̶F̶r̶e̶e̶ TON without blockchain?

Hello, members of the Free TON community!

This letter is my official response to accusations of unfair voting within the Free TON Blog Contest. Here is what happening: I am a part of the group of the Initial Members and I have a right to vote in SMM contests, and at the same time I made my own blog https://blog.freeton.org , which was the first one built on this domain, and which took the 1st place in the aforementioned contest. It was my initiative. I invested in the development of the website. But as they say, the initiative is punishable, as it turned out in the decentralized community too. This caused a lot of discontent towards me, along with demands to annulate the results of the voting. The list of the requirements is set out here:

and here: Contests for "friends", how to take first place. Free TON Blog Contest.

The author supports Ivan and wants to throw us out of the jury pool:

And what do the disaffected want? First, let’s turn to the second link: a user under the nickname Crypton decided not to complicate his post with a discourse about the fate of the community and just raised the question of the rewards. Everything is simple here: Crypton is dissatisfied with the fact that the idea to create a blog came to me even before the competition and, accordingly, that all work began in September. He proposes a solution that Robin Hood would love - to distribute the reward for 1st place among all participants whose work meets the technical requirements. Not a word is said about either initiative, or time and resources invested in the development of the blog, or about its further destiny. Don’t you think the user’s area of interest is pretty obvious here?

This also applies to the officially suggested voting to annulate the results.

Here, you can see that it is an attempt to break the requirements of the smart contracts, where the main point is permanence.

As Boris Ivanovsky said :

  • this massive is only written down once with the code of a smart contract, there is no chance that someone else will just modify it. That’s what makes smart contracts valuable. The data is only calculated once and it is stored for as long as it is needed.

I’m not trying to hide the fact that I’ve been working on my blog for a long time, but someone disapproves of my choice.

But let’s also say that we are trying to upgrade our blog by ourselves. We have implemented a new donation system for authors (as a use-case of TON Crystal), dissembled bots for telegram chats, where information from the blog is transported and set out in podcasts, news and etc. We’ve also introduced an extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla, and Opera, which is considered as one of the most convenient ways for authors to check their analytics.

Some of the users didn’t really invest in their blog, hiding behind the pretexts that « all the places are reserved », instead of really working on their project.

Who did it? How? Nobody talked about that, but you can easily find the messages like “We know who will be the winner ».

To be honest, it is not surprising that now some users dislike my submission. But how much attention do we really need to pay to it? Why nobody was uninterested until now?

So, let’s look at the mechanism of the FreeTON contests. We can find some quite fascinating cases here.

#1

https://forum.everscale.network/t/contest-airdrop-mechanics-finished/66/344

That is an example of the contest, where one jury voted, but the principle of permanence wasn’t broken down.

#2

An example of the contest in which the participants simply did not have time to submit their applications, because the smart contract was closed before the deadline indicated on the forum and in the PDF file, but what do we have here? Smart contract dominates over PDF/forum, right?

#3

In this case, one of the requirements was that the works’ size should be 1MB. Who is the winner here? Does their submission comply with the terms?

I don’t want to say that other submissions are worse I’m drawing your attention to the situation in general. You know it happens that your work might fit the requirements today, but tomorrow it will not.

The question arises: the project rules are dispositive or imperative? It looks like the first option is the main one here and that the rules can be broken down if some certain members want it. This theory came to me a long time ago, but does a theory have any value if it cannot be tested practically? This is exactly what I did by voting in the blog contest. You know the result yourself, and this is a good reason to start asking questions. The decentralization of the entire system comes into question - it seems that someone was still able to turn the mechanisms of the platform to their advantage. If a cat gets hit by a car tomorrow, can we bring it back to life?

Now let’s get back to the requirements of the protesters. The main point here is to annulate the voting results, which means the rollback of smart contracts, an unprecedented violation of the principles of blockchain. The main thing about this protocol is that transactions are secure and non-returnable, that is, not withstanding the circumstances under which they are effected, they cannot be canceled. As I said before, Boris Ivanovsky, one of Free TON developers, wrote about this.

A simple example to illustrate the scale of what is happening: let’s say you worked on a project for a month and today received a payment of 1 bitcoin for this. The next morning you wake up and see that your employer decided to simply cancel the transaction, and you were left with no money, and your time was wasted. Sounds unfair, right? This precedent could give rise to a number of similar cases, and in the end, nothing will be left of the blockchain. Its very essence will be lost.

The raison d’être of Free TON and, at the same time, the principles of its functioning are to ensure the irreversibility and security of transactions. The principle of non-intervention will be violated - whatever the intentions of the third party which requires a rollback, this is unacceptable. A rollback of a smart contract can cause irreparable damage not only to the technical side of the project, but also to the moral component - what will become of the ecosystem’s reputation? Will partners want to continue cooperation with the blockchain protocol,which has nothing decentralized it but the name? Free TON will be compromised and it will no longer be possible to change it. However, this is for the community to judge.

