New Accounts Don't Have Enough SP to Fully Interact with the Blockchain. Should witnesses update the Max Block Size? (Discussion)

kingscrown (81) · 8 years ago

worth noting that new registrations also dont really work on steemit.com - people wait for approval for weeks

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

A large percentage of people are approved within 24 hours actually. 3 business days is when most accounts are approved by.

There have still been a lot of accounts taking longer than that, but most of them are actually because they are getting flagged for various reasons (wife and husband signing up on the same computer, etc.) If there are any accounts that have taken more than 3 days, you can DM me on steemit.chat and I'll forward to Steemit to review.

There are still services like AnonSteem and SteemConnect which people can use if the Steemit.com signup doesn't work (or they don't want to wait).

I know that improving the signup process is a big priority for Steemit, so hopefully we'll see some proposals on how they plan to improve it soon.

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neoxian (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

I know this isn't a permanent solution, but if there are any newbies out there who are having trouble posting, I'll be happy to delegate 10 SP to you until you get on your feet. This offer is open to the first 5 qualified new accounts that want it.

Edit: You can contact me in Steemit Chat as neoxian.

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lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

Another reason why this community rocks. We'll help each other out as needed.

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teamsteem (74) · 8 years ago

I would really love to see this problem solve as soon as possible.

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valued-customer (67) · 8 years ago (edited)

Quite kind of you! I am a fairly new user, and have little SP, but have had no issues posting or commenting, so am in no need of your generosity. I hope this problem gets quickly resolved, and not being able to post or comment renders the site of little benefit, or use.

Thanks!

EDIT: I just realized that there is an amount of 'delegated' sp, that I have wondered about. I didn't know what it was until now. It seems to be being decreased as I gain sp from posting and curating, which I hope is correct.

Just wanted to correctly express the situation.

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neoxian (70) · 8 years ago

It is because you are receiving delegated power. If this power goes away and you haven't increased your SP to 10-12, you'll start having those problems.

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jphenderson (66) · 8 years ago

You rock @neoxian

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prakashghai (63) · 8 years ago

Your generosity is much appreciated

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isis-hecate (25) · 6 years ago

I just created an account and cannot post!! Thank you for your kind offer.

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someguy123 (69) · 8 years ago

I would think bigger blocks introduce more issues for witnesses, and might push for higher account fee.

STEEM is already at a 30GB blockchain, and it's only been around for a year.

root@someguy123 steem-docker # du -sh data/witness_node_data_dir/blockchain
28G data/witness_node_data_dir/blockchain

I run my witness on a HDD, and advise others to, because at the rate STEEM is growing, Witnesses may need a RAID of SSDs to hold the chain within a few years. Making the blocks bigger would accelerate us towards that fate.

It's understandable that new accounts can't interact very often. This could be thought of as a positive not a negative, simply because it reduces the amount of spam on the chain, as well as armies of upvote/flag bots.

I find it's rare for most people's introduceyourself to do poorly. This usually means within their first few posts, they may gain a decent amount of SP to interact (though we now have 7 day payouts which are annoying).

On the other hand, we don't want to become like Bitcoin, where people flock to other platforms because we're all too stubborn to just increase the block size.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

So one thing to consider is that as far as I know, the "max block size" is not really limiting the size of blocks (currently). I believe the blocks that are being produced are significantly below that max. The parameter though is also part of the bandwidth usage calculation, which is where it is having an effect. It also mainly affects new accounts, because once you have more than ~10 SP you can interact within normal/reasonable limits.

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teamsteem (74) · 8 years ago

Thank you for that information. I had no idea.

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nicnas (66) · 8 years ago

maybe we can have a longer vote, comment and post timer for new people instead of being locked out for days at a time? I this this is discouraging.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Thanks for your input @someguy123!

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lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

Yeah, I've been thinking about the size of the blockchain for a while now. I'm happy to see how quickly disk technology is getting cheaper, but it's still something we should keep in mind. Maybe the Steemit account can just delegate more Steem per account in the beginning.

