HardFork UA: Open Letter to @Ned & Steemit Inc
Hi @ned,
it's been about 7 months since I initially wrote about my "UA algorithm" (UserAuthority) in article 1 and article 2.
Since then things "went south" regarding abuse of the "reward pool" by "some users", while some others are trying to stop it.
The only way to permanently stop that abuse and sanitize the Steem Blockchain once and for all is by hardforking UA.
Do that now, @ned . You will not regret it. UA is mathematically correct and cannot be scammed.
PS: in case you think UA cannot be used in a dPOS / consensus environment, it can: just hash the ua.db binaries and add that hash to the blockchain.
I just read your original articles and feel your idea has merit. What I think we need is a platform that allows experimentation with a number of different rule systems, such as the one you are proposing here. Perhaps users could choose to opt in to certain subcommunities, each with their own set of rules. For instance suppose you set up a Steem UA subcommunity that attracts 10,000 users. The reward pool granted to those 10,000 users might be distributed according to your UA algorithms. Someone else might set up a different community with different rules. Over time, with enough experiments through subcommunities, people will gravitate to the ones that work best for them. By allowing experimentation with different sets of rules, we gain both evidence for what works and doesn't work. By not forcing rule sets on the entire set of users, the overall blockchain is not subject to suffering if one rule set doesn't work--so we gain anti-fragility. Subcommunities also set up a free market for users, thus ensuring competition and, hopefully, innovation.
But you should not need to beg @ned to make the changes you suggest. You or anyone else need to be able to set up the rules and then invite users to participate. At this point, I don't know enough to know whether this is something that eosDAC or SMTs might be capable of doing, but I think the idea is necessary and that blockchains that don't support such experimentation are likely to fade as others provide for more experimentation.
Setting this up to avoid gaming the system is probably difficult. For example, we would want to avoid a whale setting up a subcommunity for themselves with rules that just return rewards to the whale even though they provide no content or curation.
It's not about begging, nor about me being the "UA inventor": it's a mechanism, possibly even the only mechanism, that truly sanitizes Steem. Currently it's not possible to set up a "subcommunity playground" with "different rules": it's either hardfork UA, or not, but an intermediate solution to test drive the system in a sandboxed environment is absent.
#rightly said, correct response
Without reading the UA proposal it seems its goals could very well fit in an SMTs + Oracles model
I think if this is not incorporated into the current setup, someone will adopt it within an SMT framework. Either approach works for me, and that is where I'll be spending my time.
I just got notified about the SMOKE network's whitepaper found here (currently): https://smoke.network/Smoke-Whitepaper-2.0.pdf. Search for
scipioinside it (to be found at page #28) where I'm / UA is being referenced as core rewards improvement. I haven't had contact with the SMOKE network founders, nor do I currently know whether UA has already been implemented yet.Interesting!
Indeed!
When I read your idea a few months ago I really thought everyone would do their best to implement it as quickly as possible, or at least try to adapt it to implement it in the best way.
So I'm a little surprised that you weren't heard earlier and I'm very happy that your idea is back in the spotlight. I really like the concept even if I don't fully understand the math behind the process, the finality is really what we've all been looking to achieve for months now.
I hope that we will soon see it in our ecosystem and that this will positively change the rules of the game on Steem. I wish you courage to achieve this, you have my full support :-) .
Thank you for the very kind and supportive words! Multiple reasons can be given on why UA hasn't been hardforked / implemented at the core of Steem yet. One of them being, that when I initially published my first UA article, I myself were still a Steem N00b (only active for a few weeks). Despite the fairly large amount of upvotes, my article and myself were still "unnoticed" by some.
Another aspect: the calculation of UA is primarily concentrated on the follower matrix (who follows who), and that's a metric at which "consensus" has to be reached.
Etc. etc. ;-)
Time will tell!
Yes I understand, indeed these are important decisions to make that require some trust on the part of the community. I'm sure time will work in your favor, there's no doubt about it!
And for a newbie you really started on the wheel cap as they say in French (chapeau de roues) :-D!
See you soon and we hope to hear from you soon!
I see you got some really good feedback on the previous posts.
6 months down the line and we are clearly in worse shape with regards to bad actors. RS in the hope for further discussions.
Indeed. UA (UserAuthority) might be mathematically heavy / difficult to understand for some, but it is the only solution I came up with that actually holds up and permanently solves a lot of Steem-related problems.
Yet it only works as intended once UA is hardforked. And I cannot do that myself.
So please, resteem this, and get @ned 's attention.
I’ll read a proposal but would rather read the code. I can really appreciate HF proposals if they include mock code and implementation framework. Anyway please share the link to UA concept.
