Author Topic: Moonstone - New Bitsapphire Wallet: Fundraiser proposal  (Read 24898 times)

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sumantso

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Seeing as they are still sticking to the hardcoded delegate proposal even in the face of complaints by the community, I am starting to doubt the intentions of these people. Regardless, even if I believe they are good guys I will still call them out as scammers and try and scare off any potential users ("these guys are nice, but don't use their wallet" won't have much of the desired effect).

Regarding the attack vector, IMO its non-existent. Users won't be randomly downloading any wallet of the internet and expose their keys to it. Any wallet which has a certain amount of negativity associated with it would be universally shunned.

Offline xeroc

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The proposal will feel alot less "harmful" if you would publicly discuss running it through a middle man like most devs are doing ..
that way we don't need to trust the same party that has the delegates hard coded in there software ...

please also refrain from an opt-out after funds have been raised and instead go towards an opt-in ..

Offline Troglodactyl

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If I may raise my hand let's be a bit more meticulous here,

Bitsappire has just uncovered a major flaw in the incentive structure that maintains the security of the Bitshares network: there is a threshold below which there is not sufficient value at stake for a holder to expend the cognitive work of voting. This threshold is different for everybody for whom it's value is not zero or infinite. That is to say that some people will vote with the dust in their wallet and some will never vote in spite of very significant investment. Bear in mind however that (last time I checked) voting must only occur once and is valid until the voted for delegate ceases operation. So the minimum "Value at Stake" threshold must only be exceeded once for the stake to become "Actively Voting Stake". "Passively Voting Stake" would be the kind held in the hypothetical wallet with default voting settings.

Let us say that the wallet appeals to a specific set of Bitshares users with a generally higher "Value at Stake" threshold for active voting to occur because the cognitive work is greater for them (new user).  They may also start with a lower stake (new user), putting them under their unique threshold. All stake held by these users will be "Passive Voting Stake" controlled by the developers of the Hypothetical wallet - not cool.

Whether or not this presents a problem depends on the quantity of stake held by the wallet's user set, the average initial minimum "Value at Stake" threshold for that user set, the rate at which cognitive work diminishes due to familiarity with the platform, the rate at which the quantity of stake of the users in the set breaches the "Minimum Value at Stake" threshold and the compensatory behavior of the stake controlled by users outside that set. And probably a host of other things too but there is enough here to get confused about.

In the real world this is not a disaster because the "Value at Stake" threshold for veteran users is low due to lower cognitive work required and new users hold comparatively little stake.  People buy in with small amounts to play, explore and as part of that . . . vote. Speculators with strange behavior due to indifference to the platform generally hold their stake on exchanges and even many of them may vote. How many? We can't know but they are the only dark shape in the water. Bigger players can compensate for strange voting patterns by re-targeting the voting power of their stake and the community can shout down "Default Voting" wallets - as we've seen.

This presents an opportunity to study voting passivity that should not be squandered. I'd like to see The Moonstone wallet default target a single delegate that pays a charity of the forum community's choosing. This way we can begin to gather data on which to base an understanding of the voting behavior of the new wallets users rather than speculate about it.

Hope all that made sense.

Hard coding delegate votes has been discussed before, so even if it was a major flaw (which I don't think it is) it isn't a new one.

In order to hard coded votes to matter, the wallet needs control of private keys controlling significant stake, which requires trust and significant adoption.  In order to get trust and significant adoption, it needs to be open sourced, and the developers need to convince people to trust their work.  If it's open sourced, and the developers try something nasty and unreasonable with hard coded votes, people will fork out the votes.  I don't really see the flaw in the incentive structure here.

Offline legendface66

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If I may raise my hand let's be a bit more meticulous here,

Bitsappire has just uncovered a major flaw in the incentive structure that maintains the security of the Bitshares network: there is a threshold below which there is not sufficient value at stake for a holder to expend the cognitive work of voting. This threshold is different for everybody for whom it's value is not zero or infinite. That is to say that some people will vote with the dust in their wallet and some will never vote in spite of very significant investment. Bear in mind however that (last time I checked) voting must only occur once and is valid until the voted for delegate ceases operation. So the minimum "Value at Stake" threshold must only be exceeded once for the stake to become "Actively Voting Stake". "Passively Voting Stake" would be the kind held in the hypothetical wallet with default voting settings.

Let us say that the wallet appeals to a specific set of Bitshares users with a generally higher "Value at Stake" threshold for active voting to occur because the cognitive work is greater for them (new user).  They may also start with a lower stake (new user), putting them under their unique threshold. All stake held by these users will be "Passive Voting Stake" controlled by the developers of the Hypothetical wallet - not cool.

Whether or not this presents a problem depends on the quantity of stake held by the wallet's user set, the average initial minimum "Value at Stake" threshold for that user set, the rate at which cognitive work diminishes due to familiarity with the platform, the rate at which the quantity of stake of the users in the set breaches the "Minimum Value at Stake" threshold and the compensatory behavior of the stake controlled by users outside that set. And probably a host of other things too but there is enough here to get confused about.

In the real world this is not a disaster because the "Value at Stake" threshold for veteran users is low due to lower cognitive work required and new users hold comparatively little stake.  People buy in with small amounts to play, explore and as part of that . . . vote. Speculators with strange behavior due to indifference to the platform generally hold their stake on exchanges and even many of them may vote. How many? We can't know but they are the only dark shape in the water. Bigger players can compensate for strange voting patterns by re-targeting the voting power of their stake and the community can shout down "Default Voting" wallets - as we've seen.