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alexpmorris (65) · 8 years ago

I think there's such a huge influx of new users that they're trying to cut down where they can. for example, I recently got my mom to sign up and she was delegated around 150SP.

However, yesterday it was reduced down to like 4SP which quickly hit the bandwidth limits. @timcliff got them to set it back to 9, so I guess we'll see if that's enough to solve it (well, for now at least).

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lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

Wow, that's a pretty major change. Seems to me Steemit inc messed that up and should fix it, not the witnesses. 150 to 4 is drastic.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

The account creation fee is currently .2 STEEM (set by the witnesses). A week or so ago, it was .5 STEEM. When it was .5 STEEM, it cost .5 * 29.5 * 5 = 73.5 delegated SP to create an account. That was way more than what is needed for bandwidth limitations. A calculation was done based on the bandwidth limits at the time, and it was determined that an account with 5 SP could 'reasonably' interact with the blockchain. Based on that, they removed the unnecessary delegation and left users with 5 SP.

Since then though, the bandwidth requirements seem to have gone up. I assume because of the increase in usage. 5 SP no longer seems enough to interact with the blockchain. It seems like 10-12 SP is the new limit.

There is a workable solution on the Steemit side of things, which is Steemit can delegate 10-12 SP instead of 5. I don't think this would be a huge deal.

The real problem though is that Steemit is not the only service creating accounts. Lots of accounts get created with non-delegated SP, and those users only start out with .2 * 30 = 6 SP. Anyone who has an account setup that way won't have enough SP to 'reasonably' interact with the blockchain.

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9 votes

lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

The real problem though is that Steemit is not the only service creating accounts. Lots of accounts get created with non-delegated SP, and those users only start out with .2 * 30 = 6 SP. Anyone who has an account setup that way won't have enough SP to 'reasonably' interact with the blockchain.

Isn't this the responsibility of each individual system though? They could also delegate Steem Power if they wanted to.

My hunch is most of the growth happening right now is via steemit.com and if they can fix that easily by delegating Steem Power again, it seems to me they should do this right away. To me, a drastic change like that which negatively impacted the users seems like a mistake which should be corrected.

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5 votes

timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

most of the growth happening right now is via steemit.com and if they can fix that easily by delegating Steem Power again, it seems to me they should do this right away.

I talked to Steemit, and they are going to change it from 5 to 10-15, so it should be OK for Steemit created accounts going forward. They are also going to see what can be done about the accounts that were updated to 5 and see if they can be increased to 10-15.

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5 votes

lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

That's great news, Tim!

Curious who you talk to at Steemit and how. Do they have a main phone line you call or something? Hehehe. Thanks for making this issue a priority.

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Show 2 more replies

timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Isn't this the responsibility of each individual system though? They could also delegate Steem Power if they wanted to.

The systems are designed to allow users to create new accounts based on whatever the blockchain account creation fee is. If the account creation fee is not high enough to support 'normal' activity, then that is going to cause a problem.

If we are going down that path, then the solution to make it 'work' (without depending on a bunch of third party developers to know that they need to add extra / special logic) would be to force the right amount by raising the account creation fee.

I agree 100% that it is a problem that needs to be corrected. The main question though is what is the right approach to correct it :)

Personally, I am leaning towards increasing the max block size, but I am also treading down that path very carefully because I do not fully understand the implications.

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alexpmorris (65) · 8 years ago

If I understand the problem well enough, one possible solution, if it could be implemented without too much difficulty in a future fork, is to have a fractional reserve "pool" approach (which may be similar to what you're saying with a multiplier). Since not all users of a particular registrar (ie. steemit) will be online at the same time, users who have less than say 20SP can be extended up to 20SP towards bandwidth by "tapping into" the registrar's own SP reserve up to the designated limit set by each registrar.

lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

If the account creation fee is not high enough to support 'normal' activity, then that is going to cause a problem.

