Please cast your vote for where to send gentso's delegate funds

[donkeypong]

Kudos to Thom for being up-front about this and giving the community a choice. I would say it's less about re-directing funds, though, and more about you finding a new delegate partner. If this is purely a short-term arrangement, then I'm not opposed to one of your suggestions for re-directing funds, but if this continues beyond 2.0, then time to re-start the delegate.

By process of elimination, I would eliminate DataSecurityNode from consideration. He does a lot of good things and may well be deserving, but from the comments, you guys don't get along. No sense running such a partnership together with Thom, even for a short period of time.

I say burn it or give it to 30PTSW.

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

@DSN: Yet more accusations. Disingenuous? There's a good example of the phrase, "the pot calling the kettle black". Like your motives aren't transparent as can be to get an unprecedented number of delegates under your personal control, like your disingenuous "offer" to host delegate.verbaltech, if only I would give you the keys you'd have it up and running right away.

You seem to take joy in bringing up the most nit-picky issues in this thread, like how I was so derelict in my duties for not linking to this poll in the original announcement thread. Big fucking deal! Like that really matters. It's in the same board with gentso in the subject. If someone was the least bit interested in keeping informed they will find the relevant info. Just stop already, you're not helping.

Grow... up.

[Thom]

@DSN: Yet more accusations. Disingenuous? There's a good example of the phrase, "the pot calling the kettle black". Like your motives aren't transparent as can be to get an unprecedented number of delegates under your personal control, like your disingenuous "offer" to host delegate.verbaltech, if only I would give you the keys you'd have it up and running right away.

You seem to take joy in bringing up the most nit-picky issues in this thread, like how I was so derelict in my duties for not linking to this poll in the original announcement thread. Big fucking deal! Like that really matters. It's in the same board with gentso in the subject. If someone was the least bit interested in keeping informed they will find the relevant info. Just stop already, you're not helping.

[puppies]

If burn 85% is choosen that would end up being quite an expensive  "witness only delegate"....

I agree.  if my maths correct that's 19237 bts per month.  I'm not opposed to you continuing to run the delegate.  I think having as many individuals running nodes heading into 2.0 is a good thing.  if we're gonna be purist and call support of 38btswarrior charity, I think we need to do the same for 15% delegates that do the same job as the 3% ones.

[mint chocolate chip]

What I would propose to improve the network is for @bytemaster to remove his votes (and the tens of millions under his control) for all delegates besides the core developer delegates he knows are working on bitshares 2.0. The leg-up that his ~ 170 million votes has created for those that got it has made those delegates untouchable, they virtually can't be voted out by the other shareholders, this has in turn made many of them less transparent, and in some cases possibly even less productive than had they been battling to stay in the top 101.

Under DPOS 2.0 most of these issues go away... no marketing delegates will be voted in, and only a few workers will be hired...
...
If there is a 100% delegate that is getting paid for nothing then let me know and I will remove my votes from them.   

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

There's a lot of strong words being used in this thread, and it really disturbs me. I don't believe it's called for at all. However, I have to pause here and apologize for my own poor choice of words too. I am far too quick to become defensive, especially when I'm trying to be completely open.

I don't disagree with pc's comments (except for his statement regarding betrayal that is), however what he suggests has not been done with other delegates who have been in similar positions. Toast left without much of an announcement, as did methodx to name two. Zero public discussion of where their delegate funds went until long after they were gone. I saw nowhere near the discontent expressed towards their choice to redistribute as they saw fit. They didn't even make an attempt to ask the community for input or even disclose they were no longer fulfilling their delegate proposal. So why am I being held to such scrutiny, why the double standard? The record (in this forum) speaks for itself. I've been completely transparent on this matter, more so than other delegates in the past.
 
I may have to devote a chapter in The BItShares Saga about DPoS' shortcomings in an immature crypto project based on this and other (defunct) delegates. Perhaps this is why Gentso decided to walk away without so much as a word, seeing how inconsistently this community reacts.

It remains to be seen IMO if the consensus aspects of DPoS will succeed or become a process (like this thread) of political / good old boy / insider / cliche / special interests that don't represent the community. DPoS may well work to secure block production, but the jury is still out on it's viability to ascertain the actual desires of the community and self govern in an open and transparent manor. It clearly is a better design in that regard than most other cryptos, including bitcoin. We can however see it's weaknesses, which are highlighted in this bear market. Without incentives, there is little to quell voter apathy. The DPoS process is far from proven and mature. We'll see when 2.0 comes how much more needs to be done. The splitting of delegate roles is a step in the right direction. I don't believe the consensus building / determining characteristics of DPoS have gotten the attention they require to achieve a robust and solid process of governance for the project that truly represents the will of the community.

