I had joined TOMO Hunting, and it was ended with a mix feeling for me, unhappy because I neither in Top 10 nor in 30 luckiest hunters but happy as I have got better understanding on how Tomochain works and learnt some experience that should be helpful (to me and hope for others as well) when in real voting in the mainnet to come.
My original strategy is to balance risk among Masternodes (MNs) but should not be too many MNs to be able to measure and track their performance for necessary actions. I had read the published instructions as well as AMA Q&As to try to understand how to determine a good MN. Basically, apart from computing power (CPU, memory, storage, etc.), the other 2 main factors that maybe measurable are Capability (ie. total TOMOs deposited and/or voted for a MN) and Sign Number (or "laziness"). After checking a number of the available candidates, I had started the hunting by voting for 4 candidates (Boomtrader, Kris, Tomo_H, BigBoom) with different amount TOMOs.
In theory, we can track those factors to determine whether a MN performs well or not (in order to decide to stay voted for the MN or unvote from it and move to vote for another better MN) however in reality, there are also some other factors (like availability or stability of a MN computing, etc.) that are unable to (or very hard to) measure so I thought it's better to track directly the outcomes (ie. amount of rewarded TOMOs of voting MNs). So I captured all data from Rewards tab in https://scan.testnet.tomochain.com/, arrived at "Effectiveness" (% reward if 1 TOMO voted per MN per epoch) as seen in TOMO Hunting - MN Effectiveness Tracker file and made them visible via trend charts as seen below.
By observing "Effectiveness" trend charts, it's easy to see what MN perform well or not for appropriate decisions. To me, through the trend charts, I had made some decisions (moved from a MN to other better MN)...however unfortunately, since it took much longer (9 to 10 hrs) in reality (vs. 4.8 hrs as pre-noted) to transit from a MN to MN, and the total time of the game is short (I didn't dare to move in the last 3 days even seen WOLF one didn't perform well), so I wouldn't win :).
My TOMO Hunting experience can be seen in 4 phases below:
Phase 1: from excitement to being realized that it needs to change because the effectiveness of the voted MNs get reduced overtime.
Phase 2: it's time to change strategy from more MNs to lesser MNs with better performance & more stable.
Phase 3: Crisis time when some voted MNs down or unstable that led to bad performance and had to find and move to better MNs.
Phase 4: Survival. Not much time left, so just seeing the trends with tear down...
I think these are some of my most interesting experiences as joining the TOMO Hunting that hope helpful.
In terms of opportunity for improvement, it would be great if TOMO team can implement/fix below in the coming mainnet:
- There should be a better way for participants/voters to track performance of MNs, at least provide ability to extract data from the Dapps (scan, master, etc.)
- Improve the systems so that it works closer to commitment, ie. closer 48 hrs to be unlocked after unvoting in the mainnet
Not many, but I'm owning an amount of TOMOs, and hope more exciting as "playing" with the mainnet to come and wishing Tomochain successful.
Ngoc Do
My code: 9d0B55