I see what you mean, and I agree that keeps the solution simple for third-party developers. Maybe a good approach is recognizing a delegated Steem Power model is better for creating new accounts and under that model it's safer to introduce a multiplier to ensure the there's always plenty to go around (as it was before steemit made the change). If all onboarding systems took a similar approach, there would be less of a concern and it might end up being cheaper in the long run for those systems as they could just reclaim their SP for abandoned accounts.

raising the account creation fee.

If that makes the most sense to fix things quickly, I'd be ready to do it now (though I'm just a backup witness).

I also don't know the implications of changing the blocksize, but I do think it's something we should discuss with the experts before taking positions on.

bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

The @steemit account is the ideal faucet to seed accounts with adequate SP to interact with the blockchain.

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alexpmorris (65) · 8 years ago

just curious, how much RAM and CPU power do you currently need to maintain your witness these days?

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someguy123 (69) · 8 years ago

CPU power doesn't really matter.

As for RAM, minimum 8GB. Disk 30gb.

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mattclarke (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

One example here
Would it be best to just explain it more clearly in the error message?
"Great to see your enthusiasm, but you've done too much too quickly for such a new account. You'll speed up as you build your steem power balance."

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15 votes

lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

I like this approach. Much like Candy Crush only gives you 5 lives at a time and then you have to wait to get more. When something is scarce and desired, it becomes more valuable.

I'm also in favor of increasing the account creation cost. The Steemit account has an estimated value of $185,635,587 according to steemwhales with 3M in liquid Steem. Raising the price a bit won't hurt them too much, IMO, though I don't know anything about their operating budget. Yes some other onramps may pay a bit more, but couldn't that also be seen as a natural balance to growing too fast too quickly? We're already seeing some sporadic issues with the front end so maybe a little temporary slow down is a good thing.

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whatsup (75) · 8 years ago

I think this would feel like "leveling up" for some. On the other hand most websites do what they can to increase activity.

Very interesting idea though.

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cosmo.crator (48) · 8 years ago (edited)

I don't know jack about the dev side of this, but I do know that it was a bit disheartening to have the desire to upvote/comment without the ability. I'm still learning things and I've found SteemIt a wonderful place to meet new people, be part of an online community that is supportive, laugh at some posts (etc).

The incapacity to interact with the community for newbies is a problem. I'm sure that some users have created and abandoned accounts because they couldn't see the use in having another website that promised to be a social media solution, but that didn't let them be social.

While sites like FB and Twitter don't pay, they do fulfill the mission of social media from the start of account creation. If SteemIt.com is serious about mainstream adoption, then this is a situation that is in dire need of a solution.

As I said from the outset, I don't know jack about the dev side. I know well the inherent laziness of people who already have too much to do on too many sites.

Glad you posted this. Can't wait to see what happens to rectify the issue.

(P.S. could someone please help me out regarding Curation Rewards? I get that not every post will earn Curation Rewards, that said, I've been active and manually upvoting posts I like since I started, yet haven't seen any Curation Rewards for the last 18 days. Thanks.)

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good-karma (76) · 8 years ago

When you claim rewards, your curation rewards are part of it now. So you are earning curation reward, Steem Power you see on your pending rewards are coming from curation as well as from post/comment rewards.

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cosmo.crator (48) · 8 years ago

Is that why in the author rewards sections there's things listed that aren't my posts?

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Great comment! Thanks for your input.

Regarding curation rewards, you only get a very small percentage from the post payout if you don't have a lot of SP. Most of the curatoin rewards go on the bigger voters who contributed more to the payout with their votes. If the amount of curation rewards earned is considered "dust" (below the lowest decimal point that the blockchain uses) then they are not counted.

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cosmo.crator (48) · 8 years ago

Thanks for the replies. I'm still wrapping my mind around blockchain and Steem, your assistance is much appreciated!

Is that why my most recent upvotes (shown on steemd.com) say "upvote" when a few older ones say "curation reward" -- the newer ones were dust? Good to know.

