The Biggest Mistakes Shift is Making Right Row

Stephen

Shift used to be one of the most honest, and promising projects in the crypto world. But recently the team has seemed to forgotten what it means to create an unstoppable, democratic Blockchain that will take over the world of websites. In this letter I will be outlining these specific issues, and why they're so crucial.

Index:

On The Issue of Holding Funds for a Fork
The Golden Block
The Block Reward Increase
Transparency
The Donation Deal
Static Fees
Disclaimer

1: On The Issue of Holding Funds for a Fork

One of the big topics that have recently plauged shift has been the issue of funding. This same issue surrounds multiple future decisions, but I will start with the specific issue of the dev wallet. The dev wallet currently holds 1,000,327.09 shift which accounts for 9.05% of the entire supply. This was at one time worth around four million dollars, but is currently worth around one million. Now, that's quite a bit of money. But why doesn't the dev team start using some of it to hire devs, do some marketing, and make the project better? Because they claim that they need to hold a significant amount of shift in order to vote for Genesis delegates to keep the ball rolling in case of a hard fork. However, claiming that they alone must be able to so this is just wrong. Community cooperation has historically been great, and I doubt that will change. And in a case where the majority shift holders do not agree with what the developer team wants, the devs shouldn't simply be able to "over ride" the community. This is a democratic Blockchain controlled by its users, or at least it should be.

2: The Golden Block

The second issue I'm going to tackle is this whole "golden block" proposition. For those of you who don't know, some early investors/friends of the developers had their shift wallet hacked and lost what would now, in worth, be a substantial amount of money. And the developers have compensated that individual with their funds. They then wanted to create around one million extra shift all at once in order for the developer team to get their money back. Now I know that this has already been avoided, but there has been talk of bringing it back but with some changes. Regardless of whether or not this topic will be revisited, I am going to explain why it is a terrible idea.

One of the fundamental ideas expressed through blockchain is that everything is set in stone. There can be no chargebacks and there can be no "printing money whenever I feel like it". Without this, a blockchain is just another weak and centralized institution controlled by the few. Of course the developers control the blockchain, and they should receive respect for that. But they can only do so at the permission of the users. The community ultimately decides what happens on the majority chain. These ideas would be directly violated if such a golden block, or anything of the sort, were to be implemented on the main chain. I know that the developers suspect that it was partly their fault because of an insecure wallet server, however that is no excuse for creating millions of dollars of worth from thin air at the expense of everyone else through inflation. And doing the same except slowly, like they have already done by increasing the block reward by 10%, is just the same. And that brings me to the next thing, the block reward increase.

3: The Block Reward Increase

In the June newsletter, found here, the developers announced that they were increasing the block reward from 1 shift to 1.1 shift. They claimed to have good reasons for this change, and promised to release more details in a later newsletter. However that newsletter has not come yet at the time of writing so I will be writing as if they have no further reasons. This change has already happened, and falls into the same category of violating those fundamental ideas as the previous issue. As far as I can tell, increasing the block reward only has three effects. Giving the developers more money from their delegates, giving the currently forging delegates more money, and increasing the supply which in turn increases inflation. Shift isn't supposed to be a cash machine, and based on the only effects I see, I can only suspect the reasoning, however if further details are released I will remain open minded to other reasons, effects, and motives.

4: Transparency

Previously the shift team has been quite good when it comes to transparency. You can freely join the Ryver and personally talk to them and read the newsletters. However, the July newsletter announced that the developers had created a private chat for all of the delegates to discuss issues, because obviously they control the blockchain. This is all great, except for the fact that it's completely hidden from the public. We as the public cannot see what is being said in regards to what's happening with the blockchain in reference to the delegates. I understand that this sort of developer-delegate communication is important, and needs to exist without spammers and such that we have with public chats. However there are many ways to allow everyone to see what's happening without allowing them to talk. This wouldn't be such a big except for the fact that in the newsletter the devs also mentioned that they have been taking votes internally with the delegates. This is a problem of how the developers are treating the delegates. But the biggest thing even yet is that this private chat is human controlled. Once your delegate becomes number 101 you aren't automatically in direct contact with the important people around, someone has to include you. And that sort of system allows people to be excluded based on the ideas they represent, even if they are systematically a delegate. Without that direct communication while everyone else has it, your delegate will not have the same weight or power that the others do. I'm not claiming that this sort of corruption will happen, but the possibility is definitely there. And with situations like the recent Bitcoin debate as prime examples, censorship because of different visions (like r/bitcoin) for the coin can happen. This is the first step that the developers have taken to make being a delegate more of an exclusive and controlled group rather than a democratically controlled system that will keep things fair.

5: The Donation Deal

Another huge issue that was announced in the July newsletter is this whole donation deal. This is the kicker of the exclusive group that the delegates have become. In order to still get compensation for the funds that the developers donated to the person who had their shift stolen, the developers created a donation wallet where everyone can donate to the cause. Great, no issues there. However, if a delegate agrees to donate then the donation wallet will vote for them. This is a prime example of true corruption. The developers are directly making sure that the people willing to pay for them stay in the top 101, making money. This reminds me of the sort of lobbying that goes on today in American politics. Company A doesn't like proposed bill B so they pay representative C to vote a certain way. In our situation, the delegates are paying the developers in order to receive extra votes and extra solidification in their position as a delegate. This is not a small thing, this is a huge deal! This really shows how the developers are going to keep treating the delegates, and is a reflection of how they think things should be run. Honestly this is the biggest problem for me personally, if this is not resolved I will definitely be leaving. This isn't a threat, I don't have that much shift and I'm not a huge asset, however I find it important to show how seriously I take this. A blockchain is not supposed to be corrupt like this. Blockchain technology was created to get rid of this exact kind of corruption, please don't let this continue.

6: Static Fees

This is a very small complaint, especially compared to the last. I understand that it is ideal for each delegate to have the same transaction fee, even though it is not necessary, but not allowing the delegates to change the fee in real time is a problem. As things currently stand the transaction fee is set in the code and can only be changed with an update. I don't think that will be feasible long term and will eventually need changed in order for quicker tx fee adjustments to be able to take place without software updates.

7: Disclaimer

With this letter I am in no way saying that Shift is, was, or will be a failed project. However, these issues are big enough for me to seriously question it's future potential and for me to not be so heavily invested in it. Not only financially, but as far as how much time I pay attention to it and how much effort I put into the community. I am not trying to get everyone to dump their shift, in fact please don't if you can afford it. But take this letter seriously, I have written it not because I hate shift or the devs... I have written it because I want to see Shift succeed. This is definitely subject to change, and I will likely be making updates and edits as I receive critiques and things change. Thank you for taking your time to read this, and I hope that you have got something out of it.