Here's a recent picture from the reward pool. Look at all that beautiful steem flowing over the dam. I'm not sure it's done equilabrating yet, but the reward pool stands at 983k steem. That's about half of what it was before HF19 took effect. I'm glad to see that minnow votes are worth more, but I'm not sure the tradeoff so far has been worth it. In addition to the following concerns we've shoved 1million steem into the already biggest authors. Not a huge fan of that either. I guess I missed the steemitblog announcement where the reward pool would be cut substantially by the recent hard fork.
Pros
- Minnow Votes were 50x more, but with the reward pool cut in half it's now down to 25x
Cons
Minnows don't get a slider and only get 10 votes a day, so they have to use full power votes each time. It drains their power if they want to go above upvoting a few of their own posts, upvoting the handful of comments they like, and upvoting a few other peoples posts. Then it starts draining, and that's cutting down on minnow/minnow interactions from what I can observe (haven't dug into more data yet, just first observations)
Views are down. Not sure if it was just a spike in rewards and then a fall, or truly the 40 votes --> 10 votes has disincentivized finding new content, but again from observation it looks like overall views are down especially on minnow posts.
Autovorotic behavior. Peeps are self voting at all an all time high. Sure, I guess it's your right to do with your steem power as you seem fit, but upvoting spammy shitty comments buried in low view pages doesn't seem like a good use of a community asset even if that portion was yours to spend. Comment voting is up about 9X from what I can tell. Pretty sure it's not newly engaged curating whale suddenly supporting lots of new comments from minnnows there.
The percentage of the reward pool seems to have increased on the top accounts. Trending is mostly the same faces, but now those faces get an even larger portion of the pool. That can't be good. Like the world needs another mechanism to shove rewards to the highest earners.
Minnows don't get a slider and only get 10 votes a day, so they have to use full power votes each time. It drains their power if they want to go above upvoting a few of their own posts, upvoting the handful of comments they like, and upvoting a few other peoples posts. Then it starts draining, and that's cutting down on minnow/minnow interactions from what I can observe (haven't dug into more data yet, just first observations)
Views are down. Not sure if it was just a spike in rewards and then a fall, or truly the 40 votes --> 10 votes has disincentivized finding new content, but again from observation it looks like overall views are down especially on minnow posts.
Autovorotic behavior. Peeps are self voting at all an all time high. Sure, I guess it's your right to do with your steem power as you seem fit, but upvoting spammy shitty comments buried in low view pages doesn't seem like a good use of a community asset even if that portion was yours to spend. Comment voting is up about 9X from what I can tell. Pretty sure it's not newly engaged curating whale suddenly supporting lots of new comments from minnnows there.
The percentage of the reward pool seems to have increased on the top accounts. Trending is mostly the same faces, but now those faces get an even larger portion of the pool. That can't be good. Like the world needs another mechanism to shove rewards to the highest earners.
So, look. Can you describe HF19 as good or bad objectively? No, it's subjective. I want to growth hack steemit and help minnows grow. I don't think this hardfork is ultimately helping there because more of the rewards pool is going to top accounts than before and systemic abuse is on the rise. Minnow votes are worth more, but it's not enough to drastically alter their fate especially with the change in viewership. A short term spike in your ability to upvote isn't beneficial compared to the long term benefits of viewership, better peer-to-peer interaction in the comments section, and making friends with your power rather than the inclination to horde it post hard fork. If you're looking for more liberty on how you spend your own steem power though even for shit reasons then I guess it's a win.
I'm still confused why we don't just allow 1 vote to take all the steem power for all eternity and power that into one giant vote... That would surely help.
I think HF19 was a backend hack to try to unfuck the real problem on the platform which is distribution. Without even including @steemit the top 1% of accounts have 93% of the steem. That's the real issue. HF18 rules would be working fine if so much of the power wasn't in the hands of just a small minority of people.
It never will even out, but I do hope to see it become more distributed.
There are much more viewers than content creators.
Since there's money involved, some will game the system to get as much profit for as little effort as possible. This is new though and intended to give the profit to those who really put in some effort, and provide value. It will take time to grow the community and balance things out.
Most posts only get 10-20 views on steemit though, do you really think there's too many viewers?
