The Bandwidth Game - Join Now - Win 20,000 CRR!

in #help7 years ago (edited)

This is the first ever Massively Multi-player Online Steemit Game (MMOSG). This is a game where everyone can truly win.

The Gamification of Steemit

After yesterday's hard work, I had a good sleep, took my daughter to school and, on the drive home, thought about what to write. I just don't feel like another lengthy technical article, so this is a bit of serious fun!

Firstly, we need some proper information on the Steemit dashboard so that we can play the Steem Game without crashing into barriers we didn't know were there. This is like driving a car with no fuel gauge and no speedometer. We went too fast without knowing it and hit some motorway traffic - time to slow down a little and let the bottleneck clear.

I think the Gamification of Steemit will be a positive development. But we all need to view important game parameters in one place: our dashboard.

The Bandwidth Game

During the last two days, we hit some serious traffic issues. As explained in the previous article, the current_reserve_ratio (CRR) has plummeted from its stable value of 20,000 down to as low as 250. The congestion is real and many people have had to wait as the "blockchain traffic lights" turn from red back to green - only to turn back to red again.

Why is the CRR important? Because it is used to calculate the allocated bandwidth assigned by the system to each and every one of us. The calculation is performed over a 7-day period; subtract your used bandwidth from your allocated bandwidth and you get a value for how much bandwidth you have left. However, if the CRR drops below 20,000 then your allocated bandwidth drops in proportion to the CRR value and, even if you're not doing anything, you may suddenly run out of usable bandwidth.

So, the aim of the Bandwidth Game is to get the CRR back to 20,000. This is going to take the collective will of everyone to push in the same direction. The CRR is a global parameter that affects all of us - and we can all help in bringing it back up!

The witnesses have increased the block size and this is already making a difference, with the CRR moving from about 400 to 1200 in about 8 hours. I'm not absolutely sure if this is enough to push it back up to 20,000.

Firstly, go to the steemdb.com homepage, scroll down to the bottom and in the right-hand column you will see a parameter named current_reserve_ratio. As I write this, the value has increased to about 1200; much better than yesterday but still far from 20,000. This ratio will move slowly as it replenishes itself - so long as the overall traffic does not cause another jam.

Secondly, look at your own data; you can find this at steemdb.com/@yourusername. Click on the Activity dropdown menu and take a look at your posts, comments and votes. It even has a nice graph so you can quickly see if your recent activity has been very high.

Thirdly, and here comes the actual Game, lower your overall activity for 24 hours. If you are participating in voting bots, consider pausing them for just a day - you can always turn them on again. Any other activity that appears significantly higher than the rest try, just for the Game, to decrease it.

Not All Bots Are Equal

Now, I myself have participated in some voting bots to help minnows and to help curators find good content. But my voting activity soared from about 30 votes per day to over 400! I know the people behind all these initiatives have spent hundreds of hours helping individuals and the whole Steemit ecosystem; I really do not wish to harm these initiatives (far from it!) but I feel that the experiment is worth doing.

To be fair, I hope all the other bot owners would also consider turning off their bots, if they can! This does not have to be for the full 7 days; if we all do this for 24 hours we can see the change in the CRR value. If the bots are then all turned on again, we can then see if the CRR continues to climb or whether it starts to drift down again. If the bots are not the cause of the traffic increase, then we can look elsewhere.

I think the Game is worth playing.

There is another issue: why this bandwidth limiter kicks in way below the network maximum? That is for another time.

Thanks

=== LATEST UPDATE ===

This issue is now being resolved at the developer level. Changes will be made to how the system's bandwidth reacts to surges. I do not have a timeframe for this, but the new algorithm is being tested as I write. I will let you know as soon as I can (but I also have to sleep) and the developer team will undoubtedly issue a statement with more details.

Thank you for your continued patience, and there is now a nice bar chart showing your voting power and available bandwidth in real time at steemd.com/@yourusername - thanks to @roadscape. This should help you judge how much activity you can safely do at the moment.

Sort:  

Please read the UPDATE posted at the foot of the article.

As I suspected from 12 hours ago, the CRR is creeping up too slowly, so changes are necessary at the code level. These are being actively looked at with some urgency.

Thanks for reading.

Oh, hey! A solution!

A creative and fun proposal to solve the problem - I love it. Great job :)

Thanks a lot. Much appreciated.

I hope it's fun - maybe I, or others, should post the CRR value every hour or two.

Currently CRR = 1543

CRR > 2000 now. Nice to see how a problem get's fixed on steemit... it's faster than my curiosity.

