So, We Might Be Getting A New Chain...
has recently posted an announcement discussing the formation of a new chain. Lot's of folks have come out in support, like dPoll's creator
committing to migrating to the new chain & long-time Steemian
discussing his thoughts on the potential of "Hive". It seems like we're moving together in the right direction, finally.
But, as much as I'm excited for a new & hopefully better chain, I've been considering some very important changes that I hope to see on the new platform. Such as:
š New Name || steem was always confusing & bad
I personally feel like the name "Steem" was such a bad idea. Way to similar to "Steam", and that probably threw a lot of people off. "What? Valve made their own blockchain? Huh?"
Names like Tron and EOS are also quite dumb, as they both already exist. We are fighting a war of recognition, branding, and SEO.
Seeing the name HIVE thrown around, I actually kinda like it. Makes sense for the features that Steem currently has, and has lots of good puns / naming potentials ( Don't doubt the power of memes. The fact that we could tap into a whole slew of bee-related jokes & wordplay is legit huge for branding. It makes promotion a lot easier when we have an anchor we can relate to. )
We needed a new name, I'm a personal fan of the proposed HIVE.
š§āāļø New Governance || it's not just us, it's all of DPoS
Look, we need to get real: DPoS was just tested, and it failed. I'm sorry to say, but that's a fact.
We need a new & improved consensus / governance model, or else there is zero point of migrating to a new chain. Here's what I recommend on how we fix the "dictator-stakeholder" problem that plagues all DPoS chains:
- For each token you stake, you get one vote
- You are capped to "x" amount of votes ( say 1 million, for example )
- 31 witnesses, but you can only vote on 10
- Split your vote weight however you'd like ( split equally across 10 votes, or 99% to one vote, 1% split across the other 9 )
- These voting rules only count towards witness voting, not towards DAO systems
- very small monthly reward for voting for all 10
These numbers are placeholders, but the equation they represent is what I'm really pitching.
š Account System || the case for a better on-ramp
We need to keep the "usernames as wallet addresses" feature. This is a KILLER feature, and will make the new chain really stand in a league of it's own.
In addition, I propose a revolutionary new concept: "Anonymous Side Accounts"
"Main Accounts" are the main account one creates on chain.
"Side Accounts" are secondary accounts you create that are attached to your main account. Although, this attachment is encrypted in the blockchain, so these side accounts and their "relation" to main accounts can remain anonymous.
Why create an account system like this? Simple... Porn.
No one wants to upvote nor curate porn, or other risque material, on their main account. So side accounts allow us to curate a variety of content, and allow us to control the "public relationship status".
This isn't just for porn. Imagine you're running a MMORPG, where you have MainGameAccount being used for posts & updates, but then you can setup GameBankAccount to manage user deposits & withdrawals. This can be achieved now, and in fact is, but the way we currently allow it is a wrench in the gears of our governance.
It's up to you to disclose which accounts you own. No human will ever be able to tell, only the code.
Economics of main accounts vs. side accounts:
Main accounts hold 100% voting power for your stake. Side accounts will only hold 25%.
Meaning you don't have to invest into 100 different accounts. Just invest into your main account & stake. Of course, the account relationships are encrypted in the chain data (meaning no person can ever see who owns which accounts, only code will be able to tell). This allows us to prevent duplicate voting.
If a "side account" voted on content, main account can't.
These side accounts will not be able to vote for witnesses, nor DAO proposals. Purely for curation & alt-identities, without any fraud.
How do we allow for multiple accounts, while achieving a fair "one person one vote" type of system? I'm glad you asked:
šµ Lightweight-Encrypted-KYC || don't freak out! this KYC is actually fair!
Now, for sign-up, we need instant cheap signup, with a measure in place to prevent name-squatting / creating a bunch of side accounts in order to distribute stake & take over the chain.
To create a "main account", you'll need to provide a valid phone number & verify through text, and then repeat with an email.
The phone number & email will be stored ( encrypted & private ) into the chain, to prevent being used again. The only possible entity that can "see" this data is the chain code itself. No human would ever have access to your phone nor email, as it's all encrypted. Witnesses & developers would only hold onto encrypted hashes, not visible data. The chain code itself is responsible for checking against voting / duplicates.
