As some of you know by now, there are significant initiatives being undertaken on Steem to accelerate the onboarding of new users. However, there are some technical hurdles involved with mass onboarding to Steem. I spoke with many witnesses, developers and some from Steemit inc. too while at Steemfest and I learned something new - We can't re-delegate delegations on Steem yet! I suggest we change this now.
I have had a project running on Discord for a while now called 'Passport to Steem' that has been working to solve the various challenges with mass onboarding for Steem and I will be making a post to announce that very soon (Keep an eye on @steempassport). One of the issues with mass onboarding is that we need to be able to perform actions that are similar to those that Steemit inc. does when they sign up users for free accounts. This means that we need to be able to delegate small amounts of Steem to new users on a temporary basis. This is fine for Steemit inc. since they have a large pool of Steem to draw on, however, if third party projects are to replicate this, they either need to directly control a large amount of Steem themselves or be able to RE-delegate Steem that is delegated to them.
While it would be ideal for onboarding projects to have a large amount of Steem Power under their control, so far this has not occurred and so I am suggesting here that we consider a change for a future (ideally near) Hard Fork.
Re-delegation Proposal
Under the existing system on Steem, users can delegate Steem to other users to enable them to upvote and interact with the network using that Steem Power. However, there is a limitation that means that the recipient is not able to then re-delegate that Steem elsewhere. Under typical conditions this isn't an issue since the original delegator can simply undelegate the desired amount and then delegate to the new recipient directly. When we come to onboarding solutions, however, the situation is different.
Users need a small amount of Steem Power in order to use the blockchain (around 15 Steem Power might be ideal). Currently new users that sign up via Steemit.com are delegated Steem and this can then be revoked if they are reported for spamming. If @steempassport or some other project that does not hold a large amount of Steem power wants to do similar, we find we currently have no mechanism on the blockchain to support this.
Re-delegation would mean that users who have received delegations can also re-delegate that Steem power elsewhere as if it were their own. If someone 'up chain' then cancels a delegation, then all 're-delegations' that affect that delegation are revoked. Revocation would need to be handled intelligently, so that the minimum of disturbance occurs when a delegation ends and it could affect people further down the chain of delegation.
It is easy to see how such a function might become complicated and difficult to track. What if users delegate the same Steem Power repeatedly, so that it is passed on hundreds or even thousands of times? This might be unlikely, but needs to be considered. In order to prevent such confusion and to minimise the necessary coding/testing for the blockchain and UIs, I suggest that perhaps initially we could just support one layer of re-delegation, which would enable onboarding projects to practically carry out their mission - without adding the kinds of complications that might arise with the ability to re-delegate in an unlimited way to an unlimited number of levels in depth.
Comments & Feedback
It would be great to hear from all stakeholders on their thoughts on this. What challenges do you perceive? Are there any conflicts of interest with regards this approach that may not have been considered?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Vote @ura-soul for Steem Witness!
(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!)
Highly rEsteemed!
I appreciate your concepts. I wish STINC. would pay more attention to some of the development ideas of it's witnesses. SteemON Bruv!
It has been discussed a decent amount of times before. There is even a GitHub issue for it: https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/1501
The official dev team is planning to implement something called "delegation pools" which aren't exactly the same thing, but they may cover some of the same use cases.
I think the main hurdle is just that it becomes complex to code, when all of the various corner cases are taken into account. There is also a shortage of capable developers who would actually be able to code it up.
Thanks Tim. We also have the idea of RC delegations being passed around too, but I haven't seen anything 'official' on it yet. I will see if I can get the attention of Michael in chat to find out where they are up to with it all.
Ah, I was just pointed to this issue that relates to RC delegations: https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/3033
and
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/2761
Sounds easier said than don, but....
Who will pay them? What will they actually be paid to do? Who will determine if whatever they are paid to build is done correctly?
I was satirical with that meme.
I am kinda aware that there are more problems in Steem development than meets the eye. Especially in the talents department.
I've so far haven't seen a good "fiverr for coding" done properly, the closest could be Gitcoin, but even then it's not that perfect.
I would rather see accounts with less than 15 SP able to have functionality without a donation of delegated SP.
The delegation is the mechanism used to prevent Spam. Delegations can be removed once spam is identified, shutting the account down.
Hey, @ura-soul!
Thank you for your contribution to the crowd. We are the Steemit project dedicated to empowering The Wisdom of Crowds. You can find more about us on our official blog, whitepaper and website. We are also inviting you to join our Discord server. Don't forget to use the #crowdmind hashtag and happy crowdsourcing!
Additional comment: This is a really interesting proposal and we hope there will be additional comments on this subject. But anyway, it is always refreshing to read this kind of posts. If there are more active bloggers who are debating the potential development of the whole platform – it will probably trigger the crowd and help achieve valuable conclusions and results.
Hi @ura-soul!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.874 which ranks you at #96 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 1 places in the last three days (old rank 97).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 196 contributions, your post is ranked at #2. Congratulations!
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 7 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 11 SBD worth and should receive 162 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePig