Community communication of the code

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After posting about the coming Hardfork last night, it became apparent that there are a lot of people that don't seem to know that there is even a hardfork coming. With a hardfork changing the fundamentals of the chain in some way effectively making it the new "law" on the blockchain, I believe that everyone who should know something and it is their responsibility. Having said that though, I am still uncertain when it actually is and I don't know where to find out for sure.

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The greatest amount of information is coming from @blocktrades in their updates (much appreciated) - which is where I discovered that the 22nd might no longer be the date, but I think at least the most current potential date should be known by all without too much trouble, with a link to the fork change candidates attached.

I think this is important from a community perspective, as it not only notifies of when and what, it also gives the community a chance to build a conversation around the hardfork, which I believe is important for everyone on and off the chain and can actually create hype for Hive that attracts valuable attention and token recognition to build to attract potential new users and investors. Even though there will be disagreement on pretty much every point of a hardfork, this creates discussion and allows for a mass of interest and ideas, which means that people opt-in more to the community as they invest more time and thought into it. It also means communities can get out in front and take an active part in the conversation from their perspective and prepare for how they think it might affect them.

This doesn't have to be a complicated notification system, just a simple banner or pinned post that the frontend interfaces can leverage, so that the most up-to-date information is available and visible - The possible date and the main factors of the proposed hardfork are pretty much all that are needed, and then the discussions can start to be distributed and spread throughout the community. Visibility is very important and one of the core tenets of blockchain is some level of transparency. As a community powered blockchain, this is an even more important factor.

In the past there have always been complaints of "I didn't know" come up by some accounts that I think should have known, as there was plenty of discussion around previous hardforks. At the moment though, there is barely any community level discussion, with many people having no idea that there is even a hardfork candidate, let alone what it includes. This is likely to cause problems in the community later (though this particular HF might not as it doesn't affect endusers as noticeably) as people are surprised with changes and will immediately get upset to the break in their approach, especially if they feel negatively affected. A lot of the problem can be easily mitigated through just the slightest and simplest bit of communication to give people a little warning and time to read up and get ready for the change.

A lot of developers seem to have the approach that the most important part of technology is the technology itself, but that is only part of the model. The story comes from the community who uses the technology and on Hive it is the community that is the marketing mechanism, even though it isn't the greatest at it currently. For the chain to mass onboard and even attract investment, the community has to be considered and that requires communication.

It isn't enough to give a link to Github as that is not enough for most of the community to get comfortable with changes - most require discussion to better understand. This serves two valuable core purposes, bringing people up to speed and, building network relationships. The discussion around hardforks and the blockchain in general, tends to build people's network and level of trust in other members, as they end up discussing topics that are important to both parties - the one thing that links all of us is the Hive blockchain and this means that we always have something in common.

I am guessing that most of the frontend devs are staying abreast of the latest hardfork news as they have to prepare themselves, so perhaps some of them wouldn't mind giving a basic bulletpoint list of changes, or at the very least, have a "Latest update" link on their front page so people can at least see the current proposed date. If the date isn't known or too uncertain, a "Stay tuned for Hardfork info" would be enough for those potentially interested to do a little digging.

I am not expecting any of this to be taken into consideration however, so for at least the people who read my blog, I recommend following @blocktrades for the latest updates and progress made on the coding, so at least you will have a chance of knowing that there is a hardfork coming and an idea of what it entails. As said, it is our responsibility to stay up-to-date in many ways, but I also think that we can't claim community decision making or consideration if there isn't the attempt to let the largest parts of the community know about what is going on.

Just in case you missed it - there is a Hardfork coming. The Hive community is what sets Hive apart from pretty much every other blockchain and project out there, so we have to make sure that we are supporting its development. The easiest way to grow a community is to develop community discussion - the blockchain connects us all, so let's take the opportunity to buidl community value.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]



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There is simpke way around that, do not vote for current witnesses that do not take care of their community.

But then again, Wait... don't their vote euqal enougj to vote for the circle? :)

Theoretically idea of governance was good, but in practice peiple are poeple. No universally perfect forms of governance.

