Over the last few weeks I've been thinking about ways we could increase the demand for Steem Power, the quality of curated content and the incentives to participate as a Steem curator.
Here are a couple ideas I have been kicking around. They're not fully mature and could use a good rinsing by the community.
Allow Steem holders to delegate their Steem Power voting rights to a voting pool
A delegated voting pool could socialize voting power and individualize rewards. One prime use for this could be the @steemit account. @steemit could create a voting pool and invite anyone with a verified identity and good reputation to join the pool as a curator. This could increase the number of unique curators, help bootstrap Steem as an identity database and give people even more incentives to sign up.
To show the numbers, an example would be Alice Bob and Charley each delegate their SP of 2, 3, and 7 to one voting pool. Now they each have 4, 4, and 4 SP to be used to curate. Better curation would earn them more curation rewards.
A side effect of delegated voting pools could be voting markets. Any user would have the power to create a voting pool and these users could charge curators for participation. Some of the platform's whales could be interested in offering subscription models to minnows as a way to get more voting influence.
If powering down stake loses voting influence
Imagine that any stake being powered down would lose its rights to use voting influence. This could make the system very clear in the regard that stake is either in or it is out. Users could be able to choose any % of their stake to power down regardless of how many accounts they have and only the % stake that is powering down would lose voting influence. Stopping a power down could return all voting rights.
Perhaps the effect of this could be 1/ more interest to stay in the platform and 2/ more fluidity in the witness queue 3/ more fairness regarding the PoS nature of Steem 4/ more clarity from participants looking to exit the system
Combined effect?
Perhaps these proposals could have a combined effect that increases the demand and fluidity of Steem Power while improving the curated experience for people visiting Steem based websites.
1 needs modification, 2 is a good idea
Despite some who call 2 an exit fee, I think Steem Power should stop being marketed as an "investment" to "investors". Market it to users of the platform who want to power up their accounts but make powering up or upgrading a lot easier. Make it possible with a gift card, fiat, a credit card, or Paypal. People should never see Bitcoin or blockchain anywhere on the Steemit official marketing.
Use gamification to make people want to upgrade their Steem Power. Market Steem Dollars to crypto investors for the 10% interest.
Steem Power a purchasable upgrade for accounts
And Alice goes to Walgreens with her Visa Card and buys the Steem Card instead of the Netflix card. It's also possible to sell a Steem Power subscription for people who want to buy a little bit at a time, remeber WoW is subscription based and. Second Life has Linden Dollars which are like our Steem Dollars and can be marketed in a similar way.
Do not make the mistake of listening to crypto anarchists or crypto people when it comes to marketing. Crypto people are horrible at marketing and that includes Bitcoin. All of crypto has a bad reputaton and horrible marketing. Look at Pokemon Go or even Reddit Gold to see how to do marketing, or just hire a profesisonal in gamification and marketing guru. Do not listen to Steemit whales and don't even listen to me. Hire people who are from the gaming world, or who marketed popular social networks.
Note: notice games and social networks never use words like "investor" or "speculator", as this would be like trying to market the social network as a gambling site which is something they all avoid.
UPDATE: IF ANYONE CAN GET IN CONTACT WITH Jane McGonigal AND HIRE HER AS A CONSULTANT IT WOULD BE GREAT FOR STEEMIT. SHE IS A THOUGHT LEADER IN "PURPOSE DRIVEN GAMING" AND HAVING HER ASSOCIATED WITH STEEMIT WOULD BRING MOMENTUM.
References
Both @ned and @dan are crypto anarchists (or voluntaryists ?) so the likelihood of them not listening to that approach is slimmer.
I think you're hitting at a root cause here -- pie in the sky ideals only last as long as it takes for reality to step in. Believing that all SP can be essentially redistributed 'fairly' without psychology and market forces wreaking havoc on the ecosystem is foolish and a sure way to lose market share. Greg Maxwell has a similar, but different, problem... all tech, no business.
