@ned - are we on the verge of a Steemtrain wreck? Answer NO - BUT THERE ARE STILL VALID CONCERNS

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)

crocodile-195783_1280.jpg

(Picture edited - was a train wreck)

(2nd picture edit - was a couple of fluffy bunnies)

I love Steemit, Steem, the Steemchain and the vast majority of people I've had the good fortune to meet and interact with on this revolutionary, decentralised, blockchain-based, social media platform. I honestly believe in using it, we are changing the world for the better. I've tried to help this fledgling community grow as best I can along with a great many other people.

Recently, I raised some concerns I have regarding EOS and the potential for a competitor to arise and displace Steem, I still have them. Everybody here, everyone contributing value and receiving value in return, the community is what is valuable. I don't care if we are on Steem, an EOS app, Ethereum, Bitcoin....whatever, as long as it works, as long as the system has integrity. What I hope can be avoided is the thousands of people who have given the most to Steem, losing a significant amount of their earned value.

Recently I read a post https://steemit.com/steemit/@joseph/an-open-ended-question-to-ned-and-dan regarding some voting activity from @dan and @ned but that was not what caught my attention the most. What did catch my attention were the comments by @elfspice relating to what sound to me like potentially catastrophic issues with the Steem database architecture......the effects of which are apparently being felt right now. No doubt many of you are already aware that exchanges are having regular and extended maintenance periods concerning Steem. Some I believe have stopped supporting Steem completely.

Other than @elfspice's comments, I was not aware of this issue and have not seen it discussed anywhere else. I've chosen to make this post because I am gravely concerned and would like Steemit.inc to address the issues raised. Here are some of @elfspice's comments;

elfspicecomment2.png

elfspicecomment3.png

Please take a look at the full discussion and decide for yourself if it sounds like something that should concern you.

I have no idea if @elfspice is correct

...but I would like steemit.inc and/or @ned to address this concern for the community immediately please. I think we all deserve to know;

  • Is the issue described in @elfspice's comments real?
  • Is the issue described in @elfspice's comments as serious as they seem to be?
  • Why has the Steem community not be made aware of this issue before by steemit.inc?
  • What is the actual state of the situation today?
  • What is being done to address the issue today?
  • What are the chances of success?
  • How long will it be before an attempt to address the issue is made?
  • Are there any other issues that you are aware of that is not public knowledge?

If this is not an issue, it is important to expose @elfspice as a source of FUD. I do not believe that to be the case right now. I think there is cause for concern.

If there is an issue, I think it is imperative that kind of critical information is disclosed to the steemit community. It may be that arguments of protecting Steemit's fledgling network were used to stifle disclosure and I understand the temptation but that is not acceptable in my opinion. Everyone needs to know what they are dealing with as soon as possible. People need the chance to decide what they want to do about it. If there is a technical solution, it may be that the bonds that have been formed within steem are strong enough to get through even a serious issue, but to be open about it, to deal with it as a community is the ONLY option, whatever may come of it.

I have been supporting the Minnows Support Project with the majority of my SP for a while. I was already reducing it slowly for personal reasons, but if this issue is not addressed, I will have no choice but to reduce my delegation to ZERO so that I can begin powering down.

Steemit.inc, please address this at the earliest possible time. If you are reading this and agree, please resteem and post your own concerns. I have not been overly impressed with steemit.inc's communications of late so applying some pressure seems only fair.

If @elfspice is correct, he will have done a great service to this community. I will send him the SBD from this post.

edit - though I believe him to be well-intentioned, it would seem that @elfspice is wrong in his analysis and concern for the health of steem and steemit. I won't be sending him any SBD. Feel free to flag this post, I feel it's done it's job now

*2nd edit - after reading @furion's post

https://steemit.com/steem/@furion/updates-on-steem-python-steemdata-and-the-node-situation

https://steemit.com/steemit/@elfspice/vindication-so-stinc-who-was-lying-i-am-incompetent-at-systems-administration-am-i

it now seems to me that @elfspice's concerns were absolutely real. This does NOT mean that steem or steemit are fatally flawed, but it does mean that the lack of communication from steemit.inc and the way they have handled this issue are very concerning to me. I have apologised to @elfspice and will be sending him the SBD from this post.*


Happy Steeming.....for now

Back to Happy Steeming :)

Sort:  

Ah, so that's loki. All I remember is that he ragequit witnessing when no one took him seriously. Anyway, pretty much everything in that post is pure FUD. If anything, it just reveals his total incompetence at running a Steem node. I don't understand A or B of development, I'm pretty much a n00b compared to seasoned developers or IT admins. Yet I find it really easy to get Steem up and running. Sure, it takes a few hours to sync if you're starting from scratch, but that's a one time thing.

Poloniex had over 15 coins disabled earlier this week, now it's down to 8. It's not just Steem. Clearly they are having issues.

Steem is now processing more transactions than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined. Unlike those two, it's not choking with ridiculous delays in block time or anything. Sure, plenty of optimization needs to be done, particularly with I/O usage. Work is ongoing, and it might be a couple of hardforks more before Steem is ready to scale to the millions. But there's nothing here that suggests there's any existential threat to the network at all.

You can look at the #witness-blocks channel on Steemit.chat to see how incredibly reliable the network has become. Missed blocks are very rare - in fact I couldn't even find a single one in the last couple of days.

I don't think a response is warranted from Steemit Inc when it comes to such unfounded nonsense.

I hope you will see the evidence and retract this post so as not to spread further FUD. Thank you.

