Hi @patrickulrich.
Thanks for the constant hardwork in bringing the best for this platform. I would like to clarify a few things :
What's the use of @sportsvoter? To burn Sports tokens in exchange of upvotes, correct? This is the only use case of @sportsvoter other than increasing SP on an account (I dunno what are your plans with the SP but I think of it as a profit like most bidbot operators do). It is not helping the users logically. You send sports in exchange of upvotes and those sports are in current steem equivalents, which means it is technically just the same with other bid bots than its "burning" mechanism.
The @sportsvoter SP delegators were the main reason of the price dump of Sports. The 20% allocation of the reward pool to SP delegators is too much for a purpose that only farmed Steem. That's my opinion, before @sportsvoter was launched - its price was reasonable than "after" it was launched. Imagine those users who bought the tokens at 0.008/Sports which is now sitting at 0.0004/Sports.
I guess that's okay right? Because in the first place, Sports is not an investment "at all". But seeing that price dump, how are you feeling that the users who "invested" in your platform is experiencing a huge "loss"? I suggest to stop the bidbot scheme, distribute Sports tokens to content creators and curators because honestly, most delegators are just dumping Sports and we've seen that tragedy! I've been using @sportsvoter and I love it, I'm just against the Sports rewards for SP delegators idea. Steemit Inc, has actually launched a delegation application which you can apply your bidbot that burns sports. How about it?
Totally different from other platforms were tribe users who post under (#spt, #steemmonsters for example) receive votes for being active (and probably an investor) in the platform.
Make 50-50 rewards split for users posts. 50% sports and 50% Sports power. That could limit Sports liquidity.
Decrease the amount of time it takes to powerdown. Instead of 9 months, make it between 3-6 months
Please don't get me wrong. I love sportstalk and the man behind this tribe. It took me time to make this comment because I am concerned with the future of the platform.
Hey @korver - Thank you for taking the time to make these suggestions! It will be community members like yourself that are dedicated to improving the platform that will allow us to continue to grow.
You're correct on the usage of @sportsvoter's SP. It's used as a tool for users to redeem their SPORTS as an upvote from the @sportsvoter account. That being said this provides us with a number of uses beyond just the voting bot. The SP within the bot also allows us to claim discounted account tokens that will be invaluable in bringing non-Steemians to the platform as we grow. Currently we've redeemed roughly 250 account tokens to help prepare for inviting new SPORTS creators.
I understand your concerns towards the curation SP gained from this account. The plan is to not withdraw from the @sportsvoter account. This will allow the voting power to continue to grow and thus keep the number of SPORTS that can burnt similar to the initial levels. This won't be used as a profit for founders or delegators but instead a continued tool for improving the community.
The rewards that @sportspromo (@sportsvoter's delegation paying account) have only been set to 10%. We initially launched with the possibility of this going to 20% if there was over 2m SP delegated but it never went past 10% on that scale. We've since decided that capping the limit at 10% is the way to go. In addition we switched to that 10% being distributed as 25% liquid SPORTS while 75% is distributed as SPORTS POWER. https://www.sportstalksocial.com/sportstalk/@sportstalksocial/announcing-changes-to-sportsvoter
With the change to only 25% liquid SPORTS that means that delegators are only being rewarded a liquid amount of 72,000 SPORTS that can be sold on the market. Yesterday there was 144,128.299 SPORTS sent to @null from the @sportsvoter leaving us with a net decrease in the circulating supply. This encourages me to believe that over the long run that @sportsvoter will still be a net positive for the ecosystem as the market determines the proper value for tokens. In the future we will certainly be considering applying for a delegation from Steemit Inc but I'm not sure that this would eliminate the value proposition to @sportsvoter/@sportspromo though it would certainly be appreciated.
We'd also love to move towards a 50/50 split. Unfortunately at this time it would not be sustainable for the community as it would drastically increase our daily active users and thus require a decent capital investment to keep the tribe running. I detailed the reasoning for this in more detail on this comment - https://steempeak.com/sportstalk/@patrickulrich/pwrl93
I'm not sure I follow the logic on lowering the time for a powerdown. This would only increase the circulating supply of SPORTS and thus make more available to be sold on the market. I'm certainly open to reviewing this though if I'm overlooking a valuable reason for switching.
Hope some of this helps you understand my logic in our current setup. I'm certainly open to reviewing but for now I still believe that our setup is geared to grow the platform over the long term.
Thank you for positively taking this concern @patrickulrich. I'm surely taking it note. Though I am about to click the "post" button for the proposal I made which was the same concern of my comment above. I have now clear understanding of what you're doing (and the team).
I hope your wife had successful operation. Wishing for fast recovery. Have a great day ahead.