Budget glitch?

[rango]

All proposals, that made it into the budget, have not been paid this time:

Example:
labitconf-adv
Payment block 382168 (already passed by more than 100 blocks)
Payment address Xn7rMqkLVsTUmD84mjSQRhsVVFWZfTMGkv

No budget payment can be found for this address.

Did i miss anything or did the budget system really have a bug on this payout cycle?

Best,
Rango

 

[eduffield]

All proposals, that made it into the budget, have not been paid this time:

Example:
labitconf-adv
Payment block 382168 (already passed by more than 100 blocks)
Payment address Xn7rMqkLVsTUmD84mjSQRhsVVFWZfTMGkv

No budget payment can be found for this address.

Did i miss anything or did the budget system really have a bug on this payout cycle?

Best,
Rango

It looks like we missed the finalization of the budget. This part of the budget system really needs some work for redundancy. The way it works requires someone on the network to run the daemon in "suggest" mode, which will finalize the budget then pay a fee to broadcast that message to the network. Bummer that I missed it, I was at the conference when the network would have finalized it.

Maybe finalization could be a quorum action, that would be a lot better I think and reduce the risk of something like this in the future.

 

[Sub-Ether]

Whoops!

 

[TanteStefana]

I'm going to complain again about the loss of coins, LOL.

I know very well, that the number of coins doesn't matter, that we can move the decimal point over as far as we want, that all cryptos are infinitely divisible, however:

I believe there is a psychological barrier that people have for the cost of a single coin. Having 0.356 bitcoins doesn't give you the same feeling that having 3.5 blankcoins gives you.

I think the only reason why Doge is up so high is because it's so cheap! It feels good to buy 1000 doge, no matter the cost. And buying them for pennies, is only more fun.

No, it isn't logical, but it's real.

Finally, the more coins that never are issued, the more the instamine matters to people. Dash's coin supply keeps shrinking and shrinking, not to mention the funds lost that were supposed to pay for things this month.

I suspect it is a lot harder to do, and do safely, but if there is any way we can keep a tally on how many coins were allocated to the budget, and have them always remain available, forever, I would feel much better. We never have to spend them, but if they should ever be needed, they will not have been wasted.

Another thing that is still irking me, is how the payment to put in a proposal is thrown to the wind. Why isn't it added to the budget? I understand the block reward could be played, but not the budget.

If nothing else, all of this affects the way people view our project and the accusations of centralized ownership. I know in the scheme of things, it's minimal, but it's also wasted. These funds were meant to do work for us.

If there is any way this could be fixed, I'd vote for it.

 

[Solarminer]

Although this is unfortunate, I am confident this will be fixed in 30 days or less.

Tante, if we just allow more coins to be created, or give an exception, we destroy the concept that you need to do quality work to get paid from the blockchain. The threat of not being paid is what keeps people honest and working hard. The scarcity of Dash is also what gives it value and the loss of coins should theoretically bump up the price of Dash.

As for the proposal fee, this needs to go dashwhale or sites that accept proposals or host comments. Dashtalk server fees could work too - it just needs to have a story behind it.

At the next talk...
Question: So anyone can just post budget proposals....are you worried about spamming?
Answer: Yes, it is open to everyone. We already thought of the spam concern and we implement a fee to submit each proposal. It is used to fund a website that you can submit the proposal, which also hosts a discussion forum.

See doesn't that sound cool?

 

[TanteStefana]

Ok, forget my other message, I didn't see this answer (which is what I was looking for) LOL, thanks Solarminer!

I don't see how keeping funds that were not spent available for proposals in the future. In fact, I would think that would make it so there would me less pressure to spend everything that's available. Yet, if an opportunity comes along, like sponsoring a big convention, etc... we could do it. We could afford to do big things once in a while, when the time and opportunity arise.

So I kind of see it opposite.

But still, you helped me keep a better perspective, thanks

 

[camosoul]

I hate to say it, but... Toljaso.

You don't have to write code to know that a dyke with your finger in it is a bad idea. No, I'm not talking about butch lesbians...

P.S. I support gay marriage, but only if both chicks are hot.

 

[stan.distortion]

Although this is unfortunate, I am confident this will be fixed in 30 days or less.

