Hardforks, Communities, SMTs: Interview w/@justinw and @vandeberg
In today's episode of The Steemit Podcast we interview Steemit's Head of Engineering, @justinw, and Steemit's Senior Blockchain Engineer, @vandeberg, who explore the recent hardforks, Communities, and Smart Media Tokens.
Audio Only Version
The Hardforks
We begin with a discussion of what went right with the recent hardforks, primarily the economic changes (the EIP) and SteemDAO and then move on to the blockchain halting incidents that occurred as a result of overflow bugs. @vandeberg explains why these halts were actually the intended response to unintended bugs.
@vandeberg then explores what we have done since the incidents to ensure that there are no more bugs like this lurking in the code, and what can be done going forward to ensure that no such bugs are included in the SMT code.
Communities
We then move on discussing the timeline for the rollout of Communities, and @justinw shares that all the backend work in Hivemind that was needed to implement Communities has already been completed! We've now begun implementing the frontend components in Condenser (the open source software that powers steemit.com).
Smart Media Tokens
The timeline for SMTs is very positive. To get a better sense of that progress be sure to check out the SMT Burnup posts that we've been releasing on @steemitblog. There are only about 8 issues left !
Testnet
The testnet is absolutely critical because adding Smart Media Tokens to the blockchain will be one of the biggest changes to ever happen to the protocol. Almost every single core system that exists in Steem is being expanded or redone to support SMTs.
The potential combinations of SMT features are so extensive that we cannot hope to test all of them. The testnet will not only enable users, developers, and businesses to begin familiarizing themselves with how SMTs work through hands-on experience, but in the process they will also be assisting us by testing all of the combinations of features.
Mainnet Launch
We don't take any hardfork lightly, but this is by far the most important HF to get right because there is so much that is changing. We believe that SMTs should be tested on the testnet for at least 3 months. During that time we expect an extensive back and forth between ourselves, developers and Witnesses as we work together to finalize the most powerful, and secure, release possible.
This is just a summary of the interview, so be sure to watch the 20 minute video in full for more details.
Future Episodes
If you have any questions for the team that you would like us to answer in future episodes, please let us know in the comment section below.
The Steemit Team
not bad interview at all
Oh wow I didn't even know this account existed and i'm looking forward to listening to the interview thanks for doing this @andrarchy ... also any other accounts i'm missing for my Steemit INC list?
Thats an useful list and it should be more public!
At a glance, I believe that mostly covers it yes 🙂
One to add: @steemitdev
No more overflows in the future, good.
Need to wait until next year for SMT. At least we know when the time comes. I am eagerly waiting for the community to roll out before STEEMFEST or after?
Great interview, watched it from start to finish
Very glad people are understanding how important honest voting is (voting rewards not just going back to the voter either through selling or circle jerking etc) and how the economic incentives have a drastic impact on the honesty of voting behavior.
Eagerly looking forward to Communities and believe it'll greatly improve the user experience on here.
There's no honest voting going on here, at least not for the majority part.
think my downvotes are honest, working on the other
I said majority, that leaves space for honest voters. A small space but none the less some space...lol.
To evaluate that claim, we need a quantifiable definition of dishonest voting.
Dishonest would be openly saying I do not read the articles that I up vote or that I don't have time to read the articles I up vote on a platform they signed up for whose reason for existence is rewarding authors based upon what a person thinks that particular article is worth.
voting behavior that's indifferent to the voter's subjective appraisal or reasonable expectation of their subjective appraisal of the content
eg Vote selling: if I vote based on who pays me the highest rather than what that content is. Circle jerking/post farming are all similarly content indifferent.
How would you operationalize that definition? That is, which formal criteria would be useful at the detection of such behavior?
You can't detect it precisely unless you're the voter yourself, in which case you know pretty well if it's the content influencing your decision or not (eg if they're paying you to vote on their post, or if you're voting on their post because they're voting on yours in some stake weighted arrangement etc)
Externally, for now there are generally many hints as to whether the vote is bought or part of a circle jerk or some other dishonest scheme. Eg. If there are on chain links to vote buying.
Ultimately, if these things become less telegraphed, people will just have to get into the habit of downvoting whatever they believe is over rewarded more generally.
hola
It's definitely a work in progress, but it's noticeably better than pre HF 21
That's like saying I broke into the store and only robbed it of the things I really needed.
Good
Great to hear there are going to be a heap of configuration options. Have we seen a list of those somewhere? eg; could we see an SMT with a 104 week powerdown? 208 weeks?
What sort of reward curve options are we looking at? n3? decaying?
Nice!
Okay guys. Let me get this right. The problem is content discovery....the answer is communities. So if you join a community of "supposed" liked content you are more apt to discover what you are looking for or have an interest to read, if you read it then you are more apt to engage.
