What an incredible few days. Hard Fork 20 was the best thing that ever happened to the STEEM blockchain.
Yesterday's post dealt with my conclusions about some of what is taking place. This expressed what I believe the benefits of the hard fork to be.
Today, I am going to deal with why the fiasco that took place was the best thing to ever happen to STEEM. The hard fork, itself, is going to do wonders for STEEM yet it might pale in comparison to what else took place.
There is a lot of finger pointing, whining, and complaining. Many are upset with what took place. Here are some of the sentiments expressed both on STEEM and Telegram.
STEEM is done.
Steemit failed us.
The Whales want to destroy STEEM.
It is only for the rich to get richer.
They want to get rid of the Planktons.
I can't do anything.
Steemit are liars, crooks, and/or incompetent.
I could go on but you get the point.
Now I am going to lay it all on the line for everyone.
We getting exactly what is deserved. The truth of the matter is it is our own fault. We created this so it is time for us to own up to it..
This is blockchain, We all need to learn what is going on.
Steemit.com does not run nor update the blockchain. Yes, they are the ones who write the code for it. They also can make suggestions and try to influence what is adopted. However, what took place is not their fault.
Steemit.com cannot implement anything.
The Witnesses appeared to be at fault. In fact, I mistakenly called them out. But the more I think about it, this is incorrect. Sure, they might have been ignorant to the testnet, too distracted to fully use it, or too complacent. At the same time, they might have been nervous about going counter to what Steemit.com suggested.
Whatever the reasons, this is not the Witnesses fault either.
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The responsibility lies with us. This is our blockchain. In the past I wrote about dedication and commitment to the blockchain. With that, comes responsibility. The fact that we absolve ourselves of it means we get what we deserve.
One of the biggest advantages to the blockchain is that there is no central entity that runs it or owns it. We are the ones who are the stakeholders. This includes those with 1M SP or the newbie with .001 SP. Both are stakeholders in the ecosystem and have, not only a say, but a responsibility, to what is going on.
Now some of you might be thinking that I am getting a bit too intense about this. After all, this is only a social media site. Placing responsibility for an online place where I post and upvote on top of everything else in my life is absurd.
Well if it is only a social media site, why the upset about the hard fork issues? If that is the case, then it matters little.
You see, people cannot have it both ways. If this is just a social hangout site, then whatever happens means little. We all have been on sites that ended up shutting down. We moved on, not the end of the world.
If, however, STEEM is a lot more than that, and judging by the reactions, it is, then we have the responsibility to step up our game and do our part.
The witnesses are the ones who decided to adopt the software upgrade that is Hard Fork 20. They are the line of defense between us, the community, and Steemit.com. Yes, as it turns out, things went poorly and the witnesses embraced something they should not have (at least in the manner/timing it was done).
Yet, the truth is we are the ones who put them in that position. Whatever the faults of the witnesses, they are only there because of us. We are the ones who have control over that.
The process starts with voting. This is where the STEEM community completely fails. Ironic, the ones screaming the loudest, just from looking up a few accounts, are the ones who seem not to vote at all. If you cannot even be bothered to vote for a few witnesses, how can you complain about what is happening?
Worse than not voting at all is upvoting 30 witnesses on a whim and then forgetting about it. This is another sign of absolving ourselves of responsibility.
I mean seriously, if one is renting a place, and a pipe breaks, is that person going to sit and complain about or do something about it? Doesn't one get off the couch to shut the water off? Isn't it true that one gets his or her stuff out of the way? Perhaps grabs a few towels to dry things up.
Why does this person do it? Because he or she is a stakeholder.
Yet, we seem not have the same mindset with STEEM.
Source
Of course, many will say that they have so little voting power it makes no difference. That could be true on an individual basis but on a collective basis, votes from a few thousand Planktons could move a witness from 22 to 20 or vice versa. That is a huge difference in that witness' standing.
Voting is not the only thing that is required. How much do we vet these witnesses? Those without voting power, did you write a post or two about particular witness or asking some questions? It could be true that nobody would read it since you have no following yet, if you use the #witness tag, there are many who go through that.
