Crowdsourced and stake-based content discovery and rewarding, also known as Proof-of-Brain, has been proven a failure, at least in its ideal form. It is, however, better than just wasting power like PoW. I think what the network and all its participants have generated in the three years of Steem's existence is much better than entropy which is the only thing PoW leaves in its wake.
At the very least, having been a participant has taught me many lessons about human nature. The difficulty of getting anyone to join has also been an eye opener.
By the way, I don't think bid bots are the crux of the matter. Vote farming is. Bid bots are but one of the many ways to accomplish ROI maximization at the cost of putting in the effort to curate altruistically.
Then again does that matter? I think Steem is still a shitload of fun and the money is vastly better than on any mainstream platform in spite of everything.
What's great about communities is that each community has an opportunity to create their own variant of PoB, some of which may actually work. What I think has the best possibility of working is an app owning the vast majority of stake in a community token and treating content creators like freelancers and keeping other curators in line by negating any abusive voting done by them.
Proof-of-brain is not an alternative to proof of work, delegated proof of stake (DPoS) is.
Proof-of-brain and content voting generally could be turned off entirely and the Steem blockchain would continue to run, apps which don't rely on the voting for rewards such as SteemMonsters and others would still be working fine, etc.
Proof-of-brain was one feature added to the Steem blockchain intended to help it attract users and grow. It worked to some extent but its effectiveness to date has been fairly limited.
I'm fully aware of that. However, Steem allots some of the token inflation to content creators and curators.
I know. I've actually been saying for quite some time that I wouldn't mind if PoB were discontinued at the base layer at some point but not any time soon (meaning a few years).
It has made also made the stake distribution somewhat more decentralized. Even if it didn't add too much value otherwise in terms of driving traffic, it has furthered the decentralization of stake.
I think that is very debatable. Many of the largest stakeholders have gained enormously from it's actual results (as opposed to the intent or theory) through a variety of schemes including but not limited to bid bots. Some smaller stakeholders have certainly benefited but to talk about "decentralization" in the aggregate you need to consider the full spectrum including the enormous earnings at the top, and the conclusion looks shaky to me.
Steemit, Inc's stake has definitely been diminishing with the passage of time as they have sold huge quantities of STEEM. Other large stakeholders may have increased their share. Who knows.
Yes, steemit has not benefitted from PoB (though some of the founders have through their company-granted accounts). But as you note it has declined greatly due to selling (and being given to new user accounts before they stopped doing that), and that would have happened regardless of PoB. The same can be said for many other large accounts which have sold a lot.
Most of the other large stakeholders (including, as noted, most of the Steemit founder accounts) have gained enormously from PoB especially since bidbots became dominant, but also previously due to n^2.
IMO the most effective route to decentralization has been selling, and not PoB.
Well, you're right about that. Decentralization has definitely been driven by Steemit, Inc being forced to sell to cover development costs. This is why I'm happy they're selling as long as they are not in danger of going belly up because of the price dropping too low.