Author Topic: Proxy: fav - Journal  (Read 88805 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline abit

  • Committee member
  • Hero Member
  • *
  • Posts: 4664
    • View Profile
    • Abit's Hive Blog
  • BitShares: abit
  • GitHub: abitmore
@fav I wonder why you vote against worker refund400k (1.4.0)?
And @mindphlux ?
BitShares committee member: abit
BitShares witness: in.abit

Offline fav

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4278
  • No Pain, No Gain
    • View Profile
    • Follow Me!
  • BitShares: fav
Breaking down on @xeroc 's worker proposal https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20681.0.html

Quote
Lots of Documentation (e.g. docs.bitshares.eu), Whitepapers, BSIPs,
General Technical Support for BitShares (e.g. in the forums), and
Some improvements in the Graphene-UI (by far not as many as @svk though)

Very valuable work. If there's a decent ticket/support system implemented to Bitshares.org/OL and other "official" websites, I'd consider $1k per month as reasonable. Bitshares is rather small, so support hours should not go up the roof anytime soon.

Quote
Development of a Python library

answer:

could you please elaborate on "Development of a Python library," ?
https://github.com/xeroc/python-grapehenlib
I plan to add transaction construction and signing to it as I had it already in the previous network.
But as the underlying wire format changed, I need to rewrite alot of code and add alot of different transaction types (i.e. operations).
Then we could have a simple python tool for instance for offline-signing of transactions .. not just the Javascript and C++ implementation

Also the development of price feed scripts and other tools for witnesses take their time.
Another idea I have is to do some statistical analysis over block chain parameters .. e.g. for committee members ..

ignoring the price feed here, as I consider it very valuable until we got a professional provider.

as for TX signing (offline TX mentioned earlier in the thread) - I'm not sure what to think of it. Offline Signing is probably a 2 out of 10 on the priority list in my opinion.
Waiting for more information on that one, since it stands for, according to my calculation, $2.2k.

Until this is clarified, I will stay neutral on the proposal.

Offline fav

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4278
  • No Pain, No Gain
    • View Profile
    • Follow Me!
  • BitShares: fav
I will vote for @svk asap.

GUI development worker - https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20655

He's one of the active guys working on our GUI

Offline bitcrab

  • Committee member
  • Hero Member
  • *
  • Posts: 1928
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: bitcrab
  • GitHub: bitcrab
I have explained the whole process as quoted below.

the point is, ATM the system is not ready enough to welcome the force settlement feature, what the committee did is to delay the time for the force settlement going public and at the same time make the system ready.


the "SQP1500" event is really a big shame for Bitshares. it has very bad influence to Bitshares' reputation, it put a big doubt on how bitshares can do good change management and protect user's benefits from being hurt. every developer, committee member,  witness  should remember this event and try to prevent similar things from happening in the future.

in the past several days, committee did some change to the blockchain parameters, the route is disable force settlement ->upgrade price feed scripts->change max settle volume of from 20% to 2% ->enable force settlement. the former 2 are finished, the latter 2 will take affect in several hours.

actually it's not easy to do all this, many debates happened in the process, but finally the result is satisfactory, I am proud that the committee can finish this as a whole.

now let's review what happened and why they should happen.

force settlement is a new feature of bts2.0, it is announced in the documents several months ago,  however many users, including me, recognize what this feature bring only after the settle button appear in latest light wallet.

force settlement is a powerful tool, it can bring price floor to smartcoin, it can also be used by speculators to manipulate the market, so while introducing this feature, it is very important to config the environment carefully to try to prevent it from being abused, and protect the user's benefits.

but even 2 days ago, 2 things are not ready to welcome the force settlement.