I hope you will see the evidence and retract this post so as not to spread further FUD. Thank you.

Why would/should he do that? Disputing criticism is always better than ignoring it. Of course if someone is just spamming insults it is OK to flag or want it to be retracted, but as long as there are civil arguments being made I think they need to be answered, which I think you did with this comment. I don't understand the nitty gritty of the blockchain, but I dont think talking about potential flaws is FUD.

@liberosist, I do completely agree with you. There are a lot of negative stuff going on regarding steemit. The fact, Steem is now processing more transactions than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined has made it great . And every great things come under the radar of crticism. If we talk about the technicals, Steem is wroking fine, there's no downtime and the problem of bandwidth has also been resolved now. When it comes to exchanges, they their servers always get overloaded with transactions. Last I tried to withdraw my Verge, guess what, it's withdrawal was also under maintenance. So this problem is hapenning with all the other major crypto's. Poloniex has the highest volume, that's why it disables most of the withdrawal requests from most of the cryptocurrencies.
Steem is doing just great and it has a lot of supporters. LIke you, who are curating the best content here. It is the first social media platform on decentralized and blockchain tehcnology and many people have invested their fortune in steemit. I am sure, it ll survive all the odds. You and people like @ned , working hard here to make it even better.
So, I would like to thank you and all the other major people who're making awareness about this platform and helping people to use it more often.
Thank you.

Poloniex has the highest volume, that's why it disables most of the withdrawal requests from most of the cryptocurrencies.

Poloniex has horrid customer support, and other than having nice looking graphs and a low fee they are not that great of an exchange lately. They received one of my deposits and never actually deposited it. Two tickets were ignored and months later still nothing. That wasn't the only issues I had with them just the one that finally made me decide to stop using them and that was several months ago.

Always two sides to every story

That there is a clusterfuck of other coins having problems does not count.

What about shapeshift also. They quit dealing with steem at least 2 weeks ago.

tradequik just got stuck 2 days (and are they still offline?) on 'routine automated maintenance'.

When I got my powerdown two days ago, there was literally only one way for me to trade my steem for dash, Blocktrades.

And why is it that you all are using self-votes to push your comments upwards. Have you got something to hide?

It sure looks like you got something to hide, all of you.

You are one of the preminers, aren't you. Who in the preminer circle, isn't being blackmailed into presenting a united front? @berniesanders admitted that he was a preminer also. 'just so I knew'. I believe that you assholes also are having some issues with him lately...

Don't drag me into this one, asshole.

Is all that mining-earned SP starting to chafe again? It should be, because the rest of us took risks with our money and time to get what little SP we have.

That snipe goes to everyone who mined their SP before it was a true public offering.

If a company was selling shares on an ongoing basis in an unlimited fashion to a private, closed group, it would not be a problem... UNTIL that offering was opened to the public. At that point, it's breaking the 'Truth in Securities' act of 1933.

The shitstorm that is constantly raging here, is entirely caused by this, and the sooner you all realise it, the better.

100%, Can't wait to move over to Calibrae.

Thank you for this perspective @liberosist, it really helps.

Hi @benjojo I've published a post about you, check it out if you can, thanks.

30 Best Steemit Bloggers Of The Day To Follow 3rd August 2017

https://steemit.com/steemit/@jzeek/30-best-steemit-bloggers-of-the-day-to-follow-3rd-august-2017

Thank you, I feel better already!

I think that steemit will be the first social network in the world because it has the potential to be, it is a new concept different in the world in the social networks, it is time to invest a deep money And time
we should promote Steemit in all social networks to get more supporters and investors , it will be Huge!!

If he retracted it then we wouldn't see your response. I saw the original elfspice post and had been planning to look into it as it is not something I (many of us) have researched and would have any authoritative information on. Questions need to be asked so answers can be provided. Also one of the great things about steem is the transparency. Too many things occur outside of it that cannot be tracked, documented, etc. Talking about problems outside of the blockchain rather than on it seems like a step in the wrong direction.

I do thank you for your response. I actually believe someone addressing the elfspice post without ad hominem attacks and such and just providing us a blow by blow of why the points are not an issue would be a valuable post at this time. Saying "don't worry, they can't run a node, and don't know what they are talking about" is an appeal to authority. You didn't say those exact words I am paraphrasing. Such statements can reduce confidence in your response. The rest of the information was welcome though, and I for more would be interested in MORE information.

All of the information I'm aware of is within my response. I could have made an objective list, but I'm a human being and delight in creative communication. But I'll make that list just for you -

  1. Steem is demanding on I/O resources, as you'd expect of the most used blockchain on the planet. Still, it runs fine on a basic server, as gtg demonstrated below.
  2. There are several nodes running; a new witness netuoso who joined last week got a full RPC node up and running within hours. Anyone with basic competence and appropriate hardware can get one running.
  3. The developers are working actively on scalability solutions.
  4. There's no need for panic. Steem is growing exponentially - all's well.

Of course, all of this information was covered in my original reply.

That was not my point at all. You recommended the person retract their post. If he were to do that people would not see your reply. That was my point.

I see what you mean. To clarify, my intention wasn't to recommend the OP to delete their post entirely. In hindsight, I should have worded it better. I was going for the traditional meaning of retract, i.e. "withdraw statements as untrue and unjustified"; rather than removing it entirely. My reply would still have stood, with enough context to give it meaning. That worked, this post stands a lot more balanced than before.

Maybe I would be answer some questions here, as a witness and operator of full API node that is used by various service providers on Steem.

