Steem 19.10 Officially Released: AppBase, RocksDB, Unlimited Content Editing, and More!

in #steem6 years ago

Steem 19.10.jpg

In today’s post we’d like to update you on the next release of the Steem software (v0.19.10) which includes two major changes that we’re really excited about: AppBase and RocksDB. In addition to the AppBase and RocksDB changes, release 19.10 also contains several additional exciting changes that we will describe below.

Release 19.10 is a non-consensus change, and therefore will not require a hardfork.

AppBase

AppBase provides a robust foundation for meeting all of our future scaling needs. AppBase will allow the platform to grow while managing the resource requirements of third-party application developers, witnesses, and exchanges.

Four months ago, we announced that AppBase release candidate v0.19.4rc1 was ready for community testing. After several months of extensive testing, we are excited to announce that the release is officially ready!

RocksDB

As described in our recent blockchain update post, we updated the account history plugin to use RocksDB – a fast-on-disk data store with an advanced caching layer, which will greatly improve the efficiency of the Steem blockchain.

Release 19.10 will contain the RocksDB version of the account history plugin, so that node operators can start to benefit from the performance improvements that RocksDB offers.

Changes for developers and steemd node operators

As mentioned in the previous AppBase post, there are some minor changes required for developers who are interfacing directly with the steemd APIs, as well as for node operators who are running instances of steemd.

Please be sure to read all of the details in the release notes, as well as the previous announcement post.

Additional Changes

Auto-scaling of shared memory file size

Node operators will be happy to know that we added an option that will allow the shared memory file size to automatically increase once it reaches the configured limit. This will allow node operators to deal with increasing shared memory file sizes without having to restart their nodes.

The new options that are available in the config.ini file are:

# A 2-precision percentage (0-10000) that defines the threshold for when to autoscale the shared memory file. Setting this to 0 disables autoscaling. The recommended value for consensus node is 9500 (95%). Full node is 9900 (99%).
shared-file-full-threshold = 0

# A 2-precision percentage (0-10000) that defines how quickly to scale the shared memory file. When autoscaling occurs, the file's size will be increased by this percentage. Setting this to 0 disables autoscaling. The recommended value is between 1000 and 2000 (10-20%).
shared-file-scale-rate = 0

New location for blockchain data files

Node operators should be aware that the default directory for the blockchain data files has changed from $PWD/witness_node_data_dir to $HOME/.steemd. It is still possible to override the default directory and specify a location for the data files using the --data-dir= command line argument.

Unlimited content editing (past seven days)

The release will include a change to allow unlimited content editing (beyond seven days)!

Once the 19.10 release is deployed to production nodes (by the witnesses and RPC node operators), the blockchain will allow changes past the seven-day threshold. After that, it will be up to individual UIs to support unlimited content (or not).

Steemit has already created pull request 2826 to update condenser to allow unlimited content editing, which will be deployed to steemit.com after a sufficient number of witnesses have updated.

What’s Next?

Our primary focus will continue to be Hardfork 20, which will include the complete overhaul of the bandwidth formula to use the new Resource Credits system. We look forward to providing more updates on Hardfork 20 soon.

Steem on,

The Steemit Blockchain Team

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Love the unlimited editing idea - as there's plenty of times when I've noticed a spelling mistake or where I miss said something and I wish I could go back and alter or fix but I'm unable to because of the 7-Day window.

For the next update consider allowing us to comment when we resteem something - with its own voting/ payout - essentially making it its own post where we can earn rewards by refering someone else's content - you can even add another level to the curation for this - kicking a lion's share back to the original poster - this could even allow for people to earn on a post past the 7 day window / bring older posts some attention they may have missed out on.

Just some thoughts.

All the best.

E.

I would prefer to allow posts to earn profit past the 7 days window (without any time limit). Probably it's super hard to do but would benefit good content creators (posts that attract new visitors from google etc.)

I've been saying this for a while - I make films - it costs a lot to do that. What's my incentive to share them here exclusively if I can't earn past 7 days - what's the likely hood of me making 2k or more organically on a post to cover costs? Slim to none.

