Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Agent86

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 32
1
General Discussion / Re: Soledger Goals
« on: November 03, 2016, 03:25:57 am »
Quote from: blahblah7up on November 02, 2016, 11:32:22 am
Your decision about "opportunity cost" was made when you decided to form a new business instead of working on "well paying careers with clear paths for advancement".  Those are called "sunk costs" and you don't need to tell us about them.

If you are already calling into question the decisions you have made, you will find succeeding difficult.
Quote from: abit on November 02, 2016, 01:04:58 pm
Somehow agreed.

Hi blahblah7up,
When I mentioned opportunity cost, I was speaking about everyone in the community who invests time and energy on building our ecosystem who might otherwise invest in careers and other endeavors.  I think it's nice to acknowledge it.  I also think the discussion is relevant and important to consider when thinking about how to attract or retain talent.

My personal situation is that I still have a full time job as a application scientist for a biotech company and it's a very good, rewarding job.  I'd love to have more time in the day and it's always a balance how to make the most impact.  I think Vikram is super talented and I'm humbled he started a company with me but I'm also aware that he's young and it's risky and I want him to spend his time in a worthwhile way.

2
General Discussion / Re: Soledger Goals
« on: November 03, 2016, 03:14:09 am »
Quote from: Chronos on November 02, 2016, 02:42:44 am
Quote from: Agent86 on November 02, 2016, 02:37:18 am
Vikram and I have ideas about what is useful and compelling and worth working on.
Looking forward to hearing these ideas.

Hi Chronos:

I can mention a few things I feel are interesting:

For BitAssets, I think pegging via forced settlement is not ideal as a small group control the exchange rate and it could prevent BitAssets from tracking close enough to be treated interchangeably.  I prefer maintaining parity using the feed to restrict shorting.

I think a bond market that creates a dollar denominated investment vehicle with trustworthy defined returns protected by a margin call mechanism could be REALLY popular and a way to bring a lot of people into the system.

We've played with using Golang for development and I think it has the potential to make development more efficient and make the code more easily accessible and auditable.  I would propose we could make a Golang implementation of BitShares but I think it would be too much to take on without help.

Vikram and I discussed using a widest chain metric for consensus where the widest chain is acknowledged by the greatest percentage of witnesses and/or stake rather than using longest chain.  For example, the consensus chain for BitShares is the longest chain (most valid blocks, combined with using checkpoints) but in our opinion two signatures from the same witness doesn't lend more credibility to a chain than one signature from that witness.  There's some non obvious complexity in terms of implementation but I think could provide efficiency benefits such as using transient commitments instead of adding empty blocks to a blockchain which is nice to keep the blockchain size down and it also may allow less reliance on checkpoints/more robust consensus.  I think it's also possible to implement a true transactions as proof of stake metric that isn't prohibitively expensive to track.

I've been a fan of the idea that expecting stakeholders to be responsible for certain things like voting for witnesses and proving they are alive and haven't lost their private keys once a year is useful.  I think this can reduce the amount of stale/forgotten stake owned by people with little or no interest and keep a stake voting community more lean and active.  Although penalizing stale stake is probably the kind of thing that shouldn't be added to BitShares because it's a fundamental change to the social agreement.

3
General Discussion / Soledger Goals
« on: November 02, 2016, 02:37:18 am »
Hi Everyone,

I am writing to provide some more information and context about Soledger Inc. and our goals (prompted by this post https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23474.0.html and follow up questions).

Vikram and I were both heavily involved in the BitShares community and it's where our passion for blockchain technology took root.

Some of the visions and goals discussed on this forum are extremely compelling.  So much so that despite setbacks there are a large number of community members that have remained engaged and following the forum in the hope of finding a way to bring the potential to life.

Most of us would agree the BitShares ecosystem is not yet all it could be.  More than anything, Vikram and I would like to see cool and compelling systems developed and brought to life and to be a part of that.  And as far as we are concerned, the BitShares community speaks our language.  This community comprises the people who are most likely to understand, appreciate, and enjoy the types of things Vikram and I would like to be a part of building.  In addition to being the people most likely to be able to offer useful support and constructive criticism.

When I talk of "our community" it's obviously hard to define. The community is far from unified; different people have different opinions on what's important, what's interesting, and have different goals.  It can't be entirely defined by the current allocation of BitShares stake as I think there are talented community members that may have sold for valid reasons.  But that doesn't mean they lost sight of the vision or have nothing to contribute.

