Hardfork 21 - Steem Proposal System (SPS) + Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP)

in #hf216 years ago (edited)

There have been a lot of posts over the past year talking about various ideas and proposals for the next hardfork. We seem to be getting close to a point where the changes for the next HF are relatively finalized, so I wanted to share my views.

Overview

The first part of this post will provide a high level overview of the changes that are currently in the proposed HF, for anyone who is not familiar with them.

Steem Proposal System (SPS)

The SPS will work similarily to the current rewards pool, except instead of providing an unknown amount of rewards "after the fact" (once you create a post), it will allow users to get paid a predetermined amount for proposed work.

The key benefit to this is that it will allow entities (other than Steemit, Inc.) to make proposals for various things that will improve the value of Steem - such as development projects, marketing, etc. Since I joined Steem back in 2016, one thing that I have heard people say over and over again is "Steemit is not doing this" and "Steemit is not doing that". With a funding source that stakeholders can allocate towards various projects, we will now have the opportunity to pay for some of these things ourselves.

Whether it will be successful remains to be seen, but if participants and stakeholders take it seriously and use it well - there is a lot of potential to add a lot of value to the platform - for both stakeholders and users.

One of the big sticking points on this proposal is how to fund it. From what I have heard, Steemit, Inc. is planning to provide some level of "seed" money to get it going. This would be a finite amount of funds though, so there has been a lot of discussion on how to sustain the SPS fund long-term. The main idea on the table is to divert a portion (likely somewhere around 10%) of the inflation currently going into the rewards pool to the SPS fund. I realize there is a lot of controversy surrounding this - which I will touch on later on in the post.

Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP)

The EIP is the second part of HF21 that is being discussed. This is a collection of three main changes that stakeholders and witnesses have been proposing as ways to improve the economics behind Steem.

The three changes included in the EIP are explained in detail in this post from @steemitblog.

The TLDR version of the changes is:

  • Moving from a linear rewards curve to a convergent linear rewards curve.
  • Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators.
  • Create a separate “downvote pool.”

Opinions on HF21

Thought process behind the changes

I suspect it is going to be hard for most users to see how these changes are going to make things better for them (especially when viewed in isolation). I suspect most users will translate the changes into:

  • More power for whales
  • More money for whales
  • Less money for authors
  • More downvote abuse

Before you go down that path though, I suggest you ask yourself: Does it really seem like Steem is working well the way it is today? I feel that pretty much everyone that has been here for long enough knows that the system we have in place today is not working.

  • Bid bots pretty much rule the platform.
  • Very few stakeholders are spending time looking for quality contributions to reward.
  • Many users who contribute a lot to the platform struggle to get any decent rewards.
  • Little to no marketing is being done.
  • Very few changes that users have been asking for are actually getting done.
  • The STEEM price has fallen significantly from the all-time-high, and there is not much optimism for it going much higher than it is today. In fact, a lot of people are worried that it will just continue to go lower.

A lot of users, stakeholders, and witnesses have been talking about the issues surrounding Steem for years now. There have been tons of proposals and plans, but very little has been done to improve the situation since the last economic hardfork (HF16).

One thing a lot of users likely don't understand is how difficult it is to go from an "idea" to a successful hardfork. I have seen and discussed hundreds (possibly even thousands) of ideas during my time as a witness. Getting enough people to support an idea, then getting someone to actually develop + test code for it, and then getting a super-majority of witnesses go agree to adopt it is REALLY HARD.

The EIP (combined with the SPS) is not a perfect / ideal solution that is going to magically solve all of our problems. It is a culmination of several years worth of discussions among a lot of very smart users, stakeholders, witnesses, and people at Steemit, Inc though - who have all been trying to come up with a way to fix this place and make it better. It represents a consensus on items that we believe will improve the platform and that we can actually get to the finish line.

The Goal

The goal of HF21 (whether you believe it will actually work or not) is to try and make this place better for all of us. Making it better means encouraging more of the behavior that we want, and discouraging the behavior we don't want. It means more money going into the hands of users who are contributing to the value of Steem, and less money going into the hands of the users who are just here to leach. Hopefully, this leads to more value being generated - which can potentially lead to a higher STEEM price.

My Thoughts

HF21 in it's current form is not what I personally view as the best path forward. If it were 100% up to me, there are a lot of things I would do differently. Despite my objections over individual items in the proposal however, I do see the "package" of changes as a significant improvement from where we currently are.

The outcome of HF21 is impossible to predict. While we have had a lot of very smart minds talking about these changes for a very long time, the big unknown is how all of this will affect user behavior. Will we shift users into more of a mindset where the goal is to reward what we want to encourage, and penalize what we want to discourage? Or will we just end up with more of the same - users trying to maximize short-term personal gain at the expense of everyone else? I really hope that it is the former, but unless/until the changes are live - there is really no way to know.

Authors will likely complain over what appears to be a more than 50% reduction in their rewards. While I fully understand the concern, and it is 100% legitimate - I am looking at it from a much different angle. Instead about worrying about how cutting the rewards of a quality member from $10 to $5 is going to hurt retention - I want to figure out how we get to a point where that user is earning $100 or even $1000.

Will we get to that point? I don't know.

What I do know though, is we need some major changes to the system in order to even have a chance of getting there. It is not guaranteed to work by any means, but in my mind - SPS + EIP is the first step.

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Speaking of "leaches", you're one of the biggest on the platform. Sitting in the top 20 witnesses doing ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING but writing this bullshit posts that says ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING and earning for it. Where's your bullshit node list nobody fucking cares about?

Go fuck yourself already Tim, worthless LEACH.

Responded on your post, since it seems like a better place to have the discussion.

where do you find the energy to keep on with this?

did I teach enough lessons for the next to go better?

We will see.

Posts like yours and the direction of where Steem is heading are PRECISELY why I am 100% powering down.

"Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators." 25% isn't enough? If you change it to 50% there will be more people who buy Steem just to use their upvoting power to make 50% on upvoting anything. Already as it stands we know that bidbots have that exact same problem. Giving more money back to people who hold SP doesn't solve any of it. You provide no math, no facts, no proof of how arbitrarily changing it to 50% makes a difference. I don't care what your "opinion" on it is, that is worthless. Data. Facts. Metrics. I see NONE of that in your post.

"Create a separate “downvote pool.” Why? Data. Facts. Metrics. I see none of that showing why a downvote pool would help solve a problm. In fact, YOU HAVEN'T EVEN NAMED THE PROBLEM. What is the problem? Is it that your "opinion" is that there isn't enough downvotes? Lets just give MORE power to the people who regularly downvote abuse becauase they were here for the ninjamine and had millions of SP. Yeah, that will totally solve something....

Good grief. Steem is going to die by a thousand cuts of non-fact based thoughtleaders taking Steem over a cliff.

If you change it to 50% there will be more people who buy Steem just to use their upvoting power to make 50% on upvoting anything.

... then you kinda go on saying stuff like, "You provide no math!"

No math I say!

But read this again: "If you change it to 50% there will be more people who buy Steem just to use their upvoting power to make 50% on upvoting anything."

Think about that. Think long and hard.

More people buying steem. I'm thinking that's probably a... good thing? Yes. Yes, it is a good thing. No math needed there.

"Using their upvoting power to vote.." OH... MY... GOD! Not that! Why would thousands of content producers want people actually voting for their work?!?!?!

This is an outrage!

...oh... wait. No. That's actually EXACTLY what content producers want.

This place needs more content consumers. More content consumers means more money to the content producer. You do not need math for this. Picture a comedy show. Will the comedian earn more if the the chairs are empty, or full?

You entirely miss the point. The trending and hot tab is already filled with bid bottled posts. The bid bots will just make more money with more curation. Causing more power to be given to them. I dont need to show any math for that, go look.

There will be more shitposts and people buying steem to make money from voting is a ponzi scheme that cant last long term. When quality goes down due to shitposts how much will steem be worth.

Like I said I'm powering down because after 2 years I done

That's twice now, in one thread, where you said, your account here is dead... and you're leaving. Therefore, there's no point in speaking to you anymore. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

You've made it clear, you're leaving. Goodbye. This is not a response to you, because technically, you're not here.

To anyone else. If you bought $100 worth of votes, would you be foolish enough to do it twice if on payday you realized 50% of that $100 went to someone else? "Hello ma'am. Will you please give me two quarters for this dollar bill?" Brief pause. "Why are you looking at me like that, ma'am?"

Are you going to be the sucker who purchases votes from a handful of accounts, when thousands of accounts would be willing to do it for free?

Then this character who is no longer with us goes on about shit posts, all while not being able to factor in the downvote portion of the plan... but it is me who is missing the point, somehow.

Huh...

I said I am powering down 100% and selling my Steem. I never said I was going to stop using busy.org or give up the group I run @informationwar.

I have been here for 2 years and basically not much has happend that is good. The signs all point to negative things happening. Steem laid off a bunch of people because they didn't sell their stake into USD responsibly every so often like they should have(cryptocurrency is a speculative assest with high risk). Steem generally is seen as a scam if you look where people talk about it on major crypto forums/reddit/twitter(I know Steem isn't a scam, just saying the perception is that it is by most).

Putting information onto the blockchain so that it cannot be censored is a valuable thing, that is why I am here. I have been in the cryptocurrency space since almost the very beginning of Bitcoin. I sold my Bitcoin for the same reason I am selling my Steem and buying more ETH/OMG/LOOM/BCH.

I criticize the problems with Steem because I want them to get better, not make things worse. Linear rewards suck. Current bidbot status quo sucks, but changing to 50% curation will just attract more people looking to blindly upvote anything to make profit.

If it changes to 50% curation rewards from the current 12% I may need to examine how well that does and possibly re-consider keeping SOME Steem, just so I can constantly make money from upvoting. 50% is nothing to sneeze at, the current 12% is something to sneeze at because it also has a 13 week powerdown period(which is also stupid now that we have Resource Credits).

I am pretty well versed on this entire thing from the beginning to the end. Just telling me to go away and stop talking is a weird response.

However, i did power down these same reasons.

Dear @nonameslefttouse

I actually agree with @truthforce on this one.

Those who self-upvote will not stop. They will receive less as an authors but more as curators. So it won't stop them.

At the same time bidbots will be growing twice as fast as they are growing now (after all their curation rewards will double).

Yours
Piotr

Yes you are write.
Until you can just open free account if you have 5,000 Steempower and this always again after your resource credits was refilled you just make different accounts and vote with one the other account.

For the bid bots it's even a good deal, because they get more curation reward for their votes.

Yes you are write.

"Write" or "right"? :)

Here is the weird thing. @steemhunt actually has solved virtually every single perceived problem mentioned above and nobody is talking about it. I think I'll b writing a post on this. I made this poll and you can take a look at the responses: https://dpoll.xyz/detail/@vimukthi/are-you-more-of-a-content-creator-or-an-investorgamercurator-how-do-your-perceive-hf-21/

Dear @truthforce

If you change it to 50% there will be more people who buy Steem just to use their upvoting power to make 50% on upvoting anything

I hate to say that, but I see it exactly the same way. Those who self-upvote will not stop. They will receive less as an authors but more as curators. So it won't stop them.

At the same time bidbots will be growing twice as fast as they are growing now (after all their curation rewards will double).

Yours
Piotr

Buying votes for 'promotional purposes' is a farce. People buy votes because the vote seller offers a potential ROI but no guarantee. Explain to me who would buy a vote if the seller was to get more and the buyer nothing? For what purpose would someone buy a vote?

Dear @nonameslefttouse

Buying votes for 'promotional purposes' is a farce.

I absolutely agree. It'a a farce. However upvoting published content to trending page gives people hope to get some exposure and traffic.

That's obviously my own opinion.

Yours
Piotr

However upvoting published content to trending page gives people hope to get some exposure and traffic.

Which is why people should be curating and voting quality up to the trending page, instead of all the crap paid programming we see there today. Thousands left because they had no hope of ever making it here. If I can go out and buy the trophy that says I'm the best golfer in the world, I don't even need to learn how to golf.

me too, powering down. You fucking people SUCK.

From one artist to another, I just want to suggest you give it more thought and some time. You need eyes on your work and by the sounds of things, this plan could help with that. Right now, many potential curators choose to be paid to look away. The proposed changes offer incentives to get paid to look.

