Increasing block size, thoughts on SBD/STEEM, farewell Steemit.chat
Increasing block size
I've been keeping a close eye on the average block size. It has been consistently over the 25% mark for the last week, and shows no signs of relenting. Plenty of new users have run into low bandwidth issues, which is an absolutely unacceptable user experience. I'm glad to see @steem delegating to alleviate some of these issues. On one hand, this has been pretty effective in maintaining bandwidth, but on the other, I do believe this has created a pervasive bottleneck for growth on the Steem network. I am now publishing a 50% higher block size, at 98,304 bytes or 96 kilobytes. I fully expect the 98,304 byte block size to hit 25% saturation in short order, as the Steem network is well on the path of exponential growth.
Regarding scalability issues. I've verified that a 500 GB NVMe or a 500 GB SATA RAID0 based-server is affordable for most witnesses above the rank of #100, and currently this uses less than 30 GB shared-memory + 60 GB block_log. You could store the block_log on a slower SSD or even HDD, leaving plenty of room for growth on the NVMe partition to host shared-memory. Currently, this server uses less than 5% disk I/O, so this is not a bottleneck. Furthermore, I expect AppBase to bring plenty of further scalability improvements. In a nutshell, I don't believe scalability to be an issue at all for any witness above the rank of #100 (and this is a very conservative estimate). Witnesses ranked #50 and above can also store shared-memory in RAM (256 GB servers) for the foreseeable future.
TL;DR - The block size must be increased to sustain the Steem network's exponential growth. Witnesses are paid enough for this not to be a sustainability issue.
Spectre/Meltdown patches cripple performance on Intel systems?
I've discovered that the Spectre/Meltdown patches have a significant impact on disk I/O performance with Steemd on Intel chips using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I will consider this anecdotal, however, and request fellow witnesses/developers to report their findings. I'm unable to confirm if AMD Ryzen or EPYC servers suffer a similar hit (as the new servers seem patched already), but in most likelihood they do not. This is because AMD has a near-zero risk to Variant 2 and Variant 3. I shall transition to a Ryzen or EPYC based server this week.
SBD / STEEM
The STEEM pump in early January has been an interesting simulation for how a positive bias would affect SBD. Please note that we only have a month's worth of data, so this is hardly enough evidence to draw conclusions. However, there's a clear trend emerging. There are of course several other factors at play, but there have been two main results - a) Authors enjoy far higher payouts, b) SBD is on a sustained downward trajectory closer to its intended USD 1.0 value. There was one irrational pump for SBD mid-January, and a significant sell-off earlier this week, but even correcting for these anomalies, leaves a clear trend forming. Thankfully, the conversions have been disabled in UI through this turbulent period.
To this effect, I continue publishing a bias. Since the higher STEEM price has effectively had the same impact as a positive bias in stabilizing SBD, I have now reduced the bias to 200%. I fully expect SBD to continue its downward trend, barring any other errant pumps. (Which, of course, could happen at any time.)
However, given the rapid pace at which SBDs continue to tumble, I'm concerned about sustaining that USD 1 target, in the event of an exponential rise in STEEM price. I plan to publish negative biases in case SBD dips significantly below USD 1, and set a few BTCs worth of SBD buy orders at the exchanges. Things can change very fast in the crypto market, so witnesses should be well prepared for this eventuality.
Leaving Steemit.chat
I'll no longer be on Steemit.chat. I have requested the (existing) admins to delete my account. I have no idea who the new owners are, and a preliminary investigation doesn't inspire much confidence. This is a personal choice, of course, and I elect to err on the side of caution. If the new owners of Steemit.chat prove to be trustworthy stewards of the services, I'll be back later in the year. Till then, you can find me on Discord @liberosist#0001. I'm a member of the Curie and steemSTEM channels. If there's a channel for witnesses on Discord, I'd appreciate an invite if possible.
I have been reading a bit on the low bandwidth issue for some new users. Glad there are folks out there trying to mitigate it. Your post was written three days ago...it was interesting to see a reverse of the trend you mentioned here today. SBD pumped over five dollars and went ahead of Steem once again. Is this because of manipulation by witnesses/whales or is it due to broad movement of money across the platform toward SBD? Just curious. It has been nice to see the larger payouts we have been seeing recently.
It's just regular crypto pump-and-dump. It's normal. You have to look at the longer term trend to get a better view of things. Like I mentioned in my post, errant pumps like this can happen at any time.
I have now run into a few 'older' users with bandwidth issues who haven't powered up much and are leasing nearly all of their SP to services like @minnowbooster. Others have created accounts themselves but have not delegated enough or, have removed the delegation before the account was able to grow sufficiently.
I just looked at the minnowbooster delegation prices, they are insane. Why don't they just buy a few Steem off the exchanges and power up?
The million dollar ( few steem) question. They are giving away their future.