Vikram and I have ideas about what is useful and compelling and worth working on.  But building such systems is also a huge undertaking and requires multiple people to risk time and mental energy at a significant opportunity cost.  Time that could be spent working on well paying careers with clear paths for advancement.  Broadly, our hope is to work in conjunction and as part of a sophisticated and understanding community.

https://www.soledger.com

4
Technical Support / Re: Minimal required changes to revive an MPA after a black swan event?
« on: October 30, 2016, 10:24:31 pm »
Quote from: pc on October 30, 2016, 09:02:19 am
Renaming a settled asset would be much simpler to implement than the BSIP, that is true. But it's not a good idea, IMO. It's more like a hack, not a real solution.
* It clutters up the asset namespace, which will lead to confusion.
* It will also clutter up wallets with dust amounts from settled assets, which is a nuisance.
* It will turn users away from assets that have seen a black swan before - who would buy GRC when there's also GRC_SWAN_1, GRC_SWAN_2 and so on? :-)
* 3rd party software (like external exchanges) may run into problems if the mapping asset name <-> asset id is no longer static.
* It won't help assets backed by SWAN.

Sounds good to me, I was mostly trying to think of a way to save some work.  I think it would be great if you got a worker approved to take this on!  My opinion is it's important to keep sharp developers like you taking an active interest in the platform and community, so hopefully it would get approved quick.

5
Technical Support / Re: Minimal required changes to revive an MPA after a black swan event?
« on: October 29, 2016, 11:06:27 pm »
Hi pc,

I'm impressed with how detail oriented you have been in fleshing out all the impacts of this change!  It seems like it could be a lot of work.  Getting that bug fixed with the feed expiration time preventing people from settling positions seems to be most important. Otherwise the primary goal is to recover the name for re-use right?  Do you think it might be possible/easier to allow the original issuer (after a certain period of time) to create a new asset that would just show up in the user interface under the same previous name?  Whereas prior versions of the asset that have been black swanned /force settled are represented differently to indicate this?

In regard to assets used as backing for other assets (SWAN backing DUCK) I'm not sure this is a very useful feature in the first place and maybe could be eliminated if that simplifies things, I think Dan had originally though of this as working like a bond market of some sort but I'm not sure it was ever useful in that way... thoughts?

6
General Discussion / Re: Randomness of Witness Scheduling
« on: August 28, 2015, 02:39:17 am »
Quote from: arhag on August 27, 2015, 08:46:16 pm
Quote from: bytemaster on August 25, 2015, 05:13:42 pm
1. removing random number generation from witnesses which will reduce block header size by 46% and saving an "empty" blockchain 1.2GB per year.

Quote from: puppies on August 25, 2015, 05:15:16 pm
I like the random numbers built into the blocks and would love to find a way to keep them, which I think requires no witness gets to sign two blocks in a row.  I just think having a provably fair RNG built into the blockchain is a good thing.  I would consider it worth a couple of hours of compute time on a witness node per year.

We already have an entropy source from the witness signature. Why not simply require the nonce of signature to be committed in the prior round similar to how the random number is currently committed in the current scheme.

The witness signs the block and also submits the x-coordinate of the elliptic point of a new nonce (the r value) that will be used in the signature for their block in the next round. The signature of the block by the witness in the next round would only have the s value of the signature, not the r value which was already submitted in the previous round. That way no additional blockchain bloat is needed in each block header but the blockchain still has the same provably fair RNG we currently enjoy.
Couldn't the witness just change other data in their block until they get an s value that they like?

7
General Discussion / Re: Let's Try This Again
« on: August 15, 2015, 06:28:47 pm »
Congrats on the Ethereum launch, even if you aren't as involved these days... What is IOHK up to?  Gambling in Asia?

8
General Discussion / Re: Let's jumpstart share based voting / polling!
« on: June 27, 2015, 01:45:15 am »
Thanks Method-X, CLains, vikram, Ander, arhag, and all for the support of the poll and taking the time to participate/vote and show support for the upgrade!

9
General Discussion / Re: Let's jumpstart share based voting / polling!
« on: June 26, 2015, 04:56:05 pm »
Quote from: arhag on June 26, 2015, 04:38:18 pm
This feature (https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/wiki/design-issues#voting) would help with that a lot in BitShares 2.0. If that isn't supported (and I don't know why it shouldn't be since it is a relatively simple tweak), it can be approximated (at least for voting with BTS stake) using a zero pay worker proposal.

