"...nothing has been done except rewriting a few lines of a code."
While the oligarchical control of the blockchain is restored from Sun Yuchen's takeover of Steem, that centralization under one individual is orders of magnitude worse than our present oligarchy.
For four years the present oligarchy has largely resisted censoring dissidents (witness the lack of oppressive flags on this post, for example), while I mistakenly thought Stinc and @ned hadn't directly undertaken governance, they had withdrawn that direct interference for years prior to the sale to Tron.
Today on Hive the median payout is more than double what the status quo has been recently on Steem. Sure, <$.20 is a small payout, but what that reveals is that most content creators are getting twice on Hive for their posts than what they were on Steem, and if this isn't merely an artifact of transition but a durable paradigm shift, it's a dramatic increase in decentralization of stake, which will affect governance.
It's a massive change, not merely lines of code. More importantly, Steem has been radically centralized and is now totally governed by one person: Sun Yuchen, and that is a terminal cessation of even the paltry decentralization Steem historically enjoyed.
@arcange publishes daily relevant statistics by which the flow of rewards (which determine how centralized or decentralized Hive is) can be tracked. The anomaly or trend will be revealed by that data, and folks interested will be as informed as they are attentive.
Thanks!
thanks for the numbers!
Thanks for the statistics, but it might be a bit too soon to draw conclusions on the subject. Maybe median payout is higher only because there's less posts... (Activity is divided by 2 if same amount of people decided to stay on either one of the two blockchains, whereas the stake has stayed the same - with the airdrop, except for Stinc's stake, but as they never voted on posts, it doesn't impact the distribution of rewards).
So saying the objective of decentralization has been fulfilled on that basis might be a bit premature.
For me, it's about governance, not distribution of rewards. Some of the witnesses are large stakeholders, are the ones funded by the HPS, are the ones writing the code, deciding on forking or not, etc... Distribution of rewards means nothing, distribution of stake is much more relevant in the matter of (de)centralization.
That's nothing I have ever said, in the above comment, nor anywhere. In fact, I said "... if this isn't merely an artifact of transition but a durable paradigm shift, it's a dramatic increase in decentralization of stake, which will affect governance."
I don't think we disagree at all, so I'm a bit confused that you seem to take my comment as disagreement. Regarding governance and rewards, stake is what delivers influence on governance. Rewards are how all of my stake has been received, and all of my influence on governance gained. Increasing my rewards will increase my stake, and increase my influence on governance.
That's DPoS.
Yeah, we don't disagree.
It was just that sentence and the graphic coming with it that I didn't concur with. For me, even if it's a durable shift, it will only have a feeble impact on decentralization. I don't know the statistics but I feel like most stake around here was either : bought, obtained through curation rewards thanks to a big Steemit Inc. delegation or another kind of monopoly/favouristism/nepotism or ninja-mined. Not obtained through post rewards.
So yeah, a better distribution of rewards will have a little effect on decentralization of governance, but I think it's marginal. And considering that since the EIP, the more stake you have the more you win (through the new curve), in fact a better median reward doesn't necessarily mean the rewards are better distributed. If current users win more but the top 1%'s rewards increase more than that increase of the median, we're going towards more centralization and not less.
That's our only disagreement. Essentially, I'm just a bit more pessimistic about that potential shift to a better rewards distribution and its potential effect on decentralization.
This is mathematically impossible. If whales get more, the median gets less. It's just a mathematical function. The most recent graphic @arcange provided reveals that both the average and median payout rose, and this reveals that the average and median payouts are converging, meaning that whales are getting less rewards now, and plebs are getting more.
This isn't mandated by the rewards mechanism, but the result of restraint by the whales. They could change their minds at any time, or their stake end up in the wallets of those with less restraint.
The present system of DPoS governance is just incapable of ensuring decentralization, mathematically. In order to achieve robust decentralization, an additional metric(s) must be added to influence on governance.
I believe our present overlords are more benevolent than Sun Yuchen, and that is the only reason Hive is censorship resistant today. Unless we adopt a more robust governance mechanism, that is temporary, and that's just mathematical fact.
I totally agree. Yeah for the median/whales it's impossible with a constant number of posts and a constant HP.
If the number of posts decrease you could have an increase in median (as there's less posts) and a higher increase for the whales' posts. As there's the same amount of HP divided into less posts, then both are possible.
What I wanted to say is : as long as there less activity/posts on the chain, it's too soon to draw any conclusion about these numbers. We need either the same number of posts that Steem had so we can compare, or we need a few weeks of data to have a new standard for the Hive chain, and then only we can see how it evolves.
But for the part about current DPoS being incapable of decentralization, the current elite being better than the one on Steem and the need of a better system, I'm 100% with you.