RE: Bringing It All Together: A User-Centered Approach to EOS Voting
EOS is becoming a protocol. It's not like other cryptocurrencies. Speculators who don't understand this are confused, but that's to be expected. If application developers are confused, that's more concerning. I'm quite comfortable with many different portals and approaches, I just think it would be helpful to provide more directories explaining what all the tools are, what they do, who built them, if they are trustworthy, etc. I don't think centralizing things is the answer. I think the answer is having more tools like Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo. In many ways, we're building a new, decentralized Internet here and it's only 1995 or so. The answer to me isn't to move too quickly to get a "faster horse" (what Ford suggested many people wanted) but instead provide something new. Something better. Something decentralized.
I'd love for every day users of EOS to not really know anything about EOS. It'll all be under the hood of the applications they are using.
I'd like to see BPs become trusted community partners for those who do care more about the protocol itself (serious investors, dapp developers, businesses, etc). A handful of trusted BPs then become the gateway for them to learn more and stay informed. I think that model provides a nice level of decentralization and healthy competition. If a given BP isn't meeting the needs of those who are requesting information from them, other BPs are available to compete.
well said, EOS is unique, it is being built in the open, so suffers more criticism than any other project, but it's strength is being open to change more than any other
seems to me, communities emerging and cooperating on a scale I've never seen, and it is a beautiful thing to see happening,
and those who want an easy user experience are likely the users of dapps further down the road, who don't need to be aware of how EOS works
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:
I think the miscommunication here is that you equate a voter education initiative proposal with a centralized approach to EOS referendum voting.
The only thing in this initiative that is centralized is the fact it is being proposed (not by me, I am actively fighting this) that only one account will be attached to the referendum contract, and that account will be in the hands of one person.
The very first referendum that will be listed (or so it is said) will be to hand the account over to a governing body who will handle the account, and this is the real problem afoot I keep talking about, and you keep talking about one UI proposal (among many) that will implemented.
Bringing together these use cases into an interface that explains what it is, why it is important for token holders to engage with it and activating them is a public good for the ecosystem and not the enemy of decentralization here.
You are arguing with the wrong person about the wrong issue. There is a much bigger threat at hand.
The real threat to DPoS based systems is and always has been voter apathy. While you sit back on your inflation rewards as a Steem witness, the sad reality is that the platform has fallen off in popularity significantly in the last year. It has become a haven for bots and whale cartels who are more focused on maximizing their stake than actually growing the platform.
The numbers don't lie...
What are you doing to fix this @lukestokes?
In case you haven't been paying attention, Bitshares and Steemit have failed miserably at educating the general public on how to actually take part in the system to affect any kind of significant change that could lead to improvements in larger adoption. I see EOS going down a similar road.
This is because the tools, resources and interfaces to engage with the system are scant and often difficult to use. My proposal addresses these hurdles for the average token holder and gives them a resource showing clearly how these different features work together, as many in the comments have said.
In my view "moving forward" is activating another 20-30% of smaller token holders to stake, vote and engage with important matters.
Things like increasing the number of paid standbys, amending the constitution, making arbitration a free market, enforcing the reg producer agreement, etc... so that the current discord we see in the majority of the community can "move forward" (for better or worse) out of this phase of confusion and bad press.
The outcome of those issues is not as important to me as much as that the liquid democracy we were building actually works and isn't dictated purely by those who have the most stake.
Activating and educating token holders is where all of the other DPoS systems have failed, and it was because they had engineers who could not design a bake sale flyer if their life depended on it leading usability and user research decisions they simply don't understand. Decentralization at all cost - even the very adoption that would make it work is just asinine any way you slice it. That's a view I do not agree with.
Now real UX people are showing up and pointing this stuff out, and just like you claim people new to DPoS don't understand decentralization, we are saying the incumbents don't understand the components of how to drive meaningful adoption.
I'm confused by your replies. As I already said:
It sounds to me you're saying the problem with voter apathy is that we don't have a unified portal design. I think the problem is we don't have secure hardware wallets, so many token holders are patiently waiting and Dan has mentioned this is a priority for Block One to come out with secure wallets with hardware encryption and biometrics for Mabook Pro and iPhone.
I didn't mention referendum voting at all in my comments, other than to say that's not what my comment was about. From my perspective we're completely missing each other in this conversation. If you want to talk about the referendum contract, please link me to a discussion as I asked, and I'll join in if I can. What you're describing in the comments here certainly sounds bad (centralization, etc), but your reply is confusing me as it seems like a "what about ism." As part of a BP, I haven't voiced support for anything you're describing or agreed to any proposal that would increase centralization.
Okay, but I didn't think this post was centrally about your concerns regarding a referendum proposal. I was responding to the idea that the problem EOS has is it needs a centralized UX/UI design. I disagree. That's it.
STEEM has 70% voter engagement by token (not including Steemit, inc holdings as they do not vote). I do a report on this every month.
Please don't confuse "Steemit" with STEEM. They are different and neither STEEM nor BitShares has failed. In fact, by transaction volume, they are the most successful blockchains on the planet by far:
Steem has many, many more projects on it than just Steemit.