Is the issue described in @elfspice's comments real?

From what he described it seems that he has real issues,
however Steem platform is fine.

Is the issue described in @elfspice's comments as serious as they seem to be?

For him? Yes. For platform? No.

My full API node is operating on a single, low-end dedicated server with amount of RAM as on my few years old workstation.
At this very moment it is serving 65 connections per second (average from 100 seconds). Disk latency is 2.6 - 4.0ms.

cpu-day.png

Of course there are some performance challenges that we witnesses, and others: community developers, Steemit Inc developers etc are aware of, those are being addressed, way ahead of time, but FUD-spreading-troll level talk is not even close to what I would like to spent my time on.

If this is not an issue, it is important to expose @elfspice as a source of FUD. I do not believe that to be the case right now. I think there is cause for concern.

It's not an issue and @elfspice is a source of FUD. Not for the first time.

Hey there @gtg, I'd love it though if you would make a tutorial maybe on making a Full API node in best practices?

I use your node for my upcoming app, so it would be nice to make a few more for some load balancing and etc.

If I would have time for that...

Actually this is pretty straightforward, as long as you are not expecting to run it on potato-grate hardware ;-)
Also, a lot depends on certain needs. Not all the people needs really full node with all plugins. Most of people doesn't. Like for example exchanges mentioned by that troll are not using full nodes.
Most info needed to successfully run your node is in docs. You might want to modify that depending on your exact needs. Feel free to catch me on steemit.chat as Gandalf but expect some delays with answers.
I would gladly help with setting up public nodes.

BTW, I'm able to have considerably low amount of RAM mostly because I have decent speed on my storage backend. Current setup is very cost effective, however I'm running out of space (storage is fast but small, as I have 3 disks combined)

Ah, so instead of having 128GB RAM, you're using SSDs in RAID 5 for your swap backend?

RAID1
Of course having 128GB of RAM to keep there everything would be nice, but not cost effective.

I very much appreciate your extra clarity on this issue, but it does sound to me like that architecture won't scale beyond a few months without major work. I hope there are plans in place, and that Steem Inc. can communicate better on this issue in future.

Thanks again though!

@gtg thank you very much for offering your observations. I really appreciate it. I hope others do. When there is limited communication from the people that know these things, there is ample room for doubt. The majority of steemians, myself included are not technical. There are clearly issues but none of us know how serious they are and it is difficult to put things into context at times. None of us can read everything on here. I did not know that elfspice had spread FUD before.

Do you know why exchanges seem to be having difficulty offering a stable service for steem?

Do you know why exchanges seem to be having difficulty offering a stable service for steem?

Currently there are crazy times because of Bitcoin. Aside from that:
Bittrex is indeed having some delays recently but they are great at communication and I think we would be able to help them improve reliability.
Blocktrades is working flawlessly.
Poloniex well... multiple attempts to contact them, they were down today for hours... that's not related to Steem at all.

So, a virtual machine with 10 cores and 50gb of ram, that was doing just fine running a witness, and 3 months ago was running an RPC fine, and, a Ryzen7 1700, which I established I had to update a kernel to fix that problem, both somehow cannot replay the full chain, for an RPC, BOTH RUNNING UBUNTU 16.04, LATEST.

Prove you are not lying by taking a person, who has not had any dealings with you in the past, and helping them get an RPC up and running.

  • Because bittrex is having a problem.

  • Poloniex is basically refusing to deal with it anymore, they got bigger fish to fry.

  • Tradequik, over 48 hours 'routine, automated maintenance

  • Shapeshift quit dealing with Steem at least 2 weaks ago.

So, stop lying. What keeps your RPC up and running, and why is it that me, and 4 major, high end operations, cannot keep a steemd running?

Let us know what the secret is, or admit that you have much more fancy hardware, paid for with your premined stake, than you are admitting to.

I know enough about sysadmin to know, that your front end, could be bumping traffic to any number of backends. You could have over 10 Steemd nodes running, on a failover, and nobody would know, unless they could monitor the in-and-out on your server.

@furion thinks the following, which supports your hypothesis:

Full rpc steemd nodes are a challenge to run. Currently, they require expensive servers with 128GB of RAM, and regular baby-sitting. To my knowledge, there are no open solutions for managing steemd clusters . Such software would be much appreciated, not only by developers, but also exchanges (currently, both Bitfinex and Poloniex have STEEM&SBD deposits/withdrawals frozen, as they are failing to tame resource hungry steemd [2]).

https://steemit.com/steem/@furion/updates-on-steem-python-steemdata-and-the-node-situation

No wonder I was having trouble on a 50Gb xeon VPS with 10 cores and a 1.2tb SSD. When I started, back in November, this was still a bit difficult but it only needed about 32gb. In 6 months since, that requirement has quadrupled. If it quadruples again, there isn't a computer on the planet that sits inside one box, that can run this thing.

I'm not gonna hold my breath for an apology from these pigs who have been blatantly lying through their teeth.

Graphene, so great, it needs 128gb to run a 1 year old blockchain.

So, who's lining up to be part of Dan's next project?

Yes, no wonder, I see why you're bitter about this! It does make me feel sick, and the lies are really disappointing!

If EOS stores a more sensible amount of info in the blockchain though, it could be much more sustainable even if it's very similar underlying technology. Don't you agree?

I reckon he's probably learnt his lesson (technically), moved out and done something with a genuinely better architecture, though I don't know how good of course, and trust is pretty important!