In the arts and entertainment world, these changes are much like offering a standup comedian a smaller cut on a slow night because the venue is offering consumers drink specials. The drink specials are there to fill the house, the performer ends up earning more by accepting a smaller percentage because the seats are full. Had the venue not offered the drink specials as an incentive for people to show up, the performer would have taken home far less money, even if offered the full cut, because the seats were empty.

We have too many empty seats here at the moment. Too many performers, not enough content consumers. Everyone is in the back, waiting to go on stage, to perform in front of an empty house. Back room is packed. Something needs to be done to change that, or we go out of business. I've been saying this now for a very, very long time. If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Personally, I prefer to see people succeed. Standing room only. People hanging from the rafters.

I guess the downvotes are there because every venue needs a bouncer to handle the drunken riffraff.

In the arts and entertainment world, these changes are much like offering a standup comedian a smaller cut on a slow night because the venue is offering consumers drink specials. The drink specials are there to fill the house, the performer ends up earning more by accepting a smaller percentage because the seats are full. Had the venue not offered the drink specials as an incentive for people to show up, the performer would have taken home far less money, even if offered the full cut, because the seats were empty.

You hit the bulls eye

interesting. The hard forks have always reduced the value of my account. I am sick of it. I see you have been on here about as long as I have. I don't see where they have ever done any good. It's pathetic. I already actually powered down a while ago and had done nothing - that's why I am plankton instead of a minnow 3 - which I could never get beyond - but even powered down, I am making more money now than I ever have on a regular basis - but it's more to do with having found my community in eco-train than these idiots antics which have basically drowned us... and the google ads make it even worse.

I used to ask why, rather than purchasing votes, why don't these folks just flag my work into oblivion, for free, because the end result is the same.

Me publishing a post that includes art is much like putting up a display behind my shop windows. People are to walk by and notice it, then maybe step into my blog and browse around. Unfortunately, since they started selling votes, I put my work up behind the windows, and some asshole comes along and plasters shit posters and advertisements all over the glass, meaning people can no longer see what I've done.

I went from working my ass off, starting with nothing, working up to having the odd organic trending post from time to time... to nearly losing it all. That was all due to the people being paid to look away, and those offering the incentive to earn by looking away. What is any form of art and entertainment without the eyes and ears looking and listening? The views come first, then the money. That's the only way this business works, and thousands of years of history prove that, but somehow these folks who don't really know much about the arts and entertainment or its potential to generate billions yearly concluded it would be better to earn a few hundred or maybe a few thousands measly dollars selling votes. Blame the platform, blame those in charge... but let's not forget about the actions of the people as well. I'm looking at a lot of those folks who are getting paid to look away, and they're not even here to see me staring at them. An attention economy.. LOL! And these folks pay people to look away. Common sense says that's sabotage.

I don't agree with such a drastic drop in author rewards. But that was a very nicely point argument.

As someone who spent the better part of two years as a curator on steem, the curator system is broken. 25% of curation rewards goes to who ever gives the quickest biggest vote. Curators don't get paid enough, it's possible that his proposed solution isn't good enough, but it's for sure that good curators make very little for their time.

Yes, and that could be solved if we had a system that was similar to how Witnesses work. A Curator Council type thing, where people vote for curators. Curators would get extra rewards depending on how many votes they had, bad curators would lose votes.

I think the fact that bad witnesses get voted out and good witnesses voted in proves that type of system largely works already. It could do with some adjustments of course.

That's actually what we're trying to do with the HoboDAO. But it will be specialized for decentralized journalism. However, nothing prevents any communities from copying our design and doing it for art, music or whatever.

Good stuff! Good luck in that endeavor!

Thank you for this post Tim, at least someone is being a leader... I think you should run with this post Tim and try to rally people behind you as a brand, you can for sure be the face of steem right now if no one else is, like you could inspire so much confidence with a 10 min weekly video post, explaining this plan for HF21

Hf21 could be what saves steem price and gets us users marketing, so many things could be built into steem to market from inside the chain using its own users to post across legacy social media in return for steem-engine tokens etc ,

glad your offering solutions...

nice

We all need to look at the reality that which is staring us in the face and remember the golden rule -- "THOSE WHO OWN THE GOLD... MAKE THE RULES".

Why do I mention this?
Because Steemit doesnt have an Economic System Problem... it has a Cash flow MONEY problem. We have been debating bit bots, curation rewards, author rewards ect for years... Trying to implement some new changes to this system is not solving the problem. We need to solve the problem at a whole new paradigm.... which is Get More Money into STEEM ASAP. Why? Because if Steem was at $10 curators could afford to give more upvotes... authors could afford to spend more time at posts and not complain about the $3 the are earning because now they are earning $30... Ask yourself if Steem was at $10 TODAY would you be whining about all of the above? Maybe... but not nearly as much as when the price is at .42 cents

PS- I am not trying to start an argument and I am 100% behind this community and all of those who work incredibly hard to keep this place going.

You're not behind this community. Your advice to newcomers at one point was to basically show up, purchase STEEM, then hand that STEEM over to you and other vote sellers. You lied in your videos and said this would help and lead to their success here on this platform. Thousands of people were duped into taking part in this mess. They don't have any STEEM, they don't have successful blogs, as a matter of fact, once many realized it was all BS, they left... and they probably left for good feeling embarrassed that they fell for your bullshit. Now, I'm not trying to start an argument because at this point, there is no argument left. STEEM isn't $10 today but it nearly was before this mess you helped create. Yes, you. Deal with your reality. If it bothers you that much that you might have to actually lift a finger to HELP someone around here, for free or simply because you enjoy what they do... leave. It's not that hard to replace you with someone better, someone who actually gives a crap.

P.S. We're not all blinded by dollar signs around here.

Ask yourself if Steem was at $10 TODAY would you be whining about all of the above?

First of all, seeing a problem, or attempting to solve a problem... that's not whining. Especially at this point in time, once we can literally see the results, writing off these grievances as simple petty whining is only putting your ignorance out on display, for all to see. I was one of the many from way back in the day, when the price of STEEM was at its all time high, sitting here, poking and prodding at the potential problems I was seeing. Here's an example, and I didn't stop there. So what if I made over $100 for the post because the value was high. That didn't mean the problems I saw suddenly went away. We're not children here and you can't just dangle a lollipop in front of our faces to make it all better.

One true comment in a sea of bollocks! How they love to insert their heads up their own arses...

great guidelines

The two real reasons why people leave Steemit. 1) no money 2) hateful comments/downvotes. Instead of bashing everything I say why don’t you invest in more Steem if you’re so behind the community... I have 6X more Steem power than you...

I didn't bash everything you said, I simply put you in your place. Now you want to challenge me to a pissing competition? Are we twelve years old? I can play that game.

Here's you:
Screenshot (553).png

Nobody gives a shit about you, Mr Community.

Here's me:

Screenshot (552).png

I win again. Go buy some candles and build me a shrine, bitch. ;)

Yep!

Anyway, that was pretty low. Pretending to be a man of the people, then crapping on anyone with 25600SP or less; treating us as if we're not worthy enough to be here.

Didn't your parents teach you not to play with fire?

AWESOME, now I remember what Steemit was like when there were real people posting and commenting, before a bunch of geeks fully took over and it all turned to shit - those were the days!

It's great to see you still have testicles and things - geeks don't have those...

That whole line about people leaving... because of hateful comments? What planet are you on? This is Earth, correct? Have you ever ventured into the comment section under ANY Youtube video? Are those content producers bitching and moaning about the MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of screwed up feedback they receive?

Is playing the victim card like that all you have left in your deck? Are you so accustomed to only making attempts to appeal to the naive newcomer that you've forgotten what industry you're in. What kind of role model are you? You want to be doing this kind of thing, grow a pair. Anyone who's anyone in this industry is someone partially due to the fact their skin is like armor. Thick. Your thick skull will get you nowhere in life, Joe. If those folks leave because of words written by some random they'll never meet, this wasn't for them to begin with.

You're so full of shit that your eyes are brown. Up there you say:

We have been debating bit bots, curation rewards, author rewards ect for years...

Years! It's probably time to take action, no? Maybe do something about it, be proactive, be honest, see where we screwed up, attempt to fix it? You're not even willing to acknowledge the issues. Walking around with blinders on. How are we all supposed to fix this, or anything, if an investor such as yourself isn't willing to make improvements? The best people in this world have failed more times than you've even TRIED, Joe. Are you afraid of failure? We made mistakes here! There, I said it! I don't feel like less of a man for saying that. We grow from here. Hit rock bottom and there's only one direction left to go, Joe. Up. Are you telling me you can't get it up, man? Come on. Take your pills and lets fix this place... maybe make a new shiny baby we can all love.

Yeah... that's about it.

Add to that 3) mostly totally crap content 4) their friends have all quit 5) "featured" posts at the top of their feed 6) bots from end to end doing many of the comments as well as nearly all the voting 7) watching a platform being trashed is a bit of a downer 8) and listening to geeks going on about their back ends all the time and watching them pay themselves with money they have essentially stolen from the work of the actual content creators really grates a bit too...

Way to lose your last ounce of dignity with that comment.

We can see where your version of this game leads us, here.

Bring back the whale experiment.

If Steem was at $10 would you retire your shitty bid bot? Everybody who doesn’t own a bid bot agrees they are destroying the community.

?

When the price goes up more people will come and the same problems will remain.

Joe I think you have to consider how the votes you sell are used. I see a lot of shitposts who have bought them. Others operate blacklists and I would hope you could too. The short-term profits for you may not be worth it. Of course there are other vote sellers who give even bigger votes and do not blacklist.

My bot has blacklist protection... if it doesn’t please msg Matt as he runs my bot - I’m sure he can help

You contradicted yourself in less than 7 words.

Does your bot have a blacklist, or not.
Clearly you don't know.

Join us, stop farming us, eh?
Do you really need money bad enough to take food out of the mouths of our Venezuelan users just so that you can appear popular?

I feel bad doing it, and i live in a tin box.
Smdh.

How can an account with one post get reputation 39? ;-)

Quality vs. quantity?

Reputation system is based on total upvote value received and the reputations of those that granted the upvotes. Getting more than $1 in votes on that one comment propels my reputation upward.

Lets boost it further ☕️

Posted using Partiko iOS

Rich friends,...

I flag trash (and morons). You have received a flag.

Thank you very much tim, for a balanced thoughtful presentation of the ideas.

The amount of funding if the SPS is funded by inflation is also an important part.

While I am not strongly opposed to the bucket of changes, and can't support them until I hear how some of the details are worked out.

I much appreciate and honest break down of the issues.

Very dangerous ground in my opinion to drop them both at once and try to figure out which changes are having which impact.

Also, no one outside cares about this.
Edited to add:
Please tell me how other chains you are invested in handle their specific inflation POS or POW. (It's not the point, the point is most people don't know and don't care enough to have them memorized.

For sure. These changes are scorched earth and way too much at once. There might be some good aspects in there, but as a basket, this is pure poison. The more I've learned this week, I've gone from a soft and uncomfortable "yes" to a firm "no". Not only will the changes kill content; they also eliminate any remaining reason to own SP.

Not only will the changes kill content; they also eliminate any remaining reason to own SP.

Actually, quiet the opposite IMHO.

Currently those without SP can easily upvote whatever with bid bots.
They earn (see: negative cost of promotion which itself is riddiculous).
Bit bots earn. Content, thus authors are irrelevant.
Even great posts earn very little if you look at organic vote values, because SP holders can easily profit on a behavior we don't want to see here. We want them to profit on a desired behavior. Pretty much this:

encouraging more of the behavior that we want, and discouraging the behavior we don't want

It's not that ridiculous,
Bidbots were a pain to use for normal people until not long ago
The current profit of about 5% has to be considered in the context of sending liquid and receiving vests.
No downvote mean that risking 95% for a 5% gain isn't even being countered on bad content.

