So like
Hive is better than steem
Cause it shed stinc
But it also shed many individuals stake based on their voting history and affiliations
With Hive having made it clear that individuals stake was fair game
Steem banned a bunch of hive accounts
There are a few ways to read this, I am going to share several here.
Toss/ban/block me if you'd like, happens to me a lot in steem and hive circles, so I've developed a thick skin about it.
I won't be offended.
Of course if we have an interesting conversation about it, all the better. I'd like that.
Ok so, I think everyone can agree that the ninja mined stake was a net negative to the blockchain known as steem. Steemit Inc was a net negative as well.
But, without the ninja mined stake and the fundraising it enabled, steem may have never existed. Contrary to popular belief, software is in fact very expensive to create, build run, and maintain.
And steem, what amazing software it was. Early on at steem, we were all.... Connected. Not just socially, but economically, too. Hasn't been replicated elsewhere except by other blockchains based on steem of which there are now many.
FYI I'm kinda referencing a few tweets I made today
https://twitter.com/gadikian/status/1247347427293589505?s=19
- gadikian
Jacob Gadikian (
Twitter
But I'm going into more depth here. This is interesting stuff, and it deserves in depth treatment.
So steem, it was economically centralized and effectively controlled by a cabal. I'm not using the term cabal prejoratively, just factually. The cabal did a lot of good. It also introduced the problems common to systems controlled by cabals.
But I'd like to look lower, deeper. Straight down to consensus level in fact.
In 2016 I posited that you could more effectively execute a steem like network on Tendermint. I had mental health problems, and the effort failed. To this day I don't know if my thesis is correct. If we look at Cosmos, we can find that it, too, is controlled by a cabal of sorts. Again, I'm not judging when I use the term cabal. Not hating at all. But the cabal has fractured some and the chain is still up and running.
BitShares.... I think it's evident that BitShares is in fact a mafia of some kind. But for sure that mafia has fractured over time and the chain is still up and running. No one's stake got forked out. Stan Larimer calls himself the godfather of BitShares on LinkedIn.
EOS has had problems with witness collusion. This is well documented. TELOS just had the same problems.
Bitcoin, one of its enduring strengths is that it is "money for enemies".
Censorship is possible, but only at exchange level. I'm referring to concepts like "coin taint" here. The blockchain has no concept of tainted or dirty coins. Users can merely spend UTXO's and that's how it works, and it works.
There have been forks of Bitcoin, too.
And I'm sympathetic to their ideas, namely the core idea of big blocks. It's a very simple scaling solution that requires little actual writing of software.
(BSV and BCH both implement big blocks. I hold neither.)
So, and again, I'm trying to be analytical, neutral here:
How to build social money for enemies? Steem and Hive have failed this test. They fork their enemies out.
So is the problem a community problem?
I don't think so. Communities naturally have enemies, out-groups and the like. This is normal, right?
Thing is, we shouldn't drain our enemies bank accounts. We shouldn't even be able to. It should be unthinkable.
Is the problem POS itself?
I reckon not. While I don't think that we have yet seen the end state of POS designs, I imagine that POS is overall workable. I'm being generic here. When I speak of POS I'm talking about all major POS implementations. There are better ones and worse ones and yes I have opinions, but since about BitShares 2.0, it's been clear that POS can work.
Let's circle back.
What do we want?
Social money for enemies, not encumbered by an entity like stinc.
Where did Hive fail?
Hive is not money for enemies. It purges both real and percieved enemies
What can we do about it?
(Please note that I'm happy to discuss this point but am currently happily engaged in other endeavors that likely preclude my running to build it. But happy to discuss.)
Well, we can't, and shouldn't try to change Hive. Hive is actually very good, just as it is. I like Hive and think that even though an unfortunate decision was made to purge (dare I say cleanse?) various stakeholders, it's far better than steem, because it's Free. Controlled by no one. A beautiful mess.
I am a net supporter of hive.
Steem is hilarious and because it's what led me to go full time crypto, I'm always going to have much love for it. Even if it's corrupted by Justin Sun.
