Next Committee Proposal: Witness Pay

[valtr]

@rnglab well written summary.
I am with BitShares from the Protoshares times but I am not coder so I can not judge technical details, but I feel  that further development, maintenance and flawless operation of network is substantial otherwise all investments (not only fiat or crypto spent but years of attention and work of many active members)  e.g. the whole value of BitShares could disappear quickly. 
At today's prices BitShares are a real deal, no experiment or hobby. I think many of members feel the same these days.
I wish BitShares crowd to find necessary will, consensus and funds to act in the meaning of what was written.
Many thanks to all contributors!

[xeroc]

I also here the frustration in your words @xeroc, it's difficult going it alone (so to speak). I have a feeling you'll be getting some help as more devs see how great the opportunities are here. Look, RoelandP is a recent addition, he is a great example of what I bet you'd like to see more of.

This!!

I had hoped the additional momey would motivate them to 'do more' than was written.in the job description .. like what wackou, lafona and roelandp are doing .. but there are some that are just too silent

That said, I encourage everyone! (Not just witnesses) that want to do some coding to get themselfs a worker running. I highly recommend a USD worker. Conntact me if you want to know more.

[Thom]

Building tools was never a part of "the deal" for BitShares witnesses, there's much more to the role than that.

However, witnesses are the closest people we have to devs now, some are devs or like me have a strong enough tech background to create some tools.

I have always loved scripting languages, and I will get up to speed on python, count on it! But I can't be pushed, and there is so much going on it's hard for one guy to keep up with everything. Just bought 2 more dedicated servers, one for testnet. Plus I am ramping up on PeerPlays too, so my time to manage all these servers and upgrades (seems like all I've done since returning from Anarchapulco is buy & upgrade) is increasing.

I also here the frustration in your words @xeroc, it's difficult going it alone (so to speak). I have a feeling you'll be getting some help as more devs see how great the opportunities are here. Look, RoelandP is a recent addition, he is a great example of what I bet you'd like to see more of.

I encourage witnesses  and candidates to run nodes and APIs also on testnet.

I asked for this months ago. Only 2 have made it.

I have also encouraged people to join efforts on witness tools. Besides me, only 3 are building public witness tools by now
I am pretty disappointed by the witnesses performance in general (except for block production). That is also the reason why I voted for a reduction of the number of witnesses .. to get rid of those that just setup the server and do nothing else. I understand that there are few that want to go further and build tools and I would love to encourage them, but I personally (today) prefer to go through a worker (many workers)
that pay those people to build those tools and APIs. Given that we now also have the tools to do USD denominated workers, I think this is the path forward - and not through a lot of money at all witnesses.
It also separates the jobs quite nicely.

[abit]

I encourage witnesses  and candidates to run nodes and APIs also on testnet.

I asked for this months ago. Only 2 have made it.

I have also encouraged people to join efforts on witness tools. Besides me, only 3 are building public witness tools by now
I am pretty disappointed by the witnesses performance in general (except for block production). That is also the reason why I voted for a reduction of the number of witnesses .. to get rid of those that just setup the server and do nothing else. I understand that there are few that want to go further and build tools and I would love to encourage them, but I personally (today) prefer to go through a worker (many workers)
that pay those people to build those tools and APIs. Given that we now also have the tools to do USD denominated workers, I think this is the path forward - and not through a lot of money at all witnesses.
It also separates the jobs quite nicely.

I like the worker idea.

[Permie]

@rnglab thanks for your input, your idea is suggestive, we need to think more and do more.

now I just share one news: last week I met the people of WanCloud under WanXiang Blockchain, They told me that they are interested in Bitshares and hope to join the Bitshares community as an institution, they will provide witness and API server service, and hope to work with Bitshaers in other areas.

Source: http://www.econotimes.com/Wanxiang-Group-launches-new-blockchain-product-WanCloud-703699

“WanCloud is not just a technical platform; it’s an open innovation platform,” Haifeng Xi, CTO of WanCloud, told Bitcoin Magazine. “WanCloud is essentially a bridge between [the] global blockchain development community and China. We aim to connect the world to the Chinese developer community, Chinese startups and traditional Chinese businesses.”

WanCloud offers an ecosystem for open-source blockchain protocols to be localized and made easily accessible to the Chinese development community. The initial blockchain protocols include developers and consultants BlockApps, Factom and Stellar.

“This partnership is important for Factom China because it will make it easier for our product to reach and serve the needs of the end users in China. WanCloud is really adding value, helping us localize the platform for enterprise users and the large community of developers in China,” Zeen Zhang, CEO of Factom China, said.

[Permie]

It shouldn't be difficult for a monitoring tool to highlight witnesses that stops feeding prices and producing blocks at the same time, nor to check seed and API nodes availability.
This approach would help stake holders and proxies to identify witnesses with inadecuate infraestructure (misuse of budget) sooner or later, while adding complementary metrics to price feeds accuracy and plain missed blocks.

We have proxies mainly for two reasons, one is decentralization: holders with low stake and similar ideas can sum their voting weights through a proxy that represents them, and become influential along with bigger stake holders
The other reason is to counteract voter apathy. Regardless of their commitment, most users don't have the time, knowledge or updated information to actively vote on every decision. But paradoxically, at the moment it seems much easier to look into every new proposal and read its specific documentation to decide what to vote, than to periodically dig into the forum for reports from each proxy to have a general idea about who represents you better.
Cryptofresh ballot charts are very important, but centralized historic information about what proxies have voted is the only way for users to easily check their behavior, remain informed and able update proxies dynamically in front of big decisions, as intended.

