BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bitmarket on September 13, 2014, 05:01:40 am
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I see many things I hate about it, but what is the point?
The only thing I can come up with is if btsx is in cold storage then people cannot change their delegate vote. Is that is purpose? To encourage frequent voting?
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yes
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DPOS delegates maintain the stability of whole system, so stakeholder contribute to the system by voting for delegates, I think this is the point.
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Also to burn lost coins
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As far as I recall. It was originally a part of tapos and was designed to prevent the ability to create too many coin days destroyed in regards to your stake. I'm not exactly sure what the rationale for keeping it in these dpos days is. I think the fact that it isn't yet implemented is proof that it isn't as important to Dpos as it was to tapos. I would love to get a technical analysis on why it is still needed.
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http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Inactivity_Fees
Not very in depth but ahh well.
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Thanks gamey. In response I would love a more technical analysis of how blockchain pruning works.
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The coins are not burnt. They are returned to supply. This is for the purpose that gamey's link mentions but also as a lost coin and dust collector. For private keys that are lost for whatever reason (too small balance to move aka dust, death of key holder, damaged hardware, forgotten passwords, etc.). To prevent this fee any transaction will do. For cold storage create a new cold wallet and transfer funds to it. Not a huge burden for an annual event.
In my opinion the benefits to the coin and network as a whole far out weigh the burden of annual cold storage refreshes.
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Also to burn lost coins
Burning lost coins could be a problem though so I see his point. Therefore Bitshares X wouldn't be good for long long term store of value such as 20 years because of this fee.
The vast majority of people will never bump up against or feel this fee but I could imagine that it could be a possible scenario where someone could lose 100% of their holdings because they lost access to their private keys for years.
If you think you're going to not be able to access your private key for years then maybe you'll have to put your Bitshares wealth somewhere else. Bitshares X is primarily an exchange but there will be other DACs and some of them don't have to have the 5% fee.
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So I was a victim of a substantial bitcoin heist. My now hold my bitcoin in mutlisig cold storage paper wallets in several continents in several private vaults.
To achieve the same level of security without paying this fee, I would have to fly all over the world ever year, so yeah refreshing cold wallets every year is annoying as hell. For serious corporate investors this would absolutely be a huge problem.
Additionally I want people to put their btsx in cold storage. Its helps drive the price up as they are not as quick to sell.
Further it seems quite rude. Imagine if Apple or Amazon told shareholders that if they did not trade their shares every year, they would slugged with a 5% tax. That would turn off people using it as a retirement investment.
It is pretty rude and disincentivises desirable behavior, however, if it is possible that "lost coins" will get "stuck" voting for a delegate, then I guess it is possible end up with an undesirable delegate.
If this is the real reason, then I can think of a way around it, but I think its pretty rude to leave it in there.
Someone mentioned it is not implemented though... did I read that right... it is not even part of the protocol anymore.
In that case, I will shut the hell up and move on with my life.
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There are tons of things not implemented. I think this is pretty low on the list.
As has been pointed out by Dan, holding data on the blockchain has a cost. It isn't necessarily fair that everyone who has full client has to maintain data from others indefinitely without the owner of the data paying the network anything.
I'll add this to the wiki real quick.
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Reset all votes that are older than 1 year?
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It might be that 5% inactivity has too much of a marketing cost. It prevents people from just sitting on their BTSX which is usually desirable to other holders.
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Bitmarket - do NOT shut the hell up. You are raising some very valid points and this is all part of the discussion of an evolving product/protocol.
While I have my views they are just mine and they are not cast in stone.
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Perhaps we can provide an exemption for multisig accounts.
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Perhaps we can provide an exemption for multisig accounts.
What about the ability to flag an account as cold storage but as soon as it does a transaction the flag drops and the clock starts running. Once a cold storage account does a transaction it's not cold storage anymore.
The biggest downside to this, obviously, is that if cold storage is lost it's gone forever.
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It might be that 5% inactivity has too much of a marketing cost. It prevents people from just sitting on their BTSX which is usually desirable to other holders.
