Please correct me if I am wrong but you can only change these features once right? So if we surrender these features today we cannot turn them back again, right? So if we change them we can not adjust to any future market conditions where we might use these features.

That would be almost like the block size debate in Bitcoin. I would prefer a more flexible system.

Indeed, surrendering these permissions would be a one-way street, so any action would need discussed by all committee members (and the rest of the BTS community).

I think you have missed the point that CryptoPrometheus was trying to make.

Voting decay means the overall level of votes will go down, due to voter apathy. That means a large BTS holder can vote in not only one witness for himself, but as many as he likes, taking over control of the blockchain.

Note that with 27 active witnesses, buying out 51% of them witnesses will cost at least 14 times as much as buying out one, whereas you currently need less than twice as many BTS to vote 14 in than you need to vote one in.

I get that voter apathy may be a concern in the future, but at the moment the low level of voting participation in the first place is more of a concern than voter apathy IMO.

At the moment, when you're voted in & your node is running you're very unlikely to be at risk of losing your elected witness position (a potential centralization risk). I don't think that users will become apathetic to voting if their vote degrades over say a 6 month period.

We should be continuously driving users to vote (and re-evaluate their votes after a certain period of time) within the Bitshares network. We should be brainstorming new ideas regarding how we can drive up voter participation in the future, such as holding informal fun polls (favourite colour, community mvp polls, etc).

The Gridcoin network is also experiencing a lack of voting participation - only 1/7th of total vote weight votes which brings the validity of poll results mandate into question.

I was thinking about how Project Rain could work for Steem.

1. You could create a thread, request users upvote it and distribute the steem dollars raised to BOINC users.
2. A witness (with their increasing SP) or curation group could allocate up-votes to BOINC users. (Though, you cannot vote lower than 1%, so there would need to be a cut off).

I'd love to hear how you think Project Rain could be used in BTS/Steem/(other graphene projects).

Cheers,
CM.

Hey,

In episode #173 of BeyondBitcoin (https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@officialfuzzy/guest-signups-beyond-bitcoin-hangout-173-9-16-16-rsvp-to-friday-s-hangout-refer-projects-for-rewards) I raised the following questions:

• Should we increase the quantity of BTS witnesses?
• Should we introduce witness vote degradation?

In BTSX we had 101+ witnesses, now we have 27 witnesses in BTS. Currently, witnesses earn approx $200/month. If in the future BTS increases significantly in value these positions will be earning more. The reason why I ask if we should increase the witness count is primarily because of the current witnesses slow reaction to implement price feeds.

Why I ask if we should introduce witness vote degradation:

• Campaigning for these witnesses positions has become almost non existent at this point (no witnesses in beyondbitcoin hangouts asking for votes for example)
• The witness sub-forum (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/board,61.0.html) has become a ghost town (witness channel on steemit isn't populated with BTS witness posts).
• Witnesses once voted in, unless their node degrades, are unlikely to be replaced by another prospective BTS witness. If we had voting degradation where after 'x' months your placed vote on a witness begins degrading over a period of 'y' months, we would see witnesses who actively campaign potentially becoming witnesses, replacing inactive BTS witnesses.
• Getting current witnesses to implement price feeds for new MPAs is quite difficult, I have been actively campaigning for witnesses to publish price feeds for the 'GRIDCOIN' MPA (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22733.0.html). After 2.5 months and 3 BeyondBitcoin hangout appearances only 2 witnesses have published price feeds for the GRIDCOIN MPA. New witnesses may be more likely to interact with the BTS community.
• By introducing voting degradation, we may increase regular participation in the voting system rather than a 'vote once and forget' mindset right now.

During episode #173, crypto.prometheus raised the issue of due to the current low network voting participation, perhaps an individual armed with $500k they could vote their own witnesses into power - whilst true, on the other hand if an attacker had significant funds they could likely convince an active witness to sell their account (since they only get $200/month, if someone comes along with $10k+ they may be very tempted to take the offer).