 

@rnglab da real MVP

You have changed my opinion on witness pay. I think the Reserve Pool is there to be used, and should be.
Other projects need to rely on Venture Capital / Marketing investment, and those that have are currently doing very well in terms of MarketCap.
BitShares doesn't need VC, the shareholders can vote to invest in the ecosystem itself.
How much does 'dilution' actually seriously effects the price?
When the overall profitability, the fees paid, of the BitShares network is so small it's hard to determine the "true value" of BitShares.

I really want to see this higher market cap translate into a noticeable uptick in user-participation, transaction volume, account creation and liquidity on the exchange. Once there is a real user-base of fees being paid then it will be easier to determine how much of the Reserve-Pool can be spent without diluting the supply such that the price decreases unnecessarily.
BitShareholders should be able to review the BitShares-Big-Data in easy/quick to read Graphs, Charts and statistics to evaluate the state of the network for themselves.
Cryptofresh.com is blazing the trail on that front.



Worker proposals are indeed hard to get voted in, and as you have explained, Witness' pay is an easy entry-point for new devs to get involved.

Bravo.

[xeroc]

now I just share one news: last week I met the people of WanCloud under WanXiang Blockchain, They told me that they are interested in Bitshares and hope to join the Bitshares community as an institution, they will provide witness and API server service, and hope to work with Bitshaers in other areas.

That's wonderful news!

[bitcrab]

@rnglab thanks for your input, your idea is suggestive, we need to think more and do more.

now I just share one news: last week I met the people of WanCloud under WanXiang Blockchain, They told me that they are interested in Bitshares and hope to join the Bitshares community as an institution, they will provide witness and API server service, and hope to work with Bitshaers in other areas.

[xeroc]

I encourage witnesses  and candidates to run nodes and APIs also on testnet.

I asked for this months ago. Only 2 have made it.

I have also encouraged people to join efforts on witness tools. Besides me, only 3 are building public witness tools by now
I am pretty disappointed by the witnesses performance in general (except for block production). That is also the reason why I voted for a reduction of the number of witnesses .. to get rid of those that just setup the server and do nothing else. I understand that there are few that want to go further and build tools and I would love to encourage them, but I personally (today) prefer to go through a worker (many workers)
that pay those people to build those tools and APIs. Given that we now also have the tools to do USD denominated workers, I think this is the path forward - and not through a lot of money at all witnesses.
It also separates the jobs quite nicely.

[Thom]

!!!!!!!!!WOW!!!!!!!!

An astonishingly amazing and awesome post sir, I symbolically bow to thee!

So many great things in there, and I can't take issue with any,  V E R Y  well said.

Isn't it the professional path to follow? For how long would you trust a blockchain without a serious software release protocol?

This is the essence of how seriously this community understands what we're doing and what's at stake. Since the majority of stake is held in eastern hands, and since those hands and the minds they're connected to have only a small number of people who participate in the forum and on the Friday mumble sessions (and perhaps on the Telegram channels as well), it is extremely important for those in the east that DO follow and stay informed such as @bitcrab, to emphasize the principles @rnglab so comprehensively articulated here to their eastern brethren. Failure to do so could lead to irrational decisions harmful to the robustness and longevity of this amazing ecosystem. This is not just the responsibility of one group but it is an important directive for us all. Educate, educate educate. Market, market, market.

The western and the eastern communities must learn to communicate better and manifest a unified perspective towards the value of work that must be done to maintain and grow this platform. Can we do it? It is a significant challenge due to cultural and language obstacles, but it is so very important to try.

Who knows, perhaps the people of these two groups can demonstrate the power that peer-to-peer cooperation can make in the world. A spirit of humanity springing forth from the grassroots, not dictated by a ruling class that cannot possibly make effective and appropriate decisions for individuals. If the well being of individuals is threatened it will ultimately threaten the collective. This is why gubermnt will always be at odds with the best interests of the people.

I have a genuine respect for the eastern view that considers the well being of society above the individual. It is quite different than the the view held in the west, at least historically who emphasize the importance of the individual. It illustrates the need for balance, as both views have value.

It's very interesting that the 2 cultures are evolving away from their past orientation and embracing the contrary; people in the west moving more towards a collective orientation (i.e. socialism) and the east moving more towards individualism. This is a generalization of course, and the speed of change is not fast or ubiquitous within those collective populations.

I know that individualism is still strong and dominant for the western participants in this project, but we are learning to balance that with the needs of the many who make up this entire ecosystem.

I am rambling here and have inadvertently steered the focus away from the nuts and bolts, practical concerns expressed by @rnglab. But please consider the import of what we have expressed and may that lead to a brighter future for us all.

[rnglab]

    bitcrab I appreciate your involvement and your wake-up shakes in here.
Becoming a witness just to understand what it means, to make wiser proxy, committee and business decisions with that knowledge (when there was still practically no reward at all),  demonstrates strong commitment.

I agree on that block reward needs to be reduced in the short term.


    Besides that, it seems to me that there is no common knowledge about what it means to have DPOS block producers (maybe even from some proxies and committee members). That's ok so far, as we are building and running disruptive, real time, resilient, top edge technology, which means a lot to learn and to be aware of, permanently.

The stage of BitShares becoming truly decentralized and autonomous, and thereby fully functional, took more time than what many wanted to wait for. When main dev/s moved to work on Steem or other projects, they left their research and development for the public domain, while reducing the concentration of stake.
Core development was almost paused for more than a year.

A financial blockchain that is safely mutable through consensus (by design), requires strong involvement from block and feed producers. When core development gets active, witnesses can't just automate, monitor, apply fixes, and be always up to date on markets, BitShares channels, and ready to jump from bed. That's not enough when we want new core features and certain fixes to be implemented.

I think this is why:
we can't expect cryptonomex to run live code tests anymore. But guess what? Yes, we can ask witnesses to do that for free.
With core features and fixes to be applied soon, devs and witnesses will need to work closer. 
I won't hardfork before staging on a distributed testnet anymore.

Graphene/BitShares release was vertiginous,  Dan's full control over its code let an enthusiastic group of witnesses to apply patches on their producing nodes on the fly. When new issues were introduced as a consequence, urgent fixes were ready just in minutes, mostly from Dan.

It is hard to replicate every BitShares aspect on a development environment. When new code breaks so meting on main net, specially when it comes to networking/consensus, there's usually no time for testing (or there's no need to if the network forks or goes down).
That can become in a desperate need to have as many witnesses as possible dropping everything else in their lifes to start iterating builds and debugging until the problem gets solved and network consensus is gathered again.

That only happened pretty close after graphene/BitShares release, we had almost no user base then.
And we don't want to rely on a single person (or just a few) to take care of the network now.

I encourage witnesses  and candidates to run nodes and APIs also on testnet.



    Because Dan announced leaving Steemit to work on a new blockchain just in time with the distributed stress test, it's difficult to measure the influence of those results in the price that started to rise again after a long time at the very same moment of the stress test . However we have much more precise information now after the tests, we have publicly proved some aspects that potential users should check when choosing a platform (like being the fastest blockchain).
There's a lot of tests that could be highly beneficial, or even needed on a regular basis.

Isn't it the professional path to follow? For how long would you trust a blockchain without a serious software release protocol?

Will the mayority of witnesses agree on providing infrastructure for public testnet and to coordinate hardforks there, run tests, gather information, analyze logs, build again if fixes are needed and iterating as many times as required before deploying changes on mainnet?
On top of what they already do? Without knowing if there will be any pay next week because of price movements, lack of consensus regarding block reward, or maybe even because of some arbitrary or misinformed whale or proxy down vote?

How would everyone perceive a financial platform that pays the bare minimum to the specialized technicians that they choose to keep it up and safe?




    If fairly paid, the witness job can serve as the main entrance for developers as well. Devs who aspire to work on BitShares have a steep learning curve. They can bring some tool as a way to show their skills, but a lot more is required to get a worker proposal approved. If voted as a witnesses, besides getting specialized very fast, they'll be economically encouraged to continue development (while being a good witness), either to gain reputation for further worker proposals or just to help keeping the witness voted in by bringing needed extra services.

I'd also take into consideration if and how having tempting block rewards boosted the network efect for other chains.
 


    As a short term way to (be able to) adjust block rewards consistently, I'd suggest defining the minimum required and provable witness infrastructure first, this way we could track expenses and update that budget based on chaging hardware requirements. On top of that we can agree on a fixed salary in USD, and a time lapse in which the change in the average salary in BTS should trigger a (still manual) block reward correction.

Some thoughts on provable witness infrastructure:
 - main producer nodes both on main net and testnet. Seed nodes and public API nodes as needed. Those are already public-provable.
 - At least one failover node, in a different location: missing to many blocks in a row can be interpreted as a lack of failover nodes or as running them on the same datacenter.
 - Independent node/s to produce price feeds (also in a different location): if a witness stops publishing feeds and producing blocks at the same time there's most probably no independent price feeds node or they are in the same datacenter.

It shouldn't be difficult for a monitoring tool to highlight witnesses that stops feeding prices and producing blocks at the same time, nor to check seed and API nodes availability.
This approach would help stake holders and proxies to identify witnesses with inadecuate infraestructure (misuse of budget) sooner or later, while adding complementary metrics to price feeds accuracy and plain missed blocks.

I see no sense at all in proxies asking for hardware specifications and locations (or a fast response in an arbitrary thread) to determine who will be voted for witness. I hope there's no need to explain why at this point.
Best candidates should have a chance to produce blocks and feeds for an evaluating period, only then their aptitudes and commitment can be measured.



    For all this to work we may also need better proxy monitoring tools, so stakeholders can easily check historic participation and decisions taken by proxies, and update their votes when needed without doing a deep research on every proxy for each topic.

We have proxies mainly for two reasons, one is decentralization: holders with low stake and similar ideas can sum their voting weights through a proxy that represents them, and become influential along with bigger stake holders
The other reason is to counteract voter apathy. Regardless of their commitment, most users don't have the time, knowledge or updated information to actively vote on every decision. But paradoxically, at the moment it seems much easier to look into every new proposal and read its specific documentation to decide what to vote, than to periodically dig into the forum for reports from each proxy to have a general idea about who represents you better.
Cryptofresh ballot charts are very important, but centralized historic information about what proxies have voted is the only way for users to easily check their behavior, remain informed and able update proxies dynamically in front of big decisions, as intended.



    Sorry for the wall of text. I'll edit with better formating later. It started as a short comment and ended up with this.
I've  been a witness since graphene release, not for the block reward (just enough to pay the bills) nor speculating on the price ( way easier to buy cheap). I assumed the responsibility for this role because I love the technology and its potential to disrupt many things.

The potential of this role to become a real job, being paid to work on something I advocate, is actually an incentive. But this beast is growing really fast and getting harder to feed. I don't like to do things halfway, it seems it will be demanding a lot more time soon, and I don't have much to spare. In order not to risk my real and stable incomes I should decide whether to maintain this position, based on what the consensus determines regarding the value of this work. Either way I'll stay here as much as I can, you won't get rid of me so easily 

[alt]

seems jerryliu had fixed the feed price problem,
I have vote again.

[vegolino]

I have remove my vote for witness jerryliu.

But I know bitcrab is very busy for help bitshares these days,
he had contact many new partner(include exchange, ico, bitCNY gateway) to join bitshares.
and attend some meetup in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu for Bitshares
he is the best  wealth for Bitshares,
I need our witness with a high quality
So I will vote for jerryliu again when he resovle the feed price problem.

 

[xeroc]

I have remove my vote for witness jerryliu.