Posted using Dapplr

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Witness voting and governance is a different thing. You don't just want witnesses that are good at communicating with the community, you want some who are highly technical.

But, they should get together and find a way to keep as many people as possible informed. Pay someone to do so if they must, at least around hardfork time.

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You vote for witneses and they introduce, communicate and implement the changes in protocol apart running hardware for block production don't they?

I get that not everybody that are implementing changes and write code are witnesses. But it should be that most prominent actors that influence those changes are voted for witnesses and their job should be to inform their community about incoming updates and discuss it. In a perfect world i.e.

Now there is a big disconnect. Witnesses are on one side, dev team on the other and community somewhere else. That is a trait of decentralised governance with no prominent leader. While it seems very democratic it is quie unefficient at the same time. People need leaders, that is harwired into our nature.

Posted using Dapplr

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I do think that all witnesses (consensus) should offer their perspective on the hardfork - but I would like to see them come to some kind of point where the candidate is at least made very, very publicly aware to give everyone a chance to get onboard or weigh in or whatever.

Decentralized governance is likely (for a long time to come) going to be inefficient, but at least it isn't so efficient it favors only 0.1% of the community.

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BTW, how are you finding Dapplr so far?

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So far so good. Team has put great effort into design, voting slide is neat, fun and convenient. Few UI details that i am sure will be updated as it is still work in progress. But move in the right direction.

Other than that, no quality changes from UX, still miss adding suplementary keywords and ability to search for the content that i find relevant.

Seemingly quite a simple feat that requires some work of course, but while dev team is beatong around the bushes tweaking rewards scheme what they fail is making a content orientated frontend that would give it utility if i want to find the content i need imho.

I still remember that you find rewards part as a utility, but i am talking about a different utility, one that any person not familiar with crypto would welcome and use application for other purposes than getting rewarded and where rewards would be a welcome nice addition to otherwise useful and fun app.

Posted using Dapplr

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I've never taken much notice in the past when a hardfork came around, just kinda relied upon others break it down into the simplest terms possible. But it never hurts to at least check it out for myself either.

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There hasn't even been many "breat it down" posts - I normally do something but I am a bit out of it too this time. It is weird.

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Under ordinary circumstance I'd be 100% with you and screaming from the rooftops about discussion of the coming HF. In this case, this particular case I'm only half with you. This HF is entirely directed at fixing errors that resulted from the HF that created Hive.

The consensus witnesses and the devs are really concerned to do this right so that it doesn't have to be repeated at the next fork. I get that.

The part that I am with you on is communication. Do you know that only 4 consensus witnesses have issued a monthly (required) witness report since the split? Really?

I bitch to everybody I can think of. To no avail. As long as the voting is as it is there is no reason for them to say a peep to anyone.

I would expect the discussion about the next HF to start early and go on. That one will undoubtedly have changes that DO affect everyday users such as voting and rewards.

I don't understand why it's so hard. I've even offered to do reports for two witnesses. Urrrrgggghhhh.

I think I'll quit here. I'll save my vitriol and angst for the next fork.

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This HF is entirely directed at fixing errors that resulted from the HF that created Hive.

Not quite. There is the discussion about the conversion of the mine into HBD which has a large impact on the platform. I am not sure if it is included in this HF, but I thought it was.

I would expect the discussion about the next HF to start early and go on. That one will undoubtedly have changes that DO affect everyday users such as voting and rewards.

Yeah - it is going to be an interesting one for sure. Would love to see a little bit of passion creeping bck into the community - I don't need the drama, but I do like people who care.

I think I'll quit here. I'll save my vitriol and angst for the next fork.

=D

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Yep. Sometimes you just have to piss people off to get the passions stirring. A job I am very qualified for :)

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Give us the names of those 4 Sir Tom so we can vote for them.

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Thanks for that reminder. I heard about it coming maybe a month or so ago, and of it being mostly a fix patch, but actually forgot all about it until your post.

