RE: Feedback Wanted: 4 Week Power Down
I'm not a fan. As a witness I wouldn't vote against the SMT proposal because this is included, but I think it's bad for the network to change it. Part of what makes Steem a community is that people can't just up and leave. If you have steem powered up you're going to be a part of this place for 13 weeks. I think it's part of why steem has a culture of "we all go to the same moon," as opposed to "sorry suckers that token is going up slightly faster so I'm leaving." It happens anyway, but there's a bunch of people that'll post here up until the blockchain flatlines.
I do think it's a real concern to speculators that people can't get their money out quickly. That answer is simple. Buy Steem, nut don't power up. The question I see is does it hurt investment? My guess is that there's more problems seeing the utility of Steem and getting in and out is a tiny side show. So, rather than rush a "simple fix" that I believe will hurt the community let's move it until after the hardfork and make it a burn case.
In a different version of this, Steem still has a 13 week powerdown, but you can burn some of the steem you would otherwise get if you wanted it to happen faster. Adds a burn case for steem, doens't hurt the community, and is a step closer to investor/trader friendliness.
In the larger scope of things I don't think a minor tweak of this property will drastically change things for the better. What will change things for the better is adding apps, usecases, businesses, and communities of people that are able to use Steem to make money, make a point, grow an audience, play a game, or some way that this place adds more value to their life than having dollars in a bank account does.
I'm mildly in favor of the 4 weeks. I don't think it is that big a deal either way. But I do strongly disagree with this:
What makes a strong community is that people can leave but choose not to. They renew their ties every day when they decide to stay. A "community" where people can't leave is a cult or a prison.
Fully agree with that. We are not in a bank system where we have to beg to have back our money... Why not put in place something similar to tezos where you need to wait 1 month before your delegation or power up here starts to produce interest. Like that people are free to have back all their money when they want it but they have also reason to avoid power down
Amen to this:
Dear @smooth I have been targeted by @buildawhale and he is downvoting my posts to nothing . I have posted here on steemit every day since I joined steemit in July 2016 and invested a lot of money in this and if this sort of thing is allowed to continue then steemit will never recover .
Here is what I wrote him to ask him to stop and then I will show you his response .
To @buildawhale
I do not post anything offensive and do not bother anyone .
Please leave me alone or I will power down and leave Steemit as so many others have done from these " down voting plagues."
As you well know, Steemit is declining in active accounts . As long as this type of down voting continues , Steemit has no chance of ever returning to its former glory .
It is beyond my understanding as to why you want to destroy Steemit .
Who in their right mind would ever put any money in Steemit when someone like you can come along and destroy their investment ?
I have invested money and time in this and the money was before people could down vote someone and not use some of their own voting power to do the down vote . Just look what has happened to the active accounts since the last hard-fork : I hate to say this , but If Steemit does not fix this soon , this site is doomed.
Remember the Golden Rule : " Do unto others as you would have them do unto you " . Would you really want someone with millions of Steem Power to down vote your posts to oblivion ? I think not .
And here was his response
Yeah, that's problem.
You don't do anything. You are just a mini-Haejin.
What happened after the last hardfork is that the long-running decline in active accounts, posts, etc. slowed down a bit, but not dramatically. Recently some measures of activity have been on a bit of a rebound, though it is probably too soon to say how significant or sustainable it might be.
I'm not and can't be responsible for how someone else votes.
@smooth thank you for your reply
The instant power down concept, regardless of the cost/burn, destroys the security feature altogether. A hacker won't care about burning 5% or 20% or even 50%. Anyone who is hacked will lose all their funds instantly.
Also, proposing that people invest without powering up is ignoring the cumulative cost of Steem's high inflation. If you are day trading you don't care about inflation, but few serious longer-term investors can (or will) really accept an extra 8% per year for the "privilege" of investing in Steem, especially over a longer term holding period. That would be like paying an 8%/year management fee, which is almost unheard of.
You are spot on! At such as high rate, its ridiculous and a major tax on people.
Respectfully, I find your arguments to keep long term SP contradictory for what you and Steem in general stand for. On one hand we want to give power back to people, on the other force them to lock up their funds. Doesn’t make sense. SP should be eliminated and Steem alone in the wallet can be used in a similar fashion as SP. Let the free market decide if people keep Steem here or take it to exchanges. Justifying 13 week SP with the purpose of keeping people and their funds here sounds authoritarian.
Sure people say if you want luxury of staying liquid you can do so, but that doesn’t make sense. Why would anybody be interested in buying and keeping liquid steem when inflation dilutes the value of steem and doesn’t let them participate in the economy in a meaningful way.
Perhaps its time to give the options for people to set the parameters as they like. If security is the concern, increase the lock up time for savings.
I don’t think Steem continuing to play a central bank kind of role is beneficial. Anything that lowers the power of witnesses and gives more power to users regarding funds would make steem more attractive as an investment. Until then we/steem will be stuck in this semi-centralized/semi-decentralized limbo.
I've made this exact point repeatedly in various witness chats. It seems to me like a natural subject for the next fork post SMTs anyways. First to simplify things in the face of multiple new tokens that will otherwise be a mouthful for new users to wrap their heads around an already complicated platform. Second to judge whether or not inflation-derived rewards from stake-based voting should continue to exist on the main token once SMTs are here.
An ideal situation would look something like this: Steem Power and the STEEM savings account are both removed completely. You simply hold STEEM in your wallet. It can either be liquid (default) or locked for a specific time period. Carrying out actions that require the use of resource credits, or casting witness votes, will necessarily lock the required STEEM to be granted those resources, or the stake that you decide to support a witness with, for a given amount of time (to avoid abuse of resource credits by people who could otherwise swap STEEM from one account to another and take up the available bandwidth). Users can then also themselves lock their STEEM for any given amount of time specified by themselves as a means to add security.
This would simplify things by several orders of magnitude for any new user coming to Steem and wondering what they need to do in order to participate, and what is up with all these different names for basically the same token.. It would also allow for flexibility in terms of different users with a different wish for security versus liquidity being able to choose what they want without us needing to find a "middle ground" which in the end doesn't satisfy anyone.
Finally, we would not have this childish term "Steem Power", which may be cool for an SMT used in a gaming community, but isn't fit to describe the main resource powering an "enterprise-grade" blockchain.
Obviously, this requires a serious rework and a lot of discussions, which is why I believe it deserves its own fork rather than being lumped in with the long awaited SMT fork.
I like your ideas. I hope you will be able convince other witnesses. After SMTs Steem as a currency will have to take a different role to power the larger economy which may require better liquidity and flexibility for participants. I think Steem wallet is one of the best features of Steem, and removing SP would unleash its true power.
I agree with aggroed. But I am also a fan of a way to instantly power down + burn 5% as a fee to do so. Creates a sink, liquidity and is good for large investors who don’t want to be locked in a speculative asset with no way out for 13 weeks. I don’t like the idea of a 1 month power down as it does nothing for anyone. A month is still too long for a large investor to YOLO on(power up) and dosent satisfy a way to get out instantly.
That's a really interesting idea but doesn't change the fact that in case your account got hacked, with a shorter power down period the attacker could get a bigger portion of your STEEM before you would have the chance to change your keys.
Maybe 2 FA should be implemented in the long run.
Maybe there could be the option to determine save withdrawal addresses (white listed addresses)?
Also, wouldn't it be possible that every account holder had the option in his own account to either select a 4 or 13 week power down?
Absolutely. And keep in mind that 4 weeks and 13 weeks are random numbers. They have no meaning and the powerdown period in the future should be far more dynamic than that.
ideally I would like the option to extend PD for certain long term savings accounts and have others in 4 weeks etc, but I don't see that being possible for this HF due to complexity, 4 week only is a simple number change.
If the 5% fee were to be implemented, I am more inclined to support it, if it were opt-in based. And the opt-in effect should be delayed (2 weeks, 30 days?) in order to prevent someone who compromises an account to opt-in and automatically withdraw. As for the destination of the fee, I'd allow options, regarding the destination: @steem.dao, @null, maybe @steemalliance if they can take this kind of funding.
But on the long term, I prefer the solution @therealwolf proposes with differentiated interest benefits, based on the duration of committed power up. With the possibility to have different "deposits" with different interests, kinda like at the bank. That doesn't exclude the possibility of implementing both.
Both are not the kind of easy fixes Steemit expects, like changing "13" with "4". Both will require some work and some code auditing afterwards, especially since we are dealing with wallet code changes.
Anything is possible however if you take a look at the original post here, you will see that the change to 4 weeks is only being considered for the upcoming hardfork because the code change is trivial and low risk:
Of course it is possible to discuss any other sorts of changes such as configurable power down time, but not within the context of something that is feasible to deploy soon.
Yes, @steemitblog wrote it was easy to implement, but the reasoning for considering it is also that there was support for that idea within the community:
What I meant with "interesting idea" is the suggestion of @theycallmedan to burn a certain percentage of the STEEM always if anybody wants to initiate such a faster power down. So if one could fulfill the necessary security requirements (or if some people - I am not one of them - by their own choice optionally could accept a somewhat higher risk in exchange for a faster power down) that could be an interesting instrument to reduce the inflation of STEEM.
Thinking the idea to burn STEEM (whenever possible) is interesting doesn't mean I was supportiing the proposal for a shorter power down period (currentIy I am not).
Sorry, in case it wasn't clear I was answering the question in your last paragraph:
by pointing out that, yes, it is certainly possible, but not possible within the constraints set forth for the current hard fork. It would have to go into a future one, probably in six months to a year. For this one, the options under consideration are simply 4 weeks or 13 weeks.
Your other ideas (2FA, whitelists, etc.) are also very good ones which should be considered in the future.
I like the idea of white addresses to which I can get (this solves all security problems) speculators move the price in markets around the world, so we need them like air !!! 100%
I dont like the idea of a burn. I dont see any benefit for Steem to do that.
Burn means Steem is not a valuable resource, otherwise it would be a donation for instant powerdown to Steem DAO.
If you need to burn token the design of the token is bad.
One of the reasons for the high bitcoin price is its scarcity, whereas STEEM still has a rather high inflation. In my opinion burning some STEEM helps to curb the negative effect of inflation on the value of STEEM - at least for now.
dont get me wrong but with onboarding and more usecases we get the same effect in a more sexy way.
Steem is not Bitcoin.
If we remove current SBD from rewarding and make a Version like DAI out of it, we have the same effect beacause Steem get lockt up and less ( not control able) inflation.
And nice site effects like a real scalable 1$ pegged Coin on Steem.
I think things should be build for longterm and not for shortterm.
No problem, that you have a different point of view than me. I know what you mean, STEEM is not mainly (only) a value storage but also a fast and flexible blockchain with many possible use cases. Sure, there is a difference between STEEM and bitcoin, but for now we have no 'mass adoption', yet, just a crypto currency which is losing more and more of its value (which not only hurts current stake holders but also makes it less attractive for potential new investors).
I wrote "for now" I like the idea of burning STEEM, because I think that at least at the moment inflation, the fact that Steemit, Inc. is selling lots of STEEM and other reasons are causing an already long-lasting price decline pressure.
Nobody is going to lock up coins knowing they have to take a 5% cut to get out quicker than 13 weeks, that's a losing proposition with Steem.
And you're wrong, a 1 month power down does more than "nothing" for true investors. Maybe you need a little more time in crypto to understand things before speaking about them.
How about an internal exchange SP to STEEM .... I believe this was mentioned before
if someone compromises my account (somehow) the 5% burn for instant power down would be the last thing I want available
for hackers 10% ok too :D
Can you elaborate?
Instant powerdown or 4 weeks are only if opt in.
Like:
" You want a less secure account and 4 weeks Powerdown press here (owner key required)"
Same with Instant Powerdown with fee.
