RE: Did We Learn Any Lessons From HF20?
While time will heal the downtime, the lack of confidence will haunt unless there is some evidence that lessons were learned in all camps.
The top 20 witnesses are the last line of defense between the end-users and hacking, incompetence, or catastrophic errors. While I do not have a large investment here, it is enough I want to feel it is in good hands.
I still see more people fighting rather than assisting with the testnet, etc.
While I am waiting to see how this pans out, it is difficult to feel much can change with Pumpkin and Freedom.
I also want to acknowledge that I saw you communicating on the blockchain prior to the fork about your concerns. Although I don't always appreciate your communication style, kudos for pointing out the risks and doing what you could to bring awareness.
The buck stops with the witnesses, not SteemIt Inc.
Pumpkin (and thereby Freedom) do change their witness votes from time to time, so all is not lost. The question is, who controls pumpkin and what are their parameters for choosing witnesses?
The buck stops with the witnesses, but if they are all "Yes Men" (and women) then we will never see critical thinking step in and make reasonable requests/demands. Everyone is too afraid of losing those witness rewards for producing blocks.
So really, the buck stops with the witness voters. We do have enough cumulative power to outvote Freedom if we ALL started using out witness votes. Unfortunately, so many people don't even bother to vote for witnesses or even know what it means to vote, or be a witness, that we will not be seeing these changes any time soon.
That would be amazing to know.
Maybe we should make major pushes to encourage people to proxy their votes more. Some people really enjoy keeping their ears to the ground and shift their choices frequently depending on developments. In my experience I went from not even knowing 10 witnesses I'd like to support to knowing who most of the top 100 are and wishing I could vote more than 30.
It's really not that realistic to expect your average Steemit user to gather the information necessary to choose 30 witnesses unless they have specific interest in it. If we had a culture where proxying was more popular, even a tiny minnow who dedicated to staying up to date with witness activities could have a pretty big say in matters.
I like this idea, however, first you have to teach the average Joe Steem users that they should care who their witnesses are. I think there are a lot of people on Steem who do not care one way or the other.
Maybe this current situation could be explained in a way that encourages people to set a proxy, but who do we encourage them to proxy to? Asking people to proxy needs to be accompanied with a list of potential proxies for people to consider. Asking people to proxy to yourself can easily be read as a power play.
So convince the people who don't vote for witnesses to vote, make it easy for them to proxy, and give them a list of potential proxies to choose from. I think then you might have a SLIGHT chance of making a small difference in the witness rankings.
But maybe I am too pessimistic.
Maybe we should make major pushes to encourage people to proxy their votes more. I've been thinking about this also.
Totally
There are many, probably most who do not have the ability to vote on witnesses. Although I am well informed, I am likely on the cusp of this myself.
Those who are "yes men" because they fear losing money are bad actors, but I feel an inability to have any influence.
I'm waiting for the dust to settle, but I can't currently trust the system.
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you have some good forking points there... ;)
****echo****
I also would love to see evidence that lessons were learned... show us witnesses! stand up!
Steemit Inc could outvote Pumpkin and Freedom if they voted for witnesses.