Agree with the comments on higher visibility and that in general a layman's version(s) ahead of time would be nice. Overall though, I think the witnesses and dev's working on these are very underappreciated. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into maintaining, upgrading, and testing these changes before they roll out. Sure, they've had a couple major glitches in the past, but that's common with any system. Look at how often even the giant companies like Microsoft break things even with their billions of dollars and thousands of code reviewers. I for one, have been impressed with the team we have here.

That said, there is always room for positive suggestions and improvements. I hope folks will keep their comments positive for them when this comes out, and still provide updates and suggestions for improvement. One of the better things I saw in the Hive fork was the addition of the "proposals" section available on the right hand pull-down menu in PeakD (below your name where "wallet" is) for those that don't know. I have to admit I don't visit it as frequently as I should, but that is a great example of how folks can get more involved and see what is being proposed as well as discuss those ideas.

Well, enough on that. Here's to a successful and positive fix-fork and thank you to all those involved in the effort. We appreciate your work!

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Yeah - it is mostly clean up (from what I understand) - although there is also the conversion issue involved to.

Overall though, I think the witnesses and dev's working on these are very underappreciated.

I agree. This isn't a criticism of their work or them at all - just a general reminder that the community should be notified.

Look at how often even the giant companies like Microsoft break things even with their billions of dollars and thousands of code reviewers.

The MS ecosystem has problems that commonly bring down global companies that leverage them. No one really talks about it.

Hopefully it runs smoothly with no hiccups this round :)

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This hard fork is not one that will be discussed much since it was mostly back end stuff. The biggest change, from the users perspective, is the 30 day delay in new HP applying to governance. Outside of that, this a technical fork that is focused upon the operation efficiency on the back end.

The next fork, that could see some fireworks. I think the biggest issues to be discussed will be whether to change the power down time from 13 weeks to something different. There is a divide on that end with passion on each (all) sides.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Yep, this is right - but I still think it would be a good idea to have everyone (most) know that ther eis a hardfork coming. I I have found it interesting how few active people actually know.

The next fork, that could see some fireworks.

I hope so. The powerdown period should be on the cards and there are many people who feel strongly both ways. I am still unsure what is better, but perhaps shorter would work in favor. The other option would be to have the ability to stake with non-voting stake into the wallet with the option for a fast powerdown - possibly at a burn cost.

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The other option would be to have the ability to stake with non-voting stake into the wallet with the option for a fast powerdown

Actually, that feature always has existed since the beginning. It's just the "saving account" section in the wallet. Whose stake stored there never had influence in the voting system and only requires three days to convert that stake in liquid form again.

In the very beginning in the Steem blockchain, that stake stored there used to earn interests. But after a little while, in one of those HFs they changed the rules and code to turn out the saving account financially useless beyond barely have that stake a bit safer from a potential hack. But then, people seems to not use that section of the wallet anymore basically because of its now financial futility. Despite the extra layer of security against hackings that it offered at the time and still does.

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Actually, that feature always has existed since the beginning.

No, that is just a savings account - it doesn't have any staking option involved. I used to use it often to lock up liquids from potential theft. Haven't used it in about 6 months though I think.

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No, that is just a savings account - it doesn't have any staking option involved.

Uhm well, then maybe I'm not understanding well what you are referring to with "staking" in the context of having Hive with non-voting stake into the wallet.

Would you care to shed some light on the concept? :)

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Well, potentially that savings wallet could be used to stake rewards for a non-voting return, rather than have people vote on crap because they must. As I see it, there should be a premium to stake, so the return would be competitive, but not as good as average curation.

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Well, potentially that savings wallet could be used to stake rewards for a non-voting return

Well yeah, that's what I said in my first comment. But wait, with "stake rewards for a non-voting return" you mean also having the capability to generate and earn some sort of interests or something like that to increase that stake automatically with no voting or curating activity? Otherwise, I'm afraid I still don't get it.

As I said before all Hive you "manually" store in the already existent 'saving account' section of the wallet, currently requires barely three days to convert that stake liquid again to sell it, powerup to influence the voting and curation earnings or whatever. As apparently you were implying to want that as a new feature. At the moment you won't get any ROI storing stake there. But if Hive Devs restore the ability to earn interests in it, I guess we'd have what you were talking about.