Yeah, maybe he learned the error, but his narcissism prevents him from admitting his error.

Also, if EOS borrows from Ethereum, then it uses multiple backend data stores and not just one giant monolith. Different types too.

Hey lok1! We at TradeQwik were performing some upgrades across servers and adding a few( 4 new). STEEM was not the reason for our routine maintenance. Thanks man

Don't hesitate to talk about how it is running RPC nodes, if you please.

"Prove you are not lying" (...) "So, stop lying." (...) "what the secret is" (...) "admit that you have much more fancy hardware, paid for with your premined stake" (...) "I know enough about sysadmin" (...)

I'm sorry, I can't help you. That would be an illegal medical practice.

I've explicitly offered (and provided) help to people that needs API nodes for their businesses and reported on my own node status multiple times in my witness logs.

Right. So furion is lying, according to you. 3 days waiting for a replay on a 50gb machine with real SSD. It was running pretty good 6 months ago.

Also, help would be if you did even half the job @jesta already did with the only half way adequate guide to setting up and running one. If it wasn't special tricks you were doing, then why don't you publish exactly what you tell people to do. You know, like, your config.ini. Precise specs of your servers, and who manages the physical hardware.

Also, euthanasia is the illegal medical practise. You imply murder in what you just said, not a medical procedure.

Just so you know, I am screenshotting this. It looks like a veiled death threat to me.

Seriously? That is what you see there?
Are you seriously screenshootting content that was written on the blockchain?
You are insane*
(*) that's my subjective point of view, unfortunately, I'm not a doctor so I can't provide you a medical advice = "that would be an illegal medical practice"
Please seek your help among doctors, not witnesses.

Good luck.

Well, my non-professional medical opinion is that you are a sociopath with borderline personality disorder what I term 'cryptomania', like much of the rest of the preminer crowd here, Dan included.

What you don't realise is that you people have by any reasonable moral standard, committed heinous crimes against many people who have been duped into committing their money and time to this platform, all so you could milk the rewards pool with your inside tricks.

Please seek your help amongst fancy lawyers, with your ill gotten gains.

an Illegal medical practice, what lobotomy? euthanasia? what did you mean? Or just offering your medical opinion? Based on what qualifications and research?

Also, it's pretty rich coming from you giving a damn about the law when you and many others in the premine group are in clear breach of the Truth in Securities Act 1933, and most of you are in that jurisdiction.

Is anybody else having this issue other than elfspice? What problem could he have if you're facing none?

Already discussed. BKAC kind of problem that he fails to acknowledge blaming the rest of the world.

Thanks for clearing the air. Followed both you and elfspice. Good to listed to both the sides of the argument. Nice names by the way Loki and Gandalf the Grey.

If you were really not lying through your teeth, you would have helped me out, a long time ago, and I would have happily taught everyone the secret magic trick that you do to make your nodes function.

You really think that I am making trouble for ... wait a second, you are saying I am a troll?

Are you going to more fully clarify what the hell you mean by that? Some citations of me provoking people other than for a directly stated reason of provoking people into confessing they are lying?

I have been absolutely transparent. You have not, not even one bit.

"you would have helped me out, a long time ago"

Yes, indeed, you had a chance for that long time ago...
That would be before you've made your platform-leaving-FUD-performance with @faddat.

Just to remind you: you've used alleged issue with steem as an excuse for that. When I pointed out that it's not true and steem is working as expected then you've blamed @xeroc's python-lib which turned out to be your lack of understanding how it works.

Good luck with The Dawn.
The Steemians send their regards.

You are so out of date mate.

You don't think that Steem Power qualifies as a Financial Security? Really?

Let's see what happens when your giant RPC cluster is the last man standing and nobody can buy or sell Steem anymore, and finally all the exchanges quit, and the people who genuinely put tens of thousands of dollars into Steem, decide it's time to stop playing nice and seeing exactly who is responsible, and who the SEC might want to put in a cage.

By the way, regarding my error in using the wrong parser to output the JSON. wow, you think that was the first problem I came up against? You know that prior to that incident, the whole edifice of piston was in disarray, and scripts that had worked a month before, suddenly were not working with the newer version. Hm Stable API eh?

You'll get what's coming to you. I don't even have to see to it, I already did. The rest of the people who are here, apart from this inner circle of Steemians, are going to be out for your blood pretty soon.

Don't say I didn't warn you. And you're welcome. Your constant provocation and trolling me is the reason why I keep on pushing to get the real story out of you all.

Why do you keep commenting on 2 of your separate accounts?

I haven't even started talking about the login logout bugs I have been dealing with since I started using two accounts. Or how easy it is to forget which one is which. At least I'm not pretending it's different people, at least you know well enough, unlike so many who have been keeping me in their blind spot, that one person controls both.

If you want to see what I mean about the login bugs, and the lack of proper state transition between the resteems and upvote/downvotes, have two different accounts, log into one, then display a page, log out, and then log into the other one. You will find the vote display is not zeroed and re-created from the second account, and the resteems are persisting in the javascript caches after logging out and into a different account.

Right, I have to refresh every time.. this platform is so bugged.. they can't even fix the simplest shit.. which is how my friends and I were able to register 3000 accounts with 2 different bugs....................

Thanks @gtg.

What amount of RAM does your full API node have?

32GB currently, but that would flawlessly only with decent speed on storage backend (a lot of I/O has to be handled)

Thank you. We are trying to understand the discrepancy between what you're saying at what @furion is saying here:
https://steemit.com/steem/@furion/updates-on-steem-python-steemdata-and-the-node-situation

Can you help any further, to put this issue to bed, so I can keep investing my time in this great project?