So, how would a new user who isn't big on posting, but wants to curate and resteem be able to make enough SP to have any kind of impact?

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

If you are looking at steemd, the upvotes are from you clicking upvote and the curation rewards are payouts from past votes.

So, how would a new user who isn't big on posting, but wants to curate and resteem be able to make enough SP to have any kind of impact?

Posting and commenting are the main two ways to build SP. There is also the option to purchase more via your wallet.

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cosmo.crator (48) · 8 years ago

Thanks for all your help @timcliff. I've chosen you as a proxy. I don't know enough about the various witnesses, nor the platform (yet), to pick 30 witnesses based on anything other than "wow, cool name."

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Ok, cool. I am selective with my witness votes, so your vote is in good hands :)

If you ever want to learn more about the process and who to vote for yourself, here is a witness voting guide:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/witness-voting-guide

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cosmo.crator (48) · 8 years ago

Groovy! That's a lot of reading. Gonna space it out so I don't blow my mind or my computer. lol. Just found myself with like 10 more tabs open...my poor computer can't handle it.

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jesta (71) · 8 years ago

Which hopefully will be improved with HF19!

The whales won't be as impactful as they are now, hopefully freeing up some of those rewards.

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blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

A contract-based account that runs a script of delegating donated SteemPower to new users who post legitimate introductions (possibly induce greater rewards for tying to external accounts like Twitter or Facebook for the sake of viral marketing).

I would donate to that account.

Also-- the blocksize issue is an interesting one. Has anyone done the research to see when it would become TECHNICALLY prohibitive, versus financially prohibitive (which shouldn't be the case)? I would imagine the technical challenges would arise far sooner. But, I'm not a witness so I dunno nuffin :D

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joele (55) · 8 years ago (edited)

Members should inform of their Status like Limited access to those below 10 SP and where to buy links.

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liberosist (70) · 8 years ago

I believe @vandeberg hinted in GitHub that they have a more elegant solution lined up to this problem.

On a related note, we might start hitting block size limits purely because of content soon though. I remember as far back in September 2016, Curie's curation list would run into a block size limit. Well, I often see multiple posts made within seconds nowadays, and the growth is accelerating. We could have dozens of posts in a single block if Steemit were to go viral. We aren't quite there yet, but something to look out for.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

True. I've heard they are working on things too, although it might be quite a bit until whatever they are doing gets coded, tested, and forked.. We may need to come up with a short/medium term solution.

It is definitely something to keep in mind. As I mentioned in my post, it's one of the areas I'm not that knowledgeable on. What are your thoughts on increasing the block size? Do you think we'll need to do it?

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liberosist (70) · 8 years ago

Definitely sounds like a reasonable short term solution to me, as others have pointed out :)

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heymattsokol (68) · 8 years ago

Hmm... #3 sounds like a good solution for now - but what happens if Steemit is at 10x the current signups rate?

If we ever hit "the tipping point" and have tens of thousands of new users joining each week for a while - will the increased block size hold up? Or does the same problem repeat itself?

Thank you for sharing this issue, it's an important one. I would encourage a patronage model much like AnonSteem makes possible today. It's far from a perfect solution, but: I strongly disapprove of any plan that involves requiring new users to buy in for themselves, because it veers a bit too close into pyramid scheme vibes at that point.

Plus: If users have to pay for their friends to sign up, while it would slow down adoption, it would have a huge impact on the quality of userbase. Steemit isn't easy - quality users are important.

All just thinking out loud. Thanks for sharing - adding you to my witness vote list now.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

If we ever hit "the tipping point" and have tens of thousands of new users joining each week for a while - will the increased block size hold up? Or does the same problem repeat itself?

The system will have to scale up eventually. That means higher usage, bigger blocks and increased costs for people running nodes. The main question is when and how fast.

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heymattsokol (68) · 8 years ago

Fair point. It certainly won't be easy, but we'll find our way.