There are other ways to get to these witnesses. @dragosoura is a prime example. He is a witness who posts a few times a day. If someone went to one of his posts and asked a witness question, I feel certain he would answer it. If the subject was important enough, he most likely would turn it into a post. And I can assure you he would not look at one's STEEM Power to determine whether he should answer or not.
Discord is also a mecca for witnesses. Utopian has a discord channel where a lot of witnesses hang out. I do not frequent it since they speak a lot of geek but that does not mean it is inaccessible. Many of you heard me mention @mcfarhat, the main developer for @actifit. He is very active in the @actifit Discord room, approachable by anyone. Do you know where else he frequents? The Utopian room since he does speak geek. If anyone posed a question to him about anything to do with witnesses, I am sure he would not hesitate to ask it on our behalf.
I believe there are many others on this blockchain who would do the same thing.
There are just a couple ideas off the top of my head about ways we all can be more attentive to what is taking place here. It is a mistake to blame others when this is our blockchain. We are the stakeholders. Yes, so are the witnesses but we are the ones who need to hold them accountable.
@wwf had a wonderful post about this. He is one with an IT background and yet he failed to address certain issues. As noted in his post, he will not make that mistake again. The next proposed hard fork, he clearly stated he will be asking the hard questions. Good for him. That is him taking responsibility for his part.
https://busy.org/@wwf/trust-is-a-fickle-creature
For all the issues, Hard Fork 20 being such a cluster-you-know-what put us all on notice. It is time to turn that into the positive. What are we going to learn from it AND, more importantly, what will we do differently? This is how we move passed this in an upward manner.
Fortunately, we are already seeing the benefits to this:
Here is a video with @lukestokes who is very candid about what took place and his views on the situation. He owns up to his part in, perhaps, not doing all he could with the testnet.
https://busy.org/@lukestokes/steem-is-broken-a-conversation-with-sida-of-partiko
Here is a post by @aggroed, of @steemmonsters fame, talking about the Hard Fork and the benefits. He owns up to the fact that the rollout was not great in the title. Nevertheless, this does provide insight into why he thinks the RC/HF is a good thing.
https://busy.org/@aggroed/hf20-has-incredible-potential-the-roll-out-has-been-less-than-awesome
And by the way, he hosts a Witness Forum where anyone is free to join in. Here, again, we see a resource available to us. Perhaps more Steemians will participate from now on since we saw what happens when we are remiss in our own responsibility.
https://busy.org/@aggroed/steem-witness-forum-tomorrow
@reggaemuffin wrote an epic article about changes that witnesses need to make. This is the proverbial taking of lemons and making lemonade. It is a must read for all who care about the STEEM blockchain. He acknowledges the problems and is presenting ways to ensure things are better in the future.
By the way, the ones I linked to here happen to be on my Witness voter list, which should tell you what I think about them. However, do you own due diligence to determine who to vote for.
Also, I would caution against only looking for witnesses who post a lot of content. There are many who are fabulous geeks (I say that with great admiration) yet are not writers or big time content creators. They might be too busy coding and doing other things on the blockchain that we do not see.
The final point I want to make with this is that we are seeing some people step up and take responsibility.
@fulltimegeek announced that he was starting a Witness node over a week ago. I believe he announced it after the blockchain went down the first time. Either way, I explained my view in a post yesterday as have many others. The one post I will link with this is one by @edicted showing where @fulltimegeek now stands.
https://busy.org/@edicted/fulltimegeek-is-already-99-witness
I will reiterate that anyone who has been on here for more than a few months has seen what @fulltimegeek is all about. Believing that he will take the best interests of the community into his actions as witness is not a giant leap. He operated that way without being a witness.
Another one who stepped for is @fknmayhem. He is heavily involved with @steemhunt, one of the more successful DApps on this blockchain. He posted yesterday his intention to set up a witness server after the first of the year. In fact, according to the article, there are a few people involved with him in this endeavor.
https://busy.org/@fknmayhem/i-wasn-t-going-to-post-about-hf20-yet-i-am-going-to-post-about-hf20
One thing I can say about @fknmayhem, and you can see it in the tone of the post, punches are not withheld. This is a serious cat who is intent of driving things forward.
In fact, this gem is from that article:
There needs to be more pressure on this chain. Pressure to achieve excellence. On all possible levels.
