There are no cost reductions to run witness nodes as yet. Over time the costs have simply grown, though to some extent this was expected. The MIRA version (with its associated cost reductions) isn't recommended for witnesses.
I don't think the witness reward mechanism is perfect, but if we are looking narrowly at the reward amount, I think the analysis that was done when it was reduced by 80% and set to 10% of total inflation was reasonable and hasn't changed significantly, therefore the split shouldn't change. Proposals to revamp the system in a more fundamental way can be considered. I'm open to looking at it.
Why is it not recommended? That was one of the selling points sold to us by Steemit,Inc... That this new version would help decentralize the platform as it would make running witness nodes cheaper.
I would guess it will eventually get there, but not yet. The main priority was reducing the costs of Steemit's own expensive RPC nodes, and they did that.
MIRA can reduce expenses of running a node (full RPC, seed, witness) but at the cost of a much slower replay. On my witness test node, a replay usually takes 20-22 hours without MIRA but when I enabled MIRA I gave up after 3 days of replay still not completed. For a top witness, it is critical to be able to replay as fast as possible in order to get the node back on track on events such as a HardFork where a replay is required.
MIRA will help with reducing the costs of other nodes but for witnesses nodes it's not recommended for the reason above.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. Was that just smoke and mirrors then from steemit,inc saying that MIRA was going to help reduce the costs for running a witness node and thus making steem more secure and more decentralized?
It will help for new comers who don’t have enough votes to produce enough blocks at first. They can do with waiting few days for a replay. After a replay it’s all good. Also good for secondary witness nodes. So if a top witness runs multiple servers then yes it will reduce costs, just not recommended on the primary witness server.
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I see. Thanks.