna figure it out.

I agree with @gtg said... nothing more to say... it was very clear with my same comment....

Alright, from what I understand of what's planned, there's some misconceptions here.

Where is anyone talking about a token for account creation? I haven't heard that anywhere.

From what I understand regarding mining and accounts is that you'll be able to set an account name in your steemd node, specify a public/private key pair for it, and then once you find a block, that account is created. This is how it was when Steem first launched and I assume it would be how this new system would work.

a big issue with users new to steemit is the huge learning curve. Even to someone who is familiar with crypto its a tough learning curve.

I agree, I came in knowing nothing about crypto and I still am learning new things every day a month later

I agree and I studied math...! What about invitations? Sort of like an MLM strategy, you invite new users and if they add quality content then you get a piece of the pie for the first say 3 posts?

I also agree

Yeah but it will one day be SUPER user friendly, like easier than Instagram easy...

It already IS the MOST easy crypto currency to use EVER! NO bitcoin or ethereum wallet can let u just send and recieve Money to a username like this! No complicated crazy long address to send to! just a imple usernme! were the only blocclchainaltcpins with that! were more advanced and more efficient than bitcoon!

once we have Bitcoinnd ethereum in our Internal SBD/Steem market the game will be over and steemit will sart eating the llunh of poloniex and bittrex and we will have a amazing advantage!

we will attract alls orts of users who want a simple easy to use wallet wth Al their coins! imagine being able to keep ur bitcoinss ethereum ec20 and any tokens here in your steemit wallet! we will even have EOS and openledger.io (aka bitshares) integration, its gonna be so easyto use crypto currency soon all with steemit

we are ALL SO lucky to get to use steemit! I have beentelling peopel for a while now that eventualy youll be able to have Bitcoins and ethereum in your steemit wallet and u wont nee poloniex anymore or bittrex or evencoinbase we wil also have ourown fiat gateway! u will ahve nt oly steem ATMs in every big city bt a Steemit Debit card that even takes out a lil bit of money for taxes etc, it will be perfect! it will be so streamlineed

STREAMit will be ore like it!

STREAMLINED steemit is coming! Imagine HF30!

Perhaps you give the Steemit community an estimation when all these great things will be completed

hahaha yes I wish i could! But I have been talking about that for a while! I have been asking for more coins in our interal market but I am just HOPING that they add this feature in the new updates! i canttell u whenit will happen but Im hoping its soon!
I need a personal trainer to teach me web development and i need a personl yeller to yelll at me to make more steemit posts and work harder eveyday!

Im going to try and wake up tomorrow and start a very dense Steemit post all about a Steemit Video advertisement i will outline and storybaord and then ill mke it and then ill release it using teh steem i make from rewards on the outline, to pay for its youube advertissing money, iw ill pay to ave the video seen! and it will drive more sersto steemit thus helping us all and i will try to cut out a little paycheck for yself to simply make ads for steemit like jerrybanfield does the more the better!

if a few thousands of us just marketed for steemit.com every day all day for a few months, g etting people jining the steem blockchain, we would get 10 mllion users by the end of the year! we all need to work super hatd everyday and just FLOOD the internet with steemit ads! and steemit social media posts! wmust show off how much we make off our posts and comments! we can get MASSIVE traffic and MASSIVE userbaseon steemit!

Loving the enthusiasm, upvoted and followed! I've made some business cards to put on counters, hand out to people, put under wipers, put on the grocery store billboards, etc: https://steemit.com/steemit/@libertyteeth/business-cards-for-steemit-to-increase-participation

I agree with you -- marketing is the way! (And my history is as a developer, who'd a thunk. :) )

The devs are trying to solve a problem while not taking into consideration the difficulty new users will face during account creation. Its already a difficult annoying process for the new users . Now they are introducing mining. While I appreciate their effort; they seem to think everyone is as tech savy as they are. No!

