Revamped Representative System

[bbedward]

In the interests of keeping a healthy, decentralized nano network. There are some things that can be done in Natrium to aid the process. Especially with its growing popularity.

Ideas:

• [ ] A notification when a representative has more than 3-5% of the voting weight
• [x] An easy menu in change representative screen that lets you change rep in one-tap
• [ ] Unlockable theme or disabled themes for bad reps?
• [ ] Potentially change default rep selection to be random

[bryanwag]

A notification for official reps (some have less than 3-5%) and offline reps would be really helpful too. I’m using nanocharts.info’s list of “Offline” and “Caution”. As for intrusiveness, the notifications at Ninja Vault are noticeable but not in-your-face at all. So I think it won’t affect UI and will bring tremendous benefits to the network if notification is on the subtler side.

A quick idea of subtle notification. People like to click on red notification alert (like April Fool’s TNC Discord). If text is deemed too intrusive, a little red alert button can appear in the “change rep” menu bar, and when clicked, a three-sentence explanation will appear like “Your representative is offline/has lots of weights. Evenly distributing the weights across high-quality representatives help secure the network and protect your money. Would you like to change to another representative?”

Given that it’s very hard to achieve a high score these days on Ninja, I think the risk of Sybil attack now due to random rep selection is slim as long as it’s selected among the top 5 or something. I still think a cured list would be better in the long run since if Sybil attacker learns of this feature and springs up a bunch of 100% uptime nodes, they can achieve high scores in 3 months or so.

[BitDesert]

I would suggest an alert box (maybe between the balance and transactions) with a very short text that the user has to do something and the option to dismiss this notification for 24 hours. This alert should be triggered by two factors: Weight > 3% or Uptime < 80%. If you click on it you should have three options:

1. Choose the most suggested rep or random (easiest option for most people)
2. Choose a rep from a list (either Ninja Verified list via API or self-curated)
3. Stay with your current rep (not recommended but some might want to keep their rep)

New accounts should always use 1. as this doesn't need any user interaction.

Unlockable themes are a great idea! If we can gamify the process it's more enjoyable too.

@bryanwag a Sybil attack is possible but very unlikely as you need at least 3-6 months to get a decent score. In this time most fakes are discovered. The whole process can be hardened if needed.