=)

You mean you don't have a curiosity_reserve_ratio?
;-)

Means I am very slow =)

Well done on your research yesterday. In anyone doesn't know, @rycharde was the hair breaking the camel's back on this I think! Your research tipped the balance.

I'm thinking of making a small standalone web app with a speedometer showing CRR, as well as historical values in a line chart. What do you think?

The witnesses have increased the block size and this is already making a difference, with the CRR moving from about 400 to 1200 in about 8 hours.

Some witnesses. I encourage everyone to check out the list on steemdb or steemd and consider changing your vote to those who support this, what is probably a temporary measure, but which is necessary now.

To be fair, I hope all the other bot owners would also consider turning off their bots, if they can!

You can't hope to get good data from this because you have no way of knowing how many bots are currently active, whether they were turned off and when, etc. Something else needs to be done here.

There is another issue: why this bandwidth limiter kicks in way below the network maximum? That is for another time.

Yes, when the average over a minute is above 1/4 of capacity. I would love to find out the reason for this too, maybe it's too conservative? Let's find out.

Thanks a lot. Looks like many of these issues will be fixed with a new algorithm.

Interesting proposal.
So mainly just pausing bots right now? (And, individually, also not hitting 30 upvotes in an hour)
So, if this test finds bots are the issue....do bots get banned? Or the system fixed to opperate with them?

Lastly...I'm assuming what you are proposing requires 70%+ participation?
So this Post needs to be massively shared and seen by everybody!?? 👍
🐳POWER

Yes, participation is key - and I can't resteem my own posts! So all help appreciated.

I think firstly we need to run this experimental game and see the effect; then that will inform the next stage of the discussion as to whether the traffic surge is bot-related or not.

The CRR is currently at 1456. At a rough estimate, rising about 50 points per hour - it looks too slow, will reach 20,000 in 350 hours?! But the regrowth is non-linear, so we shall see.

Thanks!

Well I resteemed. Hope it helps!!

Well, instead of fixing the problem, we have helped bring about a more stable solution - hopefully. Thanks for your help.

Ouch can't do anything when I'm hit with this kind of error. Wanted to try and put up a post per day but seems to have hit a speed hump. Can't even redeem rewards or transfer them to wallet. 😒

May I make a suggestion. Look here: https://steemd.com/@thecoolplayer
You only have a few kb available. Those big images in your posts are killing your bandwidth at the moment.
So wait a little, you should then be able to turn some SBD into SP and that will up your bandwidth.
Hope that helps a little.

Thanks for the advice 😊 Will try to convert some SBD to SP

I encountered the "bandwidth limit exceeded", too. As I read more of these articles and did some research on the subject, I'm filing in the blanks. This is the first article I've seen to explain the cause. The problem is so widespread that some people have powered up just to be sure they have enough Steem to work with.

I have a feeling that this issue can be traced down to the bots. I have tried bots myself, but now I have reservations about using them.

This platform is based on the idea of an attention economy. If attention is the most valuable thing you can give someone, a bot doing your voting is probably in conflict with the spirit and reason for being of the Steemit.com website: monetizing the attention economy.

Now in the comments for this article, someone mentioned that they were using bots to find good content worthy of their interest, and I have no problem with that. But if the bots are hindering our capacity to interact, a condition that I think is very likely to be confirmed, then we need to rethink our motivation for using the bots.

I'd be OK if bots were banned just to ensure our ability to interact on this platform. I'm not so sure that such a ban can be enforced, however. I do hope that this game will help to relieve the congestion and that the developers can find a solution to it that won't require a ban on the bots, as I see that some people appreciate their utility.

I suspect it is too many high frequency bots. If so, we need to find another solution as they will expand to fill all available bandwidth. Thanks for your thoughts on this.

I'm wondering too if those of us doing mass following is having a major impact on the bandwidth. I've noticed many more people doing it since my own activities have been made public on the platform.

Perhaps a daily cap on following needs to be put in place, if possible.

Resteeming this to 12,000+ followers.

Wow! That is a lot of followers.

You've given me an idea - another hidden formula. What are the real effects of resteeming in terms of bandwidth used and Vests consumed.

Update: CRR = 1825
Seems stable at 60 units per minute rise.

Thank you for your explanation. Thanks for everyone who work hard to solve the problem.

You get an upvote for your kind comment :-)

Thank you very much. I'd like to invite you to visit my blog when you have time.

I am new to all this. Thank you for the info. upvoted restreemed and following

I just saw this post and I'm confused on how it all works. Is there a simple intro for this?