Definitely not too many viewers. Need lots more. It's the way it is. Viewing is easier and more entertaining than creating. Need those viewers to participate more too. Eventually they will
Good comment.
Oh my god! It's almost as if this was predicted! Maybe people will start listening to informed criticisms now?
Nah...better to pretend that a certain few devs are always right and everything is perfect!
Thank you @aggroed...I noticed this after the first week. If you all had not started PAL, we would pretty much be algae food.
My goal here was to learn about currencies, and then possibly invest some, but I have to really think on it...
I have seen comments rewards drop... but maybe it is me and what I say,or how I say it... :-0
I know I am less inclined to use my votes on comment's ,as I would rather reward authors who are putting in real effort(?) or that catch my ADD vission.. wow pretty!,thats cool!...
hopefully HF20 or 21 can give us some votes back!!!
but
NOT! or maybe I should teach my kid how to lie steal and cheat because it works... raise a politician!
sorry I see it as wrong for 1% to have 99%... I was taught to share,help those less fortunate than me...
why I am part of MSP! and P.A.L. net!
thank you for all you do @aggroed!
namaste!
I must say i agree with alot of your toughts, i was here only the last weeks of HF19, but that time felt more rewarding for me as a minnow, had a lot more views and the few comments I got back then, where usually real input, and not just "follow me" spam.
It felt good to have a little more to give to people on a upvote, but then again it constraints me that I now have to keep a close eye on my voting power. For me the community and the different areas I feel I can learn more from trough other posts have gotten so much harder to connect with. The influx of new users with the reward pool changing has led to a lot of spam, which makes it harder to find quality writers. We can only see what will happen, but I predict that hf20 will arrive soon, atleast if someone is reading the feedback. the distribution problem is quite big, but can be managed over time. As you say, peer-peer interaction is worth alot more!
Yeah, so, HF20 fixes a different set of problems entirely. I haven't really started paying attention to that yet. I'm still kinda stuck here watching long term sustaibable growth for the minnows in the Pond I help build deteriorate for short term short sighted gains.
The decentralized system on steemit is pretty much a good reflection of our current world reality. Unless something is done to "level" the playing field for minnows, good authors will eventually be disincentivized to continue to blog. Eventually, spamming will hurt the community.
Hope that HF20 will bring about some much needed "regulation."
I guess the best solution now is to not follow spammy authors and hold back the need for instant Steem gratification.
When is HF20 expected to be initiated ?
I can't speak technically as elegant as you, however, I totally agree with your view point. At the end of the day, we'll have the same or less 'power' as before the HF19.
I quoted you in a response to the Old Dog @kus-knee with this "The percentage of the reward pool seems to have increased on the top accounts. Trending is mostly the same faces, but now those faces get an even larger portion of the pool. That can't be good. Like the world needs another mechanism to shove rewards to the highest earners."
Well, I'm stoked to see a user with a rediculously high rep chime in here looking at what may not have been the best plan after all. Thanks for commenting @gringalicious and thanks for your continued support. You're great!
I normally never chime in on these discussions. I'd much rather focus on frosting and raspberries, ( did I happen to mention that raspberries are my favorite? ). BUT, I am put out by the fact that I can't focus on my raspberries, instead, I have to figure this shit out every couple of months. If you want to give some 'power' to the minnows, how about trying to maintain some constant parameters?!
I need to find my happy place apparently - LOL
Yeah, it's all an experiment, and I hope they figure out something that really works for the vast majority without all this self upvoting shit post spam before they try to charge at reddit for real.
This is the key thing. Every hard fork, people should be all over adjusting to the changes and be charitable to everyone and their intentions because until we get everything right EVERY SINGLE HF WILL BE BROKEN. This is all transient. Every Steemian should explore every aspect of every new HF X, we should see what doesn't work, we should fix it thoughtfully in HF X+1, no one should get up in arms or freak out, and we should move on together, rinse lather repeat. There's no steady state yet.
There is a dynamic that seems to come with any change - unintended consequences. Looks like we have a couple with the latest HF. So long as there is more pros than cons at the end of the day, change is good. I guess that is the question then.