1. for BitCNY, the settlement price provided by witness is always obvious lower than the actual price.
2.the max settle volume parameter is wrongly set to 20%, according to the design it should be set to 2%.

these 2 factors give speculators big chance to manipulate the market, and expose the shorters to big risks. when several days ago I tried my best to persuade committee members to disable the force settlement temporarily I am only aware of factor 1, not aware of factor 2.

committee finally agree to disable the force settlement temporarily with unwillingness from some members, and then the work to upgrade the feed price script began, I'd like to say thanks for all the members that participated the new script coding and test, yesterday  the new script work well.

and then the 20% max settle volume problem come to committee's vision, after some debate and response from BM, 2 proposals are created to change the 20% to 2% and enable the force settlement at almost the same time.

in the whole process I behaved rude and tough now and then, I apologize here if I had hurt someone's feeling,  but I don't regret to what I have done, In many cases the only thing I focus is to ensure what should be done really be done, nothing else.

many said all I did is for my own benefits, sure, if the system introduce risk features without well prepared environment and put all shorters to big risk, shouldn't I fight for them, including myself?

someone tell me that I over evaluate the risk, but, from a perspective of a financial system, the key point is to kill the possibility of easy market manipulation at design, this is relevant to many users' assets, not kids' game.

someone said I help shorters but hurt longers, surely shorters need more care, because in Bitshares only shorters face the risk of being margin called or force settled, and have big possibility to be exploited. there's no leverage tradings designed for longers and longers have no such risks to bear. I really helped shorters, but I haven't hurt longers, at most I removed their chance to exploit shorters.

I am glad to see a user wrote this after knowing what had happened:

I missed that post from bytemaster.  And cryptofresh doesn't seem to indicate who created the proposal.  It would have been nice for committee members to be explicit about this as their rationale for quickly voting the 20%-->2% change, otherwise it looks to stakeholders like you're not being deliberate enough, especially after the previous controversial proposal that was voted through.  Anyway, it looks like things are falling into place.  Thanks.

Email:bitcrab@qq.com

Offline mindphlux

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 232
    • View Profile
Trust me, tonyk - I learned my thing what it means to believe someone to what he/she is saying regarding bitshares. I always presumed that committee members are trusted community members and have no desire to manipulate - I've proven wrong, and the committee guidelines attempt to fix that so it cannot happen again.
Please consider voting for my witness mindphlux.witness and my committee user mindphlux. I will not vote for changes that affect witness pay.

Offline tonyk

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3308
    • View Profile
I've just seen this thread with this debate in progress, so I'd figure I should write down my side regarding this fiasco

1) We, the committee members at the time, were approached by transwiser (led by bitcrab) that the new settle button in the frontend is causing transwiser to loose money, people are actively exploiting it and have already suffered losses
2) The suggestion from bitcrab at the time was to disable the feature permanently
3) After further discussion, a compromise was reached - turn if off for one week, and allow the witnesses to adjust the price feeds for the CNY market, there was really a 2% gap there.

So far so good.

Before casting my vote, I specifically asked if transwiser is indeed ALREADY loosing money on this issue, and I was told that this was the case. This was the sole reason why I was voting for this proposal in the first place.

After the vote has passed, I asked bitcrab again in the committee channel if money was indeed lost or not - answer was that transwiser lost no money, and the action was needed to protect CNY shorters from the 'evil' settlers

Later on, this was blamed on miscommunication between chinese language and english language, but personally I felt misled and also feel like I was fed wrong information and this whole episode feels cheated, one could also call it power abuse. The fact alone that bitcrab is acting as committee member and submitted a proposal that deals with his company has a bad aftertaste.

As a result, I came up with the idea to create a common set of committee guidelines how a proposal is submitted, to make sure such misleading cannot happen again.

well listing to the forum idiot singing would have helped as well...

PS
sorry fav for posting in your thread, feel free to delete the post if you find it inappropriate/in the wrong thread.
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline mindphlux

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 232
    • View Profile
I've just seen this thread with this debate in progress, so I'd figure I should write down my side regarding this fiasco

1) We, the committee members at the time, were approached by transwiser (led by bitcrab) that the new settle button in the frontend is causing transwiser to loose money, people are actively exploiting it and have already suffered losses
2) The suggestion from bitcrab at the time was to disable the feature permanently
3) After further discussion, a compromise was reached - turn if off for one week, and allow the witnesses to adjust the price feeds for the CNY market, there was really a 2% gap there.

So far so good.

