I've been meaning to make a post about this for some time but didn't want to feel like I'm complaining or whining about the state of things. It's a bit unfortunate how some things are but it's the same all over the world, the ones with the loudest voice, best marketing, fake numbers and support from those who don't know better will come out on top than those trying to do good things for the platform as a whole.
It took us a long time to launch @ocdb, that was not cause it was extra difficult to get it going, but having been a curator for the longest time and not wanting to falter to "bid bot" alternatives we tried to prolong it for as much as possible but unfortunately things did not seem to want to change while more and more stake was being locked up in bid bots. Why do you hate bid bots so much? Well it's not like I hate the bid bots itself, every platform has their own tools for promotion and if used correctly they could be good for stakeholders as a whole. With the overreacted bear market and lack of a big active userbase it caused them to either go idle or be used for anything, that's the part that sucks cause it clogged up trending with literal garbage while no one wanted to downvote them down cause it cost them voting power and potential curation rewards, at least to those that the rewards were big enough to matter. So yes, it was a symptom of broken economics but at the same time the "competition" between these "businesses" probably has a whole rabbit hole of things going on such as faking buys to pretend they are being used by sockpuppet accounts or just bidding during the same bid window to take a cut from the others because to them it doesn't matter, they are getting a cut off of each bid either way and that was my biggest concern with it. Most of these bid bots are just clones of an opensource one so their "business" is nothing else than having been at the right time, cloned the right bot and gotten a delegation from the right whale while they make a ton of Steem for doing absolutely nothing than damaging trending of Steem. Not all bid bots are the same of course, there are some that care how theirs are being used and take action, but let's just say I still don't think the rewards are deserved.
So we went along and launched @ocdb the lesser evil, fully non-profit which meant that the only people receiving a profit where the 3k+ authors that @ocd had curated in the past and a few extras that got in from recommendation posts we did. To be able to pay out the curation rewards to the delegators though required that we fed @ocdb liquid Steem on a daily basis since curation rewards are returned in SP. Over time it would be fine cause the account would catch up to the required amount of liquids needed to be paid out when the powerdowns were able to cover it and thankfully @anomadsoul stepped up and powered all of his accounts down to take care of it as he had created @ocdb and had the keys to it (he's part owner of @ocd-witness since @steemonboarding joined forces to tackle some Steem problems together, mainly onboarding and curation/retention). Now with HF21 coming up though it means that there will be a much bigger need for liquid Steem as curation rewards will be going up and he won't be able to cover it alone, that's one of the reasons I've been powering down lately and will be keeping it going for a while longer. Well, that and some extra bills I've had to get rid of lately and some investments I decided were worth to start on Steem to hopefully increase the userbase even though the price is probably at a definite bottom right now, time will tell if that works out.
So a big cost has been opportunity cost, my stake not being powered down could've easily returned to me a nice daily reward from @ocdb itself but that's the cost you pay when you want to risk it in a bigger investment which will hopefully pay out in the long run. At the same time there's often been some payout errors with ocdb which have required me to pay the delegators from my own pocket (thankfully it didn't happen with the big ones) but it sure added up over time. Then if you count all the time you've had to answer to countless questions about @ocdb from whitelisted authors, potential delegators even though there are plenty of posts and FAQs around explaining things in detail, and the sense of entitlement some authors and delegators get even though they should know by now that this side project of @ocd is just what it is, a side project, the lesser evil "distribution bot" in a platform filled with passive stake only being delegated to bid bots. It gets a bit annoying having to deal with all these questions and users feeling like they are doing us a favor by delegating to @ocdb even though again, it is fully non-profit, it doesn't matter to us if there is 50 million SP delegated to it or 50k. Of course we care about it in the sense that it is helping distribution for all authors willing to use @ocdb on a daily basis and it better be going to them than bid bot owners but it just gets tiring over time, you can probably understand how that would feel.
