Author Topic: Could we put this forum on the blockchain, it might get people voting?  (Read 6299 times)

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Offline starspirit

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Maybe consider how a transaction fee system for forum posts could be utilised to improve the quality of the discussion? e.g.:
- a flat cost per length of post, covering system cost, but also encouraging stakeholders to make pertinent points where they feel this genuinely adds value to discussion
- an ability to like posts, and absorb some transaction cost from the poster, encouraging lower cost for more helpful posts
Some days ago I proposed in a hangout to have something like Stackexchange were people find answers to questions and the most helpful answer gets a "helpful answer" flag .. plus you can up and downvote individual alternative answers and and give credits to the people answering ..
you might either distribute "income" daily, weekly, monthley .. whatsoever .. and "pay"/"gift" those willing to help within that period accordingly ..

I thought about this a bit more.  I like it for paying people giving support answers.  I think paying for forum posts won't necessarily be good.  It will lower the amount of posts but it will also get some of the better posts as not everyone is willing to pay to post.  (without going into specific amounts/threshholds)
Maybe the first post or two a day could be free.
Or what if we fostered a tipping culture like DOGE? Then its possible really helpful posts might actually make you money in community tips.

Offline Rune

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Then we have a strong profit motive to develop censorship resistant technology. A for profit, high quality TOR as a subDAC.

Last I understood, to get TOR access in China required significant legwork.

How would this resistant technology work ?  Answer - probably not that well, but lets just take on Chinese government as longterm business plan anyway??  No thanks.  Don't want BTS as a platform for anti-Chinese government propaganda.  That should be a different DAC.

Getting TOR to work in china is just a matter of financially incentivizing people to run entry nodes. Obviously all the flaws of TOR has be solved but the only China-specific problem is the entry nodes. They will ban us for the financial services any way. The second an official hears the word "bit renminbi", they will realize we are threatening their survival.

Offline Rune

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

I would strongly urge caution in making the large stake-holder/trust-holder both the delegate voter and the arbiter of deciding what content is widely read vs buried.  Seriously, seriously, seriously, urge caution against that.  In fact, I would probably just sell off  a solid majority of my stake for USD if that became the predominate mode of communication for community + voting. I don't think I've ever issued any other threat/ultimatum like statement in my existence on this site.

This is why I emphasized both multiple consensus measures and multiple subjective measures. The user ultimately has the freedom to censor/filter/order as they wish. If they don't like a particular consensus measure because it in their view "unfairly" gives to much weight to whales, they can use a better consensus measure or better yet use their own subjective measure based on how much they personally trust the identities behind various accounts that they have given a thumbs up to or otherwise rated in their local client.

I never said unfair, so I don't know where that quote is from but I don't think it is me. FYI


It has nothing to do with some simplistic notion of what is "unfair".  It has everything to do with having completely unbalanced powers that go far beyond someone having a large stake vs a small stake.  I agree that this forum becomes very hard to use.  I can think of patch solutions, or you can go to some vote system.  I'm not sure.  I don't think subject matter as important as this should be mob ruled, so I have never been accepting of voting systems for content here.  (Even when I think they work just fine on aggregator sites that are not so *important*)  It really is a tough problem...

Largely this comes down to whatever the default metric is.  Most people will not sit around twiddling the filter.  So what is considered the fair default weighting ?  Meh. 

Just give it a lot of thought and never consider giving stake holder size some significant weighting in what people read.  I realize that was just part of your idea, but I can't imagine something being worse.  (And I am a guy who defended I3's large stake)

I think I see what you are getting at. You're afraid of the danger in giving the rich minority control over the "pop culture" and thus ultimately zeitgeist of the community. I agree and think it should be split into two separate modes: stake voting for pure business questions and decisions, primarily to determine if a particular vote could pass, as a means to refine and reach compromise on them. And then a separate, trust based forum that is used for social and intellectual discussion.

Offline gamey

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Then we have a strong profit motive to develop censorship resistant technology. A for profit, high quality TOR as a subDAC.

Last I understood, to get TOR access in China required significant legwork.

How would this resistant technology work ?  Answer - probably not that well, but lets just take on Chinese government as longterm business plan anyway??  No thanks.  Don't want BTS as a platform for anti-Chinese government propaganda.  That should be a different DAC.
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Offline gamey

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

I would strongly urge caution in making the large stake-holder/trust-holder both the delegate voter and the arbiter of deciding what content is widely read vs buried.  Seriously, seriously, seriously, urge caution against that.  In fact, I would probably just sell off  a solid majority of my stake for USD if that became the predominate mode of communication for community + voting. I don't think I've ever issued any other threat/ultimatum like statement in my existence on this site.

This is why I emphasized both multiple consensus measures and multiple subjective measures. The user ultimately has the freedom to censor/filter/order as they wish. If they don't like a particular consensus measure because it in their view "unfairly" gives to much weight to whales, they can use a better consensus measure or better yet use their own subjective measure based on how much they personally trust the identities behind various accounts that they have given a thumbs up to or otherwise rated in their local client.