Sort of complex setup, but beautifully simple concept.
This helps with loads of DPoS issues, such as: Alt accounts with massive stake trying to single-handedly take over the chain, abuse of the rewards pool, loopholes with my proposed governance changes.
The best part is: None of my suggestions are interrupting people's rights to earn, or create new accounts. They just prevent the abuse of these freedoms from ruining our new platform.
I should reiterate that this verification method would be FULLY encrypted, private, and anonymous. No real person would be able to see this data. Only the code can check against it.
It could be called DKYC: don't-know-your-customer ;^)
āļø User Migration || the value is in the people
Every current Steem user will be seamlessly migrated over to the new chain, with equal wallet balances. In order to vote & create side-accounts, they'll need to do the encrypted-KYC step.
No one should have to restart from scratch ( other than "rep", which I talk about below ).
We want to create a smooth transition, so smooth it'd feel dumb not to join the new chain.
š³ļø New Voting System || easing the reward pool abuse
Instead of people being able to bot shitposts up to thousands of dollars & relying on everyday users to hunt down these posts & user their downvotes, we should have a simple mechanic to ( mostly ) prevent this from being able to happen.
CAPPED REWARDS TIERED TO REP
Finally making good use of the rep system!
- New users with 0 rep can earn a max of, say, $5 per post. $1 on comments.
- The higher your rep, the more you're allowed to earn.
- This rewards high-value participants, while being a gate for spammers
This reduces strain on the rewards pool, while keeping the "earning-opportunity" alive & well!
ā Reworked Rep System || let's finally make that number mean something
So, now that Rep is tied to something important, we need to discuss it's reworking. My suggestions:
Rep increases based on a variety of factors:
- š¹ High stake ( shows commitment )
- šļø Long time user ( shows loyalty )
- šØļø High engagement on other posts ( not reported as spam / highly-downvoted )
- š¬ Frequent engagement on own posts ( shows a loyal fanbase & good indicator of quality content )
The exact balance & nubersr in the rep & voting system will need some work to get right. We will of course need tweaking over time. We won't land on the perfect equation right off the bat.
š New "Freemium" Transaction Model || allowing for more control, and more options
Tron actually does something really neat. You can either "freeze" your stake for "energy / bandwidth", which allows you to do free transactions. Or, you'll just have to pay for the ( very cheap ) fee.
We should adopt & innovate on this method.
In order to make transactions, you'll have to either "power up / freeze / stake" some tokens ( which will allow a certain amount of activity each day ), or you can choose to pay out-right for the fee.
This creates a super easy on boarding experience.
Imagine: You're playing a game, and you're about to go to bed, but you're just about to collect some loot. You go to send some custom JSON to store on the chain, but you've run out of free transactions. Ah shit... Now you have to buy BTC, send to exchange, trade for STEEM, send to wallet, power up. LAME.
Instead, you should be allowed to just outright pay for the low fee ( ~0.01 - ~0.05 on average? ) fee.
ALSO! We can do some cool stuff when people pay fees. When / if someone chooses to pay for a transaction fee, the chain should make use of this to do some cool stuff:
- 25% gets donated to DAO
- 25% gets burned to reduce inflation
- 40% goes to active witness for payment
- 10% gets added to the rewards pool
These features of paying for the fee opens up a wide range of amazing incentives
For Example:
A service built on the chain will commit to making 50% of their transactions by paying the fee. Because this helps the platform, the community would surely favor this service & support them even more.
Allowing to pay outright for the fee opens up more options, and we can capitalize on that to help improve the chain economics.
š MISC. || other important goddies we should have
š² Stable coin that actually works ( I've actually been contemplating s relatively easy system, let me know if you want to discuss! )
šø Development fund for marketing, DAO, and developer contests / hackathons ( instead of forking out the "ninja-mined" stake that's causes us so much grief, why not finally put it to good use! )
ā Shorter "power-down" window, maybe 2 weeks? ( allows for faster liquidity for companies / startups, very good feature to have, but maybe we could limit to 50% max you can power down in 2 weeks, the other 50% takes a month or something? )