@whatsup , @donkeypong , @gtg, true true and true , : too early to really have a conclusive opinion , too much at once and indeed, a picture of a steak gets about the same as a metafysical treaty on time or how to see anarchy lol ... in the end however, as systems and humans go, it does stand to reason that those in power will not vote for anything that damages themselves . . . bidbots and profit ? heh ... if you did that math, i did that for a while, its very dependen on the price over seven days, you get curation which isnt a set percentage, if you get 1% on top you're probably voting with small bots, who don't really make a dent in the pool with their value, if you go to the higher up actual profit from the vote itself becomes unlikely as their margins are lower.
I don't consider them evil things, they're just part of the system because the system has it in it. If any of the new rules are prone to anything that can be used, it will be done, thats just how it goes. If you make a bet on tipu or the bigger one for 50 dollar or more you're unlikely to get your 50 dollar back unless , as done with hitsingles since the beatles your position in the top ten shouts * -> popular <-* , musthave :p

If you look at steemit as a social media platform then the importance of bulk here seems to be highly underrated due to some elder rules instated at the start when it all came for free and the top witness could basically rake it in by sleeping. You can not expect 99% of posts to be world-changing, thats not how things are, but you need the bulk or you're left with a platform with a few 1000 posts a day because no one bothers and you get better money from youtube or something. it IS about the money after all, right thats what it says on the frontpage ... i doubt you reach much of the 'general populace' if i may be so bold as to call it that, considering the number of reactions you get here i'd say it's safe to say most do indeed not care to be engaged.

Halving author rewards in order to promote bigger entities ... that does sound indeed close to sponsoring the big five with money from the little billion (million in this case)
but until it's implemented and tested it's gonna be really hard to say. Any externsice plan, the more its planned ahead and the more complicated it gets gains also by that more chance at flaws and failures, purely statistical, so ...
here's hoping it goes gradually, not over one single fork and seriously considered with an option to rollback in a very short time the moment ugly beetles and backdoors no one thought of (which is normal) start popping up. It's better to go steady than to go fast, if steem stays around a dollar than so be it, it's not limited amount anyway
AND (lol)
It's not the smallfry who will bottom out the price, if all the plankton with steem accounts would sell of everything by tomorrow i doubt it would make much of a dent.

It needs to stay attractive for the general user, that's a fact but as for the rest i havent read nearly enough of the included links and im probably five posts behind on steemitblog itself, so im not gonna start making suggestions or anything, and beside i'm nobody anyway but thanks @timcliff , i think you're one of the first witnesses i voted on here, you're pretty level, i can appreciate that :D

the thing where it says separated downvote pool sounds scary but i havent read up on it, i personally have been a hudge fan of removing negative voteweight but havent studied the whitepaper either so i dont even know if that's possible : my point being if you succeed in onboarding huge brandnames that compete ... coca/pepsi, to name two, you can't have that ...
gud, and here i was not going to talk ... im gonna continue a bit on my brand lol, eta due 2050 i think, if by then it's still worth the time hahah

(sick sense of humour, j/k, we'll see, i just seriously hope they take it easy and one step at a time and don't get caught up in some dopamine-rush, that could end with a serious hangover)

el Gato out :p

Not only do they not work on SMTs, but the things they are working on will destroy this chain...

don't forget... "We think, mostly hope". :)

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Exactly.... sp owners will be loosers... even the whales like steemit inc will be loosers even though they hold many... as the price of steem will collapse after everyone went to MEOS...

Didnt expect such a strong stance from you. 😁
Im still trying to form an opinion. Some people close to me hate this but i think that those people that are proposing this like Kevin will start curating more.
Maybe that helps make it better for everyone?
Im starting to do really well again on steem so i hope i wont lose it all with this change. ☺

Very dangerous ground in my opinion to drop them both at once and try to figure out which changes are having which impact.

Exactly. And if earlier Hard Forks are any indication, very hard to get such implementation reversed once it’s in place.

From what I've gathered, it seems the most likely long-term funding source for the SPS will be 10% of the total inflation. This would be "paid for" by reducing the amount of inflation that goes into the rewards pool from 75% to 65%.

With this change, the inflation would be:

  • 65% Rewards Pool
  • 15% SP Interest
  • 10% Witness
  • 10% SPS

Very dangerous ground in my opinion to drop them both at once and try to figure out which changes are having which impact.

Again, this gets into "my way" vs. "consensus" way. I'd prefer to see them split up too, but there are also some valid reasons to justify combining them.

could you explain the valid reasons for combining these changes, please?

I would prefer to separate out SPS and EIP, but that gets into what I said about the change not being 100% done the way I want it to be.

The main two reasons that I see are:
-We are trying to change the culture of behavior. This is more difficult than just tweaking math. When the changes are bundled together, then the package as a whole is more likely to cause users to think and act differently than if we did them one at a time.

  • More hardforks means more support work for exchanges, which can lead to more down time and in extreme cases possibly even being delisted from exchanges.

Okay, thanks.

So effectively, we’d really be changing from 75/25 to 45/45 rather than 50/50, i.e., author rewards would be falling even more than most people realize?

That is a disaster for smaller accounts, as they can´t get out much of curation either!
Did nobody consider, that Steem´s future is dependent on the - now - small accounts?

The math works out a little bit differently, but basically yes. As I said in the post, a "more than 50% reduction".

The math works out a little bit differently

You’re right.

Currently, 0.75x0.75 (authors) and 0.75x0.25 (curators) of inflation.
Post-HF21, 0.65x0.50 and 0.65x0.50

So author rewards would be going from the current 56.25% of inflation to 32.5% of inflation, and curation rewards would change from the current 18.75% of inflation to 32.5% of inflation.

That is closer :) It technically gets even more complicated because 100% of the curation does not go to curators (if votes are placed within the first 15 minutes). But it is the correct line of thought.

Change from 56.25% to 32.5% is only 42.22% reduction.

#sbi-skip

I'm not tech minded before I continue, and thanks for all this info in the post by the way, but has anyone ever thought about having not just one reward pool? Just something that popped to mind, could it be possible to somehow have multiple reward pools and so all the users are not all dependent on just one that can get drained too easy?

The reward pool never drains - its made of a special kind of magic called inflation. This inflation fills it everyday and then using another special power, this one called division, distributes it perfectly to all the sources. It literally can never be drained!

Oh yes! Of course! The 60k daily steem? I wonder though if somehow to have a graded system of different reward pools from the fresh tokens produced somehow separately allocated to accounts based on something like ...... ? I get lost at this point :)

Yes but we have to wait for SMTs to get that. Each coin will have its reward pool.

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I might be wrong in this but from what i gather for steem to work as intended, people need to power up as much steem as possible and people need an incentive to do this. The result is liquid steem comes off the exchanges, and incentivises curators which are the source of all the pay outs and so encourages content creators. The price of steem should then rise as it becomes less available in liquid form.

In theory, yes. You're not that far off here. This hasn't happened as much as people would like, but you have the core concept down.

I flag trash (and morons). You have received a flag.

I'm very much opposed to the move to increase curation at the expense of the authors. The curation is nothing more than a race to vote, not actual consuming content and moving the better content to more visibility.

I've already witnessed at least one larger stakeholder flat out saying that if the move is made, he will buy more Steem and run more curation BOTS. So how exactly is that getting more eyes on content? He's at least being honest about his intentions while pushing for the split.

The bidbots will continue to flourish and earn even more. So much for changing that behaviour.

Content creators see that cut in their share of rewards and will re-evaluate if their efforts are worthwhile on this platform. Some of the better ones will move on to other venues.

IF those proposing the changes are all that sure they are correct on the outcome, then move in smaller increments, like 65/35.

IF, and that is a huge IF, there is a corresponding increase in curation and upvoting of decent content, then the content creators will welcome a future change.

IF the projected changes don't happen, then the hit the content creators have taken is not as large.

A lot of content creators (especially the better ones) hold their earnings on the platform as an investment. If you hit those earnings hard enough for them to leave or cut back, that is stake not held.

Curation bots will try to find good content so that people upvote the same content. If they upvoted it first, they will get even more rewards. So, this will make curation bots prop up good content instead of bidbots upvoting any content.

There is no way bots can find good content. How they can evaluate a great photo made by steemian? They will upvote the users that consistently make posts with hight payouts (thanks to bidbots).

lol, how could you actually believe this? Curation bots vote on accounts that have a lot of Steem or which use bidbots. Humans curate.

Curation bots will try to find good content so that people upvote the same content.
@marki99

How will the bots find good content?
ML?
AI?
And who trains the bot?
Where’s the training data from?

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Price of STEEM has nothing to do with who gets paid and everything to do with how STEEM functions as a currency. There is a growing number of exchanges trading cryptocurrency that don't trade STEEM. Until an effort is put into place to increase STEEM dominance as a currency on exchanges, it will continue to drop. All the hare forks in the world will not make a difference. Go ahead and have your hard fork. You will see.

Myself and others have put a lot of work into trying to get Steem listed on more exchanges.

I recognize that, but you are aware that relating the hard fork proposal to an increase in STEEM price is misleading. Hell, even the name EIP implies improvement in price.

I’m not sure what specifically you are referring to. I’m not the one who came up with the name. In terms of hoping that improving the economics of the blockchain will potentially increase the STEEM price - I’m pretty sure everyone involved wants that and is hoping for that. Whether it will actually happen is out of our control.

Moving from a linear rewards curve to a convergent linear rewards curve.

Bad idea. Whales becomes much stronger.

Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators.

Bad idea. I can sell my upvotes if I need get more money. Curation rewards and bidbots is bad combination.

Create a separate “downvote pool.”

Not so bad. Flag wars is problem.

On current moment we necessary Resource Credit delegation tool for mass adoption.

(On current moment we necessary Resource Credit delegation tool for mass adoption.)
Great point, I think that one gets forgotten!

I flag trash (and morons). You have received a flag.

This proposal is a steeming pile of hot garbage. You're tinkering around with rewards incentives that pull rewards away from authors to the tune of 25% without addressing the biggest problem Steem has.

EASE OF USE.

You want to make Steem better, make it easier for newbies. Every one I've signed up has given up within two days of using the platform because they get confused and frustrated! They don't get enough initial SP to vote enough to explore and they leave!

Meanwhile, you're proposing taking more rewards away from me and fellow authors. I spend HOURS creating thoughtful content. Researching, writing, photo editing, video creation, et al and you want to make it even harder for me to earn my small rewards?!

This "big picture" mentality truly misses the point. Without authors, you have NOTHING. Absolutely nothing and if you make it less desirable to create, authors will leave. Coupled with a lack of focus on end user experience and you've got a poison pill and then it's bye-bye, Steem.

EASE OF USE.

Not disagreeing with you that this is super important. I've done a lot myself to try and improve this, but fully acknowledging there is a long ways to go.

Meanwhile, you're proposing taking more rewards away from me and fellow authors. I spend HOURS creating thoughtful content. Researching, writing, photo editing, video creation, et al and you want to make it even harder for me to earn my small rewards?!

It is not really my goal. I actually want authors such as yourself who are contributing value to the platform to be rewarded more. The biggest problem that you face (from my point of view) is there are very few users with enough stake for their votes to count spending time to find your content and vote on it. There is little economic incentive for them to do so. Instead, they mostly delegate their stake to bid bots, and authors who are working hard to make this place better are for the most part getting ignored.

The goal of these changes is not to take money away from authors, but to try and update the incentives structure so that more stakeholders actually upvote your content.

It is hard to see how this will work when the changes are looked at in isolation, and it is also possible that things may not work out as intend. I fully acknowledge that the end result of all this may end up being worse off than things are today - but I assure you my intent behind this is not for that to happen.

... there are very few users with enough stake for their votes to count spending time to find your content and vote on it. There is little economic incentive for them to do so. Instead, they mostly delegate their stake to bid bots ...

... and in future they will join automated curation trails which are upovting stuff from popular users who are earning anyway.
Who isn't curating manually now, won't do that if he gets 50 % curation rewards.

A real curator loves what he is reading and will curate anyway, he doesn't care if curation rewards are 50 or 25 %.
When I upvote stuff I upvote it because I like it. I don't care when I upvote (if for example after exactly 15 minutes), and how many other users have already uptoved that post.
I intentionally seek posts from new and/or unknown authors to give them a dollar or two.
With 50 % curation rewards I can't give them the same amount in future, because then I myself will get a big part of my own upvote back (as curation) instead of being able to support the authors! Sounds ironic anyhow: then I want but cannot anymore support people ...

Why do 'stake holders' care so much about their ROI? What does it help to get a bigger part of a cake which is getting smaller and smaller? I prefer to have a smaller part of a huge cake. :)
If I knew it would let the STEEM price increase significantly, I would accept not to earn one single STEEM from now on. :)

Any why would it increase the STEEM price to seek and upvote posts from new and unknown authors manually? Because a rich pool of satisfied users would also make STEEM much more interesting for larger investors in the long run than it still is today, interesting to place advertisements read by many, to market products, to disseminate information. The value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users.

