Quote from: georgem on April 19, 2016, 05:23:47 PM

Quote from: rhinomonkey on April 19, 2016, 04:55:44 PM

Once the vote is made for how long is that percentage kept in place? Will there be multiple voting periods?

Every block will have a vote in it. A value between 0-100.

Obviously whoever finds the block gets to write in that value.
Much like he gets to write in his coinbase tx.

So every block has a vote. Those blocks that don't have a vote (because they are from the previous version) are considered a zero vote.
(this will only have to be considered during the 24 hour interim period after we do the fork. After that it is mandatory protocol for a miner to fill in the vote value.)

How do we now calculate the percentage that goes to the servicenodes?

By looking at the last 1440 blocks, by reading all those 1440 votes and calculating the average of all those votes.

With every new block we repeat this.
Again we look at the last 1440 blocks, which are now 1 block higher, so the average will be slightly different.

And we just repeat this over and over. There is no "voting period" as you say, it just happens continuously, much like new blocks do appear on a constant more or less predictable basis.
(average once a minute).

In effect we are looking at all the votes of the last 24 hours.

And as the globe spins, we are spinning with it!

BTW: With an average over 1440 values we will see a very steady smooth curve.
The maximum the percentage can be moved from one block to the other is 0.07% (that's in the absolute outlier case of having 1439 "0" votes, and 1 "100" vote.)

Thanks for clearing that up. I made the same mistake in my imagination of the schema as I did when I asked you about "kicking" nodes; I assumed the set up was very black and white, when it is actually more of a continuum.

I think it is a great approach (in terms of establishing yet another "free market") and well thought out too. However, I do have some additional questions that I'd like to air out and hear your thoughts on.

While I don't think the same scenario would happen as Bitcoin (miners voting for zero rewards to SNs), I can imagine situations in which some types of miners could be detrimental to the network of node operators. If you allow me to set this up a bit I might be able to explain this more thoroughly and maybe you can correct some holes in my thinking, if there are any.

Below I have set up a relatively simple game theory matrix:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11cLb-JdW5X20KIrg9kizCRvBpgk7zK11XH_OHY7vGgk/edit?usp=sharing

Essentially miners will have three basic choices - mine & reward (whatever amount they wish), mine & not reward, or not mine at all. Node operators have two options - operate nodes or don't operate nodes.

Anyways, that is really just a visualization.

Scenario A involves a large GPU farm miner not caring much about the coin or driving its price / node count down. This miner comes in and is able to mine the majority of the blocks and votes for zero on all of them. This drives the nodes down to being only profitable for a few and results in a less than optimal SN network supporting services. Is this likely to create an environment that is unsuitable for running nodes - extreme fluctuations reducing profitability creating a frustrating inability to have continuous node operation.

Some checks for this I could imagine would be that new miners can not contribute votes for the first few blocks - aka a trial period where they must wait before having the ability to vote. Although maybe these are unnecessary because centralization of mining is unlikely to happen / extreme fluctuations are unlikely to happen due to the long average taken into account?

Scenario B involves miners maintaining low rewards for nodes - especially in the beginning and taking their profits because they can mine more blocks (due to low difficulty). They either don't see the long term benefit of nodes, or don't want to take short term mining losses.

The only power that node operators have is that they can cease to operate and sell their coins and perhaps drive the price down so that rogue miners are no longer incentivized to remove rewards. Perhaps this is how you foresee the interplay between price, miners and SN operators?

The problem I am envisioning is that there are uneven risk profiles for nodes and miners. The SN operators can't take their SPR elsewhere and decide to use them on another coin, whereas (non-SPR friendly) miners can jump in and out whenever they aren't making money. An investment in the mining equipment is less risky because there are multiple opportunities, whereas investing in SNs you subject yourself to the whims of what I classify as rogue profiteering miners (not the SPR supporters) and can't just take your stack and leave lol.

I am more or less just voicing this out loud to understand how you see the balances working out & to see if these scenarios are implausible / extremes that will be rectified by the market.