RE: HF Proposal: Vote to Reduce Power Down Period to 4 Weeks
In my opinion it's a horrible idea.
When an account is compromised with 4 week powerdown worst case scenario if it's recovered on day 28+ all its stake whether it's powered up or not are stolen (Is it even worth recovering anymore?). Even if its recovered day 7+ after it's stolen it loses at least 25% of its powered up stake while with our current powerdown period at worst case when it's recovered on day 28+ it only loses 4/13 of its powered up stake, a little more than 30%. After 30 days of course you lose the account to the hacker on both cases.
Shortening powerdown is also bad because how our hardfork works. 4 weeks is not too bad (still worse than 13 weeks), but 1 week is plain horrible. If it's only 1 week exchanges will undoubtedly start voting for witnesses. You say our powerdown period is too long compared to EOS but they are having a huge governance problem. Even Dan Larimer is proposing staking pools with up to 10 years(!) lockup period and the 3 day lockup EOS tokens have 0 vote for BPs, the minimum lockup to have any vote for BPs is 3 month, pretty close with Steem right now and it seems like it won't have gradual weekly powerdown like Steem has. If an "investor" can't even commit to their "investment" for 13 weeks do they even can be counted as "invested" in the chain? If they just want to speculate on STEEM price that's what liquid STEEM is for, hold those instead.
The instant powerdown with burn fee is even more horrible idea. Now instead of losing 25% of your powered up stake each week when your account is compromised you lose 100% right away, GG!
However, I agree that in order to participate in PoB someone shouldn't be forced to lock up their capital for 13 weeks.
Here are my proposed changes instead:
- 2 separate staking pools
- The first pool has 1 week powerdown (even better than 1 month) and the second pool has 13 weeks powerdown
- Entitlements of the first pool: VP and RC
- Entitlements of the second pool: VP, RC, Witness vote, SPS vote, etc. (The benefits of SP right now).
- Delegations works as if the pools are mixed. (You can delegate 210 STEEM away if you have 100 STEEM staked on the first pool and 110 STEEM staked on the second pool). Delegations delegate VP and RC like how it works right now and will interact with the RC delegation pool however it works in the next hardfork.
- SP reward on posts can go to first pool or the second according to witness consensus. The name of each pool should be discussed with the community (only one of them keeps the name SP).
- Stake on first pool can be converted to the second pool instantly but not the other way around (similar to Dan Larimer's proposal).
- Current SP can be converted to first pool or the second pool on hardfork according to witness consensus. Each has their benefits and drawbacks. If it's converted to the first pool non-committed people gets weeded out really fast as they won't be converting their stake into the second pool but witness votes basically reset to zero and may cause instability in governance and block production for a short term. Converting to second pool is safer but will take 13 week correction time until it shows the results of the previous way. Of course we can assign a ratio too (like 90% goes to the first pool and 10% goes to the second pool) and have the benefits of both but needs a little longer implementation time.
- When these separate pools is implemented I think making the second pool powerdown period even longer than 13 week can be considered if we want to see more committed witness voters and more protection when an account is compromised.
Yes, these changes will be complicated to code but I think this is the way to go instead of simply reducing the powerdown period to please the so-called "investors" which in my opinion is very shortsighted .
That's my thoughts on this.
Way too complicated IMO. Just not worth even close to that level of mechanism for something (lock up) that is very minor to the platform overall.
If someone were building a system like Steem today it would not have 13 week lockup and certainly would not have the 2 year lockup that was originally there (and for which reducing to 13 weeks was proposed as a compromise). It would probably have a few days to possibly a few weeks of lockup, or maybe none.
These were experimental ideas, worth a try, but really did not demonstrate any clear benefits, did not catch on more broadly, and should be left behind.
Good point you've made about the safety issue regarding power-down time. Also, having two separate staking pools is too rigid and we should have more than that. 13 weeks was a somewhat random number. Having a dynamic range (e.g. 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, 5 years) would satisfy more people.
