!!! This thread is now retired, please use the new one for new posts: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12534.0 !!!

Hi all,

My name is Nicolas Wack, and I have been developing in C++ for the last 15 years and python for the last 10 years or so.
You can see some of my projects on my GitHub account (https://github.com/wackou), as I am a fervent believer in open source and free software as a better way of developing software.

Having learned about Protoshares about a year ago now, I have since then been fascinated by the DAC concept and BitShares in general, which is why I decided to run as delegate since the launch of BitShares (and the dry runs before that), and have been developing some tools in order to maintain my delegate easily. This has been open source since the beginning and the source code can be found here: https://github.com/wackou/bts_tools

What the tools do is that they automate a lot of the tedious tasks needed to properly maintain a delegate, such as building a new version, publishing feeds, not forgetting to update the info of your delegate with the version after an upgrade, monitoring of network connections, etc... and will send you an alert by email or iOS push notifications whenever the client crashes or starts missing blocks.

I would like to run a new paid delegate to fund my development of the tools, and further participate in the BitShares ecosystem (eg: I already provide a seed node too, but would like to provide chain nodes, write howtos about setting up a new node, etc.)


Mission

My mission is to enhance the security, stability and overall reliability of the BitShares platform, by making it easier to run a delegate properly, and enforcing good practices. I also have some ideas about making the network more resilient to defects, lack of connectivity and/or directed attacks which I would like to explore if given the opportunity.

These 2 main avenues of development can currently be seen in my previous delegates website:

• the bts_tools development delegate: http://digitalgaia.io/wackou.html
• the network strengthening delegate: http://digitalgaia.io/backbone.html

Now that it is possible to have delegates with a higher pay, I think it makes sense to have a single delegate operating on both these issues with a combined payrate rather than 2 separate ones. Making the network stronger would also now involve multiple delegates getting together and gathering their resources (seed nodes, chain nodes, etc.) rather than me running dozens of them from a single delegate pay.


Short-term roadmap

The roadmap I plan to follow for the short term future is to go on developing the bts_tools, fix bugs and implement feature requests that can be seen in the github issues tracker: https://github.com/wackou/bts_tools/issues

Mainly, I would like the tools to be ultra-reliable (what good is a monitoring tool if it crashes?) and start implementing what is needed in order to monitor specialized nodes (eg: seed nodes, backbone nodes) instead of just delegate nodes.

I do also hereby welcome people in this forum to preferably report bugs/issues/feature requests directly on github as it makes it easier to track what needs to be done.


Long-term roadmap

In the long term, I plan to continue maintaining the delegate tools and make it easy for delegate to perform their duties easily (by writing tutorials, etc.).

Once we know that all delegates are operating in a stable way, I would also like to try to investigate what could be done at higher level in order to ensure that the network functions properly (for instance, I firmly believe that it would be beneficial for the network if it could be ensured that it acts as a small-world network), and would like to build incentives for nodes to coordinate in order to guarantee that, or provide myself nodes that would do that.

This long-term roadmap is still a bit vague (mostly, it's what's described in my previous backbone delegate proposal), but I plan to refine it continuously by updating this post and/or the delegate website.


Closing words

I am currently thinking of running this delegate at a 30% pay rate, as I foresee to only be able to work 5-10 hours/week on it for the coming months, and do not think it would be fair to ask the same as bytemaster, toast, svk, cass, etc. I am of course open to publicly burning some of it in the future if BitShares market cap rises a lot (pretty sure it will ) and if the community wants me to
do so.

Before registering the delegate though, I would like to test the water and see whether 30% at current rate seems an adequate pay rate for the value I propose to bring to the ecosystem, so please use the poll at the top of this thread to give your opinion. I will most likely create the delegate in the next few days according to the outcome of the poll.

Thank you for reading this far!

EDIT: changed desired pay rate from 50% to 30% as it seems people think it's more fair
EDIT2: this thread will soon be retired for a new one without the poll (visual noise)

Sorry about me, I had been consistently publishing feeds, but they broke 2 days ago because:
 - btc38 changed btsx->bts (fixed it immediately, was easy)
 - (not sure about this one) btc38 started adding a BOM to their json response, which broke the json decoding for me (and python 3.3 doesn't have a really informative message, 3.4 does but I don't have it on my server...) See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24703060/issues-reading-json-from-txt-file for the problem I had.

I am now happily publishing feeds again for USD, EUR, CNY, GOLD and SILVER

I just saw that the last fork in the blockchain was caused by my delegate (sorry ), but I really am at a loss as to why... My delegate has been running since 0.4.24 uninterrupted and did not miss a single beat, I am properly synchronized to ntp, have a healthy number of connections, etc.

I did look at some delegates that recently missed isolated blocks, and tried to look at the next and previous producing delegate to try to see a pattern (eg: a delegate not properly synchronized to ntp might produce its block early and ignore the one from the delegate just before him), but couldn't find any...

Any help understanding what happened?

Actually, is there a (general) method to do post-mortem analysis of why a block was missed, or a fork created? Best practices, etc?

Thanks for any tip/suggestion too.

  you definitely have my vote, too

Thanks for letting us know!

Ha, it looks like you're always a couple of steps ahead of me

I think we both agree then that a single node with combined capacity is better for the network. Also, I believe it would be beneficial for the BitShares network to be a small-world network, and an abundance of "hub" nodes does help a network to be more like a small-world network, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network#Properties_of_small-world_networks

However the same IP with different ports could be a router hiding different machines behind.

Yes, however if your router falls off the internet, then it doesn't really matter how many computers/processes/client you have behind it...

Updated to 0.1.2 which fixes some issues after the rebranding BitSharesX -> BitShares (0.4.24RC1 and above)

I will probably rename the project from bitshares_delegate_tools to bts_tools, it's a bit shorter to type, hope no one is against it

I was also thinking about getting a new delegate at 50% initial pay rate when the new system sets in and wanted to ask the community whether that seemed like a reasonable amount for funding of the development of the tools.

Cheers!

  to all you said, I'm with you there. Couldn't have said it better.

I already have started some delegate tools myself, which you can see described there: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9881.0, let's collaborate if you want.

On another subject, It would be nice to start getting organized between IT delegates to setup something like this: http://digitalgaia.io/backbone.html . I believe it should not be too much work, just ensuring that a few nodes keep connections to a list of other ones to ensure a fully connected graph. And obviously, these nodes should be run by different people in different geographical locations. I still have a bit of work to do myself on the tools before, but say in a week or two I'll start gathering a list of people wanting to participate if no one has stepped up before to do it.