If Servicenodes were available, I'm sure a lot of people around here would set-up a fair few and donate most of their profits (after hosting costs).
You would probably see donations in the region of $3,000 to $7,000 / month, mainly because it would end up being a self funding mechanism where more development would equal higher price, would generate higher value donations, would generate more Bittrex activity.
Servicenodes would become the main patrons.
Agreed. Why not just use mr. Spreads original implementation, tie it to cpu mining or running a full spr node as a placeholder. Price will increase,network strengthened. and it will allow a greater window for what georgem is trying to accomplish. I'll certainly donate a fair amount of service node proceeds to development.
I agree with the sentiment of moving things forward in this way, and I would not be upset if this was one of the next steps if it was done
correctly... The problem is as has been discussed "taxing" the miners.
The
pros of getting service nodes up and running are many. Funding for Georgem, strengthening the network, and attracting new investors. I think it would be a huge step forward for the project.
The
cons as Georgem, and anyone else who hold the principles of decentralization to be true is that in proceeding in that manner is seemingly counter to their ideals.
This leads me to believe that if you are attempting to make a convincing argument for why Georgem
should proceed by implementing service nodes in that manner, the crux of your argument cannot be why it might be "good" for the network, or funding, or building the community... but must instead be reasons for why the principles are worth being violated because it leads to better implementation of the ideals in the future or that they are just not being violated at all. Perhaps there are more that I am not thinking of.
1)
Why perhaps the ends will justify the means (in terms of decentralization). This argument would be something as follows: By "sacrificing" decentralization now you are paving the way to more decentralization in the future. In implementing Service Nodes, the coin will have a dev fund / larger pool of donors, will attract more people, and perhaps get some more devs on the team. This will ultimately lead to
more decentralization
sooner and thus the slight shift away from the ideals was actually a larger shift towards strengthening them.
2)
Why it is not in fact a shift away from the ideals of decentralization.
This is harder to argue in my opinion. I am not sure how I would go about persuading someone of this. The big issue seems to be the 'tax' on the miners. In other words, it an involuntary payment that is forced to be made.
I guess for this I would say that the level of offense of the principles of decentralization is relative. Say for instance, Georgem decides that he wants to hard code (levy) a 50% fee on the miners unilaterally... this would, be more centralized than say, taking a vote.
The next point I would make is in regards to the system that Georgem plans to implement - the miner voting system.
In the case that you don't know about this - essentially miners will vote on a percentage for the entire mining network to pay to Service Nodes. So if there are two people mining on the network with equal hash power and one votes 100% and the other 0% then they both have to pay 50%... until on of them receives more blocks than the other in which case the vote will tilt in one direction.
So in this system, one could say that there is the possibility of some centralization... in the case that there are miners with a whole lot of hash power. However, it is still more decentralized than Georgem unilaterally deciding to hard code a 50% 'fee' on miners.
Anyway, if that system is
acceptable (and is not 'perfectly' decentralized (perfectly decentralized seems an impossible ideal) , then logically if we implemented the already coded Service Nodes in a
similar manner, it would not be in violation of any principles.
How would we implement them in a similar way? Well, I guess I will throw out an idea, please feel free to post your own I think it might be a good discussion to have...
But my idea would be that we can have miners vote in the forum... sort of as they would in the coded version. The difference being that the miners could vote Y or N to a set of proposals. i.e "Should we implement Service Nodes with X% rewards"
If some majority (or all) miners vote yes for it, then how is that any different from the future plans for Service Nodes? If it is 'different' then to what degree is it really that different? At what degree of difference is it not worth continuing with?
Problems I see with my idea that there may or may not be solutions to:
Ensuring all voters are actually miners.
Ensuring all miners vote. Maybe there are more.
Anyways, just my thoughts on the matter. There may be holes in my logic... but I hope not, lol.
Essentially, if A (Georgem's plan for Service Nodes is decentralized) and B (my idea or some variation) is == A then B is decentralized.I suspect that the rest of this discussion will revolve around whether A == B or not (and if not, to what degree).