RE: Bringing It All Together: A User-Centered Approach to EOS Voting
That's not really what this is about at all @lukstokes. Completely agree with your perspective on this in the big picture, just not so much in the short term. There is a huge knowledge gap we need to fill and that's all this proposal is about. Just like EOS Portal was necessary to unlock the chain, this is just a place to explain what the heck all this stuff is while those other tools are being built. A temporary stop gap at most.
There will be many wallets, interfaces, portals, directories, etc... but until those are built and there is more liquidity flowing through the network for people to build those things, we can come together and do something to move the referendum contract forward.
I think any attempt to reduce friction for users should be seen as a good thing during these phases, as nothing will move or change (constitution, etc...) until someone takes action and puts in the time and money.
At these early phases many of us have very little of either. We can sit back and complain about what others are doing to take action and get things moving, or we can do something, anything - even if that doesn't fit the perfect version of what some define as the true spirit of DPoS.
We shouldn't be too harsh at these early attempts to get things kickstarted as this new protocol takes it's first steps. All systems go through a phase of centralized approaches before they can function sustainably in a decentralized fashion. Look at nature, business, humanity, etc...
It's all part of the process.
I think we need patience and perspective. Professional software always goes through alpha and beta testing before the expectations set on it are realized. We're just barely in the beta phase, and I think we should adjust our expectations accordingly. Moving fast isn't the primary goal. Doing things right is.
I think we should be rationally critical if:
because:
teaches us that once an organism (or organization) is brought into being, it's primary goal is to remain in existence. Once we create any forms of centralization it's very, very difficult to go the other direction to decentralization. The ABP approach is what launched the chain, and it was done in such a way as to provably show how it could be disbanded via removing keys with all powers completely removed. In essence, the ABP was killed and no longer exists. Until I see forms of centralization take a similar route to ensure they don't morph into something terrible, I will continue to raise my concerns.
The United States, as an example, started as an amazing economic experiment. A minarchy with very little centralization. It thrived. It has now become the largest centralized global military power the world has ever known. The original document of the constitution could not prevent this. We should learn from this history and take things slow while educating all our users how important this is to get right. There are no shortcuts to the process, unless we sacrifice principles.
That said, I'm all about moving as quickly as we can while making user interfaces easier and more secure. This is like the Internet in 1995 or so. There's a lot of work to be done and "the last mile problem" hasn't been solved yet. Biometrics, time locks, and more will help people secure their private keys. From there, we'll have a foundation to build on. Worker proposals done right will allow more funds to flow to build great things. It will take some time. We're all working incredibly hard and sacrificing quite a bit of sleep. Progress is being made. We need patience and accurate expectations.
Saying we can all agree on one way of doing things, one standard reminds me of this XKCD comic:
Those with experience in these things won't waste the time trying something that won't work in decentralized systems.
Your arguments are based on some assumption that this will be the only portal / place for these things to happen. @greymass, @generEOS, @eostribe and many others are also building wallets, web based portals and interfaces for people to interact with the referendum contract and cast votes.
The nodeos plugin that Greymass proposed and the existing methods of tallying votes would leave us in limbo for 2-3 months or more at a time where some areas of the constitution need to be ratified and adjusted for the ecosystem to move forward.
No standard is being forced on anyone - one proposed method to get things moving has, but people are free to do whatever they want to integrate eos.forum as they see fit and tally votes from the referendum contract.
I have fought the idea that only one account can interface with the contract in the short term publicly long before you chimed here or in the forum post on EOS Go (and have taken a lot of flack from those working on the referendum).
Don't try to give the readers here the perception that you have the moral high ground on this issue when I was the very first one to speak out and try to get people to rally against it. Those are the facts.
I am doing everything I can to push the people developing the referendum contract away from only having one account that can approve referendum. Maybe helping me present and argue those points, rather than DPoS virtue signaling in the comments on a proposal post for one UI solution, and actually contributing your time to steer this in a more decentralized direction would be a better use of your time?
I mean, if you really actually cared about the outcome of this and weren't just positioning yourself in the public debate. Just saying homie.
I'm not virtue signaling, and we've spent enough time in direct one on one conversation for you to hopefully know that. I'm pointing out inconsistencies in the approach as I see them:
Does not match up with:
Whenever there's a proposal which says, "Hey everyone, we should all do it my way" then I'm going to start asking tough questions and voicing my concerns. A single UI solution (or at least some strong consistency within UIs) could be helpful, but I also see the huge benefit of choice and competing approaches and designs and building loyalty within token voters and the block producers they trust.
My comments were not about the referendum. If you want to talk about that, then link me to a formal discussion, and I'll contribute if I can. We're barely a month into EOS Mainnet existing. A few months to do things right doesn't seem like the wrong approach.
Maybe it would be helpful for me to better understand what you mean by: