Why account values (and a few other things) are messed up

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

Over the past several months the price of STEEM has dropped dramatically and that has introduced some issues for SBD, which is a stable value coin (aka stablecoin) backed by about $1 worth of STEEM. As part of the implementation of SBD, there is a rule which gradually reduces the backing of SBD below $1 when STEEM's value becomes too small to support all of the SBD in circulation at the full $1 value (in addition there are mechanisms to reduce the amount of SBD, but that is not relevant to this post). The way this is done is by adjusting the price feed provided by witnesses so that the system assumes STEEM is worth a bit more than it is when performing internal calculations.

The price feed adjustment is normally reasonably small and, while this would introduce an inaccuracy in values on UIs (including steemit.com) which rely on the price feed for their estimate of the price of STEEM (such as steemit.com), the inaccuracy would be quite small (similar to other such inaccuracies in displayed values due to factors such as changing market prices, changes in the size of the reward pools, etc.). However, due to a bug in the popular steem-js library, steemit.com and another of other UIs (including steempeak and steemworld) have experienced a dramatic inaccuracy as well as various other malfunctions (such as post payout detail being incorrect). I reported this bug several hours ago upon identifying it, but it has not yet been fixed. EDIT: @eonwarped also found and fixed some additional issues in condenser itself.

Some of the other UIs have introduced their own work-arounds for the problem but currently steemit.com is not yet fixed.

After some quick investigation in cooperation with @timcliff, as far as I know the problem occurs only in the UI (display) layer and does not affect any blockchain calculations.

Rewards will be donated to @burnpost

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The way this is done is by adjusting the price feed provided by witnesses so that the system assumes STEEM is worth a bit more than it is when performing internal calculations.

Is this actually being done? I thought you were against the idea of doing this?

Not adjusted by witnesses, but adjusted internally by the system (code) to maintain the 10% SBD cap.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

He buggedout, you are our man to really understand this so good to see you investigate :)

Thanks for filling in some details about this strange (though fortunately mostly harmless) occurrence.

resteemed so I dont have to keep explaining to people, thanks!

The system wasn't designed with such a fast drop in price in mind, I guess.

I'm enjoying calling myself a #cryptobillionaire! ;)

If the debt ratio stays below 10% would it be a plausible strategy to buy SBD on Bittrex and then use the conversion method to convert to STEEM effectively ending up with more STEEM than would be earned if the same amount of fiat money was directly used to purchase more STEEM? Or is the pricing and everything in too much flux that it would be too risky to attempt this?

I did a few conversions recently, and yes, generally speaking, If your goal is to power up it makes sense to buy SBD and convert rather then to buy Steem. Here's one example :

100 Steem => 54 SBD =>convertion=>125 Steem

However right now I can only buy 52 SBD for 125 Steem, so in SBD terms it was a loss.
2018-11-23 13.30.22.png2018-11-23 13.32.22.png

It can end up being more or less depending on market conditions and various system rules. It can certainly pay off, however, If you want to attempt this, I would suggest making sure you fully understand the process in detail, and also that you are prepared for the inherent risks.

So I don't really have 20 billion dollars coming? sigh back to work then

Thank you very much for your explanation.

You mean by Steem account isn't worth $296,564,412,029.54? Rats... lol.