Tante, if we just allow more coins to be created, or give an exception, we destroy the concept that you need to do quality work to get paid from the blockchain. The threat of not being paid is what keeps people honest and working hard. The scarcity of Dash is also what gives it value and the loss of coins should theoretically bump up the price of Dash.

As for the proposal fee, this needs to go dashwhale or sites that accept proposals or host comments. Dashtalk server fees could work too - it just needs to have a story behind it.

At the next talk...
Question: So anyone can just post budget proposals....are you worried about spamming?
Answer: Yes, it is open to everyone. We already thought of the spam concern and we implement a fee to submit each proposal. It is used to fund a website that you can submit the proposal, which also hosts a discussion forum.

See doesn't that sound cool?

The fee could also be used to incentivise voting as turnout could be a lot better. The fee as a percentage of the proposed budget could help too, allow things like microbudgets for small but significant improvements. I'd been wondering about when budgets should be requested too, before or after the work has been done. A hard and fast rule on it probably wouldn't work but a convention of after might make sense, cash on delivery rather than owing work to the system.

-1 to funding a website to host the proposal details, storing them on the network would make a lot more sense imo and that should fit in with DashDrive, I'd imagine it's possible to store them as plain text in the budget.dat file in the mean time and I think there should be at least some summary text attached to them.

 

[David]

Personally, I was in favor of allowing unused 10% money to be created as part of future superblocks. I remember there being a big debate on it, but I don't remember exactly why people were against it. I do remember a lot of talk about too much money incentivizing pork barrel spending.

 

[camosoul]

Proof of Service.......

Doesn't that include actually reading and voting on proposals?

What if perpetual abstainers didn't get payments anymore? If you're not reading and voting, you're failing what is the most important service that MNs currently provide, eh?

Granted, it's not easy to find the info at this point... It's not like voting for the masses. MNs are a select voting community intended to service the network with sound future-making decisions. If they're not doing it.... That deserves a Proof of Service penalty. Like, woah major penalty. It may not be practical to impose a 100% participation in every single proposal... But there's got to be evidence that these money hose operators are at least phoning-in an attempt to participate in the process... I think my previous suggestion for a masternode wallet nag about new proposals propagated in the blockchain short message capacity, and observe whether the pubkeys of MNs have voted one way or another on a certain percentage of the most recent proposals... This data already exists, just parse it and dispense discipline. There's got to be some kind of measurable closed-loop metric in there....

There are so many ways to attack the excuse that 10% is all that's needed for an approval... Leaving the hair-on-fire thing hanging out there because there is a valid excuse for it, but seeing there are obvious, fixable, low-hanging-fruit that could eliminate that excuse... It's like the vacancy is deliberately being left unfilled. I know that's not the case. But, only because I've been a Cult of Evan member since back when this was called xcoin. Anyone new to the scene doesn't have the benefit of knowing that the devness is not a bunch of dicks.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I'm going to complain again about the loss of coins, LOL.

I know very well, that the number of coins doesn't matter, that we can move the decimal point over as far as we want, that all cryptos are infinitely divisible, however:

I believe there is a psychological barrier that people have for the cost of a single coin. Having 0.356 bitcoins doesn't give you the same feeling that having 3.5 blankcoins gives you.

I think the only reason why Doge is up so high is because it's so cheap! It feels good to buy 1000 doge, no matter the cost. And buying them for pennies, is only more fun.

No, it isn't logical, but it's real.

Finally, the more coins that never are issued, the more the instamine matters to people. Dash's coin supply keeps shrinking and shrinking, not to mention the funds lost that were supposed to pay for things this month.

I suspect it is a lot harder to do, and do safely, but if there is any way we can keep a tally on how many coins were allocated to the budget, and have them always remain available, forever, I would feel much better. We never have to spend them, but if they should ever be needed, they will not have been wasted.

Another thing that is still irking me, is how the payment to put in a proposal is thrown to the wind. Why isn't it added to the budget? I understand the block reward could be played, but not the budget.

If nothing else, all of this affects the way people view our project and the accusations of centralized ownership. I know in the scheme of things, it's minimal, but it's also wasted. These funds were meant to do work for us.

If there is any way this could be fixed, I'd vote for it.

I agree, I made a similar suggestion a while back. Since then I've come around to wanting a full on 1:1000 split. If someone can show me how to make such a proposal for voting....

