Do we actually need a worker proposal system? Let's get some real examples of work proposals first.
Yesterday @blocktrades came out with a post informing us about the development of a Steem proposal system that has already been approved and will be paid for by Steemit Inc.
A proposal system is in a nutshell:
A system where anyone can propose to do work for X amount of Steem. Anyone with Steempower can then vote according to stake on these proposals and the most voted for (by stake) will be funded and build.
Example of proposals taken from this post from @blocktrades
A) Blockchain Curation Worker: wants 300 SBD per day for 14 days to improve the curation code
B) Marketing worker: wants 100 SBD per day for a year to run ads for Steem on a cryptocurrency site
C) Refund worker: represents stakeholders who don’t want to spend funds on any proposal with less stake weight than the refund worker. It wants 100,000,000 SBD that will “refund” the SBD back to the funding account (effectively, any funds this worker receives don’t get spent but are instead held in reserve in the funding account for possible use in the future).
Steemit Inc. will pay the cost to develop the system but not to fund the actual proposals (they might donate some STEEM).
Where the real money/STEEM is going to come from is now up for debate.
Some say it should come from donations and others say it should come from the reward pool (wether it is from author rewards, witness rewards or curation rewards).
If it comes from the reward pool this proposal will also require a hard fork. And as you know a hard fork requires consensus from the top 20 witnesses.
The first real simple question:
Do we even need this system?
I know it's already being talked about like it's going to happen but so far I have not read any good argument why this system would be beneficial to Steem.
This is the main argument for this system:
To speed up and to decentralize the development of the Steem blockchain
mmm....
Decentralisation is already happening. RocksDB is being rolled out pretty smoothly and when it's done I'm expecting full nodes left right and centre. So that argument doesn't fly.
Speed up development? The last I checked we have an insane amount of development going on on the blockchain already without a worker proposal system.
Did a worker proposal system make d.tube? Actifit? Steem Monsters? Steem Engine? Partiko? Steem Hunt? Steemify?
Did a worker proposal system make onboarding ramps with FIAT like steem.ninja and Steem Wallet?
No it did not. Entrepreneurs did it. Risk takers did it. People that get shit done did it.
Not people that want to secure funds first before they move an inch.
But let's say I'm wrong:
We can easily verify wether the proposals from the proposal system will be so amazing that we absolutely need this sytem.
How?
Before building anything we can ask the community before hand to propose work. Let's get some real examples.
If the examples or awesome, cool! That's a good pro argument for the system.
If they are so so....mmm...maybe not go through with it.
Is there already consensus from the witnesses?
A hardfork requires consensus from the top 20. This can't be guaranteed beforehand.
The most talk about hard fork will take a cut from he inflation of author rewards and put it to the Steem proposal system.
I understand that. 50% of the inflation of STEEM goes to authors but I also would like to see Witnesses take a small hit just to make sure they are not too biased towards the idea. It's simply too easy going along with things that don't hurt you. A 0.5-1%% cut doesn't seem unreasonable.
But if there is no consensus for the hard fork where is the money going to come from then?
Donations.
Yeah right. It will never happen and it's not reliable enough anway.
Me? I love to donate to developers that have projects I actually want to use. Like Steem Monsters. I donated by buying card packs. Or Partiko, I delegated some Steempower because I love the app and if they ever come out with a paid version I'd buy it too.
When the system is in place who gets to decide which proposals are going to be build?
Let's be honest here. We have several huge accounts on the blockchain that can easily decide which proposals get through and which won't simply by the stake that they have.
Even if there is enormous support for a project by the community resulting in thousands of votes. One single vote of these guys can stop it dead in its track.
And also the other way around.
The stake is currently simply not spread out enough.
That's it.
My first reaction when I heard about the worker proposal was enthusiasm.
Then I started to think about it deeper and I can't see the extra value it will have for Steem for the above reasons.
I would also love to see some examples (proposals) of what to expect before we hard fork anything.
Maybe I'm completely wrong and I'm happily proven wrong too.
I just don't see it right now. Maybe I'm missing something.
Please proof me wrong.
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I was exactly there.
When I first read about the SPS I thought „awesome, that’s the right thing to do“ but then immediately focused on the question of how to bring in the needed funds rather than questioning its necessity as a whole.
You are raising valid points. I’m not so sure anymore about the merits of funding proposals upfront to their implementation. It may even prevent devs from first probing the market for actual demand and could thus lead to the preservation of otherwise non-viable initiatives.
Still, maybe there is a category of projects or rather jobs, like code maintenance, debugging, incremental improvements etc. for which a salary would help to speed things up to all our benefit. I need to think more about this. Thanks for triggering that!
Thanks for the cool comment. For now I personally wait and see where the funds are going to come from. If it's donations it's fine of course, if it requires a HF it has more to it.
Thank you! I feel like so far the opinions lean to 'we like it!', so I need this post to see the other side as well. Did you weigh in on the discussions on the latest @blocktrades post already? I believe within only a few hours they will put up a vote for the community, might be important to show some of your perspective as well before that happens. Cheers!
Nobody is asking there wether we need this. Just where the money is going to come from. Donations or reward pool.
The deal itself is between @blocktrades and Steemit inc. They can build whatever they want and they should have this freedom.
If the funding for this WPS comes from donations it's fine with me. Then it's just another project on the blockchain.
If it requires a hard fork then it's a whole other matter.
Yes, the discussion is only about where the money comes from, but if people see your side of it (I mean your doubts if this whole system is needed) they might be less inclined to take a permanent cut of the reward pool.
I'd personally also love to see what proposals people might send in and what arguments they have for needing a fund for their specific proposal.
