Should each STEEM hard-fork reset witness votes?
The STEEM blockchain is ruled by Steemit Inc and top witnesses. Witnesses are voted for by stake holders based on SP, but voting really is fire and forget. Currently a witness vote, once cast remains valid until explicitly removed.
In a normal democracy, we need to vote periodically. If you don't vote your vote won't get counted, no matter what you voted for the last time around. If you die, no more voting for you.
On the STEEM blockchain though, if you die, or less dramatic, stop caring about the platform or the votes you may have cast in the past, your old vote will remain valid indefinetely no matter what.
In society, our leaders are chosen, they get a set amount of time to change things. Then a new election happens where society judges the leaders on what they achieved or failed to achieve the previous period.
At each hard fork major changes happen to the block chain for those still involved in the platform. You could say the results of a HF are the subject on what our leadership, the top witnesses, should be judged.
As such it can be argued that a hard fork should reset all witness votes, or possibly, initiate a timer for resetting all witness votes.
So the question: Do you think a HF should result in witness votes being reset?
- Yes, immediately after the HF takes effect.
- Yes, N days after the HF takes effect all pre-HF witness votes should expire
- No, but witness votes should expire after a given time.
- No, witness voting is perfect as it is.
- Other (comment)
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Interesting suggestion that I think would lead to much better outcomes. Especially with votes expiring shortly after the HF, people will have in mind how each witness handled testing, approval, and communication around the HF; making the votes much more sensitive to how the witnesses handled... only their most important job.
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Voting is perfect the way it is. We have the power to add or remove at any time.
I have a few witnesses that I have followed and want to continue to support until they screw up, or I find that others are doing a better job. Why does this need to change?
We can vote to add or remove after a hardfork, before a hardfork, or any time we like without having to do busy work of constantly renewing our already determined choices.
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I think this is a great idea. Since 90%+ of steemers are dead, each time we change the game, the votes should need to be redone.
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A vote decay would be nice.
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They should have a 1 year life from the moment approval is made. A warning of them about to expire in the various front ends would be a good feature as well as showing maybe a one time message to vote in the first place, get people more involved. I think a lot of people don't know about it and don't see it in the menu (on condenser for example).
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Holding extra elections every semester with campaign?
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I have given thought to witness vote expiration and anything short of 1 year I don't think is good. I'm not sure any time would be good.
If witness votes started expiring, Steem would be a non-stop campaign system for witnesses. As it is, most users don't vote for witnesses, most users don't for witnesses based on actions or competence. I would consider some expiration after a year though.
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Although it's a good idea to force the system to "rethink" our top witnesses by resetting the witness votes, I don't know how this will actually affect the blockchain. So, it's hard for me to just say Yes or No to your question.
We have to remember that witnesses are not just there to be leaders and make decisions for the rest of us, they're also there to help keep the system stable by signing blocks, feeding STEEM/SBD prices, etc. So, in this sense, resetting all votes at the same time could be dangerous for the blockchain at any given time.
And if you consider that the days immediately before or after a hardfork are critical times, then it's doubly dangerous to reset witness votes during this period, too. So, we should avoid further damaging the blockchain, all witness votes should not be reset at the same time, at any time.
With that said, I agree that there is a need to clean up witness votes periodically. For example, to make sure that inactive accounts are no longer casting votes for witnesses. After all, why should someone who isn't part of Steem anymore still have a say on who the top witnesses are? And also to get the rest of us to periodically review our witness votes. They shouldn't be permanent, after all.
So, I say maybe just have the votes decay, one at a time. How long this should be, I have no idea. This way, we'll still have a stable blockchain and people will be forced to rethink who their witnesses are, one at time.
P.S. I just re-read the choices and there's an option for votes to expire. I should've chosen that. Lol!
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There is a problem with this approach I believe. If all votes expire concomitantly, how does the blockchain reach consensus, even for a short period of time? And there is the possibility of huge anomalies immediately after, before some sort of votes coagulates.
If there is a period of grace to form 'new government', while the previous top is still used, it makes sense, but not sure if it doesn't introduce complications into the blockchain code (true, less than a set expiration time would, probably).
Update: Overall, when all objections and limit-cases have been considered, I believe this is worth testing.
Update 2: Here's another potentially serious drawback: HF will become undesirable by top witnesses, because there is a chance they lose their positions. They might vote against a HF not because it's bad for the blockchain, but because of pure self interest of the witness.
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A possible solution would not to have it on hard forks but on a rolling 3 year per user account so no witness would lose all there votes unless they somehow gained all the votes in 1 day. This is plenty time to campaign for votes without constantly spamming everyone to fork melting fury.
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Yes, I think it makes sense. Even 2 years or 1 year would be fine. And doing it on hard forks relieves the blockchain code from constantly verifying the vote time of every account for every witness, which would be the case for a regular vote expiration check up.
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