Gridcoin V8 - Analysis and Looking Back on a Hotly Debated Hardfork
First of all, I would like to apologise for my extended absence. I have been away at the Australasian Winter Conference on Brain Research (AWCBR) to present my PhD research - which is a vital step in disseminating my work and earning a doctorate. I am now back in the crypto fold, and will complete the work that remains assigned to me including work on the commemorative coin.
Secondly, I am glad to see we have all survived the V8 hard fork and the blockchain is still ticking along. Despite a lot of angry messages directed at me, I maintain that criticism of the hardfork was vital in not only raising awareness (as it appears there was none) but also making the voices of the miners heard. It is great to see the devs acknowledging that some power needs to be returned to the miners, and I look forward to the implementation of this. Some things I would like to address re pre-V8 coverage:
My staking estimates were based on the current community understanding of the functioning of network weight. It appears (almost?) everyone misunderstood this figure, and thanks to input from the Blackcoin devs that Ravon reached out to, we now better understand its significance.
Despite still receiving accusations of everything from FUD to trying to split the chain, I will continue to cover developments as they come to light until there is no demand for that anymore. I will not be returning to IRC. I strongly believe community understanding and discussion of updates are vital to growing a healthy community. If no-one speaks up and a change rolls out that surprises people, the devs get shot for it and I do not want to see that either.
I do not, and never have, advocated a chain split. These are alternative facts.
On to V8
To recap, V8 was vital to patch a series of vulnerabilities exposed by Brod that enabled users to game the magnitude weight component of their DPOR. The trade-off was total removal of the power of miners to either stake with their research weight, as well as total removal of their ability to help secure the blockchain.
Staking has become much slower for the average miner, and the pool has made changes to accommodate its magnitude no longer allowing it to stake by keeping a larger GRC pool in reserve. That being said, people have been repeating my worst case estimate without context, which has been detrimental to the discussion. This estimate was:
- 432,000 GRC (USD$17280 of GRC) to stake daily
- 63,000 GRC (USD$2520 of GRC) to stake weekly
- 15,000 GRC (USD$600 of GRC) to stake monthly
- 2400 GRC (USD$96 of GRC) to stake every 6 months
Based on what I have seen in V8, this estimate still is the accurate worst case scenario if all coins were to be staking. As it turns out, V8 has exposed that only a very small fraction of all GRC in existence is actually staking. This may change if the proposed fixed block rewards are implemented, requiring investors to keep their wallet online.
Based on community member reports and adjusting my calculations prior to V8, the current figures (with most coins in cold storage) stand at:
- 25,000 GRC (USD$1000 of GRC) to stake daily
- 4,000 GRC (USD$160 of GRC) to stake weekly
- 1000 GRC (USD$40 of GRC) to stake monthly
- 200 GRC (USD$8 of GRC) to stake every 6 months
These sums are much more achievable for new miners. That being said, between wallet crashes and undetected forks I am yet to stake a single block since V8 was introduced on 50k GRC.
I would like to reiterate again that with innovation comes some rough patches - stick with it and it will pay off. I am fully behind our dev team and am looking forward to balance being returned that (at the very least) makes miners just as important as investors. At the end of the day, the researchers running BOINC give this coin its value - not the 1.5% POS.
What has your experience with V8 been? I would love to hear from you all.
I'm at about 4800 GRC right now and I've been staking every 2-4 days since the patch came out. Since it took me about 9 months to get that many GRC, it seems to be at a reasonable spot for new miners.
However, that also indicates a larger problem, which you also alluded to in one of the comments. Based on your numbers, if all possible GRC was being staked, I should be staking every 3 months. Instead I'm staking about 30 times faster. That means that only about 1/30 of all the coins are currently online and staking, or around 3-4%.
This actually explains a lot of things, like why one whale can stake several times in succession, and why polls generally have such poor representation. It may be time to reconsider how we reward people for participating in staking, so that we can encourage more people to stake continuously.
You nailed it with regard to how few coins are actively staking, and I agree there needs to be some brainstorming done on changing the system. POS is a reward for helping to secure the network, and currently hardly any investors are doing that. On the flipside, that makes staking far harder for miners...
Thank you for providing your experience with V8 as well, it's interesting to see the very wide range of experiences people have had in the first week or so. We will probably have a better picture of the impact at the end of the month when everything has averaged out somewhat.
I was staking about 10 times a day before the fork, and it remains at that level post-fork. I do have the rare random wallet hang (although it seems just UI-related and work appears to continue in the background), and it was confirmed by a dev that it's a known issue.
being a (non-gridcoin) developer myself, it made total sense to patch the exploits quickly, even if it wasn't an ideal fix. then you go back and make things right later, after the fire is put out. I'm assuming that work is going on now.
Good to hear you are still staking regularly. Based on that, and your stake rate being relatively constant, I would guess you are (primarily) an investor?
I do have some good hardware running 24/7, but I think yes, my investment probably dwarfs my research.
That makes sense then, with regard to your stake rate not changing much. Thanks for the update! =)
thx, added to:
Sweet as. Thanks for maintaining such a comprehensive list of relevant content - it will help casual readers a lot.
So far I haven't had any issues stating, but during the first week or so during the fork I had about 5-6 relatively new comers asking lots of questions in IRC. All of them had lower balances and weren't staking - needless to say weren't too happy about being forced to join the pool. One did seem willing to buy some coins to even avoid the pool.
Thank you for the perspective.
It is very unfortunate people are being pushed into centralised pools, but I guess that is the reality of all big coins...
"That being said, between wallet crashes and undetected forks I am yet to stake a single block since V8 was introduced on 50k GRC."
Same here ... no stake since V8 around that ballpark ... had very regular stakes before.
I love the excuse for not being around. Sorry I couldn't be here, just off to present my PHD research...
I'm still waiting on a stake as well but I'm still below 3000
With 1700 GRC, running 24/7 it took 7 days to stake since the V8. I staked again after 3 days. Before v8 it used to take about 10 days (mag 130).
Thank you for the information! =)
It took me a week to stake on 50k GRC, so it appears you got very lucky and I got very unlucky on time to first stake. Then again, your second stake after only 3 days would disagree with that theory...
I'd be interested to see how stake rate averages out by the end of the month.
I'm glad the magnitude stake weight was removed and I don't want to see it come back in any form. Central third-party projects should not have any say in securing the blockchain.
One or more rouge admins should not be able to influence the security of the chain.
They would never have 51%. Currently the large investors who pop online every month do, however, have that power. Look at the block explorer when PhilD comes online - 10, sometimes 15 blocks in a row.
Even so. I still don't think it's a good idea to introduce mechanisms that can be changed by malicious users into the security mechanism. What happens if there is a fault in the PHP code of the website and all project servers are hacked into at the same time?
Very good point - that would give the hacker full control of payout and significant control of what wallets mint blocks.
Just over 3k GRC here and have not staked since v8. My wallet has become stable again. I left it fully unlocked for about 14 hours and then set it back to unlocked for staking and have not had a problem since.
Thanks for the input - the more the better. Would love to hear when you stake a block.
Nice, it is really helpfull to read such info from someone with experience :)