No doubt this is a work of a genius, and I respect that genius, if not the necessarily the morality, depending on which way it goes.
To me, if this system isn't changed soon though, it demonstrates that it is a Ponzi Scheme. It's really disappointing to have just discovered something so promising, only to realise it's possibly not what is seems!
I hold onto the hope that something changes in the right direction to demonstrate our fear is wrong. I realise you're convinced already.
I think the first steps would be, along the lines you've proposed:
To increase the power-down period again.Perhaps gradually extending it by one week every month (set in software in the next hard-fork).
Prevent (or mandate) witness self-voting
Prevent (or mandate) direct self-voting on comments and posts
Perhaps some indirect self-voting could be discovered through tools, and somehow become a 'proof of work', useful mining operation.
A better idea would be to just start with increasing incentive to vote on others and get this UI improved A LOT.
Increasing the power-down period should provide that incentive.
Have you written about the UI changes that you think would help?
A little here and there, but it's mostly a waste of time. They don't seem to care about the UI at all (yet).
I don't think the power-down period has to change. It's the least problematic.
I can understand that to be honest. The blockchain logic is where the incentive structure needs to be IMO. Especially once Steem has community namespaces and differential moderation, which is due to happen this quarter.
This is technically true, but forking the blockchain and getting a parallel witness network supporting so many accounts would be a difficult and very expensive undertaking I think. I'm not entirely familiar with the architecture though.
True. I guess some lower ranking witnesses could probably do that. I wonder what does stop them then.
That is very true, but accepting code changes is still a democratic process which is slow and sometimes annoying. But maybe i should seriously explore this opportunity in the future in some way.
I love reading your analysis, even though I'm unsure what to think.
I don't know enough about these systems to have an informed opinion on this, but do you think that this is Dan's warm-up act then, and before it technically exhausts itself, he will bring it down, and transition to EOS? Does EOS also have these technical problems, or have they been addressed in some way?
I do find it hard to imagine that the blockchain couldn't be somehow truncated (so a complete replay isn't necessary), and earlier stuff archived in some way, whilst the new continues. I know very little about blockchains though, and maybe I fundamentally don't understand the situation.
I do wonder why you worked at being a witness if you knew of the inevitable demise of the infrastructure, or did you learn that later?
Since Graphene is open source, would it not be fairly easy to determine to what shared memory limit is, if that's important?
Not happy to read that. If it is a Ponzi Scheme I should withdraw all my assets immediately and stop posting here. Not sure if I want to do that though. :(
I don't know what to say. It just pops the biggest bubble of hope in my life and I feel like I am drowning. Steemit was my last resort.