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smilexyz03 (44) · 8 years ago (edited)

@heymattsokol i agree with you because i remember when i joined last week , though i was enjoying the activities of posting and upvoting . then came the mesaage that my voting power is low. I beleive thats was when steem fell down in the currency chat, so i have to power up my SP. Now not because am compel to but because i knew the importance in the future. But for new users to be compel to always power up, itwont make a cut here ..they will not understand but just say is a pyramid stuff. So i dont support first powering up fee for fresh users.

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justinw (60) · 8 years ago

Hi Tim, we (Steemit Inc) have completed the task of re-delegating 10 SP to all accounts which were previously lowered to 5 SP. Everyone should now have 15 SP delegated to them (unless they've already exceeded this amount themselves). We don't want any new users to have a negative user experience on Steemit due to bandwidth limitations. Also, thank you for this important post and valuable feedback.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Thanks @justinw!

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lukestokes (75) · 8 years ago

Excellent job as always, Tim. Thanks for bringing this up for discussion. Does Steemit, Inc have an official stance on this other than the previously posted message about the cost of account creation? With the rise in Steem price, they should have a lot of USD value needed to run operations with less Steem required for sale on exchanges. Seems the witnesses could raise the creation fee rather quickly if we think onboarding needs to slow up a bit.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Steemit replied to the post with an official stance:
Hi Tim, we (Steemit Inc) have completed the task of re-delegating 10 SP to all accounts which were previously lowered to 5 SP. Everyone should now have 15 SP delegated to them (unless they've already exceeded this amount themselves). We don't want any new users to have a negative user experience on Steemit due to bandwidth limitations. Also, thank you for this important post and valuable feedback.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

They haven't made any official positions as far as I'm aware..

I don't think we want to slow onboarding though. The momentum that we have right now could be our big chance to take off. It wouldn't be good to stifle that over solvable technical limitations.

They have expressed concerns that the current system is not scaleable, especially if the fees continue to get more expensive. I believe they are looking into ways to improve the way signups are handled.

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ausbitbank (73) · 8 years ago

After reading this post and discussion, speaking with some other witnesses and getting dozens of PM's from new users about this overnight imho I think the plan should be :

Increase the block size immediately at least temporarily to 131,072
Steemit Inc should be delegating a little more (~10 sp extra)
Myself and other witnesses and whales should be generous in delegating ~10 SP to new users having this issue in the meantime to not give them a bad first impression.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

I think this is a good idea, but I don't think we should be hasty about it. A few days to talk it over among the witnesses and make sure what we are doing is good/correct would be good.
Talked to Steemit, and they are going to start using 10-15 on future delegations. They are also going to see what they can do about the accounts that were brought down to 5.
Agreed. In the short term, this should take care of it. I've topped-off everyone that has reported issues in steemit.chat #help. @neoxin offered to do the same above. I think if we all keep an eye out for users reporting issues, we should be able to catch/fix a lot of them.

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rycharde (63) · 8 years ago

Good ideas, but I'm still not clear as to why the delegated SP is such an issue. Once a newbie has generated their own SP greater than the delegated one, they are running on their own steem (punintended), and the delegated power can be withdrawn and allocated to other new users.

At that point, the newbie should be instructed that any powering down from that level will impact their ability to interact. That delegated SP is not later given back to them - they need to keep earning it. That strikes me as both fair and a reasonable game theory scenario.

What does everyone think of that?

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

It becomes an issue if/when the user takes back their delegation before the account has reached the point where they can run on their own steem.

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swolesome (60) · 8 years ago

Not as a long term solution. But how about doing a delegation lottery/draft. All the users over x SP are put in a drawing. Whoever has their name drawn they have the opportunity to delegate to a crop of users. Then another whale and another whale is selected until we get five whales who agree to compete. And each crop earns points for their whale via activity. Whatever whale retains the most of their users. And or has the highest activity wins. It creates bragging rights a way to help Kickstart an entire wave of new users as the noncrptyo enthusiasts join this site.
I would love some input.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

It's a cool idea, but it could still make the new user experience frustrating and confusing.