Simply put, a 1:1000 split would give us fewer decimal places and, thus, more palatable to newcomers. I would also suggest that the last two digits are dropped entirely. This would give us a currency with 3 decimal places, which I think the public can more easily grasp. Even if dash grows in value by 1000, those last two digits being chopped would still only be worth 0.02% of a US cent (can someone please confirm my calculation is correct).

For creating a Paypal like service, it doesn't matter how many decimal places there are because the end-users are probably dealing with fiat... but if we want a system to transition the masses from fiat to crypto, then suddenly the decimal places becomes a significant psychological barrier.

Despite what some die-hards think, the scarcity argument only applies to currency specific features, it has absolutely no connection to the transfer of tokens between people. I'll tell you why... crypto has maybe two universally accepted pillars; a) permissionless, b) frictionless transfer. Frictionless means, the cost of transfer is next to zero. With enough liquidity and with efficient markets (adequate competition), that frictionless transfer applies across ALL popular cryptos. This means, when I go to buy something in crypto, I can split my payment across a basket of cryptos where the SUM OF SUPPLIES is greater than any single currency supply... and yet it works flawlessly, we already know this to be true.

 

[TanteStefana]

You can even keep the decimal places, I don't see a problem with those. But making it so that there are more "whole" Dash makes them easier to understand and gives a more positive psychological experience. It also feels easier to spend, which ultimately is the goal. Spend 'em, use 'em.

We kind of need those decimal places for micro payments, but they don't have to show up, or there could be a choice to see them, or round 'em up.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

You can even keep the decimal places, I don't see a problem with those. But making it so that there are more "whole" Dash makes them easier to understand and gives a more positive psychological experience. It also feels easier to spend, which ultimately is the goal. Spend 'em, use 'em.

We kind of need those decimal places for micro payments, but they don't have to show up, or there could be a choice to see them, or round 'em up.

I'm all for micro-micro-payments but, honestly, even without the those last two digits, according to my math, the smallest denomination would be worth just 0.02% of one cent ... and that's if dash grows in value 1000 fold... to give it some perspective, bitcoin is currently 168x the price of dash! If we keep the last two digits, the smallest denomination would obviously be 0.0002% of one cent... again, that's assuming dash grows in value by 1000x!

If dash found a legitimate application to use such minuscule amounts (per second streaming?), it would in all likelihood be for a very popular application, thus a very demanding load on the servers... and if that was the case, I would argue, from a technical point of view, that per minute billing (or other) would be more practical. Obviously, 10 second billing would be an instant 10x improvement on performance.

 

[camosoul]

I agree, I made a similar suggestion a while back. Since then I've come around to wanting a full on 1:1000 split. If someone can show me how to make such a proposal for voting....

Simply put, a 1:1000 split would give us fewer decimal places and, thus, more palatable to newcomers. I would also suggest that the last two digits are dropped entirely. This would give us a currency with 3 decimal places, which I think the public can more easily grasp. Even if dash grows in value by 1000, those last two digits being chopped would still only be worth 0.02% of a US cent (can someone please confirm my calculation is correct).

For creating a Paypal like service, it doesn't matter how many decimal places there are because the end-users are probably dealing with fiat... but if we want a system to transition the masses from fiat to crypto, then suddenly the decimal places becomes a significant psychological barrier.

Despite what some die-hards think, the scarcity argument only applies to currency specific features, it has absolutely no connection to the transfer of tokens between people. I'll tell you why... crypto has maybe two universally accepted pillars; a) permissionless, b) frictionless transfer. Frictionless means, the cost of transfer is next to zero. With enough liquidity and with efficient markets (adequate competition), that frictionless transfer applies across ALL popular cryptos. This means, when I go to buy something in crypto, I can split my payment across a basket of cryptos where the SUM OF SUPPLIES is greater than any single currency supply... and yet it works flawlessly, we already know this to be true.

Don't tamper with the duff supply. The decimal point is meaningless, you can set it to show only 2 places in the client... There you go, dumbed down, and you didn't completely destroy the system to do it. This commentary comes from a fundamental lack of understanding about how any form of cryptocurrency works, and has been shot down over and over again...

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Don't tamper with the duff supply. The decimal point is meaningless, you can set it to show only 2 places in the client... There you go, dumbed down, and you didn't completely destroy the system to do it.

Well, at least I gave some substance to my argument... how would it "destroy the system"?

