I've spoken a lot about micro transactions in the past, but now that we have this new resource credits system I think it's worth another round. After all, this new scheme we are adapting to is a form of micro-charging.
With micro-charges we can push the herd in the right direction. Bags at the grocery store used to be free. Now they cost 10 cents in California. This cost means nothing to a lot of people from a financial perspective, but from a psychological perspective the effect is much more profound. This tiny 10 cent charge has increased reusable bag adoption by a huge percentage. This tiny charge prevents a lot of pollution.
The same can be said for traffic problems. I watched this interesting TED talk on the issue of micro-charging during peak hours, and the results are INSTANT. It doesn't take a week for the populace to start responding to these changes. The change happens immediately.
At first the charges have little support. Who would ever support being charged more money? However, once the beneficial results of the micro-charges become obvious, they start to garner more backing. In addition, people lie to themselves, because when asked in surveys who changed their mind, no one admits to it. They all remember supporting it the entire time. Yes, people are tools.
Mana
Why do I make the claim that our new system is a form of micro charging? I mean, we aren't being charged anything right? The bandwidth regenerates for free. Ah yes well, under the current system, my alt account @smartasscards was only able to post 2 times before running out of bandwidth. That's two Discussions every five days. Before this system came into place it was near infinite.
This means that Steem must now either significantly lower the cost of operations, or provide a way to buy bandwidth very cheaply (likely with an upvote). If we lower the cost of operations too much the new system ends up being kind of worthless. The whole point is to stop bots and spammers from cluttering the blockchain with garbage. Resource credits will allow us to scale to new heights by trimming this fat.
However, if we force plankton to buy bandwidth that is a pretty big turn off in terms of mainstream adoption. The general population is much more acclimated to Internet services being free and having their information sold or being advertised to in order to front the bill.
Therefore, it's pretty obvious that we need to find some kind of middle-ground baseline. This is exactly what we are doing right now. "Allowing the system to reach equilibrium."
Side note: if you ever find yourself hopelessly outnumbered in a gunfight simply allow yourself to be surrounded without cover and shoot in every direction. lol.
Centralization
Given the current state of RCs this could turn into a situation that further centralizes the wealth of Steem. If we have to pay whales for bandwidth the divide between the rich and the poor will surely grow. I would hope that a lot of whales/orcas would be willing to dish out bandwidth for free. Perhaps we can come up with some heuristics to identify legitimate users vs bots/spammers. This way the plankton could resume their normal activities on the blockchain without having to purchase bandwidth. Obviously this would open a whole new can of worms of abusers trying to game the system, but I still think it's better than what we had before. I think it's a good thing that my dummy account can no longer really transact on the blockchain without me powering it up.
Will RC conflict with SMT?
It's been said that SMTs are going to make Steem very scarce. All these new SMT projects are going to desperately require as much delegation as they can get. This is going to be even more true with this new Mana system. Both Mana and SMTs are going to make Steem coins very rare. I've already pointed out that Steem is 7000 times more rare than Bitcoin when you look at the smallest values (Satoshi vs milliSteem). SMTs aren't that far away. Coins are about to become very scarce.
What have we learned?
Well, for one, I learned that editing a comment is just as expensive as posting the comment. I had no idea. How many times have you edited a comment like 5 times and forced the witnesses to bear the cost? That kind of waste is no longer going to happen with this new way of doing things.
We also know that voting is about 4 or 5 times less expensive than posting text to the blockchain. The same goes with transfers and power-ups. These ratios were completely unknown before the RC system went into place. Now, everyone will know because it directly effects them.
Will 60-70% Voting Power Be the Sweet Spot?
This is just a side thought, but isn't the reward pool going to be largely untapped tomorrow? Most accounts are attempting to regain 100% power, but my experience with Steem is that most things are calculated on a 3.5 day average. That means when most accounts are hitting 70% all the votes from 3.5 days ago to today are going to be insanely scarce. Will the people that vote tomorrow the be the ones who temporarily control the reward pool? I wish I knew more about the blockchain to answer that question.
Conclusion
The RC system is going to make everyone think twice before transacting with the blockchain. It's going to cut down on a ton of waste, overhead, and stress that we were previously putting on the witnesses without a care in the world. That's what happens when you make things free: people turn into wasteful gluttons. Those days are over. It's time to embrace this new sustainable system.
This new system might turn into exploitation. It might push away new users and overcomplicate the system. However, it also might eliminate spam and add a valuable resource to our economy. Even though a lot could go wrong, I'm excited for mana and the possible prospects it will bring. The old system made absolutely no sense to me. I think that any competent programmer could have created a bot army using the old system and brought this blockchain to it's knees. I'm a firm believer in the value of micro-charges. I hope we make the best of it.
I believe the obvious answer here is people need to just stop being poor I guess.
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Isn't the point of cryptocurrency to decentralize wealth and eliminate poverty? Yes, not being poor is the answer.
Because RCs are not yet transferable, the obvious temporary solution is to simply reduce the cost of transactions. This is going to happen in the very near future.
One of the big selling points of HF20 was the ability to generate new accounts for free. What's the point of generating a new account if it can only post twice a week? Give it time.
This is the part that I don't understand. Under HF19 and prior, wasn't that the whole point of being a witness? The witness bears those costs and gets paid out of the inflation of the STEEM supply as compensation.
Under HF20 it seems like the witnesses aren't bearing these costs (at least not to the same degree) but are still receiving the same level of compensation.
Indeed. Wouldn't it of been nicer if they had cut rewards to the witnesses and put it back into the main reward pool? Or perhaps they could have made witness rewards variable and dependent on how much work they were getting done. However, I'm guessing the witnesses would had vetoed that idea.
When you think about how much spam and bot action was taking place it simply isn't sustainable to put all that garbage on the blockchain forever. This new system will turn into something much more sleek than it was before. Even if RC distribution right now is totally Nazi, it won't be like that forever. Give it some time.
As a fellow solo Red mage, I need moar Mana! Ok, not really, steem went from 8-bit to 32-bit gba pretty quick.. oh to have a Max of 8 Mana per level again... wait.. was I talking about ff1 or steem? Shit... In any event.. I love the changes. Change is life. Change is good. It means someone is doing something. Assuming their intentions are pure, it'll all work out. Having faith in the system you are putting faith into is kinda a requirement yea?
The change is quite profound, and I am convinced the reasoning behind it is good, but we all agree it needs lots of tweaking!
But I am sure the future is bright for Steem