But I know bitcrab is very busy for help bitshares these days,
he had contact many new partner(include exchange, ico, bitCNY gateway) to join bitshares.
and attend some meetup in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu for Bitshares
he is the best  wealth for Bitshares,
I need our witness with a high quality
So I will vote for jerryliu again when he resovle the feed price problem.

[Thom]

I have remove my vote for witness jerryliu.

But I know bitcrab is very busy for help bitshares these days,
he had contact many new partner(include exchange, ico, bitCNY gateway) to join bitshares.
and attend some meetup in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu for Bitshares
he is the best  wealth for Bitshares,
I need our witness with a high quality
So I will vote for jerryliu again when he resovle the feed price problem.

[alt]

I have remove my vote for witness jerryliu.

But I know bitcrab is very busy for help bitshares these days,
he had contact many new partner(include exchange, ico, bitCNY gateway) to join bitshares.
and attend some meetup in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu for Bitshares
he is the best  wealth for Bitshares,
I need our witness with a high quality
So I will vote for jerryliu again when he resovle the feed price problem.

[Permie]

@bitcrab, you truly help this community, and I am very grateful for that.

fortunatelly now in a whole the price feeding of witnesses work well so my absent do not lead to obvious worse consequence...

What would happen if other witnesses used this same excuse? It's not like you can't afford to hire someone to resolve the issue for you.

I won't keep hounding you about this but if others do I think it's deserved.

Perhaps you should consider giving up your witness slot so others who have the time and are able to perform according to the standards you yourself have described  have a chance to.

Please respect the Witness job and take steps to correct this as soon as possible.

I've only just learned of this grievance with bitcrab, but if witness' responsibilities are being neglected then it would be better if the witness-slot was given up to the market to find a better replacement.

Does bitcrab have enough proxy votes to keep himself elected?

I know you have put a lot of your time, effort and financial faith into Bitshares bitcrab, and I am grateful for it.

But being a witness doesn't bring you any significant profit (or shouldn't). Witness pay is to hire an employee to manage computer servers that can provide services to the Shareholders. If you haven't got time for that, why do you still want to remain elected?

[Thom]

@bitcrab, you truly help this community, and I am very grateful for that.

fortunatelly now in a whole the price feeding of witnesses work well so my absent do not lead to obvious worse consequence...

What would happen if other witnesses used this same excuse? It's not like you can't afford to hire someone to resolve the issue for you.

I won't keep hounding you about this but if others do I think it's deserved.

Perhaps you should consider giving up your witness slot so others who have the time and are able to perform according to the standards you yourself have described  have a chance to.

Please respect the Witness job and take steps to correct this as soon as possible.

[pc]

now I would like to propose to adjust the witness pay to 1BTS/block immediatelly.

I am not a enough skilled programmer/system administrator, and I am very busy these days, after I updated my witness node I also tried to do feeding with btsprice, but not sure what happen I kept failing to do so...
fortunatelly now in a whole the price feeding of witnesses work well so my absent do not lead to obvious worse consequence...
I'll try to fix my price feeding scripts when I have time...

I see you're still voting for your own witness. Would you accept your own performance from others as well?

[bitcrab]

I don't disagree with your request @bitcrab, I would not oppose it.

However, I would like to point out that you are not exactly setting a good example for witnesses to follow.

You were the one who helped promote the rise in witness pay and I supported you in that.

I am quite sad your feeds are broken AND you missed a huge number of blocks, that's not acting responsibly towards your role as a witness, and it makes us all look bad. Please try to do better and get your feeds running again!

I am sorry for the bad behavior of my witness in recent past.
I am not a enough skilled programmer/system administrator, and I am very busy these days, after I updated my witness node I also tried to do feeding with btsprice, but not sure what happen I kept failing to do so...
fortunatelly now in a whole the price feeding of witnesses work well so my absent do not lead to obvious worse consequence...
I'll try to fix my price feeding scripts when I have time...

[Thom]

I don't disagree with your request @bitcrab, I would not oppose it.

However, I would like to point out that you are not exactly setting a good example for witnesses to follow.

You were the one who helped promote the rise in witness pay and I supported you in that.

I am quite sad your feeds are broken AND you missed a huge number of blocks, that's not acting responsibly towards your role as a witness, and it makes us all look bad. Please try to do better and get your feeds running again!

[bitcrab]

now I would like to propose to adjust the witness pay to 1BTS/block immediatelly.

from March to now, the BTS price went up 10 times and the witness price doubled in BTS, generally speaking we can say that now the witness is obviously overpaid.

it is not easy to get a perfect witness pay infrastructure, and we can continue the discuss on this topic, but at the same time, I think we need to adjust the witness payment to more reasonable and acceptable level immediatelly.

the number that come to my brain firstly is 1BTS/block, in current price it means about $1720/month for a witness.

I feel this payment  is enough to pay the cost for a witness,  and I don't think $1720/month is a overpaid salary to a witness that do good job in block generation, software update, price feeding...we need to provide a good salary, not a lowest salary.

and surely this is not the final witness payment, we can review this number continuely when price change a lot. but now I think we need to reduce the price immediatelly.

it will end or at least elimate most of the complaint to current witness payment, and will save much budget for worker proposals.

and this will tell the world: Bitshares team are able to consider globally, they focus more on the benefit of the whole community but not the benefit of a small group.

any ideas? please let me know, if there's few objection, I think we can apply the proposal in short time, otherwise, maybe we also need vote to decide.

[ripplexiaoshan]

 I agree now the witness is a little overpaid , but instead of reducing the salary of witness, I would rather see more APIs provided by witness, as we need a more fluent network.

[Chris4210]

I am also supporting to adjust the witness pay to maintain the best possible security for the network.

