Hardfork 13: Minimal Steem power to vote + Steem mining bug fixed
The hardfork scheduled for Mon, 15 Aug 2016 14:00:00 GMT will include the following releases:
This effectively stops accounts with really low amounts of steem power from voting. Preventing spam of meaningless votes. This update was made with the intention of preventing bot attacks.
After the recent mining attack by a user named 'supercomputer' the steemit devs have been working hard to fix this bug. 'Supercomputer' did this attack by skipping the hashing part of mining and using ECDSA instead. The hacker could submit new blocks, using old blocks and changing their block-id. Then change his private key to sign the new block, effictively skipping the POW. @arhag will soon fully disclose how all of this took place.
@bergy Upvoted and totally appreciated! I was watching Github to see the changes in the next Fork but had no idea what the planned release date was!
One of the big changes I'm thrilled about is switching back to a 24 hour instead of 12 hour payout schedule. The 12 hours was simply too small of a window for many of us who post off hours. When the average person gets 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night it made the windows even smaller because posting at night when a majority of the user base was in bed almost certainly doomed a post to be buried by morning.
Great job on fixing the POW issue too! I noticed it was pretty much DDOS'd so I just turned of my node but once that issue is fixed I'll fire it back up without hesitation. :-)
Congrats to everyone who helped contribute to Hard Fork 13! Keep up the awesome work!
I don't think the reverting to 24 payout period is officially included in the hardfork yet, see https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/0.13.0-rc3. It is however on the milestone. Will update once I figure out more.
I saw it was in there and just assumed it was going to be included. Honestly with the speed you guys keep busting out the updates it won't be long of a wait I imagine. ;-)
You seem to be under the impression I am a developer of Steem. I want to make it clear that I'm not. I just follow their github.
It was just a shot in the dark because you were following so closely on GitHub. Than again I guess I too have been following GitHub and adding bug reports with error codes when I find a glitch from time to time. I'm not one of the Dev's either, just a fellow enthusiast such as yourself. Sorry for the confusion, my mistake entirely. Still a big thank you though for keeping us updated. Constantly running to Github for updates gets old really fast when not coding or reporting on newly implemented code.
Hopefully this update will inevitably stop the overwhelming bot votes and help more genuine Users to cast a real vote on something . This will help put real interesting Content on the Active page and give all users a fighting chance to get noticed. Way to go Steemit!!!
Thanks for sharing for those who are unaware! Important stuff is at work.
I hope that the minimal rshares per vote not so high to keep attracting new users.
I don't expect it to be, it's just to keep the bots from votespamming.
How can new users participate in voting now? This seems to kind of hurt the platform due to the reduced interaction that newer users will have and make it seem more like a scam or ponzi because they have to deposit money to be able to participate in the voting.
@bergy & @goingpaper
Everyone gets a little SP when they sign up and the only thing a new SP limit on voting would reduce is their ability to curate content. They would still be granted the full rewards any author gets for publishing an article.
Posting a simple introduction in #introduceyourself has been granting more than enough SP to many users who want to get started with the platform. A good intro is typically worth way more than low SP curating or the small amount they get for free when signing up.
Furthermore this update has the added side effect of encouraging users to contribute if they want to participate. Lurkers simply won't have the ability to troll anymore without putting themselves out there, unless of course they want to shell out money to do so...
I can honestly say if you look at the content I have posted. It takes time, this update might shake those who think they can one post to glory and open a door to those like me and others who have posted tons of content. I think you are right most make a tone off of their introductions but i am proof you can make it if you keep working at it. I made 1.15 with my intro, but have continued to bring genuine content and have been awarded accordingly.
Trust me, persistence will be the key to success on this platform once the kinks are worked out.
Steemit was never meant to be a "Lottery" like system with slot machine style payouts. It's still in beta but has been solving problems just as fast as they arise. Judging by your rep you've been doing quite well in the SP department by sticking with it.
Hopefully more people will follow your example and drop their "I want to win the lottery," or "Cut & Paste my way to victory," approach that we've all been seeing way too much recently while the platform goes through its initial growing pains.
Users with that low amount of steem power have pretty much no effect now either.
New and casual users don't understand that, they just want to be able to participate in commenting and voting. If you take the voting away it drastically changes how the public and outsiders will see steemit and in my opinion when people see the image of more power being given to the elite and wealthy it negatively impacts that perception.
Edit: also your comment reminded me a bit of this
But that's pretty much exactly what steemit does. You pay for influence. I do agree on your point that this is not very inviting to new users though.
Oh wow I did not know there was another hack
It wasn't quite the same as the last hack but someone found a way to game the mining system and pretty much DDOS'd it for the rest of us until it gets patched. They found a way to bypass the POW system and pretty much controlled the flow of all mining payouts via a 100% attack that made a typical 51% attack look like a joke by all comparison.
How does the average newbie user gain initial voting weight?
By either commenting, posting, or powering. Atleast that's what I think. Because the minimum steem power to vote was not specified, it might aswell be only for accounts registered through the cli wallet, which require a registration fee. Making their steem power lower than people who register through the normal ways (fb, reddit).
I can't find any commits that implement the minimal rshares check. There's no commits attached to the issue (https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/248). Where's the code change? Are you sure it made it in?
I'm pretty sure it made it into hardfork 13 (https://github.com/steemit/steem/labels/HARDFORK)
Yeah, it should be there. But there's just the issue in the label, no references to any commits. I've searched through the commit history and can't find anything. Weird. I've asked for the commit info in the issue thread.
Thanks You for bright share