What about providing a single one time fee as a "storage cost". This would help keep the system profitable and give users the option of paying a single one time fee and not having to worry about moving their holdings. You could offer it in 5 year increments and give them a discount on the 5% since they are paying the fee upfront. The beauty of this is that some users will sign up for a 5 year hold, then say we get a price spike and they want to cash out. The system gets to keep the fee and if they want to put their btsx in storage they must pay the fee again. It creates options and another avenue for the system to earn.
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If the point of the 5% fee was to encourage delegate voting, why couldn't there be an exemption for accounts linked to active slates? For example, if my voting slate said "cast my votes based on Bytemaster's votes" then would it even matter if my shares were in cold storage as long as Bytemaster was active? Or am I misunderstanding the slate feature in the web of trust?
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It might be that 5% inactivity has too much of a marketing cost. It prevents people from just sitting on their BTSX which is usually desirable to other holders.
What about providing a single one time fee as a "storage cost". This would help keep the system profitable and give users the option of paying a single one time fee and not having to worry about moving their holdings. You could offer it in 5 year increments and give them a discount on the 5% since they are paying the fee upfront. The beauty of this is that some users will sign up for a 5 year hold, then say we get a price spike and they want to cash out. The system gets to keep the fee and if they want to put their btsx in storage they must pay the fee again. It creates options and another avenue for the system to earn.
Or what about the option to flag an account as cold storage and have the 5% come out of another account. Command could look like
wallet_account_flag_coldstorage <account_to_flag> <account_to_pay_inactivity_fee>
Then as long as the maintenance account had BTSX in it there'd be no problem. It'd be easy to calculate out how much 5%/year would be for your cold storage accounts.
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5% isn't the cost of storage, it was a reclamation of lost funds strategy.
Voting doesn't apply to bitusd
Long term storage isn't that much of a burden with dpos.
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That makes sense. So the once a year thing is proof of control. Hmm...so the ability for people to have long term cold storage vs the network's ability to reclaim lost supply. Of course there's nothing stopping people from sending 5%/year to their cold storage account to keep it topped up.
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The market will price in lost funds on its own. Perhaps removing this fee will help. It will make my life easier.
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As a point of data/use case.
My sister invested some $$ in BTSX after reading some promotional material. I was happy to help her, because I'd just keep her funds with mine.
Then her bf who I don't particularly like told her he wanted to invest. Well... I wouldn't mind but this whole 5% thing means that I have to teach him something and someone has to maintain it. I can't just help him buy it and put it in cold storage with a few copies of the private key and instructions. So I basically told her I really didn't want to mess with it.
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The market will price in lost funds on its own. Perhaps removing this fee will help. It will make my life easier.
What about an asset like bitGLD that doesn't get the 5% fee. People can then have cold storage full of gold or silver. Then the market's primary liquid asset (BTSX) would have the controlled supply and recovery channel and people can store as much bitASSET in cold storage as they like. If they want to store BTSX they either have to refresh the keys or keep it topped up.
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-5% only on btsx but not on bitAssets?
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-5% only on btsx but not on bitAssets?
That's my thinking. BTSX is the crucial one I feel but I also don't have the same economic theory background others have.
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As a point of data/use case.
My sister invested some $$ in BTSX after reading some promotional material. I was happy to help her, because I'd just keep her funds with mine.
Then her bf who I don't particularly like told her he wanted to invest. Well... I wouldn't mind but this whole 5% thing means that I have to teach him something and someone has to maintain it. I can't just help him buy it and put it in cold storage with a few copies of the private key and instructions. So I basically told her I really didn't want to mess with it.
To argue for the other side, BTSX is not just like holding some shares. You are expected to take part in maintaining the network health, and if you can't take the trouble then we don't want you.
For multisig cold wallets, I think there might be an option where you can sign that address to show that you are still the owner of it and still active. I think we need some feature like that anyway so that I can show my balance to somebody if I want; its currently not possible due to TITAN.
Off topic, but I would like an armory type wallet, which I can keep on an unconnected laptop for ever.
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I dont think reclaiming lost funds is very necessary, however reclaiming lost/stale votes does have some merit. Enough to warrant the 5% fee probably not.