I can see the possibility that workers & witnesses could evolve similarly to how bitcoin mining evolved, getting more and more centralized as the size of the ecosystem grows to make it far less viable for individuals to maintain nodes. As the launch approaches for 2.0 we'll see what type of consensus emerges concerning the number of witnesses, the requirements they must meet, as well as workers and the standards they will be held to, and how accountable they will be to their proposals. My concerns for delegates in 2.0 stem from the fact their roles are purely political, and I'm always suspect about the motives of politicians.

If anyone cares to look they will see that I sounded the alarm early, and indeed it was done in the original proposal thread. Now don't let me confuse you with facts, especially if someone else is telling you what you want to hear. Repeating claims don't make them true, but unfortunately that tactic still works all to well. Saying that I'm denying consensus when this entire thread is an attempt ascertain it, albeit in a simple and flawed manor, disregards the effort. It reminds me of how newmine provides lots of criticism but rarely offers any solutions or better alternatives. PC stated the obvious - that the official consensus is voting. This thread / poll is only a stopgap measure, and it is proving to be a flawed approach.

I'm not making any allegations, but it is a fair question to ask what happened to the funds between the time Toast and MethodX chose to disengage and therefore break from their delegate proposal to the time they actually redirected their delegate funds elsewhere. I don't believe there were any nefarious things going on with those guys, but the point is their transition was not "well publicized" or handled in a transparent manor. Yet their feet weren't held to the fire like mine seem to be here. I'll grant you the circumstances are quite different despite the commonality of redirecting delegate funds. I would be the last to deny that toast didn't earn every last BTS (and then some) he has. My respect for methodx may not be quite as high as it is for toast but I believe he too earned his BTS. These are only 2 of several other delegates that have abandoned their delegate roles, there are others we haven't even mentioned.

Allegations that no notification was given or was somehow inadequate are unfounded. Since that allegation was made by someone that responded in that thread to my initial announcement, there is no excuse for bringing it up here as a question. It is therefore biased and inflammatory.

And thanks lil_jay for your last post. Good to know some in the community think positively.

Your apology is disingenuous after that sanctimonious passive aggressive dig on me and thanks to everyone else. Passive aggressive pot shots, are still pot shots. Grow up.

You are not a victim of a double standard or politico world as dramatic as it sounds.

You actually were starting out doing the right thing.

You are not in the same position as methodx or toast. They were the ones voted to carry out their delegates, so it was in their discretion to decide how to handle the funds they were entrusted with. Both of them were questioned numerous times in the past about it, and there was always an answer that the funds had be redirected to some other worthy/needed cause that they saw fit albeit this was not very effectively communicated. Whether you want to accept that answer or not is your call. Only a few days ago I questioned one of toasts 100% delegates that had not been updated since January.

You on the other hand are just the host maintainer. You got your hands on the private keys, and thats all. You are operating with diminished authority, other than the agreement you had with Genso, which now appears null and void.

You weren't given permission by him to continue to operate this delegate were you?

You are not carrying out the delegates purpose as a 100% delegate are you?

So you started out doing the right thing and said hey community, we got this delegate that is voted in but the one that it was meant for is gone.. I really have no business here continuing.. what say you? You gave numerous options, 11 to put the the delegate to some other work the same way others have done, and 1 to burn it.

At the time there were 17 votes to do something with the funds, and 15 to burn (at present its 21/20). You take that as some kind of answer which we have already established is flawed. Yes, you were shown that consensus was for the other route, and denied it/disagreed. Only later did you begin to acknowledge the flaw in the process taken. It's not a newmine trick as you seem to like to imply I reminded you of; it's the way it was.

I couldn't find any links to this poll in the original delegate proposal. So voters who were following the thread at least never got notice of whats going on here. Due Diligence of notice in my estimation would have been to go through the thread and make a list of every single person that said they voted and PM them. That's about the best you can do now.

Consider this some great content fodder for your book like you said.

I don't care for this personal bull you seem to want to throw at me.. so I ask you to stop focusing on me.. and deal with this.

Take decisive action and let the voters know.

[Thom]

Thanks Stan & lil_jay for your kind words of support and understanding.

I will think about the purpose of delegate.verbaltech moving forward as Stan suggested, and put together another proposal to put before the shareholders. About all I can promise is it won't be another "business development" role.  It might possibly be considered marketing, if I incorporate my efforts in writing The BitShares Saga. Many of you have seen the quality of my writing from the first preview, which is being reworked into the 5 part book series I call The BitShares Saga. The effort will be far more comprehensive than originally planned and cover much more material than Max's BitShares 101 book did (although that was a very good effort IMO).