As far as I can see, @furion seems to be satisfied with my node. Of course funding clusters of such ( or even better - much bigger ) nodes is always welcome.

It was the 128GB versus 32GB RAM difference that I was getting at, but now you've explained that you use SSD drives for swap it reconciles the apparent discrepancy for me. Thanks.

Ah, I see. Everything depends on exact environment. Low latency is crucial especially at initial reindexing. For example my 64GB backup API node performs much slower (at least at reindex) because it has a single SSD drive.

Oh right. I've been considering setting up a witness, but would only be interested in a full RPC node, as I'm doing development with RPC ( @steemreports).

Given that I'd need to do it remotely, so won't have access to the hardware, is there a suitable provider and server you could recommend? I getting the impression a VPS isn't going cut it for a number of reasons.

I'd very much appreciate any pointers.

In case anyone was still wondering:

I'm a believer in don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. The only way I could figure to do that in this case is to look at peoples wallets. Is anyone powering down, and if so, who? Seems like this could show something.

It's my understanding that it takes 3 months to power down? With this belief I looked at the last three months for the people saying Steemit is ok, and also the two accounts held by Loki who says there is a problem.

From what I saw, @elfspice does not appear to be powering down, however @l0k1 is.

@ned initiated what appears to be a full account power down two months ago, and stopped it one month ago. And is not powering down.

@sneak initiated what appears to be a full account power down 13 days ago, and stopped it 13 days ago. And is not powering down.

@gtg is not powering down.

@liberosist is not powering down.

So, with my minimal understanding of how this works, the four people who say Steemit is ok are acting as though that is the case, as none of them are powering down.

@l0k1/@elfspice is a bit confusing as one account is powering down but the other does not appear to be.

So everyone appears to pretty much be acting on their beliefs, and no one seems to be just giving lip service.

You don't know even how this system works. Both of my accounts are powering down, both, are depositing the payouts to @elfspice to simplify my work. You probably didn't even know you could do that. Possibly also, since you don't also realise this, the fact that they have all suddenly at once stopped powering down, might be because I have successfully brought it to the attention of the community, that Steem, the platform, is on a razor's edge now, and if immediate, dramatic and drastic action is not taken now, the whole show is going up in flames.

All I was saying was that all parties appear to be acting on what they said, including you, yours just isn't as straight forward.

Only two of the four had power downs scheduled and stopped and the timing was separate from each other. Stoping a power down because you realize the system is going to crash seems counter intuitive.

Again I was observing all of you were acting on what you said. You are powering down, you believe it will crash. None of them are powering down shows they don't believe it will crash.

Think about it a bit further. I depend on my power downs, for a significant part of my income. Those guys have too much money ahead of their bills. If the platform is gonna keel over soon, due to technical reasons, it's not gonna be that much more they can get out, and what is it with their coordinated actions? I thought Dan was not employed by Steemit anymore?

You simply have the equation wrong. I make probably only just enough to pay my bills from my mining. I can't invest any deeper into that with my current surplus. I need the power down. Not to mention that 1235 of it was that steem that poloniex locked me out of for 19 days.

I don't want to be forced to go take a shitty job at an outsourcing company again. I want to conserve my surplus so that I can continue to work on what I love, instead of for someone else's shitty money-grab.

So you're not powering down to pull your money out so when it crashes you don t lose it? You're continuing to invest in a sinking ship?

You're right I don't understand.

No, I am getting MY earned tokens out, as quickly as I can, as I would have done regardless, so I can keep paying rent and having this nice computer to work on to do my mischief.

It is a strange cultural artifact of the steem culture, that if you are powering down, that it means you are somehow wishing it to die. It's a deposit instrument, like buying shares.

You sell some shares when you need some cash, right?

"i have no idea if he's correct, but i am going to further disseminate FUD and make loud demands and point fingers even in the case where i know there might be no issues at all".

Downvoted for baseless fearmongering.

Happy Steeming....for now

I hope that means you're going to stop making posts like this.

It's your prerogative to take that position @sneak, I happen to think that posts like this are an entirely natural and predictable result of poor communication from your team.

I had no intention of spreading FUD but the difficulty in getting information requires direct approaches.

You might acknowledge that everything is not perfect and take the opportunity to provide even more information as @gtg has attempted to do. There is after all a great deal of value in setting the record straight and allow the concerns of people.....there seems to be rather a few that had them.....to rest.

I guess you and your team are perfect and anyone that doesn't know everything you do is a 'baseless fearmonger?' Are you even aware of the privilege of your position in terms of access to information? You might want to think about that. You aren't the only one who cares about the success of steem and steemit.

I agree @sneak, you guys need to communicate more, seriously. Hire another person. @andrarchy is supposed to be the community liaison but all that comes from there and @steemitblog is high fives and "yay we're doing great"!. We need to be kept in the loop.

Sneak,

I'm glad to see you looking and responding to posts that address concern about the platform. Thank you for doing that. We need people with your skillset to help this place grow.

This current approach to handling concerns is abrasive.

Many of the full Steem RPC nodes went down in one day, and this appears the next. Witness chat itself was asking questions regarding this too. There were concerns over ram utilization growth as the chain and userbase expands. It's a reasonable concern to ask about the technical state of the platform after everything crashes especially when you have substantial wealth invested in it.

Please make a more concerted effort to address concerns in a more supportive way.