With regards to being active in the community, it would frustrate me to have to go around the world and assemble my multisig just to change my vote. IT would make me not vote except in an emergency.
Am I correct in assuming votes cannot be changed under any circumstances without a transaction? Not sure how the web of trust thing works or the automatic bad delegate detection works.
Either way, what would be nice is if the private key created a derivative key, that I could vote with but not send a transaction. I can put the private key in cold storage and voting key I could keep on my computer.
If my voting key got stolen and votes were cast not to my choosing, I could use the private key to reset a different voting key and the stolen voting key would be useless.
Seems well down the list of things to work on, but I think it would be a nice to have if at all technically possible.
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As a point of data/use case.
My sister invested some $$ in BTSX after reading some promotional material. I was happy to help her, because I'd just keep her funds with mine.
Then her bf who I don't particularly like told her he wanted to invest. Well... I wouldn't mind but this whole 5% thing means that I have to teach him something and someone has to maintain it. I can't just help him buy it and put it in cold storage with a few copies of the private key and instructions. So I basically told her I really didn't want to mess with it.
To argue for the other side, BTSX is not just like holding some shares. You are expected to take part in maintaining the network health, and if you can't take the trouble then we don't want you.
For multisig cold wallets, I think there might be an option where you can sign that address to show that you are still the owner of it and still active. I think we need some feature like that anyway so that I can show my balance to somebody if I want; its currently not possible due to TITAN.
Off topic, but I would like an armory type wallet, which I can keep on an unconnected laptop for ever.
This is a good point. We want holders of btsx to be active and participate in DPOS so if they can't participate then we kinda don't really want them. What good is a board of directors if they aren't around to vote? I have changed my stance, btsx should keep a inactivity fee bit the rest of bit assets should be allowed to store at will.
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The market will price in lost funds on its own. Perhaps removing this fee will help. It will make my life easier.
I think you're right. What you need to consider is if this rule overall makes Bitshares better or worse. Since the market WILL price in lost funds on its own, there is no reason to have it, and the rule is making Bitshares worse.
Bitshares needs to have as few restrictions on use as possible. The less restrictions, the more use cases it is opened up to. More utility = a better product = a larger and stronger network.
Bitshares should also be as easy to use as possible. Having to move my funds around to avoid a fee is just one more thing that I have to research, learn about, and deal with to own some form of bitshares. If there are enough small annoyances I just give up and use some easier form of money. In fact, that brings me to another point that Bitshares should be intuitive to use. With a good product, you just know how to use it. I shouldn't have to browse the internet for hours to figure out how to trade on the market, or what the shorting restrictions are, or how to find the right way to open an account without already having funds to register, etc. It should just be obvious. I understand some of these simplifications are probably in progress, but the point is still valid.
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Vote for removing the 5% fee. It's burdensome for people that want to support the ecosystem long term by buy and hold.
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As a point of data/use case.
My sister invested some $$ in BTSX after reading some promotional material. I was happy to help her, because I'd just keep her funds with mine.
Then her bf who I don't particularly like told her he wanted to invest. Well... I wouldn't mind but this whole 5% thing means that I have to teach him something and someone has to maintain it. I can't just help him buy it and put it in cold storage with a few copies of the private key and instructions. So I basically told her I really didn't want to mess with it.
To argue for the other side, BTSX is not just like holding some shares. You are expected to take part in maintaining the network health, and if you can't take the trouble then we don't want you.
For multisig cold wallets, I think there might be an option where you can sign that address to show that you are still the owner of it and still active. I think we need some feature like that anyway so that I can show my balance to somebody if I want; its currently not possible due to TITAN.
Off topic, but I would like an armory type wallet, which I can keep on an unconnected laptop for ever.
This is a good point. We want holders of btsx to be active and participate in DPOS so if they can't participate then we kinda don't really want them. What good is a board of directors if they aren't around to vote? I have changed my stance, btsx should keep a inactivity fee bit the rest of bit assets should be allowed to store at will.
Voting is critical to the long-term viability of DPOS.
If users are not incentivized to vote, they won't.