My primary contribution to verbaltech has been technical, tho I did provide considerable info to gentso concerning precious metals. I seriously doubt my proposal will be for a 100% delegate. If I can justify my 15% delegate pay to stay elected as a "witness" in this 0.9.2 era I'll be satisfied. What I do bring to the table in technical skills is extensive and much more than many other delegates. Besides that however I am very committed to complete The BitShares Saga, once I get past all of these unexpected emergencies and get my life and focus back on track.

I have told a few of you about a life threatening incident I had early last week that landed me in the hospital for a few days. I am still recovering from that and will be for quite awhile. I'm too young to be having these issues!

[lil_jay890]

For what it's worth, I think Thom is handling this situation very well.

He has paid the fee for a delegate slot and with it comes the Natural Right to propose changes to how that delegate slot should be used with or without community input.  He has chosen to ask for advice from the community.  Nothing wrong with that.

Once he decides what he wants to propose, then it is the shareholder's turn to vote on whether they still support him.

Situations like this are bound to come up from time to time.   (Sooner or later every worker will face a similar decision.)
Thom's approach seems as reasonable as any I can think of.

The only thing I might add to the Worker Change Request Process would be that there be a time period (maybe two weeks?) for voters to react to the change proposal during which worker pay is held without being spent on anything.  If the new proposal is voted out, then those fees should be burned - which is the same as retroactively turning off payment at the time of the proposed change.  If the delegate remains elected, then the pay collected during the interim may be applied to the new purpose.

I would also expect that, if a worker gets voted out, it is their natural right to improve their proposal in an attempt to get their expensive worker slot re-elected.  Those who haven't been voted out should have no less flexibility to adapt in an attempt to stay elected.

Thom, I admire you for taking the hard road and asking for community consensus before allocating delegate funds. Not even a core developer (toast at one point) was able to do that. And I agree completely with how several underperforming delegates have distributed funds without any input from the community.

I do think that this whole situation has become another case of misinterpretation... Text in forums doesn't work well to convey thoughts and opinions.

[Stan]

For what it's worth, I think Thom is handling this situation very well.

He has paid the fee for a delegate slot and with it comes the Natural Right to propose changes to how that delegate slot should be used with or without community input.  He has chosen to ask for advice from the community.  Nothing wrong with that.

Once he decides what he wants to propose, then it is the shareholder's turn to vote on whether they still support him.

Situations like this are bound to come up from time to time.   (Sooner or later every worker will face a similar decision.)
Thom's approach seems as reasonable as any I can think of.

The only thing I might add to the Worker Change Request Process would be that there be a time period (maybe two weeks?) for voters to react to the change proposal during which worker pay is held without being spent on anything.  If the new proposal is voted out, then those fees should be burned - which is the same as retroactively turning off payment at the time of the proposed change.  If the delegate remains elected, then the pay collected during the interim may be applied to the new purpose.

I would also expect that, if a worker gets voted out, it is their natural right to improve their proposal in an attempt to get their expensive worker slot re-elected.  Those who haven't been voted out should have no less flexibility to adapt in an attempt to stay elected.

[Thom]

There's a lot of strong words being used in this thread, and it really disturbs me. I don't believe it's called for at all. However, I have to pause here and apologize for my own poor choice of words too. I am far too quick to become defensive, especially when I'm trying to be completely open.

I don't disagree with pc's comments (except for his statement regarding betrayal that is), however what he suggests has not been done with other delegates who have been in similar positions. Toast left without much of an announcement, as did methodx to name two. Zero public discussion of where their delegate funds went until long after they were gone. I saw nowhere near the discontent expressed towards their choice to redistribute as they saw fit. They didn't even make an attempt to ask the community for input or even disclose they were no longer fulfilling their delegate proposal. So why am I being held to such scrutiny, why the double standard? The record (in this forum) speaks for itself. I've been completely transparent on this matter, more so than other delegates in the past.
 
I may have to devote a chapter in The BItShares Saga about DPoS' shortcomings in an immature crypto project based on this and other (defunct) delegates. Perhaps this is why Gentso decided to walk away without so much as a word, seeing how inconsistently this community reacts.

It remains to be seen IMO if the consensus aspects of DPoS will succeed or become a process (like this thread) of political / good old boy / insider / cliche / special interests that don't represent the community. DPoS may well work to secure block production, but the jury is still out on it's viability to ascertain the actual desires of the community and self govern in an open and transparent manor. It clearly is a better design in that regard than most other cryptos, including bitcoin. We can however see it's weaknesses, which are highlighted in this bear market. Without incentives, there is little to quell voter apathy. The DPoS process is far from proven and mature. We'll see when 2.0 comes how much more needs to be done. The splitting of delegate roles is a step in the right direction. I don't believe the consensus building / determining characteristics of DPoS have gotten the attention they require to achieve a robust and solid process of governance for the project that truly represents the will of the community.

