DISCLAIMER - I do not run the faucet. I however do run YapRai Wallet and the raiblockstradebot and am part of the dev team for raiblocks. I'm taking a risk by replying only because I'm hoping to be more responsive on BCT - therefore would appreciate sensible replies. Also please don't take my reply as negative or patronising - its meant to be encouraging.
Ways to improve the faucet:
(Backend)
Separate two "team" and "solo" interactions, with separate reward system.
solo:
Limit the number of clicks per minute to something humanly possible, through a database with timeout per wallet. (Recommended mongodb).
team:
Create an api paid via domain registration, with concurrent queries, through a database with timeout and consultation by ip and wallet. (Recommended mongodb).
(Frontend)
solo:
Decrease the difficulty of captcha and create a virtual keyboard with ids, organization and dynamically generated names functions to prevent scheduled execution.
team:
Through api, allow the site registered as a team to include the service through remote javascript (similar to recaptcha, solve media, facebook).
Rounds:
Whenever a round is finished, pause for 15 minutes while making the payments, and start a new round after all payments are completed. This would allow for greater system stability and auditing.
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This would allow ordinary people to continue to have a fair distribution, and sites like "claimers.io" continue to work with the raiblocks. In addition to decreasing and limiting the use of bots. Since they would not be able to bypass backend validations.
One way that would allow the community to contribute more would be to make available in github the fonts codes of the telegram bots(wallet and trade), this will allowed greater integration with other systems. The big mistake of the Raiblocks, is that it is very closed and its distribution monopolized by some people. This will greatly decrease the use of coin and your value.
Administrators need to stop complaining and ignore feedback about site of official distribution(faucet.raiblockscommunity.net), and facilitate integrations so that new uses are created for raiblocks, which today are only about 3 or 4 sites.
The faucet is hard, really hard, there have been loads of suggestions on how to improve it, thousands are 'dev decrease TH' or 'increase top 200' and then any changes are met with backlash of 'now i don't get as much' or its too slow or the pools are stealing my xrb and if it gets particularly nasty then there is a lot of rascism which is just not acceptable. This got to a point where it was impossible to actually discuss raiblocks without being flooded with this - The team had to move off telegram onto slack and then from there still struggle with more and more complaints.
I really appreciate you taking the time to write a proposal on how to improve the faucet and I've posted it onto the admin channel for review. Why not develop your idea further, perhaps a white paper or even demo set up - I promise that I'll take it seriously but can't guarantee that it will be implemented.
There are members of the dev team who put hours a day into trying to maintain the faucet, lots of behind the scenes work has been done and they are constantly working - even today they have implemented methods to try and fight the issues of bots.
With access to the botwallet and tradebot codes, I think many would have new ideas for new systems.
In regards to the the source code of various programs that use raiblocks there are loads of open source examples out there. I have been cautious releasing the tradebot source code due to concerns about exploits - you could have always contacted me directly to ask for advice or to see the code. I've published 4 rai projects on github already (
https://github.com/jamescoxon?tab=repositories) and developed an open web api to interface with yaprai wallet, there is a #development channel on slack and for the api for yaprai go to #yaprai_api.
In the source of the wallet, it is necessary to review some parts, which are generating errors. Like the "dumped core" problem generated by "blake2".
Finally the wallet development is ongoing - the lead dev is working really hard on it, as per the newsletter 17 commits in 14 days and it had been noted in the last few days that there was an IO issue which he has already developed a fix for and they recently 'recruited' a new dev to start work on fixing some of the bugs.
I intended to contribute with the system, but from the treatment received in the "slack group" when I mentioned the problems of the faucet, I give up contributing.
If the faucet is maintained by the official website, it is an official subject, and can not be ignored.
The best way to get involved in raiblocks is by doing something, write code, design a logo, make something - actions speak louder then words