I think the reason we get so many "we like it" is because steemit doesn't have a secret ballot polling system. This makes getting genuine opinions extremely hard.
Also the polls can easily be gamed by voting bots. I don't take steem polls seriously at all.
After reading your post one steemian came to mind quick
Jerrybanfield.
He was pushing for proposals in dash and came over to steem and try to do the same thing for promotion.
I am happy and a little bit shock that you lay your point across.
You touched all bases for steemians and witnesses.
WP sounds good but it will sound better with donations or just straight delegations.
Self interest is the elephant in the room and we may not see it coming over to damage everything.
Keep on postin
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It sounds like Steemitinc might be pushing this because it gives them some more transparency about how they delegate their funds. I could be totally wrong though. It's possible they only want to give to projects that get the majority of approval from the community though. That could be seen as an olive branch vs. the past where things were a lot more arbitrary. Who knows though. Great post with some good questions and some great explanation.
I want to delegate X sp to @user
Where X is the amount of SP and @user is the steem user you want to delegate to. For example:
I want to delegate 100 sp to @exyle
@tipU will answer with a delegation link. Hope this helps!:)
In my opinion, developers will always take advantage of any money given to them 🤷🏼♂️
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lol, not only developers :)
Worth asking the question :)
Would one example be steemchiller's steemworld? It's clear that a lot of people use the site daily, and at present he is supported by author rewards (and recently a donations button but I've not checked to see how utilized that is). If he could secure a daily/weekly payment for his development work, he wouldn't need to produce a weekly update (more in the pool), and could relax a little knowing that he was covered for x amount of time. There are likely existing projects and ones gone by that use/d the Author share to fund development, the WP in effect replacing this somewhat.
I am for the idea, and do see the majority/all coming from the Author share, but I do think a fraction from the Witness share to show willing is worth exploring too.
What would be the end goal of Steemworld? Endless funding from the WPS for development or should it become a sustainable business at some point that can run by itself?
What would the proposal be? What would it look like? And at some point the project is finished and then what? What happens when the funding stops? Also if he is secured of funds for X amount of time will he work harder or slower to make it a sustainable business.
What do you think?
Maybe only receive funding when there is work to be done - like the addition of claiming/creating accounts after the latest fork?
I think this could be answered by BT, or someone with knowledge of the BitShare's network where WPs have been in place for a while.
I guess, no more new features until there is a good enough proposal/set of features to add that are voted in to receive funding.
Businesses hate paying for 'keeping the lights on', yet these tasks are critical in places :) I would suggest for a website, that isn't critical to the chain (but is a solid nice to have), that this wouldn't be a valid 'paid for x amount of time' deal, and more a 'this is what I want to add' sort of thing.
Maybe steemcleaners is a better example of constant funding for a no end in sight project? They take a good deal of Author rewards to fund, which to some might look better coming from a WP pool. e.g. Is the 1.5 million delegation that amount to ensure they have enough to combat abuse, or enough to ensure they can pay themselves enough, or both? With WP, there could be a line drawn - SP for abuse, WP funding for work?
Tough questions man, I'm feeling the heat :)
I don't get it.
First you say:
And then you say:
To me, he seems to be doing all the work that needs to be done now without a worker proposal funding and even better he secured his own funding by finding users that want to support him.
Even better would be a revenue model outside of the reward pool which should be the aim of most apps imho.
Wether Steem cleaners take money directly from the author rewards or we first cut the author pool altogether and then put it into a WPS pool and then give it to them.
I don't see the difference.
Maybe my thinking changed as I was working through my example :)
I think WP work is paid hourly, with a known lump sum split across this time and so there would be a fixed end point to the received funds. If this is true (would need to listen to BT recording again) then it would be a case of offering up the list of features (work to be done) prior to receiving funding.
Yes I agree, but love doesn't buy food
This is the goal for sure. So should WP's be seen as 'kickstarter' funds?
Right now they have one pot, the delegation. Some is used to curb abuse, some is used to self-vote - they decide. What if there was no abuse for a week, would you be happy with all the SP going to 'salary'?
With WP, the salary is separated from the SP allocated for abuse. This sounds more transparent and fair to me.
Just thinking out loud, I don't have the answers :)
users are fleeing as they should , tyranny of the whales is just out of control . I guess you'll realize what is the problem once you stay alone here .....
I don't like the idea; but then I have zero experience in software development.
In a way this whole thing is a good demonstration of the DPOS concept. I don't know what's the best way forward, and I don't have to; I just have to vote for witnesses I trust to make that call on my behalf. #WWYD (what would Yaba do?)
Prople constantly ask steemit, inc what can they do to help. Well this will provide everyone with some work
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I'm with you, I am not sold on the idea one little bit
Maybe if you were presented with a chart?
Notice the relative pause while WPs are developed and then a surge on release!
Hahaha! Oh that's smashing!
Arguably more insightful than the comments to exyle in another thread :D
Lol, I was just reading them. I was typing out a lengthy reply to join in and just managed to get a hold of myself and give myself a shake and deleted it. Phew!
haha! Brilliant.
Mark has his typing boots on today, clearly influenced by my nonsensical replies.
I'd like to think we are just 'fleshing things out', and that he doesn't wan't to ditch the Gentle Giant costume for a more assertive looking, 'You are talking shit and I'm going to curb-stomp you' attire.
🙏
Haha, I think your safe. For now... ;0)
It sounds like Ned already paid for it. As far as the funding goes I think a donation from Steemit Inc. + declined payments would be enough. I personally am very skeptical due to voting (some people have huge single accounts and some have thousands of accounts) and have very low expectations that this will add "much value" to the system.