We Are Gonna Build "Something", And The Witnesses Should Pay For It.

in #witness-category5 years ago (edited)

EDIT:
After talking to other people, I have found that the reward per block of the top 19 witnesses is lower than the backup witnesses. I do not follow very closely the top 19 as I like to work with the smaller ones, so my information was not up to date. Top 20 witnesses actually make from $2500 to $2800 a month. I won't delete this post, but consider this while reading. New information is always welcome, different opinions are also always welcome.

Introduction

@blocktrades is trying to build a new system for Steem proposals. The goal of this system is to incentivize financially people to contribute with the blockchain in regards to coding and features.

Well, so far so good. For the development of the project Steemit will pay $55k dollars for each month of development, and block trades said it should take 1 or 2 months to finish. Ok, sounds weird, sounds too much, but it is private money (that was ninja mined but ok), so I don't care.

Where funds come from

But what I care is, where will the funds for the new projects, inside the new platform block trades is building, come from?

There are three possibilities they are thinking of right now:

  1. The money will come from voting power and donations only.
  2. New inflation will be created for funding those proposals.
  3. Reduce the reward pool for post and comments from 51% to 41% (20% decrease).

But wait, why are they not considering reducing the rewards of the top 19 witnesses? More importantly, why are the top 19 not stepping in to say "wait, we should fund it, we are responsible for maintaining the blockchain".

The top 19 make a graphical load of money

To understand why I am mad at the top 19, I will break down, first, how much money they make, and then how much it costs to run a server. And I know how much it cost to run a server, I run a witness node myself.

The witness reward works like this:
There is 1 round per minute with 20 blocks on each round, each block takes 3 seconds, so, 3 seconds per round. The first 19 blocks of the minute go to each of the top 19 witnesses, so they are guaranteed to receive a block every minute. The 20th block of the minute goes to one of the remaining witnesses, the higher the rank, the higher the chances to get that block, but not guaranteed, not even for the one at position 20, though, for his high position and priority, he probably gets dozens of blocks daily.

Ok, each block has a Steem reward of around 1SP (Steem Power) and the top 19 receive 1 block per minute, that is 1 Steem per minute. That is 60 Steem per hour. That is 1440 Steem per day. PER DAY!!! At a price of $0.25 (it is higher at the moment) is means 360 dollars a day. That is $2520 dollars a week. 2.5K A WEEK!!!

Server costs

Now, let us see how much a server cost, should be very expensive, right? For them to not be able to use a fraction of the over 10k a month to pay for... Wait...

Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.18.22.png

$30 bucks for a 60GB server with 10 cores and 1Gbps port? Sign me in! In fact, that is the server where I run my witness node at.

I pay $30 bucks a month for a server to run the blockchain, and I have ZERO MISSED BLOCKS
Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.20.07.png

In fact, I am one of the few witnesses that have a zero miss rate. None of the top 19 has less than a couple dozen blocks missed:
Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.20.46.png

Ok, but that is a VPS, the top 19 need more than that... Right?...

Well, that VPS works flawlessly for me, and I have never missed a single block, soooo...

But yeah, the top 19 receive many more blocks than me, let us see how much multiple bare metal servers would cost.

For this, I will show prices of how much it will cost to get all of these:

  • 2 servers in America
  • 2 servers in Europe
  • 2 servers in Asia

Total, 6 servers, 2 super powerful bare metal in Europe, 2 powerful bare metal as a backup in America, and 2 the bare minimum to run a server as a backup for the backup in Asia.

The first, in Europe:
Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.24.55.png

The specs:

  • 256 GB REG ECC RAM
  • Dual processor Intel Xeon E5 2630v4

But that is too cheap, we can personalize and add:

  • A second E5 2630v4 processor (now it is dual processor)
  • Two Intel 900P 480GB NVMe SSD
  • A dedicated 500Mbps unmetered traffic port

The specs:

  • 256 GB REG ECC RAM
  • Dual processor Intel Xeon E5 2630v4
  • Two Intel 900P 480GB NVMe SSD
  • 500Mbps unmetered dedicated internet

With those upgrades the server costs:
Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.27.15.png

Let us make that 400 euros
Two of those? 800 euros a month for two (two main ones, the first is the main, the second the backup of the main)

Now, for the one in America:

Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.28.39.png

The specs:

  • Dual Xeon E5-2670v2
  • 128GB DDR3
  • 2x 2TB SSD
  • 1Gbps unmetered dedicated port

Price: $370 dollars, let us make it 400? yes. Let us pretend the price is in euros? yes.
800 euros a month for two (those are the backups of the main ones, one of these are the backup of the main one and the other the backup of the backup of the main one)

But we won't stop there, what if the north hemisphere somehow stops working, we need backup servers for the backup servers of the main servers. Two of them actually.

