[Vlog] Hardfork 20, Paper Witnesses and Appeal to Authority
Full disclosure
First off, full disclosure I’m a big fan of Steem and DPOS blockchains. To my mind Steem is one of a handful of decentralised Blockchain protocol that has begun to deal realistically with the challenges of scaling.
Greater scrutiny
There is one problem. In dealing with these big ticket items Steem makes itself vulnerable to criticisms that other Blockchains don’t need to worry about.
To draw a football analogy, other Blockchain are playing Sunday league kick-about in the park whilst Steem is figuring out how to implement VAR. If you don’t watch football, real football not the American stuff, go look it up. Suffice to say that if I’m critical of Steem it is from a viewpoint of Steem being in the Premier League of Blockchain technology. Anything I say against it should be viewed through that lens.
Niceties out of the way... let’s get into it.
Necessary evil
I’m not going to get in the micro details of 'Resource Credits' and 'mana' and why these things are needed for Steem to scale. Neither am I going to get into how users have been crippled in terms of posting on Steem recently.
I’m going to take that as a given.
Things mess up in technology projects and when things mess up on a public Blockchain you can’t just roll back to the previous iteration. Steem is more than just a blogging site where a few posts may be lost as a consequence of rolling back. It’s a financial transaction system. All confidence will be lost in the platform if it is known to have rolled back and undone transactions.
So we’re left in a position where Steem needs to soldier through the existing issues and it looks to be doing that.
Helicopter view
What interests me about this is a bigger question around the friction that exists between lead developers, large stakeholders and custodians of the Blockchain. This issue isn't unique to Steem and exists across many Blockchains as they mature.
In Steem, the Witnesses are the custodians and Steemit (the company) plays a duel role as both the de facto lead dev team and the largest stakeholder. Steemit also has big changes it wishes to implement on the Blockchain, most notably Smart Media Tokens (SMTs).
Paper Witnesses?
We’re therefore left in a position where the role of Witnesses is vulnerable to being seen as a rubber stamping exercise when it comes to governing changes that Steemit wants to implement on the Blockchain.
This has to change at some stage in the future if Steem is going to be considered an effective decentralised Blockchain. A mature Blockchain should be difficult to change. It should be burdensome to reach consensus on a hard fork. It shouldn’t be that the boss says “Jump” and everyone else says “How high.”
There is a danger of too much appeal to Authority on Steem that begets a centralised mindset. It's not just Steem, I've seen it with Etheruem and an appeal to the wishes of Vitalik. With EOS and an appeal to the the wishes of Dan and Block.One. Hell people in Bitcoin still appeal to the words of Satoshi even though he existed 'stage left' a long time ago. And so in Steem we need to be careful that Witnesses are just seen as conduits through which Ned and Steemit's wishes are funnelled.
Baby steps... for now
Look, in these early stage in Steem’s development we can get away with a Hardfork 20. On the basis of the ends effectively justifying the means. We can also (possibly) get away with doing everything possible to see that SMTs get implemented. We’ve come so far with SMTs that to go back would be 'as difficult as to go over' (Macbeth).
Robust governance
However beyond that I think, as a community, Steem need to up the ante on governance. As stakeholders we need to hold Witnesses to the highest standard. Running a reliable node is the base level requirement. Providing value should be a given. Due diligence and review of code changes should a minimum expectation. It should be a matter of selecting those who do this the best.
Being the largest stakeholders Steemit must resist the urge to railroad Witnesses into becoming patsy to their wishes. Even the perception of that happening is a sure fire way to diminish the value of the platform.
However having Witnesses that are visibly independent, accountable, transparent and bastions of the Blockchain strengthens Steem’s place at the forefront of public Blockchain development.
Greetings, nanzo- scoop
Excellent post man. I think the hard fork was an introductory step to the SMT placement. I always stay here for the development of the steemit !!!
Amen. I find this post a very good summary of what I've been saying in comments all over the platform the past few days. We need away for the masses of little guys whose collective power is increasing with the ongoing STEEM inflation to organize and counterweigh the few individual heavy hitters. We have witness proxies. Further decentralization requires more political activity among the small stakeholders.
I agree however I find that (in crypto) people are reluctant to get involved (directly) in Blockchain governance.