I appreciate your work on the platform and thanks for hearing me out.

Aggroed

All the nodes went down in one day

That is not an accurate statement.

edited.

Good reply, and fixed as per your request.

Note that all the pigs are self-upvoting their comments to push them to the top...

I appreciate it when people do that so I can read the answer faster than browsing through endless of comments which are not always relevant to the post. I'm pretty sure it saves a lot of readers time.

Thit is patent bullshit. Sure, flagging spammy content down below, I can see that being a good thing. But if you don't trust that the rest of the people are going to upvote your 'excellent comments' what basis do you have for judging your comments as good other than an unvalidated ego problem?

What a disappointing and concerning response.

Thats quite a big self upvote there buddy. You are spreading FUD just in the way you operate.

I don't think we should label all members concerns about this issue as FUD but I do remember Loki's meltdowns in the past and took that into account. There have been technical issues of late and that's what sparked my concern.

And you need to self-upvote to prove it. Truth has no power of it's own?

I am afraid to self upvote because I may anger a whale....I appreciate your comments which I have had a few of my own regarding the technical issues with steemit. I've worked with techy people that have horrible tempers, but they know their stuff. You are a lot like artist in that way, I have a horrible temper and have had to pay for speaking out about things I care about. I think you are just like my techy friends. I think everyone has the right to speak out even if it sparks fear in the herd, there may be danger, it's important to listen to all voices. Especially since I know next to nothing on these issues, I need to read all sides of this issue. If I can't that means steemit is broken and even the finest code and hardware in the world won't fix censorship.

You can upvote yourself without be afraid to anger a whale. That's censorship in my opinion and mister elfspice alias loki should understand this too.

thank you @oldtimer.

You're welcome. In my opinion, everyone can upvote himself and if somebody doesn't agree with that it's free to downvote him. Excuse for my bad English but I hope you understand my point.

The censorship is only possible because they premined so much SP...

I don't think you should fear upvoting yourself, you are using the platform, communicating with people and adding value. If someone is offended by you voting for your own comments once in a while they are missing the big picture.

You're a fucking moron. What's the point of holding SP if you can't upvote your own content. Halfwit.

To upvote the content of others that you deem worthy of upvoting. We could all just post 20 spam posts/comments vote them up and be done with Steemit for a day.

Again I don't want to suggest that you are only using Steemit for selfish reasons, but I think a vote is something that is earned and given, and not something that should be used to boost your content to more visibility.

We all want to earn money here, don't get me wrong. But I think the rule to not upvote yourself should be implemented in a hard coded form :). There are still ways around it obviously but it sets a good signal, especially for new users, imo.

Capital gains? I mean, that's the traditional and time honored reason to invest in securities.

I realize that it's fiscally irresponsible to not self vote when significant income is at stake. However, self voting is antithetical to the purpose of Steemit, as stated in the white paper, which is to reward content creators for creating value in the platform.

I don't recall seeing anything in the white paper advocating milking the rewards pool for quick cash, at least not in a positive way. I do recall seeing manipulation of the rewards mechanism would cause user trust to suffer, and constituted a threat to Steemit.

So, is there a point to Steemit beyond self voting after you have a grip of SP, or does it just become a cash cow?

It looks like people avoid you, but I agree with you on this one.

What's the point of spending money on SP when people like you, @ned, @officialfuzzy, @steemit, @steem, @blocktrades, and Idk who tf else got it by mining.

I mine other cryptos all day long. It cost me about $3000 for the gear, and it makes about $17/day. If I could mine SP at this rate, and I had other ways to cover my bills, I wouldn't even bother trying to earn SP by writing and curating.

However, you got that at a rate more like 100 steem power per day, even more, over that first two months.

You, and the rest of you preminers, you risked nothing to get that SP. I have only got SP that I bought, or earned, and I can proudly say that what remains of my SP, was not earned by being upvoted by preminers.

And every time I look at the chart and see all that selling. I know it's you guys 'powering down' what you never risked anything to power up.

If it was really your SP, you wouldn't use it this way, because it's extremely narcissistic behaviour to upvote yourself. Normal human beings find this kind of behaviour offensive.

@nextgencrypto I think it should be obvious to everyone by now that you are aka berniesanders.

good luck with that, aptly named @sneak.

You are all going to have to fess up pretty soon, or, I hope your exit strategy is in progress otherwise you are gonna be in some serious trouble.

I am pretty sure that you have broken laws under the jurisdiction where steemit is registered, Luxembourg. Never mind that also puts you under EU jurisdiction.

Do you think you are going to get away with this, when everything is so transparent on the chain? You should be taking this a bit more seriously, like you are under oath, and you could gog to jail, just for making a false representation, or refusing to answer a direct question.

Thank you for posting benjojo.

Lack of communication at Steemit is a problem. Lack of leadership is a problem. Allowing bully accounts to dictate policy is a problem.

There are many high powered accounts in a state of change.....whether it is renting out SP, delegating SP or powering down.....this activity alone should indicate there is a problem. If there is no benefit to having great amounts of SP.....then there is no incentive to having great amounts of SP.

The latest HF has resulted in people for the most part voting in terms of percentage rather than value. What is the gain in having SP?

Have tried to contact you in chat.....benjojo not found is the message.

Elf spice has said.... he is loki...if that assists.

Thank you for opportunity to think on these things.

All the best to you. Cheers.

I felt I had to post this. The lack of comms is really really bad. I have absolutely no idea why they would allow it to get to this. After all, it's so easy to communicate on steemit.