I can see the possibility that workers & witnesses could evolve similarly to how bitcoin mining evolved, getting more and more centralized as the size of the ecosystem grows to make it far less viable for individuals to maintain nodes. As the launch approaches for 2.0 we'll see what type of consensus emerges concerning the number of witnesses, the requirements they must meet, as well as workers and the standards they will be held to, and how accountable they will be to their proposals. My concerns for delegates in 2.0 stem from the fact their roles are purely political, and I'm always suspect about the motives of politicians.

If anyone cares to look they will see that I sounded the alarm early, and indeed it was done in the original proposal thread. Now don't let me confuse you with facts, especially if someone else is telling you what you want to hear. Repeating claims don't make them true, but unfortunately that tactic still works all to well. Saying that I'm denying consensus when this entire thread is an attempt ascertain it, albeit in a simple and flawed manor, disregards the effort. It reminds me of how newmine provides lots of criticism but rarely offers any solutions or better alternatives. PC stated the obvious - that the official consensus is voting. This thread / poll is only a stopgap measure, and it is proving to be a flawed approach.

I'm not making any allegations, but it is a fair question to ask what happened to the funds between the time Toast and MethodX chose to disengage and therefore break from their delegate proposal to the time they actually redirected their delegate funds elsewhere. I don't believe there were any nefarious things going on with those guys, but the point is their transition was not "well publicized" or handled in a transparent manor. Yet their feet weren't held to the fire like mine seem to be here. I'll grant you the circumstances are quite different despite the commonality of redirecting delegate funds. I would be the last to deny that toast didn't earn every last BTS (and then some) he has. My respect for methodx may not be quite as high as it is for toast but I believe he too earned his BTS. These are only 2 of several other delegates that have abandoned their delegate roles, there are others we haven't even mentioned.

Allegations that no notification was given or was somehow inadequate are unfounded. Since that allegation was made by someone that responded in that thread to my initial announcement, there is no excuse for bringing it up here as a question. It is therefore biased and inflammatory.

And thanks lil_jay for your last post. Good to know some in the community think positively.
 

[lil_jay890]

Please remember that this forum is not authoritative wrt delegates. The shareholders are.

Gentso's delegate was voted in because of his proposal. If the proposal can't be fulfilled anymore, a responsible delegate should announce that fact, ask shareholders to be voted out, and burn the earnings (possibly after deducting a reasonable fee to cover the delegate's maintenance cost). IMO we're at this point right now, and the only reason why the delegate is still in is that most of the shareholders haven't noticed the new situation yet.

Casting a forum poll on how to spend the funds *differently from the original proposal* is a violation of the original proposal, and can therefore be seen as betrayal.

What you are referring to would be closer to a worker proposal from 2.0.

 The intention with delegates in the current iteration is to vote someone in to bring value to Bitshares with no definitive time frame of when to be voted out.  An initial project is usually used as a foot in the door so to speak, but it was talked about very early on how once a delegate completed their job they could propose new ideas to bring value and keep there position.  They could also lower their pay rate.

I think what verbal tech is doing is providing new ways to bring value to bts.  And you may not like forum voting, but right now that is all we have.

[santaclause102]

Please remember that this forum is not authoritative wrt delegates. The shareholders are.

Gentso's delegate was voted in because of his proposal. If the proposal can't be fulfilled anymore, a responsible delegate should announce that fact, ask shareholders to be voted out, and burn the earnings (possibly after deducting a reasonable fee to cover the delegate's maintenance cost). IMO we're at this point right now, and the only reason why the delegate is still in is that most of the shareholders haven't noticed the new situation yet.

Casting a forum poll on how to spend the funds *differently from the original proposal* is a violation of the original proposal, and can therefore be seen as betrayal.

[santaclause102]

If burn 85% is choosen that would end up being quite an expensive  "witness only delegate"....

[pc]

Please remember that this forum is not authoritative wrt delegates. The shareholders are.

Gentso's delegate was voted in because of his proposal. If the proposal can't be fulfilled anymore, a responsible delegate should announce that fact, ask shareholders to be voted out, and burn the earnings (possibly after deducting a reasonable fee to cover the delegate's maintenance cost). IMO we're at this point right now, and the only reason why the delegate is still in is that most of the shareholders haven't noticed the new situation yet.

Casting a forum poll on how to spend the funds *differently from the original proposal* is a violation of the original proposal, and can therefore be seen as betrayal.

[Akado]

I believe this delegate should do whatever it's voted on in the pool while it's voted down. I think a delegate that is not performing it's original task and doesn't have the original purpose should be voted on so chances are given to others. People who voted this delegate in, did so because of the original objectives and tasks the delegate committed himself to do. Since that's not the case it should be voted down imo, that's the fair option. Otherwise it's occupying a spot doing something that the original voters didn't intend him to do.