My 2 cents on the bandwidth issue as a new user (on steemit for two weeks now, and loving it). I kind of think a little bit of bandwidth restriction is a good thing for new users like me. Exclusivity. When I go to post in the morning and I can't, I have come to realize that my posts and upvotes are special and I shouldn't just dish out upvotes like people do with likes on instagram or facebook. It makes me actually read what people wrote and think about weather I really want to upvote it. I also don't make a bunch of photo posts during the day, maybe one or two quality photo posts a day with hopefully some quality information to go along with it. Now, when I check steemd and my bandwidth is negative, I have to patiently wait to start having fun again. When the bandwidth is back in the green, it's like getting a little Christmas present, whoohoo! I get to post again! Maybe I'm different than most new users but even if the issue is fixed on the back end, it might be a good thing to ease new users into steemit. Cheers!
Is it bad that I've been on Steemit for three months now and still don't know what bandwidth means? I mean, I know how to check my bandwidth, but I have no idea what it actually represents.
Your reasoning is on point, though:)
Thank you @oyvindsabo. Yeah, that might be bad lol. I googled "steemit bandwidth", there's a few steemit posts that pop up with decent explanations.
Well, as long as I haven't had problems, I guess I'm fine. I did some reading, and since it seems to have been designed as a feature rather than a flaw, it seems like it's doing its job;)
There's some thinkers that designed this site... Bravo.
The low bandwidth issue for new users must be resolved because we have to encourage people to use steemit for the greater good of steemit community and the price of steem.
However let the price of SBD rise as it attracts new users as well. Let people speculate.
Historically, a price rise in SBD is temporary, a price rise in STEEM is more sustained. Both attract users.
What an interesting read, @liberosist.
I don't really understand your concern about SBD falling below $1. Can't this be easily solved by the feature where you convert 1 dollar worth of SBD into one dollar worth of Steem? I know the feature is removed from the Steemit interface, but is it not still there on the blockchain level?
And I'm also excited to see how the new owners of the Steemit chat turns out to be. This all happened really fast for the community, and I understand why people are concerned about this.
Yes, indeed, and if witnesses publish a negative bias, then you actually get more than a dollar's worth of Steem for every dollar's worth of SBD. That should incentivize people to convert to Steem. However, as we know, the crypto world is absolutely bereft of reason, and a lot of people are simply uneducated about Steem. I also see impressionable minnows are fed propaganda FUD by other witnesses, and they have no reason to question said authority. So, you'll see people panic dump even though there's a better option available. Historically, SBDs have spent a majority of its life in the $0.90 to $0.95 range.
That said, this is more of a long term concern than an immediate one, and over time I'm confident SBDs will stabilize.
Thanks for taking the time to clarify your concerns for me! I get what you're getting at, and I think it's a valid concern that people would be selling SBD without knowing that they can convert it.
I thought I was the only few one having a problem with bandwidth. I attribute that to my low SP. But the overall situation has probably made it worst.
Thank you for the info on STEEM and SBD.
In this case, I will just convert my SBD to STEEM. I was hoping that SBD will rise above STEEM. I think that is not going to happen.
Thank you for sharing.
The aspect of low bandwidth really been an issue these past few weeks thinking of ways I could help out new users whom I introduced into steemit and finding it difficult to bypass this issue, the only possible way out is to delegate seempower to them untill they are able to bypass this issue or setup a tutorial on how to maximize and limit your bandwidth usage so has not to get low bandwidth issue consequently.
From the above, it seems your explanation says, sbd will continue its downward trend to the initial 1usd, what of a scenario where btc and other alts coin start increasing wont this still affect the price of sbd?
It will continue it's downward trend, assuming that the crypto mafia doesn't turn it into a pump and dump coin. That's a big if, of course, and it may well be that they decide to pump it once again. This has happened two or three times throughout history. However, pumps-and-dumps are temporary, and once the mafia has made their money off ignorant traders, in the long term it'll always tend towards USD 1. Unless a hardfork changes how SBDs are printed, of course.
Thanks for the respond and the above information really appreciate it, now have a clear version of it, the first pump I think was back in 2016 from the chart I saw, it climbed to 22usd instantly but didn't stay for 1min before falling down and I assume the second will be what we experienced late last year
If someone would not have deligated some steem to me. I was not able to even vote anyone because of minus 2000% band width.
Hope the issue is resolved as I can see it now relatively better.
If the community will remain on touch in some authentic platform it will get solved early.
Interesting, I'm curious of the details behind this. I'm a very wary person so I take this seriously.
There's not much to it, really. I don't know anything about the person who is taking over Steemit.chat, and just browsing through their profile and their activities didn't inspire any confidence as to being someone I'd trust with my information and my communications. It'll take them some time to build my trust, at which point I'll rejoin Steemit.chat. So this is more of a guilty till proven innocent kind of case. Paranoid, perhaps, but I'll play it safe when the question of my privacy is at hand.
Agreed. Thanks
This is the first time I've notice low bandwidth issues, it does not paint a good picture. The SBD decline might not be nice for us bloggers, however I do believe it is better for the long term sustainability of the Steemit economy.