I agree with this post. I don't have much experience prior to HF19 but I can definitely tell there's a big difference, especially in morale. I think that's the biggest problem here.
I also appreciate that his is one of the first big person's post that doesn't just outright "blame" minnows. There's been a lot of minnow blame and it makes for an unfriendly environment.
You nailed it again @aggroed! I agree with your analysis and I felt really constrained by the 10 votes per day limit, I had to power up and today I finally got the vote slider!
I really enjoy your commentary and analysis of the important issues going on, be it hard forks or revenge downvotes.
Steemit is a massive social experiment playing out in real time and we are all part of it.
Glad to have your thoughts building up our collective crypto-dna
I'm fairly new here, yet I too notice a trend in voting... the energy with which people vote now is not as it was when I had just joined. I am yet to understand the dynamics of the minnow power and the whale power, but I do understand that the drop cannot be such a good thing. I find people more interested in posting than in voting. If it is all because of the HF19, then... the question arises why and will and when will things change again? And why isn't what's good for one individual minnow good for one whale too? Please do correct me if I'm mistaken in my thinking. I'm trying to understand the scenario here. I enjoy Steemit. I'm awestruck by its depth. Actually, in my fresh and open mind, I believe Steemit can empower people and set them free to do what they want, to exhibit their knowledge, their talents and also be a part of a big and growing world community... then why does it appear to have a number of reins?
I totally agree and I quote that last percentage factor about the distribution of wealth on here ALL the time. It does seem like at first, this was the boon that minnows had been dying for, but it's fading into black and it is having some interesting consequences.
The price of steem is down, sbd is way down (which I know they wanted to push back down anyways, hence the interest rate drop to 0), and I mean personally I'm not worried as I'm in this thing long term.
But it is scaring some of the other newer folks and they're already getting pretty shaky with their money/not investing into the platform as much, from what it seems.
Curious to see how this continues and what HF20 will bring. Is there an ETA on the next HF?
I'm not sure I saw a date for HF20. That seemed to mostly be a mechanism to allow steemit to get new people in here without burning all their steem, which makes me question a little if they are going a different route why do they have all that steem anyway? IDK. I have more questions than answers right now.
Steem price is down because all of crypto is down since HF19. It likely has nothing to do with HF19 tbh. It also probably doesn't help that many Steemians are buying into EOS and selling Steem to do it and then using Steem to hype EOS.
What is interesting is that the ratio of people withdrawing vs depositing Steem onto the site actually went DOWN a lot since HF19 which is very positive, but that trend has abated too. The Steem economy doesn't work well with people constantly cashing out more than is bought on the exchanges...
https://plot.ly/~lukestokes/96/withdrawal-to-deposit-ratio-by-user-count-over-time/
I understand it's down as well due to other cryptos but many factors vary into falling and rising prices - as you know. So to completely say that HF19 has nothing to do with it, sounds highly unlikely.
Also, I personally didn't know that statistic but thank you for sharing. If people are continuing to sell into the low prices well then they are panic selling, are exiting Steem/the SteemIt world, or they know something we don't.
I'm curious to see what HF20 will bring and if it will have any reversed effect on the changes that were implemented in 19.
I never said nothing to do with it. It is just almost definitely not even a top 2 reason for the price movement.
And down 30% in crypto from its highs is NOT panic selling. Come on now! Every crypto should expect up to 70% drawndowns at any given moment. The fact is, most people on Steem sell all the Steem they earn and few hold it and far far far fewer are net buyers of Steem in the long term. I'm a unicorn in this regard.
Definitely agree on the viewership point you mention. I'm not sure if its just me or not but I feel like I've been less active with Steemit now a day. I usually post my post and read through five or six articles each time because I'm so concentrated on my voting power staying at a decent level. I feel like before when we were able to vote more, I was reading through more articles and content so that I could upvote. The upvote didn't mean much in monetary value but it still has an effect towards the author imo. Who knows, I'm still getting used to the hardfork honestly not sure if I like it or don't like it.
I also agree on the autovoting behavior point you brought up. Its kind of disturbing to see people comment all over Steemit and upvote their own comment, giving them $4 or $5 or even $10 but they don't upvote the post they're commenting on. Yes it's their steem power but it seems like an abuse of power.