It took me almost 1800 words to express what was said in a handful. This is what it is all about.
The benefit of the fiasco that accompanied Hard Fork 20 is that it served as a wake up call to all on here. It is our responsibility to learn what is going on while putting pressure on those who are entrusted with our collective best interest. If someone is not getting the job done, then it is up to us to remove our vote while spreading the word as to why.
Here is the bottom line: if we do not like something, it is imperative that we make the witnesses aware of what our views are. At the same time, we need to pressure them into action. If that requires them going to Steemit.com and having something different done, then that is what is needed.
Fortunately, it appears this mishap was as much of a wake up call for the witnesses as it was for the rest of us.
The golden age of STEEM is ahead of us.
When I was drinking, I was piledriven into the pavement by alcohol. That was not the end of me but the start. We all were driven into the ground by this Hard Fork. Yet do not believe for a second it is the end of STEEM.
Instead, it is only the beginning of something much bigger and better.
If you found this article to be informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
I like this long but great post so much, that I simply can not walk away without resteeming it first. Thanks OG @taskmaster4450
It's a good example of why we need to be diligent and not take a blockchain for granted. Every user is responsible for keeping it running properly.
Thank you for pointing out what can be done to improve things instead of just focusing on the negatives. And thank you for pointing to my interview after the fork. Before the fork, I did a video trying to help set expectations about the resource credit system, but little did I imagine it would have been this challenging. Right as the hard fork went live, I posted details about my own witness testing standards, but ironically enough my main account had negative RC, so I had to post it on my witness account. This rollout was a mess. No doubt about it.
What matters now is what we do about it going forward. The Steem blockchain is a shared collaborative commons. Everyone who owns Steem and Steem Power has a say in what it will become. Let's work to improve and protect what we care about.
You are welcome @lukestokes. And thank you for your dedication as a witness. I am glad that I cast my vote for you. I applaud your interview and owning up to what happened from your perspective.
The fiasco is over, no it is time to clean up after the hurricane. As we move forward, we all need to band together. We will have different ideas about things but the entire ecosystem is important to all of us.
One of the most important things to do is to spread information (and for the community to read it).
I think RC will be a major benefit to STEEM going forward. It will just take some time.
Agreed! It’s important that we treat the blockchain as though we are part owner... because we kinda are! We should we stwards of the chain, not just exploiters of it.
Sensational quote....great way to phrase it.
Glad it resonated with you.
I am not getting your logic here. The responsibility for the HF20 problems is not with the people that programmed it and approved it? This makes little sense. We as voters can only respond after an issue occurs. There were no issues of this type while I have been here. We as voters and creators can not preemptively vote people in and out because there maybe a problem sometime in the future.
We need a larger developer community that can monitor proposed software upgrades to make sure the upgrades don't blow up the blockchain.
I agree with you my friend and I would go one step further. I would suggest that we are so complacent in our lives that we would rather wait for problems to be fixed than take responsibility for ourselves. That applies to this blockchain, political systems, financial system and even economic systems.
When we decide to take 100% responsibility for our lives, we have nobody to blame but oneself. Few are ready for that level of responsibility. However, this blockchain is teaching us all an important lesson. Even if nothing else comes of this HF, if it helps teach people how to be responsible and participate fully, then it has been a success.
There is no great centralized oz that is going to help us. We need to get off our asses and do it ourselves. Welcome to the new order, one without parents, feudal lords, slave owners or tyrants governing our lives. Important skills to learn and I think this blockchain is a wonderful teaching opportunity for those lessons to run deep.
Thank you for your post. It has even helped me. <3
It's been a very learning experience this week. I appreciate your insights and posts this week. I thoroughly read and enjoyed your post from other day discussing the "Freemium" model and I agree with a lot of your points here.
After HF20 was approved Tuesday and implemented, we knew that we had to do better in future. We did test on testnet since Aug.27, but that wasn't enough. We have to do better and we will
It's important for witness's to post their standards for future HF's.