Look at voter participation rates in current democratic systems. Awful.
Voter apathy is the reason democracies decay into corruption, centralization and cronyism.
Imaging how different the world would be if US citizens had to vote in order to access essential services... or if they were taxed at a higher rate for not voting.
The fee is an excellent way to return dead funds but more importantly - it will get people to vote.
If they don't want to vote, let them hold bitAssets.
I vote for keeping the fee. It is the best assurance of DPOS survival.
Edit: I am a buy-and-hold investor with limited technical skills and am actively seeking ways to dump my BTSX into cold storage for 2-3 years. So the fee is a thorn in my side as well. But I also recognize that without the fees DPOS will eventually centralize and corrupt. So I'm hoping someone clever will come up with a cold storage solution that permits voting with BTSX off-line.
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I really disagree with the above comment. It's likely only a minority of people will want hold bitshares for more than a year, so making those who want to hold long term storage move their funds once a year will only minorly impact voting. Plus, it will make them "vote," but it won't make them actually think about who they are voting for. Only the most involved users will ever make meaningful votes, let it stay that way.
The fee is an unnecessary inconvenience. Remove it.
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I do slightly agree with OldMan and think there should be incentive for endusers to pro-actively vote .. it must not necessarily be a 5% inactivity fee but at the current stake I see no way around it .. especially when it also comes to "identifying" lost funds the inactivity fee is helpful
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Edit: I am a buy-and-hold investor with limited technical skills and am actively seeking ways to dump my BTSX into cold storage for 2-3 years. So the fee is a thorn in my side as well. But I also recognize that without the fees DPOS will eventually centralize and corrupt. So I'm hoping someone clever will come up with a cold storage solution that permits voting with BTSX off-line.
I would suggest getting a separate laptop with linux as the OS and storing all your funds in THAT wallet. Open the laptop every 6 months and click the blue vote button. Backup the wallet .json file on USB key(s) and hide in two secret locations. Trying to get any more secure than this is a waste of time IMO, even if you have millions of dollars worth of BTSX. What I'm recommending here is extremely secure.
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I really disagree with the above comment. It's likely only a minority of people will want hold bitshares for more than a year, so making those who want to hold long term storage move their funds once a year will only minorly impact voting. Plus, it will make them "vote," but it won't make them actually think about who they are voting for. Only the most involved users will ever make meaningful votes, let it stay that way.
The fee is an unnecessary inconvenience. Remove it.
I agree getting the average user to research and vote for 101 delegates is unrealistic.
However, with slates/reputation voting becomes much more realistic.
Voters can pick a slate assembled by someone with a high reputation, or perhaps a service/DAC that researches/builds slates. One click and you're done.
At this point the inconvenience is simply the cost of participation.
Edit: I am a buy-and-hold investor with limited technical skills and am actively seeking ways to dump my BTSX into cold storage for 2-3 years. So the fee is a thorn in my side as well. But I also recognize that without the fees DPOS will eventually centralize and corrupt. So I'm hoping someone clever will come up with a cold storage solution that permits voting with BTSX off-line.
I would suggest getting a separate laptop with linux as the OS and storing all your funds in THAT wallet. Open the laptop every 6 months and click the blue vote button. Backup the wallet .json file on USB key(s) and hide in two secret locations. Trying to get any more secure than this is a waste of time IMO, even if you have millions of dollars worth of BTSX. What I'm recommending here is extremely secure.
This is excellent advice and I have implemented a very similar protocol. Works!
Would still prefer the peace of mind of a complete air-gap between my funds and the rest of the world.
I suspect as BTSX increases in market cap more and more folks are going to be looking for similar peace-of-mind.
Also, big money isn't going to jump in without simple/air tight security protocols.
Secure storage is an issue that needs to be addressed thoroughly.
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As a point of data/use case.
My sister invested some $$ in BTSX after reading some promotional material. I was happy to help her, because I'd just keep her funds with mine.
Then her bf who I don't particularly like told her he wanted to invest. Well... I wouldn't mind but this whole 5% thing means that I have to teach him something and someone has to maintain it. I can't just help him buy it and put it in cold storage with a few copies of the private key and instructions. So I basically told her I really didn't want to mess with it.