I don’t want to be considered as a “bad guy.” This whole competition was originally an experiment and it exceeded my expectations. Bravo! As it was planned, we offered a contest for jury selection and the search for authors, you can already join the discussion. Tokens, do I need them? In my opinion, (at least as I thought earlier), if such principles are put into practice, then the token loses its meaning. And I am very disappointed with the fact that a lot of community members support this idea.

See you soon in our blog, where every stranger is welcome!

̶F̶r̶e̶e̶ TON…

Russian version

Здравствуйте, уважаемые члены сообщества Free TON!

Это письмо - мой официальный ответ на обвинения в несправедливом голосовании в конкурсе Free TON Blog Contest. Ситуация такова: я состою в Initial Members и голосую в рамках SMM-конкурсов, и вместе с тем создал свой собственный блог https://blog.freeton.org, первым попросил разместить на данном домене, который занял в вышеупомянутом конкурсе 1 место. Проявил инициативу. Вложился в развитие сети. Но как говориться инициатива наказуема, как оказалось и в децентрализованном сообществе тоже. Это вызвало шквал недовольства в мою сторону наряду с требованиями аннулировать результаты голосования. Суть требований изложена здесь:

Free TON Blog Contest results evaluation Proposal - #7 by Crypton и тут

Contests for "friends", how to take first place. Free TON Blog Contest .

То что он поддерживает и хочет выкинуть нас из жюрейства

И чего же хотят недовольные? Сначала обратимся ко второй ссылке: пользователь под ником Crypton решил не усложнять свой пост рассуждениями о судьбе сообщества и просто поднял вопрос награды. Здесь все просто: Crypton недоволен тем, что идея создать блог появилась у меня еще до конкурса и, соответственно, все работы начались еще в сентябре. Решение он предлагает в духе Робин Гуда - распределить награду за победу между всеми участниками, работы которых удовлетворяют техническим требованиям. Ни слова не уделяется ни инициативности, ни вложенным в развитие экосистемы Free TON силам и средствам, ни дальнейшей судьбе блога. Не кажется ли вам, что круг интересов пользователя здесь довольно очевиден?

Ещё интереснее дела обстоят с официально предложенным голосованием обнулить результаты. Тут изложена мысль вернуть результаты голосования вспять, тем самым нарушив требования смарт-контракта, принцип которого неизменность. Слова Бориса Ивановского (см.скриншот ниже):

Но упомянем еще об одном немаловажном моменте - претензии к моей работе, начались еще задолго до объявления результатов голосования. Я не скрываю того, что работаю над блогом уже достаточно долгое время по собственной инициативе, и кого-то это не устраивает с самого начала конкурса. Странно, учитывая тот момент, что мы пытались его улучшать собственными силами, временем и ресурсами, а именно внедрили систему донатов для авторов (применение криптовалюты ТОН), разработали ботов для TG чатов, где активно используются и транспортируют информацию с блога и освещают все текущие новости, подкасты, расширения для Google Chrome, Opera, Mozilla, в процессе внутри полноценная система аналитики для авторов которые куют текста и трудятся, мобильное приложение на Android и iOS. Вместо того, чтобы вкладываться в развитие собственного блога, определенные пользователи предпочитали сделать его на скорую руку и остановиться на этом, прикрываясь тем, что все равно все места распределены. Кем? Как? Об этом никто не говорил, но сообщения в духе “Ну мы же знаем, кто победит” найти можно с легкостью. Для меня нет ничего удивительного в том, что эти изначально предвзятые к моей работе лица сейчас активно выражают свое недовольство. Вопрос в том - сколько внимания нужно этому уделять?

А теперь обратимся к механизму конкурсов Free TON в целом - здесь обнаружится пара занятных кейсов.

#1

https://forum.everscale.network/t/contest-airdrop-mechanics-finished/66/344

Пример конкурса, где проголосовал 1 жюри, но принцип неизменности не нарушен.

#2

Пример конкурса, в котором участники попросту не успели подать заявки, т.к смарт-контракт закрылся раньше условленного срока указанного на форуме и в PDF файле, но что мы видим? Главенство смарт-контракта выше, чем PDF, так?

#3

В данном примере было изложены требования в 1МБ для всех работ. Но кого мы видим в победителях, соответствуют ли они условиям конкурса? Нет, они полностью проигнорированы.

Я не хочу сказать, что чья-то работа, хуже, я обращаю взгляд на данный прецедент. Сегодня ваша работа подходит под этим требования, а завтра уже нет.