Despite my love of steem, it's inferior to hive.
There's no sense in messing with steem. It'll just.... Keep on keeping on doing whatever the hell it is doing. I don't claim to know what it is doing.
So, we have seen this occur and largely fail many times now. Not to say that the attempts were not interesting. In fact they were very interesting and each one was a noble experiment of some kind. Even bearshares was a noble experiment. (BearShares of course was an attempt at "steem with dictatorship by Bailal")
Universal failure to thrive has occured in steem based NewChains. Far as I know, most (all?) of these chains are still running, and doing.... Stuff. I don't know exactly what, I do not keep a close watch.
So if they're all still running, we can know that the graphene consensus can even survive economic hard knocks. This is notable.
Let's dig down to first principles again. Was steem a thing of great value to the world and more importantly to its users?
:100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100::100: yes
What made it valuable?
I posit that steem's value derived directly from the unfiltered thought of steem users. It was a machine for turning thoughts into money, the first of its kind that I am aware of.
Where did the trouble all start?
I think steem's drapes didn't match the curtains.
Here's what I mean by that. There was a social convention that the ninja mined stake wasn't for voting.
But that social convention was not backed up in code. It was just accepted to be the case. Justin Sun broke only a social convention, not what the blockchain regarded as fact.
What can we learn from this?
*Drapes must match the curtains"
Important social conventions must be enforced at consensus level.
Okay now onto point number four
If we look at who runs validators on cosmos, we can see that there are many insiders. I'm not judging, this is just fact. Cosmos and a few Cosmos-SDK chains are currently running smoothly. Game of Zones is launching soon to support IBC. Desmos is building social code on cosmos SDK. Dither is building social right on top of cosmos the blockchain.
How to know if Tendermint/Cosmos-SDK can be social money for enemies?
I) watch it
ii) watch projects like Desmos, which implements a framework for building social networks (Desmos will support many social networks and is not itself a social network)
iii) build and launch a steem like chain on Cosmos-SDK, with the goal of being social money for enemies, and with all important social conventions implemented in code, as well. Ignore IBC and focus on that one goal: "social money for enemies*. Ensure that the end result functions to turn ideas into money with steem like directness.
In the end, it's an unknown. To know if it would work you'd have to try it.
c) polkadot
Polkadot is a novel consensus (and architecture for that matter) focused on shared security using a DOT token, implemented in Rust, put out by the team that created the rust ethereum implementation-- quality work, I'd say.
It differs from tendermint in that when using cosmos SDK, the blockchain daemon has all the logic built in. To upgrade it, you have to replace the daemon software.
Using polkadot you can write your logic in rust, compile it to wasm, and then upgrade your chain on the fly without taking down the daemon. Additionally, one daemon can run multiple bits of chain logic.
It's interesting as hell, but I know much less about it compared to Tendermint. With Tendermint I've gotten my hands dirty a bit.
It's worth investigating further.
d) a social chain with its own tokens, linked somehow to Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a source of great stability. Perhaps it would be possible to whip up a Bitcoin sidechain like liquid, which implements a social network. Now I am truly out of my depth and straight up spitballing.
But I came up with this idea literally just now, while spamming your channel with ideas, and I kind of like it.
Might be able to leverage the best of both worlds with this concept. If you're pursuing blockchain based social money for enemies you might want to spend a day or two thinking about this, and looking into weather or not it's workable.
e) Novel consensus purpose built for social money for enemies
This is very hard and certainly beyond my reach technically speaking. But we all know there's value here, in social money for enemies.
So what I mean is it could be well worth your R&D costs, which would likely run into the millions of dollars, to look into this. The return could be enormous.
Starting points: look at existing consensus designs, and see which might work well for social money for enemies. But also determine which features harm the goal of social money for enemies and come up with a design that is suited to the goal.
OK!
Thanks for listening guys.
Happy to discuss and debate any of this with anyone at any time.
Have a nice day. Back to work for me.
Oh, by the way. I don't even really know what this server is for. So I hope I was not too far off topic.