Thoughts? No official proposal has been created in the client, just an informal discussion at this point.

Matching Steem post: https://goo.gl/s7xMiT

Best regards,
CM.

A massive spike in trading activity occurred on 8th September 2016:

Coinmarketcap overview sorted by 24hr % change


Further Gridcoin analysis

• $625k 24hr trading volume! Usually GRC has a trading volume of a few thousand per day, this is a significant increase in daily trading!
• Poloniex appears to be the primary exchange where trading is occuring, however users are buying cheap coins off the less used exchanges (Bittrex/C-Cex).
• Only a couple days ago GRC had a market cap of approx $2 million, now it's sitting around $5 million. Cryptocurrencies are crazy volatile!

   


There have only been two spikes like this in the history of Gridcoin (as you can see above), these are:

• Oct-Nov 2015: When we first advertised Gridcoin on Boincstats - we were recruiting 30-50+ users per day to team Gridcoin through a single month long advertising campaign.
• Approx 21st Mar 2016: When a Gridcoin reached the front page of reddit due to a /r/futurology post - it was quickly hidden from public view though by disgruntled /r/futurology mods.

So, these are exciting times! Let's hope this brings new users to both Gridcoin & BOINC!

Happy crunching,
CM!

The 5% interest on anything was a major selling point for BTSX (Hell, it has an emoji here! ). I would love to be able to set interest on UIA/MPA.

What is Project Rain?

'Project Rain' is the practice of distributing crypto assets to BOINC users based on their verified BOINC computation; it was initially devised within the Gridcoin network and has been expanded to multiple cryptocurrencies and all BOINC teams through this BOINC project.

BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is an open-source volunteer oriented computing grid that combines the processing power of all individual users for the purposes of scientific research.

Think of Project Rain as a massive new share-dropping vector that doesn't require your end-users to handle their wallet private keys nor require proof of IRL identity.

I discussed Project Rain in episode #172 of BeyondBitcoin: https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@officialfuzzy/guest-signups-beyond-bitcoin-hangout-172-9-9-16-rsvp-to-friday-s-hangout-refer-projects-for-rewards

Why would I 'Rain' an UIA upon BOINC users?
Similar to 'share dropping', Raining an UIA (or even a small % of the total supply) upon BOINC users both distributes your asset potentially further than an ICO or mining phase and purchases an user base with significant computing power at their disposal (Some BOINC users have thousands of cores and/or hundreds of GPUs).

There are approx 500k+ active BOINC users & 4 million+ registered users. There's serious potential to far exceed the scale of distribution that Auroracoin achieved.

Can I make a BOINC project?
You certainly can, anyone can create a BOINC project (there's no central authority behind BOINC project creation).
You could potentially 'rain' an UIA onto your volunteers/workers to encourage further computation or to assign voting weight for project decisions.

Have an idea for a project? Check out this steem thread (now frozen, damnit!): https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@cm-steem/brainstorming-new-boinc-projects-anyone-can-create-a-project-and-reward-their-users-with-gridcoin

What cryptocurrencies are supported?
Currently, 29 cryptocurrencies including Gridcoin, BTS, Peerplays, Heat Ledger & Steem are supported. More cryptocurrencies can be supported before launch if you request soon!

Here's a couple Steemit posts on Project Rain:
https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@cm-steem/project-rain-update-regarding-development
https://steemit.com/boinc/@cm-steem/project-rain-distributing-crypto-assets-to-boinc-users-based-on-their-verified-boinc-computation
https://steemit.com/steem/@cm-steem/gauging-interest-would-you-be-interested-being-able-to-tip-boinc-users-your-crypto-asset-of-choice

Thoughts?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on 'Project Rain' and ideas of how you could utilize this functionality.

P.S. Attention of BTS witnesses!
BTS witnesses, please support the 'GRIDCOIN' MPA by publishing price feeds, please! https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22733.msg298931.html#new