We're here to innovate... if we want to keep the status quo then we just stick with bitcoin. I'm not saying every idea must be implemented, but to suggest it would "destroy the system" without some justification is not very helpful.

 

[camosoul]

Well, at least I gave some substance to my argument... how would it "destroy the system"?

We're here to innovate... if we want to keep the status quo then we just stick with bitcoin. I'm not saying every idea must be implemented, but to suggest it would "destroy the system" without some justification is not very helpful.

There's [plenty of substance. I'm just not re-iterating the same old thing for the thousandth time...

Only an individual duff has value. There are 16 "places" of duffs. Where the decimal point shows up along that continuum is irrelevant. A duff is worth what a duff is worth.

The decimal point exists for the very sake of making it easier to understand and compare. You can choose how many of them hang off the end in the client. It changes nothing. Now, if you suddenly multiply or divide the entire supply of duffs by 3 orders of magnitude, as you suggest, you just deleted 3 out of 16 of everything that everyone everywhere is holding. How about I just start deleting numbers from your bank account because I think they're ugly? Starting from the right, I'm going to delete 3 zeros from your $100.00 bill. You now have $0.10. What a great idea! And we've also crapped all over the potential future granularity as value appreciates... But, it won't now that the supply has been wrecked.

the very concept of saying "I have XXXX.XXXX DASH" is a misnomer. The decimal point is arbitrarilly placed at the center, with 8 places to each side, and that is simply declared to be "1.0 DASH." It's really not. It's actually 100,000,000 duffs. It only exists to make it easier for people who don't know how this works.

Ever exchange dollars to yen?

It's kinda like that. There are entire national economies already based on this. Government inflation simply pushed the decimal point in the opposite direction than we're planning to do...

 

[GrandMasterDash]

If you "deleted zeros" from my back account is misleading, to say the least... it wouldn't be just me, it would affect the entire supply - everyone - so yeah, I don't mind at all. No existing holder would be better off or worse off, it's purely to help onboard new users.

As for granularity, I gave a concrete and practical example for the value of one duff. Try telling us the applications you imagine for spending 0.0002% of one cent?... because the moment you do, I will explain to you how many transactions would be required by how many users.. thus, making it completely impractical and unnecessary.

 

[camosoul]

If you "deleted zeros" from my back account is misleading, to say the least... it wouldn't be just me, it would affect the entire supply - everyone - so yeah, I don't mind at all. No existing holder would be better off or worse off, it's purely to help onboard new users.

No, it's not. You're not underdstanding floating point...

Why cripple the granularity? It's not just about value, but fractional conversion. How many times you want to round up? We're not going to just print out more one day. Ever duff lost is lost...

As for granularity, I gave a concrete and practical example for the value of one duff. Try telling us the applications you imagine for spending 0.0002% of one cent?... because the moment you do, I will explain to you how many transactions would be required by how many users.. thus, making it completely impractical and unnecessary.

At the moment. We're talking about perpetuity tho...

When/if DASH is worth $10,000, you want to add more zeroes back on?

Ever see the "microDASH" and "milliDASH" settings in your client? BTC has them, too...

For a reason.

You can always change the number of points displayed, and that's the argument, right? Too many decimal places is mean and scary? So stop looking at them.

When 0.0001DASH is worth $200, how do you represent that penny now?

If you don't want to imagine Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day, uh, don't. Is this really a problem? Adjust the cosmetics. It's built right in...

For inflationary currencies, it expands in the opposite direction. We need to be able to go both ways because we're not going to start printing out 100,000,000,000 DASH block rewards all of a sudden and human nature is unstable. Wasn't BTC worth $1,200 once? And it's a complete piece of crap! What if it only had 2 decimal points? How would you spend only one dollar?

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I'd be fine with what you say if we could enforce the changes to all wallets, and thus to all users... not just telling people individually how to change their client display. This kind of change needs to be universal.

 

[camosoul]

I'd be fine with what you say if we could enforce the changes to all wallets, and thus to all users... not just telling people individually how to change their client display. This kind of change needs to be universal.

No it doesn't.

I can count my money in pennies, decadollars, or picobucks if I want. I can even call it 100kbucks instead of 100000dollars. How about 1.32 Gigaduff? 0.759 Terracents?

