Chromes

Chromes, 10 months ago

I feel a little silly double-posting on here and Reddit, but I don't want this to die just because we all default back to reddit, but I also don't want to give up entirely on reddit till more people come here. So apologies for this:

Staking stupid question of the day: Now that my validator seems to be working and I'm in the queue, I still have about 45 days till I start actually validating. Can I turn off my validator for the next couple weeks just so I don't have it running for a month and a half doing nothing more than syncing?

Chromes, 10 months ago

Checking in after my post about taking the plunge the other day. Spun up my validator and deposited. Took me, in total, about 10 hours (yes, really). I'm "Pending" on beaconcha.in.

I wrote down a lot of what I felt and did while trying to get it all together. I'm still kind of shell-shocked by the whole experience and I'm sure I'll talk a lot more about it later. What I'll say for now is that even the "for dummies" version of setting up a validator is significantly more intimidating and intense than most people think it is.

I'm proud of myself for (hopefully) successfully doing it, but even doing it on easy mode (dappnode) had a lot of issues, things that I didn't fully understand, or things that almost had me giving up (I gave up about 3 times and then went right back to it after 5 minutes of having given up).

To be absolutely clear, that's no one's fault but mine. I'm absolutely tech illiterate, but, sadly, I'm actually probably more tech-y than most people. So I do think we have a long way to go before this sort of thing becomes something non-tech can just pick up and do. Things that I think most here take for granted are very scary or even indecipherable to someone like me.

That actually brings me to something that this whole reddit fiasco has me thinking about. One of the great strengths of crypto and eth in particular is the layer 0 stuff. It leads to great communities like this or Ethstaker. We have Reddits and Discords which are filled with people willing and eager to help. The problem is that it seems like it may have led to less focus on delivering a user-manual that makes sense to a new user who has no idea what they're doing. Communities are great for fixing problems, but it seems like we rely on a nebulous social network to teach the basics. Even the best guides I found seemed to assume a lot of knowledge and I generally had 3-5 "1 stop shop" guides open at once as I did this.

The good thing with how tough it was was that, if everything works out and I start validating in a month and a half (thanks Celsius), I'll really feel like I earned it.

Chromes, 10 months ago

I have a discord account, but I've only used it a few times to play games with friends. Discord itself feels fairly overwhelming to explore, but I'd be happy to talk with someone on there to give my experience sometime.

Chromes, 10 months ago

It's kind of hard to explain, and probably part of why I struggled so much is I felt like I couldn't articulate what I was struggling with. Some of it was super basic and I felt like an idiot once I realized it. A lot of it was probably right in the middle of the front page, but somehow I missed it. It took me far too long to realize that DAppNode was really a server that I had to connect to through another computer. I had a bunch of errors that I had to solve by looking through Google. There was an error when using the Terminal in Ubuntu to install it. Every time I used the script, it had an error and erased my wifi. I had to re-install the whole OS three times and that set the discouraging tone for the rest of the day. I ended up using the ISO method which I didn't realize was a viable option until I read way further in the tutorial. The system also asked for login credentials that I didn't have once I set it up. Turns out it was login: dappnode and pw: dappnode.s0 but I had to do a lot of looking to find that on the tech support boards.

Otherwise, I often felt like I had to do a ton of research to even know what I'm looking at on screen. That, on it's own, isn't that big of a deal, but it can be a real struggle when the system UI is constantly updated so the guides often don't look like what I'm seeing. I remember once someone on reddit commenting (on a totally unrelated issue) "Why do I have to follow this company on Twitter to learn about a new security issue" or something like that. That's kind of what I mean by the strength and weakness of our communities. A lot of crypto companies do so much through these social media companies, but it feels very strange to me. I think I kinda feel that way about going to Reddit, Discord, or other social media to learn how to use something.

Finally, and this might simply be way too much to ask, but I think having more of an internal guide would be extremely helpful. Like, in old video games you read the manual and then you played the game. Now we have walk-through tutorials that are imbedded in the game itself.

I'll admit, I feel like a total tool even complaining about any of this though. They provided this free service and, thanks to their work, I actually have a shot of pulling this off. I'm extremely grateful and I feel like most of my complaints are probably things I just missed.

Chromes, 10 months ago

Thanks! I think we'll get there, but I've always felt like we as a community downplay how difficult this stuff is to navigate given the state of most UIs in the ecosystem.

Chromes, 10 months ago

It's AzulPeregrine (BlueFalcon for anyone who gets the joke). I think I'm in the main Dappnode server.

Chromes, 11 months ago

Just want to say thanks for doing the work here. I'll mostly continue to lurk/mooch. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I owe pretty much all my success in this space to other people's hard work.