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.