Under the current curator distribution system, this is how your example plays out @blocktrades
Chart #1 shows under the current 25/75 distribution and chart #2 displays what it would be if it was 50/50 distribution.
Highlighted in light blue is the curation reward payout of the first voter (a.k.a. The Whale with a $100 vote value).
As you can see from chart #1 (the current system) the whale makes a curation reward of ~79 STEEM. Thus, it’s about 29% less than a 100% self-vote.
In chart #2 you can see that the whale would make ~158 STEEM in curation rewards - 2x as much as the 25/75 split.. makes sense, right?
In this theoretical example (under a 50/50 split) the whale would make 58% more by curating content that will later be upvoted by a significant amount of vests (a.k.a. a large collective or even a single whale with a significant amount of STEEM POWER) than through 100% self-votes.
Now, you’ve given us an example of 1 large whale, which does make the calculations simpler and I think helps to give everyone some perspective on how significant a change like this would be.
What most people don’t understand however, is that if this high level of incentivization was in place, then it is far more likely that people will continually be “on the hunt” for the best content that will rise to the top after they vote on it - which was the original intention of the system that we have now. I especially consider this to be a positive direction if real manual curation teams (like Acidyo’s initiatives) start popping up. But that’s all just my own speculation. I can envision a scenario where whales decide that they are better off delegating to effective curation teams rather than self-voting or even delegating to bid bots.
Thus under a 50/50 split, everyone would have a higher incentive to vote on an unknown post before it becomes known - whether your vote was $0.10 or $100...
This makes the whole debate over curation rewards very valid in my mind, and I’m leaning towards a 50/50 split although I think extensive testing and thought experiments ought to be done before we uppend the current system.
From what i looked at its pretty clear imo that vote selling for your hypothetical whale is still a more lucrative deal then curation after vote selling markets adjust to increase in curation. And they will.
After the passive investors move away from bots and into vote selling you will have a huge supply of votes on MB and SS.
Once the balance is struck, you just made it much cheaper in liquid STEEM/SBD for the vote buyers to get on top of trending. The vote value you had to pay 400 SBD to get on top of trending, now you will be paying around 250SBD for.
50/50 changes absolutely nothing and potentially makes it even worse. These calculations you made seem to be right, but they are just one side of the coin. No one seems to even want to look what side effects this change will have.
If vote selling is still the profit maximizing option then there is absolutely no way that passive bot investors or semi active whales, after they realize it, wont move to vote selling...
If they are doing "nothing" now and this change happens, they will continue to look to do nothing and earn as much as they can.
Vote selling and getting "smaller amounts of liquid assets and more curation" is still superior to "just curation".
This proposal slightly cuts the passive income of bot delegators (now vote sellers) since more liquid gains is better then more SP gains, but remaining passive is still the most lucrative deal.
Also, now you did a great service to current vote buyers.
Im going to ping @blocktrades since he upvoted me a few times to see if any of what i wrote makes sense to him.
Thanks for filling in the details with hard data!
Always a pleasure to help where I can! 😊
When you are speaking about "the curators" remember that they currently are just a mega small group. And if you would make it 50/50 you would punish the growing amount of true content creators. The main source of curation at the moment is coming from private high Stake people or misterdelegation. That will say 50/50 would not change a single thing to make content creators getting more leverage. It would just increase the gap between the rich and poor. Ned has even talked about this.
Actually, I think you’re mistaken.
As I mentioned in my comment, these calculations scale to any size account. In fact, when you have a smaller upvote value (say, $0.10) it is easier to earn a greater multiplier on your curation reward by voting on a post before a whale votes.
What I mean by this is the following: a small curator casting a vote - even if it’s as little as $0.01 - would earn 2x, 3x or even 8x their upvote value if they upvote a piece of content before a whale.
There are far more content curators than content creators and increasing the incentive for people to upvote unknown posts would help both the smaller content curators as well as the smaller content creators.
The issue we have is with that of behavior patterns - right now, the incentive to self-vote is much higher than to upvote a high quality piece of content. As you can see in my original comment and chart #1.
I also mentioned that extensive testing is needed before any change should ever be made. However, I’ve spent a lot of time calculating curation rewards and trust me - this would help small curators even more so than “whale” curators. Which means that everyone has a greater incentive not to self-vote and thus, the proper intention of good content being discovered and rising to the top could possibly be restored - again, extensive testing required!!!
"There are far more content curators than content creators and increasing the incentive for people to upvote unknown posts would help both the smaller content curators as well as the smaller content creators."
This is only true for smaller curation happenings. But they are not the main accounts empowering people. Today I got a 7777 SP delegation from nathanmars. He is on team content creators. He is putting stake behind what he does.
This is what will make this ecosystem grow. Not selfish 50% curation systems. There are very few high curation sources that matters. There are more content creators that matters. As they have limitless amount of new content. This is what draws in new humans in the system.
"The issue we have is with that of behavior patterns - right now, the incentive to self-vote is much higher than to upvote a high quality piece of content. As you can see in my original comment and chart #1."
This is not true at all. The highest ROI is to invest in Trust and Relationships. Yes it would help small curators in the short term. But it would not empower content creators in the long run. Especially if they want to have massive future influence. Since they have no leverage. This can already be seen in Socialist countries with 50% tax. It doesn't give incentive for anyone to create amazing content. It would encourage fast content with low effort.
Content creators are the main authority, next comes Stake holders and then comes advertisers. If you value content creators at the top, curators second and advertisers third then a network can grow. But if you value curators above content then you mess up the whole ecosystem.
People that currently isn't in thriving mode will never thrive magically with a change. Since lazy stay lazy. @lordbutterfly has pointed out in excellent posts why 50/50 will not work.
It will only work if you think that small curators are the future of a content network. But they are not producing new stuff.
Again, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I have taken no sides in the debate of what should be implemented and changed on the blockchain.
Let me continue that role by saying this: nathanmars is doing incredible work and there are a few others like him who are empowering fellow creators like yourself, however: that is not a scalable model.
What you're hoping for is a perfect world where people who have abundance are willing to share that abundance with others. I wish it were otherwise, but it simply is not human nature to act in accordance to those principles.
The ecosystem will not grow (in my opinion) to the scale that we all want to see it grow to through actions like those. Yes, they are highly beneficial on the micro level and I hope that more people stand up and do similar initiatives, but it is simply to big of an ask to get people on board with those kinds of activities.
Thus, you run yourself back to the initial idea of Steem and upvoting --> the idea behind the Steem ecosystem and the rewards pool and what not was all designed for people to spread their upvotes to others to both reward themselves (through curation) as well as to reward their fellow humans.
Believe me - if you can incentivize people to reward themselves AND reward fellow creators, then my friend, you are in business!
You don't have to believe me though, you can see how this all played out on the Steem blockchain in its current state: are the majority of people self-voting and delegating to bots or are they acting against their own interests and delegating SP at no profitability to creators such as yourself? The answer is obvious, I'm afraid.
Again, I don't know if setting a 50/50 split would solve these issues and I actually believe that it wouldn't - only that it is a worthwhile pursuit to at least consider the possibilities and run tests and experiments.
Now, I'll give you my person position --> I believe that SMTs will fragment the Steem blockchain into a bunch of smaller communities which will serve to solve the issues of incentivizing people to both earn the maximum reward for themselves while simultaneously rewarding their fellow creators. I just wrote a post on this exact idea, if you want to give it a read.
Again, I'm totally with you and I wish the world were as we hoped it would be - everyone helps each other in a completely selfless way and we all rise to the top together, but we unfortunately do not have such a perfect world.
That's why I believe these smaller communities will form with their own economic models that will far exceed anything like what we see now happening on the blockchain ---> that is how we scale the unscalable: by bringing the macro back down to the micro level!!!
Thx for a good reply,
"Let me continue that role by saying this: nathanmars is doing incredible work and there are a few others like him who are empowering fellow creators like yourself, however: that is not a scalable model."
Well it is actually scalable. Empower people and magic happens in the long run. Investing in others is a scalable model. History has proven that the last 100 years.
"What you're hoping for is a perfect world where people who have abundance are willing to share that abundance with others. I wish it were otherwise, but it simply is not human nature to act in accordance to those principles."
If you take a look the last 100 years you can again see that abundance has gone up. And people are sharing it. Most places that have a more capitalist approach and not socialist approach are creating massive freedom. Life is still competition though.
"Believe me - if you can incentivize people to reward themselves AND reward fellow creators, then my friend, you are in business!"
Content creators are already doing this on the Steem Blockchain. And it works.
Well I'm with you that I think experiments will be done with Smart Media Tokens. And that it will create all kinds of results