I would prefer to see more witness reports and comparisons between the different witnesses quality of work. As a shareholder, I am ok to pay more for witnesses when they also do a good job. A high salary should attract more active witnesses who compete for the top of the list. If we still see no voting activity from the shareholders, then we all need to raise more awareness for voting.

To move forward, I suggest to monitor the BTS price for a few more days and adjust the witness pay if the price further goes up. Right now we hit a new floor of 0.039 USD .

[sahkan]

now we need more good API server all around the world, I think providing good API server can be a plus for a witness.

I couldn't agree more. We need more access points to provide better experience for users.

[bitcrab]

from my side it's ok to reduce the witness pay to, say, 1BTS/block.

but I do not agree that it's easy to do the witness job well enough.

responding in time, upgrading while necessary, providing exact enough price feed... always need to pay time and efforts to keep the witness running well.

now we need more good API server all around the world, I think providing good API server can be a plus for a witness.

[Bhuz]

Sorry for OT, I will take more care posting.
I think I started the post with "There is a problem with parts of the jobs the witnesses do, and if more money can solve it, it should" and that went a little to far with my post. Will come back when I'm more familiar with everything.

Ahah, no worries!

I hope to have clarified a little bit your concerns...

Inviato dal mio Nexus 5X utilizzando Tapatalk

[8ejM]

Hi,
…

Hi and welcome!

First, this is completely Off Topic, you should had opened a new Topic and post your concerns there, not hijack this thread...
…

Sorry for OT, I will take more care posting.
I think I started the post with "There is a problem with parts of the jobs the witnesses do, and if more money can solve it, it should" and that went a little to far with my post. Will come back when I'm more familiar with everything.

[Bhuz]

1- Should we consider how much the witness "ideal" guy is worth on the real world? (ie. how much a (even Junior) SysAdmin gets paid)

Yes, BUT running a witness is far from a full-time job. When I was a witness I was happy with the payment, despite the much lower rewards and BTS price. I had a few night shifts in the early days of the chain, but since then the node was mostly running on its own.

Admittedly, the work load on witnesses is somewhat higher today, not so much from running a node but mostly from the price feeds. Apparently feed sources are unreliable at times, and there is a certain lack of consensus on what the "correct" price for certain assets is.

I agree it isn't a full-time job, even tho I find myself spending a lot of my time for it, way more than the 5hours/month estimated in another thread

2- Should we consider the 24/7/365 requirement aspect of the witness job? (you can sleep, have week-ends and holidays, but you still have to "go to the office" in a timely manner no matter what the day and time is)

The problem here is that we (the shareholders) cannot enfore what rules we impose on witnesses. We can *expect* a witness to respond in time, but we cannot claim damages if he doesn't. It is therefore unreasonable to pay them as if it was a regular 24/7 job.

I think shareholders and proxies could remove their votes for those witnesses that do not respond in time (ie, still offline after 12/24 hours), in that way they can expect and "enforce" it
Plus, the reference for the 24/7 doesn't have to mean to pay them as a 24/7 job, but maybe add a little bonus on top of the decided base pay

3- Should we consider how much other blockchains spend (invest?) for their own security? (ie. how much BTC, ETH, etc spend, compared to market-cap) (even other dpos like STEEM and soon PEERPLAYS)

Yes, BUT the fact that the cost for security is much lower in DPOS than in POW chains has always been highlighted as a big pro for BitShares. So don't let us drop that.

4- Should we consider the current profitability of the DEX DAC?

No. The chain is still running far below its saturation level. At this point it is important to attract more users. Sacrificing service quality for a minor increase in profitability is a bad idea IMO. (Remember that witness pay is a relatively small part of the current spendings).

Maybe more tough (and subjective?) questions:
5- How much is the whole blockchain task, security and decentralization worth? (this is what a witness really do, from a pure blockchain pov) (looking at point 3 may help)

IMO the best judge for this is the market. :-) Obviously, the service provided by witnesses is essential for the existence of the blockchain. But that doesn't mean we should all hand over our holdings to the witnesses.

Remember that BitShares is a DAC, and whatever the C stands for, it will try to get the best possible service from witnesses for the least possible cost.

6- Should 4, and particularly 4b, be able to overcome 5?
n/a

I overall agree with your points, thanks for the thoughtful reply

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't read that far. :-/

That means steem pays 25*0.189 STEEM per 63 seconds (one round), or 25*0.189 / 63 * 86400 * 30 * 0.562 = 109,252.80 USD/month.

You right, I didn't considered the x5 of the runner-up. I will edit my post, thanks!

[Bhuz]

Hi,

I new to Bitshares, so I may fully informed about everything.  I started buying BTS a few days ago, mainly because of bitUSD. I read through the white papers and were especially excited about the pegged assets. I went on an bought a bunch of BTS. Some days later I wanted to buy some bitUSD and bitCNY. I was and still am very confused about market prices below settlement price since I red in the white paper that pegged assets are expected to be traded at at least the price of the underlying asset.
My excitement for bts took a hit, since it didn't seem to behave as outlined in the white paper and it seemed that a lot more market knowledge was needed to buy at a reasonable price and don't get cheated.
Then I learned about the page where pricefeeds where shown and was shocked that feeds are not updated in manners of seconds but minutes, hours, days and even weeks. I saw forced settlements and witnessed a change in settlement price just a minute later. This made me very suspicious.
Then a learned about complaints about witnesses that don't update the price feed and are still official sources of price data.

At the end I stopped trading and will wait till I gathered enough information about the market. I simply don't really trust the data at the moment.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I think its a typical example for someone new to bts. And some will just leave when they feel that something is weird. It is very important that problems like proper price feeds are fixed. When the cryptomarket sees a correction people will give BTS as a possibility for cashing out in fiat a try. If by then these problems are not fixed. We will loose a huge amount of potential users, that never will come back.

