What if I told you that I had a Bitcoin, and it was for sale? What if you told me you wanted to buy that Bitcoin, but I said I was auctioning it off instead? You'd probably think I was an idiot jackass. Who in their right mind would try to do something that stupid?
Auctioning a Bitcoin would be like setting up your own temporary exchange and then trying to get people to trade on it with a liquidity of 1. Not only that, anyone who wanted to buy the Bitcoin would have to buy the entire thing: all 100,000,000 Satoshi. In addition, if the bid didn't reach a high enough value the seller could simply refuse to sell.
Who in their right mind would be a part of something like this? Why wouldn't they just go to an exchange to buy the Bitcoin? The value of Bitcoin is established across multiple exchanges. Tens of thousands of Bitcoin are being bought and sold every day. Why would anyone ever be willing to bid on crypto?
And yet, this is exactly what we see every day here at Steem: Whales are auctioning off their votes and acting as if the value of their vote needs to be figured out for some reason (greed). It's a vote. It's no different from anyone else's vote. Stop auctioning off crypto, jackasses.
The point of an auction is to determine the value of a rare item that is in high demand. Also, the value must be arbitrary and determined by the competition. You aren't going to see a gold bar get auctioned off. Even if it's rare and in high demand, we already know the value of gold. It would have to have historical significance to be worth more than regular gold. This is why we see auctions for things like art, antiques, and sports memorabilia: because they are rare and the value is determined by the collectors.
The mere existence of bidbots on this platform is a slap in the face to everyone. It is a constant reminder that there are far more developers trying to leech value from Steem rather than bring value to it. Not only do vote auctions attempt to sell crypto for higher than it's value, but the direct vote buying/selling services also skim much more off the top than they should.
No worries, I have a plan: Something that will undermine every single vote selling service here. That won't be difficult considering the ridiculous markup these services charge. The answer? Decentralized vote buying/selling: A free market that determines exactly how much a vote is worth.
At first, I was wondering if I should incorporate auctions into this system. Not only would this be an extra complication, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was a terrible idea for the reasons described above: no one's vote is worth more than anyone else's vote. $10 from a whale is worth just as much as $10 from 100 other people. The trending tab doesn't play favorites.
What is the value of a vote?
This is a very interesting question; one that would be much easier to answer if our broken curation system was abolished. A vote becomes worth less to the buyer as the age of a post moves from 0 minutes to 30 minutes. The ineffective curation mechanic ensures this. In addition, sellers want to sell votes to posts that haven't been upvoted yet but are 30 minutes old. This ensures that they will receive maximum curation from the vote while also selling their vote (win/win). Seriously, it's so broken... I'm going to exploit curation until it finally gets thrown in the garbage where it belongs.
There are two other factors I can think of that push
and pull the value of votes in a certain direction:
Exposure
I'd like to think that votes are actually worth more than their value because you can pool them together to get someone onto the trending tab. This variable is called 'exposure'. A vote is worth it's value plus the value of exposure to the trending/hot tab. This factor increases the value of buying votes.
Cashout
The second variable in this equation is the 'cashout' variable. This variable increases the value of selling votes because it allows you to turn the vote into liquid funds immediately. I haven't sold my vote in a long time, but when I did it was a pretty nice feeling to just get the SBD instantly delivered to my account.
Push/Pull
- Exposure increases the value of votes by increasing the demand.
- Cashout reduces the value of votes by increasing the supply.
So far, exposure seems much stronger than cashout. This makes sense, because exposure is an investment while cashout just gets the money to you a week faster. However, the truth is we don't know the value of a vote because these vote selling services are introducing high friction into the market. How can you know how much a vote is worth if the bot selling them is skimming 15%? Given this metric, we know that a vote must be worth at least 15% more than it's value, or users wouldn't buy them.
The same can be said for vote selling. Users are willing to take a loss in order to get the funds now instead of in a week. We live in a culture that encourages instant gratification. Users are willing to pay for those dopamine hits.
The one thing that is certain is that auctioning off votes is simply a greedy cash grab to exploit the buyers who don't know any better. Auctioning off a vote is the logical equivalent to auctioning off any kind of crypto. We don't need an auction to find value; we need a decentralized free market.
This is why I want to create a service that allows anyone to buy/sell votes in a decentralized manner; completely cutting out the middle man of vote bots once and for all. After that I will even go so far as to undermine vote buying altogether. As a JavaScript newbie, I've got a long road ahead of me.
I agree. I don't use bots, I've tried them once and quickly realised I never wanted to use them ever again and that it is not beneficial, and I feel a lot better growing organically anyway. I don't want to be fighting with a bunch of other people, spending MY hard earned Steem to CLAIM that I AM HAVE MORE WORTH than them in order to be ALLOWED to have this ONE vote from this bot. And then if I don't bid enough, I'm not worth that vote, and if I bid too much, that vote gives back less than what I spent to try to be worth mroe than someone else. It's a love me more mentality. Why not love everyone the same.
Everyone's votes are worth a lot to me. Even if their value is low. I'd like to think that my few cents are worth much mroe to someone when they see that I upvoted their post, that the happiness they feel, that the engagement we have, that the relationship we form, is worth more than the measly few cents value of my vote. The same way I feel people's votes are worth much more than the value of their vote.
And the feeling that someone actually, possibly read your post/comment in the first place too
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Absolutely!