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swolesome (60) · 8 years ago

True. But it'd give whales an incentive to actively teach a group of new users.

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leongkhan (64) · 8 years ago

Potential Solutions #1 and #2 would probably damage our current growth momentum. If increasing the block size will not significantly impact the witnesses we should definitely do it. Even if there is some impact on witnesses, this block size expansion appears to be necessary for growth so those that wish Steem to grow should be voting for witnesses that are willing to increase the block size.

Sounds like a new initiative for witnesses to increase block size!

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stevescoins (68) · 8 years ago

The very first thought was to bump the setup fee...but that is going to be a barrier to entry

I'd go with option #1, knowing that I understand even less about option #3 than someone who doesn't even have an account here ;>

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jtstreetman (52) · 8 years ago

Good info ! thank you. I am not a coder or a developer so my point of view is not from the system mechanics point of view. Imho, If new users can't post or comment as often as they like, it negates their ability to express themselves and interact with the community, leaving them feeling left out of the community. Thus decreasing new user retention. Just my .02 SBD

Read More Reason More ... JTS

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cassidyandfranks (62) · 8 years ago

Your .02 SBD is currently worth double!! .04 cents :D

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bhavnapatel68 (58) · 8 years ago

Interesting post @timcliff

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akrid (62) · 8 years ago

Thanks for keeping us updated. I've noticed a lot of people come into chat with this same problem.

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nicnas (66) · 8 years ago

This is becoming a big issue. An friend of mine started with a delegation of 74 steem and was find until at 4 days it dropped to 4 steem. Now he is unable to do anything. We need to make sure that we are expandable as a community otherwise people are unlikely to want to join. Is there a way to make new user purchase steem to create a new account?

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rycharde (63) · 8 years ago

This is exactly what happened to me today! My Steem Power - the figure in brackets, like (72.5) - has since joining been about 72, this morning I noticed it was down to (4)! I had to increase my voting power back to 100% just to vote.

Is this part of the reset to linear power? If so, someone has to recalc the maths! I wasted ages checking if had been flagged then searched for an answer before posting.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

It is unrelated to the reset to linear power. Steemit was just reclaiming delegated SP that was not required to keep the account running. There was a mis-calculation though, and it turns out they needed to leave a bit more than they did. I topped you off to above 10, so you should be good now as far as bandwidth is concerned.

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rycharde (63) · 8 years ago

@timcliff very kind of you, thanks very much!

I had a look at my wallet and no sign of a transfer, so you have the authority to add to my delegated power but I cannot pay you back in the future, or it is auto done at some point. Seems like a lot of you are helping out us newbies before there is an official reset. Just curious as to what happens under the hood! hanks again!

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Technically any user can delegate SP to another user, but there isn't a way to do it through the UI. It also doesn't show up in your transfers on steemit.com, but if you go to https://steemd.com/@rycharde it will show you the full history of your account (including the delegation). No need to pay me back. Eventually (once you earn more SP on your own and no longer need it) I will just remove the delegation.

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rycharde (63) · 8 years ago

Ahhh. that's why it's called delegated! Thanks again

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nicnas (66) · 8 years ago

@vot had the same issue. Dropped from 74 to 4. I dont know why.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

There is a way to do that (through AnonSteem or SteemConnect) but I don't think we want to go down the path of having new users buy their way in to having an account. DM me your friend's account name on steemit.chat and I'll delegate him/her a few more SP when I get home tonight.

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nicnas (66) · 8 years ago (edited)

Your right about that though. Its not a good idea asking or expecting people to pay. But there has to be a better way of fixing this scaling issue. Because i think that is exactly what it is. I really think that maybe have a scale for waiting times for voting,comments etc on new accounts might be realistic. It would tame those accounts until they have more vests.