Love the debates brought forward in ur posts about Steemit :D
I've noticed slided down rewards in last week.
I feel really horible if I can see under post amount $35 in one day before getting reward? and as a result I get 12SBD and 4SP for.... I just stop to create something, because my potential money just gone in someother hands for 24 hours.
How it might be improved:
I recently spotted a whale upvoting only their own posts, then being one of the first commenters on their own post by posting links to their other posts, and then upvoting that comment as well. And this particular person pretty much never resteems anything from anyone else either. Yet that's the kind of behavior that thousands of followers are actively supporting. i didn't come here expecting to get rich. But it's definitely annoying to be watching those who are raking in the top rewards turning around and hoarding the rewards they should be distributing to the community.
yep!!!
I feel like HF19 was meant to bring balance to the rewards received by everyone across the platform but has had the unintentional result of increasing the rewards to the top earners. Surely this isn't by design? Thanks @aggroed, this content helps keep us all in the loop, interesting insights for sure!
why we can't design slider (or something else) for minnows?
why? :|
it is worth of a few line code ,
we want to kill steemit?
If your power gets too low than you can't interact on the blockchain at all. So, it's actually there to stop minnows from voting themselves into an inability to post or transact.
but it is possible making a dropdown for minnows that they can upvote with 50% of their power
50% is better than 100%
esteem let's you do it. I'm not it's wise as a minnow though. Again you'll hit a point where you can't talk to the blockchain.
Thoughtful and based on solid data as always.
The best outcome is if the 1% realize that their 93% can be worth 10X more, if they reduce holdings to 80% or some such number, to allow increased rewards for minnows which will cause the platform to grow.
Ultimately the value of the platform is based on how much it can grow. Actions that cause sustained growth will cause the platform to become more valuable.
STEEM On !!
Dave
@davebrewer
always on point...
seems the 1% all very stingy with their votes and usually use it for their friends and cronies.. an impartial review and mandate for the upvotes to spread should help the community grow the real foot soldiers should be taken care of s they can get many more members...
Some whales have stopped voting, so they don't appear to be manipulating the system. End result is the whales that are still voting are having an even larger impact.
yeah...votes are low now but still the strong will keep struggling...
check my blog posts from my intro pots to the new one.... male and female brains... very undervalued as such i decide post less...
please find time and read my posts and comment.....gives me hope if someone like you support...
thanks...
@aggroed
very on point. views are really down as such , good posts from minnows with relgatively low steem power get swallowed in the bottomless pit of many other ones coming...no matter what strategy from randowhale, minnows support and maybe steemwizard, if nothing is done it stil remains same... right to upvote 40x daily i better than 10x as one has ability to read up more to upvote.
I suggest maybe for the system to be able to limit self upvoting for max of 30% a day and upvoting others 70%... with minnows upvoting more profitable...
my question is, for the limit of 10upvote dily, cant one be at liberty to adjust voting power so one can be able to vote many more or less times...
your post is excellent and your remark on point...as such, i can point out that you have brains ( dont mind me, sent a post yesterday in my blog about brain power)
Upvoted and following for more of such...
thanks
Distribution will always be controversial did not realise so much continued disparity still heading in the wrong direction. I did think the Hard Fork was better in encouraging you to limit upvotes. I suppose spammers will always try to game the system. Anywhere to view the distribution as i think the official chart is down.
steemwhales.com. i think steemd.com has one too.
Thanks steemwhales is easy to understand was familiar to https://steemd.com/distribution but thats where i get a message its 'Down for maintenance. '
I think your last sentence sums it up nicely:
HF18 rules would be working fine if so much of the power wasn't in the hands of just a small minority of people.
I guess the next question is - how to remedy this?
socialism.
That's a joke.
heh...funny.
@aggroed, I wrote a post about this similar problem - let me know what you think?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@altcointrends/steem-world-s-largest-social-experiment-in-charity
I suggested a solution in the discord with a post I made, funny enough my post was considered spam and I was directed to post it somewhere else.... we live in a strange world... I would keep my thoughts to myself
Thanks for the post.
The first few days after the hard fork were great. I was getting a penny for my post but now nothing. I'm lucky if I get few other votes but they've been few and far between.
