@blocktrades announced that the initial version of SPS is ready for public testing three days ago.

For those we don't know, SPS is a proposal system allows funding STEEM accounts based on the proposed projects. Stakeholders decide if the proposal should get funds or not. It is similar to witness voting, in that perspective.

After the discussions about where should the money come from, the first version uses a donation system to feed the proposals. This may change with a new hard fork (e.g using the inflation) if that model doesn't work.

Reviewing SPS

After the CTA about public testing, I have spent some time reviewing the changes. Even though, there is a public testnet available I wanted to have a private testnet for the SPS. This was the first time I have been running a private testnet, and it was a great learning experience. (literally bugged @inertia in every 5mins, about tinman :P)

I have already reported a bug and proposed a small design change. Both of the issues are addressed in a timely manner. Things are changing and progressing fast on the project these days.

Resources

• SPS API plugin wiki entry explains the new RPC endpoints.

• SPS Operations wiki entry explains the new operations defined in SPS context.

General Notes

• Payments are done daily with SBDs.
• There is a proposal creation fee to prevent spam proposals.
• A proposal includes these fields:

{
  "creator": string, 
  "receiver": string, 
  "start_date": date iso string, 
  "end_date": date iso string, 
  "daily_pay": asset, 
  "subject": string, 
  "permlink": string (permlink)
}

The fields are pretty obvious. permlink is unique together with authors in STEEM context, so it can be @creator/permlink or @receiver/permlink. The creator account has the priority in case of any conflict.

• A treasury account is allocated to hold the funds. (steem.dao at the moment.)

Using Lightsteem to broadcast SPS operations

Here is a small script to create a proposal in the public testnet.

---

from lightsteem.client import Client

from lightsteem.helpers.amount import Amount
from lightsteem.datastructures import Operation


USER = ('emrebeyler', '<posting_key>')
NODE = 'http://sps-blocktrades-testnet-api.blocktrades.info:8090'

# monkey patch Amount class
Amount.ASSETS.update({
    "TBD": {
        "nai": "@@000000013",
        "precision": 3
    }
})


def create_proposal():
    c = Client(
        nodes=[NODE,],
        keys=[USER[1]],
        chain=dict(
            chain_id="18dcf0a285365fc58b71f18b3d3fec954aa0c141c44e4e5cb4cf777b9eab274e",
            prefix="TST",
        ),
    )

    # Assuming the USER[0] has a Comment with relevant permlink
    op = Operation('create_proposal', {
        "creator": USER[0],
        "receiver": USER[0],
        "start_date": "1970-01-01T00:00:00",
        "end_date": "2019-06-01T00:00:00",
        "daily_pay": "10000.000 TBD",
        "subject": "testing stuff",
        "permlink": "hi-i-am-meeseeks-look-at-me"
    })
    c.broadcast(op)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    create_proposal()

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Since Lightsteem follows a generic approach to send requests to STEEM nodes, there is no update required. There are also steemjs and steem-python branches available to test related RPC endpoints or broadcasts SPS ops.

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Overall, I am excited about the Steem Proposal System. I will be following its development closely. It's good to see the project has good progress, so far.

Vote for my witness

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If you like what I do, consider casting a vote on Steemconnect or on Steemit