I never said unfair, so I don't know where that quote is from but I don't think it is me. FYI


It has nothing to do with some simplistic notion of what is "unfair".  It has everything to do with having completely unbalanced powers that go far beyond someone having a large stake vs a small stake.  I agree that this forum becomes very hard to use.  I can think of patch solutions, or you can go to some vote system.  I'm not sure.  I don't think subject matter as important as this should be mob ruled, so I have never been accepting of voting systems for content here.  (Even when I think they work just fine on aggregator sites that are not so *important*)  It really is a tough problem...

Largely this comes down to whatever the default metric is.  Most people will not sit around twiddling the filter.  So what is considered the fair default weighting ?  Meh. 

Just give it a lot of thought and never consider giving stake holder size some significant weighting in what people read.  I realize that was just part of your idea, but I can't imagine something being worse.  (And I am a guy who defended I3's large stake)
I speak for myself and only myself.

Offline tonyk

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

I would strongly urge caution in making the large stake-holder/trust-holder both the delegate voter and the arbiter of deciding what content is widely read vs buried.  Seriously, seriously, seriously, urge caution against that.  In fact, I would probably just sell off  a solid majority of my stake for USD if that became the predominate mode of communication for community + voting. I don't think I've ever issued any other threat/ultimatum like statement in my existence on this site.

Rune - When you break through the wall of China they will start to actively censor the DAC.  They have the resources.  I have never heard this discussed, but I doubt that you can create a DAC that can't be censored by an entity with enough control and resources. (like what Chinese government has)  Perhaps the network protocol could be obsfucated enough, but I am quite skeptical.  Taking on Chinese government is definitely not in favor of a longterm investor IMO.

Strongly Agree!
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline Rune

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.
Rune - When you break through the wall of China they will start to actively censor the DAC.  They have the resources.  I have never heard this discussed, but I doubt that you can create a DAC that can't be censored by an entity with enough control and resources. (like what Chinese government has)  Perhaps the network protocol could be obsfucated enough, but I am quite skeptical.  Taking on Chinese government is definitely not in favor of a longterm investor IMO.

Then we have a strong profit motive to develop censorship resistant technology. A for profit, high quality TOR as a subDAC.

Offline arhag

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

I would strongly urge caution in making the large stake-holder/trust-holder both the delegate voter and the arbiter of deciding what content is widely read vs buried.  Seriously, seriously, seriously, urge caution against that.  In fact, I would probably just sell off  a solid majority of my stake for USD if that became the predominate mode of communication for community + voting. I don't think I've ever issued any other threat/ultimatum like statement in my existence on this site.

This is why I emphasized both multiple consensus measures and multiple subjective measures. The user ultimately has the freedom to censor/filter/order as they wish. If they don't like a particular consensus measure because it in their view "unfairly" gives too much weight to whales, they can use a better consensus measure or better yet use their own subjective measure based on how much they personally trust the identities behind various accounts that they have given a thumbs up to or otherwise rated in their local client.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 11:55:40 pm by arhag »

Offline gamey

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

I would strongly urge caution in making the large stake-holder/trust-holder both the delegate voter and the arbiter of deciding what content is widely read vs buried.  Seriously, seriously, seriously, urge caution against that.  In fact, I would probably just sell off  a solid majority of my stake for USD if that became the predominate mode of communication for community + voting. I don't think I've ever issued any other threat/ultimatum like statement in my existence on this site.

Rune - When you break through the wall of China they will start to actively censor the DAC.  They have the resources.  I have never heard this discussed, but I doubt that you can create a DAC that can't be censored by an entity with enough control and resources. (like what Chinese government has)  Perhaps the network protocol could be obsfucated enough, but I am quite skeptical.  Taking on Chinese government is definitely not in favor of a longterm investor IMO.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 11:47:39 pm by gamey »
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Offline Rune

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

There are so many possibilities in this space. I have many more ideas that need to be better developed regarding a Social Networking/Forum/Discussion DAC. I think all posts should link to recent previous ones within the relevant branch of the discussion thread forming a DAG (directed acyclic graph). Then, periodically anyone can post a hash of a recent post to the blockchain to protect any of the posts referred to in the chain from being censored. I don't think there is any need to bloat the blockchain with hash of every single post. If a "trusted" third-party does this on a frequent basis, we can get a decent upper bound on the time a post was made. A better lower bound can be done by the poster by including a hash of the most recent block in the meta-data of their post. Even if the timing isn't precise, the DAG will ensure that the order of posts was at least not altered.

Payment for the posts would need to be figured out. I don't like the idea of paying for each post (again blockchain bloat). I think the entities providing the frequent timestamping of posts can also be the entities hosting the actual encrypted contents of the posts as well as managing the metadata relationships between the posts. These entities can then be paid by the posters through micropayment channels instead.

