The Gridcoin POS Kernel V8 at Next Mandatory (v3.6.0.1)

frank0051 (42) · 7 years ago

Having witness this debate play out on IRC over the last couple of days and having read the comments here, I started to think about to when I started GRC. It was already a pain in the ass to get the wallet and blockchain loaded. Then I had to send a beacon and wait like 1-2 weeks to get my first payout - and that was after buying a couple thousand coins.

Here's what I see as issues based upon what I'm reading:

As a newbie, I wanted to stake at least once a week. Anything beyond that was scary to me. I think the idea that you could need 10K coins to even start tasking once a month or so, that might be pretty daunting and create a huge barrier to entry.
GRC's purpose is to support BOINC - anything that creates barriers to entry to GRC creates a barrier to entry to new participants in BOINC.

Today is the first alternative I've heard presented that actually seemed to make sense: could we pay out research at each superblock? Could we perhaps have a discussion of what would be the pros and cons of doing this?

$2.10

7 votes

erelas (42) · 7 years ago

One thing, you might get more people to keep their wallets running as a side effect.

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frank0051 (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

@erelas, I think many of us would see that as a very positive side effect.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

could we pay out research at each superblock?

Not possible with the current SuperBlock/NeuralNetwork implementation, it would require significant development (we've got higher priority items in the roadmap) and would potentially negate one of the primary reasons for holding GRC (increasing payout frequency) without a replacement economic incentive.

It would also potentially increase the computational complexity of verifying superblocks as each payout would require verification (100's/1000's/10k+ POR payouts in a single block?) compared to only a single CPID requiring verififcation in each block right now.

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frank0051 (42) · 7 years ago

So, what other options exist? I think a lot of us wold be in interesting in hearing that.

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scalextrix (60) · 7 years ago (edited)

'If you are a solo miner with a low balance, you will never stake and therefore never be paid out for your research. If you do not stake research within six months of completing it, payment is lost.' I read that quite often and it could be misleading, you only lose work done not in the six month rolling window. So lets say you staked in 6 months and 2 days, you would lose the first 2 days of rewards owed. As the first month is mined at reduced Magnitude anyway due to RAC calculation, most miners would barely notice the loss of their first weeks rewards.

I agree we need to make Gridcoin as easy and as approachable as possible, and make mining rewards deliver to people quickly, but security comes first.

I dont agree with the statement that doing this makes Gridcoin closer to a PoS coin, you still get mining rewards in V8, you just dont get them quite so often.

I think we can vote on things, and should do, and I agree the Mandatory wasnt as well publicised as it could have been, but ultimately we are in a mode where someone started publishing outdated security issues with the coin and we dont want any more mud thrown in case it starts to stick. Lets patch this hole and find another secure way to mimic its effects.

EDIT: Maybe we should question the 6 month payout window, I dont know why 6 months is a magic number. Perhaps stake weight can be boosted after 5 months or something, Im not a dev so we have to let them think it over.

$1.85

16 votes

dutch (61) · 7 years ago

you only lose work done not in the six month rolling window

Good point - I probably did not make that as clear as it should have been. The first month may not be mined at reduced RAC though, as that only goes for brand new miners, which will mainly join pools anyway.

The miners that are going to be hit hardest will be the ones that are going at it solo already, but have not got a large balance of GRC.

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jamezz (7) · 7 years ago

but you are a community member, and i agree with some bits of your opinion and comment here and want to point out dev or not , you , me CM and everybody else have the same voice... There is no prez there is no peon , your opinion and views along with everybody else as I want you to know and understand are equal dev or not and its a community coin not just the dev's. Yes security matters but when votes for projects are getting NO's over SSL after the vote and the community spoke and since boinc doesn't use ssl it just uses port 443 for plain text after attaching to a project and a whale telling me people are just worried about their credits ( still not ssl its plain text over port 443 per David Anderson on the boinc forums that some people are security paranoid , you must have missed the #gridcoin accused rain theft ( was not anyone stealing ) and missed #gridcoin-irpg and again more theft accusations because people do not understand irc connections are not single user accounts like facebook. So really man , I would love to hear more of your idea. This isn't going to work this way , I had no idea v8 just caters to investor whales and traders or people whom make their GRC off non mining and understand now why/who is supporting it and who is not. Greed vs Science. I did seti@home free on a k6-2 with 4mb stb riva tnt2 4mb with 4mb edo sodimm addon so i could watch the pretty openGL 3.5mhz frequency spectrum water fall screen saver via my 2 x sli voodoo 2's. 1wu every 72hr to a week for free. The 6mo window thought really sparks my interest if we could look into that , but then again what I want to know is what pepole getting as incentives or kickbacks to force new users to grcpool.com and this again as I keep calling it and now its a monopoly on new users being forced to join the pool in order to ( earn from completed wu's as we dont mine gridcoin ) but if extending past 6mo could change new users being forced to join the pool lets hear more , I am starting to think stake gets used loosely meaning " create a block that you get PoR from " where it was previously staking a block for interest , sorry @ 20k GRC i still get more from rain than I do interest so staking interest is not important to me , along with many other users, it seems to only matter to whales.