Most bots have a profit/loss % set. Which means if you bid carefully you can get more value in votes than sent. Similarly, if you bid bad, you can lose money.
I know bid bots are hated by a lot of people on steem but do u ever wonder, what will happen to steem price if all the bid bots are stopped from operating. They will have no use for the steem power they have. People with millions in steem don't have time to manually curate. They will sell thr stake and move on to some other platform where they can grow thr money. Bid bots are part of the ecosystem. In fact they might be the one still keeping the price of steem where it is. I haven't used a bot in quite a while, but when i did, it was still profitable.
My argument here would be that there is no reason to auction the vote. Just sell it for what it's worth if that's what you want to do.
As much as I hate vote selling in general as I believe upvotes are not a commodity to be sold but rather a mechanism for gauging user contributions. A few of us have discussed what sort of alternatives could be developed.
One idea is a promotional queue bot. One that sells votes at the value they are worth and places the user into a queue to be voted at their appointed time slot. The problem is how such a model like this would compete in terms of ROI.
I think the simple answer is it can't. People will continue to bid. The exploit may not necessarily be with the blockchain but rather human nature. People want upvotes like crack. Game theory is a helluva drug.
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unfortunately upvotes are a commodity. they have the utility of buying time on the trending tab. this is why i am also creating a content filter that can hopefully mitigate the the weaknesses of the current trending/hot/promoted tabs.
in conjunction with a decentralized vote buying service hopefully I can convince devs to work on more productive endeavors.
Yeah, I know that is what they've become.
I've been thinking the old adage is applicable.
Perhaps, I was entetaining the notion of building a fair vote selling queue bot. Another idea I was thinking of was a bot that gives a bonus vote value on posts with decline rewards.
I already have my hands full with other projects atm so maybe one day. I like your idea and looking forward to what you put together.
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In that case u can buy fixed roi votes from smartmarket
Truest shit I've heard in a long time.. great article!
Thanks for your article.
That would be awesome. I, for one, have been trying to grow without bidbots.
However, I am a big fan of programs like @steembasicincome, @upvoteshares, @minnowbuilder and even @steemitbuilder.
What are your thoughts on those?
My thoughts are that they all depend on the trending tab staying incredibly basic. Look at all these developers working toward the same antiquated goal. Do we really want to delegate thousands of development hours into this sector?
What they should be working on is a better trending tab. Proof-of-brain incentive is what developers need to be working on achieving, and I don't see a single project on Steem even trying. Everyone seems to be a lot more worried about making sure they get paid instead of making the platform better as a whole.
You know what irks the hell out of me.
One top 50 witness who will not be named is one of the biggest vote selling and bid bot supporting ppI I know (it is actually how he rose to prominence) yet he is getting accolades and praises from the community for another project which I presume was able to gain momentum because of that same vote selling that is the bane of our platform.
I have not forgotten and I am uninterested in their card game as matter of principle as supporting them I would be empowering those greasy vote auctioneers.
In any case, I have long envisioned a similar but I would argue decisively more creative project and I am waiting on a 3D printer to get it going. I've said too much.
I must state I am not jealous of this person. I am more disappointed in the naiveté of people.
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Card game eh? ;D
I think 3D printing open source projects are going to be all the rage within 5 years. I have an idea for one as well. I have an idea for an on chain video game but I also want to adapt it to a physical game where all the pieces could be created by a 3D printer.
It really all comes down to proof of brain. If a project can create value and distribute that value back to the community it will go viral for sure.
Try Weku.io. Though, it's currently being tested, and I think It will be better platform. There won't be Bidbots! That's good things.
I agree, @swan-nguyen. They prohibit bidbots and that will be a big improvement!
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I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 10 SBD worth and should receive 197 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigI would suggest smartmarket already does this.
Strong disagree. smartmarket is a centralized service that forces you to pay them money to use it. There is no reason for these centralized services to act as escrow for vote buying/selling. We can all individually take that risk/responsibility.
How do they "force you" ? You either want to use them to upvote you, or you do not, I see no gun at my head!
Are you saying then you are going to provide the first "free" upvote service, at no cost?
Interesting times.
Indeed, that is exactly what I am saying. Free upvote service. Free market.
Excellent, sounds good to me.
I saw this and thought of you.
https://steemit.com/steem-bounty/@steem-bounty/new-voting-service-by-steem-bounty
So are you a geek or a mechanic?
Bit of both, like you I grew up pre internet with computers we had to code, write long ass programs for, for our freebie games, bikes and cars were work, bikes also for fun, pc's? you know the script.
I don't do code - that is for geeks!
Kiwideb had a computer like this and I thought it sucked :)
I was too busy doing this:
Well I did admit to being half a geek. :p
Interesting thoughts, but I'm not sure I agree.
There is transparency among bid bots thanks to @yabapmatt's steembottracker.com. Everyone can see how much they will get at least / at most and can choose the bot that has the best rules for them (ok, given that there aren't many last minute bidders). That also includes the fee (if any applies).
It's not only whales auctioning their votes, but any size or type of bots.
Auctions are an effective price building mechanism especially when liquidity is low. In addition, your example with Bitcoin seems odd because votes are typically auctioned in fractions.
What will a "decentralized" bid buying system look like? How will it actually improve transparency and fairness? Could you provide details? I'd be happy to help :-)
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allow anyone to sell their vote for whatever price they choose without taking a cut. problem solved; free market achieved.
I don't give a shit about Scamcurrency anymore.