As for voting in the current BitShares 0.x system on the upgrade to 2.0, wouldn't it be easier to just have all the current delegates (and delegate candidates) publicly announce their position (for upgrade or against upgrade) and let the stakeholders vote them in and out appropriately over the next month? That way if the stakeholders are against the upgrade (which I don't think anyone believes is true), BitShares 0.x will have the right block producers in place to avoid the node upgrade that would cease block production by a certain date. I'm a fan of letting the elected representatives just do the right thing but allow the stakeholders who actually care to veto their decisions (and quickly vote them out) if they disagree. For example, I think the 2 week delay on delegate actions in BitShares 2.0 strikes a great balance between progress and stakeholder control when considering the reality of voter apathy.
IMO telling people to go find out which delegates support this or that and then vote accordingly is a very round-about way of gauging stakeholder support for something.  It's just way less straightforward and doesn't give you the same data at all.

Yea, I think that in BTS2 there may well be a reasonable way to do stake polling, even in BTS 0.x using delegates as a proxy is very close to being ok.  My main issue with governance in BTS 2 is things like people have to register non-diluting workers and vote for them and the way there is a fixed pie of dilution that otherwise gets divvied up.  If stakeholders were able to prove that they could reach 50% consensus of active stake on certain things they could "change the rules" without it being an arbitrary declaration by Dan or other authority.  For example, the 50BTS dilution rate that halves every 4 years; maybe there would come a time when that isn't desired... changing it is changing the rules of the game and doesn't seem right, but if there is provable overwhelming stakeholder support than I think it is a totally different thing.  I think it is really useful for stakeholders to get in the habit of expressing a stake weighted opinion on things so why not start now?

10
General Discussion / Let's jumpstart share based voting / polling!
« on: June 26, 2015, 04:05:16 pm »
I think share polling is super important for a consensus system but unfortunately despite talk of its importance I don't feel like smartly implemented stake polling / governance features have been a sufficient priority.  This gives the impression that BTS is very centralized and prevents large changes from having a feeling of legitimacy.  Things like current delegates and even workers in BTS2.0 leave a lot to be desired in terms of use for polling and governance IMO.

The best thing I can think of for stakeholders to start voting on things now in a user friendly way would be to register 0% delegates.

We also need delegates to be able to "resign" so that voting in a delegate to express an opinion on a poll doesn't actually elect a block producer.  IMO it's best if a resign feature allows people to still vote for and view resigned delegates in gui, they just aren't part of the top 101 that produce blocks; that way they can be used for polls.  The resign feature should probably be ironed out regardless so delegates who have stopped producing blocks can resign.  I'm offering a $500 bitUSD bounty to get the resign feature for delegates fixed/complete asap (not waiting for BTS2).

I've registered two 0% delegates to start a poll:

upgrade-to-bts-2 (vote if you support the upgrade) (ID: 89386)
do-not-upgrade-to-bts-2 (vote for this if you don't support the upgrade) (ID: 89387)

I think it's obvious which way this poll will go but I still think it's important for stakeholders to show it if they are willing to take the time express themselves.  You can burn comments on the wall of poll delegates if you like too.  My feeling is that the success of BTS depends heavily on stakeholder voting, and if we are ever able to get over 50% of active stake agreement on some things that would be very helpful.  PLEASE VOTE! And if there are other polls people want to make then do the same thing and promote your poll.   If either are voted into top 101 I will get a delegate running and produce blocks or retire/resign the account(s).

11
General Discussion / Re: Cryptonomex? WTF is this?
« on: June 15, 2015, 05:44:29 pm »
Maybe something like copyright respective authors, licensed for use with Bitshares is a step in right direction?... that way other people can contribute code to the project for the specific benefit of BitShares while they retain their own right to use their own code that they contributed rather than giving it all to Cryptonomex which seems harsh.

12
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Review Methodx and pc delegates
« on: May 20, 2015, 09:30:33 pm »
Quote from: delulo on May 20, 2015, 07:02:14 pm
Aren't upcoming changes a good compromise between shareholder control and limited shareholder attention? I mean specifically the role of the delegates (forgot the new exact name of that function) that decide on changes to the network requiring a hard fork which are elected by shareholder.
The degree of voting participation might just have to do with how easy it is to use the software.
I have thought a bit about how voting participating can be increased but couldn't come up with something. I see that it would be a worth while goal to pursue. I guess voter apathy is the biggest weakness of DPOS. Do you have anything in mind there since you stated that more should be done here?