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barton26 (56) · 7 years ago

If you are a solo miner with a low balance, you will never stake and therefore never be paid out for your research. If you do not stake research within six months of completing it, payment is lost. Currently you will need about 165k GRC to stake daily, 24k to stake weekly, and 1k GRC to stake every 6 months in the V8 system."

This statement remains undemonstrated and unsubstantiated. When v8 goes live, the difficulty of staking a POS block will decrease for those with medium balances. Currently we do not recommend attempting to go solo with a low balance, so I do not see how this is any different than the current situation.

$1.74

7 votes

erelas (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

Look up my username on gridcoinstats about 6 months ago, you'll see how this can affect. At my highest point of holding I only ever had around 10k in my balance, and to me as a casual researcher, that was a lot, I have less now, my own choice, sure, but even at 10k balance I was staking 150 GRC at a shot. That simply is not happening now, and will not be happening in the future as things stand and I understood @dutch's explanation correctly.
I don't consider myself a casual researcher now, as I routinely remain in the top 200's in some projects and have a higher "rank" in them thatn some names I recognize from here, yet, I never stake, or stake at terms longer than a week. V8 isn't active yet, it's gonna be a rough change to see.

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barton26 (56) · 7 years ago

I have less now, my own choice, sure

And that is your choice. By holding less coins, you stake less frequently. Welcome to Proof of Stake coins.

$0.29

erelas (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

sighs That could have probably been stated better.

From scalextrix - "I dont agree with the statement that doing this makes Gridcoin closer to a PoS coin, you still get mining rewards in V8, you just dont get them quite so often."

A few comments down from that, from barton26 - "Welcome to Proof of Stake coins."

These little snips show how things devolve, imo. GRC has always been both PoW and PoS (PoR), and my question posted on the forum is still out there.

barton26, not making a big deal, but also being entirely honest, that came across a little snide sounding in my head. Meh, I take for granted that may be my issue, but if you don't know I took it that way, and it wasn't your intent and I let you know, then no harm no foul, I hope.

I still haven't seen much to dissuade me from taking @dutch's analysis at face value, perhaps I could get someone to actually define small miner, medium miner, etc., since these terms are being used to describe hypotheticals. I'm sure we're closer in numbers than this, but, it could be that I think a small miner is someone holding 1k balance or less and you consider it to be 100k or less. Let me know what it's to be considered and we can go from there.

Of course, holding less coins means staking fewer times - I'm currently involved in another coin that I stake eight to ten times a day, it's been good and I have significantly, as in years less, time in it than GRC. So I feel a baseline for defining these terms is good for conversation and information.

If I could, I'd put it up for a vote, before V8 went live, whether to leave it to activate, or to alter it asap so it activates but does so in a way that doesn't hinder new-solo and older/smaller solo miners.

The entire mechanism of Gridcoin was supposed to be to encourage research, I feel V8 moves us farther away from that and it should be altered before being allowed to activate.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago (edited)

If I could, I'd put it up for a vote, before V8 went live, whether to leave it to activate, or to alter it asap so it activates but does so in a way that doesn't hinder new-solo and older/smaller solo miners.

The v8 changes were required due to critical network security risks associated with providing magnitude a stake weight. Once v8 is implemented and stable we can certainly prioritize the topic of POR payout prioritization on github/steemit/etc.

You should check out the github wiki's proposed incompatible changes, there are many proposed improvements which will directly benefit POR users.

The entire mechanism of Gridcoin was supposed to be to encourage research, I feel V8 moves us farther away from that and it should be altered before being allowed to activate.

Given the network security risk of sticking with the current staking mechanism (which includes mag in the staking mechanism), maintaining the network/blockchain on pre-mandatory versions (forked blockchain) will likely experience malicious network consensus interference.

Once the mandatory has passed, we can transparently discuss improvements for the POR mechanisms as a community & assign an appropriate priority (and bounty via dev program) for development (considering the other high priority development items in the pipeline).

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

I'm very interested in the we/community/... discussions. Where should I look to know what the communities priority list is. Point to issues lists (who decides on priorities?) and saying things will change is pointless. You're saying it will be worked on. But I have no idea if it will be first second or never. It's the opposite of fud.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Look up my username on gridcoinstats about 6 months ago
[ ... ]
at 10k balance I was staking 150 GRC at a shot. That simply is not happening now, and will not be happening in the future as things stand and I understood @dutch's explanation correctly.

Reductions in POR rewards are likely due to the substantial growth in team Gridcoin this year; thousands of more users have joined through pools or solo so the difficulty and competition to earn large magnitudes has increased. You need to competitively crunch, picking the projects with most compatibility with your machines and the least user participation/competition (crunch less popular projects).