Self voting has become crazy though. I believe you can if you want to, you have the right. But there are quite a few spammy accounts who post frequently (10+) a day or even by the hour. Then they self vote and every bit of their power just funneled into themselves. Bummer but again, they can do what they want with their power.
@aggroed so now whats the possible solution
where is it located? wooooooow
@aggroed
Steemit has been down these days, where I used to receive 30+ Upvote is now cut in half for the past few days.
yeah...seems people are hurding their upvotes and when many even upvotes, its usually zero$...
but its ok...we shall improve through hard work
Yeah we just have to wait , some days are good and some are bad
sees you have an eagle eye...do always keep me updated...
you can drop in and check my new posts on male and female brains...
you are right. I am in same fact
I propose to subtract a percentage (25% for example) from every self-vote and add it back to the reward pool. Or burn it. This way, the community benefits partly if people choose to upvote their own posts or comments.
I'm going to make a smurf and have it upote me. Then what. I'm not sure that will actually solve this.
Hey @aggroed what do you think about this. All solutions seem to be met with the proposition: "What if they just make a smurf".
So how about we create a voting power between individuals that is diminishing (and recharges).
Here's roughly how it looks.
Vote for your self.... 100%
Vote for yourself again... only 50%
BUT, if you had voted for someone else, it's the normal 98%
Same for bots... the first time they vote you, it's 100%. Second time it's greatly diminished. So you could only self vote or get bot votes efficiently once per... let's say couple days. If you continue to autovote (even with bots), you're losing a ton of efficiency and rewards.
Instead, it's much better for you to vote once for yourself per time period, and then vote for others. Ultimately the goal is that you get your rewards but you have to actually engage various users for maximum rewards, instead of just yourself or a tiny group of friends.
I really feel the platform will wither if engagement isn't incentivized. Basically what would happen to the population if masturbation really was better than sex.
I could get behind some diminishing returns that refresh. Still thinks bots outsmart it...
I like the analogy, but consider this. There are times when if you arent masturbating, you aren't getting anything at all! Masturbation isn't better than sex, but it is better than nothing... And that's why peoole are upvoting them selves more and more...
Anyway, your solution is the best I've seen so far...
Really interesting post. I still don't get what's happening. I had a post who almost hit $60 and my final payout was $23 for me and $7 for the curators. I lost 50% of that post's value in one week. Crazy!
yeah, that's the rewardpool drain. Not 100% positive, but that seems to track almost exactly.
Thank you :)
I've been on steemit for a week and learning a lot. I can't wait to get more steem power to be able to up vote more generously. Keep the content coming.
azming @aggroed upvoted :) And visit my wall if you can thanks alot :) )
thank you for sharing this useful information. Learning so much everyday
@aburmeseabroad
on point...with all the talents on steemit, once you read few posts you must learn something new, like my recent posts educated on brian power...happy steeming...
Hope there is a more equal solution in future to benefit all.
This is the first time I've seen the word autovorotic! I'm definitely against upvoting one's own comments. I'm okay with posts if it's not spammy.
How do you stop people from having multiple accounts and upvoting their own comments that way?
We need to get (the real) Bernie Sanders into steemit and vote him into a witness.
@alexander.alexis
on point... wall street style...
You'll have to send mail to his three houses to find him.
You might find him at the Big House soon
Yeah, socialism isn't the answer here either. I don't know how minnows can seize the means of production either. Still too new to have all the answers, but it's been long enough to observe some of the problems.
I like the bounty that is out there right now... @jerrybanfield wants to know everything he can about the large aquatic mammals. https://steemit.com/curation/@jerrybanfield/make-these-posts-and-i-will-upvote-usd20 ... knowledge might be a first step. Names and faces to avatars and aliases.
There was another interesting HF-19 post yesterday that mentioned not being allowed to self-upvote. But I wondered if limiting self-upvotes to 3-5 per day would be a good idea. What are your thoughts on that @aggroed?
delegation is easier than ever. If I'm limited in self votes and motivated I'll just make a smurf and use the smurf or multiple smurfs to upvote me. If I'm not as savvy I won't have that option. So, I don't think it's worth it.