I think the HF19, as I think @dan and @aggroed (among others) predicted, was a mistake. I was all for it becuase I thought it would be fairer.....shows what I know!

This is sue though, if it is real and the lack of transparency is really concerning. I hope they address it now.

Not sure why you couldn't get me on chat?? I am not often in there but I'm supposed to get e-mail notifications and my account is definitely working last time I checked!

cheers bud.

I don't think we should blame hf19. Block chain based data systems are relatively new. Steem is an experiment as is Bitcoin. Whose to say bitcoin will be able to keep up with its growth and the nodes will just need too much disk space to work in say twenty years?

Bitcoin has been running for eight years. It has worked this long and that gives confidence. Steem has worked two years and yes in order to do anything interesting the straight forward approach means you need an RPC node. I feel elfspice is sincere but that doesn't mean he is correct and if he is incorrect it doesn't mean he is insincere.

I am not blaming HF19 for what @elfspice is talking about.....which is an issue with the database architecture as I understand it.

I agree, either way I believe @elfspice's intentions are good. There are too many observable issues which combined with his explanation, right or wrong necessitate far more communication from steemit.inc and @ned.

HF19 had nothing to do with it. It was going to hell anyway, already, beforehand. HF19 just extended the bonanza of rewards pool milking to everyone, instead of just the premined giant whale accounts, who were already doing that 'responsibly' before.

I'm not holding my breath on there being any change in the leopard's spots. They have kept denying thte facts of my own experiences, but today, none other than @furion came out and said what I have been saying since I first started to try and work with steemd

https://steemit.com/steem/@furion/updates-on-steem-python-steemdata-and-the-node-situation

Full rpc steemd nodes are a challenge to run. Currently, they require expensive servers with 128GB of RAM, and regular baby-sitting. To my knowledge, there are no open solutions for managing steemd clusters . Such software would be much appreciated, not only by developers, but also exchanges (currently, both Bitfinex and Poloniex have STEEM&SBD deposits/withdrawals frozen, as they are failing to tame resource hungry steemd [2]).

As nodes became harder and more expensive to run, community powered nodes disappeared.
Aside from @gtg's node, I am not aware of any public nodes. As far as I know, two of the best community developers, @jesta and @good-karma run their own. Steemit's nodes are generally a bit slow, and occasionally unreliable [3].

BTW @furion, I already wrote failover scripts, and if anyone had been sponsoring my work, even a little bit more (and I did this work while living in a homeless shelter and spending my days at drop in centres) I might have already provided the solution they were looking for.

But nobody wants to support my work, because I tell it like it is about the shit I am dealing with, which looks bad. Damn straight it looks bad, because it is bad. Amazingly, it is possible for a piece of shit to smell like shit.

Yes, I am indeed the same person behind the two accounts. I switched over to @elfspice because, well, it's my old nick, my first online username in my first forum account at DMT World. And the hive. If you think the fact that I have been involved in the drug underground chat networks in any way discredits me, you are right out of line. In 2013 I was running an account on the Silk road, and I ditched it because I was fatally mismanaging my assets and resources. I even begged to be honest, with DPR, to let me refund my deposit and close my account. It had appreciated by 300% at the time. He said no. I had a friend help me out with faking transactions to meet the requirements, after I had begged 3 times to just let me have my deposit back.

I can tell you, it did not endear me to DPR, and I honestly thought, as the scuttlebut said, that he was not in fact running it anymore.

I don't even know what to think about it now. Ross Ulbricht in his media impressions since his arrest, did not read like the DPR that told me, basically, that he didn't write the code running the server, and he couldn't change the rules of refund.

I have no idea what to think of it all now, whether I was really talking to Ross, or someone else when I was trying to get out of SR. Or if Ross was the real DPR, or not. I think he probably was.

But suffice it to say, that I learned one thing out of all this.

Nothing is what it seems on the internet. Especially if the government law and its agencies has something to say about what is going on.

You people at steemit, and the premined accounts, is it a coincidence that suddenly you are all turning on each other, right after the SEC says that it has jurisdiction over securities contracts, like Steem Power?

FUD?

yeah, I'm getting paid so good at this that my whole living depends on me keeping 4 high end video cards and two machines mining altcoins to pay my rent.

You all have an opportunity to stop the lies, and redeem your reputations. But you are continuing to step up the lies. You are gonna get in so much shit, I am not even gonna shed one tear over your misery. You don't know what misery is. If you end up dead, you are gonna have it easy.

this chain will scale. the talent that designed steem and eos scaling strategies works for steemit.inc.

Ned,

I love this blockchain. I love this app. Mostly I love these people.

I'm sure you've been scanning the posts lately that have been begging for communication. The beauty of blockchain is transparency and I'm sure you already know that.

The lack of clear lines of communication from the top is building the perceived image that Steemit INC simply does not care to be transparent.

That image destroys user's confidence in the platform as you can not sell transparency and not seem to be transparent yourself.

I know that there are politics at play, and that you all feel that you are making a calculated decision but your reputation as a company is at stake.

I don't think that's something worth gambling on.

I remember you all posted a job opening for someone that would communicate to the users of Steemit. Sorry if this offends anyone but if they have been hired I haven't realized it.

Meaning, if they have been hired they aren't doing an adequate job.

Is there anything we can do to open up these lines of communication?

Maybe host a live stream with questions from the community?

If you read this, thank you.