The changes won't affect your payment amounts, rather the frequency at which you are paid will potentially decrease.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

Be prepared, I honestly believe that you are about to see the first "I ain't been paid in 6 months", complaint, and the time to address that, imo, is before the complaint has a chance.

I have spent a, my wife wants to kill me, vast amount of time since...a certain incident, poring over Team Gridcoins members stats, looking at what they do, how they do it, etc. I am unconvinced that we can say it's due to a large influx of new users, sure, that's a factor, but not the entirety.

Please, take a moment to look at my recent stats, then ask me if I think I am competitively crunching, lol.

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bullshark (47) · 7 years ago

It costs more to stake frequently now than it would with V8. It is much cheaper to purchase GRC than it is to purchase the hardware required for a decent mag.

$1.41

dutch (61) · 7 years ago

I agree. If your sole aim is to increase stake weight, that will become cheaper in V8.

I am mainly taking the angle of the miners that have existing hardware though.

$0.29

erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Does that seem to be the consensus now? I'm having issues keeping up with disparate opinions in multiple places, so I am genuinely asking if that is being born out?

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dutch (61) · 7 years ago (edited)

He is right. If your sole aim is to increase stake weight (starting from nothing - no hardware or GRC), that will become cheaper in V8.

I am mainly taking the angle of the miners that have existing hardware though. This is what I feel GRC and BOINC target - people who have idle hardware lying around already. They get hit by this change.

$0.29

erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Yup, that is what I though, oh and color me affected. I mean for goodness sake, have you checked out the prices / availability of gpu's lately. If you count power, hardware, etc., no reasonable person is buying "turn your spare cpu cycles into SCIENCE!" That was great two years ago, when I didn't junk old hardware, GRC was that hardwares last hope of surviving.

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ravonn (53) · 7 years ago

These calculations can't possibly be correct. If you check my stats when I switched to PoS I staked on average 3.75 times per day with ~46k GRC. If we check the 4 days after and the 4 days before we get:

4 most recent days as researcher, average mag 115: 2.5 stakes/day
Big jump to 16/7
4 days as researcher, average mag 150: 5.25 stakes/day
4 days as investor, mag 0: 3.75 stakes/day
4 days as researcher, average mag 155: 3.75 stakes/day

I will switch to investor during the weekend and see how often I stake.

$1.40

dutch (61) · 7 years ago (edited)

I based all those numbers off the wallet's staking estimates, which correlated nicely with Vortac's approximate stake rate (and he is primarily an investor in terms of GRC/mag ratio).

Based on your numbers, you essentially got no boost from your mag to help you stake in the current stake engine...?

EDIT: I just realised you are effectively an investor too. Most miners are not sitting on ~50k GRC. You will not be affected heavily by V8 as you are probably near the sweet spot where increased balance stake rate and removal of mag stake weight cancel.

$0.05

denravonska (38) · 7 years ago

Writing it here as well: my 115 mag and 34 UTXOs has the same stake weight as 4000 GRC. I would say this mostly affects users with a lot of UTXOs.

$0.26

erelas (42) · 7 years ago

dutch, I really appreciate the way you explain things, no offense but it seems to work along better than others explanations with my brain, lol. You should hear how I have to turn things around for my wife.

I've never really looked into the big fish of GRC, looked at their stats etc., because what would be the point, GRC is supposed to be altruistic, and now I have. I'm about to pass RHalford in one project, but he's made no movement there in a long time, merely "invested" and sat in that position. I really should have given that a think when I started, but, I was more excited to do research for research sake, and others are playing a different game. Ok, well, game on.

cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

GRC is supposed to be altruistic

That may be the perception by some, but this has never been an official stance within the Gridcoin network. For-Profit and non-scientific projects are likely going to be a reality in the future.

he's made no movement there in a long time

Similar to the vast majority of the BOINC network, they have become inactive in crunching due to real life situational changes.

I was more excited to do research for research sake, and others are playing a different game.

You can do that without gridcoin, the introduction of gridcoin in the picture means you're playing the same game.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

Me : GRC is supposed to be altruistic

cm-steem :That may be the perception by some, but this has never been an official stance within the Gridcoin network. For-Profit and non-scientific projects are likely going to be a reality in the future.

I have typed my response to this, like four times now, thank God for backspace, because I feel like I am forced to pretend that I did not hear that.

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xaqfields (51) · 7 years ago

Security in this world (unfortunately) has to always be the top concern. I don't love the concept of losing out on my magnitude stake weight, but if that's the price that must be paid to avoid security FUD dragging Gridcoin down, that's acceptable to me.

I think there are some really good ideas being tossed around that I believe we should be strongly considering. I've heard that one option is to basically pay everybody their mining rewards at the SuperBlock. IMO, this is a crucial change if magnitude is no longer part of stake weight. Think about it: if there's no relationship between magnitude and stake weight, then why should mining rewards only be paid when someone stakes a block? Makes no sense. Instead, just have the neural network track everyone's owed mining rewards and if you're owed at least 100GRC, you get a payment at the next SuperBlock. Basically along with a SuperBlock being minted would be hundreds of mining payments. It would be doable, especially if you limited the minimum payment to 100 GRC which means very few miners would be getting paid daily but most would be paid at least once every couple weeks.