And here we go:
Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.38.20.png

Specs:

  • Intel Xeon E3-1245v5
  • 64GB DDR4 of RAM at 2133MHz
  • Two 480GB NVMe SSDs
  • Dedicated unmetered 250Mbps internet port

Total: $241 bucks. But let us say it costs 300, and let us say it is euros
For two of those, 600 euros a month

Witness weekly gains and monthly costs

So, in total, for 6 servers, we pay monthly 800+800+600 euros (wink wink). That is 2200 euros a month, or:
Captura de Tela 2019-02-13 às 14.41.34.png
nearly 2.5k dollars a month

But wait, don't the top 19 witnesses make 2.5k dollars a week?

Yes

EACH TOP 19 WITNESS MAKE IN A WEEK ENOUGH TO PAY FOR 6 SERVERS

The budget

So, the witnesses have 7.5k left at the end of the month (2.5k times 3 weeks left)

Do you know how much is that? 7.5k (dollars) times 19 (witnesses) is over 140k dollars a month IN PROFITS for the witnesses, after paying for an unnecessary amount of 6 servers each!!!

And how much did block trades charge for the development of the new platform, that is a project so complex it has to probably tackle the rewards pool? 110k FOR TWO MONTHS OF DEVELOPMENT!

And witnesses are not stepping in to say "way, we can pay for it"!!!!!!! (for the projects inside the new platform, let steemit pay for the platform if they wish so)

This is unacceptable! Witnesses are paid exactly to guarantee the quality of the blockchain they are the "owners". It does not matter how much we discuss or what we want, in the end, the top 19 decide which way the blockchain goes, and they can't sacrifice a little bit for a better Steem!

Bro, I don't know about you, but if the response people for this blockchain make over 140k in profit a month (all together)and they don't want to sacrifice half of that (they would still each make over 3k a month in profit) to improve the blockchain, we have ULTIMATELY FAILED.

I really want to hear what the top 19 have to say about it. What are they spending their money on? What are they doing for the blockchain? What are their thoughts on the proposal system? Are they willing to reduce their profits for a better Steem?

Remember, I have, in my calculations, I have done
To round down the profits to make them look smaller:

  • Considered the Steem at 25 cents, instead of 29
  • Rounded the weekly profit down by 20 dollars

To round the expenses up, to make them look bigger:

  • Changed the value of dollars to euros, so 1 dollar I considered as 1 euro
  • Rounded up the expenses of the servers
  • Consider two of each server category

And still, in one week they make enough money to pay for the monthly bill of 6 top notch bare metal servers and still have left enough to pay for my VPS server... Something smells really bad...

What is a backup witness

I am a small witness here on the Steem blockchain. It is usual to call witnesses that are not on the top 20 as "backup witnesses" because their power of decision and influence is very low, so we are like a "backup" in case the main top 20 stop working.

Zero block miss rate

I do my job as a "backup witness" very well actually. I have never missed a block. Steam chooses one witnesses to produce a block every 3 seconds if the witness did not produce the required block within 3 seconds, the opportunity goes to another witness.

I am proud of the score of having zero blocks missed, that means my node is doing a great job. THERE IS NO WITNESS ON THE TOP 20 WITH ZERO BLOCKS MISSED, so, when the top 20 misses blocks, my server is here to help! Never missed one and I don't plan to do so any time soon!

You don't want new users having slow transactions, vote @igormuba for a faster blockchain!

I AM A STEEM WITNESS

To vote for me, simply use the SteemConnect link below
https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=igormuba&approve=1

or go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses

(note, it is /~witnesses, not /witness)
Scroll all the way down to "If you would like to vote for a witness outside of the top 100, enter the account name below to cast a vote."

type igormuba and click vote

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I think a lot of people, especially Bernie Sanders, have said that the witnesses get paid a huge amount for the services they're actually providing, and they should be held way more accountable than they are.

I think Witness Vote Decay would go a long way to helping this... but there's also the Freedom and Blocktrades votes... they can pretty much decide who is in the Top 19 by themselves... which is great in times of emergency, but bad when the majority don't agree with their votes. Conversely, you don't want to make it a popularity contest either.

I'd really like to make a Witness Portal that lists who the witnesses are, where they stand on particular issues and what they contribute. I'd say the normal user has no idea who the witnesses are... really.

Not many people seem to love the Blocktrades suggestions... and I agree, I haven't seen anyone suggest the witnesses help pay... because, obviously, the people with the most clout wouldn't want to do that.

Witness vote decay should be the top #1 priority in my opinion. I wish I could help more, but I am not a confident enough developer to make that change on the blockchain myself, and differently from the top 19 witnesses, I don't have a 10k monthly budget to hire developers, which is a bummer because good developers here in Brazil are not expensive, really, I have a friend that graduated as the best in the class, worked in many AI projects, and the salary is less than 2k dollars a month here (sad for them, luck for the employer).

But the witness portal is a great idea. Imagine a portal that shows everything the witnesses are working on, every Steem they withdrawal, where is that going to, etc... I think I am confident enough to develop something like that, I will add that to my to do list and try to get something similar next month if I do have the time.

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