This is also a DPoS blockchain, which means there are many important contributors working for YOU. Consider the responses here from Witnesses and other technologists. It appears to me they are right.

hey ned I am a lead software developer tester for one of the top 20 tech cos. I do see some issues. I am currently looking through the source code and aiming to for fortify the testing suite. If there are any meet ups or sync I should attend I would love to. I really believe in this platform and would like to make it better and keep the confidence high.

Thank you @ned

You can take me, but you will never take my bunghole, Hm heh.... For I am the Great Cornholio Hm heh I have no bunghole, hm heh...

I am Cornholio! (Whoa! Hm heh... that was cool) I need T.P. for my bunghole! Come out with your pants down!

Hi, @ned I wrote a post about how to attract new people to steemit. I don't know how to reach you, so please give a look. https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/will-steem-succeed-or-commit-suicide

Thank you for commenting @ned, is there anything to be done to bridge the knowledge gap between the developers and the non technical users? Especially when issues occur as they have done recently. It would be great to have a short update so that people who notice things like exchange issues, nodes going down etc have pertinent information they can trust.

Transparency is the main issue for everyone eventually on Steemit. The lack of transparency is extremely intuitive on their behalf, because ALL of the parts that need to be seen are, yet the secrets behind the curtain are all just optimizations and tweaks to further IMPROVE our existance on Steemit. I do think that there needs to be an "HR" of sorts that speaks to the community and comes back to the drawing board with our direct input. Technically isn't that what a witness is sort of for? I see a new group needed that consists of "Group Ambassadors" for each main posting group. That way, you have people who specialize in a specific posting matter - ie: myself and Vape technology. Now I could tell you that we have a very small vape group on here, and that is mostly due to the issues with downvotes from people who don't agree with smoking. (Seriously, do the research.) Something so small could make the curation of a great read that much easier. Although I have not been a user for long, I have seen the lack of factual information in the user's face: and that is my only gripe about Steemit.

-@jgr33nwood

thanks for clearing things up and putting our minds to rest

Sure. When you release the secret sauce that makes a RPC replay in less than 2 days.

Yeah, when you finally finish the rewrite and move the forum data to a separated data store and not tangled in the graph blocks. You have to rewrite graphene, and steemd, at the same time.

How's that going, ned? and where is this stuff you said you were working on, to me, on skype, almost a full year ago?

We're working on a ton! Can you be more specific?

When are you going to move the forum data store out of the graphene shared_memory file?

Flagged for disagreement over rewards. The next highest comment was $80, so this is pretty excessive if it was meant for visibility..
Edit: Self vote and flag have been removed, thanks @ned :)

am I the only one who has considered that maybe you downvoted officialfuzzy to give him more publicity? Just looking at the effects of said downvote. that is a guess... you are not obliged to reveal your purposes to me... but I consider that the downvote in question may have had a benevolent purpose.

I removed the @smackdown.kitty and @sadkitten flags since you removed your self vote (which you changed to 100% vote! wow I had a surprise waiting for me today!)

I'm curious as to why exactly so if you feel like it please let me know. 😊

I agree it would be nice to get some answers about this. From what I can tell elfspice had a pretty negative attitude towards steemit lately, but he also seems quite knowledgeable about the underlying technical systems. It's hard to know how much of what he says is true, so it would be nice to

I completely agree. One thing it highlights is that steemit.inc's communications with the community are seriously lacking. Does anyone really know how they are coming along with the challenges they are wrestling with? How soon anything already discussed will be implemented?

It is important to understand for sure if steemit.inc are withholding critical information about the health of the network or if @elfspice is wrong.

It certainly doesnt improve optics never communicating.

Totally. I don't want steemit.inc's custodianship to turn into something to be lamented. I'm sure there are people working very hard there. But, there is quite a lot that does not stack up right now and the terrible communication is one major red flag.

Maybe some more responses from other witnesses (like gtg comment) on the topic will help clarify if it's a non-issue. But the communication aspect is still an issue. I'm only 6 weeks in and in the last 2 weeks it's starting to feel like there's nobody up front in the engine car. There really is no "corporate" team, HR, PR, etc to interface with users. I rely on older members, the 2016 group like yourself, (I call them Primes) for community support, guidance and growth.

here we are, users, owners of the blockchain :-)
that's by design I think

Very true, but there could be a central voice that keeps everyone in the loop and defines clear objectives, goals, and addresses problems or concerns so these issues dont boil over. I try to ask questions to witnesses to learn as I go, but its a new experience not having a central voice.

owners, yes, because you premined it.

How much does your RPC cost to run? There is no fuckin way you can keep it up and running like you do, if it isn't at least three or four full dedicated 16+ core xeon rigs with dual or more NVMe SSD's, 256Gb of memory servers and multiple failovers with DNS round robin.

Cos even poloniex, bitfinex and even bittrex are having problems keeping it going.

Even @furion is finally letting the cat out of the bag about the situation

https://steemit.com/steem/@furion/updates-on-steem-python-steemdata-and-the-node-situation

Valid questions that deserve answers.

Transparency is the key. Along with proactive attitude towards resolving situations.

Upvoted and resteemed.

Thank you. I think you are absolutely correct about transparency.

I think we need an official updates feed here on the platform so the community can help the devs.. We have the power to change the system and help grow.
Thanks for sharing this article so we stay up to date.
Cheers

I totally agree with this. The community needs transparent, up-to-date information so that it can try to help save itself.

It would be great to get more reports from the Steemit team. If there are issues then they need to be brought up and addressed. Bugs and other problems can be reported on Github

Unless they ban you from it.

Absolutely