To argue for the other side, BTSX is not just like holding some shares. You are expected to take part in maintaining the network health, and if you can't take the trouble then we don't want you.
For multisig cold wallets, I think there might be an option where you can sign that address to show that you are still the owner of it and still active. I think we need some feature like that anyway so that I can show my balance to somebody if I want; its currently not possible due to TITAN.
Off topic, but I would like an armory type wallet, which I can keep on an unconnected laptop for ever.
This is a good point. We want holders of btsx to be active and participate in DPOS so if they can't participate then we kinda don't really want them. What good is a board of directors if they aren't around to vote? I have changed my stance, btsx should keep a inactivity fee bit the rest of bit assets should be allowed to store at will.
Voting is critical to the long-term viability of DPOS.
If users are not incentivized to vote, they won't.
Look at voter participation rates in current democratic systems. Awful.
Voter apathy is the reason democracies decay into corruption, centralization and cronyism.
Imaging how different the world would be if US citizens had to vote in order to access essential services... or if they were taxed at a higher rate for not voting.
The fee is an excellent way to return dead funds but more importantly - it will get people to vote.
If they don't want to vote, let them hold bitAssets.
I vote for keeping the fee. It is the best assurance of DPOS survival.
Edit: I am a buy-and-hold investor with limited technical skills and am actively seeking ways to dump my BTSX into cold storage for 2-3 years. So the fee is a thorn in my side as well. But I also recognize that without the fees DPOS will eventually centralize and corrupt. So I'm hoping someone clever will come up with a cold storage solution that permits voting with BTSX off-line.
I tend to be in favor of it too, I think. I posted the original thing just for the sake of conversation but was not for or against the 5% fee. I think this post has put me in favor of it just from a security + incentive argument.
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Would still prefer the peace of mind of a complete air-gap between my funds and the rest of the world.
storage is an issue that needs to be addressed thoroughly.
Without getting too pedantic your funds are never offline as they are always just a "score" on the blockchain. Once you send funds to the public key it's out there and can be brute forced (though most likely so hard no one bothers trying).
A better strategy would be to have your funds spread between a half dozen or so wallets each with a different passphrase and uploading them to DropBox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, and whatever you have for usb storage, printing private keys, etc.
Cracking one of your private keys wouldn't gain them anything on the others and with TITAN it'd be very hard for a hacker to pick targets.
Also, it's highly unlikely that a hacker is going to spend significant resources on a wallet they can't get the balance of. TITAN takes care of that too.
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Would still prefer the peace of mind of a complete air-gap between my funds and the rest of the world.
storage is an issue that needs to be addressed thoroughly.
Without getting too pedantic your funds are never offline as they are always just a "score" on the blockchain. Once you send funds to the public key it's out there and can be brute forced (though most likely so hard no one bothers trying).
A better strategy would be to have your funds spread between a half dozen or so wallets each with a different passphrase and uploading them to DropBox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, and whatever you have for usb storage, printing private keys, etc.
Cracking one of your private keys wouldn't gain them anything on the others and with TITAN it'd be very hard for a hacker to pick targets.
Also, it's highly unlikely that a hacker is going to spend significant resources on a wallet they can't get the balance of. TITAN takes care of that too.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rurll/on_the_subject_of_listing_all_possible_private/
cracking TITAN keys is much more resource intensive as you still have to rescan the WHOLE blockchain on every single guess .. that is WAY .. WAY ... WAY .. to expensive!
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Just want to be sure I understand fully the concept of the voting/inactivity fee...
Let's say I buy a few BTSX worth of bitUSD and sell those bitUSD back for BTSX once a year, does that cast my votes twice and reset the "inactivity clock" for each transaction?
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Just want to be sure I understand fully the concept of the voting/inactivity fee...
Let's say I buy a few BTSX worth of bitUSD and sell those bitUSD back for BTSX once a year, does that cast my votes twice and reset the "inactivity clock" for each transaction?
Yes. Though the easiest way would be to click the "update vote" button which sends all your BTSX to yourself in one step.