It's my money, and as long as the most granular unit isn't being fucked with by someone, I can do what I want with it because it'll be consistent. Which is exactly what you want, right? Consistency?

Not being allowed to fuck with the number of decimal places is enforcing uniformity... If big numbers are scary, you can just not look at them...

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Your example of 0.0001 dash being worth $200 is ridiculous.. that's one million times it's current value, in US dollars... by the time one dollar is worth one million, would you still be using it? Like I said earlier, bitcoin is currently 168x more expensive than dash.

If you take my example from above, moving the decimal 3 to the right, then your 0.0001 dash becomes 0.1.dash. You'd still have two more decimal places, and that your example is ONE TWENTY-MILLIONTH in size.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

ok, so if you don't care where the decimal place is, it's just a name, why are you against it?

 

[GrandMasterDash]

YOU can handle those decimal places because YOU are so smart... it's not for you, it's for onboarding new users that don't have your smarts

 

[camosoul]

YOU can handle those decimal places because YOU are so smart... it's not for you, it's for onboarding new users that don't have your smarts

This has nothing to do with smart.
It's about cutting off your nose because you don't like it, when you can just not look in the mirror because you're beautiful just the way you are.
Maybe that's why the client has that setting for showing as many decimal points as you feel like...

 

[GrandMasterDash]

The coinomi app, for example, displays 4 decimal places or 8 if you tap it. It goes to 8 decimal places for the reason you stated.. and inherited from it's bitcoin fork. Every dash developer takes it's lead and prerogative from this reference, it's not enforced.

Personally, I agree with you that the decimal place is notional, however, your average Joe does not see things the same way.. they don't want to be dealing with point zeroes or crypto dust. And btw, four decimal places is a big turnoff for Chinese users (bad luck). What we need is some kind of enforcement.

 

[pille]

One day there MAY be a problem with the 18.9m supply indeed. 18.9m * 100000000 duffs = 1.89e+15 or 1.890.000.000.000.000 (1.89 quadrillion). If you want to reserve two decimals for cents it "only" 18.9trillion (thats about the total debt of the US alone).

 

[David]

I think we will find ourselves in the same boat as the Bitcoin community when their currency reached astronomical values per unit...merchants and converters will simply price everything in mDASH.

People think that spending $50,000 on a bitcoin would be ridiculous, but by the time bitcoin is worth that much, they will *actually* be spending $50 on an mBTC. Nobody will talk about whole bitcoin anymore...everything will be based on mBTC.

As a practical matter it's irrelevant anyway. Either a 1000:1 split or pricing in mDASH...it's all the same so it doesn't really matter to me. Plus, we're still a ways from needing to do that =)

 

[TanteStefana]

One day there MAY be a problem with the 18.9m supply indeed. 18.9m * 100000000 duffs = 1.89e+15 or 1.890.000.000.000.000 (1.89 quadrillion). If you want to reserve two decimals for cents it "only" 18.9trillion (thats about the total debt of the US alone).

I don't think there is any way we'll have more than 15,000,000 coins in 150 years, and that's if we don't keep burning them up in the budget system

 

[GrandMasterDash]

If dash's goal is simply to replace Paypal i.e. an intermediately between other currencies, then I don't think any of this matters because ultimately we'll all be looking at the US dollar value etc. But if we want wide-spread acceptance, to be an integral part of a fully functioning economy, then we need to seriously look at these issues.

So, one dash becomes worth $50,000 and we switch to mDash or whatever... that's not as simple as it sounds, it's like asking americans to go metric - haha, fat chance of that happening - so why don't we just address the issue now? Keep in mind, this is not about us here in this forum, this is about the onboarding of new users that will respond better to something closer to what they currently use.

 

[Solarminer]

Yes it is that simple. You would probably use them today even. If you are buying a car pay in Dash, buying a pop pay in mDash, buying a piece of gum pay in uDash, and if you have a pay per second phone(of the future) you pay in duffs. Advertisers and vendors pick the best way to show pricing. This really won't matter anyway, the QR codes will populate the pricing in your wallet so you don't even have to keep track of decimals.

Gold is sold in mg, oz, and tons depending on how much you are buying/measuring at a time. Do we just go around and recalibrate all the scales so the numbers LOOK right, no. People get the difference.

Can we move on to something useful? Maybe GrandMasterDash can do a Dash rap for us. There must be some relation to the great Grand Master Flash.