More thoughts are to be found here.

I prefer to have a smaller part of a huge cake. :)

That is where we are trying to go with the package of changes.

Any why would it increase the STEEM price to seek and upvote posts from new and unknown authors manually? Because A rich pool of satisfied users would also make STEEM much more interesting for larger investors in the long run than it still is today, interesting to place advertisements read by many, to market products, to disseminate information.

Unfortunately, one of the big disconnects with the economics of the platform is that more users does not directly translate to more demand for STEEM. Even with things such as advertisements, it is the companies who are running them (such as Steemit, Inc.) who are getting all the revenue. Stakeholders don’t see a dime of profit/revenue from advertisements.

Unfortunately, one of the big disconnects with the economics of the platform is that more users does not directly translate to more demand for STEEM.

Hm ... but imagine that @aggroed (as an example for a company owner) is posting about Steem Monsters, and not 50 people are reading it (where 5 start playing Steem Monsters) but 5000 (where 500 start playing Steem Monsters and buying cards) ...
Or imagine a news paper is considering to open a STEEM account to find new ways to monetize its content ... There have to be enough readers of the articles then ...!

So normally for every business owner and investor the amount of users on a potentially used platform should play a role.

What do you think about the automated way of upvoting ... do you believe a significant number of stake holders would really start to seek, read and upvote posts manually?

As I stated elsewhere, I am not completely against EIP - I hope the best together with you - but maybe I am just skeptical by nature (and by the experience I made here) ... :)

I am skeptical too. I’m not going to sit here and try to promise that this will fix all our problems. The best I can do is explain what the changes are and what our desired (and hopefully expected) results will be.

The best I can do is explain what the changes are and what our desired (and hopefully expected) results will be.

You are doing that very well. And in addition you listen and answer to the people who are commenting your article.

Last thing (for now): what do you think about retaliation flags?

For example the comment directly on top under your article - I guess normally you would flag it: a self-upvoted, insulting comment, but you know very well what would happen then ... and if in future downvotes will be really cheap (or better to say: give you some rewards), what do you think some whales are going to do then? :)

I think there should be an elected committee with lots of delegated SP (for example from Steemit, Inc.) to be able to discuss, decide about and counter abusive whale flags if necessary. Only then a downvote pool made sense in my opinion.

I don't intend to criticize anybody, but just would like to give some input and hope some of these ideas may become object of witness discussions in future.

Tim,

I fully believe your intentions and goals are good, but the literal outcome, both big and small picture, will be to reduce the rewards that are allocated towards creators, and put Curators on the same compensatory playing field with Creators, full stop. This is an unacceptable reorientation of the rewards system.

Ask yourself: why is it that people go on doing this curation function for free on Facebook and Twitter - and every other free social network before them - and yet for some reason we have to financially incentivize the same behavior on Steem? It's not because of rewards allocations are misaligned, but because the system is idiot proof and shareable in the former and not on Steem. That's it! If the top 20 witnesses pooled their efforts to fix that singular problem, things would dramatically change on this platform. Instead, you're wringing your hands about figuring out how to pay people for the same damn thing people do on other platforms because the refuse to do it here. Does that make any sense to you at all? Because it doesn't make sense for 100% of everyone I've ever gotten to get an account who have quit. They all give the same reason. They love the idea, but hate the execution of Steem. It's confusing and they aren't allowed to vote and share enough upon their initial exploration of the platform. They don't have time to learn it and get frustrated by the most basic of functions.

For the love of all that is good on the platform, stop thinking in economic terms for a moment and consider what regular folks want out of a platform. They want it to be easy. They want it to be fun. They want to be able to choose their own experience. They don't have time to learn what hardcore enthusiasts like ourselves take the time to learn and what the ins and outs of their economic rewards are going to be. You need to invert your priorities.

As an anecdotal point of evidence, consider what I do for a living. I make movies and TV. I regularly screen my work and we regularly take feedback from fans of the TV show I'm on to better their experience. Sometimes you have to know when to say that the audience is wrong, but they often aren't. When someone tells me that the end of my film made them feel confused, I know that something is WRONG and I do my best to fix it within reason. When the audience of my TV show say, "we hate this" we do our best to address what they want within reason.

The same goes for social media. People regularly tell me what they HATE about Steem and what they love. I've raised this issue before with others, but what you're proposing here is literally missing the target as derived from real feedback from real people who can't execute because of the way the user experience is designed. Your solution to this "lack of curation problem", is to diminish creator rewards? Now you're fucking with MY user experience... and my money... and the principle of the matter. I can't tell you how infuriating this proposal is.

Focus on user experience, and user experience alone, and stop fucking with the rewards system. Make the experience effortless for newbies and the curation will come, just like on the platforms where people spend hours a day for free.

I’m not really going to try and argue with you, because I think we have a fundamentally different view on the situation..

why is it that people go on doing this curation function for free on Facebook and Twitter - and every other free social network before them - and yet for some reason we have to financially incentivize the same behavior on Steem

This is one of the main reasons why Steem is such a different animal. With the distribution of stake that we have, it doesn’t really matter much what most users are doing. What matters (in terms of rewards) is what the large stakeholders do. They are looking at this more from an investment perspective, and what we have found in practice is that the “average” investor does not care about discovering content, and instead are more concerned over ROI.

consider what regular folks want out of a platform

I’m not disagreeing that ease of use is not (also) a major issue. From my perspective though, the ability to earn rewards for their contributions is even bigger of an issue for a large portion of users. It is a problem that I believe is necessary to solve in order for our community to substantially grow.

You’re not going to argue with me because you’re incapable of providing evidence to support any of the claims you - and others like you - make for this rewards change. You supposedly have talks with other witnesses and stakeholders. I don’t see any logs of these chats or videos of the chats or who was party to them. Whether there was a consensus or not. I don’t see any outreach on Reddit or Twitter from you. I don’t see any scientific polling or studies. You claim self-voting is a problem when only 6.4% of total votes are self-voted, a tiny problem by my estimation. You claim the price of Steem is somehow related to these rewards distribution without evidence. You claim that what really matters are large stakeholders. You just claim these things.

I have invested what capital I can in Steem and the rest I earn by posting and you are trying to make it harder for people like me to earn my way.

You just can’t see it because your paycheck depends on not seeing it.

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I am not presenting evidence because I don’t have any. I’m not trying to argue with you and say you are wrong and I am right. I am basing my decision on my own observations and understanding of how the stakeholders are behaving under the current incentives structure. My hope is that the new incentives structure will change stakeholder behavior.

You claim self-voting is a problem when only 6.4% of total votes are self-voted, a tiny problem by my estimation.

Where have I ever said this?

You claim the price of Steem is somehow related to these rewards distribution without evidence.

I don’t think I said this either.. The price of STEEM is 100% based on the supply and demand for STEEM. All I can do is speculate on what forces drive demand.

You claim that what really matters are large stakeholders.

Again, where did I say this?

the rest I earn by posting and you are trying to make it harder for people like me to earn my way.

I have told you already - I am not. My goal is actually to try and increase the amount of money that authors (who are contributing and adding value) make.

You just can’t see it because your paycheck depends on not seeing it.

I don’t know what you are implying, but I am free to vote on this hardfork however I would like. I am 1000 times more concerned about my paycheck going down due to the price of STEEM going down than I am of loosing witness votes for voting a certain way on this hardfork. You are correct that I am voting a certain way because my paycheck depends on it - just not in the way you think. I want the price of STEEM to go up (not down) which is why I am planning to vote yes.

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Authors will likely complain over what appears to be a more than 50% reduction in their rewards

Numerically speaking, changing the split from 75/25 to 50/50 is a 33% reduction to the author portion and if one factors in the budget redirection to SPS, it is a bit more, but still less than 50%.

To be more specific 75% of 75% is 56% of total inflation going to authors now (ignoring reverse auction, which increases this a bit). 50% of 65% is 32.5% (again ignoring reverse auction). So the net reduction is 42%.

This ignores changes in the economy and behavior and significantly overstates what authors are receiving now. Rewards from votes that the author pays for don't count.

Thanks for mentioning the real numbers. I guess over time the significant increase in number of daily downvotes will (at least for most authors) lead to nearly the same rewards as we now have. If all works out as intended, even to more.

That plus the increased curation rewards looks like a big step in the right direction. Time will tell, but overall I think we are headed in the right one with HF21.

I guess over time the significant increase in number of daily downvotes will (at least for most authors) lead to nearly the same rewards as we now have.

The problem is that most people don't dare to downvote, anyway, because of fear of retaliation. (In the post My STEEM Vision. I wrote more about the problem.)

If downvotes will generate (additional) curation rewards in future I may create a new (peaceful, not retaliating) account just to downvote it regularly. :-)

The problem is that most people don't dare to downvote, anyway, because of fear of retaliation.

Yes, that's true, especially for smaller SP holders, but I guess larger accounts will build/use kind of automatic downvote services (maybe targeted at 'overpaid' authors on the trending page) to maximize their own rewards.

Maybe some people will even create an extra (unrelated) account for not having to risk their main account being targeted.

Actually, I had such an extra account just for flagging whales ... but it had not enough STEEM power to make any difference. :)

I guess over time the significant increase in number of daily downvotes will (at least for most authors) lead to nearly the same rewards as we now have. If all works out as intended, even to more.

It could. As noted, this is a baseline estimate ignoring changes to behavior and a very large portion of the pool now goes to paid votes and self-voting, meaning not much left for actual rewards to authors in practice.

However, no guarantees.

42

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Huh? Real author rewards at this point are practically non-existent, but you are saying that an HF that reduces those rewards by 50% will make steem better? Sorry, but no. My incentive to use steem will drop even more if thisis done.

Real author rewards are practically non existent because there are practically no stakeholders taking the time to find and vote on content. Higher curation rewards, along with the other changes are an attempt to change that.

First of all, thanks for explaining this in Layman's terms - helped me a lot, cuz I've been hearing a lot about SPS and HF21. The technical side of this seems well reasoned and I do see how those involved to put this forward expect price - thus, investor, increase. But I would assume that you have a step-by-step plan in mind to attract new and retain old content creators. If so would you mind sharing this? As this will have a massive impact once the new EIP is in place. As this was left a bit unclear from the above.
Also believe that this will be very time-sensitive as this blockchain cannot sustain its purpose without content creators. Because as a content creator I see it like this - if now I make 2 STEEM from my post - with the new EIP system ("more than 50% reduction") the price of STEEM must increase 100% (or more) just to make the same value as I did with the old system. And all this would be fine if we would know how do you plan to achieve this? What are the steps that you are going to take in order not to lose quality content creators (and attract new)?
Cuz if there is no plan in place - this might hold a high level of risk.

FYI - We actually truly support this, cuz this shows that there is someone who cares enough to change something. These are just some questions that we would like to hear more about.

what appears to be a more than 50% reduction in their rewards

It appears to be. It isn't. It will be less.
Curators will be more incentivized to search for a good content and upvote it.

Precise math behind this is actually not that important. What interest us more is what are the precise procedures that will be implemented after the HF21 to keep the current content creators and attract more new content creators? I do get the more appealing look on the EIP with convergent reward curve from curators point of view. But how are you planning to resolve the other (more important part) part of this equation - content creator? I do not believe that you have this foolish excuse of - let's "hope" for a price increase?

Not after HF21, it is within HF21. That very change that empowers curators is good for the authors. Or at least good for those authors who create valuable content.

Currently SP holders are lured by profits from paid voting services. Content is irrelevant. With new model if you decide to curate good content instead of selling your vote you won't be on a losing position.

That increase the chance for content creators to be upvoted without paying for votes.

More than anything, the hope is that more votes will go towards actual contributions after the incentives are changed. While authors may be getting less of the overall percentage, more could go towards content that is actually consumed by curators. To say that we have a "plan" is probably a bit of an overstatement. It largely depends on how the human behavior changes after new incentives are in place. There isn't really any way to know how it will work out unless/until we try.

yea that's more or less clear. I've been reading around this topic and what picked my attention was how @theycallmedan gave a very well explained his plan of action after EIP. Which was actually something that we were looking for. Basically that it makes more sense for him and other large SP stakeholders to withdraw their delegation from bid bots and curate in a sustainable way.
Idk if you have done this already or not. But it would be a good idea to discuss the same with the large SP stakeholders this approach. Just to see who and in what kind of stake they will support this EIP. I truly see how this new equalized reward system can be the first step towards something truly great.
Because it would give peace of mind for some content creators (at least in some level) if they would know that "whales" of this platform have their back in a way. I guess.