For example seemit have verifiable curated tieres of content quality..... things listed as gold tier may have an open pay out which still pays out every seven days......

Front-ends with ad-revenue could be a solution.

Did someone say ad revenue? I've been brain storming again. Came up with an idea to help create demand for STEEM by creating a Market for promoted posts, removing them from trending, and placing them as banners (publisher chooses from a list, like curating) inside posts. A simple click of the banner works as a vote for those hosting the banner, and that equals easy ad revenue, plus a percentage of the rewards from the promotions once paid out (they jockey for position much like the trending page within the market through the use of promotion bots) goes to those hosting the ads, much like curation rewards.

I've been yapping about it for a few days but I'm not sure if many are paying attention or noticing, which is normal... LOL!

That's a really interesting idea @nonameslefttouse!

Yeooooo that sounds pretty cool!

Did someone say “ad revenue?”

I wrote some of my ideas last year. I think the post is still relevant.

Which post are you talking about?

The one where I talked about advertising and (I think) revenue distribution schemes and stuff. I’d get the link, but searching on Steemit sucks.

Again something else I've been talking about for a while. I've worked for a number of blogs over the years. Always thought a ad rev supported frontend could be cool - mix it with the tiered quality system - better percentages for gold / silver / bronz.

what is front end with add revenue kindly explain

I agree with your opinion.This is one of the solutions.

This may be an inappropriate answer, but that would be better off in LBRY.io. My wish is that a marriage of Steem (Steemit) and LBRY would happen. As far as can tell, it is the answer to many problems.

Can that happen?

I don't know much about LBRY but I think that would basically mean joining two different blockchains and that's not likely to happen.

I am not a developer, but I was thinking a front end that put the two together. Even if the inputs and outputs were two cryptos, it seems reasonable enough to me. Maybe it could use a token and only pay out in LBRY and Steem at certain points or times.

I don't know, but I hope some developer hero will consider or figure it our someday.

It's not that it's super hard, believe it or not. It's that it creates a blockchain bloat problem and there are many non-consensus solutions to that problem the most obvious one being reposting.

The most important point I want to make here is that the decisions that are made with respect to Steem are always based on scalability and utility for developers. Developers need to be able to do what they need to do and they need to have confidence that the platform is going to scale with their needs. Not every thing needs to be fixed on the blockchain level. In fact, very few things need to be fixed on the blockchain level and the more things that are fixed on a blockchain level, the less scalable the platform becomes because blockchains by their very nature are difficult to update. Therefore, if the blockchain can be used as the backend, while a user interface can be used to solve a problem on the front end, then the front end solution should always be favored. Any project that violates this rule will not be scalable, regardless of grandiose (and baseless) claims.

So how can the problem of rewarding evergreen content be solved using Steem? Quite easily. On steemit.com we want to encourage new content. A platform that wants to focus on "evergreen" content can automatically repost content every 7 days on the backend without showing any change in the interface. If the content truly has evergreen value, no one will object. Another solution would be a dapp that only reposted a piece of content after it receives an upvote. E.g. A post is a year old. It has not been reposted. A user upvotes the post through a user interface. On the backend the post is reposted to Steem and given an upvote by that account. From the user's perspective the content creator's post was rewarded. From the content creator's perspective they were rewarded for their evergreen content. Nothing was changed about Steem. Steem remained scalable. Blockchain dev time was spent on something more important than solving a problem that was easily solvable on the front end.

Now I've heard the response to this: it's too complicated. Actually, it's quite simple for developers and if a developer can't code this, they're not really a developer. The reason we have a 7 day limit is because most content receives most of its votes in the first week and infinite payouts leads to infinite blockchain transactions, which is unscalable. The fact that most content receives the majority of its rewards early on means that infinite payouts are an edge case, i.e. not mission-critical like hivemind, SMTs, sign up, etc. The fact that infinite payouts is not scalable, means that you would be destroying the blockchain for a non-critical edge case. Why are infinite payouts not scalable? Because if a potentially infinite number of posts can receive votes for a potentially infinite amount of time, then the number of transactions will trend toward infinity. It's also important to remember that most upvotes have very little value, so it's creating an infinite number of txs so that mostly low-value upvotes can be made to the blockchain (as opposed to UI-only upvotes). For this reason, post rewards need to be bounded somehow. The 7 day limitation is how the Steem community has chosen to bound the potentially damaging outcomes. Of course, this is an open source project, so if someone solves the problem in a scalable manner, submits a github PR, and there is consensus among the community that it should be adopted, it will be adopted by the witnesses and the blockchain will be updated. Anything other than a PR is just "tawk." Anything for which there is not significant consensus, is also, just "tawk."