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cyberblock (65) · 8 years ago

Very interesting topic you have brought to light. I would have to agree with others that option 2 is my least favorite. I would like to chose option 3 and increase the bandwidth. I'm fairly certain that our developers will be able do this without major problems.

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daynewright (55) · 8 years ago (edited)

I am interested in understanding how increasing the max block size will increase bandwidth. So is your bandwidth determined by how many blocks you can have content in over a period of time? So by increasing it you could get more in per block, therefore increasing the amount you can add (posts, upvotes, etc) with the same SP?

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

The Max Block Size is part of the formula for bandwidth calculations. Doubling the number will double the amount of available bandwidth per SP. That's at least my understanding of it based on the conversations that I've had with people who understand it all better than I do :)

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5 votes

rycharde (63) · 8 years ago

What the precise formula for bandwidth calculations?
Also, what is the formula for the account creation cost, in both Steem and US$? Is the increased "cost" related to the increased price of Steem and/or the computational costs?
Thanks

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

What the precise formula for bandwidth calculations?

I've dug through the code to understand it before, and it is quite complicated. I don't 100% understand it even after reading it a few times. Maybe someone else with a better understanding can help.

Also, what is the formula for the account creation cost, in both Steem and US$? Is the increased "cost" related to the increased price of Steem and/or the computational costs?

The witnesses set an account creation fee. You can see what each witness is setting on https://steemd.com/witnesses (under Reg Fee). You can pay liquid STEEM or delegate SP. The cost is 30x the account creation fee. You can also delegate up to 29 of the 30, but each STEEM that is delegated costs 5x as much.

With the current account creation fee of .2:

Example 1: 30x.2 = 6 STEEM.
Example 2: .2 STEEM + 29 * .2 * 5 = 29 Delegated SP

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brendanwenzel (52) · 8 years ago

How long do you have to delegate that SP to the witness? Is there a good tutorial on the account creation process that you know of? I'm looking to onboard a lot (possibly 1000s) of my audience into a niche based steemit spinoff and trying to figure it all out for the plan.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

When you delegate SP, you can technically revoke it right away but I believe it takes 30 days before it is usable again. As far as the onboarding process through Steemit.com, there is info in the FAQ page. There is also the "Quick Start Guide", which is where they will land after their account is fully approved. (Links to both pages are in the main menu in the upper right.)

If you are looking to open the accounts yourself and either pay or delegate the SP, here is a tutorial/tool: https://steemit.com/news/@timcliff/new-tool-from-busy-org-create-new-steem-blockchain-accounts-with-steemconnect

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nicnas (66) · 8 years ago

that makes sense.

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bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

I've been considering raising my account_creation fee, and pressuiring Steemit, INC., to streamline account creation. Basically, it only hurts the growth of the platform for the flagship site require manual aproval of new accounts. The @steemit account should be used as a faucet, to provide new accounts with enough SP to interact with the community. You should be able to jump right in. But only they can decide to let the platform grow...

Accounts should be free. The onboarding process should be painless. We need help either way.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Well there are separate issues there. There is how much it costs, and there is preventing abuse. They have said that solving both of those are priorities, so I expect we will see some type of proposal relatively soon. I don't think making it cost more though is going to make the streamlining process go any faster though. Regardless of how much it costs, they will probably need to continue manually reviewing accounts until they are able to solve the problem of automated approval (with abuse prevention) programmatically.

Separate from the dev issues though, I do think that we should at least consider either raising the fee or raising the block size limit in order to deal with the bandwidth problem. I'm not 100% opposed to making bandwidth something you 'earn' (or buy) but we would have a lot of work to do as far as explaining and onboarding users into that experience if it is going to be how it is. The way it is right now, I think it is harming the user experience.

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r0nd0n (63) · 8 years ago

My introduction post goes over how the default "upvote upon posting" feature prohibited me from posting since last September. If initial SP is upped at sometime for future, then I guess the problem I had would be resolved, but unchecking the box by default could be an easier solution.
https://steemit.com/steem/@r0nd0n/belated-introduction-how-i-missed-9-months-of-steemit

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Thanks for the info. There are technically two separate limits in the blockchain. The error you were getting is from a different limit (unrelated to the parameter change discussed in this post). I asked you a question in your post.