Out of pure curiosity: Are you located in Blacksburg and (how) are you getting paid? What's you role? I always valued you critical contributions and hope all is going well.
(sorry for temp hijacking thread) I think the new proposed system for voting on workers, while an improvement, is still convoluted.  If you want to limit dilution you'd have to try to choose from various denominations of no dilution workers to try find one that works; probably no one will bother.  It limits dilution to the 50BTS/block that again was just arbitrarily chosen after chain launch, but it doesn't require much support for a project to get funds which I don't like.  As far as voting, I know you've expressed concern about how people have to vote for 101 delegates for their votes to fully count and I never liked slates; I worked out a way to determine dynamic delegate number that I think addresses the concern but it's a bit long to post… maybe I'll send you a demo program and explanation if you have interest.  As far as my role; when I quit my job there was something laid out that I liked but it all frustratingly changed and I haven't since seen a business plan that makes economic sense to me.  I've been working on some related things; I filed a patent application on a new consensus mechanism but I've been mostly living off savings which is definitely not sustainable. Feel free to skype me sometime.

13
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Review Methodx and pc delegates
« on: May 20, 2015, 06:32:04 pm »
Quote from: Carpet Ride on May 20, 2015, 05:01:24 pm

Quote from: Agent86 on May 20, 2015, 04:27:13 pm
I like that PC charges what he is worth, even if it highlights our self created system problems as much as anything.  It's not his fault that the setup makes it really difficult for stakeholders to govern / hire; I would take up the complaint with Dan not PC.

Despite repeated urgings not to, Dan decided to conflate the idea of DPOS/block signers with blockchain hiring.  This made voting confusing and added an extra step for potential workers like PC.  He then unilaterally changed the consensus of the chain to dilute at a rate he randomly picked (50 BTS / block).  And also made it expensive for potential delegates to even register so people like PC have to put up significant money to even see if they get elected.

This is not PCs fault; I doubt if he would have made the same decisions.

Sorry for the tangent but it's a bit frustrating to me because I think blockchain hiring was a great idea. It was a great idea that bytemaster had nothing to do with, but somehow he managed to take this great idea and use it / implement it in such a crazy and poorly thought out way (from both a PR and technical point of view) that it made this project less valuable instead of more valuable.  I'm still left scratching my head about what blockchain hiring ever had or should have had to do with DPOS (nothing).
/rant

Picking up some very weird undertones from this post just fyi...

Can you give us a status update?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yea, I've just been frustrated by the cost of certain mistakes and feel like I have a hard time getting Dan to listen to me on various things, and a discussion with him yesterday left me annoyed.  Perhaps this isn't the right venue for it.  Some of it is just how the propensity to change things without warning has a personal impact on my efforts to try to contribute some value.  More generally, I would like to see bitshares stakeholders more empowered with things like easy to use polling; I don't think this is on the road map and I feel like this is kind of a foundational thing.  I feel like the destiny of bitshares is and should be in the hands of the stakeholders in large part by how they vote so it needs to be facilitated.  There's changes to the worker structure which should get released when all the other big changes get released but I'm not sure they go far enough.  I would like to see workers try to get 50% approval by active stake, which of course takes work, but IMO very worthwhile work. I would still like to see more effort to drive stakeholder involvement and make it easy because I think it may be necessary for things to play out well.

14
Stakeholder Proposals / Re: Review Methodx and pc delegates
« on: May 20, 2015, 04:27:13 pm »
I like that PC charges what he is worth, even if it highlights our self created system problems as much as anything.  It's not his fault that the setup makes it really difficult for stakeholders to govern / hire; I would take up the complaint with Dan not PC.

Despite repeated urgings not to, Dan decided to conflate the idea of DPOS/block signers with blockchain hiring.  This made voting confusing and added an extra step for potential workers like PC.  He then unilaterally changed the consensus of the chain to dilute at a rate he randomly picked (50 BTS / block).  And also made it expensive for potential delegates to even register so people like PC have to put up significant money to even see if they get elected.

This is not PCs fault; I doubt if he would have made the same decisions.

Sorry for the tangent but it's a bit frustrating to me because I think blockchain hiring was a great idea. It was a great idea that bytemaster had nothing to do with, but somehow he managed to take this great idea and use it / implement it in such a crazy and poorly thought out way (from both a PR and technical point of view) that it made this project less valuable instead of more valuable.  I'm still left scratching my head about what blockchain hiring ever had or should have had to do with DPOS (nothing).
/rant

15
General Discussion / Re: follow my vote and workers
« on: May 13, 2015, 04:00:26 am »
I was more disappointed the DNS premine disappeared in the merger.  Nikolai was always the one saying "I'll spend my own salary" on this or that if it doesn't get approved for AGS funding for various things.  So I would have liked to see him keep that budget to fund DNS or anything else, but it's hard to change anything now.

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 32

Page created in 0.035 seconds with 24 queries.