But once again, thanks for what you are trying to accomplish.

Your an honest man, and know what is needed - a proper strategic plan will help;

You have a plan, its a bit loose, you just need to demonstrate its well considered by setting and sharing your measurable objectives, implement and then report how far off the target we got.

If you do this alone and make it transparent and seek feedback for each from the wider public, prior to implementation, sentiment & engagement will improve measurably.

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I suspect most users will translate the changes into:

More power for whales
More money for whales
Less money for authors
More downvote abuse

I suspect most users are right.

I don't see the whales spending their time searching for the quality content to upvote. At best, the bid bots will be replaced by the curation bots. My prediction is that we'll see the whales running/delegating to the curation bots and those bots upvoting the golden boys 24/7.

Write good content, get rewarded is a lie. It's been since I've joined the platform and it will be in the future. Steemit is a collection of the upvote circles of various sizes and strength + bid bots.

The dApps and their creative use of the reward pool are the way forward. The quality content is neither being produced nor rewarded here. Nobody outside this bubble cares about it. Hell, even those here don't care about it.

What they care about is getting the big upvotes themselves. Just ask them what the quality content is... it's always their content first, their friends second, and at the distant 3rd place is an objectively good content produced by a talented author that's not in.

What I'm trying to say is that all those things that you hate, I like. My opinion is not a popular one but it is honest at least.

From what I've observed as an outsider, the loudest noise about the quality content is being made by those that lost the big upvotes when the bidbots showed up. The whales delegated their sp and the golden boys' posts payouts went down.

I can already see a bunch of self-righteous pricks running around downvoting those smaller than them. Fun times ahead.

In conclusion, the whales will get more than now, the golden boys will be downvoting the small guys that dared to use the bidbots...

PS - The proponents of this change should keep some numbers. Let's see how many whales are doing manual curation today, how many will be doing it 3 months after the hf.... I think we both know that whales won't be spending their time searching for the quality content to upvote. Curation bots here we come!

I would like to think I am creating good content. My earnings are minimal, though. Between bid bots, whale cliques, and the sheer mass of spam, it's hard to get noticed. We need someone to address these problems, and I haven't seen a good argument for why tweaking the numbers will improve things yet.

Honestly, we are pretty close to "bottom" right now already in terms of whales just taking as much as they possibly can. It can't get much worse than it already is. The system needs to change if we have any hope of making it better. Unless you are in the camp of thinking that the system is so messed up that it is beyond fixing, then why even try - then I'd hope you can at least see the potential to at have a chance of making things better.

It can't get much worse than it already is.

The famous last words :)

The system needs to change if we have any hope of making it better.

True statement. I just don't think that the proposed changes will get you the result that you want. Call me cynical, but all that I can see as the result of this change is more drama. The whales will find a workaround and still get what they want out of it (even more than what they are taking out now).

Unless you are in the camp of thinking that the system is so messed up that it is beyond fixing, then why even try - then I'd hope you can at least see the potential to at have a chance of making things better.

Steem is what it is. All the HFs before this one made it that way. I'm more for accepting this reality and see what we can do with it than going after the whales & bid bots... See what works now and what keeps people around here. Do more of that.

Creating the right incentives that will bring about the original steemit vision is next to impossible. Mostly because the original vision (great authors get rewarded) is ignoring the reality of the human nature.

If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the whales doing just fine, and the small guys getting less and less while at the same time being abused by the self-righteous downvoters.

In any case, good luck!

If I were a betting man ...

... according to your name you are a betting man ... :)

... I'd put my money on the whales doing just fine, and the small guys getting less and less while at the same time being abused by the self-righteous downvoters.

Even if whales are getting a bigger piece of the cake it doesn't help in case the whole cake (the STEEM price) is getting smaller and smaller. So they shouldn't only think about how to get more from bidbots, from curation rewards, from circle-voting or whatever, but how to increase the value of STEEM and thus their own investment.

The proponents of this change are right - something has to be done. I just don't see this one working as planned. In any case, we'll see soon enough what will happen.

... something has to be done.

Right, the question is just: what?
If you like to know how I see things you may read My STEEM Vision..

Maybe so. We might end up there anyway, even if we didn’t make any changes. My goal is to try and make the best decision to do whatever I think has the best chance for success.

Close to bottom? Just wait for the bidbots to powerdown and commence 13 weeks of pain. The trend is your friend, up to maybe a 15 week or so trend, don't catch a falling knife, and their will be FUDD and severals months of it. Steem inc will just have to sell more Steem to keep paying the idiots making these dumb decisions. The best thing steem, inc, could do is undo HF21 immediately after it begins to mitigate the harm as much as possible. Bidbots were the scapegoat to hide managerial incompetence. Managerial incompetence prayed upon user's envy as a tool.

And just when youtube purged users the other day in a new policy update, steem is going to pay whales to demonetize and pseudo censor content here and on d.tube. The market is begging for something better, and steem already had the technology but is ignoring the marketplace who is tired of this big tech crap.

So what do you recommend we do?

We should recognize that the coin has become a psuedo proof of stake, and accept that proof of brain will always be gamed. The present downvote issue is driving many long term users away, and that will likely escalate under HF 21. Social media platforms will always have a lot of garbage on them, but people with guidance will find users and communities that they do like without hiding content. I think the downvote is unnecessary. There might be issues with copyrights, but perhaps a post, when timely flagged for copyright, can be rewarded to a steem inc owned account and rewarded later either to the author and the curators or to null (or to the accuser for their services) depending on the finality of the copyright decision.
Steem, inc, should recognize that people, sometimes through voodoo like tactics, have morphed the coin into basically a POS. In embracing that it is a POS, the company should [start to] offer more POS rewards in steem for inactivity or light activity based upon SP. At the same time, reduce the number of rewards for posting content to a level where bidbotting would be an act of charity instead of a business model-but at the same time not scaring away the present investors who have helped transmuted it into a quasi-POS state. The alleged whales upvoting their own junk posts might realize it is better to to hodl if the math is done properly as to not scare them off. The Whales who delegate to bidbots would have no more profit incentive to do so and can as they wish.
Certainly, this takes value out of posting content to steem it which seems to also be one of the pleas people are making. This may not bode well as to the Metcalfe's law, but neither would HF 21. Reddit seems to have done quite well without steem's potential. But aside from avoiding a lot of pain, Steem can focus on bringing in users through marketing instead of proceeding in HF21.

It needs to market itself to appeal to the present market place in social media, and there is a large opportunity that is being missed due to the present management at steem. They need to recognize the problems that are inherent in social media with the purges and exodus that is going on, and advertise their platform and perhaps even sponsor banned personalities to join their platform. When Milo went to telegram, he managed to have acquired 16000 users-not to mention telegram and gab have been receiving a lot of free press.

Granted steemit isn't developed like a facebook or myspace, but does offer features similar to youtube and reddit. The emphasis would need to be that steem doesn't ban ideas, and that steemit will be the new go to place to find information and hopefully to connect to their favorite speakers.

An auxilary focus would be to try to create a revenue stream through advertisement in the white space and to reach the point of profitability, and when profitable using equity to secure a minimum value that steem can reach. The trending system may be broken in terms of intended purposes, but this can be done on a typical CPM basis-and perhaps enhance [to a weekly limit] it to reward steem users a small percentage who may go on to visit the blog and/or follow the speaker.
It also needs to emphasize that the crypto transactions are free. Perhaps changing the steemit logo to emphasize the features might help to the broader crypto market. Three squiggly marks in a sea of over 2000 listed cryptos on coinmarketcap-at least it is in the top 100.

A further focus should be on presentation and building the community such as the creation of groups, [off chain] emails, and chats and instant messaging apps, and other apps that might be useful. Much of the development could be done without steem, inc. But development doesn't appear to be easy, and management's focus should be of making dapp development more accessible and let the community do the rest.

From the development side, I notice some of the software will not run on my hosted server for obvious security reasons. I don't particularly desire to run an at home server. Instead of relying on third party executables, it would be nice to just upload a php (or cgi) script and config file, edit the config file, then proceed to write dapps.

It would also be interesting to have an online console (with tutorial) to interact directly with the block chain where users could get to get to test non-traditional features of the blockchain to get a basic idea about what they can do before trying to fight with the installs or network changes/investments. I think there is a lot of untapped developmental potential in the blockchain if it were easier to access and people could more easily play around with it and get their feet wet.

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Thank you for clear presentation of the ideas.

My point of view is exactly here:

HF21 in it's current form is not what I personally view as the best path forward. If it were 100% up to me, there are a lot of things I would do differently. Despite my objections over individual items in the proposal however, I do see the "package" of changes as a significant improvement from where we currently are.

get paid a predetermined amount for proposed work.

This should help me as a professional writer, correct?

Only if enough stakeholders vote for your proposal to get paid to professionally write. It is certainly possible, but I don’t know how likely it will be that you get sufficient support. Can you make the case that your writing will directly lead to an increase in STEEM price?

I could see this happening, as with bloggers, vloggers, public speakers, and others potentially being paid to promote Steem, but probably it has to be writing that gets carried on (or at least frequently brings traffic from) platforms other than Steem/Steemit. Sitting around talking (or writing) to ourselves does not bring in new users or new money.

Well if I am already getting paid and my employer is taking out a good chunk from the efforts of my work, how could it not benefit to switch to a crypto based platform. Especially, if much of my work is writing about crypto. Seems like a no-brainer.

@timcliff,
Very useful content! A lot of questions that I had before were solved! Thank you!

Cheers~

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Thanks for the clarifications.

I agree fully that what we need to do is what is good for the platform as a whole, and for its future.

While everyone would love to gain short-term profits, and no-one wants to decrease the current rate of profits, such short-term goals are pointless if we cannot maintain and grow the system. I fully support any efforts that will ensure the stability and long-term growth of the platform.

Full Steem Ahead!

If we do implement SPS, might I make a suggestion? Let's allow multiple users to contribute funds to a proposal. Something crowdfunding oriented, you know? That way, a couple thousand Plankton could contribute 0.1 Steem, and it would add up. Probably won't be as much as a whale dropping 1k, but it would give Plankton the perception that they can help contribute towards something greater.

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That will already be supported. Users will be able to transfer SBD to the account and it will be added to the fund. There are also some discussions on trying to make beneficiaries work as well, so users can set the beneficiary of a post as the SPS account and have the rewards go there.

I think the suggestion above was somewhat different. It was to allow funds to be donated to a specific proposal. The amount that would need to come from the common pool would then be reduced (and this in turn might increase its chances of being approved). This actually makes a lot of sense to me but is not in the first version of SPS. It could be added later.

Yeah, that's more what I was getting at. The added bonus to such a proposal would be that people who donate would have a sense of ownership in the projects they support. Even if it's a pittance, it's still a contribution.

Thanks for the clarification. Agree, that would be a nice thing to consider for a future version.

Smooth added some additional clarification in response to my thread on this comment.

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Some of these changes would move us closer to the business model over on PublishOx, specifically the change in payout balance between curation and creation. I appreciate the efforts to keep innovating for improvement on this chain, and want to be 100% gungho about a proposal that seems like it can get implemented toward that end, but my experience with PublishOx makes me doubtful.

On POx everyone starts as only a curator, so the emphasis is definitely on earning from curation. I don't think they even have bidbots yet, or a trending page. You have to apply to become a content creator. But you know, I just can't get myself to use that site.

Why? Because it takes me more time to read several low payout articles to get to a certain curation reward than to write one and get a mid-sized reward I can expect for my quality content. Plus sometimes I get to the end of a post and realize it doesn't deserve my upvote, but I still invested that time. I know the time I invest in creating content is well spent. That is within my control.

I think the behavior of shifting rewards from authors to curators will make authors feel more insecure about payouts for their time, while quickly showing them that the time it will now take reading in order to earn the same total payouts on the platform is simply more time than they want to invest. So what we're really counting on is that more people can be attracted to the platform as content consumers who want to buy STEEM to increase their rewards for reading. To me that's a harder sell than attracting people who want to buy STEEM to increase their rewards for sharing writing, photos, videos, etc. Creators are already more proactive and involved than consumers, which is a more passive stance. Buying STEEM (even just learning how) may require more initiative than the passive consumer really has.