Upvoting your own posts rewards those who invest in Steem. Something we want to encourage.
I would agree with not being allowed to vote for your own comments, but then how do you stop people from having more than one account and upvoting themselves that way?
I think we need to lock posts in Trending to much shorter timeframes. Maybe as little as an hour and you're gone from trending. We need a lot more turnover there, the page looks almost the same day to day, and it's probably one of the first thing new users hit. Seems like an underutilized asset.
"the top 1% of accounts have 93% of the steem."
Not sure how you get around this one without some kind of forced distribution, unfortunately. What percentage of the quality content do you think those 1% of accounts are producing? I'd say it's at least well over 1% (ie more than proportional).
Well, that's basically what hot is. I still think we need a way to incentivize upvoting minnows. I do get worried though it's going to incentivize self voting through smurfs. IDK. We collectively need to come up with an answer.
Is there a way to give higher curation rewards scaled against a LOWER target SP (more rewards for curating a minnow to $1k than a whale post to $1k) that won't be immediately abused via sock-puppet posting? Maybe the lower SP target would need a minimum time since registration or minimum number of upvotes received...neither of those sounds like that smooth of an idea.
one idea is to separate the rewards pool for posts and comments. It's not really abused through posts because it's too easy to catch and the whole community sees it. It's abused through comments. One option is to cap comments at 3% of the pool. That stops the amount of abuse accessible through there, but it also hurts actual comments. I'm not sure of a way to do this yet without unintended consequences.
Yeah, commenting is kind of how you get started on the platform. I have gotten a few $30+ comments which in turn boosted my followers when I had next to none. However, I feel like if you restrict it to posts, people will just make more posts. I don't think there are enough flags to go around.
Flag wars are destructive and best used only by the biggest set of whale balls around.
How about separating voting power between posts and comments. Everyone gets 10 (or 20 or whatever is a good number) % of their voting power to spend on comments, when it's used up it's used up. The rest is delegated to voting on posts.
I rather see the comments being worth more than 3% as we need both readers as creators to balance things out.
Yeah, it's always a bit discouraging when looking at the top 1% carrying so much... I don't have a solution to the problem, but I love what you are doing to help the minnows and new people on steemit. Your growth hack of steemit that you called it haha! Keep it up @aggroed
My experience as well.
OTOH, even with the overdrawn reward pool, fewer views, and less interaction (which I think is the result of so many new Steemers on our feeds...a good thing!), I am making more simply by upvoting my own posts (not comments)
HF19 has been best for us Dolphins, in my experience.
even with my comment voting at a dime a shot, I am helping out Minnows with more effect than I was under the previous reward distribution...when I find Minnow content I find valuable, that is. But just because I don't find a lot of that (since my interest is very narrow) doesn't mean that the flood of new users isn't a good thing.
Good observations and reSteemed!
we will hope good solution in near future.
It would be nice to see a better distribution of steem, but, I am so new that I accepted it as it was as I was coming in.
Sadly, I'm coming around to this point of view on HF19. At first, I was very encouraged by the additional voting power, and thought it could make a huge difference to those trying to grow out of the minnow pool. But the reward pool shrinkage has dampened my enthusiasm. If I understand it correctly, that pool depends on interactions, and it seems pretty clear that the hardfork has decreased voting to a substantial degree.
My hope was that a reduction in voting would lead to an increase in commenting, but that also doesn't seem to have happened. On balance, I don't know that HF19 helped a great deal. Surely linear power is a step in the right direction, but the downside of reduced interaction and more autovorotic--love the term--has blunted the impact of that improvement. Sad.
Still, nothing to be done but what was smart all along--keep producing good content, interact, and vote for the good guys. It isn't as if it will take LONGER now to get out of the minnow pool.
thank you so much bro
Totally agree...The worst is that many already warned about it before the HF.
Yeah, I seem to recall a few high profile promoted posts about it.
I was really looking for this post. I hope This reward pool gets stabilized at some point and we can get slider on 200 SP that will really help using upvotes effectively.
10 times more blogs a day than even a month or so ago coupled with sharper vote power drainage, turbulent waters at present.
Very good information! This explains a lot for me.. thank you brother, keep up the good work!