Bump the threshold up to 500GRC if you want to really minimize those payments and keep an incentive for people to join pools if they still want daily payouts.

$1.14

7 votes

jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

You could as well pay out after a certain amount of time instead of coins. More predictable and fair for everyone.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

I would probably vote yes on the ideas in your second paragraph, and even mostly agree with bumping it to 500. Hell, I've got pools now that pay out only at much more (they are also more profitable) as a minimum. It should though be voted on I think after the proposal was hashed out.

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bullshark (47) · 7 years ago

IMO I don't think we should have a threshold for payout. I would prefer something like STEEM where you can click claim rewards.

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jedigeiss (72) · 7 years ago

I can only agree ! And once in 6 months staking is nevertheless a too big timeframe for getting rewarded. We definitely should look for something that is working quicker than that. The pool topic should really be emphasized nevertheless grcpool is doing a great job it is currently a probable single point of failure and out of risk purposes this is a nightmare in itself. Please all an everyone who's got an idea to that come join the gridcoin slack channel and discuss with us. We already got some things sketched but like @dutch says there's nothing written in stone yet...
Thanks for the post !

$0.38

cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

The pool is open source, it's only a matter of time before many pools are available (especially when the marketcap increases).

The current solution to improving staking frequency is to acquire more GRC (they're still undervalued at the moment, imo).

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dutch (61) · 7 years ago

While the pool is 'open source' it is VERY hard to get running and there is a lot of work left to do until someone can set it up without help from Bgb. Darthur went through the process and it took him days and a lot of Bgb's input, even though he has decades of experience under his belt with programming.

$0.05

cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Projects usually last longer than a few days to reach a production state, especially experimental/beta software. As more people work on the pool, it'll get better & easier to run a new one.

dutch (61) · 7 years ago (edited)

Fair point, maybe expecting near plug-and-play functionality is too high a goal.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago (edited)

For the short term, yes it's too high a goal. Anyone interested in running a pool needs to get their hands dirty & not expect a production level pool kit.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

I am sorry if this sounds....bad tempered, please don't take it that way. I stated in the forum that you should shut off crunching in the short term, mine something profitable, buy GRC to achieve a higher balance and then continue on. I was, debated on that statement. Now I see that statement is, effectively being repeated and this back and forth is making me nutso.

It is very easy to say to someone, to make more "money" you have to spend more "money", we've all heard that and some of us can not, will not, don't want to hear how easy it is to fix with money, the problem.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago (edited)

I don't see how your post relates to the programming/running of a gridcoin pool? Did you reply to the wrong comment?

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

cm-steem : The current solution to improving staking frequency is to acquire more GRC (they're still undervalued at the moment, imo).

Worded differently, that means, "They're cheap atm, buy now". That involves throwing money at the problem to fix the issue on an individual basis, not fixing the problem itself persay.

I think what we are seeing is the sometimes odd ordering of comments, they are in one place at posting, someone votes on it and it can be moved in position, sort of placing it out of a topically logical order.

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

How does this affect solo vs group mining? Why would one solo mine vs group mine and what is the switching point?

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Solo investors will stake more frequently, the pool will likely stake less frequently however they no doubt have enough grc in reserves to stake with in a timely fashion.

Switching from pool to solo -> the point is to help secure the network yourself, getting voting rights, maximum decentralization.

$0.31

jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago (edited)

If you're in it to mine and earn coins none of that really matters. the voting power is minimal compared to the big guy. Users won't mine if they don't think it's secure. Decentralization follows the same reasoning. What's the reward for helping securing/decentralization with V8?
Edit: is that the 1.5 % apr?

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dutch (61) · 7 years ago

Group mining gets you paid more frequently in V8, assuming the pool will hold a large reserve balance to stake. Solo mining will see a vast reduction in payment frequency.

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

I guess more users care about frequent payment instead of 1.5% apr. At least I do with a coin I find harder to trust due to several factors. That way I can move earnings somewhere I trust more. End result: even less secure coin.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

At least I do with a coin I find harder to trust due to several factors.

Cryptocurrencies are trustless by design.

End result: even less secure coin.

I don't believe that if you use a pool or sell your grc that contributes to a less secure gridcoin network.

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

Every currency only works because of trust. I don't think my personal preference makes a difference. But if everybody turns to the pool it would.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Every currency only works because of trust.

Perhaps FIAT currencies where you trust a bank to exchange cash for the real monetary value of the notes, but in crypto trust does not enter the equation.

