30 Sep Symbol blockchain news update – 30/09/21
Well September is nearly over already and it is starting to feel very autumnal here in the UK (come back summer!). We have a few updates for you today on Symbol Blog so I will get going..
New wallet release!
Make sure that you upgrade to the latest Symbol desktop wallet release (v1.0.7). It contains a variety of bug fixes and changes which you can read more about on the download page and in yesterday’s news item.
Changes to node rewards?
So maybe I misinterpreted these posts but the automatic translation of @TrendStream‘s original post is this:
Node owners aren’t worth the current market price, which is very difficult.
And Hatchet‘s response is that changes are coming. This would be very interesting if I have indeed followed this correctly.
Problem: I think we all realise that there are many node owners that are probably not even breaking even at the moment from delegates. I made a quick animation yesterday showing node balance and delegate changes over time.
I realise that the gif in the tweet is too small so here’s a link to the full sized animation. It’s not great (and the data is not perfect either) but I took node data between 16th April and last week and plotted number of harvesters per node (X-axis) versus total node balance (Y-axis). You can see that the Y-axis looks weird, this is just because it is on a log10 scale. The Y-axis ticks are 100, 100,000 and 100,000,000. The X-axis goes from 0 to 500 harvesters. Colours are based on the number of weeks that the node was active within the 20 week period.
What you will see if that the majority of nodes have a relatively low balance and very few harvesters. When a delegate harvests a block on your node you will receive a proportion of that harvest (25%) which currently equates to just under 44 XYM (or around $5ish). Unless the total balance harvesting on your node (really it is account importance but balance is a good proxy for this) is high enough the income from delegates will not cover you monthly running costs.
As you can see from the plot there are a few nodes that absolutely dominate in terms of number of delegates and this disparity is not great for the ecosystem. If 90% of nodes decide that they are not breaking even and it is time to shut down their nodes then it would not be good for the network.
Some sort of change would be welcomed but I am not sure what this might be. I doubt it would be easy (and maybe not wise) to implement a rewards system that was linked to token price for instance. I guess it may be possible to increase rewards further whilst the network is young. As the network matures and there are many more transactions, and therefore fees, then the block rewards could be reduced. Chances are that if there are many more transactions then the XYM price would be higher anyway since the network would have gained mass adoption.
It will be interesting to see what changes are planned anyway.
Scammers 😡
Please, please don’t fall for this scam. I did mention it in a previous post but the attacker has now made close to 1M XYM. I feel terrible for those that fell victim so please educate yourselves and know what you are doing.
I have covered this before but the problem comes from the attacker sending an aggregate bonded transaction. They send an empty transaction to the victim but have a second transaction wrapped in the aggregate that requests them to send XYM back to the attackers address. The transaction requires the victim to sign, if they do then the money is sent to the scammer. There may be another element to this where the scammer is tricking them to transfer funds by saying that they need to do this in order for them to harvest on their node since there is always a message “Delegate” sent with the funds. You do not ever need to send funds to anyone to activate delegated harvesting – this is done through the “Harvesting” tab in the desktop wallet.
I actually posted some example code very similar to the method that the attacker is using in a previous guide (not for nefarious purposes though!).
As a general rule of thumb, don’t sign an aggregate transaction that you have no knowledge of. Also, just like signing a contract in the real world, read it thoroughly! Check the details of what the sender is asking you to sign. You will see the full details if you look in your wallet and click on the transaction. In the guide I mentioned I show a screenshot of an aggregate transaction. Alice asks Bob for 100 XYM within the aggregate transaction and if Alice signs it then the 100 XYM will be sent back to Bob.
If the transaction remains unsigned for a period of time (I think 48 hours max but I am too lazy to check it right now) then it expires and the sender loses the 10 XYM deposit that they paid for the aggregate transaction to be sent which means that they will lose money (albeit not a lot).
As a measure to stop this happening in the future the team are working on implementing a warning the user of the risk and making sure that they want to proceed. I am not actually sure if this has been implemented already in release 1.0.7, I didn’t see it in the changelog so I guess it is coming soon.
EDIT: It has been implemented in the latest wallet release. I received a legitimate aggregate transaction to sign this morning and see the warning in the wallet:
Fast work guys – excellent job! 😊
Crypto girls
We reported on this in a previous post where you can read the full details but @netadi has been working on a fun (and a little crazy) price/volume tracking app for Symbol. The basic premise is that when the price and volume goes up Crypto Girl kicks the bad guys assess in various ways including some special moves. It looks pretty fun and seems to be progressing nicely. Watch this space and I will update you as soon as we have more news.
Abstraction EIP – completed it mate..
Nobody is going to get my nod to the Inbetweeners in the title I know (loved that show). Seems like Symbol is ahead of the curve on this one already.
Good to see that great chains are thinking alike.
If you like crude humour and don’t mind some pretty filthy language then I urge you to check the series out if you can find it online. There are also two movies but the series is better 😁 I need to rewatch these, and the IT Crowd soon (original British versions, not the US ripoffs 😁).
Symvolution
I’ve talked a lot about this in the past but the Symvolution game which integrates Symbol is coming along nicely. @toshiya_ma made the logo himself and was aiming for a retro feel which he has definitely achieved. Transports me back to the 90’s (and what a time it was) 😁
Thanks!
Thanks again for reading and apologies for typos. We will be back soon with another update!
I’m a Symbol and NEM enthusiast and run this blog to try to grow awareness of the platform in the English-speaking world. If you have any Symbol news you would like me to report on or you have an article that you would like to publish then please let me know!
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.