I mean at least it's still more flexible than just 1 staking pool we have right now. With those dynamic ranges I am guessing you want to incentive longer staking the same way in Dan's proposal? In my opinion there will be conflict of interest between 1 month stakers and 5 years stakers as 5 year stake have so much leverage against shorter stakers with less tokens invested and it will be way more complicated to implement and for users to undestand especially new ones, we have nowhere near as much capital as BlockOne for development, testing, and educating users. The two separate pools is compromise between our current one and Dan's proposal.
13 week is arbitrary, so does 1 month and 2 years previously. 7 day voting window is arbitrary too. Arbitrary =/= bad. For the second pool period if the consensus thinks it's too long then shorten it next HF, if it's too short then prolong it next HF while the first pool period will simply follow the voting window period.
If someone decides to lock their tokens up for 5 years, then they obviously should have a higher return on their investment, than somebody who locks it up for 1 month. That's simple incentive theory.
Sure, but having multitude of pools like that still overcomplicates the implementation and horrible for user friendliness. It's not worth it at all to implement it like that even when voters acts ideally imo. To which pool does SP rewards on posts and curation even go?
Just because you might find it too complicated, isn't nearly a good enough reason to be against multiple pools. Steem can and should be complicated, the frontends shouldn't be and its their job to make it as simply as possible with their UX & UI.
The average user should only know: "rewards earned by posting & curating take x-months to power-down" and I can decide to stake my STEEM for 6 months to earn 10% APR or 2 years to earn 20% APR (rough example, numbers are random)
No, I don't think it's too complicated for me. Why do you think I think so?
What I'm concerned is the implementation will be significantly harder than having only two pools. We are nowhere near as big as BlockOne so we need to be more efficient. More efforts dedicated to implement the multiple pools are efforts not dedicated to improve, say, SMT v2 or other upgrades. It's up to you witnesses in the end.
I understand why you want multiple pools like Dan's proposal, you seems like the type who will stake whatever the maximum period to me.
How long SP-earned-on-posts-and-curation power down period do you think is the best?
That’s how bank term deposits work yes.
I think there also should be an option to have it powered up forever.
Yes I am all for a dynamic range, I would like to be able to set longer periods for the Steem I intend to hodl. The 4 weeks baseline is still good, we have even people asking for as low as one week in comments here. 4 weeks is also a familiar lockup period much like a 30 day term deposit.
Just thinking out loud here, but could a security feature be implemented that would only allow an account to send powered down steem to a beneficiary account specified by the user unless a certain length of time passes. For instance, you could set a beneficiary account called @beneficiary or whatever. If you power down steem, that steem could only be sent to @beneficiary for 3 months. That way someone would have to hack two accounts to gain the funds and this would reduce the security risk for instant power downs. Once you transfer the funds to @beneficiary, they are unlocked and free to go anywhere, such as exchanges, etc.
And while more complicated, maybe it isn’t all that much more complicated for the general masses while still maintaining security?
Little bit complicated, also if the hacker gets the active key they can change that power down recipient account, unless u put it on a timer that takes 30 days to effect such change, a two account security feature may be too many keys for the average joe to think about and potentially lose. Currently there are vesting routes you can set with the active key.
The reasoning behind your comment is plain stupid. Sry. 99% of cryptos don't have a 13 week powerdown and they function perfectly well. Security? You offered such a fringe example that happens in 0.1% of cases here.
The 13 week powerdown is extremely detrimental to the price of steem and offers basically nothing.
Adjustment could be made for the person staking to stake for however long he wants or 2f authorization added.
All those things can be added as long as the 13 week powerdown is eliminated.
That's the single biggest culprit in steem being at 80th in mc
Do you not even notice that I propose 1 week powerdown alongside 13 weeks powerdown? I just want the 1 week lockup to not have any voting power for witnesses and proposals. if it's possible to keep PoB from being gamed without lockup at all then the 1 week powerdown can be eliminated.
In Steem we use our keys an awful lot compared to other cryptos. When this chain become more popular, if that ever happens, incentives to steal accounts will be way bigger than now, Compromised accounts will still be fringe cases but will happen a lot more often. 2F auth doesn't protect anyone that got their key(s) compromised unless it's implemented on blockchain level.
If custom stake period is implemented I want staked STEEM have vote weights for witnesses and proposals proportional to the stake period.