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zeiloor (32) · 7 years ago

Sure it does.
What will happen if people do not trust Bitcoin anymore? Well they won't buy it anymore en people owning will be selling. No demand and plenty supply means the price will drop en the coin will be worthless.
The only difference between fiat currency and crypto currency is that fiat currency is centralized government controlled whereas crypto is decentralized en controlled by the community. They are both based on trust.

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

That's nonsense. Why are shops using bitcoin and not some minor altcoin? Even when looking at it as an asset you're wrong. Trust is one of the major aspects.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Cryptocurrency is not trustless. Blockchain is trustless. Cryptocurrency working depends on lots of trust, from the dev(s) down.

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thorondor (50) · 7 years ago

Thanks a lot for the great summary. Looks like I will have to stay in the pool for a lot longer, in order to have frequent rewards.
Don't get me wrong, I love the pool and all the good it gives to us newbies, but I was planning to be a mature miner at some point.

$0.15

zeiloor (32) · 7 years ago

I think regularly paying out crunchers stimulates them to keeping on crunching. Being rewarded twice a year or less is demotivating. Even without de V8 engine the payout scheme is far from optimal.

Payout should be weekly to keep people interested and attract new crunchers

$0.12

9 votes

thorondor (50) · 7 years ago

This is exactly how I feel. I am currently in the pool and was planning to go solo real soon.
With the V8 I will now stay in the pool, to maintain my frequent rewards.

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

Exactly. And since you are payed faster you can move your earnings faster when things get grim.

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step1 (30) · 7 years ago (edited)

I'm glad someone is talking about this and taking it seriously. This is a BIG change and most people don't even know about it.

This is another good reason for implementing a BOINC-style notification system; get the word out, because guess what.... People are gonna be super pissed if they aren't getting their reward at the same rate, and possibly not at all.

This should've been discussed days or weeks ago rather than a week or so before it's implemented. People need to use the info to make their decisions.. Some may want to quit. Some may want to buy. Everyone needs to know that they'll have to hold a much higher balance.

The price has already increased. Had this information been out days ago, people could've theoretically bought in cheaper. It's not really fair if only some people really know what's going to happen...

$0.11

6 votes

erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Feels worse than being on the short-end of an insider trading racket doesn't it?

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

That's a bit of an exaggeration.. everything is open source and quite well documented on github. This isn't a permanent change, rather a necessary change for the immediate security of the Gridcoin network & its planned release had to be rushed due to an increased risk of exploitation.

$1.50

bullshark (47) · 7 years ago

I'm not sure adding notifications is a good idea. This used to be in Bitcoin and it was removed because who should have the rights to send the messages? What happens when a developer leaves and spams the message system?

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

We could potentially create a github repo from which the gridcoin client scrapes news, but as you say it's a centralized solution which could be exploited if the responsible accounts were hacked. Nobody wants malware attempts directly within the gridcoin client, it's far safer to subscribe to traditional Gridcoin channels such as Twitter, Steemit, Cryptocointalk, Slack, etc.

$0.23

erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Very good point @bullshark, blast it. Look at what recently happened, ugh.

Hmm, only way to correct for that then would be to have a rotating body of three, each one of the three can initiate a message, but the other two must also approve it before it is sent. Limit them to sitting in that triad for a period of time before they must be replaced and may not sit again for a period of three times as long.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Look at what recently happened, ugh.

What happened recently?

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

If you wish me to go thru that again, you should know I'm not shy about it. An exploit was utilized by Tomas Brod to inject superblocks during the one millionth block celebration, turning it into "The One Million Block Exploit".

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

This should've been discussed days or weeks ago rather than a week or so before it's implemented. People need to use the info to make their decisions.. Some may want to quit. Some may want to buy. Everyone needs to know that they'll have to hold a much higher balance.

The removal of magnitude from the stake weight calculation was for highly critical security fixes, of which we are currently anticipating the mandatory upgrade switch-over for (upgrades are out).

The reintroduction of magnitude stake weight (or stake weight boosts close to the max payout window, or a greater payout window) could be possible in the future when other higher priority development items are completed, if you want to see this change accelerated you should aid in such developments.

The price has already increased. Had this information been out days ago, people could've theoretically bought in cheaper. It's not really fair if only some people really know what's going to happen...

The price jumped because of the mandatory upgrade period, this has historically always been the case for an unknown reason. Gridcoin are not above the ATH peak & the information has been out for days and in fact documented for months in github.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

The price jump after a mandatory upgrade isn't a big mystery in my mind. The exchanges take their wallets offline, but because they are obviously not moving the actual crypto each time a transaction takes place trades continue, but supply is frozen, the natural reaction is a price increase. If you desire to dump, then plan to do it right after a scheduled mando.

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alpinegiant (48) · 7 years ago

I agree it is alarming that this change is being made with zero input from the community. If I wasn't constantly stalking slack and steem I probably wouldn't know about it. Driving all miners with small wallets into the pool will essentially centralize the vast majority of mining being done. Additionally if GRC goes up a significant amount in value, which obviously we would like, the cost to acquire even 1k GRC will be too much. There must be a better way than a pure POS system.