Therefore, I suspect we wouldn't have none of the polarization or discussions about the need to shorten the powerdown period anymore.

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I mean to get a return that doesn't require voting, but doesn't allow for governance decisions. The interest won't be attractive enough in comparison to voting directly, or do you propose increasing the percentage of interest that comes from the inflation pool?

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I mean to get a return that doesn't require voting, but doesn't allow for governance decisions.

Well, then stake stored in the saving account is perfect for that. Since it wouldn't have influence in any of both.

or do you propose increasing the percentage of interest that comes from the inflation pool?

Yeah pretty much that. Basically allocate inflation away from the rewards pool and into the saving accounts would be enough.

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Yeah pretty much that. Basically allocate inflation away from the rewards pool and into the saving accounts would be enough.

How much, considering that average voting would get quite decent returns, far above the current interest rate. To be effective to discourage poor voting, it would have to be able to compete with the gains from poor voting behavior.

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How much, considering that average voting would get quite decent returns, far above the current interest rate.

Well, that's an entire different matter to let to be solved by the math geniuses here with some vestige of moral, fairness and ethics. Although obviously, submitted to the general consensus of the entire community. };)

But I guess my initial suggestion was more on the lines to end once and for all the ongoing discussions and the whining of the biggest stakeholders about the imminent need to have to reduce the powerdown period more than anything.

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I also have a look at the @blocktrades posts and on rare occasions even comment on them even though my technical knowledge is zero, but it is great to read the comments and to get a vague idea of what's going on lol.

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I enjoy the BT posts, even if I don't understand it all. I met Dan in Krakow and he took me as a decent person - opn and friendly and willing to share what he knew. I didn't have much of an idea about him before that, but I came away with a positive feel after the meet.

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I haven't met him of course, but we have had a few discussions on discord and you are right, he sounds like a decent guy.
Now if you can't understand it, what chance do I have of understanding it?
themarkymark made a remark (no pun) about a meme that beat a quality post in rewards by a large margin in one of the latest BT posts.
So I replied that it is disheartening, especially as hard workers put a lot of effort into their quality blogs only to see the big rewards go to scrappy posts.

There was another interesting reply to the comment that I replied to and so, if I see something that falls into my limited scope, I comment on it!

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If people missed them and want to catch up on the Hive core developer meetings, they were recorded by @howo, and there are nine of them. Most of the stuff presented is of a technical nature, but I still found them interesting to listen to. I am hoping there will be a meeting on Monday, and that we may hear more about the HF24.

@blocktrades is the lead on the update/HF, so a follow is a good Idea, when time permits the people behind the @hiveio account also try to put information out.

Being decentralized it can be hard to find and keep up with ongoing changes. I use the peakd list function quite a lot, a couple of the list I have been creating for myself are witness, and Dev Type, they are where I add people I feel most of the chain updates are going to come from.

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Yep, there is information out there, but the problem is that one has to know where to find it and who to follow. I think there should be a very basic and simple update announcement just to remind people what is going on.

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I agree there, just pin one notice, and don't go over board on the pinning like the idiots did over on steemit. A simple post, containing the names of the people working on the HF's and what is being worked on, and what chat-system they are using to take questions.

A list of names would be great, because then we could build our HF Dev list and make it easy to see when things have been updated. So far I think I only have 8 developers on my Dev List.

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Yep - simple and stupid - so I understand it :D

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As the wise Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." I am thankful for and grateful to all the great minds working hard at making this the best experience possible on the Hive BlockChain. Most of the back end and development is above my paygrade tbh. I see that as a great opportunity to learn.

I am looking forward to this Fork so we can get it out of the way in it's proper time and place. The future is looking more and more interesting by the day. I am sure some interesting discussions are up and coming for everyone to get on the same page!

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I am looking forward to this Fork so we can get it out of the way in it's proper time and place.

Yeah for sure. I am glad that this is happening now and hopefully the changes make a difference on performance.