I myself suggested some features for steemit developers to include in the coming updates, but my article did not got much attention and i am afraid that the developers will not found that @aggroed

this is a very big issue, the learning curve. I am a minnow and not familiar with crypto, and boy is it confusing

tfw this sounds strikingly familiar to my post last week

feelsSad.gif

ummm. Not too much. You have a good idea with the ability to basically upvote a new account into existence. That's sorta neat. Anyway, other than talking about new accounts these approaches seem different to me.

you caught me.. i was in a rush when I read yours =P

agreed on new account approaches, regardless

Upvoted for the simple juxtaposition of "agreed" and "aggroed" (+1 letter, and change one letter). And, why not, followed! :)

To be honest I can't get my head around how everything works on steemit but why steemit has to grow fast? It already created good reputation, bringing too many people will water it down, at least fast influx. I'm here for a month, and when I joined it was good platform, what I noticed is that more people get in less quality content and more spammers you can find. All big social networks didn't become big overnight, and nowadays their content is so dispersed that people give up using them and try to find new social platform.

Yeah, imagine how it feels for someone who's been here for only two months. In such a short time, steemit has been inundated by people who seem to think this is just another social media platform, and that we want spam posts in our feeds that would be totally acceptable on twitter or facebook.

People are coming in with money, and get the mentality that they shouldn't need to try very hard, or they should upvote themselves, because the platform/community owes them an ROI.

And there are people abusing the power they get from bots like @minnowbooster by getting a ton of delegated power, and commenting empty bs, upvoting themselves, but not the posts they're commenting on.

Hey, thanks for the @minnowbooster tip! I'll go and check it out right now! :D

I find it to be a very ridiculous idea. One that can easily be taken advantage of by greedy people who like to upvote their own one sentence comments.

I was trying to be funny. :D

😂

Minnow booster rocks. I leased 700 SP to increase my voting power and don't upvote my own comments. I even just upvoted one of your comments for the lulz.

Full disclaimer: I am a mod at minnowbooster discord and have about 200 Steem invested in the project

That's great that you're using it ethically, but it certainly has the potential for abuse by unscrupulous people, though some would argue that buying power then using it all on one's self isn't against the rules. It may not be, but neither is taking the entire bowl of dinner mints on your way out of the restaurant, or claiming an entire pile of magazines labeled 'free'. But if you wouldn't do one, why is it ok to do another? It's not "against the rules", it's just downright rude, and I don't feel like steemit was created for lazy, greedy people...

@thatsweeneyguy I bet I know who you are talking about that has come in with money....

No one person in particular. It's just a mentality I've seen a few times...

We're on roughly the same track as the other guys. Just is.

@dijana969 @thatsweeneyguy I pretty much agree with your sentiments. The quality has taken a drastic nose dive. These voting pool bots certainly aren't helping with promoting good content. I can comment, after research that one of them is definitely using it as a scheme to siphon off Steem to Bittrex.

Great post

I definitely want to see more details on the token system - a solution to quick but effective on-boarding is critical...

I remember reading that one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for @steemit having a such huge wallet balance was to have enough Steem to create accounts far into future. Now that they're scrapping this plan and introducing a totally new coin for just this function, will there be a burning of some % of the vast tokens that were (almost insta)mined for just this purpose? @ned care to chime in?

And how hastily was the whole system coded up if the creators couldn't see this as becoming a problem? Or was it ever supposed to run this long or gain this much adoption? @dan being the genius couldn't see this flaw?

Any opinions?

Bringing in new users who are completely new to crypto will be EXTREMELY difficult with such conditions. I'm a little worried.. hopefully they do a more noobie friendly update.

Thank you for your explanation such that an ordinary minnow is able to understand you.

Like you rightly pointed out, minning will worsen the cry of minnows and people who may not have the technicalities to mine the tokens.

If you consider that many ordinary people are in steemit and not other platform, it will tell you that steemit is able to achieve this because it involves what everyone can do which is writing.

Bringing mining into any aspect of steemit will be counterproductive.