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positivesteem (70) · 8 years ago

Thank you highlighting this problem. The new users should be able to enjoy a pleasant experience here. Are there any other solutions?

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

I pitched the main ones I could think of :)

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amberyooper (69) · 8 years ago

I still have a number of witness votes to use, I used one for you. I thought this post is important enough to resteem so that other minnows that I' connected to will see it. I don't understand much about the blockchain yet, but I pick up more information by reading posts like this one.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Cool, I appreciate it! When I posted it I knew it would be kind of a 'dry' topic for many people, but hopefully learning more about how all the blockchain works and seeing some of the decision making process that goes into it will be interesting for some people.

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zcgolf16 (54) · 8 years ago

To me, it feels like a no-brainer to double the block size. Double the bandwidth per SP with minimal added strain on witness nodes seems like a good deal. The only concern would be the blockchain, which is already ~30GB, growing in size much faster. However, as disk storage technology continues to improve, the price of storage will become cheaper and cancel out the growing blockchain size.

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https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/need-service-for-steemit-mass-account-creator-and-mass-upvote-bot.866615/

moataz (53) · 8 years ago

I come from a different world, very far away from the blockchain technology. I come from the world of Marketing and here are my two cents @timcliff.

I believe there's nothing wrong with limitations on new user accounts, as this is possibly a really good spam filter. A spam filter which will decrease the amount of junk and make this a better place for everyone.

Many people would love to exploit the system as long as it makes them money. I'm talking about automated account creation, automated upvoting bots, mass commenting bots, etc.

Below is one example of what I'm talking about:

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prakashghai (63) · 8 years ago

Sounds good.

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samupaha (66) · 8 years ago

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

We don't have transaction fees to control how many transactions are made, we have rate-limitations for that reason.

If somebody wants to use the platform more, they should either earn or buy more SP.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

We don't have transaction fees to control how many transactions are made, we have rate-limitations for that reason.

Well, the main user group that is impacted is new users. I don't know if that is a good thing.

If somebody wants to use the platform more, they should either earn or buy more SP.

It's a valid idea, and one of the options I presented - but I don't think it was the original design. One of the main goals is to onboard new users to the platform. Things that may make people run the other way should be considered carefully.

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samupaha (66) · 8 years ago

Of course new users should be given enough SP to use the platform without too much disturbance. And they could be offered a chance to buy SP when they create an account so they can be sure that no problems will come in the near future.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

That is true, but the various parameters are somewhat arbitrary. There's no inherent reason that 64k blocksize is the 'right' right tradeoff and that 128k would be the 'wrong' one.

There seems to be an expectation that new accounts should cost somewhere in the $5-$20 range and that that should be sufficient for reasonable usage. A natural consequence of that is that as the STEEM price rises, the blocksize (and overall network capacity) has to scale along with it (not necessarily in lock-step though).

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samupaha (66) · 8 years ago

Good points, but I started to wonder why nobody has been proactively thinking about this? So I wrote a blogpost: From reactive politics to proactive politics (in blockchain governance)

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cerebralace (58) · 8 years ago

Great observation @timcliff. I would be in favor of solution #3 - increasing the amount of bandwidth that users are allowed by increasing the "Max Block Size" parameter - if that is currently technologically possible. That way, even new users can perform the same operations on the blockchain as everyone else while keeping the account creation fee is low as possible.

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sneakgeekz (56) · 8 years ago

Thank you for this post and the information about witnesses. I never voted before this post but I used you link and voted. Thanks. Followed.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Cool, thanks :)

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hammadakhtar (56) · 8 years ago

I faced that problem and now I have posted about that on my profile @timcliff.
https://steemit.com/help/@hammadakhtar/need-urgent-help
I'll share the temporary solution for this problem tomorrow.

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