All of that being said, I will reiterate that infinite payouts are already easy to code on Steem. We simply choose not to implement them because we do not believe they are right for this product. What the 7 day limit means is that developers have to consciously choose to increase the load on the blockchain and deal with the consequences if their app is interpreted is adding spam to the blockchain.

That was wonderfully informative and easy to understand as a nondeveloper. Thank you @andrarchy. Feel like I have a better grasp on the reasons for 7 day payout standard now.

Thank you @andrarchy from me too.

Some of us have already been considering this on @steempeak - https://steempeak.com glad to know we were thinking the same thing. And happy to see the more involved explanation @andrarchy

What do you think about another option on UI being that a vote could attach a reward to a new comment (hidden or not) our UI can continue to show the value of the POST going up and report but it's only having to create a new comment and that's better on bandwidth I assume. However there is the issue of dust votes for under 3 cents.

Anyway we have several other more pressing issues to focus on first as well.
But let me know what you think and I'll share this response to the rest of the team like @asgarth

Sounds like an interesting idea. The way we approach problems is that we want developers to experiment with the blockchain in whatever ways they think will add value to their app. If it threatens to break the blockchain, that just means that a flaw has been exposed (which is a good thing) and we need to work with the witnesses and the community to develop a solution. So go for it :)

Steempeak is fantastic. Heaps of cool, useful features.
If anyone's on the fence, take the leap.

That sounds like a cool idea.

I've always thought the seven day window is ridiculous and there is no good reason for it. It's hard to discover good content on here and when I do, often the posts are older than 7 days and voting them up does not reward the content creator.

One trick I have tried to reward old posts is to comment to draw a reply from the author. Once they reply, you can upvote the reply.

Yes, that's one way to do it. What I hate though is when authors upvote their own replies.

Although it's considered a faux pas to self-upvote by some, at the best it's an aspiration for a more voluntary/gift-based economy (as opposed to exchange/barter), at the worst it's a needless idealism that causes unnecessary strife in the STEEM community.

Would you be the designated cook for a family gathering, do all the work, and then not eat any of the food yourself?

There are many people that come to STEEM primarily as investors. They don't really care much about blogging. Is 100% self-voting tasteless? In my opinion, yes, it's abhorrent. What about 90%? 75, 50, 25%?

This is subjective moralization of a system that, at its core, is intended to allow as close to maximum freedom when it comes to using one's own stake as possible. Guilting people for self-voting helps nothing. It's also quite useful to upvote comments in order to draw them towards the top of a feed.

If this behavior is agreed to be dysfunctional, then something huge needs to change about how the STEEM blockchain functions in order to de-incentivize self-voting. (Even then, people will just use alt accounts and find other ways to achieve the same end - maximum profit.)


Two basic ways to change the Steemit economy: 1) change the blockchain itself. 2) change the mentality/behavior of the users of the blockchain. The former is quite easy though requiring enough consensus. The latter is extraordinarily difficult, though capable of being affected by a single well- (or ill-) intentioned person.

I do agree, although there are some folks I know need help, so I'll upvote them anyway. Mostly, I don't upvote them as upvote themselves.

@valued-cutomer ,Very nice trick. Thanks.

Probably there's a technical reason, maybe it would eat up too much steem blockchain resources to track payout of every post ever created. Hope they'll figure it out :)

Save it for Hardfork 30!!!! Lol

They used to allow 30 day post earning but it was deemed wasteful. After the first 5-7 days no one really voted. which is one reason why we got rid of 1 day and 30 day payouts.

for most cases it would be true. i think they need to separate earning and payouts. the earning should be depending on upvote time and not the age of post. so if someone upvotes on day 15 of a post he should get rewards on day 22.
i found a few articles while researching on steem reward calculations that go 2 years in the past and i wanted to upvote but there was no point. We could also link it with a resteem so everytime a post is resteemed it would start a new 7 day cycle. so if i want to upvote i would have to resteem as well ( with a comment optional ) and the earning cycle starts again.