If the problem can be solved by throwing more money at it, take both hands a throw as lot money as needed.

A more modular approach might also be a way to achieve better results. I don't know about all tasks of a witness. But would price feed data a task of its own, one could easily drop everybody with poor data quality from the list. Removing bad quality data sources is something a algorithm can do well, you would not have to start voting campaigns on the forum for that.

Hi and welcome!

First, this is completely Off Topic, you should had opened a new Topic and post your concerns there, not hijack this thread...

Anyway, you can always trade in the market for whatever price you want/you think is right, pricefeed doesn't really matter for that purpose. You decide on what prices to sell and to buy.
Pricefeeds from witnesses are used only for forced settlements that get "activated" after 24hours, so having a pricefeeds that updates itself in minutes isn't really a problem...it actually could prevent market manipulation.
The blockchain already remove "bad data quality" by using the median of all published pricefeeds, plus every witnesses use different price sources and publish the mean/median/weighted result based on his settings

[8ejM]

Hi,

I new to Bitshares, so I may fully informed about everything.  I started buying BTS a few days ago, mainly because of bitUSD. I read through the white papers and were especially excited about the pegged assets. I went on an bought a bunch of BTS. Some days later I wanted to buy some bitUSD and bitCNY. I was and still am very confused about market prices below settlement price since I red in the white paper that pegged assets are expected to be traded at at least the price of the underlying asset.
My excitement for bts took a hit, since it didn't seem to behave as outlined in the white paper and it seemed that a lot more market knowledge was needed to buy at a reasonable price and don't get cheated.
Then I learned about the page where pricefeeds where shown and was shocked that feeds are not updated in manners of seconds but minutes, hours, days and even weeks. I saw forced settlements and witnessed a change in settlement price just a minute later. This made me very suspicious.
Then a learned about complaints about witnesses that don't update the price feed and are still official sources of price data.

At the end I stopped trading and will wait till I gathered enough information about the market. I simply don't really trust the data at the moment.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I think its a typical example for someone new to bts. And some will just leave when they feel that something is weird. It is very important that problems like proper price feeds are fixed. When the cryptomarket sees a correction people will give BTS as a possibility for cashing out in fiat a try. If by then these problems are not fixed. We will loose a huge amount of potential users, that never will come back.

If the problem can be solved by throwing more money at it, take both hands a throw as lot money as needed.

A more modular approach might also be a way to achieve better results. I don't know about all tasks of a witness. But would price feed data a task of its own, one could easily drop everybody with poor data quality from the list. Removing bad quality data sources is something a algorithm can do well, you would not have to start voting campaigns on the forum for that. 

[pc]

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't read that far. :-/

That means steem pays 25*0.189 STEEM per 63 seconds (one round), or 25*0.189 / 63 * 86400 * 30 * 0.562 = 109,252.80 USD/month.

[abit]

Thanks for starting this discussion.

One remark - I think steem witnesses are being paid like 0.94 STEEM/block, not 0.189.

The backup witnesses in Steem get paid 5x per block in comparison to the top witnesses. They produce much less blocks per day though.

[pc]

Thanks for starting this discussion.

One remark - I think steem witnesses are being paid like 0.94 STEEM/block, not 0.189.

To answer your questions:

1- Should we consider how much the witness "ideal" guy is worth on the real world? (ie. how much a (even Junior) SysAdmin gets paid)

Yes, BUT running a witness is far from a full-time job. When I was a witness I was happy with the payment, despite the much lower rewards and BTS price. I had a few night shifts in the early days of the chain, but since then the node was mostly running on its own.

Admittedly, the work load on witnesses is somewhat higher today, not so much from running a node but mostly from the price feeds. Apparently feed sources are unreliable at times, and there is a certain lack of consensus on what the "correct" price for certain assets is.

2- Should we consider the 24/7/365 requirement aspect of the witness job? (you can sleep, have week-ends and holidays, but you still have to "go to the office" in a timely manner no matter what the day and time is)

The problem here is that we (the shareholders) cannot enfore what rules we impose on witnesses. We can *expect* a witness to respond in time, but we cannot claim damages if he doesn't. It is therefore unreasonable to pay them as if it was a regular 24/7 job.

It has always been my understanding that market rules apply here - offer a reasonable payment, then let witnesses apply for the job and fire those who deliver bad service. Increase payment offer if you don't get a sufficient number of acceptable quality candidates.

3- Should we consider how much other blockchains spend (invest?) for their own security? (ie. how much BTC, ETH, etc spend, compared to market-cap) (even other dpos like STEEM and soon PEERPLAYS)

Yes, BUT the fact that the cost for security is much lower in DPOS than in POW chains has always been highlighted as a big pro for BitShares. So don't let us drop that.

4- Should we consider the current profitability of the DEX DAC?

No. The chain is still running far below its saturation level. At this point it is important to attract more users. Sacrificing service quality for a minor increase in profitability is a bad idea IMO. (Remember that witness pay is a relatively small part of the current spendings).

Maybe more tough (and subjective?) questions:
5- How much is the whole blockchain task, security and decentralization worth? (this is what a witness really do, from a pure blockchain pov) (looking at point 3 may help)

IMO the best judge for this is the market. :-) Obviously, the service provided by witnesses is essential for the existence of the blockchain. But that doesn't mean we should all hand over our holdings to the witnesses.

Remember that BitShares is a DAC, and whatever the C stands for, it will try to get the best possible service from witnesses for the least possible cost.

6- Should 4, and particularly 4b, be able to overcome 5?
n/a

[Thom]

If instead you want to decide what a witness pay should be without consider what his job is really about and what it is worth for the blockchain etc, then I am not interested in the discussion...

Thanks Bhuz for taking the time to post this. I sure hope we see more discussion and input from a wider audience.