Before casting my vote, I specifically asked if transwiser is indeed ALREADY loosing money on this issue, and I was told that this was the case. This was the sole reason why I was voting for this proposal in the first place.

After the vote has passed, I asked bitcrab again in the committee channel if money was indeed lost or not - answer was that transwiser lost no money, and the action was needed to protect CNY shorters from the 'evil' settlers

Later on, this was blamed on miscommunication between chinese language and english language, but personally I felt misled and also feel like I was fed wrong information and this whole episode feels cheated, one could also call it power abuse. The fact alone that bitcrab is acting as committee member and submitted a proposal that deals with his company has a bad aftertaste.

As a result, I came up with the idea to create a common set of committee guidelines how a proposal is submitted, to make sure such misleading cannot happen again.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2015, 10:09:49 pm by mindphlux »
Please consider voting for my witness mindphlux.witness and my committee user mindphlux. I will not vote for changes that affect witness pay.

Offline maqifrnswa

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 661
    • View Profile


I actually interpreted the situation in the opposite way. By changing the rules, people exploited JonnyBitcoin because he was the only one that was correctly following the rules. When some didn't like that he was following the well publicized rules to which everyone agreed, they changed the rules to favor themselves. It sounds like those that changed the rules exploited the system.

Absolutely not.

The committee's posts are pretty clear about what the situation and the reasons for temp disabling the function were.

Your interpretation does not really make sense. People exploited JohnnyBitcoin, really!? How so? Did JohnnyBitcoin lose anything?

Please do not turn around facts.

You are free to not believe in what the committee have done, for whatever strange reason you could have. But twist facts like this is really unbelievable.

I have no problems with the committee stepping in to slow things down until they are better understood in this case. I just want you to be aware of how this is perceived by non-bitshares experts (outsiders). The committee can post all they want, and have noble goals, but in the end they have to realize they are weighing pros and cons. Very few decisions don't benefit one group and hurt another. I'd like to see the committee acknowledge that they were aware of the consequences but thought they were justified.

The facts point to JonnyBitcoin being exploited. In the end, exploiting him is probably worth it as his loss was minimal to ensure everyone was on the same page and feeds were made more accurate, but nonetheless something that should be taken seriously.

Facts:
1) The BitShares blockchain was working perfectly as designed. There was no flaw in the blockchain/DEX.
2) JonnyBitcoin was using the system perfectly as designed and profiting from performing an important network roll (supply control arbitrage)
3) Due to a misunderstanding of how the system works, what price feeds do, and how price feeds should be reported, some thought there was a flaw in the system.
4) The system was changed temporarily so people could figure out how they should have been behaving all along, but weren't because of a misunderstanding.

How JonnyBitcoin got hurt:
He was going long on assets he thought were overvalued so that he could settle them for a profit. By turning off forced settling, he and other settlers were stuck with things they already knew were overvalued. In the time it took for settling to be turned back on, the market had already corrected itself and Jonny lost the profit he would have made along with losing value in assets he didn't want to begin with.

Companies have gotten sued for less.

The committee made the decision to hurt one person (or a few people) in exchange for slowing down that system so larger, more important, organizations could readjust and feed scripts could be fixed. As we're starting off, that's probably the right decision - but it should not be taken lightly.


EDIT:
Quote
The market was working with an inaccurate feed.
The settlement function relies on an accurate feed to determine the price of the settle.

So, there was indeed something not working as it should.

Feeds are absolute, there is no such thing as an inaccurate feed. All business models and decisions must be based on the feed. Some community members did not like the source of data for the feeds, or how they were calculated. The "accuracy" of the feed must be priced into the value of bitshares. Inaccurate feeds do not mean the system is not working, it just means you need more tolerance for error and thus decreases the value of the system. Increasing accuracy was great, and increased the value of the feeds themselves, but does not mean the system was not working when the feeds were inacuate.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2015, 07:39:32 pm by maqifrnswa »
maintains an Ubuntu PPA: https://launchpad.net/~showard314/+archive/ubuntu/bitshares [15% delegate] wallet_account_set_approval maqifrnswa true [50% delegate] wallet_account_set_approval delegate1.maqifrnswa true

Offline Thom

it is late for me and I am about to pass out at my keyboard, but was informed of something quite interesting and would like to delve in a bit further in hopes of someone giving me the cliffs notes version so I don't have to read through the entire thread right now and can save it for a bit further into the future.