Aye, but it was the early days, I believe that today content creators would benefit from it.

Interesting, could try, if not, can go back any time

Yeah, but today no one really votes on anyone unless you have connections, deals or is a huge big whale. So no one with sub 5000k steem, high rep and a lot of ass sucking is earning anything at all. So people leave and look for other things. Better to at least have the POTENTIAL to earn after 7 days, than to guaranteed not to earn anything at all. Posts could potentially go viral weeks or months later if lucky strike. At least thats something. RIght now there is no reason to stay here for 90% of content creators. They earn zero..and after 7 days they can never earn anything whatsoever on that effort.

to become good content write we need time and practice and i believe this platform is giving opportunity to be one

My simple solution is to send full amount of upvote directly to the user after the 7 day curation payout has arrived thus allowing the author to continually make earnings off every post

Posted using Partiko iOS, join the beta testing program here

You have a very good point here cardboard, I second the motion.

Personally I think that all resteems should scoop 100% of the curation they generate, but your way is easier to implement.

That could work too - and would only further incentivize users to find and share good content.

@emwalker Yeah great idea as well it quite unfair that many good blogger didnt get much attention in 7 day window and by this mean they might get reward for good content even after 7 days window

This idea with the commenting on resteems and adding beneficiaries for the original author is amazing!

Sir you are money Hide steemit what is this ?

I agreed with you bro , giving upvote to old post would not be good option, because everyday day we change and come with new options

Very True and need of the community.

@emwalker Couldn't have expressed your points better, saved me the time for writing this (#upvoted ;))... especially the spelling edits. You mention resteem, I would also like to see it appear in my chronological date of posts and not to the date of initial post date, which means it gets lost and has no visibility if I post several times a day. A large percentage of internet users do not scroll the page down, do you?

I do like what you are saying, but I also have similar concerns like @naturicia has mentioned. Phishing is one thing. Then, there is the trolling part when you add in the Resteem idea.

When STINC allows someone/people like the Steemit Doofus League gain so many accounts, it's just a recipe for future abuse. Unless, one wants to argue that they will settle down once they can earn without feeling shafted because they got called out for plagiarism, spam, etc.

Of course, if you can flag the Resteem post (as in flag the Resteemer), then maybe it's not so bad.

I think STINC needs to consider all the angles of abuse when designing and rolling out updates.

I honestly feel like some planets aligned recently. I'm not trying to cheerlead blindly, I'm just being sincere.

All of the sudden communication got ten times better, and it seems like Steemit Inc really started to listen to Steemians. I know that I might be attacked for saying this, but as the old saying goes - "Perception is truth" - At least in practice, not in theory.

Anyways, this is great, I'm excited, I'm smiling...

We're glad you feel that way! We've been doing a lot of work over the past year toward improving many of our processes including our communication. The reason why it probably seems like it's all happening at once is because it takes time to develop systems, put them in place, get them running at full "steem" ;) and in parallel. I guess we're finally hitting our stride :)

Content Director,
Steemit

Please continue this trend ;)

I felt the same way -- I think its better to communicate that there's nothing to update, bugs being tackled, Ned's gone vegan again, Old grandma is bringing round icecreams in the offices than sheer silence. Thanks for the hard work and seeing some updates is great :)

Is there an estimate ETA on HF20 or is it using Valve's Half Life 3 release date schema?

:D (Its done when its done-- I know!)

Laters :D

HF20 Confirmed ;)

Thanks for clearing things up.

Quite right. It does feel like more transparency is happening. Although @andrachy muted me forever for asking about why Poloniex and HitBTC wallets have been frozen for so long. So far there is Zero information about this. I guess that highly controlled and very limited information is a tiny bit better than no information at all.