I've been thinking to start changing some things around in the way we operate though, at least with the marketing part with HF21 coming up. Curation projects have been undervalued for so long and curators underrewarded. Even with @ocdb 3.5m SP out of 4.2m mostly come from 2-3 big users which is a bit of a let down as you'd think many more would be interested in distribution the stake as wide as possible on our platform to strengthen our currency that's built in DPOS. So over the next few weeks we'll be trying to push and dare I say bid bot our announcements of @ocdb changes and other initiatives we'll be focusing on with @ocd which will hopefully bring the most value to Steem. I hope to see other curation projects do the same as they surely will need the extra support come HF21 after this long 2 year broken economy that has left them with barely a million SP to curate with while there's maybe 50 million in bid bots. Kinda sad but it is what it is and there's no point looking back and keep crying about how things used to be and look forward to how things can be in the near future if we try our best to curate, downvote and take care of the rewardpool better than we have in the past.
To everyone who's been trying and ignoring going for max ROI through these times, I want to thank you and hope you still have some strength to try for a bit longer and hope things will turn around here for them. Even though curation is very underrated, think about how many ask why you upvoted their post compared to why you downvoted them, or at least be thankful for curation they receive instead of feeling like the blockchain or curators owe it to them compared to how fast a downvote gets them all riled up - I'm hoping things will change for the better and we'll have a healthy content discovery and curation onto deserving content no matter the size of the author behind the posts. If HF21 won't fix it somewhat then I don't really know what I will do, probably take a long break and focus on myself for a while.
I'm holding on the last threads of hope too. But you already know that.
Bring on HF21 !
And, this hasn't been said enough, but you're a goddamn gift of a person. I think.... I was pretty lucky to have been roped into OCD when I did, cuz it was the only thing that renewed my spirit to keep on fighting the good fight.
This is a profound question.
I would say it is assumption, expectation and entitlement. People are hostile getting downvoted and ungrateful getting upvoted and assume they deserve reward regardless of behavior, expect to receive regardless of what they give and are entitled to value regardless of what they offer the market.
Looking forward to the mess that will ensue after hf21 and then seeing what we can build from the rubble :)
Non Profits always have to face very unfair odds my friend.
As a registered and lauded Non Profit now in our 18th year, albeit in a different field, we encounter the same problems that you do with the big boys.
They skim the cream off the tops and the drops are left for us small guys to fight over for survival.
Fortunately we have learned the very hard way to do with what we've got, but just like you we could do so much more in a fairer situation.
I wish you only the best and all strength in your struggles.
Blessings!
Are you using all of OCDB's daily voting power? If you aren't you should use what ever is left over for curation purposes. Any voting power left idle is just steem in the hands of the bidbot runners.
Oh no we don't have any problems with that, we had to lower max bid to 10 sbd recently cause the queue was 4200 minutes long (5040 being max we can afford it to be cause a 3 day old post would be close to the 12h before payout gradual vote strength decrease). It's been nice to see more daily unique authors using it though and even with just 10 SBD max bid it has taken it's time to go down. This has been our goal since the start tho after freedom's overwhelming delegation, to have the max bid as low as possible and as many users using it as possible.
Hope people are going to like our changes for HF21.
I'm actually glad to see the max bid able to be lowered to 10 SBD for that reason despite benefiting from a much higher max bid at a time a few months ago when astonishingly few people used @ocdb. How did you come up with the 90%/10% split between delegators and authors? The ratio that works best is a reflection of the community spirit on Steem.
It's cause most bid bots were taking cuts between 5-15% or possibly higher from bids and their delegators, but considering bid bots are supposed to cost buyers as it's promotion we settled with 10% to remain competitive against them while taking no cut for ourselves.
With HF21 and the new curve the author profit may be changed but remains to be seen how we do it.
Great, sounds good. I think you are running a fair and useful promotion service and am glad I delegate here and not elsewhere.
It is safe to say HF21 will not solve anything on the curation front. All it will serve in doing is killing off the minnows. If it was difficult building up SP now, how difficult will it be to build anything when you are bleeding 50 of it to curators?