But i would say the fee goes to DAO. So if the price pump DAO gets more funds, or use it for account tokens for onboarding.
useless burns would change nothing.
Good idea!!! But the fee should better be 30% for the instant power down instead of 5%!
That burn feature is a nice idea. It seems like its a flavor of the HEX token's "emergency unstake" feature, but yeah, would be good to see that option.
I don't think either of those metrics is appreciably affected by the contemplated difference in powerdown time.
Again, the difference in powerdown time makes little difference. That there is a lockin at all probably is far more relevant.
A while back I made an error that enabled a hacker to swipe all my liquid. Had there been no lockin I certainly would have lost all my SP as well. This was revelatory to me, and has moderated my opinion, which was previously completely opposed to the lockin. I see it more as a security measure now LOL. This brings me to the fee for faster powerdowns. It seems to me the security aspect of the powerdown time is obviated by that potential, as hackers would certainly be willing to burn as necessary to make a quick cash grab. Therefore I do oppose that.
Beyond that, I reckon your judgment far superior to mine in this regard. I have far too often demonstrated my ignorance disagreeing with you =p
Thanks!
All of this. The answer is to change nothing about how this works now, because it is a security mechanism.
I agree with @aggroed. Also +5% burn for instant power down. But considering potential compromise from instant burn to powerdown as highlighted by @smooth, can we setup up a max cap for instant power down ? For instance maximum of 10%(TBD) of your SP can be instantly powered down with 5% burn with cool down time of 30 days for the next use thus if you want to use another instant powerdown you need to pass 30days from the last instant powerdown date.
Time to time people will need some urgency of liquid funds in their life regardless of how much they love about steem. Life is no guarantee. ;)
Agreed on almost all points. Even if we did want to change, the change should be much more conservative. From 13 to 10 weeks, for example.
Make incremental changes, observe results, and make further changes if necessary.
Ya, 4 is a big jump from 13.
"Part of what makes Steem a community is that people can't just up and leave". This is a good thing? So we will just keep other people's coins locked so they can't go? Why don't we increase it back to 104 weeks? Who cares about small users here on steemit when whales are the ones that are controlling everything.
Let the users decide if they want to stay or go. Create a better environment and they will definitely stay longer.
Its a good thing when people have consented to it. Know anything about certificates of deposit? Locking your USD gets you more USD, because it is good for other people. In Steem you agree to lock up your STEEM for "powers" and it benefits others because you do it. This is a consensual relationship, you agreed to have your STEEM locked up, so don't go around calling it an attack on free will.
But the thing is that people NEVER leave when the token is going up in value, at most they sell a small part of their stake.
People leave only when the price is going down, way down. And this bear market has proved that people still powerdown, it doesn't keep them in.
At the same time, we are not allowing investors to panic sell. I know it's counter intuitive but we want them to panic sell so that they get rid of most of their stake at the lowest price possible.
Removing the powerdown will allow us to take a big punch whenever price capitulation happens and then recover quickly.
However, with this powerdown in place, selling pressure remains throughout a bear market, and that's a big part of why Steem fell in ranking on coinmarketcap.
Let the weak hands leave quickly so that they get replaced by strong hands quickly.
What needs fixing is the price of steem more than anything else, so let's take this into consideration and make it an instant powerdown, or make it an option (in case someone still wants the security it provides).
You're wrong here. People do dump during a bull market, smart whales do. Imagine who this benefits most. It helps whales dump on the market and get out as price rises. This is not good for the little people that don't realize that their STEEM's value is about to plummet over night as a massive sell wall gets created. Giving whales this power will result in the inevitable death of Steem and leave poor people poorer.
Whales dump only part of their stake. If they dump everything, the coin will clearly stop going up in price.
That is one of the things we need to be cautious of. How can we know that certain whales are not pushing this 4 week shift because they want to dump everything and leave everyone else will greatly devalued STEEM? We wouldn't know until it was too late. 13 weeks on the other hand slows a whale's ability to dump all of their coins.
If they dump at this price then it's the best thing that could happen to steem. We are near all time lows.