If you have time, you can take a look at what we posted about this.
https://steemit.com/witness-update/@followbtcnews/with-hf20-now-live-it-s-time-for-a-look-at-the-process-a-statement-from-one-of-the-consensus-witnesses
Thanks for the nice words about my witness work, really appreciate it. I would kindly point to a small typo, my username is actually @dragosroua (not @dragosoura).
Steem on!
Commented from my other account, to test RC consumption, but yes, it's still me :)
A couple of points I didn't see in there: 1) Top witnesses chat in a private channel 2) There is little to no documentation on the code which makes testing, evaluating, etc as an open source community almost impossible.
Witnesses should demand fully commented code with flow charts and all the other things specs normally have. Then, the community can get behind evaluating a product on the test net that can prevent the kind of clusterfuck we just witnessed.
I would find it helpful for people to post the witnesses that they vote for and why they vote for them. I see very little in the way of discussion around this.
You're right that we have to be more proactive but every hardfork brings in new problems. I don't know if steem will succeed but I hope it does. Of course due diligence can help but if you expect everybody to be informed than I'll just say it now. Steem will fail. Its just the reality. I mean look at politics. That has more real worl implications and people tend to be ignorant about it so going by that I'm not too hopeful that steem will succeed as a platform. Truth is you cater to the uninformed or you don't survive.
soy un nuevo usuario de steemit, tal vez tenga una semana usando esta red social. sin embargo hay que tomar en cuanta que todo lo que hacemos, todos los usuarios en esta red social ya sea publicar, comentar, votar, entre otras cosas, tiene que pasar por red de steem o mejor llamado la blockchain de steem. un hard fork es una actualización para poder mejorar el rendimiento de la blockchain, y eso algo que ha sucedido y seguirá sucediendo con las demás criptomonedas, a medida que va creciendo la cantidad de usuarios que usan dichas criptomonedas.
asi mismo los o el ceo de steem, buscarán la manera de mejorar la experiencia de los usuarios, haciendo a steem más confiable, para los usuarios. ademas steem cuenta con la base fundamental de todas las criptomonedas que se basa en la fe y confianza que le damos todos los usuarios, una criptomoneda es totalmente descentralizada, en donde solo nosotros y con nuestro apoyo seguira creciendo este proyecto, y es donde el o los ceo de steem tienen la responsabilidad de tomar acciones en dichas actualizaciones en la blockchain, para optimizar la experiencia de usuario, para los mineros, y las transacciones en los diversos exchange que apoyan a steem.
antes de juzgar y decir cosas sin sentido, recomiendo documentarse un poco mejor, no soy un experto en blockchain pero se como trabaja, les recomiendo que lean el libro blanco de steem, y verán en qué consiste este proyecto, el cual si eres usuario de steemit debiste haberlo hecho...
You are absolutely right about every word you said. I feel the most newbies dont really understand what Steemit is about. They think it is a platform like facebook or twitter and dont even know the function of a witness here. They dont join discord channels, they dont discuss Steemit problems or even vote for witnesses.
Whatever happened is a very big change on the platform whether it is positive or negative we will know after some weeks. But it will encourage the most people to make better content and care about engagement and connecting with other users. Steemit isnt about a single person's work, but about building a team from all countries to change the Eco-system and the future generally.
Enjoy your weekend!
Part of the problem is having to join a discord channel in the first place. Fb or youtube have groups, private messeging etc. Youbdont gotta run around to 10 different sites to use one
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Preach..... 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
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I think Steemit is same. You have different groups and discord channels. You can join anyone you want depending on your interests. You can also private msg and invited friends. I am already in more than 10 discord channels and have many friends there.
I dont use discord nor do I feel like having to hop cross platform to interact with people. I don't even use Facebook but at least facebook has private messaging, groups, pages, etc. Here if I want to talk to you I have to visit your blog feed and leave an unrelated comment on your recent post for all to see. It's just not efficient. Your average user doesn't want to have to use Steemit, discord, telegram, steemchat just to communicate with people from steemit
I also dont like chatting much, but visit discord to ask about something or help in a project that I like. But sometimes it is helpful to know many things that you dont hear about.
The only application that I know has a mesenging service is @dtube.