So far I don't see any informed comments. No appreciation for the Witness job, and only the "Politics of Envy". Lot's of emotionally charged opinion but not many facts.

I only hope the shareholder collective will realize just how important the Witness role is, and make informed decisions concerning Witness pay.

I could reiterate many of the points I've raised in other posts concerning pay, but I will not repeat myself now, but rather I will wait to chime in after more informed comments appear here, if they do.

I am not here to defend the current pay level of Witnesses, despite being a Witness. I believe the pay is higher than it needs to be. I will withhold my opinion as to what I believe a reasonable pay level should be. It will be more than pure altruism however, I will say that! I had enough of that for almost an entire year!

I gotta say, some of the remarks here infuriate my sensibilities!

[Bhuz]

Expense ratio has no relationship to market cap indeed. No matter how much the price is, reward per block per month / total supply is almost fixed in other crypto projects. But in BitShares we're able to adjust.

Code: [Select]

monthly_expense_ratio
= monthly_expense_rewards / market_cap
= (tokens_per_block * blocks_per_month * token_price) / (total_supply * token_price)
= tokens_per_block * blocks_per_month / total_supply


You are right.
I still wanted to show USD values tho, since that was the actual thing that started the complaints about the witness pay


Inviato dal mio Nexus 5X utilizzando Tapatalk

[abit]

Since the last Committee Proposal went through (fee-adjustement), @xeroc remembered and asked the Committee tu discuss about the witness pay, and more precisely what is a rational payment for a witness job
The following is the reply I wrote on the telegram committee group and, as suggested by @abit soon after, I am now posting it here too, for a wider discussion with the community

******
These are just inputs... there surely are more questions that may be worth asking and answering... please comment and discuss them, modify or add your own

If instead you want to decide what a witness pay should be without consider what his job is really about and what it is worth for the blockchain etc, then I am not interested in the discussion... I will vote for whatever the committee or shareholders decide, but probably without giving any meaningful input or personal thought


Questions we should answer:
1- Should we consider how much the witness "ideal" guy is worth on the real world? (ie. how much a (even Junior) SysAdmin gets paid)
2- Should we consider the 24/7/365 requirement aspect of the witness job? (you can sleep, have week-ends and holidays, but you still have to "go to the office" in a timely manner no matter what the day and time is)
3- Should we consider how much other blockchains spend (invest?) for their own security? (ie. how much BTC, ETH, etc spend, compared to market-cap) (even other dpos like STEEM and soon PEERPLAYS)
4- Should we consider the current profitability of the DEX DAC?
   4a- If so, should it be able to greatly increase what the points 1,2,3 would suggest?
   4b- If so, should it be able to greatly decrease (or even reset) what the points 1,2,3 would suggest? (ie, no profit for the DEX == no profit for the witnesses --> witness pay = costs of running a witness)

Maybe more tough (and subjective?) questions:
5- How much is the whole blockchain task, security and decentralization worth? (this is what a witness really do, from a pure blockchain pov) (looking at point 3 may help)
6- Should 4, and particularly 4b, be able to overcome 5?

Plus:
IMHO we shouldn't start from a number to later check if that is sustainable for a witness, but rather start from what an adequate pay for the job is, and only later set the pay...
So, witness pay = job pay + costs (adequate/deserved witness net income + costs that the job itself requires)
******


PS:
BTW, it's basically one year that I pay my BTS witness costs thanks to STEEM... if it was for BTS itself I wouldn't have earned nothing, or worst I would be at loss...
I hope this will be read and understood by all those people that were jumping and screaming around as soon as bts (finally) rose in value, to point the finger to the witnesses that, suddenly, were "earning too much" thanks to their "unbelievable, unaccettable and absurd pay"
I also hope this will be considered for choosing an adequate BTS witness pay


_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Some data about point 3 at the time of this post, from coinmarketcap, considering current rewards
BTC:
Market-cap: $25,617,582,661
Price: $1570.05
Monthly blockchain expenses: 12.5(btc/block) * 144(blocks/day) * 30(days/month) * 1570(usd/btc) = $84.780.000
BTC expenses / BTC market-cap --> 84.780.000 / 25.617.000.000 = 0.0033

STEEM:
Market-cap: $132,000.000
Price: $0.562
Monthly blockchain expenses: 0.189 (steem/block) * 864000(block/month) * 0.562 (usd/steem) = $91.800
STEEM expenses / STEEM market-cap --> 91.800 / 132.000.000 = 0.0007

BTS:
Market-cap: $95,908,469
Price: $0.036894
Monthly blockchain expenses: 3600 (bts/hour) * 24(hours/day) * 30(days/month) * 0.037(usd/bts) = $95.900
BTS expenses / BTS market-cap --> 95.900 / 95.900.000 = 0.001

This means, compared to their market-cap:
BTS current expenses is less than 1/3 of BTC's expenses
STEEM current expenses is about 30% lower than BTS's current expenses
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


If interested in the matter, please comment, discuss, and share your thoughts. Thanks

Expense ratio has no relationship to market cap indeed. No matter how much the price is, reward per block per month / total supply is almost fixed in other crypto projects. But in BitShares we're able to adjust.

Code: [Select]

monthly_expense_ratio
= monthly_expense_rewards / market_cap
= (tokens_per_block * blocks_per_month * token_price) / (total_supply * token_price)
= tokens_per_block * blocks_per_month / total_supply


[CoinHoarder]

Witnesses should be paid nothing, zilch... nada.

In such a scenario, they will be compensated from the value rising due to the amount of BTS in circulation being lowered from burned fees and the token value rising due to demand staying the same (or increasing due to deflation).

$95,900 a month is ridiculous for  23 delegates. That is what... ~$4169 a month for doing nothing? Give me a break..