You know what though? That isn't happening. At least not to any great extent. Maybe if you are lucky you will find a comment, two, maybe three (and even that is iffy still as to if those comments don't believe to alts of the author) What we have found though is people joining communities basically saying "I'll pat your back if you pat mine" and put those people on their auto voters. One person even went as far as to tell me he doesn't have time to read the stuff his community writes and it's his stake, his right to put his vote where he wants to. The only way you are going to solve the lack of engagement is to get rid of auto votes, that makes individuals go out and look for the content in their community they want to up vote. One guy in a community wrote a post about three bags of shit hanging from a ceiling....and his community, on auto vote, up voted that shit to over thirty dollars. You see how this is not the answer to find quality content and up vote it? It's just a new way to circle jerk. It's even made it even all the harder for anyone else as all the votes are being distributed in a circle. I'll pat your back if you pat mine.
Communities aren’t here yet so you must be referring to steem engine tribes that some are also calling communities - these are very different products (nothing against tribes, it’s also a cool but different product). Hive communities that we are developing include moderation features and you can subscribe to and view them from a single interface among other things.
No it's not cool to up vote content one doesn't honestly read and/or engage with, that's the whole premise that steem is based on, to claim otherwise is a flat out lie and deceitful to the platform's intended purpose.
I don't belive I made any claims for or against automated voting. Just pointing out that communities are not here yet and are a very different product than tribes.
Looking at the bigger picture - I believe what you are pointing out are issues with engagement and content discovery. Hive communities aim to help solve these problems.
When you make a statement as such:
you are for people forming groups to circle jerk up voting each other using auto voter.
Nah, no where does anyone say the platform is filled with content to read and upvote all though that is one use.
Another is for stakeholders to allocate the stake to whatever they feel ads value.
Please do show us where the platform has ever been promoted as a gouging mechanism to make money. We'll be waiting....but if I was you I'd quit while I was ahead....otherwise I may have to go find a fifth grader to decipher for you what you just said.
Great to know this differences, would we have to wait for communities to be released to find out any other differentiating characteristics? Also, is there any option for you to integrate the work already done by Steem-engine team into the next communities and SMT releases?
Great to know this differences, would we have to wait for communities to be released to find out any other differentiating characteristics? Also, is there any option for you to integrate the work already done by Steem-engine team into the next communities and SMT releases
Hmm. So what you mean is that the model will be similar to reddit?
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Yes, it's quite clear that the idea of finding quality contents by means of voting is fundamentally wrong and steem is a wonderful demonstration of this fact. Quality contents is always appreciated by very few and not by crowds.
Nice statement. That is very true, even when it comes to authors you really like not everything or subject they write on will a person who usually enjoys their stuff will want to read.
By what mechanism is 'getting ride of auto-votes' even possible I wonder?
I am not sure but it can't be that hard, they got rid of the number of views an article received that use to appear. I am sure that was a decision made in regard to auto voting as it showed the extent to which people were just auto voting articles instead of reading and engagement. In all reality how can you have twelve views but seven hundred upvotes.
It was removed due to it being a poor implementation at the time. We have some ideas of how to better do this with hivemind and it's something we'll circle back around to in the future. We are not against having a view counter though - it would be a great thing to bring back in due time.
Give it some time. Communities don't exist, yet. Steem-Engine Tribes do. I'm sure it's a mixed bag when it comes to them.
I am sure misuse of bots was a mixed bag also as some people opted not to use them.
Perhaps it's just me, but does anyone else see a disconnect with @sunlit7's comments?
It's a hobby, been doing it for years, there's no disconnect.
I can't save you fifteen percent off your insurance every year but I can save you time responding back with more psychological manipulation, here have a salad, it's on me.
https://steemit.com/blog/@lucylin/word-salads-and-the-disingenuous-word-salad-warrior-for-hire
The disconnect was the gratitude that seemed to be expresessed for being set up for autovotes. Not sure what you are referring to by "salad". A Facebook thing perhaps?
Context is everything....his response was to a article I posted that got one cent after fourteen upvotes
My gratitude wasn't that he put me on autovoter but the fact that he wasn't going to see stuff I posted turn to dust after the hardfork was implemented. If I had written the post myself I'd went over to one of his post like I have done before and nudge him over to save my post from dust. I'd said something along the lines of could you see your penny pinching ass over to my post and save it from a dusting, cause we joke around that way all the time, he's a great guy that way, just as I tell him he's getting to be an expensive habit...give a guy a quarter of a penny up vote and next thing you know they want half a penny. So autovoter wouldn't have made an iota of difference, it was just another opportunity to joke around a bit like we always do.
Sounds like a dusty circle jerk to me. But that's just my opinion.
Some people take "value" in "customers" who have a good sense of humor, sometimes that better then the pennies of a dollar.
You have such a wonderful skill of coming up with such meaningless platitudes. Bravo! 👏
@steem.marketing,
Thank you for both of these genius, we are now at the new ERA of the STEEM blockchain. Which is much better than HF21 and yeah they might lead us to our next milestone of SMT as well! Thank you for conducting this interview.
$trdo
Cheers~
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Great interview. My question is, is anyone working on ideas/developments to further support the economics of Steem? Some suggestions I had in mind were:
That's finally done.
O I didn’t know that. Thanks for letting me know. Steemit should have wrote a post about this.
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Coinbase could mean the end of the long winter for Steem, but the listing fee surely is about the Everest high