Of course, my priorities may make me an outlier, and maybe in general something different could be expected. We can look at how PublishOx winds up performing for a preview.

I like others would like to see a less severe payout shift, to see if it does in fact start moving the stats in the right direction. I would also like to see the elimination of the Trending page, which I think will make bidbots irrelevant.

Moving from a linear rewards curve to a convergent linear rewards curve.

Are the parameters for the convergent linear curve available? The devil is in the detail on this change.

From looking at the vandeberg deep dive post, if you are the first voter on a post / comment, then:

  • A HF20 $0.02 upvote could initially add $0.00 to a post / comment under HF21.
  • A HF20 $0.10 upvote could initially add $0.01 to a post / comment under HF21.

In both cases I'm not sure of the numbers, hence the request for the parameters.

Both upvotes would increase back up to (and indeed slightly above) their HF20 values if enough value is added to the post in total.

A communication piece explaining how this particular change will affect smaller votes would be useful. Including what level of overall post value makes for a reasonably "efficient" use of a vote. When HF21 kicks in, this effect will probably come as a surprise to many users.

In his post, @vandeberg gave the exact formula. What more parameters do you want?

He gives a formula of the form: n^2 / (n + 1)
But in the example he uses: n^2 / (n/5 + 1)

My reading was that the post was a broad discussion of the general premise of CLC curves. If the final formula for the HF is confirmed then that would be useful to know.

Oops, you're right! I missed that bait and switch, where one formula was used for introduction, a different formula to demonstrate examples, and then switched back to the first for the conclusion.

The actual formula they implemented is ( rshares + s ) * ( rshares + s ) - s * s / ( rshares + 4 * s )

It's a bit more complex than explained in the deep-dive, and I don't feel qualified to explain it properly.

Thanks Joseph, that's helpful!

I had a check on github and it looks like "s" may be 2,000,000,000,000 rshares. Working through the formula on that basis gives a curve that:

  • Starts at 50% of linear (rather than 0% - this is a welcome change!)
  • But takes quite a long time to move towards approximating linear.

So a HF20 $0.10 upvote would:

  • initially add $0.05 to a post / comment under HF21.
  • be worth $0.08 ("80% consensus") around $6 payout.
  • be worth $0.09 ("90% consensus") around $16 payout.

Although there is also some scaling to take into account (since the lower rewards on smaller value posts would be spread across all posts over time).

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I tried a year or two ago to create a reward incentive program on Steem through a different steem account, where people would submit content by using a tag, the best content would be combine into a daily post, with a monthly lottery that randomly rolled 3 winners for a steem reward.

My experience from that nearly year-long experiment concluded that most steem users who participated were genuine, although I would say 10-20% were plagiarizing deliberately to participate, and my blocked user list was massive for it. The rest of the participants were genuine and couldn't believe it when they won the monthly lottery and had their work showcased.

But, it was unsustainable on its own. At first it was sustainable and user upvotes kept the system afloat. But as time progressed the power of thousands of user upvotes barely amounted to anything, and so I created a seperate pool of Steem that I used to buy upvotes on the daily showcase posts in the hopes to get more exposure and more upvotes to pay for the monthly reward, but bumping the post reward up into the realm of $100+ did nothing to bring in more votes or views.

I ended the experiment because steem itself did not work in a way that it logically should, and large whales soaked it all up. This is how it works in the real world, so monetarily there is little reason for a new user to believe that their work into the platform will reward them in any manner, and my own experience backs that up.

It seems this hardfork attempts to address some of these problems, and it will be interesting in the years to come to see where the Steem ecosystem ends up.

One of your best counterpoints to those against the hardfork changes is ... it isn’t like it is working now! We need something different. I agree the hardfork is unlikely the perfect package but it is possibly better than what we have now and at worst it will just be more of the same. I am not exactly a fan of the mentality of “let’s just try it and see what happens” but at the same time we are just bleeding a slow death so let’s change it up. If it horrific, we can always go back or try something else.

My primary concern with the hardfork is getting proper funding for the Steem proposal system. We need that funded. I am ok with pulling it from inflation. We have to have it to stay competitive and keep this chain advancing, especially as other chains come along. So critical. How would you like to see the SPS funded?

I was personally leaning towards pulling a little bit from each of the three inflation sources (rewards pool, SP interest, and witness pay) so that the SPS had around 10% of the inflation. The consensus though seems to be more leaning towards just taking 10% from the rewards pool. Again, it's not my personal top choice - but I'm OK enough with it to support it if that is what everyone decides.

I was personally leaning towards pulling a little bit from each of the three inflation sources (rewards pool, SP interest, and witness pay) so that the SPS had around 10% of the inflation. The consensus though seems to be more leaning towards just taking 10% from the rewards pool.

The consensus being among Top 20 Witnesses who would prefer that none of that 10% come from witness pay? 🤔

It was discussed at length. My 'vote' was technically for a 10% reduction in witness pay too (as well as SP inflation). The main reason against it though (that I do agree with) is that it affects backup witness pay too, and a lot of the backup witnesses are already running at a loss.

One of the nice things about the SPS, is that once we have a funding source in place, it is then possible for the community to fund changes. If someone wants to make a proposal to the SPS to fund development + testing for a change that increases backup witness pay, decreases top witness pay, and adds more funding to the SPS - that is fair game.

If the system works as expected / hoped, then we basically have a framework for these types of improvements.

Is there no way to restrict the reduction to only top-20 witness rewards?

It is possible, although it would be more development for Steemit, more things to test, which would mean more time before the fork. There is already a lot of pushback from the hardfork containing too many changes. At this point, most of us want to get something out the door so we can start working within an improved system. There will always be the option of making more tweaks later (such as updates to witness pay), and after the hardfork - we will have a SPS to pay for such things.

Will the backup witnesses still run at a loss with the implementation of MIRA? I assume the effective pay of all witnesses should increase in the near future since your cost will decrease?

Time will tell. From what I've heard, it will not have much of an impact on the costs for consensus (witness) nodes. It's a bigger deal for 'full' nodes and exchanges.

https://steemit.com/steem-pressure/@gtg/steem-pressure-6-mira-ymmv-rtfm-tldr-lgtm

IMHO if top20 witness is not running at loss at this moment then they are doing something wrong ;-)
Hardware costs are negligible compared to time/effort spent to make Steem awesome.

Yes, and I'm one of those. Witnesses are also SP holders, authors and curators.
Currently for one to fund some project, a viable way of getting funds is to post about it and get it from rewards anyway. It is an equivalent to ask people to allocate a vote to a project that will add a value to the platform.

Kind of like how Congress always votes Congress a raise. Yeah, not expecting too many witnesses to volunteer themselves for a pay-cut, even if it would be the more "fair and balanced" way to go.

I was up for it, but again - the main thing was that it would affect backup witnesses too.

Yeah I know you said you support 1/3s, but I doubt a majority would vote to decrease their pay even if those below 20 were excluded. Such are our times.

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As long as it comes from somewhere, that is a great thing. Thanks for your update.

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Hello, @timcliff.
When will that HF ​​take place?

There is no date yet.

Another aspect of the greater rewards towards curators is that they might be more inclined to upvote content they like.

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Only if they are really willing to READ my dear @moeknows. };)

Read the content before 'curate' it... an art and craft that seems extinct in these parts lately.

Yep, that is the idea.

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One consequence of changing the reward curve will be that it will be more profitable to cast 10 votes at 100% than more votes at a lower strength. So there will be less votes spread around. To what degree is this better or worse I am not sure.

Not necessarily. The curve applies to overall payouts not to individual votes. If more smaller votes allows you to target your votes more effectively and get better, or at least more consistent, curation rewards, you may be better off that way.

Agreed, I did some math on it and there is a small advantage to casting full votes but it's not much and it can be offset by having good curation efforts just like we have today.

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@timcliff I read the entire article and the only thing that worries me is the Increase of Curation Rewards. If I am not wrong the proposal is a 50/50 Split between Author and Curation Rewards but then where would the Beneficiary Rewards go. If we factor in the Beneficiary Rewards that almost all the Daaps take which is a Minimum of 10% then we get 40% Author Reward 50% Curation Reward and 10% Beneficiary Reward this will most certainly act as a catalyst for more users to Leave Steemit. Plus there would be a Possibility that people might stop using these Daaps that take Beneficiary Rewards and these Daaps might go Under.

I agree that with the increase in Curation Rewards people might go for more Curation but then again if you see this Differently f more People look for Curation there might not be a lot of Content to curate. Only a Handful of People will be Creating Content and all the STEEM will get accumulated on their accounts.

There is also the possibility of People creating different accounts to just Upvote each other thus keeping 100% of their Rewards in which case the Increase of Curation Rewards will do absolutely nothing other than steering away more people from this Platform.

I believe the 75/25 Split in favor of Author Reward is perfect for now as this gives a perfect incentive for both Authors and Curators to do their Jobs. I will agree that there are fewer Curators when compared to the number of Authors but then again I feel we also need Authors to Run this Platform.

There is almost no legitimate curation going on today. We have tons of authors creating good content, but very little in terms of content consumption. I hear your concerns, and they are valid - but I disagree that the 25/75 split that we have today is working.

To me, a layman, this kinda seems like a massive boost to those who just sell votes to their bots.

Replied to a similar comment here:
https://steemit.com/hf21/@timcliff/pt83ef

Hey again Tim, I've read that comment and failed to see how it addresses vote-selling, can you please be clearer here?

Sorry, I see now that your question is getting at something different..

The short answer is downvoting. Whether stakeholders will actually start to clean things up after the right incentives are in place remains to be seen, but the idea behind the package of changes is that we should hopefully see more stakeholders upvoting good curated content and downvoting more content that is just siphoning rewards without adding value.

I wish I was an optimist, but humans are greedy and lazy, if they can automate their profits they will... an utopic vision of people doing stuff pro-bono isn't the way. There's no incentive to manual curate as opposed to lay back, auto curate and just collect the bigger profits.

I'm all for the inflation paying the SPS system. It makes sense for now and if we don't like it we can fund the change for the SPS system with the system. We no longer will have to wait on things to get done just because steemit don't have enough hands or because of consensus issues. If its voted for and gets the funding its likely got consensus and its now a clear path to development.

As for the downvote pool, I'm down for it something people aren't seeing is it becomes more profitable to stop the abuse of the down vote pool. Its becomes profitable to create anti-abuse guilds, it might take 7 days for payouts but they would, in the long run, get more profit than bid bots can give especially is they offer a share in the sp powerdowns.

I have this odd feeling those downvotes will also be used on bot votes as they take about 30% of the pool now. Also with this new system, the bid bots would be getting more of the vote. It becomes more of a risk to invest in bidbots in the long run.

I personally have no issues with the bots, but people just sitting taking from the chain and creating no value are the reason our chain has sunk to its lowest point. So here is to the future.

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Hi @timcliff, you've been a big help to me a few times in Steemit
chat/help etc... I respect you for that and for your obvious
knowledge about all of the vagaries of the blockchain.
I don't think if I were 20 yrs old again, able to maintain my
Attention span for extended periods as I used to, I would EVER
Understand all this.
I came here for three reasons.

  1. the promise of getting paid for posting what I did in FB for free
  2. The absolutely WONDERFUL formatting options and landscape
    (as compared to FB and a few others) allowed me FAR better
    avenues of expression.
  3. The (perhaps false) sense of security and permanence that
    The blockchain seems to afford me.

So, in the post above, you said:
"It means more money going into the hands of users who are contributing to the value of Steem, and less money going into the hands of the users who are just here to leach."

I don't see what I do, posting original/inspirational poems/prose,
Original photos and family stories, I don't see those "contributing
To the Value of Steem", so by process of elimination, that makes
Me a Leach.
Not sure I like that appellation.
Please tell me I've misinterpreted your statement.? I hope?

Are there users on the platform who are enjoying your content? If so, then you are adding value.

Leaching = creating plagiarized / spam posts then self-upvoting to steal rewards from users who are actually contributing.

