Hangouts #45

(Please note that this article is only to summarize the questions and points that were brought up in the 45th hangout. It does not cover every detail of the discussion)

Special note: This hangout holds the record for the longest Gridcoin Community Hangout and as a result this summary took a bit longer than usual.

Thanks and appreciation:

As always a big thank you to BeyondBitcoin & @officialfuzzy for hosting the BeyondBitcoin Mumble server and allowing Gridcoin use of this resource!

These hangout summaries (especially today’s!) take considerable time to produce. Special thanks to @jringo for joining again to help write.

Attendance (Alphabetical):

This week’s hangout showed an increase in attendance numbers over recent weeks. The following members joined the live discussion:

Coltwlf, Cryptopotimus, Fkinglag, G_UK, GeeBell, Hotbit, IFoggz, Jringo, Langfod, Loadedanvils, Melk, Mercosity, Peppernrino, Ravonn, Slimeball, TheCharlatan, Vega40k, Wisecracka and Zipity

Intro by Rino

Gridcoin is a cryptocurrency based on rewarding BOINC computation. During these hangouts we discuss topics posted in the comments of the Gridcoin Community Hangout Steemit article. The article for this particular Hangout can be found here. This coming Saturday, the 16th of December, the fourth Gridcoin Community Classroom will take place live on Mumble. Further details can be found at the end of this article.

Topics

Grider123: “I thought about setting up a Gridcoin community steemit account.”

During the hangout the following posts and comments were read and discussed. Rino started by reading out @grider123’s proposal post:

“Steemit is growing ... Writing a post that stands out from the crowd and is read is not easy … [U]pvotes are important to highlight good posts and increase the activity and visibility of the Gridcoin community on steemit.

...

The biggest part of the value of all upvotes of Gridcoin Community comes through @vortac. … Independent and differentiated opinion-forming can only come about if different opinions are presented. With a community account, the independent curation can be secured on steemit.

...

I [@grider123] see the task of the community account only in the curation of good posts. The account should NOT be used to post [articles] about Gridcoin.

...

Owner

There should be one person that has access to the owner key of the community account. With this key one can change all other keys and have full access to the account. The owner should be a trusted and well-known community member. ...The owner is elected by a vote in the Gridcoin client.

Curators

Curators only have access to the posting key. That means they can't transfer funds or power up. They are responsible to curate good Gridcoin posts with upvotes. The upvoting is done based on rules that ensures that every opinion is respected and nobody gets censored. The curators are elected by a vote in the Gridcoin client.

… "

-@grider123

(view full post)

@Votac responded to @grider123’s post and this comment was also read out live on Mumble,

"… Perhaps we could spend some Foundation funds to set it up properly? A community account with zero Steem Power won't make any difference ... funding a Gridcoin community Steemit account is a good marketing move ...”

-@Vortac

(view full comment)

In reply to @Vortac, @Jringo responded with the following comment,

“I would propose keeping Foundation Funds out of it at the start. Let's see if we can use Steemit's internal mechanisms to their fullest! We can all delegate our steem power to the new account and see how much we can get the community to contribute. … If that is still not enough power for relevant curation power, I would propose that we put together a ROI system for the Foundation Wallet funds … "

-@jringo

(view full response)

Following the reading of this comment Rino, GeeBell and others stated in the hangout that they are not fond of the idea of using foundation funds at all. Nevertheless, GeeBell voiced his opinion that he is pro some sort community curation account while others like Rino and Fkinglag stayed very hesitant.

Jringo adds that he is against using foundation wallets, but for the idea of increasing curation presence in the Gridcoin substeem. Perhaps instead of a single “official” curation account, we could remind the community that they can delegate their steem power to people that see as suitable curators. Fkinglag expressed hesitation with “forcing” new users to steemit. Overall the Mumble seemed split 50-50 over pro- and anti- community curation.

@guk provided the following helpful links:

GeeBell: “Gridcoin price: discussion involving our thoughts on growing Gridcoin versus developing to spike the price. Also, warning about shilling Gridcoin during price pumps (like I did during yesterday's ATH)”

The discussion revolved around the emotions connected with trading GRC and how they can influence decisions. GeeBell described his excitement when GRC experienced a recent spike in trading volume and price. He concluded with the following: Don’t get too excited over market spikes; focus on long term growth. Mercosity agreed and was glad to hear a relatively new user was thinking this way.

Fkinglag mention that these times were good times to trade and Jringo added that informing the community about high prices can help notify people who sell at spikes to recoup electricity costs sounds like an interesting idea.

Fkinglag

"Bitcoin price more than doubled for a brief period of time.

Gridcoin price spiked during this time.

Gridcoin will now be mentioned in comparison to Bitcoin at the end of a video on the PBS Space Time YouTube channel.

Discuss recent github development.

Gridcoin Classroom recap and such, like how there is another one next week.”

It seems as if it may have been Fkinglag who made the comment that got Gridcoin a shoutout in the end (13:25) of this PBS Space Time YouTube Video.