Essentially, I have always loved the idea of this non-profit project. It is what I wish bidbots were. But human nature is to be greedy and to profit as much and as quickly as possible hence why SP is flowing in the opposite direction.
While the focus has been on curation alone it buffles me why this project never includes a clause to require people to delegate SP if they want to be a part of the project. Just like steem, if you want to earn anything, you got to stake something.
How many of OCD authors actually are delegating to the project?
Just like Steemonsters support me in earning Steem so I support them with delegations.
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This makes no sense, the curation is supposed to incentivize big accounts so they vote on many others including minnows. Minnows will be able to earn more from curation if they are good at it compared to the linear system now, same with bigger accounts who keep looking for new good posts and land their votes early or delegate to curation projects who do it for them and give them back their curation rewards or take a cut, I'd personally prefer non-profit there too.
The reason we don't force people to delegate to use @ocdb is because they have already shown us they write good content when they were curated by @ocd. Forcing them to delegate would not be fair to those that have nothing to delegate and we'd rather they use their low stake to curate and connect with other accounts thus increase interaction and retention than only have empty votes.
I don't know if there is a tool out there that can help show the ratio of minnows to whales. Just off the top of my head, I would go with a 90-10 ratio.
Curation, yes, would be the expected outcome once we have the hard fork and I expect to at least in the short term. However, I expect that later on people will find ways around it.
I would expect the bid bot code would simply be modified to include curation rewards to delegators or maybe private curation trails will be the in thing.
Obviously, I am a minnow and I am definitely nervous about the EIP just when I found a support system and my SP is growing.
I still maintain that communities are the way out to increase curation. Just look at the interaction in the tribes like sportstalksocial.com and see the difference.
All the same OCD is the front runner in the non-profit area and I hope it stays successful despite the coming headwinds. I am definitely a supporter.
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Who would curate for curation's sake with this ratio?
There's barely anyone curating right now and everyone who does is just shooting themselves in the foot seeing everyone else fly by them in stake and ROI. No one votes on posts that have good content except a few curation guilds while no one gives them any SP to do it properly with cause all is locked in bid bots/dapps/etc.
HF21 will make it possible for curation rewards to be higher than just bid bot ROI if you do it well, focusing on the same authors daily while bot accounts keep front-running you will lead to you making less curation rewards so you will need to either actively look for posts from new authors you think will do well or delegate to those that focus on it.
I am really looking forward to post HF21. I see it as reverse robin hood, whales will double up pretty quick, and you see it in a more positive light. I hope that is the case because my goal is to grow my SP which I should have probably stuck to over the two years I have been on Steem. Let us agree to disagree and see what happens. It is always nice to see a different perspective.
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@acidyo, Check out my first explainer video and let me know your thoughts! Id like feedback from promenient steemians that care about steem. Not asking for an upvote as I would prefer some actual criticism/feedback.
https://steemit.com/dtube/@memehub/qbc839hip8o
Hi!
I understand your point but why to much focus in curation?
From the community side of the blockchain I think curation is not the rough thing... My self I like to have more rewards and so, I don't have, sometimes I don't do enough, sometimes I just post to be active, no big deal!
I think problem for a strong, united and growing community (all of we) is the trolls problem.
People who visit Steem won't stay when they see this sort of trolling, thousand of post just to bid, thousand of comments to troll, you can't even read a post because it take to long to load, etc etc etc.
Why not a blacklist hardforked and validated by the majority of the witness in the top of the list?
To be with trolls people remain in Facebook, even with curation cause we know nowadays Steem coin Steem is worth a gum..
You got a 24.27% upvote from @ocdb courtesy of @acidyo! :)
@ocdb is a non-profit bidbot for whitelisted Steemians, current max bid is 10 SBD and the equivalent amount in STEEM.
Check our website https://thegoodwhales.io/ for the whitelist, queue and delegation info. Join our Discord channel for more information.
If you like what @ocd does, consider voting for ocd-witness through SteemConnect or on the Steemit Witnesses page. :)