I don't plagiarize, I will sometimes use a quote (but link out to it)
as a part of my post, and yes, going by the few comments I get
Those that do comment are generally complimentary.
I self upvote, but only after the first hour, I don't
Know how to create or use a bot, and I wouldn't
Do that anyway. I am pretty scrupulously
Honest about stuff like that. Comes as
Part of my recovery after many years
Of being a slime ball because of Drug and
Alcohol addiction. I can't go back there again.
Just recently, after losing 18 months of work and
Income when tsu folded, then joining here and seeing
My wallet explode in value that first few months, only to have
It all crash, now 2 yrs later I finally found a way and managed
To cash out some steem and pay myself some real USD, for the
First time ever.!!! It felt so good too!!!
All these hard forks and booting up in the morning only to find
Everything changed, a new wallet, new rules... it all scares the
Hell out of me and I don't think I'm alone. Thanks for
Responding @timcliff.

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Way to stir up the wasp nest!

I'm not quite sure what to say. I've been here steady for just over a year and am almost to a BIG whoppin 260SP LOL! Minnow status might be reached by 2030 at this rate.. Something might need to be done asap!! Orange Alert Orange Alert Orange Alert.... help a sister out, Anybody?

Yeah I concur @timcliff. If you are not active in discord or engaging in every weekly challenge it's a pretty quiet atmosphere. I enjoy the small groups that have applicable information and interacting in discord, just wish it crossed over to my blog page?

It appears as if I have mostly bid bots liking my posts? If I put more quality and info or time into my posts the interaction and response is the same as if it is just a picture post. Perhaps it's because no one is interested in posts themed around LOVE or Gardening...;( nB3zg5S.jpg

I've learned a ton on this forum, and hope to continue to in many aspects; writing, coding, editing photos and most of all inspiration to 1,000's of viable humans seeking and acting for a better world.

Thanks for sharing your opinion and info on this topic....

You have some good points, I have another comment not mentioned anywhere nor have I seen it addressed. As the platform has expanded worldwide my feed is crammed with a lot of multi-language posts. Which on one hand is cool, as it shows growth. I guess in future upgrades would be nice to have some sort of language filter. Being bi-lingual it would be neat to select just posts in the languages I would like to read. Not sure who to mention this too or where to talk about it. It's a drag to scroll through pages of posts I can't read :-)

Yep, agreed. It has been brought up and discussed before. It is one of those things that a lot of people agree would be nice to have, but probably won’t be a super high priority for a while.

@timcliff thanks for the sum up and your thoughts on this! I agree in many points. The SPS can really be beneficial to boost the needed business development and marketing aspect - if designed & marketed properly itself.
The EIP proposed model is a double edged sword. It's easier to change bot's behaviours than human's. But the new split at least incentives the majority to change theirs. So it's in our hands 😀

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So it's in our hands

Best feature of Steem.

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Good Luck with cleaning this place up. I am surprised the whales getting rekted did not change their behavior. You would think after upvoting yourself for 2 years and losing more and more money would have woken some of these bad users up. Sad.

It just boils down to tragedy of the commons.

Is there a way to block self up votes? I think that needs to be part of the hard fork too.

No. People would just get around it using “sock puppets”.

Oh yeah.... Duh.

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Well, I'm glad to have read it here and not elsewhere.

At least I know that you try and say it as it is in the most diplomatic way possible.

Personally, I am all for a % of the funds from the so called "rewards pool" along with the funds from the upvotes that goes back into the kitty be allocated to this investing into the enhancement of Steem.

I guess this is as good a place as any to voice my personal view on this.

TY mate.

Cheers.

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Sorry, the solution of increasing curation rewards just doesn't make sense if what you want is more engagement.

Very few stakeholders are spending time looking for quality contributions to reward.

If you want this to happen you must link payout to engagement and for EVERYONE. Assign an engagment quotient. A perfect score would be 1. So if you want to obtain your payout and all of it, you need a perfect EQ. Your EQ is earned through varied engagement, that is not just with upvoting a handful of accounts. This means that if I use a bid-bot, I am only half way to getting a payout. Now I must engage on the platform and upvote various other people. Or in the very least upvote and engage with the comments on my post.

The solution of giving more in curation rewards will do NOTHING. No, probably the opposite of improving engagement. If I am only upvoting myself, do I care if it comes through author rewards or curating rewards. NO. I get curation rewards from upvoting my own posts too and the bulk of it if I am large account. This will not encourage engagement and will likely drive smaller accounts to blockchains that have the very system we used to have. And bidbots will now receive a larger share of curating rewards too.

Go back to the drawing board. Increasing curating rewards is not the solution.

Hey Pryde, I really believe that MEOS will offer us a viable alternative. I may be fanboying too much, but I think Dan has had time to see what happened to his creation here, and how to make it better. We should know more on June 1 :D

Thank you for your response, Paul. But I will not be going over to EOS.I think steemit and the steem blockchain overall is an extremly good place and do not believe EOS will do any better. Vote buying will simply occur off-platform and in the shadows, so only those connected will have access to it. That is human nature and those hawking EOS now are not really on my side but the side of making profit. It would be naive to think otherwise. I have invested both time and money and making the change will mean an investment of even more time and money with no guarantee it will be any better. You brought me over to steem in the first place. Remember.

Perhaps when we are left with only those who are all pulling in the same direction, the long run success of steem, we can make the changes needed to make the steem blockchain a even better place. Move over to EOS if you want, but stop trying to burn down the place before you leave. Will Ya. You got friends here, man. You are hurting us too. Some of us are truly trying to build something great with steem.

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The outcome of HF21 is impossible to predict.

Are you serious? I mean... Its preety clear. Today you cant even invite newcommers because they can do what? 1 post every 3 days? And of course, you cant even answer your post comments because shitty RC.

CANT YOU PLEASE STOP TO KILLING LITTLE ACCOUNTS?

Just a thought you know... Or you, rich powerfull bosses want to stay alone on Steem sitting over your bots?

Im really trying to put my best to trust steem. Last fork just be the worst thing happen ever to Steem, and now, you accept the challenge to destroy even harder every new usser who dares to create a new account?

I want to figure out how we get to a point where that user is earning $100 or even $1000. Will we get to that point? I don't know.

Do you honestly believe that? Be serious, whales dont write, whales dont read, whales are not whales, are SNAKES.

Im just shocked.

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Or you, rich powerfull bosses want to stay alone on Steem sitting over your bots?

Who are you talking to? I don't own, delegate to, or use any bid bots. I support stakeholders right to do what they want to with their stake, but beyond that - I do not support bid bots in any way.

Do you honestly believe that?

If I didn't think that there was an opportunity to fix this place and make it somewhere that users can be rewarded for their contributions, I would not be wasting my time here.

Before start, not trying to blame you perdonally. Dont even known you, sorry it sounds personal. Trully.

Returning to the topic:

Steem is working, not at his fully potential, but what leave hf20 behind? Not much really, newcommers have more problems, spam slightly changes and some ussers makes a lot of money by curating only. When finally some SP distribution start to (slightly) change over months, they do this. Change the rules of the game in the name of some poor kings?

First of all, i dont care much about stackers. I mean, if you consider for example Steemit Inc as a stacker, they are just putting his own interest over all. Not surprised, after all it seems like Steem has owners no matter what the speach of "descentraliced platform" the reality tells another story.

Can i blame them for just care about money? Maybe not, snakes are designed to bite, isnt his "fault" (is a metafore, im not saying snakes to them, even when it fits)

Steem is $0.4 not because content creators, there is a lot of energy out there. The decission making is ultra centralized. But all the punish is always targeted to those who have no voice at all. Why content creators (even the amateurs as im) should be punish by the mistakes of those who are on the top of the food chain? Just because we are weak?


What is the difference betwen Facebook censorship and flagged content with no reason?


Both situations have the same pattern, strong people stomping little people.

There is no such thing as freedom of speech if what i wrote is almost invisible. Then a powerfull guy post a picture of a puppy and then cry about he is not earning! Its insane! Its like when politics say "well the market do this or that, and thats why we save the banks" what we turn into? Or even worst, this is all we are going to achieve? 10k users runing around with no purpose with our noses sticked to our business?

(Sry my horrible horrible english and if you felt attacked)

From my viewpoint, the current system is not working well for the "little guy". I want to improve that. I actually support the changes in the hardfork because I see them as actually having potential to make things better for the little guy. I know it is hard to see why that could be (since in isolation, they all seem 'bad' for the little guy) but I do actually see this as the best opportunity to start fixing what is broken.

If it have 4 legs, walks and smells like a dog, and then barks, is a dog.

Im negative? Maybe, and of course i hope you are right. Nothing would make me happier than that. Also, im sure about what im writing here, im not new in Steem.

Im pissed because i like Steem, and its hard to see how every penny, planing and effort is going straight to the interest of the same guys who put us in this situation.

I read a lot of witneses who doesnt trully like this changes. That just doesnt matter? Actually not, but as you, they are defending it. Faith? Friendship? Obedience? Optimism? Im just trying to understand. Its curious how we have an entire system based on VOTES and we cant chose/vote nothing. Its like a big joke.

Makes no sense at all.

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Very well expressed and presented post my esteemed @timcliff.

Along this article you've been highly eloquent, balanced and assertive in your appreciations all over the content. And I reckon that the humble spices with which you've seasoned all your words, viewpoints and rationality behind your written dissertation here will help big time the steemian's willingness to accept these changes in a more positive way. :)

As an author, I've always been against any change, procedure, algorithm, formula and decision that is or will be detrimental to the already stunted rewards of the content authors. And so I've always expressed it multiple times throughout this place.

Therefore, the current 50/50 rule in exercise and the idea to take financial resources from the collective rewards pool to fund the SPS project, for me, it still taste a bit bitter. But yeah, I'm indeed an experimental beast. Since most of my life has gone by performing experiments everywhere.

The outcome of HF21 is impossible to predict.

Yep, in fact, no one could predict the possible outcomes. Given that everyone is looking the future through their very own version of crystal ball. And to top it off, all of us are looking 'the situation' thru our own crystal ball from many, diverse and multiple angles & perspectives that only respond to our own interests.

So, let's give time to the time. That without a doubt, there will be newer times in the near future to celebrate or to complain once again. };)

Cheers!!

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Not a fan of downvote rewards pool, the downvote has been the cause of so much abuse. I can’t fathom why we’d reduce author rewards when minnows get nothing anyway. No way to encourage authors and as for curation rewards it’s still a mystery to me how they’re calculated and people use scripts to game the system anyway. It’s sad to see so many great Steemians jumping ship over these proposed changes.

You bring up a lot of the problems that exist today. It is hard to imagine how changes to the economic model will play out in practice. If there is no change in behavior, then yes - things could get worse. The hard part to quantity though is what might happen if the right incentives structure caused the entire dynamics of the community to shift.

You are correct. It is clear to me that investing a significant amount of effort in writing quality content is simply not worth it, at least with respect to the author rewards. I get more ROI by providing fluff content--a photo with a small amount of text, or a few paragraphs.

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Saludos y felicitaciones por informart tan claro@timcliff, es bueno cuando el lider habla con los pequeños y da detalles de lo que pasa, Sus temores sus perspectiva de las cosas eso le oxigena el alma y hace ajustar mejor la visión. Es claro que las la mayoría de las ballenas que crearon el sistema entre esos creo esta Ud, tienen la mejor disposició de que steem no desaparezca. La confución de la visión es el problema. Veo que para la mayoría la retribución de dinero mal habido y que llegue a tu bosilllo lo más rapido posible es la prioridad; pero le hablo en nombre de mles que hacen de steem su ilusuón de cada día, no por la remuneración y el dinero sino por la democratización de que tus datos esten en lugar seguro y además recibas una retribución justa. Si el punto es uq que hay que curar un 75% ara que la plataforma mejore eso es lo que hay que hacer. Disminuiran los autores pero aún no se ha llegado a todos los autores potenciales de la red así que no hay que tener miedo...adelante... hagan lo que tengan que hacer

...rafa

I have been reading comments at this post for over half an hour now and all I can see is people actually talking to each other, proposing ideas, fighting and clarifying their intentions.But if you look at the bigger picture this all show hundreds of people who actually care about what will happen to this platform even if they keep saying "I am powering down" etc.That's a good thing in my eyes.

I will not propose anything cause I suck at these things, I create content and trying to run a healthy community in here.
The only thing I want to mention is that if rewards for curators drop to 50/50 we MIGHT be able to see a more healthy upvote model for Steem BUT this will most definitely hurt new accounts.
We need communities that will support the minnows when they join the platform.Real communities run by real people and of course we need whales to wake up and start manual curation with a 50/50 model.