Возникает вопрос: правила проекта диспозитивные или все-таки императивные? Пока выглядит как первый вариант, и сейчас они вполне могут нарушаться в угоду некоторым лицам. Эта теория возникла у меня еще довольно давно, но в чем ценность предположения, если его нельзя проверить на практике? Именно это я и сделал, проголосовав в конкурсе блогов. Результат вы знаете сами, и это причина задуматься. Под вопрос попадает децентрализованность всей системы - кажется, кто-то все-таки смог обратить механизмы платформы себе на пользу. Если завтра кошку собьет машина, сможем ли мы вернуть ее к жизни?

Теперь вернемся к требованиям протестующих. Суть их состоит в обнулении результатов голосования, которое означает откат смарт-контрактов, беспрецедентное нарушение принципов работы блокчейна. Сама суть протокола состоит в том, что транзакции являются защищенными и невозвратными, то есть в каком контексте бы они не происходили, отменить их нельзя. Об этом писал Борис Ивановский, разработчик протокола:

Простой пример, чтобы проиллюстрировать масштаб происходящего: допустим, Вы месяц работали в проекте и сегодня получили за это оплату в размере 1 биткоина. На следующее утро Вы просыпаетесь и видите, что Ваш работодатель решил просто отменить транзакцию, и Вы остались без денег, а время было потрачено попусту. Звучит неприятно, да? Этот прецедент может дать начало целому ряду подобных случаев, и в итоге от блокчейна не останется ничего. Пропадет сама его суть.

Сам смысл существования Free TON и одновременно принципы его функционирования заключаются в том, чтобы обеспечить необратимость и защищенность транзакций. Принцип невмешательства будет нарушен - какие бы намерения не были у третьей стороны, требующей отката, это недопустимо. Откат смарт-контракта может нанести непоправимый ущерб не только технической стороне проекта, но и моральной составляющей - что станет с репутацией экосистемы? Захотят ли партнеры продолжить сотрудничество с блокчейн-протоколом, в котором от блокчейна лишь одно название? Free TON будет скомпрометирован, и изменить этого уже будет нельзя. Впрочем, судить сообществу.

Я не хочу, чтобы меня считали “засранцем”. Весь этот конкурс изначально был экспериментом и он превзошел мои ожидания. Как и было задумано, предложили конкурс жюри и поиск авторов, вы уже можете присоединиться к обсуждению. Токены, нужны ли они мне? На мой взгляд, (как я полагал ранее), если в сеть закладываются подобные принципы, то токен теряет смысл. И я очень огорчен тем фактом, что многие члены сообщества поддерживают данную идею.

До скорой встречи в блоге мыслей, где каждому страннику рады!

̶F̶r̶e̶e̶ TON…

5 Likes

I think the rules are quite simple: the jury member can not participate in voting if they also participate in the contest. So instead of very long post: did you or did you not voted on the contest you were also participated in?
This is Yes or No answer.
If the answer is Yes, than you have clearly broke the rule. And there is really nothing to discuss any longer.
There is also a difference between honest mistakes and breaking the rules intentionally. If the Free TON community has changes rules before to correct honest mistakes it does not mean any rule changes are allowed now. This one is clearly not.

15 Likes

Thanks for seeking our opinions over this topic :wink: in respect of this idea I don’t welcome it at all. But as the matter of fact I know there is no any project that is willing to loose or fail rather they need to move forward. About the contest I have registered on the blog and I will spare time to share my experience regarding the publications aspect as it was the contest we are participating into it. Thank you once again for welcoming everyone including me in to this contest.:wink:

1 Like

Thank you for your feedback on the situation.

I admit your leadership and will personally vote against both you and your team members to be excluded from Jurors if such Proposal will appear.

Your team initiative with blog and automation tools was first to come - this fact is easy to check.

I’m also glad that you called this “experiment”.

You wanted to submit a Proposal to compensate your efforts, then came up with the initiative to hold a Blog Contest to allow all members contribute and have a chance to start their own in parallel.

But the proposed Blog Contest was in fact not correct thing to hold in this situation.

What may’ve been done instead is, for example, the Contest to submit any proofs of contribution to Free TON SMM activities.

Lets discuss “smart contracts are final” idea. It’s a very good point and it’s always hard to argue with Boris.

But there is another fact that we hold Main Gov payments with set of scripts, manual aggregation and processing in Google Sheets, then set up the Payments Smart Contract which is then funded by tokens from Givers with separate working group called PDG highly involved in the process.

And believe me, the smart contract data is just source data, it doesn’t reflect final ranking according to currently agreed specs.

There is no smart contract or proposal or any other on-chain “something” which somehow does the correct thing now in terms of evaluation and application of voting rules.

That’s bad, but that’s what The Open Network came up with in 6 month of governance existence.
And the solution is social consensus (it won’t work after we go for full media coverage, so let’s not run into long debates), which is achieved by public discussions, Proposals and voting.