If someone doesn't want to stake their Steem for 13 weeks, can't they just buy liquid Steem?
I think you forgot to mention that Steem CAN be bought, just like any other liquid crypto like Bitcoin.
Steem needs to be simple for users, we cater for more normies than EOS does so we shouldn’t get too complicated, Dan tends to make things too convoluted and technical for the average user. We already have 3 currencies on Steem, adding an extra pool is akin to having 4. I don’t think a 4 week pd schedule will create a governance issue, take for example a major shareholder in a real world company stock, there is no lockup period traditionally unless that was the terms given in a buyout or something but that won’t be common, investors in such stocks still exercise their voting rights for the good of their investment same as if you own a property in s body corporate, you can sell it anytime but doesn’t mean while you hold the property you will make malicious voting decisions at meetings.
The issue with EOS and alot of crypto is the quality of investors, no matter if the lockup is short or long, a bad acting large stakeholder can still help mess up the project.
For myself a short or long time period won’t change my decision making process, my investment in Steem is my time over the years that makes me invested.
I do like your point about the burn being a huge security risk and defeats the object of the security feature of the 30 day recovery period.
I also urge users to split their stake across multiple accounts and for ease of use can delegate to the main account. Having as shorter pd period can help users decentralise their holdings in this manner for increased security.
Steem needs to be simple for users, I agree. That's why I concede at two pools instead of Dan's wacky amount of pools. Normie users actually doesn't need to learn about the extra pool at all. If SP rewards for posts and curation goes to the first pool then they don't need to learn about the second pool unless they are interested in voting for witnesses and proposals. If it goes to the second pool users don't need to learn about the first pool unless they actively don't want witness and proposal voting power and prefer faster power down and don't mind the lower security. The choice depends whether you (witnesses) consider witness and proposal voting a "normie feature" or not. Users only forced to learn about both pools if post and curation rewards goes to both pools which I'm strongly against. While we are at it, I'm also proposing disabling SBD rewards entirely on posts next hardfork as the DAO already provides constant downward pressure to SBD price regardless of the debt ratio, this way normie users don't need to know about SBD unless they are interested about holding this particular stablecoin.
This is a tangent but no lockup in most real life companies is the very reason company's shareholders prioritize short term profits over sustainability and treats their workers pretty badly knowing when in near inevitable crash they can bail right away, even worse after crashing they cry to government to get bailed out to "protect their worker's job" while they have already bailed themselves and became shareholders on other companies (or simply keep their wealth from selling the stocks). Taxpayers get screwed too even though they have nothing to do with the company.
Yes, most stocks in real life companies don't have lockup period but having lockup period for governance voting forces the stakeholder looking at the best interest of the token value at least for the duration of the lockup. We are a blockchain community not companies. We have no workers to exploit as they can simply leave and we have no government to bail us out when we make a lot of bad short term decisions. One of the main reasons we have lockup period at all is so exchanges can't vote, the lower the duration the more vulnerable we are to that and this complements with the security issues I mentioned on the previous post too. Exchanges are not in for long haul, STEEM is just one asset they hold and it's not even theirs.
You agree that quality of investors of crypto is bad but you advocate for shorter lockup? If it's implemented like I proposed we can still market the lowered (1 week) staking period to new investors and if they want to get involved in governance they only allowed to play a long game. Where's the drawback? Most of our bad stakeholders now are due to ninjamine and/or only invested because of bad economics pre-HF21 anyway.
Sure, I believe you are a good actor but you can't just project your behavior to other actors. If a system rely on all its participant to act good it's garbage. Why are you even advocating shorter powerdown period if it doesn't affect your behavior whatsoever?
Yeah, keeping multiple private keys for multiple accounts where an account already have multiple private keys is totally user friendly. How about having a single account with higher security where 100% (or at least significant portion) of your stake doesn't get stolen within the account recovery window?
Steemit just needs to stay decentralised and thats pretty much it, oh and keep going. As for the power down i say keep it at 13 weeks. No reason other than in the real world 13 weeks lock up of your investment is nothing and second why encourage volatility in the Steem price.
Who is steem's greatest offender? It is @themarkymark. Read this post to understand why you should never support him nor whoever he supports.