Hi @ned thanks for responding.
the mathematical formulae and implementation mechanisms were already posted in my first article here: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@scipio/how-to-solve-spam-on-steem-introducing-userauthority
Instead of Gauss-Jordan row reduction I've used (low-CPU / low-RAM) multi-iterative substitution, which is presented in the spreadsheet / Excel found there as well.
the implementation plan is as follows:
Regarding no. 5: with the
1I meant the initial absolute UA/weight approximation per account at iteration 0. The sum of all UA is either equal to the total number of accounts, or 1 (when all UA is divided by that same number of accounts).Hey. I just read both of your posts on UA.
I want to ask here since its a new post:
How exactly would this change the trending page? It seems the algorithm is mostly focused on followers.
High SP accounts will always have high UA
Due to their high SP.
Bots having low UA doesnt mean much since many dont posts that frequently.
Wouldnt this just create a trending page filled with whales and older accounts?
Could someone new ever get to trending with an upvote from dtube or curie?
Also take Jerry for example... Many people follow him out of curiosity of what crazy thing he will do next.. Not neccesarily wanting him to be on trending, "our store front" for the world to see.
How exactly would payout work with UA in terms of visibility?
Hi, UA can be used for many purposes as a stand-alone as well as a combined metric. High SP accounts do certainly not always have high UA, and the opposite is also true: some low-SP accounts can have a very high UA: it all depends on who follows who. UA is a probability distribution.
In case UA gets implemented via hardfork, new behavior will apply: people will be more aware and more careful of who (not) to follow, hence the follower matrix will change drastically over time, leading to completely different UAs for every account.
Yes i noticed that implication. Many of us messed up our feed and now im too "scared" to unfollow due to Gina.
This would incentivize using personal feeds more which is amazing.
Id say that high SP accounts that upload regularly always would have high UA regardless of content quality.
The issue being with new accounts having reduced visibility prior to acquiring networking skills.
I consider my self a quality content creator and without a huge amount of work i put in networking i wouldnt have anywhere close to my payouts.
I even think networking consumes 70% of my time on steem compared to 30% that goes into content creation.
Doesnt UA favor networking and High SP even more, over quality especially in newer accounts?
Do you think the implementation would create a dynamic trending page or a consolidation effect where the visibility would be reserved only for those with high UA. Meaning if i had high UA id always trend and always get high visibility, creating an opportunity for me to get even higher UA, giving me even more visibility, potentially keeping me in trending indefinetly. (If i understood your proposal correctly)
I think thats just another way of monopolizing trending.
Imo a solution would be quite a bit simpler and quite dumber in terms of mathematical equations.(which i write about in my post idea few weeks back).
Just make a seperate trending with organically upvoted content. "The new trending". Add a filter that excludes all well known bot, minnowbooster, smartsteem, booster, etc... upvotes and a way to update the filter if new ones pop up. Exclude the self upvotes from the listing as well. (Not the self upvoted posts)...
Let the bots keep this trending page and give us another.
I know thats super simplistic in idea form but complex in implementation.
@ned probably wont answer this, but might as well see...
This is some deep stuff Marica. You are going Adrian deep 😂
Nice post
Good luck
There are people I follow out of interest, but not because I appreciate their content.
If, under this system, I was to unfollow them, would this be considered gamification or how things were supposed to pan out?
When UA is hardforked, much more weight is given to following and unfollowing accounts. New rules, new behaviour. Every follow and unfollow affects UA of all accounts, slightly.
If people disagree with the behavior of user X, say @haejin , all they need to do via UA is to simply unfollow that user, and collectively his influence will be reduced to almost zero.
Right. Well the theory sounds good, i cannot speak of the math/coding level required, but do think it's worthy of further discussion.
UA works 100%, is mathematically correct, relatively easy to implement, yet needs to be hardforked to have full effect.
I'd say to @haejin "Analyze this"
Currently, if I no longer resonate with a person or their content, I unfollow. Free time is not something I have a lot of.
Yes I understand.
And I suppose it is this feeling/action that holds up the UA mechanism.
Correct again
Smart idea to base mechanics on eigenvectors!
Resteemed.
Thanks!
I have not read the articles. I am going to read it. This is relevant I guess. resteemed and liked. What else can I do? Or Let me suggest something to you? I guess you are a programmer. Can you explain the math in a simple way and write a STEM article with #steemSTEM tag. Maybe if possible you can do a simulation with an example. That can also give voice to your suggestion I guess. :)
Hi, you might want to read the articles then because a simulation and the simulation results are already in there.
Okay. Let us hope @ned considers this seriously :)
Seems like it now! ;-)
wow! Let me read his comments
I wasn't around 7 months ago, so didn't read your article then, but I just read it and the idea makes sense to me. I think it would be a huge step in the right direction. Any word from the powers that be on implementing it?