This presents an opportunity to study voting passivity that should not be squandered. I'd like to see The Moonstone wallet default target a single delegate that pays a charity of the forum community's choosing. This way we can begin to gather data on which to base an understanding of the voting behavior of the new wallets users rather than speculate about it.

Hope all that made sense.

Offline fuzzy

Though i am of the belief that had they reached out earlier, it would have helped prevent a community pr nightmare...at least they are reaching out now!

If them reaching out earlier would have swayed more community members that hard-coding votes into their client is a good idea, then I'm glad they didn't.

(Just to be clear, I'm only opposed to the idea of hardcoding delegates, not bitsapphire. Bitsapphire seems to be handling this conversation reasonably, and from the little they have showed so far also seem to be competent developers.)

i am simply saying that reaching out and being active with your investors alllows them to give you input before you make a decision on how to move forward.  If there was more community involvement, they likely would never have let the hardcoded delegates get into the announcement and would have worked with the community to find viable alternatives.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2015, 04:35:40 am by fuzzy »
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Offline fluxer555

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Though i am of the belief that had they reached out earlier, it would have helped prevent a community pr nightmare...at least they are reaching out now!

If them reaching out earlier would have swayed more community members that hard-coding votes into their client is a good idea, then I'm glad they didn't.

(Just to be clear, I'm only opposed to the idea of hardcoding delegates, not bitsapphire. Bitsapphire seems to be handling this conversation reasonably, and from the little they have showed so far also seem to be competent developers.)
« Last Edit: February 16, 2015, 02:58:30 am by fluxer555 »

Offline fluxer555

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We are always here.
We just learn to keep our mouths shut.

:)


Stan, I'm dying to know your thoughts about bitsapphire's proposal...

Offline Stan

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We are always here.
We just learn to keep our mouths shut.

:)

Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline carpet ride

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No wonder the devs aren't active on the forums anymore.
I am not so sure that we have decreasing dev participation
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Offline fuzzy

We will be having a hangout soon with bitsapphire about this and I look forward to .  Though i am of the belief that had they reached out earlier, it would have helped prevent a community pr nightmare...at least they are reaching out now!

Lets keep this going and we can set something up for sometime soon.  Perhaps we can have it on bitshares PLAY's usually date and time since it is a chinese holiday!
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Offline fluxer555

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I can't think of any kind of innovation which is stifled by not allowing voting transactions. In fact, making voting incorruptible makes for a more fertile environment.

In BitShares-land, the people who vote are the ones who have control over the direction of the company. Anyone wanting to "do something we don't like at the moment" simply won't get the chance to do it, as they won't be voted in. If they are voted in and "do something we don't like at the moment", we vote them out.

Or that's how it should be, and was designed to be, at least. I think moving toward that design is moving in the right direction.

The only way I could think of how voting could be cut out from a wallet or other app would be to change the vote registration from normal transactions including it to a special vote transaction which is paid for in transaction fees by the voter. That way voting would be opt-in always. However any wallet could easily have access to the private keys of the user, and therefore still vote the same.

If I'm understanding correctly, this would mean that in order to vote, the wallet would either need to be a full client, or the light wallet provider would need to know the user's private keys. Since any wallet which exposes private keys to a centralized identity is extremely dangerous, this kind of wallet would be seen as an attack and private-key harvesting malware, and would not make it far in terms of adoption. Any non-light client would also not make it far with the masses, as these are inherently resource intensive and take quite a bit of dedication to run and maintain for the user.

Considering all this, your solution seems to be viable.

Out of curiosity, if this was indeed implemented, how would this affect your proposal?

Offline bitsapphire

So in your wallet access to the private key of the customer is Ok as well. ??? You will not exist long as a bussines in no world other than your own head.

tonyk this is extremely disrespectful and ignorant of you. The wallet won't have access to any private keys. No wonder the devs aren't active on the forums anymore.
Register and get your personal Moonstone Wallet Beta here: https://moonstone.io/login-register.html

zerosum

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So in your wallet access to the private key of the customer is Ok as well. ??? You will not exist long as a bussines in no world other than your own head.

Offline bitsapphire

I can't think of any kind of innovation which is stifled by not allowing voting transactions. In fact, making voting incorruptible makes for a more fertile environment.

In BitShares-land, the people who vote are the ones who have control over the direction of the company. Anyone wanting to "do something we don't like at the moment" simply won't get the chance to do it, as they won't be voted in. If they are voted in and "do something we don't like at the moment", we vote them out.

Or that's how it should be, and was designed to be, at least. I think moving toward that design is moving in the right direction.

The only way I could think of how voting could be cut out from a wallet or other app would be to change the vote registration from normal transactions including it to a special vote transaction which is paid for in transaction fees by the voter. That way voting would be opt-in always. However any wallet could easily have access to the private keys of the user, and therefore still vote the same.
Register and get your personal Moonstone Wallet Beta here: https://moonstone.io/login-register.html

Offline fluxer555

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I can't think of any kind of innovation which is stifled by not allowing voting transactions. In fact, making voting incorruptible makes for a more fertile environment.

In BitShares-land, the people who vote are the ones who have control over the direction of the company. Anyone wanting to "do something we don't like at the moment" simply won't get the chance to do it, as they won't be voted in. If they are voted in and "do something we don't like at the moment", we vote them out.

Or that's how it should be, and was designed to be, at least. I think moving toward that design is moving in the right direction.