$0.11

8 votes

cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

I agree it is alarming that this change is being made with zero input from the community.

This is to improve the network security, if the community seriously wants change then they should join in development (even just reading others posts & giving your opinion can help greatly).

Driving all miners with small wallets into the pool will essentially centralize the vast majority of mining being done.

It's a good thing that stake weight doesn't account for mag with the new system then.

Additionally if GRC goes up a significant amount in value, which obviously we would like, the cost to acquire even 1k GRC will be too much.

A problem I look forwards to our community having to deal with, and we will no doubt deal with it when the time comes.

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alpinegiant (48) · 7 years ago

I guess my concern is mostly that there hasn't been much of a formal announcement with information from devs on reddit or steemit that I have seen. I feel like I follow the right people on Steem to have seen something but I expect most causal Gridcoin users are mostly just watching the reddit. To be fair Erkan did post something about it but I stopped reading his posts a while back.... To expect everyone to monitor the dec slack channel and sift through all of the technical talk for useful information is incredibly unreasonable. It does seem like there has been an effort from devs to be more transparent about what is happening, but it seems like right now it is typically coming several weeks after the fact.
I think ideally an actual dev would post version release notes on reddit and steemit when new versions come out. The notes Erkan c/p into his post for 3.6.0.1 doesn't mention anything about magnitude staking being removed. I'm not trying to raise a big stink, just think a little more communication would be beneficial.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Ya know, I mentioned having a summary of what is going on, the person doing it being compensated from dev compensation funds, and got lambasted about slavery. It was like Erelas's Law, ala Godwin's Law, the longer an internet discussion goes on, eventually someone will mention slavery.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

I guess my concern is mostly that there hasn't been much of a formal announcement with information from devs on reddit or steemit that I have seen.

Devs have been working on the required changes (and additional changes which are heavily detailed in the github branches, wikis, issues, etc) more or less full time, they can't do everything perfect - remember there isn't a centralized company behind Gridcoin but rather it's a decentralized/distributed community effort to develop/maintain/improve the gridcoin network.

Whilst it's true that it'd have been great to have announced the mag stake weight removal ahead of time, the required changes were required in a short time frame due to the network security issues associated with assigning stake weight to magnitude.

The consequential reduced POR payout rate will likely be addressed especially as our network grows (with the removal of the mandatory team req), we just need to research secure alternative methods of prioritizing POR payouts. You can see proposed changes in the github wiki & issues sections, you don't need to be programmer to help brainstorm.

It does seem like there has been an effort from devs to be more transparent about what is happening, but it seems like right now it is typically coming several weeks after the fact.

There is indeed an editing backlog for the Gridcoin community hangouts (I trust you listen to them, at least the beyondbitcoin hangouts?) so you need to attend in order to hear the absolute latest news in person. These hangouts are incredibly transparent, anything not included is likely due to the information being unavailable to us at the time of a hangout.

Despite the backlog, we've not had the opportunity to discuss the ramifications of mag stake weight removal in a hangout yet.

My stance is that network security takes far greater priority than reward payout rate, however further research into secure POR reward prioritization should be explored/brainstormed as a community.

I'm not trying to raise a big stink, just think a little more communication would be beneficial.

We're not perfect & there are many of us, so bear with us as we improve the communication issues that are being highlighted.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

I think that there are a few that no longer, if they ever did, wish this community members opinion. Security is indeed key, but keeping the crunchers crunching is the entire point, otherwise research is not being done.

This is definitely going to increase the market capitalization for GRC, but I feel the system has been manipulated to do that, at the cost of the solo miner and personal faith in the system. If anyone can restore that, I'd be happy.

That and being predictive in what this change has caused. I feel it was predicted, but not by the majority of miners. In the short term, if I wish to remain with GRC and progress, then I should mine SIA and ETH, dump it, buy GRC, get a decent sized balance, then never research, and where does that benefit humanity?

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

I think that there are a few that no longer, if they ever did, wish this community members opinion. Security is indeed key, but keeping the crunchers crunching is the entire point, otherwise research is not being done.

If we do not prioritize core network security over payout frequency then we may come to find the rewards distributed to our crunchers rendered worthless. Temporary decreased payout frequency due to mag stake weight removal is a neccessity for the time being, if/when a more secure manner of prioritizing POR payouts is created it'll likely be implemented due to the sheer size of the BOINC network (500k-4m+ users can't buy a daily stake amount each, there isn't enough coins to go around).

The vast majority of the BOINC network crunches for free. Whilst team Gridcoin is the most powerful in terms of computing capacity it isn't the driving force behind the 99.5% of the BOINC network's volunteerism.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Somewhere in here, I did want to address listening to the hangouts. I've never bothered with them, because the deaf might listen very well, but they don't hear anything. Stated because you hoped we listened to them, I personally can't.