I saw this when The DAO was created on Ethereum. Despite all the hype around the project people weren't engaged when it came to looking at proposals.
I think having some well-versed Witness voting proxy that people can reliable use may be the best way for the 'little guy' to utilise that collective power.
I don't think most people are even aware of what a witness proxy is. It falls on us middle-tier users to inform the rest and activate them to the extent that is realistic.
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I agree with this entirely and have been outspoken about not only the process of hard forks, but the perception of how they are crafted, proposed, and always accepted. (You can see my official witness posts about this on my @ats-witness account. I know you approve me, so thank you for your continued support!)
The attacks against Steem have always been centered around the notion that it’s centralized (due to the ninja-mine and the development history) and having rubber-stamping witnesses pushing through untested code pretty much validates that criticism. Whether you like the changes or not and even if the hard fork was rolled out smoothly, the perception of Steem would not be affected in any way. The concerns/criticisms are simply never addressed.
I have tried to offer views and suggestions from an investor’s/businessman’s perspective, but there seems to be little interest in attracting these types of people to this blockchain. I’m currently working on an actual project for commerce that will utilize the Steem tokens, but I’m getting practically zero interest/support from those who claim they want added utility and actual businesses.
There’s a major disconnect between what most people here say they want (decentralization, token utility, commerce, and investment) and what they actually do/support. And I think it all starts at the top with Steemit, Inc. and our witnesses.
I agree with you about the disconnect.
I also think it is systematic of where crypto is at the moment... in the rush to create perceived value the key tenant that makes public blockchains valuable in the first place is forgotten, decentralisation. For Steem/ DPoS consensus this puts extra scrutiny on the role of Witnesses.
I think Steemit are locked into their development path, however as the largest stakeholder it is important they don't overplay their stake, else they feed the perception of Steem being centralised.
Hi @nanzo-scoop
Firstly, I can't believe this post is over 4 hours old and not a single Witness has commented so far. Allow me, speaking for @steemcommunity to be the first.
As a lower ranked witness, I must admit that the importance of code review was lost on me. I do come from a development background, but can only read python and JavaScript at a basic level. I feel this must improve if I am to take the role more seriously.
I do wonder if the issue two weeks ago regarding a vote after 6.5 days not being understood by an older version, and thus forking the chain, could have been spotted with more eyes, or thinkers. Realistically, you wouldn't need to be a coder to asses 'rule changes' like this, and how they could impact a system in which some machines weren't aware of the 'new' functionality. 'We' all had plenty of time to ponder potential effects and both Steemit inc and Witnesses, have to take some responsibility here.
5 patches in 5 days following the fork meant code reviews would have been brisk, and it really was just a case of following orders and the actions of the top witnesses. This didn't sit well, but I felt we had no choice here but to follow the lead.
Recent events have been a wake up call for all of us, and I hope we can learn plenty to make the blockchain stronger in future.
Cheers
Asher
Thanks for your reply Asher. Your honesty is refreshing.
For me the issue was the degree of due diligence prior to the code being released into the Production Environment. Once issues are found, it is kind of all-hands to the pump to expedite fixes so I can understand if patches being hurried through.
While we all want to see improvements that had aid the growth of the platform, it is in my view more important that Steem doesn't become an oligarchy. If that means changes take longer to implement as a consequence than so be it.
this is what I want to hear, not the 'oh take it as you see it' approach most large stakeholders are propagating. I do understand that these measures taken are neccesary but how it was done has been the major issues. Another issue is the independence of the witnesses. we don't need witnesses who would accept anything steem inc suggests. There is need for transparency and people who have not just the interest of the blockchain but the people who use it. Everyone should be carried along. Although I have my skepticism about decentralising, only time will tell if we are making the right move as a community.
Thank you for this write up bro 👍
I agree. Although I lad the witnessing for all they do, they should be doing so much more. We are lucky we can still get away with some errors, maybe not so in the future
Through conflict arises progress:)
Great write up
Alternatively we could try coming up with a more accurate description of steem....
'A blockchain whose architecture is centrally controlled by a white male neo-liberal techno elite; while social relations on the blockchain can best be described as a dystopian fusion of capitalism and feudalism.'
Could probably be improved on....
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