And we can’t rollback anything unfortunately. We can only vote on Proposals.
You may go for publishing yours, of course. This will lead to SMM SG suspension and yet another issue to be solved on Main Gov level, and we definitely don’t want to allow this to happen.

I will repeat the important thing: by no means you’re the one to lead the activities around Blog maintenance within SMM SG.

Other Initial Members are here to help and support with any procedural and organizational work we may do. Our motivation is that we believe in the transparent and sufficiently decentralized processes of Social Media Marketing work as well as any other complicated processes.

Let’s follow the social consensus part of Governance, not only onchain stuff.
The proposal is going to be there for open discussion for a few days.

I hope we are on the way to get through this situation. Let’s get ready to accomplish the distribution according to Contest Specification soon™.

I think the next steps (after solving this issue) will be:

  • Jury Contest
  • Arrange an open SG call and identify other directions within SMM and the way we are going to hold that with help of new Jurors.
  • Involve all possible leaders and specialists into the process and scale the SMM SG internationally.

We need to be ready for decentralization event which is going to happen very soon.

1 Like

Actions say more about us than words. You voted for yourself - you did the deed.

My idea is simple, so that people will have a pleasant impression of the competition, after the distribution of prize awards, do the deed again.

I do not support removing judges or rolling back a smart contract. Actions say more about us.

1 Like

Good day! Thank you for your answers here! Our experiment with a contest clearly showed that it is possible to reverse the actions of a smart contract retroactively, simply spitting on the blockchain in this network.

It would be wise to cancel all previous results of the contest, or revise them, BUT you will face the fact that the “arrow” will work in one direction. Who even knows, what if your transaction will be canceled tomorrow.

Regarding voting agreements, they were discussed on the private call with Ivan and other team members. It works very well here.

1 Like

I will also add an explanation for those who are not aware of what is happening. Just imagine there is a button in front of you, by pressing which a nuclear explosion will happen. You are thinking whether to press it or not. You press this button, an explosion cloud appears, but then it all returns to its place and the explosion does not happen. Here it works like this.

Movie “Source Code”.

1 Like

Perhaps the smart contract supports the function against dishonest voting. Zeroing votes or something similar. Surely, when creating a smart contract, such a situation was foreseen.

Why do I need cryptocurrency if I can go to the bank and do the same? If Free TON needs the third part, it’s bad. There won’t be ever a decentralization.

1 Like

Someone in chats asked - and how did the juries vote in the contest?

I’ve compiled a template in which with bold font marked the votes of the juries with their own work in the contest. See below.

Submission # Points. Bold for jurors with their work in contest Average, pts
1 10; 8; 7 ; 8 ; 10; 8; 6 8.14
2 work by voting judges 9; 7; 10 ; 10 ; 10; 8; 10 9.14
3 10; 6; 7 ; 9 ; 7; 7; 6 7.42
4 10; 10; 7 ; 10; 9; 7 8.83
5 9; 9; 5 ; 7; 9; 6 7.50
6 9; 6; 6 ; 8; 6; 6 6.83
7 8; 4; 5 ; 7; 5; 2 5.16
8 7; 6; 5 ; 6; 7; 6 6.16
9 8; 5; 1; 1 ; 6; 1 3.66
10 7; 6; 2 ; 3; 7; 3 4.66
11 9; 10; 5 ; 8; 10; 4 7.66
12 8; 8; 4 ; 6; 7; 3 6.00
13 9; 7; 7 ; 6; 6 7.00
14 8; 5; 4 ; 5; 2 4.80
15 9; 10; 5 ; 10; 4 7.60
16 9; 7; 7 ; 6; 6 7.00
17 4; 1; 3; reject ; reject; reject 2.66
18 9; 6; 4 ; 5 6.00

Won’t be commenting the votes themselves.

5 Likes

Thank you for your work. I wondered why this was happening at all. Starting from the way prizes are distributed, this system initially creates such opportunities. In this topic, I suggested ways to distribute prizes for contests. Prizes and contests. Time is not a token

1 Like

You probably wanted to ask a question in a different way: why do I need cryptocurrency if I cannot vote for my works the way I want? :smiley:

2 Likes

On the other hand, in this post one of the judges (for which thanks to him) clearly explains how the voting for the competition went. It turns out that everyone was aware of how things were done. And now it suddenly turned out that not all, and do not know? I would like to hear from all sides. Free TON Blog Contest - #55 by 1001

Img-1

Img-2

1 Like

@Aleso How can you think to reverse a contract on a free,brand new, state of the art blockchain? Forget it, better. Ledger will state your actions.

1 Like

In all competitions, such problems occur, but what is important in the end is that there are lucky winners that we must congratulate, and in return, losers who must accept the loss without problems.

1 Like