That said, it goes back to having a more centralized place for folks to get their information, can we pick one or two, not...all of them?

You also made the point that part of the development process is responding to comments, and I hope that includes here and in the forum, and that with all the times you've re-stated that security is the priority we might feel that the priorities, since that is being addressed be shifted to fixing the PoR situation created by the "fix", (that I will probably never be entirely happy with, not that my happiness is required, because of the name attached to it).

Foxes may know chicken houses inside and out, but they are not good guards for the chickens.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago (edited)

Somewhere in here, I did want to address listening to the hangouts. I've never bothered with them, because the deaf might listen very well, but they don't hear anything. Stated because you hoped we listened to them, I personally can't.

If you're deaf you should read the RSVP threads where the topics which were discussed are roughly documented and full of relevant hyperlinks, likewise enabling subtitles on youtube is fairly accurate.

I raised the hangouts because that's the most transparent medium we currently have, there's even some users providing transcribing recently.

That said, it goes back to having a more centralized place for folks to get their information, can we pick one or two, not...all of them?

We've got many platforms upon which our community is spread across, once we remove the team req this quantity of communication platforms will further increase (each individual team/technology forum). Even if you post on all of them, there's the high likelihood that users won't be online that day or week to take note (no to say that's a reason not to broadcast announcements).

You also made the point that part of the development process is responding to comments, and I hope that includes here and in the forum

Anything written in the announcement thread should seriously be considered lost, a couple pages after your post and nobody will ever see that content again. You're far better off creating dedicated threads in appropriate sub forums, as the announcement thread is more of a chatroom.

Likewise, it's best that once you have held discussions on here or on the forums that you curate your content into a concise stance on individual topics & provide that to the github issue or pull request. The lead devs aren't going to scour everyone's post history for their ideas.

all the times you've re-stated that security is the priority we might feel that the priorities, since that is being addressed be shifted to fixing the PoR situation created by the "fix", (that I will probably never be entirely happy with, not that my happiness is required, because of the name attached to it).

The POR stake weight is not the next immediate priority, improving the accuracy of mag (potentially moving from rac to total credit (see thom's proposals)), the security/stability/predictability of superblocks and re-decentralizing the statistics scraping mechanisms are AFAIK the next high priority items.

If you disagree, you're entirely welcome to aid development regarding the functionality you desire to see implemented within the client.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Umm, I laugh at subtitles on YouTube regularly, they are not 100%, by far. Please, lol, don't tell a deaf person to turn on subtitles, I think we figured that one out a long time ago. I really do believe you didn't mean to offend, but that one was a fail, I'm just being easygoing about it, don't bank on others reactions being positive.

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evildido (61) · 7 years ago

Thx to inform little miners like me. I have only 1700 GRC and I'm sad to read the new behavior.

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bullshark (47) · 7 years ago

I think you will still stake regular with that amount

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an0n7m0us3 (45) · 7 years ago (edited)

Regardless of the requirements for security, which are correctly being put first, this seems like huge change to make without community input.

This is my main concern in moving to v8. Many polls have come to pass that could by comparison be called trivial. To vote on a preferred color of a logo, or the preferred cpu project in the Pentathlon, etc. I had not personally been aware of v8 until it was listed in the changelog of the new wallet version.

I don't think it's too unreasonable to expect major decisions like this to involve community input before being enacted.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

So instead of implementing critical network security patches, we should introduce weeks of delay?

I do agree that we need proper discourse when proposing mandatory upgrade changes, however given the severity of the issues patched with v8 the change without full discourse is justified. Future changes which aren't as critically required will certainly be discussed by the entire community.

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jefpatat (64) · 7 years ago

Fake argument. These issues were known for a longer time afaik.

cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Issues being known and weaponized exploits capable of taking advantage of said vulnerable issue being released to the public are two different things though. The reality is that these changes are required because an attack could be launched pre-mandatory upgrade.

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an0n7m0us3 (45) · 7 years ago

I fully appreciate the need to patch severe security issues. However, I was not involved in any discussions on them, so my knowledge is somewhat limited.

Was it not possible to fix these issues without adding another level of difficulty for new miners? Or was this a temporary measure on the path to making a more balanced reward system?

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

I fully appreciate the need to patch severe security issues. However, I was not involved in any discussions on them, so my knowledge is somewhat limited.

So involve yourself in the development process? You don't need to know how to program, just reading over large issue threads to give your own curated view of participants posts could help steer development.

Was it not possible to fix these issues without adding another level of difficulty for new miners?

No, the priority is to establish a secure network to which once the dust has settled we can analyze the true staking reality (everything is speculation right now) and react appropriately once other high priority dev items are out the way.

Or was this a temporary measure on the path to making a more balanced reward system?

Network security has been prioritized over staking priority for POR crunchers, there are multiple proposals for improving the POR mechanism which are publicly documented on github (wiki).