An improvement regarding the backup function in the client was discussed. The next update will ensure that clicking backup in the Gridcoin client will no longer crash the wallet, among other things. The end of an era. The end of an error.

Suggestion on using a session of Gridcoin Community Classroom to cover the basics of how to contribute to the Gridcoin Github, specifically regarding how to report bugs. The whitepaper was brought up briefly. Jringo reminded everyone that the updated Gridcoin Whitepaper writing is continuing with the main discussions taking place on the Gridcoin Slack in #whitepaper and on Github. There are two versions, a Technical Whitepaper compiled by Dangermouse77 and what is currently being called a General Audience Whitepaper compiled by Jringo.

Jringo: “Gridcoin Research 4.0-2018 Roadmap Progresses Report #3 Bring your questions, bring your comments, bring your concerns.”

Discussion regarding the [Gridcoin Research 4.0-2018 Roadmap Progress Report #3]](https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@jringo/gridcoin-research-4-0-2018-roadmap-progress-report-3) has been ongoing. Discussion began with a reminder that the original timeline has been scrapped, but the intent to start polling by January first 2018 remains and to use these polls to create a working draft of the roadmap release on January 1st. After receiving community feedback, the group has decided to rephrase the polls to be less specific and to extend the time for which the polls run. The question of whether the Greylist will be on the roadmap was raised. While the topic of a greylist was talked about, this question was not answered directly in the Mumble, however it is in the original article. A reminder to read the original article which describes every proposal in fairly clear detail was put forward. There was a request that the polls please be made very clearly without any ambiguous wording. Communicating what the proposed updates are and how they will effect Gridcoin is critical. A reminder that education and communication are the primary goals of the proposals was expressed and no poll will be made without detailed understanding. It is also required that questions be asked, or misunderstandings/ignorance will go unrecognized.

At this point a suggestion was brought forward that priority polls could be color coded and the wallet GUI could have an indication for when new polls goes live. Github issue should be created.

There was also a concern that David Anderson’s TBD project might hinder Gridcoin’s ability to collect stats. A clarification regarding the project followed.

TBD is a front end UX project that will simplify the BOINC experience for new users. BOINC will remain open source and TBD will not affect anything regarding stats collection and will most likely have no effect on Gridcoin’s operation.

Dynamic Witness Participation is the last major proposal of the 4.0-2018 roadmap that needs to be discussed at length. The poll may be rephrased to exclude the specific proposal and instead present a yes or no option regarding a change in how superblocks are created.

Conversation sidetracked as it was noted that currently there are four nodes hard coded in the wallet. Talk of removing it ensued. This also lead to the suggestion of a conf file editor in the GUI.

Jringo: “What from the old roadmap should we bring into the roadmap currently under development? https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/759095/Gridcoin-Roadmap/ “

Jringo wants to be sure that this old roadmap gets to the eyes of the community as we get closer to starting to finalize the new roadmap.

Tangent

Following this Rino and Jringo had a bit of a disagreement which will not be summarised here... Details regarding the raw recording can be found under “Additional Information” near the end of this post.

Jringo: What can we do to smooth out the processes of whitelisting new BOINC projects?

Jringo pointed out the following problems that present themselves when a new project is whitelisted:

Announcing correctly and fairly Communicating with Admins Ensuring enough tasks

He suggested using testnet to ensure stability of the new project along with a channel of stable and direct communication for project admins.

When the most recently whitelisted project went live there were also some weird SuperBlock issues. Slimeball presented some greylist ideas and said that he will be posting these on Slack hopefully in the near future.

Helpful information

Mercosity provided a spreadsheet of different blockchains. This can help users understand issues regarding changing to another blockchain to improve Gridcoin.

Elephant in the room.

It was briefly noted that Halford's manner of announcing his proposal was not received well.

GeeBell: “Hangouts #050: Something Special?”

GeeBell suggested promoting the the 50th Gridcoin Hangout in some manner. A raffle in which the prize would be split 50/50 (see what's being done there?) between a Mumble winner and a charity was suggested. More ideas are welcome in future hangouts or in the comments of a hangout related article.

Questions and Speculation of Suspicious Accounts

Talk about malicious users of Gridcoin and what should be done about them. Between the Hangouts and this summary going live an article was posted detailing @deltik and @dutch’s investigation into just such a suspicious account.

Additional information:

Next meeting!

Everyone is welcome to join the Gridcoin Community Classroom #004 on Saturday, December 16th at 6PM UTC. You can get further details here.

Please see the raw feed of this 45th Hangout kindly provided by Fkinglag, available here.

To see a summary of the previous week’s hangout you can continue reading here

Further thanks:

Thank you to @jringo for providing help with this article. Thank you to all the devs who are continuously working behind the scenes. Finally, appreciation is extended to everyone in the community who contributed to the hangouts – in person or otherwise. If you wish to take part in the conversation, join a community forum such as Steemit, CryptoCurrencyTalk,

Discord, Mumble, Reddit, and Slack (request an email invite if you’d like to join)!

Here’s to the growth and development of Gridcoin!

Signed

@geebell and @jringo