So after listening to the latest mumble... It sounds like the Blockpay token will either be exchanged or redefined.  Chris said it was mainly going to be for branding reasons, but the real reason sounds like it is to remove Ken from the equation.  How that is done seems to be up in there air still though.

There were several vague terms like "mess" thrown around, but the subject was danced around.  Also it sounds like Ken has still not been paid, which makes me think Stealth has been delayed.  This topic was also danced around.

Overall there is a lot of uncertainty brewing.  Changing the rules of the Blockpay token is worrisome.  The effort to cut out Ken seems like it will be very detrimental to the entire project.  Not only will there be legal battles (which i'm sure will be paid for from the funds that were raised from investors), but any progress on any of the projects will likely come to a standstill in Ken's absence.  Thom and JoeyD? seemed to do a good job asking some pointed questions, but the answer's were very vague and eventually the conversation digressed.

That was a very good review of the topic on mumble @lil_jay890. Xeroc also chimed in and provided a perspective this might work out better for everyone, but I don't see it that way. From my perspective this is a hostile take over and I believe it was motivated by an outside party who is throwing money at a few individuals to make this happen. Who / whatever that source is needs to be exposed and scrutinized, brought out into the light. If the community were given the choice to continue under kencode's management or bring in others what choice do you think shareholders would make? One of the most important criteria should be who could finish Stealth first? It was not that long ago ken was saying Stealth would be ready for testing on the testnet. Unfortunately this power play has derailed that timing.

This community is comprised of people on a spectrum of different political and social perspectives. The core people that had the vision for this ecosystem were mostly oriented towards a volunteerist / anachist mindset, and I know @kenCode is as well. My impression is that Chris4210 leans more towards a statist perspective and still trusts in the benevolence of government much more than kencode does. If I'm right about this I'll bet whatever outside source is pulling the strings is not aligned with a volunteerist / disruptive mindset.

For any of you naive enough to think that the banksters won't aggressively work to prevent loosing their monopoly on money have another thing yet to learn. Once they truly recognize the disruptive threat is real they will identify who they can, the weakest and easiest to manipulate or influence, and target them to neutralize them. It may not be obvious who is behind such neutralization tactics but at some point they will use the power they still have (and that is still huge) to try to retain their monopolistic control. 

Why randomly? A script should only switch signing key when
1) network participation rate is above a threshold, for example 80%, and
2) head block age is not too old, for example within 10 seconds, and
3) the witness missed x blocks in a row

I know it's not perfect, I'm not arguing about this, but IMHO the risk is relatively low.

OK, so you acknowledge there is a window of vulnerability. You may believe it is insignificant but you have no evidence to back up such a claim. I happen to agree with you, but I also think we should be cautious and avoid introducing things which may have a negative impact. Due diligence says this risk should be evaluated and characterized before we deploy auto failover widely.

I say randomly to simulate a worse case scenario, to increase the failure rate so we can observe the effects. More switching, more Witnesses. It would be good to see just how robust the failover is. If missed blocks is a factor stressing the testnet far enough that Witnesses start to miss more blocks is simply being thorough in testing.

Here is a little tool I made to get an automated report of server Key Performance Indicators at my morning coffee, delivered via Telegram. This can come in useful for witnesses to have a finger on their server's performance.

What this script does is checking and reporting:
* Disk Space (free / used)
* CPU usage per core
* Ram space (free / used)

Collects it and sends it as a Telegram message. Simply configure a cronjob to get the report as often as you like.

Depends on psutil, requests an os packages for Python3.

Preview


Check out the script on my github:
https://github.com/roelandp/server-stats-to-telegram

Awesome @roelandp! Thank you for being fully engaged and helping to improve the BitShares ecosystem. There was a time when most Witnesses were similarly engaged, but it's been so long ago since we've seen it. I am nearing a point where I can begin to get serious about improving my python skills, which I will apply to improving bts_tools. Working on infrastructure items like a VPN and secure email server atm. Thank you for all you do sir!

FYI - this is a very nice and useful addition. Aside from the Telegram angle, bts_tools also reports on these stats, and alerts a Witness when they miss blocks, get voted out and a number of other alert items it tracks. If you want it will send you an email alert which you could see on your smartphone.

My smartphone is quite dated. I am thinking about getting a new one and if I do I will get one with a screen big enough to allow me to open a terminal window and interact with my nodes, for example to switch signing keys should the Witness node die or otherwise become unreliable.