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Thanks for the tip! Much appreciated
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I would suggest getting a separate laptop with linux as the OS and storing all your funds in THAT wallet. Open the laptop every 6 months and click the blue vote button. Backup the wallet .json file on USB key(s) and hide in two secret locations. Trying to get any more secure than this is a waste of time IMO, even if you have millions of dollars worth of BTSX. What I'm recommending here is extremely secure.
+5 +5 +5
PS and don't forget to erase permanently the backup json file that was automatically created on directory "wallets" on your laptop...
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Would still prefer the peace of mind of a complete air-gap between my funds and the rest of the world.
storage is an issue that needs to be addressed thoroughly.
Without getting too pedantic your funds are never offline as they are always just a "score" on the blockchain. Once you send funds to the public key it's out there and can be brute forced (though most likely so hard no one bothers trying).
A better strategy would be to have your funds spread between a half dozen or so wallets each with a different passphrase and uploading them to DropBox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, and whatever you have for usb storage, printing private keys, etc.
Cracking one of your private keys wouldn't gain them anything on the others and with TITAN it'd be very hard for a hacker to pick targets.
Also, it's highly unlikely that a hacker is going to spend significant resources on a wallet they can't get the balance of. TITAN takes care of that too.
Good points!
Perhaps it is a psychological thing.
The client feels like a hot wallet, and already most crypto investors feel hot /= secure.
Also, my last attempt at multiple wallets did not end well.
Currently it seems to be one wallet/password per machine which is obviously not conducive to this approach.
Best of all worlds would be a watch-only mechanism where BTSX and bitAssets could be transferred to a paper wallet or other media and physically secured.
The trick, of course, is avoiding the inactivity fee when in storage.
Perhaps the only way to do this is to pay a small cold storage fee to the network, like a safety deposit box fee.
Not really unreasonable at all!
The owner just burns a small amount of BTSX as proof that the funds in storage are being stored rather than lost.
Would still prefer the peace of mind of a complete air-gap between my funds and the rest of the world.
storage is an issue that needs to be addressed thoroughly.
Without getting too pedantic your funds are never offline as they are always just a "score" on the blockchain. Once you send funds to the public key it's out there and can be brute forced (though most likely so hard no one bothers trying).
A better strategy would be to have your funds spread between a half dozen or so wallets each with a different passphrase and uploading them to DropBox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, and whatever you have for usb storage, printing private keys, etc.
Cracking one of your private keys wouldn't gain them anything on the others and with TITAN it'd be very hard for a hacker to pick targets.
Also, it's highly unlikely that a hacker is going to spend significant resources on a wallet they can't get the balance of. TITAN takes care of that too.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rurll/on_the_subject_of_listing_all_possible_private/
cracking TITAN keys is much more resource intensive as you still have to rescan the WHOLE blockchain on every single guess .. that is WAY .. WAY ... WAY .. to expensive!
We really need this sort of thing to be very visible to newcomers.
I've been here a while and did not know this.
This would give the typical BTSX/bitAsset owner a large measure of comfort.
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The 5% is more about proof of control of the funds to prove to the network that the funds aren't lost. I'm not sure there is really any way to prove that the funds aren't lost other than to spend them.
I made a mistake in my earlier post: A locked wallet will still show wallet_account_balance in the CLI. However that would require the hacker to be in possession of your wallet file.
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Cracking the private key is well impossible like Xeroc pointed out :
"So, if you could use the entire planet as a hard drive, storing 1 byte per atom, using stars as fuel, and cycling through 1 trillion keys per second, you'd need 37 octillion Earths to store it, and 237 billion suns to power the device capable of doing it, all of which would take you 3.6717 octodecillion years.
Better get cracking."
So this is should not be a concern for anyone. The best and simple solution would be :
I would suggest getting a separate laptop with linux as the OS and storing all your funds in THAT wallet. Open the laptop every 6 months and click the blue vote button. Backup the wallet .json file on USB key(s) and hide in two secret locations. Trying to get any more secure than this is a waste of time IMO, even if you have millions of dollars worth of BTSX. What I'm recommending here is extremely secure.