I'm a software developer too for a healthcare company. I've been accumulating LSK for the past few months. Probably half my portfolio is LSK. I think it has a good chance of success with the use of Javascript and sidechains. The only thing I really hate about it is the current voting system. Here's my thoughts on it.
- You can't divide 101/4 evenly. So if you want to use all your votes you end up wasting 1 whole LISK coin on 2 votes.
- There are hundreds of people who want to be delegates. They all have special requirements too. They all pay out different percentages. They all have different thresholds. Some are grouped together meaning in order to get the rewards you need to vote for these other people. Or you have to register elsewhere. It's very time consuming to try and figure out who to vote for. Currently we have a few different sites that all list delegates to vote for. We also have a lot of delegate advertising clutter on reddit and on this forum.
- The thresholds are not good for people who do not already have thousands of LSK coins. Maybe you are like me with a few hundred LSK coins. I could vote for someone and maybe earn 0.1 LSK a month. However it will take 10 months for me to accumulate 1 LSK which is the minimum threshold for that Delegate. Now I'll get 0.9 LSK when it's sent to me. Or worse case that delegate gets bumped out of the top 100 6 months later and now I've got 0.6 LSK sitting there that I'll never receive. I could vote for all the members in a pool. This would be beneficial as when I accumulate enough for the threshold I'll only eat a single 0.1 LSK transfer fee. But the pool could change around. Now they have a new member and I won't get my LSK unless I vote in the new member. It will cost me 1 LSK to change my vote which proably eliminates any earnings I would have accumulated.
- I think eventually we are going to have a monopoly of delegates. We will get to the point where a new delegate comes along. He/She has a better offer. Say they share 90% and people towards the bottom 101 share 80%. This person will never make it into the top 100. Voters have the mindset that they do not want to spend another LSK coin to change their vote someone in that only has a 10% better offer. They know it could take months/years before enough people changed their vote to get this person in. If you voted now you'd miss out on rewards from the 80% delegate. So eventually the top 100 will be pretty static. This could lead to more coin dumping by them at ATH like we've already seen.
How could they make it better? Here are some ideas that I had.
- Get rid of the cost per vote. Make it a one time fee that last a year. You can change your votes at anytime for free, but it gets locked in at a certain time of the month. Pro-rate any LSK fees. So if you join in august you only pay 4/12ths of the fee for the remaining year.
- Remove LSK transfer fees for elected delegates. Meaning if you were an elected delegate last month you can send LSK the following month without any fees. This will encourage immediate reward payments and benefit LSK votes who do not own thousands of coins. There would be no more threshold limit on when you are paid.
- Include delegate demographics in the wallet. I know Nano is going away and will be replaced with something better. Right now it just shows the delegate name. So you need to do your own research, check several sites, then play a matching game. The wallet itself could display this. It could show name, sharing percentage, rating, quick about me section (maybe on hover) etc.. Then you have a single source.
Now to prevent a monopoly it gets more difficult. Some potential ideas. All have pros/cons.
- Clear the votes after each month. Meaning don't auto-renew them each month. Let people re-vote. This will encourage involvement and make it easier for new candidates to become involved. I'm kind of hesitant about this last one as it goes against my 2nd point above (meaning it's a lot of work to research 100 delegates, let alone monthly), but I think if they included delegate demographic info in the wallet it would be reasonable. If they added sorting, filtering, and a "previous vote" column showing your last votes it wouldn't be too bad. You could sort/filter it however you like. If you see that 90 of the first 100 you already voted for last month, you'll probably select them again. Now if there are 10 new faces that fall in you sort criteria but you never voted for them before you may decide on changing your vote.
- Maybe give delegates a rest? Give them term limits. Or make it On again, Off again. This would be hard to enforce as they could just create a new account. You could propose a 6 month waiting period though to even get your name into the voting list.
- Hide realtime ranking? Don't show the voting results until after voting has ended. Right now if you see someone is high up in the list you are likely to vote for them as your vote won't make a real difference anywhere else.
Curious if anyone else has any thoughts on it. I haven't voted for anyone yet as it still doesn't seem worthwhile to me. I stand a better chance selling and re-buying in when it dips.
I totally agree with you that is why i like the voting system of ARK more. Only 1 vote and you know the reward. The voting system of LSK and Shift are not clear to me, too difficult.