This and mention of my "inflation rewards as a Steem witness" sound like a personal attack. Is that your intention? For a detailed reply to your question, I'd have to explain my perspetive on what Steemit, inc is doing right now. I don't think their focus is on Steemit.com in it's current form but Hivemind ("Communities"), AppBase, HF20, SMTs, and other things. Steemit.com is just a reference implementation of the Steem blockchain. I could go into more details, but it would be tangental to the original thread here which was about a proposed problem and solution for EOS.
That's DPOS though. To change that, I think we'll have to change DPOS in some way.
I agree, both the BitShares DEX and Steemit.com (the main thing people think of when they think of Steem) were created mostly by engineers who may not understand good design. That is changing. My friend @billbutler has been actively improving the BitShares DEX, and it's much better now than it has ever been. As for STEEM, there are many other interesting, well designed sites like https://busy.org/, https://elegance.blue/, https://dlive.io/, and so many more. I take issue with you saying DPOS chains have failed because the evidence I see says otherwise.
Let's stick to one topic at a time. If you want me to engage with the referendum discussion, please send me a link, and I'll engage.
I am just presenting one potential solution among many that will come along as well as pointing to a direction for those who are developing similar portals.
Some of the tools that have been developed in the past have been a complete information overload for the average person who is new to this technology.
The EOSVotes.io initiative is just a first stab at a much bigger problem, and should not be taken as the end-all be-all solution to solving this problem. It's just one approach to presenting the information with a voter outreach and education layer that explains the who, how and why these things are important to those who have no idea why they would even need to vote on referendum in the first place.
This initiative should be separated from the larger problem I am pointing out in my OP - that bad usability is a significant barrier to more people engaging with these protocols and platforms.
In our conversations, that is the real issue that you should be addressing, at least in my opinion, not throwing stones at making it easier for people to use the referendum contract by educating them.
Having one initiative everyone gets behind in the short term to prime the general public on what it is when referendums start popping up in wallets and various interfaces in the ecosystem is more about education than any kid of centralization.
People are free to integrate referendum voting as they see fit in the wallets and portals that they trust, I was never saying anything to the contrary.
But if only one single account and person has the ability to post referendum, that to me is the real issue that needs to be addressed, not any of the things you are arguing. We are in agreement that centralizing voting on referendum through one design is not the goal, because it was never what I was proposing in the first place.
My design strategy proposal and the accompanied education initiative is 99% about activating voters and steering other interfaces, wallets, etc... into some ways they might solve this design problem for the people using this stuff.
Well, considering 53% of Steem is held in the @Steemit account, I think those numbers are a little fuzzy to the true nature of whether the system is actually working or not. But that's a completely other discussion.
In my mind, a functional DPoS based blockchain protocol that has an engaged and informed base of token holders can overcome stagnation if 1. the token supply has a good distribution and 2. token holders large and small are educated and engaged.
If that's how it came off, I apologize. I am a little frustrated you are spending time and energy on picking apart one proposed design strategy and education/outreach initiative (among many) rather than putting that same energy helping to solve some of the problems facing EOS right now.
And I love them all. There are many ways to use the underlying blockchain to solve different problems and present different information. I am speaking about the actual voting UI and education that supports it though, not the UI for projects built on top of the chain.
I was saying Bitshares and Steemit have failed in addressing a user centered approach to their UI / UX within their voting system as well as the corresponding education to activate token holders, I didn't say that DPOS failed. Don't put words in my mouth now!
See the two components I mentioned previously that would make the existing DPoS systems a little more equitable and improvements move faster. That is just my opinion though.
Do you agree with the things that are going on in EOS right now? Wouldn't you like to see referendum pass that would refine and improve some of these things?
This is why my focus is on usability of the referendum. The past has shown us over and over again (on the voting side) that apathy of the smaller token holders do not act as a counter balance to the whales who will vote mostly to keep things as they are, especially if the existing system benefits them.
You were using some pretty strong statements there. I said "DPOS chains" not DPOS itself.
I'm not "throwing stones" but giving my opinion. Your reply included things which were not accurate IMO, so I addressed those also. If there's an open discussion about the concerns you have regarding the referendum, link me to it and I'll participate. As it is, I have no way to contribute to concerns you're mentioning.
As to "the numbers don't lie" let's be careful not to draw incorrect conclusions from correlations.
Search trends for cryptocurrency:
and bitcoin would fit the same graph:
I'll wager it has more to do with price than anything else.
Well, there is plenty of supporting data that shows Steemit has a spam problem, users have dropped off and are not engaged, etc... Associating that with a lull in the overall interest in crypto is equally subjective.
Many improvements have been made to the faucet since that post was published 6 months ago. That faucet is run by Steemit, inc as they pay for and manage new accounts created through Steemit.com.
As I said, Steemit.com is not STEEM. As a Steem witness, I'm not directly responsible for Steemit.com which is run by Steemit, inc. I'm responsible for the Steem blockchain. That said, I've put forth ideas which could help move things forward for both based on community priorities that don't currently line up with Steemit, inc.
On the topic of bad design decisions... also see the nested comments during this entire back and forth with @lukestokes. That's what UX people call a "clustefail". LOL