Payout tokens are the most complex part of the system. While I see the need for all 3 tokens, being paid out in all three is very confusing. I would love to have the option to be paid in STEEM only as opposed to STEEM and SBD. I'm OK with the 50% power up as my own choice but I think powering up should probably be completely voluntary... If you want blogging platforms like Medium to adopt STEEM as a revenue system, well their users aren't going to understand why their $5 payout is locked away and can't be taken out in parts larger than 1/13. I think curation should still be SP only since you need to have SP to curate, so curators will already understand the purpose of SP. Perhaps comments could be paid in STEEM only while OP authors would have the option to be paid in SBD.
I'm beginning to wonder if we should keep SBD or not if we are to integrate with other platforms like Medium. If their userbase is not on steemit and they get SBD then when will they learn the speculative value of STEEM?
SBD for authors and STEEM for commenters would be easier to understand than 3 tokens for everyone.
But honestly if you want people to hold steem long term you need to create incentives for doing that. Right now curation isn't a good enough incentive because the vast majority of users feel that their vote is pretty powerless. At one point when the steem price was around 30c my account was worth around $2k yet my vote wasn't worth 1c on a new post. For somebody self employed who doesn't make 2k in a month (before expenses) I can't imagine how I can afford to compete by powering up. A person of my income is probably (possibly idk) the average user too so the masses are just not all the investing type.
I don't know if you have future power up incentives up your sleeve but I hope you will revisit the idea of reducing the voting soft limit or come up with some kind of solution for bot voting because that's the main reason I see my vote as powerless even at $2'000.
People seem to learn this but if it's a barrier to adoption it can be solved in the UI by displaying half of a post's total reward payout, minus projected curation rewards.
It would be the same. After my first whale upvote I called a friend to tell her I just won $300 on the post. She said brilliant what are you gonna spend it on and I said well I can only spend half of it and immediately lost her.
Now given that first reaction I took a different approach when telling another few friends. I said I won $250 that I can spend and a stake in the platform worth $250. That's when my friend who is a developer and should really be on steemit because he's currently out of work to work on his portfolio told me to be careful - that part about being made a stake holder made him think scam - which I still think is ridiculous but it's not unusual for people to think this way.
I never thought I would hear you say to remove SBD! :) What if it were marketed this way... all rewards paid in STEEM. Then you have a choice: Gain more influence by powering up to SP, or cash out/earn interest by getting SBD. This would seem to give the user a choice they can grok.
I'm not saying remove SBD. I still strongly believe in the value of it as a smart contract and as an introduction to cryptocurrency. But I would like the OPTION to be paid in STEEM rather than SBD since I don't really hold SBD for very long anyway.
I think that could work. But I would prefer if they added incentives for lower power ups. They don't even have to be monetary incentives. People go crazy about HATS on Team Fortress 2 and there are all sorts of games people will pay just for gimmicky things.