Replacing Bandwidth On The Steem Blockchain With Resource Credits - What Is This And Why Do You Need To Know About It
The blockchain is not free. Nothing is, by the way, but this fundamental truth is way more obvious in decentralized contexts, where participants must collaborate in an organized manner, that will allow them to use resources in a more or less meritocratic way (please note I didn't say "democratic", which is the dictatorship of majority, but "meritocratic").
This somehow precious introduction should - allegedly - spark your interest for a topic that is going to impact a lot your activity on the Steem blockchain, starting with HardFork 20.
Because, starting with HF20, the current "blockchain cost", known as bandwidth, will be replaced with a more refined model, dubbed "Resource Credits", or RC.
What follows is an attempt to translate (again) from Tech to English the most important parts of the new Resource Credits system.
What Are Resource Credits?
According to @steemitblog, which announced this new model about a month ago:
[Resource Credits are] non-transferable credits given to each account based on how much Steem Power it has, which get “spent” whenever a user transacts with the Steem blockchain.
Are Resource Credits Regenerable, Just Like Voting Power?
Yes.
Are Resource Credits Another Type Of Token On The Steem Blockchain?
Nope. RC are non-transferrable and you can only spend them when you interact with the blockchain: like posting, sending STEEM, powering up or down, voting, etc.
How Is The Price Of Resource Credits Established?
The blockchain is a complicated animal. It's made of humans (witnesses, devs), and machines (which have RAM, HDD storage, CPU cycles) which are talking to each other over a network (the Internet, sort of). Each type of resource in this mechanism will be a "resource budget pool". Meaning each type of resource will cost a certain amount of RC.
Can You Give An Example?
I will blatantly copy the example on @steetmiblog:
If CPU cycles cost 5 RC / megacycle, state memory costs 8 RC / byte, and history size costs 4 RC / byte, a transaction which takes 2 megacycles, creates 50 bytes of state, and has a 150 byte transaction size will cost 25 + 508 + 150*4 = 1010 RC.
(this was authored by one of the devs, @youkaicountry)
These Resource Credits Will Actually Go To Witness Nodes?
Nope, as far as I understand. They will be "burned" with each transaction, whereas the network supporters, like witness operators, will continue to be rewarded by current mechanisms (Steem Power).
No Steem Power, No Resource Credits?
Yup. You gotta have some stored juice to interact with the blockchain.
How Is This Better Than What We Have Now?
- it's more accurate (having multiple resource budget pools will allow for a much more granular evaluation of resources)
- it's more predictable (if RC prices for each resource will be public - and they must be - every user will know exactly how much they can interact with the blockchain at their current SP level)
- it's more flexible (each resource budget pool value can fluctuate over time, hence the price can be easier to adjust based on these variations)
When Will This Be Available?
- starting with HardFork 20, (which may land in a few months)
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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The difficult issue I'm seeing here is in how to cut down on spam and other "money for nothing" actors on here while not ending opportunity for new people from poor countries (or simply poor households) who really do want to contribute to the platform.
You can say "create good content" but you know, I think I create great content consistently, but I'm not kidding myself that my buying STEEM hasn't been the greater part of my modest success on here.
Before I was able to buy STEEM, or sufficiently convinced this was a good investment to decide to, I would not have been able to grow my base of support. I grew by commenting and upvoting. If I had been restricted too severely in how much of each I could do, I would not have been able to interact enough to gain traction here.
I get how there is a desire to make sure that those who use the resources of the blockchain be invested in the blockchain, but I think there has to be a better way of establishing that than simply how much money someone has been able to put into the platform.
And again, even though you can supposedly accumulate this SP by creating content, not buying it, with this new plan you will likely run out of RC before you even have been able to create enough content to get a leg up.
How is the platform to differentiate between spam content creation and genuine content creation by poor people? This is the core solution needed, not steps that penalize people for being new and relatively poor.
I like the idea behind RCs. I'm wondering, though, if those with high SP who have nearly all of their SP in delegation will be affected by this, or if it will act similarly to how voting for witnesses work, with no ill effect whatsoever.
I have my own opinions about delegation, but if this causes those who are basically operating at 50 SP or less because the rest is delegated to have problems interacting with the blockchain, if they're inclined (and many don't), then I wonder if that will have any impact on delegation and activity on the blockchain in general.
In addition, in reading through the couple of posts talking about RCs when they came out, I don't remember how this will affect new accounts. Lately they've been receiving less SP and more delegation to start. With RCs, will they have sufficient SP to start with to get going?
What does "get a glimpse" mean though? Literally just seeing it working, like looking in a window from outside without really being able to participate? Or be able to post, comment, upvote, etc. but only about the same amount new accounts can now?
This is a vitally important point, because if you both restrict the ability of new people to participate unless they are able to buy STEEM, and simultaneously make it really obvious that different people get to participate different amounts based solely on how much money they have (SP that is not delegated to them), it could really stifle growth for the platform.
they've been saying 'a few months' for a 'few months'
I had that same thought when I read that.
I am not surprised by these changes. it is increasingly difficult to grow here.
Any improvement bringing transparency to the blockchain seems a good policy. It will probably take a little while to get to understand how it works but after the initial period everyone will get a clear picture of the rules.
HardFork 20 is so much being talked about and more is currently being expected of it.
I hope it delivers the promise. Overall it looks promising:)
Transactions use up RC?
That might be a problem for a lot of exchanges like poloniex and openledger that have very little SP and RC but have to make thousands of transactions on a daily basis.
I see a huge opportunity for decentralized exchanges here...
Still doesn't seem that clear to me. I get the general concept but seems a bit unnecessary??
It' already working to various levels in all blockchains. Gas price in Ethereum, transaction size in Bitcoin, etc. Steem already had a model - the "bandwidth" thing - but it wasn't very transparent or efficient.
I'll keep my eye on it. Hopefully it makes more sense as things progress. Just something new to learn. Thanks.
So if that example costs around 1,000 resources credits, how many do you get every day? And how fast will they recharge?
What's the "price"? I thought you couldn't buy them.
You don't buy them, you simply get them based on how much SP you have. The regeneration may be related to each resource budget pool, but I'm not sure yet. The moment I learn these bits, I'll post another article
Sweet! Thanks for keeping us informed. There's all so much to learn with the new system. :)
I am pretty new and I ran into this a few days ago and knew nothing about it, Your article helped me understand what was going on. Thanks a lot.