Resolution to Referral Program Bug

[fav]

We are preparing to release the code today that incorporates many fixes into one hardfork.   The hard fork will take effect next wednesday.

thanks! Balance is looking good now.

When can we expect the withdrawal "feature" in the UI?

[bytemaster]

We are preparing to release the code today that incorporates many fixes into one hardfork.   The hard fork will take effect next wednesday.

[fav]

What's the status please?

[bytemaster]

has enough votes as of now
http://cryptofresh.com/p/1.10.17

I must say that I am REALLY happy with how cryptofresh.com is evolving!  Great work all around

[maqifrnswa]

has enough votes as of now
http://cryptofresh.com/p/1.10.17

[mindphlux]

I approved proposal 1.13.17.

[theoretical]

Proposal ID to disable withdraw_vesting is 1.10.17.  If you are a committee member, please vote for 1.10.17.  Signatures are due at the start of the review period, 21:55 UTC.  The proposal will be finalized at 22:55 UTC, provided the proposal goes through, the fee change will go through at the following maintenance interval, so no further withdrawals will occur after 23:00 UTC.

Please DO NOT vote for 1.10.16, it wasn't constructed correctly.

[merivercap]

Ok so on the positive side is it's probably less than a $10,000 bug over a lifetime, and I presume a lot of the discrepancies can be resolved outside the system so the damage should be far less than that.

In any case hopefully we vote on the changes quickly, learn from this and get better. 

 

[bytemaster]

A bug has been discovered in the CLI wallet where the referrer percentage is not properly scaled. This bug affects all registrars and the referrers to those registrars. A corresponding GUI bug masked this issue.

These bugs were not with the blockchain, but because of them some people have experienced a loss of revenue stream that we cannot calculate today and that the blockchain will not currently allow us to fix. Therefore, someone will have to provide BTS to make sure everyone is made whole.

The upper bound on the "liability" is to assume all referred accounts upgraded to a lifetime membership and the referrer got the intended amount. This upper bound is less than 3M BTS that is misallocated to the Registrar's rather than the Referrers.

In other words, a software bug in the wallet caused some individuals to receive more than they should and others to receive less. The proper solution is to have the respective registrars refund the referrers.

In reality no one is "at fault" because there was no mistake by anyone in the BitShares community and the BitShares code has been licensed with NO WARRANTY from Cryptonomex.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The cost of refunding the referrers is a time consuming task and potentially unbounded. The best case the registrar pays the referrer an amount assuming all referred accounts upgrade to lifetime members now. This represents an unfair burden on the registrar's who are also a victim of the bug.

Cryptonomex will produce a fix for the CLI wallet and release it to prevent further mistakes.

The BitShares community should collectively look after the all users and roll out a hardfork that implements the behavior intended by the CLI wallet. Cryptonomex will provide the code for the hardfork "free of charge" and roll it out as part of the next scheduled hardfork.  The hard fork will treat percentages below 1% as 100x larger.  So 0.6% will become 60% as intended by the users involved. 

To minimize further damage between now and when the hard fork goes into effect we will request the committee members raise the fee for withdrawing vesting balances to 1 billion BTS (temporarily suspending vesting balance withdraws).  The fee can be lowered after the hardfork and everything has been resolved. 

We will post the proposal ID for committee members to vote on in an hour (after incorporating the changes made by the prior committee proposal).  Please vote for this in a timely manner and if you are a registrar please voluntarily refrain from withdrawing your vesting balance.