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an0n7m0us3 (45) · 7 years ago

So involve yourself in the development process

Given the abundance of time, I'd love to. But lacking this, I'm left seeking summarizations of the bigger picture, from people like yourself who are much more involved.

But thank you. I do appreciate your explanation here, as I hadn't come across any further clarification prior.

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erkan (60) · 7 years ago

About 6 days left until stakeV8 activation

This post and others are included in the:

timeline for: Gridcoin's new PoS stake v8 kernel

gbenz (29) · 7 years ago

All the conversation surrounding pools and the need to join them for new users, makes me question why are these changes being made (and with more frequency)? Sure, there are probably plenty of valid reasons for wanting to join and be a part of a pool.
However, there's been lots of discussion and work made to eliminate the team requirement, as well as changes implemented to allow new users to work independently and outside of pools. Wouldn't it make sense to be making changes and modifications that continue to allow more "independent" (ie: not requiring joining the pools in order to meet requirements, etc.) users?
It seems very counterintuitive to be implementing changes that continue to add more cause to join a pool.
Nothing against the pools, however, I think pools should continue to be an option, and if anything, we need to be re-examining changes that are moving the chain closer to essentially forcing pool membership. My thought is, the pool is one more additional layer that generates increased constraints and hurdles, which ultimately, are the roadblocks of enhancing blockchain membership.

cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Wouldn't it make sense to be making changes and modifications that continue to allow more "independent" (ie: not requiring joining the pools in order to meet requirements, etc.) users?

Sure, however the recently proposed & implemented changes are required due to severe network security risks associated with stake weight assigned to magnitude. Improvements to POR payout prioritization will likely come with time, you can help brainstorm such improvements in here/slack/github.

If you check out the github gridcoin-research wiki for the incompatible changes, there are many proposed changes worthy of reading through. There are great improvements coming to increase the accuracy of POR payouts, so don't think that we aren't taking POR users in mind when changes are made to the network.

My thought is, the pool is one more additional layer that generates increased constraints and hurdles, which ultimately, are the roadblocks of enhancing blockchain membership.

On the contrary, you can use the pool to avoid running the Gridcoin client entirely & send your coins to a mobile wallet or exchange - vastly easier than running a staking client. Sure blockchain membership is desirable, that's why we want to prioritize network security over POR payout prioritization (not that this will be a permanent debuff to researchers).

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

So, not to belabor the point, but I want to be crystal clear, you did just say that this is indeed a debuff to researchers?
If that is the case, I want those that keep "informing" me it's not, to stick it and I pass that baton over to you, because, like I said, it's driving me nutso.
I will forever now say, lightheartedly, honest, "It is so because cm-steem / custom said so!"

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Oh, and I would be remorseful if I did not say this, thank you for coming by and addressing the various comments! I, and I hope others do as well, sincerely appreciate it :)

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dutch (61) · 7 years ago

V8 is a buff to security, at the cost of a debuff to researchers.

I invite anyone to try fault that.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

^^^

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

It's potentially a debuff in that if you were highly reliant on magnitude based stake weight, then you may experience a reduced staking frequency. The improvement of the network security is a serious buff which is worthy of the slight POR debuff.

The reality may be different from the theories being thrown around, because with wildly fluctuating and unpredicatble mag weight out of the picture it may actually be the case that small/medium stakers experience an increased rate of staking. We'll have to wait until after the mandatory upgrade to provide a clear answer to your question.

My posts are that of my own, I do not represent the gridcoin network rather myself & I did not personally develop the v8 mechanisms, so don't go quoting me as official gridcoin fact.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

Yes, we are aware Brod developed the V8 "fix".

As for frequency of staking, I'm at day ten plus now, honestly should have probably staked around the millionth, didn't, oh well, bad luck, however we'll never know for certain, as one person made sure that he staked it and no one else.

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cm-steem (67) · 7 years ago

Thomas staking the millionth isn't stopping you from staking right now, likewise there's no way for you to have estimated that you'd have otherwise staked the millionth block.

I don't see how this comment is beneficial to the discussion, it's somewhat irrelevant to my comment & your quote of 'fix' isn't present in my comment. Did you mean to post to a different comment?

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago (edited)

No one can make that prediction, that is correct, I stated as much saying that we would never know.

I put quotation marks around fix, because of the points we disagree on that is is indeed a fix, nothing more.

Let's not be argumentative, but agree to disagree there. That would also explain my "foxes guarding the henhouse" comment earlier, as Brod initiated the exploit, and is credited with fixing or "fixing" it afterward.

How I choose to comment is entirely my own doing, if you wish to judge whether it is relevant to the discussion or not, by all means, do so, but I am honestly going to say detante whether you wish it or not and take some good advice I recently received and not fall any farther down this rabbit hole.

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erelas (42) · 7 years ago

I thought I was seeing things, because I speed-scrolled, but nope, your "cartoon you" blinks and I never noticed before, nice touch @dutch.

dutch (61) · 7 years ago (edited)

Haha - excellent spotting!

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