Here is a link to a thread I think is worth talking about.  Espcially interested in what fav was talking about with committee members using their positions to help themselves as opposed to bitshares.  I am listening and hoping someone can update me and potentially provide me with some detailed evidence (if possible).

My guess is that Fav was talking about this thread:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20299.0.html

correct.

here is what I wrote earlier in this thread:

in light of the current power abuse of the current committee due to  a non-issue I left the private committee group and told them they lost my support.

bhuz, mindphlux and bitcube are the only people representing us stakeholders in the committee in my opinion.

(puppy don't know, he did not participate in the current fiasco at alll)

further actions to be discussed.

Settlement was disabled on a rushed decision by the committtee because Transwiser (bitcrab) stated, that transwiser is facing monetary losses.

We learned later, that they never lost a single cent prior to the disabling, and it was communicated as a "miscommunication" (some call it lying).

further, there were some people aggressively trying to push their own agenda, probably to please their whale voters.

that's the short version, and why I told the former committee they lost my support.

This issue is very confusing, and the quoted post above is a good example of why.

In a nutshell, fav withdrew his support of the committee, yet says bhuz et al are the only ones on the committee doing right by shareholders, and bhuz is the most vocal here in his defense of this committee decision. That is contradictory, or at the very least confusing.

Bhuz chastised maqifrnswa who was basically trying to say "stick to the rules, and stop changing them without advance notice", which sentiment I strongly agree with. Moreover, no evidence to ANY of the claims summarized in this thread have been presented here, either the evidence of the original "emergency" bitcrab et al was raising OR why changing the settlement rules without notice was the only reasonable course of action by the committee.

It sounds like the root of the emergency is inaccurate CNY price feeds. Most of that discussion was held on the private Telegram witness channel NOT this forum as it should have been. I responded to an alert complaining my price feed was "way off". Upon investigation it came to light that "way off" was only 2.5%, so I decided to continue with my existing feed delivery method for now.

I have suggested before that feeds be handled separately from witness operations. This controversy is a good reason why.

Witnesses primary role is securing the network. Feeds have little to do with security. Witnesses need to have a high level of technical knowledge, feed producers do not. Feed producers need to have a good understanding of economics and statistical analysis, witnesses do not.

Unless I'm mistaken, there are only 2 feed scripts in use among the 27 witnesses: xeroc's and wackou's. This "emergency" issue would never have risen to the involvement of the committee if dedicated feed producers were in place, as they would have had an incentive to make sure their feeds are accurate or loose that incentive. That incentive would also stimulate the creative freedom to provide far more variety in feed sources and algorithms aimed at delivering the most accurate feeds, and making adjustments when necessary. Look how long it took for the CNY feeds to become an issue after launch. If this was an issue on October nobody noticed it or brought attention to it.

IMO this represents an epic fail concerning community governance, which was not helped by the manor of communication  (timeliness, chosen media, clarity of thought and disorganized).

« Last Edit: December 07, 2015, 04:36:03 pm by Thom »
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline fuzzy

it is late for me and I am about to pass out at my keyboard, but was informed of something quite interesting and would like to delve in a bit further in hopes of someone giving me the cliffs notes version so I don't have to read through the entire thread right now and can save it for a bit further into the future.

Here is a link to a thread I think is worth talking about.  Espcially interested in what fav was talking about with committee members using their positions to help themselves as opposed to bitshares.  I am listening and hoping someone can update me and potentially provide me with some detailed evidence (if possible).

My guess is that Fav was talking about this thread:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20299.0.html

correct.

here is what I wrote earlier in this thread:

in light of the current power abuse of the current committee due to  a non-issue I left the private committee group and told them they lost my support.

bhuz, mindphlux and bitcube are the only people representing us stakeholders in the committee in my opinion.