Other things to figure out include managing group ACLs so that only participants in the group have access to the private key used to encrypt the contents of the post. Migrating groups over to a new one anytime an addition/deletion of a member of the group is necessary (and notify members of the new group of the change and the new private key to use to encrypt further posts). It should be possible to send notifications of posts to specific parties (by for example tagging them in the post) via something like the KeyMail system. Also, we would want to figure out the specifications for editing posts by attaching deltas to the original posts (to create a viewable edit history) and the specifications for adding metadata to a post like upvote/downvote/like/+1. Furthermore, it should be possible to create content-addressable links  (with necessary decryption key included) within the post to encrypted content like images/audio/video held in a decentralized storage system similar to Maidsafe/storj.

I am very excited about the possibilities in this space.

Will be so amazing to finally have a forum that can breach the great firewall of China. This stuff has the potential to change the most populated country on earth.

Offline arhag

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

We could (and should) go far beyond simple reddit up/down votes. We should optionally use Key Graph to publicly delegate our trust (and stake) to accounts/identities we trust, in addition to having our own private weights for each account we trust. This can also be done on a topic by topic basis. Then we can appropriately weigh the approval/disapproval of a post by accounts based on this web of trust and reputation and on the topic the post belongs under. Thus I could order/filter the posts by one of many consensus measures (meaning I get the same ordering as anyone else choosing the same consensus measure) and I could also order/filter the posts by one of my private subjective measures.

There are so many possibilities in this space. I have many more ideas that need to be better developed regarding a Social Networking/Forum/Discussion DAC. I think all posts should link to recent previous ones within the relevant branch of the discussion thread forming a DAG (directed acyclic graph). Then, periodically anyone can post a hash of a recent post to the blockchain to protect any of the posts referred to in the chain from being censored. I don't think there is any need to bloat the blockchain with hash of every single post. If a "trusted" third-party does this on a frequent basis, we can get a decent upper bound on the time a post was made. A better lower bound can be done by the poster by including a hash of the most recent block in the meta-data of their post. Even if the timing isn't precise, the DAG will ensure that the order of posts was at least not altered.

Payment for the posts would need to be figured out. I don't like the idea of paying for each post (again blockchain bloat). I think the entities providing the frequent timestamping of posts can also be the entities hosting the actual encrypted contents of the posts as well as managing the metadata relationships between the posts. These entities can then be paid by the posters through micropayment channels instead.

Other things to figure out include managing group ACLs so that only participants in the group have access to the private key used to encrypt the contents of the post. Migrating groups over to a new one anytime an addition/deletion of a member of the group is necessary (and notify members of the new group of the change and the new private key to use to encrypt further posts). It should be possible to send notifications of posts to specific parties (by for example tagging them in the post) via something like the KeyMail system. Also, we would want to figure out the specifications for editing posts by attaching deltas to the original posts (to create a viewable edit history) and the specifications for adding metadata to a post like upvote/downvote/like/+1. Furthermore, it should be possible to create content-addressable links  (with necessary decryption key included) within the post to encrypted content like images/audio/video held in a decentralized storage system similar to Maidsafe/storj.

I am very excited about the possibilities in this space.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 11:30:51 pm by arhag »

Offline Thom

Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Why reinvent the wheel and spend dev effort "adding forum features" to the client when there is plenty of forum software out there. I just don't see the merits of adding forum features vs. linking to some existing forum with say a p2p style (blockchain) DNS address as luckybit & I posted about above.
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Offline Rune

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Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)

Have it like reddit where you up vote with your stake. That way consensus/majority on any issues can be found rapidly. Will increase our ability to respond and adapt to any threat or opportunity.

Offline bytemaster

Forum features could be added to BTS as soon as the key graph is in place.   Assuming people are willing to pay their $0.02 to post ;)
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Offline amencon

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The forum itself doesn't belong on the blockchain, but the intriguing idea is the bundling of the BitShares client with access to this forum.

If our public keys were tied to our forum ID and access to the forum was only through the BTS client, the benefits described by the OP could be realized.

Forums really don't have that much data.  You could also compress to a high degree with known dictionaries if you wanted to be super dev.  You don't need any pictures stored on blockchain.

Other bright technical people are of the mind that we need some complicated storage system first, which means it would be likely well over a year before this would be coded.

If you are going to maintain superDAC then you can just as well have multiple chains by anything I can reason.  One DAC, multiple blockchains.  Some optional etc with slower blocktimes and lower fees.  Reimagine everything, right ?  At least then you can always split them back into their own DACs.
You're right and you never take any consideration to the actual work involved.  You just type up idea after idea after idea... 

We aren't a year away. We are months away. I would say sometime this winter you could do it and likely by Jan.

Storj is already in progress. There are altcoins which are all working on components of it. It really depends on how much priority developers give it.


What do you mean "in progress" ?  I hope all those products that are storage products are "in progress".

What altcoins are doing what ?

Yes, it depends on how much time developers give it and I'm talking about reality and not unrealistically.

How would the superDAC even pay for that storage ?  Cross-chain trading from 2 different families of coins ?
If you believe the Storj guys, the "DriveShare" portion that allows users to rent their diskspace should be in a sort of open beta by early 2015.  The initial Beta for pre-sale participants is beginning imminently.  If you want I can report back how well it appears to work, hopefully if things run smooth they'll be able to have something generally usable by mid 2015.

Though I guess mid 2015 isn't too far off from the year mark.