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Yeah... if they want to take their time working out the kinks in advance to make the fork most efficient... i am all for them taking their time. I hope all the bugs are worked out for now. I wish there was more i could do to help... unfortunately,

But i never learned how to read (code)

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Thanks for the info, I read the article by blocktrades. But I heard there were suggested changes to the post payout to reduce curation reward percentage? I don't see that mentioned by Blocktrades. Do you know if it will be implemented?
Thanks

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No, that won't be implemented and was never planned to be implemented. @blocktrades was just opening up a discussion in a separate post about it to get feedback from the community.

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Okay thats good. Do you know about the delay in the lauch in the wrapped LEO project? It basically gives interested parties two more powerdown days!

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I don't know about it. I haven't heard anything.

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If that is the only way to do it, I won't be taking part. I don't really want to trust anything to a single private user.

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Understandable. Thee other option is to go to www.wleo.io to wrap your Leo, then transfer Eth to your metamask wallet, then deposit both wrapped Leo and Eth in the pool yourself. Leofinance did a podcast on wrapped Leo today

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I am not even sure how I am meant to stake Leo for wleo

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I’m not sure it is possible to communicate the HF date this time as the decision was made that it will happen as soon as consensus reached (because had been delayed and delayed and delayed).

Is this a sound process? Nay.

No, because transparency matters and information is gold. To those who read, at least.
Yes, because that’s how consensus works on the more core level.

This time not much “law” changes, with the exception of the 30 days witness voting lock on VP power, and as an aside almost the conversion of the DAO stake which starts. But beyond that, it’s mostly an optimization update. One of little interest to most. One following “code is law” (super majority met means fork that sh*t). And maybe for this type of upgrade that’s the more apt model.

... on the blockchain, I believe that everyone who should know something and it is their responsibility

I agree with this. It is both the voters’ and witnesses’ task to inform, the onus in this type of society probably more on the voters even. Should you know? No, not necessarily but if you give two flying fraks about what rules govern your presence then maybe you should occasionally do some homework. Should we expect everyone to be able to dig through the code and discover the date when a HF is supposed to happen? Not everyone but maybe in a decentralized society this is one of those where many could discover (and build that countdown) and maybe should do just that.

Clearly we live and operate in a “dual citizenship” society where there’s users and those who codify the magic. Informing is a great exercise for those who code, should be a must for those who decide to run that code and depend on votes from the users — who are also owners. But maybe in this early stage (still) that ownership also requires a degree of pro activity. Just like the more traditional stakeholder will make a better (hopefully) yearly vote if they informed themselves more than just with each quarterly report and the highly polished AGM talks.

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This time not much “law” changes, with the exception of the 30 days witness voting lock on VP power, and as an aside almost the conversion of the DAO stake which starts.

I think the DAO one is pretty big - from the little I understand on it :D

Should we expect everyone to be able to dig through the code and discover the date when a HF is supposed to happen? Not everyone but maybe in a decentralized society this is one of those where many could discover (and build that countdown) and maybe should do just that.

I don't think it is useful to expect people to dig through code as users, but frontends have coders that can at least inform the basics to their users.

I think that for larger investors to come into the space, more visibility on what they are buying will be demanded.

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...but frontends have coders that can at least inform the basics to their users.

I am going to guess this would have happened if the HF had an actual date, if this refers to the countdown.

If it refers to more, decentralized issues where the operators will decide whether providing that information is of value to... themselves. Will they slip out of the active witnesses (top20) if they don’t? Will it consolidate or strengthen their position if they do? Is the ROI worth the effort???

I think the DAO one is pretty big - from the little I understand on it :D

Technically not. By which I don’t mean code complexity wise, but that the decision to use that stake for the DAO was made when we forked away. No one submitted a HF which burnt that stake and as such that wasn’t really a topic beyond social media arguing.
In this fork the required mechanic to make the stake usable, within the DAO mechanics, is integrated. But AFAIK it doesn’t change the DAO or the level of daily available funds which stays at 1% of the available liquid DAO funds.

Yes, I’m thinking/arguing semantically here. On purpose. :D

 

But on a general level I do agree with the need for transparency and improved information.

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