1- Should we consider how much the witness "ideal" guy is worth on the real world? (ie. how much a (even Junior) SysAdmin gets paid)

No, running a witness node is stupidly easy. Junior level SysAdmin skills are not a necessity. I could write directions easy enough to follow that my grandma could do it.

2- Should we consider the 24/7/365 requirement aspect of the witness job? (you can sleep, have week-ends and holidays, but you still have to "go to the office" in a timely manner no matter what the day and time is)

No. When was the last time witnesses had to do anything? They haven't even needed to update their nodes in what... over a year? lol. There is zero maintenance required due to the lack of non-GUI bitshares development.

3- Should we consider how much other blockchains spend (invest?) for their own security? (ie. how much BTC, ETH, etc spend, compared to market-cap) (even other dpos like STEEM and soon PEERPLAYS)

Since when has Bitshares cared about what other blockchains spend securing their blockchain? Especially when 99% of them are doing it wrong. That is one of the biggest selling points for dPoS... it is cost efficient.

4- Should we consider the current profitability of the DEX DAC?
   4a- If so, should it be able to greatly increase what the points 1,2,3 would suggest?
   4b- If so, should it be able to greatly decrease (or even reset) what the points 1,2,3 would suggest? (ie, no profit for the DEX == no profit for the witnesses --> witness pay = costs of running a witness)

No, it requires the same amount of work for witnesses no matter the profitability of the DEX.

Maybe more tough (and subjective?) questions:
5- How much is the whole blockchain task, security and decentralization worth? (this is what a witness really do, from a pure blockchain pov) (looking at point 3 may help)

Raising witness pay does not increase the decentralization of the dPoS consensus algo. Neither does lowering it, as you will always have the same amount of delegates.

Security with dPoS is obtainable without delegates leeching off of the ecosystem. I plan to release a dPoS-based coin to prove this point (that is, if no one beats me to it). dPoS is the ideal consensus algorithm for a deflationary asset, which is what Bitshares was initially championed as. Unfortunately, Bitshares has wavered many times from that path with much dilution through mergers etc.

[Bhuz]

Since the last Committee Proposal went through (fee-adjustement), @xeroc remembered and asked the Committee tu discuss about the witness pay, and more precisely what is a rational payment for a witness job
The following is the reply I wrote on the telegram committee group and, as suggested by @abit soon after, I am now posting it here too, for a wider discussion with the community

******
These are just inputs... there surely are more questions that may be worth asking and answering... please comment and discuss them, modify or add your own

If instead you want to decide what a witness pay should be without consider what his job is really about and what it is worth for the blockchain etc, then I am not interested in the discussion... I will vote for whatever the committee or shareholders decide, but probably without giving any meaningful input or personal thought


Questions we should answer:
1- Should we consider how much the witness "ideal" guy is worth on the real world? (ie. how much a (even Junior) SysAdmin gets paid)
2- Should we consider the 24/7/365 requirement aspect of the witness job? (you can sleep, have week-ends and holidays, but you still have to "go to the office" in a timely manner no matter what the day and time is)
3- Should we consider how much other blockchains spend (invest?) for their own security? (ie. how much BTC, ETH, etc spend, compared to market-cap) (even other dpos like STEEM and soon PEERPLAYS)
4- Should we consider the current profitability of the DEX DAC?
   4a- If so, should it be able to greatly increase what the points 1,2,3 would suggest?
   4b- If so, should it be able to greatly decrease (or even reset) what the points 1,2,3 would suggest? (ie, no profit for the DEX == no profit for the witnesses --> witness pay = costs of running a witness)

Maybe more tough (and subjective?) questions:
5- How much is the whole blockchain task, security and decentralization worth? (this is what a witness really do, from a pure blockchain pov) (looking at point 3 may help)
6- Should 4, and particularly 4b, be able to overcome 5?

Plus:
IMHO we shouldn't start from a number to later check if that is sustainable for a witness, but rather start from what an adequate pay for the job is, and only later set the pay...
So, witness pay = job pay + costs (adequate/deserved witness net income + costs that the job itself requires)
******


PS:
BTW, it's basically one year that I pay my BTS witness costs thanks to STEEM... if it was for BTS itself I wouldn't have earned nothing, or worst I would be at loss...
I hope this will be read and understood by all those people that were jumping and screaming around as soon as bts (finally) rose in value, to point the finger to the witnesses that, suddenly, were "earning too much" thanks to their "unbelievable, unaccettable and absurd pay"
I also hope this will be considered for choosing an adequate BTS witness pay


_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Some data about point 3 at the time of this post, from coinmarketcap, considering current rewards
BTC:
Market-cap: $25,617,582,661
Price: $1570.05
Monthly blockchain expenses: 12.5(btc/block) * 144(blocks/day) * 30(days/month) * 1570(usd/btc) = $84,780,000
BTC expenses / BTC market-cap --> 84,780,000 / 25,617,000,000 = 0.0033

STEEM:
Market-cap: $132,000.000
Price: $0.562
Monthly blockchain expenses: 25 * 0.189 / 63 * 86400 * 30 * 0.562 = $109,252.80 (edited to consider the x5 runner-up cost)
STEEM expenses / STEEM market-cap --> 91,800 / 132,000,000 = 0.00083

BTS:
Market-cap: $95,908,469
Price: $0.036894
Monthly blockchain expenses: 3600 (bts/hour) * 24(hours/day) * 30(days/month) * 0.037(usd/bts) = $95,900
BTS expenses / BTS market-cap --> 95,900 / 95,900,000 = 0.001

This means, compared to their market-cap:
BTS current expenses is less than 1/3 of BTC's expenses
STEEM current expenses is about 15% lower than BTS's current expenses
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


If interested in the matter, please comment, discuss, and share your thoughts. Thanks