Have we lost our way?
Rob Halford, our esteemed Gridcoin founder has posted a proposal under the banner heading of "Gridcoin Future Technology Base" on the cryptocurrencytalk forum:
https://cryptocurrencytalk.com/topic/90700-gridcoin-future-technology-base/
After reading his proposal, I find myself some what shocked by way he has put forward the proposal and his altogether undemocratic voting procedures on the cryptocurrencytalk forum, I felt compelled to post here on steemit.
I see he has now created a poll on the Gridcoin client which is extremely biased towards the large GRC stakeholders.
I, above all else, am a pragmatist and realise that we have a inherent need for the independent Non CPID Investor in Gridcoin (Never BOINCed) as well as the CPID Investors (Did BOINC and maybe was a founder user).
Yes I get 'pissed' that most of these Non CPID Investors and some CPID Investors do not run their wallets to secure the network as often as they should.
Yes I am a small Researcher CPID Investor (I BOINC and hodl and run my wallet 24/7 365) who has given many hours of time to the betterment of the Gridcoin Community in my own way using any relevant talents I have.
I've given this time willingly, without prejudice, as I have always believed that the primary ethos of Gridcoin was driven by its connection to BOINC - Crunching for science/humanity and being rewarded for my efforts by Gridcoin to defray my expenses and/or save my GRC in the hope that some day it might 'bear fruit' as an investment.
This is my post on steemit on the 'first month anniversary of joining Gridcoin' - https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@m3rcos1ty/the-old-man-and-the-gridcoin-apologies-to-ernest-hemmingway
To me this post still applies and my ideals are still the same!!
"Gridcoin is an open source cryptocurrency (Ticker: GRC) which securely rewards volunteer computing performed upon the BOINC platform in a decentralized manner on top of proof of stake.
BOINC is an open-source volunteer computing grid which combines the processing power of all individual users for the purposes of scientific research."
(Quotation taken directly from the Gridcoin website)
These words in bold and italicised are the reason that I joined Gridcoin and the community.
How close are we to these 'ideals' at this juncture?
Have we lost our way?
Courtesy of @joshoeah
I'm glad there seems to be further development but I thought the announcement and voting could have been handled much better.
I had the impression that this was like a CEO handing out a notice after a big reorganization in a company, instead of being an open source project with referenda. He then proceeds to start a poll, submitting a weighty vote on his preferred modus operandi. Probably knowing full well numerous people on the pool or people doing solo but never staked a block (like me) cannot vote on the subject.
Yup, unfortunately even if you voted on the poll unless you have a huge wallet our voices are silenced ..
That's how voting works though if you have to account for stake in the election. One of the reason why so many countries try to get money out of politics right now.
Back to Gridcoin though: One of the reasons you have never staked a block is that the codebase isn't really ready to go 'supersonic' as is -he is trying to address the many issues right now with the rebase as supposed to do it very small. If you really think that Rob could not have made himself rich many times in the past on the back of the community but has refused to do so time and time again then I think you see different things then I do.
Why would you say we lost our way? you cant expect grc to rise or be worth literally anything whitout a profit seeking factor. gridcoin is already profitable in plenty on hardware in specific projects (a 1080 would give you many money on enigma, a xeon phi will have crazy magnitude on srbase or tngrid ...)
The real point of Gridcoin, as far as I'm concerned, is to remunerate users to defray their electricity and equipment costs for BOINCing and donating their computations to science and humanity ..
True. If I remember correctly someone said that the goal for Gridcoin in the future is 1% CPU processing for the wallet and 99% of CPU for BOINC. So how is that not in line with that goal?
For me personally I always believed that another part of this is to beat out other currencies that waste energy on just being that coin -so that more people will eventually move to BOINC.
We won't beat out Bitcoin the OG cryptocurrency but maybe all the other altcoins that waste so much resources and contribute to climate change.
I do share your feelings.I have joined just 3 months ago, run gridcoinresearchd and boinc 24/7, staking GRC I bought on an exchange.
I found many community members to be very open to discussion and even though I find several other coins and tokens more interesting from pure investment point of view, Gridcoin was something that attracted me as a project, was something I wanted to support and work for.
The post by Rob Halford felt very authoritarian, voting in his poll shows that a handful of people have total control on the network and development. Indeeed, he is an informal CEO of the project. All who done serious work on Roadmap 2018, researching pros and cons of staying with bitcoin base or moving to graphene etc must feel quite shattered.
To be honest we aren't shattered just a bit disheartened that the 'Founder' of Gridcoin should suddenly post an extreme rebase in such a way ..
I think this is just Rob's style which hasn't changed from the beginning (not the authoritarian aspect, just the forum post describing proposed changes). In the old days, all we had was the cryptocurrencytalk forum, there were no other platforms for gridcoin discussion. It was also not a terrible way to do things either since all discussion was centralized there.
The best thing to do would be to make a forum post there and state advantages of some of the alternatives (graphene code base etc.). I think he would be willing to listen if a significant portion of the community is in support of these ideas. I don't speak for him however.
@donkeykong9000, I've been around a while and also read way back on Rob's post in 'the olden days' in cryptocurrencytalk and his posts are pretty much the same format when he wants something ..
I do wish he would see that we, as a community, are now on more communication areas than before.