(puppy don't know, he did not participate in the current fiasco at alll)

further actions to be discussed.

Settlement was disabled on a rushed decision by the committtee because Transwiser (bitcrab) stated, that transwiser is facing monetary losses.

We learned later, that they never lost a single cent prior to the disabling, and it was communicated as a "miscommunication" (some call it lying).

further, there were some people aggressively trying to push their own agenda, probably to please their whale voters.

that's the short version, and why I told the former committee they lost my support.

So this could be why none of the committee members have gotten back to me about our committee townhalls...
Perhaps they dont want real transparency, or for the community to give them realtime feedback. 

can you tell me off the top of your head who are the current committee members? 
« Last Edit: December 07, 2015, 03:02:34 pm by fuzzy »
WhaleShares==DKP; BitShares is our Community! 
ShareBits and WhaleShares = Love :D

Offline Bhuz

  • Committee member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 467
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: bhuz


Especially in cases like this, where there actually was nothing wrong with the market/settle/blockchain system.

The market was working with an inaccurate feed.
The settlement function relies on an accurate feed to determine the price of the settle.

So, there was indeed something not working as it should.


Offline Bhuz

  • Committee member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 467
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: bhuz


I actually interpreted the situation in the opposite way. By changing the rules, people exploited JonnyBitcoin because he was the only one that was correctly following the rules. When some didn't like that he was following the well publicized rules to which everyone agreed, they changed the rules to favor themselves. It sounds like those that changed the rules exploited the system.

Absolutely not.

The committee's posts are pretty clear about what the situation and the reasons for temp disabling the function were.

Your interpretation does not really make sense. People exploited JohnnyBitcoin, really!? How so? Did JohnnyBitcoin lose anything?

Please do not turn around facts.

You are free to not believe in what the committee have done, for whatever strange reason you could have. But twist facts like this is really unbelievable.




Offline maqifrnswa

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 661
    • View Profile
The only people aggressively trying to push their own agenda were the ones that was pretty upset only because they could not expoit the bitCNY market meanwhile the settle was temporary disabled.
(eg. JonnyBitcoin posts are pretty clear about this)

I really embolden @fuzzy to take the time to read the whole post and make his mind out of it.
I am pretty confident that he will more than able to see the Committee decision as a way to protect Bitshares DAC and its community as a whole.

I actually interpreted the situation in the opposite way. By changing the rules, people exploited JonnyBitcoin because he was the only one that was correctly following the rules. When some didn't like that he was following the well publicized rules to which everyone agreed, they changed the rules to favor themselves. It sounds like those that changed the rules exploited the system.

[Even if that is not true, that is how it appears interpreted to an outsider]

Exchanges should never do that. In this case, it is relatively minor and early on, but a lesson that must be learned by the system. You set the rules, you enforce the rules, and rules do not change unless there is significant advanced warning. Especially in cases like this, where there actually was nothing wrong with the market/settle/blockchain system.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2015, 01:28:19 pm by maqifrnswa »
maintains an Ubuntu PPA: https://launchpad.net/~showard314/+archive/ubuntu/bitshares [15% delegate] wallet_account_set_approval maqifrnswa true [50% delegate] wallet_account_set_approval delegate1.maqifrnswa true

Offline fav

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4278
  • No Pain, No Gain
    • View Profile
    • Follow Me!
  • BitShares: fav

I really embolden @fuzzy to take the time to read the whole post and make his mind out of it.
I am pretty confident that he will more than able to see the Committee decision as a way to protect Bitshares DAC and its community as a whole.

that's what I told fuzzy too in another thread, however, he wanted to hear my opinon

Offline Bhuz

  • Committee member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 467
    • View Profile
  • BitShares: bhuz
The only people aggressively trying to push their own agenda were the ones that was pretty upset only because they could not expoit the bitCNY market meanwhile the settle was temporary disabled.
(eg. JonnyBitcoin posts are pretty clear about this)

I really embolden @fuzzy to take the time to read the whole post and make his mind out of it.
I am pretty confident that he will more than able to see the Committee decision as a way to protect Bitshares DAC and its community as a whole.