Dr. Otto: Vote Bidding Bot Update

Dr. Otto is a voting bot that accepts payments for votes.

New Features

This is mostly a performance update. The main change is to use get_account_history for finding new bids (which is 10 times faster), then fall back on block-by-block evaluation if no bids are found in history.

Also added rake usage to get usage totals for one month. Or, use rake usage[bot_name,90] to look at usage for three months back.

The default is that Dr. Otto will only vote in 10 batches a day. Multiple users can bid in a voting batch. If only one person bids, they get the entire upvote. If two people bid an equal amount, they share the vote 50/50. The higher the bid, the higher percentage for the upcoming vote batch.

The bot operator can set any vote weight for the batch, which will affect the number of daily votes to bid on. Therefore, each day per batch has:

Votes	Percentage	Timeframe	Blocks
10	100 %	every 2.4 hours	2,880
20	50 %	every 1.2 hours	1,440
40	25 %	every 36 minutes	720
80	12.5 %	every 18 minutes	360
160	6.25 %	every 9 minutes	180
320	3.13 %	every 270 seconds	90

Example A

If you set the bot to vote at 100.00%, bids open every 2.4 hours. Alice and Bob both bid for in the same voting batch. If Alice bids 4 SBD and Bob bids 2 SBD, Alice will get a 66.66% upvote and Bob will get a 33.33% upvote.

Example B

If you set the bot to vote at 3.13%, bids open every 270 seconds. Alice and Bob both bid for in the same voting batch. If Alice bids 4 SBD and Bob bids 2 SBD, Alice will get a 2.09% upvote and Bob will get a 1.04% upvote.

Usage Rules:

If there are multiple bids with the same post, only one vote will be cast and the remaining bids will not be returned.
If the bot has already voted for a post, additional bids will not be returned.
The URL must be correctly expressed in the memo alone. Malformed memos will not be returned.

Install

To use this Radiator bot:

Linux

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ruby-full git openssl libssl1.0.0 libssl-dev
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ gem install bundler

macOS

$ gem install bundler

I've tested it on various versions of ruby. The oldest one I got it to work was:

ruby 2.2.2p95 (2015-04-13 revision 50295) [x86_64-darwin14]

First, clone this git and install the dependencies:

$ git clone https://github.com/inertia186/drotto.git
$ cd drotto
$ bundle install

Configure

Edit the config.yml file.

:drotto:
  :block_mode: irreversible
  :account_name: <voting account name here>
  :posting_wif: <posting wif here>
  :active_wif: <active wif here>
  :max_age: 7200
  :batch_vote_weight: 100.00 %
  :min_effective_weight: 0.25 %
  :reserve_vote_weight: 0.00 %
  :minimum_bid: 2.000 SBD
  :blacklist: mikethemug
  :no_bounce: bittrex poloniex openledger
  :no_comment: bittrex poloniex openledger
  :no_comment_fee: 0.00 %
  :auto_bounce_on_lockout: false
:chain_options:
  :chain: steem
  :url: https://steemd.steemit.com

Edit the support/confirm.md template, used to reply to the post when voting.

This ${content_type} has received a ${vote_weight_percent} % ${vote_type} from @${account_name} thanks to @${from}.

Run Mode

Then run it:

$ rake run

Dr. Otto will now do it's thing. Check here to see an updated version of this bot:

https://github.com/inertia186/drotto

Bounce Mode

Dr. Otto is designed to only vote in such a way that it will never run out of voting power. Ideally, you should never need to shut down for breaks in order to recharge. However, if it's ever time for Dr. Otto to take a break for some other reason, bounce will return transfers to accounts instead of voting.

For your own safety, it is recommended that you transfer your funds out of your wallet before running this mode.

Dr. Otto will now return the funds as they arrive in the wallet. You can also just use bounce_once to have Dr. Otto make a single pass rather than loop forever until signaled (^C).

$ rake bounce_once

Both bounce modes accept a limit value as argument, which is especially useful for bounce_once. The default limit is to go back 200 transactions in the history. You can set up to 10000, if you need to go back further for some reason.

$ rake bounce_once[10000]

You can also use bounce_stream to immediately bounce transfers that are invalid. The advantage of this is that bounced transactions are returned right when they happen if they cannot be processed rather than wait for the batch.

$ rake bounce_stream

Report Mode

Same as bounce_once but only for reporting without doing the transfers.

$ rake report

Also accepts a limit argument.

$ rake report[10000]

Upgrade

Typically, you can upgrade to the latest version by this command, from the original directory you cloned into:

$ git pull

Usually, this works fine as long as you haven't modified anything. If you get an error, try this:

$ git stash --all
$ git pull --rebase
$ git stash pop

If you're still having problems, I suggest starting a new clone.

Troubleshooting

Problem: Everything looks ok, but every time Dr. Otto tries to vote, I get this error:

Unable to vote with <account>.  Invalid version

Solution: You're trying to vote with an invalid key.

Make sure the .yml file contains the correct voting key and account name (social is just for testing).

Problem: The node I'm using is down.

Is there a list of nodes?

Solution: Yes:

https://steem-third-party.github.io/steem-servers

Tests

Clone the client repository into a directory of your choice:
- git clone https://github.com/inertia186/drotto.git
Navigate into the new folder
- cd drotto
Basic tests can be invoked as follows:
- rake
To run tests with parallelization and local code coverage:
- HELL_ENABLED=true rake