Agree on almost all of your points. If we have better incentives for people to search out quality content though, IMO that would be better (not worse) for new members.

Dear @timcliff

I just re-read your publication. Appreciate all your efforts.

You've mentioned:

Authors will likely complain over what appears to be a more than 50% reduction in their rewards

Is it somehow related to this part?

Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators.

Does it mean that authors would be receiving less from reward pool, but curators would be receiving more? Do I understand well?

I would obviously love to reward curators for their efforts. But curating right now seem to be focused on upvoting posts. We shall find ways to encourage people to comment and to reward those comments.

I'm trying to see big picture here, however Im not sure if HF21 will bring us closer to where we want to go, or will push us futher away. After all increasing curation rewards will mostly benefit bidbots. Or perhaps I'm wrong?

Yours
Piotr

Yes, curation will pay higher, which will mean less percentage wise for authors. Also, a portion of the author/curator inflation will be redirected into the SPS fund.

I'm trying to see big picture here, however Im not sure if HF21 will bring us closer to where we want to go, or will push us futher away. After all increasing curation rewards will mostly benefit bidbots. Or perhaps I'm wrong?

It is not just about the one change by itself. The goal is to try and get more stakeholders curating content, and more stakeholders downvoting stuff that doesn't add value (like spam content upvoted by bid bots).

It is impossible to know how it will actually play out. All I can do is communicate the goal and what specific changes are being made. We are hoping it works out in authors favor.

Yea...I'm that $5-10 a day content creator that is probably going elsewhere when that gets cut in half. I agree, too much too fast, and not enough on the BOT KILLING side of the equation.

ALSO, despite hundreds of us saying it, nothing is being done about the malicious ideologically-driven downvoting here. In fact, some ( like @bloom) appear to be here ONLY to downvote.

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Thanks for the good work. We need more witnesses with such effort!

I want to figure out how we get to a point where that user is earning $100 or even $1000.

That will literally never happen. There is no scenario where a single quality creator increases average earnings so much (unless Steem goes to 100USD today) under any circumstance. The platform isnt built that way.
You have a an upper ceiling on what a creator can earn and i think i could do a break down of each creator group to tell you exactly how much they can earn pretty easily.
Due to the very nature of those that do redistribute their votes you can never have anyone stand out. The "very best" and the "decent enough" will earn around the same with the focus on consistency and content quantity.
If you consider that, then thinking that someone will have such a jump in earnings (or even something close) when you cut author rewards across the board doesnt really make much sense.

What i expect to happen is an initial curation surge by proposal supporters that will dwindle after a short time when people realize that curation is damn hard and not very fun. Some quality creators will get a few more votes from kevin and the gang which wont amount to much due to the massive cut, the curation philosophy and because we all have friends (orcas as well) we like here that arent amazing creators, but can make a shit ton of photos daily (lol); smaller accounts, dolphins, minnows etc. wont change their voting behavior.
Vote selling will still be a thing. A few curation services might pop up eventually that will either maximize curation returns with "questionable practices" and vote subpar content that maximizes returns.

I sincerely believe that this will be the case. An initial shift in behavior from proposal supporters to prove that the proposal was right and a swift adjustment to reality.

When I joined the platform, top authors were making thousands of dollars per post. I disagree that it is “impossible”. Fully acknowledge that it is a long uphill battle to even get remotely close though.

When I joined the platform, top authors were making thousands of dollars per post.

In most cases I would prefer using the term "popular" instead of "top", but anyway, I think it was only possible because of the n^2 rewards curve we had these days.

I am in favour of implementing a convergent rewards curve, but more or less against the other two changes.

Apart from some whales most people won't downvote anyway because of fear of retaliation.
(OK, maybe some will create alt accounts just to get the curation rewards for downvoting them). :-)

I also tend not to cut author rewards not to discourage newbies even more than it happens already now.

My STEEM Vision. is a concentrate of my thoughts concerning problems and chances of STEEM.

I think it was only possible because of the n^2 rewards curve we had these days.

Nah, even under linear rewards there have been mid-$100s in rewards on some content, and definitely a lot of content regularly earning $10s.

Not so much recently because of a combination of low price and vast amounts of the reward pool being siphoned off by self-voting and vote sellers.

Nah, even under linear rewards there have been mid-$100s in rewards on some content, and definitely a lot of content regularly earning $10s.

He was writing about thousands of dollars per post ...

Of course rewards were higher than now, also with a linear rewards curve, but not as high as at the very beginning of STEEM(it).

Yes you're right, the very tip top obviously makes more under n^2 (which was even tens of thousands in a few cases). I guess I was responding to his broader point of it being possible for authors to make a lot more than now under a more functional system, and I do absolutely believe that to be the case.

So you think that EIP will lead to a more functional system?
Actually, if I had to choose, altogether I wouldn't be against EIP. That's how I see it:

  • I am in favour of the convergent rewards curve.

  • Concerning the 'downvote pool' I see the benefits that spam, plagiarism and bit bot supported trendig posts could be downvoted more effectively.
    On the other hand it would allow (and make it profitable for) whales even more easily to follow and downvote every single posts of people they just don't like ... unfortunately this happens here and makes a devastating impression on new (or potentially new) users who are observing these 'flag wars'.
    As I described in My STEEM Vision. for example a committee of respected users elected by the community and equipped with sufficient delegated STEEM power could be called in such cases and then decide whether the flags were justified or not.
    Users who aren't ever affected by these kind of flaggs out of personal reasons really underestimate their bad effect on STEEM in my opinion.
    I think apart from whales ('good' and 'bad' ones) most users wouldn't flag more than before anyway, due to fear of retaliation.
    Maybe some would even create alt accounts just to downvote them without risk to get the curation rewards (Steemians are so creative). :)

  • Concerning the 50 % curation rewards I am not against trying it, but I am not so convinced of the positive effects. I understand the idea to make it more attractive for whales to upvote again ... but at the same time I wonder why these big accounts are that fixated on their ROI? If the STEEM price raises significantly again, they will be unbelievable rich anyway, if it doesn't, the ROI also doesn't matter much: they have lost money anyway. I personally would agree not to earn one single more STEEM if that would guarantee a significantly higher STEEM price. Better concentrate on making the cake bigger than on getting a bigger part of a cake which is getting smaller and smaller.
    I curate manually and anyway already now (with 75/25) I upvote posts which I like and don't care much about the curation rewards (most of the time I upvote late and don't care who else upvoted these posts). That wouldn't change at all with '50/50': I still would upvote what I like.
    I like to upvote new/unknown users manually. Often my upvote is the only 'big' upvote under their articles. At least I can support them. With 50 % curation rewards I couldn't support these users as effectively as now because anyway I would get a big part of my own upvote back.
    I think many manual middle sized curators do the same. They curate because they just like the curated posts.
    Yes, with more curation rewards whales would maybe join automated curation trails instead of using bid bots (that would be a progress). However, I am not really a fan of these automated curation trails. They select a few lucky users which start earning quite some money on every post (the posts are not evaluated manually) but the big majority of users still doesn't earn anything. I would prefer that as many users as possible earned small amounts of money instead of a few selected ones earning quite much. That would be only possible if more (bigger) users were making the effort to curate manually and really read/watch content before upvoting.

And yes, I think the number of satisfied 'normal' users ("authors") does matter. I described it like this:
"A rich pool of satisfied users would also make STEEM much more interesting for larger investors in the long run than it still is today, interesting to place advertisements read by many, to market products, to disseminate information. The value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users."
Even if I don't like it, Facebook is a successful example ...

When steem started you had a much smaller user base. And i would hardly call those top authors. I wasnt here at the time but i remember someone mention a thousands of dollars make up tutorial. .

Those makeup tutorials aren't my cup of tea but I think it's wise to mention the fact there is a market for that kind of thing, and I'm sure the most popular act on Youtube who specializes in that sort of thing is a millionaire because of it.

Hehe. I think we should look at the couple k USD make tutorial in the context of what was going on at the time. 😁

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I missed those crazy early days by only a couple of months, but I know all about it, including that of which you speak of. So far, I'd say the most reasonable period of time to be a content producer here would have been the couple of months before the vote selling started. The token woke up, as some say, people were flocking to the place, content discovery was decent, organic trending posts were a thing, still a few flaws, wasn't perfect but I can say this community was a lot happier than it is today... then it went downhill basically the moment SP delegations and vote buying came into play. Oh well... live, and hopefully learn.

... then it went downhill basically the moment SP delegations and vote buying came into play.

Exactly that was my impression, as well.

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Oh Mitrado. Youre still at it. Bernie is leaving. How do you feel about that? I thought you would be happy about it but you still seem to be on a witch hunt.

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Thanks for sharing @timcliff. I do not like the idea of receiving a "pre determined " amount for my posts. That's a strange concept to me. Not a fan. This is coming from somebody who has relatively high community engagement at over 13,000 comments. Due to financial reasons in my personal life have had to power down and don't have as high of "stake" anymore because of that but still, this just seems a bit unfair

It is less for “posts” and more for proposals. Development, marketing, etc.

Gotcha thanks for clarifying

Oh God. I hope it's not as bad as the last HF when 90% of the users could not do anything on the site

You made 3 good points in this posts that I wanted to comment on:

  • Bid bots pretty much rule the platform.
  • Very few stakeholders are spending time looking for quality contributions to reward.
  • Many users who contribute a lot to the platform struggle to get any decent rewards.

Let's start with the last one. New people coming into Steemit don't have a large following and won't be getting payouts, no matter how good of an author they may be. Cutting the author rewards isn't going to encourage newcomers into the platform.

Now the first two points. Bid bots do control this platform because everyone knows very few people actually read post here. To make any kind of return on your effort one has to utilize the bid bots to get it. And the bid bots make money from curation. People also sell votes on posts they never read. Instead of looking for quality post to read and make comments on. These seem to be the activities you would like to minimize on the platform.

Increasing the curation reward at the expense of the author is rewarding the behavior you want to minimize. Currently if a post makes $10, that's $7.50 to the author and $2.50 to the curators. Increasing the curator portion to 50% currently would only reward bid bots and vote sellers even more.

Why stop at 50% anyway? Why not make it 75%, 90%, or even 100%? The result is going to be the same, there will be fewer posts on here to curate. By the way, this will be the same regardless of a post making $10 or $100.

How about looking for a method to actually reward people that read the post and make a valid comment on the content of the post. You have to find a way to do this without rewarding the bots that go around upvoting or downvoting automatically also.

In my opinion, simply increasing the curation rewards will only result in fewer people writing posts on Steemit.

I just had a pleasure to read your amazing comment @mikehamm

Seriously big respect for sharing your thoughts and for your time

Very few stakeholders are spending time looking for quality contributions to reward

How about looking for a method to actually reward people that read the post and make a valid comment on the content of the post. You have to find a way to do this without rewarding the bots that go around upvoting or downvoting automatically also.

This new 50/50 reward system can only work if so called Whales would actually start delegating their Steem Power to quality curators. That would indeed allow those curators to be rewarded for their work and benefit entire platoform.

I'm simply afraid, that this will not happen. That at the end most whales will continue auto-upvoting publications of very few people, with their powerful votes and without putting any effort they will start earning x2 more than they did so far.

It surely would encourage them to slow down with powering down, which in effect would most likely bring up the price of STEEM. But that is the only positive outcome. And what would happen year from now, when those "whales" would start dumping this easily earned STEEM?

In my opinion, simply increasing the curation rewards will only result in fewer people writing posts on Steemit.

Yep. People will only care about buying STEEM and delegating it to bots and enjoying rewards (which will double now).

Yours
Piotr

Steemit is not getting the message: When people are not happy with the product or service, they leave and let their wallets do the talking.

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++

convergent linear rewards curve.

Can someone explain what does it mean?

I am VIZ award bot. Author is not registered. Can't award.
more detailes here

If this aims to limit the bidbots - they will just move to "vote selling" system where users give them permission to use their vote - so they can get the curation. Probably that's gonna be the only real change.

Can I just point out, that if I want to see content from #cars or #netflix, I need to manually type the URL in the browser, like in early 90s? Why there is no tag following? Or favorite tags?

Steemit is just a shell of a website, yet we change blockchain rules every few months just to realize that it doesn't fix the inferior user experience. And than we ask why retention is so low :/

We can't even send a tip... in a social platform oriented on cryptocurrency paid to content creators...

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