I wonder about this myself, but I'm not going to FUD when I seriously have no clue. For all I know its all poloniex fault (and it could be, look how they are handling legacy accounts).

Be careful even mentioning it, @andrachy muted me forever and thus can't read what I write. Clearly, it is a sore subject for him.

I think they opened poloniex today.

Thanks for the update!

@creatr I hope you're reading this. Unlimited post editing has been your no. 1 wish ever since :-)

Thank you, sweetie...

I finally found this and I will be very, very happy to see the day!

Hope you're doing well? :D

😄😇😄

@creatr

Hehe, you're welcome honey!
I'm doing great, my lil brother is in town and we're spending some quality time :-) Hope life's treating you well, too! Big hugzzz

Good to hear you're enjoying time with family... :D

Things are going very well here, thank the Good LORD. And what great news about Steemit editability! Now I'll be able to properly maintain my library! :D

Big hugzzz back at'cha, and I hope you and your brother have a grand visit. :D

Always good to get updates "from above."

I am not a technical person, so much of this flies a straight line above my head, but the ability to EDIT past seven days is very welcome... because it (in essence) enables a broad-based ability to keep content "evergreen."

I point that out as "important" because lots of valid content here gets to be "out of date" and could readily be updated, even if it's not for a reward.

Why does it MATTER?

Because Google likes Steemit! But Google DISlikes "stale" content. And their algorithms (which — in terms of complexity — put the Internal Revenue Code to shame!) will increasingly "bury" stale and out-of-date content.

And we need all the visibility we can get!

So that's a win-win, from where I am sitting...

goes back and revises everything ever written :) ok, maybe not.. but super stoked about this!

The release will include a change to allow unlimited content editing (beyond seven days)!

It was possible even before (via enable_content_editing custom_json), does it mean that we will be able to edit posts after payout without an active key and this custom_json, as we do now for posts before their payout time?

That was technically not working. After the changes, it will only require the posting key.

NoNamesLeftToUse - High Five.jpeg

This is a High Five.

I've included a full size kitty for height comparison purposes.

move it kitty! high 5 may come down low on your

Where is the cat lol

Sitting right there on the left near the bottom! He thinks we can't see him though, so yeah, keep playing along.

Ooooh lol! Now I saw him! When I opened this reply then the photo became HD, on the Steemit comment page it was small...

Screen Shot 2018-07-11 at 02.02.09.png

Screen Shot 2018-07-11 at 02.02.28.png

Of course it's HD. When it comes to kitties, I spare no expense.

It deserves a 100 votes. Natures's Excellence.

learning bit by bit..

Release 19.10 is a non-consensus change, and therefore will not require a hardfork.

I'm just looking through the release notes right now, and I'm really pleased to see all the places this release is cutting down on superfluous options and confusing syntax!

Being able to go back and update locked in content to keep well ranking posts relevant is a pretty wide-ranging addition to a release that already has a lot of great implications for performance and stability. I think this will definitely change the way I think about writing my content, as I've shied away from certain links or styles, knowing that it's always only been unidirectional up to this point.

Otherwise... I'm looking forward to playing with all the new toys! Thanks for this solid continuous push towards improvement; it's exciting to be a part of it all.

Editing beyond 7 days!!! At last, I am so happy about this. There is nothing worse than looking at old posts and seeing some icky grammar of your own making.

Well, ok. There are lots worse. But in my head, it seemed like there was nothing worse till I wrote it down. :oD

I can finally go back to that place where I wrote 'penis' instead of 'pens' and wipe my shame away!

Or change all your pens to penises and boast about your consistency!!

Yeah! Then I can fix my vagina!

Phew, that would be a relief!

Not only grammar, but if new information gets out for a particular news story, you can edit to add a correction or link to a new article with recent developments.

Now I can also finally get the same layout added to every post, since I've changed it a couple of times.

Really happy about this feature as well!

Absolutely!

There are old how you'd that are still popular that need updated. It's a big win!

Haha, fully agreed! :-)

Well done guys! So, the witnesses should soon update to 0.19.10 ? I am running 0.19.5 BTW.

Steemit will support both non-appbase (0.19.5) and appbase (0.19.10) tracks until 0.20.0 is released.