@taskmaster4450 I didnt know they had that! Lately when I tried to post a video it didnt go through :(
@dtube never works. every few weeks/months I'll be like I'm gonna give @dtube another shot and without fail it disapoints, I try 20 times to upload something before getting error mssages and eventually giving up
Finally I could upload a video today! The browser was the problem. I was using Chrome and it didnt upload it, but worked out with Firefox. Try a different browser.
I agree that this “noise” has come at a great time for the ecosystem. While many DApps are being developed, engagement and sign ups have slowed down even before the HF20, sobit has impacted much less than if this would have occurred months ago. We see this in the value of Steem as well as it has held up despite these issues. As you mention, this wake up call will make future changes more highly scrutinized and I hope also leads to more decentralization of the code itself. The talent of developers available could lead to more code changes not led by Steemit Inc but by community members instead. Also, it seems that this RC system will actually lead to great opportunities ans it lend for an additional layer of flexibility by no longer depending solely on SP.
The most important thing is where we go from here. People need to adopt a new attitude in my opinion. I think a lot of it comes naturally as the result of this. Some will embrace the responsibility while others will turn and say, STEEM is a scam.
There will be a culling of sorts after this.
What I cannot figure out is the fact that steem being a Blockchain technology is suppose to be immune individual node shutdown.
So why on earth is the whole network going down on a software update?
Surely the update should start with just a couple of nodes and see for a period of time how the software perform before expanding the update to a few more nodes, etc.
A software update must be backward compatible to work with other nodes running older software releases.
Witnesses should coordinate their effort for for a progressive update.
As always great article! I learn so much from you! Thank you very much for your deep insights!
I enjoyed reading your post thanks for sharing. I also appreciate you taking the time to stop by and look at my photography pictures mannyfig1956
An excellent analysis of the post HF20 situation. This can be said for most open source projects. My theory is that Windoze dumbed down the average user to the extent they now need spoon feeding.
The media and education system problem had a hand in dumbing down the average user.
Quite right!
Sup brother. This is a good post like yours which pretty much summarizes it all. cheers bro.
https://busy.org/@develcuy/hf20-why-steem-software-development-process-is-broken-and-why-to-fix-it-now
I don't think hardfork 20 is a fiasco. It is to some extent quite successful.
hello @taskmaster4450 ! Thanks as always for sharing your so relevant analysis of this event who has unleashed passions :) With less technical knowledges than you, I could even feel that this HF20 will deeply and durably change the Steem blockchain, for the best in my opinion !
Have a nice weekend !
Yes. We gotta watch steemd now.
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I really doubt if this upgrade would be successful as a total package, however most of the patches would be definitely successful though!
Excellent points - I agree with the underlying key message of the post for sure. Thanks for putting together, also enjoyed reading your opinion yesterday. Curious to see what is going to happen in reality.
Most people like to complain without doing any work to help the problem or prevent future occurrences. Sometimes I feel like people come online to vent about something they pretend to care about because there are so many other things in their lives they have no control over. The vast majority of people that made HF20 out to be an apocalyptic event will likely just go back to business as usual.
I'm glad you are bullish on HF20 because I have been as well, and we seem to be in a very small minority.
Well said taskmaster. And thanks for the witness post links. SirKnight.
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Thanks fro spreading this sensible message. There is no free lunch. Yet STEEM Blockchain is giving free accounts to people as a donation and then the start complaining. It's this sad state that made be completely give up UBI. People are never satisfied.
I still have some major complains like how these devs overlooked the possibility of negative RC and never bothered to take precautions. I love the vision but the execution is some of the worst I've seen in the tech industry (although we are far ahead of Ethereum - DAO "Hack")
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This minnow feels inspired after reading your post @taskmaster. Thank you. I know I need to understand more of what is happening and it is good to know that I am expected to contribute. HF20 was a wake-up call indeed.
Good afternoon @taskmaster4450
Thank you very much for this information! I had no idea at all how things were going with our ecosystem on the Steemit and what the responsibility of each of us was.
Struggled fought in his place in hardforum, tried to spread the posts and comments every day... :)))
Sorry for the comparison, but it is similar to elections of a government. Some do vote and hope that's it. Some do not vote because they don't care. Some do not vote because they simply do not know what to do. That's the fact we need to change, at least here on Steemit in terms of the witness.