Quote from: lakerta06 on May 08, 2017, 12:06:25 pm

Where did all the FUD go? I am used to read all that FUD when the price is moving

Ok... Here is what many consider FUD... Even though they are valid concerns.

1.  And this is an obvious #1,  bitshares is merely caught up in a giant alt coin pump.  While seeing it move up against some of the other currencies is a positive, did Bytecoin, Stellar, factom, peercoin or 90% of the other coins do anything to warrant their pump as well?  No.

2.  The pump is being contained mostly to the centralized exchanges.  Account creations is stagnant and transfers hasn't made a new high.  Filled orders has made new highs, but that is probably due to more people hearing about all the easy money they can make running a bot... I'm sure that is going to end well.

3.  The money isn't flowing to derivative projects for basically any of the major platforms.  The money is staying one derivative below bitcoin.  In real bull markets, small caps outperform large caps.

4.  Bitshares fundamentals have not changed (mostly the inability for the chain to not operate at a loss), and in some cases the fundamentals have gotten worse.  The debacle at blockpay and possible delay of stealth is very concerning.  Not everyone shares this opinion, but I believe stealth was the most important factor for near term BTS growth.

Whats bullish??

The inablility for people to withdraw bitcoin to fiat is bullish.  It gives exposure to bitUSD or bitCNY as a low volatility solution.  Their has definitely been growth there, and maybe the bitUSD/CNY holders will begin to look at projects on the DEX and start investing in those.

Momentum- The momentum is super strong in everything crypto, but that could change on a dime with one quip out of the PBOC or other regulatory board about crypto currencies.  I think all of crypto, including BTS has either topped or will top this week.  How long that top lasts I don't know, but I expect btc to be at $1000USD and bts at $0.015 by the end of June.

Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered... Don't be a pig if you are sitting on a 10-15 bagger here.  Parabolic markets always reverse and they reverse hard.

Although I do see you as being a consistent contrarian to must of the "hodlers" around here, I agree with most of what you said here. I too believe when this bull market in crypto ends BTS price will decline sharply. However, and your projections agree, it will not drop back to the lows in January. The reason is this crypto pump has brought more eyes on BitShares to see how undervalued it has been and the amazing tech that offers so much performance and many of the benefits other chains offer, such as human readable account names. Not to mention the other things nobody offers, such as infrastructure for AML / KYC compliance if that's what your business requires.

Hi guys,
I see that openledger now has the option to login as wallet model and account model.
Can you tell me if it is possible to "convert" an account that was initially created as wallet model to an account model?

Yes, I am quite certain you can begin to use the login anywhere model if you like. Make sure you use a long password without dictionary words or you will be dramatically increasing your chances to be brute force hacked. YOU are responsible for your wallet's security! Act accordingly.

If instead you want to decide what a witness pay should be without consider what his job is really about and what it is worth for the blockchain etc, then I am not interested in the discussion...

Thanks Bhuz for taking the time to post this. I sure hope we see more discussion and input from a wider audience.

So far I don't see any informed comments. No appreciation for the Witness job, and only the "Politics of Envy". Lot's of emotionally charged opinion but not many facts.

I only hope the shareholder collective will realize just how important the Witness role is, and make informed decisions concerning Witness pay.

I could reiterate many of the points I've raised in other posts concerning pay, but I will not repeat myself now, but rather I will wait to chime in after more informed comments appear here, if they do.

I am not here to defend the current pay level of Witnesses, despite being a Witness. I believe the pay is higher than it needs to be. I will withhold my opinion as to what I believe a reasonable pay level should be. It will be more than pure altruism however, I will say that! I had enough of that for almost an entire year!

I gotta say, some of the remarks here infuriate my sensibilities!

I've seen TradingView myself and I know traders like it.

However, unless the TrVw code cannot be "shut down" by TrVw Inc. we can't use it as that could disable our charts on the DEX.

It depends on the license that TrVw requires. If there is a subscription cost and it's low makes sense to use it (provided we have full control and they can't shut us down should we miss a subscription payment).

Autonomy is the key. If we tie our wagon to the TradingView charts is our autonomy (i.e. chart functionality) limited by it?

As for contacting "the devs", there is no staff of devs here. The one you would want to contact about this is @svk who is tied up on another project for the next few months. Svk pretty much coded the whole wallet using ReactJS.