WHAT IS IT: A way to vote (do a poll) on hive that every single UI can easily integrate and which has advanced analytics features and multiple voting qualifications and filters.

A little while ago we announced the development of a decentralized polls and voting system for Hive. As the various pieces are gradually being built (we are progressing on fetching of polls data from the blockchain and providing them in an API), today we share with you the protocol specification for this system.

As a reminder, Hive Open Polls are meant to be decentralized and able to be (and we will encourage them to be) integrated into as many (hopefully all) Hive based UIs. They will also focus on ways to analyze the data based on factors determined by the poll creator.

UI VS PROTOCOL

The UI for the polls is already being developed by another developer and moving right along but this post today will focus on the backend protocol. However regarding the UI it will be first integrated into Hivehub.dev and we look forward to seeing what other websites do and if they want to use this open source UI or adapt it to something else for their site.

What does this polls system allow people to do?

People will be able to create polls, define choices, and let others vote on these choices. You can create a poll for everyone on Hive to vote on, or it can be just for your community's members, or just for the holders/staker holders of a token (or other criteria). Whether you want to make polls for fun, or you want to vote on governance decisions, the polls system is intended to serve all those cases.

It is also planned that later versions will allow voters to propose/submit their own choices beyond the choices the poll author added, so that there is decentralization also in the available choices that people can vote on. This can also enable functionalities like people submitting requests (for example, a request for a feature to be added to a product) and others voting so as to prioritize among all the submitted requests.

One possibility this can create is for the decentralized Hive community to collectively discover which features, capabilities and activities it cares about or wants the most, so that work can be done towards those.

Various other use cases for the polls system will be possible. We would be very interested and it will actually help inform the way we work on this project so please share your own ideas for how something like this system can be used for you and your projects/interfaces/communities.

What does this protocol do?

It specifies the rules for how the polls and voting will work. By following the same set of rules, everyone can participate and use the same polls system.

This is an initial version of the protocol, intended to get started without too much complexity. It is planned to expand it with various settings for the polls and so on.

Please share any feedback in the comments below.

The protocol follows.

Hive Open Polls

Decentralized polls software and an open polls protocol for the Hive ecosystem.

How it works

The Hive blockchain provides a way to store immutable data. Accounts can add data formatted as polls and poll votes, according to a mutually agreed upon open protocol. Anyone can spin up a polls API node which collects the polls data in a more standard database, interprets it according to the protocol and makes the interpreted data readily available to apps and frontends. All of this constitutes a decentralized polls system.

Hive Open Polls Protocol - Specification

The protocol has versions, such that the software implementation can apply the correct protocol rules according to which version was used when a poll author created a poll.

The protocol is designed to give poll authors and voters options to create and participate in polls in the way they wish to. The protocol does not specify which options or procedures should be followed in any poll but rather which options and procedures are available to choose from.

Current Version - 0.1

Polls

A poll is a regular Hive post (root comment). The post's json_metadata field is used to define it as a poll. The json_metadata field contains a json object such as the following:

{
  "content_type": "poll",
  "version": 0.1,
  "question": "How many polls do you want to see per day?",
  "choices": ["Less than 1", 1, 2, "three", "4-ish", "V", "six", 7, "e8t", "nine", 10, "10+"],
  "preferred_interpretation": "tokens",
  "token": "HIVE:HP",
  "filters": ["account_age": 100],
  "end_time": 1699373655
}

Where:

• content_type defines the post as a poll

• version specifies the Polls Protocol version. The poll and any votes on it will be interpreted according to the version specified here, at poll creation.

• question contains the poll question

• choices contains an array with choices (answers) that can be voted on. The array order is fixed at poll creation and cannot be changed. When accounts vote, their votes are recorded as the choice number in the array.

• preferred_interpretation specifies the decision mechanism the poll author wishes to use for determining the poll results. It can be one of the following:

  • tokens: choice support level is determined by how much tokens the choice voters collectively have.
  • number_of_votes: choice support level is determined by how many accounts have voted for the choice.

• token specifies the token to be used for the voting calculation. The field contains the chain or layer 2 followed by the token name, for example: HIVE:HP, SPL:SPSP, HE:SWAP.HIVE. Required when the tokens option is selected for preferred_interpretation and not applicable otherwise.

• filters contains filters or requirements that accounts have to meet in order for their vote to be counted towards the poll results. In array format. Can be one or more of:

  • account_age: the minimum account age, in days, at the time the account casts a vote.

• end_time specifies the time at which the poll ends. Votes made afterwards don't count towards the poll results. In UNIX timestamp.

Utilizing a regular post as the poll offers multiple advantages. It allows the poll author to add any text and multimedia in the post body along with the poll. This ability to expand on and describe the poll's question becomes especially relevant for polls asking people to vote on decisions of importance. Since a regular Hive post is used, the poll also benefits from being integrated into communities, post feeds, account profiles and so on. It also enables people to post comments under the poll's post.

Once a poll is created, it cannot be changed. Changes to the metadata that define the poll are ignored. If a poll author wishes to change any of the poll settings or choices, they have to create a new poll. This avoids issues where people vote on a poll and afterwards the poll is changed. The post body, however, can be changed in the standard way a post is edited. This allows a post author to edit the accompanying text/multimedia so as to clarify any aspect of the poll. At the same time, the blockchain keeps each version of the post which gives poll participants the ability to see how the post body was changed during the duration of the poll.

Poll Votes

A poll vote is a custom_json operation such as the following:

{
  id: 'polls',
  json: {
    "poll": "1a2b3d4e",
    "action": "vote",
    "choice": 1
  }
}

Where:

• id serves as the unique identifier of the custom_json operation
• poll refers to the poll for which the vote was placed. This field contains the transaction ID of the comment operation of the poll post.
• action contains the activity performed on the poll, in this case a vote
• choice specifies the poll answer which is being voted for. This is the answer number from the poll's choices field, starting the counting from 1.

A voter can change their choice by making a new custom_json operation for voting on the same poll and specifying a different choice number. The new vote replaces any previous votes on the poll - any previous votes are simply ignored. If a voter wants to remove their vote rather than change it, they can specify 0 in the choice field.

QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions let us know. And like we indicated in the post please share your future use cases with us so we can help educate our future work on the project.