Hive SBI downtime update

We experienced an inconsistency across RPC nodes in which queries will return response, versus which will return errors. This is due to distributed architecture, but we don't know why so many are running non-standard versions that don't support the whole range of queries. We tested each node and identified which will work for us and which will not. Unfortunately, the nodes that support all of our queries have higher load and slower response times. This is a minimal impact for us, but it does increase the risk of being throttled in the future.

There were some issues with pending balance accruals during the downtime (pending balances did not catch up correctly). To compensate for this, we will be running pending balance accrual at an accelerated rate for as long as our VP can handle it. This means your pending balances will grow more quickly, but it will be temporary. It should definitely last long enough to cover the lost period.

We are continuing to monitor performance, but we have not reactivated our status API's connections yet. This means balances on Peakd and on our website will remain static, as they depend on an API connection to our database. You can check your balances using !sbi status on chain in any post or comment. On chain responses are managed by the same bot that delivers votes, so they will be accurate to what is in the database. I will provide another quick update in our Discord ⁠announcements channel once the offchain balance update tools are working again.

Going forward, we hope to document which RPC node queries are causing issues, and determine whether we can streamline our operations to reduce dependency on problematic queries (thus restoring access to more RPC nodes). We will also consider whether it's more economical to run our own node and witness using the version that supports everything we need ourselves.