I know for a fact Dan and Ned aren't currently listening to crypto-anarchists. Some of the solutions they are considering definitely haven't come from crypto-anarchists. Good ideas are good ideas and they can be crypto-anarchists privately but the platform isn't going to survive appealing to a fringe philosophical and political viewpoint.
Data should be collected. An Ideal user should be chosen. And then all effort should be about encouraging that.
That's pretty much it, really. Demand for Steem Power is stalling because there's limited appeal to the platform. In free-to-play games, whales are addicted and have ample motivation to keep leveling up. On Steemit, I'm not seeing the same appeal. There are a lot of great suggestions throughout this thread. But the essence is clear - creating penalties and controls will never create demand. Adding value and appeal to the platform will.
I wholeheartedly agree about making powering up easier. I borrowed a bit of money to power up,but I have not yet used it,because the whole process seems very cumbersome, so I have procrastinated. The thought of it makes me nervous,to be honest, I´m afraid that I will manage to fuck up somehow and lose my money.
Exactly in line with some thoughts I have had..... not my intent to spam your comment but would love your opinion on this,
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clevecross/if-it-were-mine-to-change-my-answer-to-stellabella-and-why
THIS^^^
Both proposals will reduce and not increase the demand for steem. First, divesting already has a 2 year time schedule. If you make vests worthless during those two years by taking away their power to earn any curation rewards, then there will be much less incentive to actually own vests. Committing vests for 2 years already places a huge drag on demand. Completely neutering vests for 2 years will do even more damage.
Second, by having a voting pool that includes steemits vests, you reduce the value of all other vests. The incentive will be to power down, lose your voting rewards, then get a real identity and leverage steemit's vests instead.
The combination of these two proposals is to scrap any incentive to own vests becasue (1) they will be worthless as capital while powering down and (2) they will be unable to compete with steemit's vests when not powering down.
That's why it would be a good idea to provide a sliding scale.
There's a mechanism on a macro scale when liquid steem reaches around 10-13%.
Why shouldn't there be one on a micro level? Otherwise powering down just turns exiting into a tragedy of the commons.
Yes, also if you want to make vest or steem more valuable, trying to increase artificial demand is not going to help. What we need to focus on is quality content and growth. So instead of focusing on the investors, focus on the users. Especially winning new users and retaining them.
I have written a proposal yesterday about bounties that i think will help in this regard. Curation also needs to be improved though.
Yes, a bounty system would work (think of gamification). If new users do not get all the Steem Power at once but in interval, let's say 5 Steem Power for sign up and the next steem power tied to length of stay etc.
@steempowerwhale 🐳
🌞 upvoting your lifetime dreams!
Can you please look into my bounty proposal and give me feedback what you think of it: https://steemit.com/steemit/@knircky/the-potential-of-bounties-an-improvement-proposal-for-steem-to-double-its-value
@steemed really good points that someone like me who is just getting caught up to speed with the technical side as opposed to content creation aspect would have never considered. So much to learn. Thanks for the insight.
IMO, losing voting influence by powering down diminishes the value of investing in SP. If someone is flush in SP, then powering down might be gravy. But for others, powering down at some point might involve their week to week sustenance. And they might contribute so much to the platform that they're able to keep moving ahead of the power-down curve.
Some have invested Steem they bought from exchanges in order to move forward on Steemit more quickly, as part of their investment in the platform. It seems like pulling the rug out from under them to take away their voting influence simply because they're cashing in on part of their investment. Their ability to influence through voting is part of their investment. Keep the investment in SP attractive by maintaining all privileges that come with it, including what remains when powering down.
Completely agree about powering down. But I think the idea of voting pools (if the whales actually used them) could help to bring more diverse content to the home page by empowering more users' votes to make a difference.
I think I agree. Honestly, I didn't understand the particulars about that enough to really form a firm opinion. On the surface, however, I like the idea.
lol, someone flagged my comment. It must have been particularly rude and insulting.
No there are some trolls who are going around flagging for no good reason. Don't take it personally, and you will get offsetting upvotes from good community members in response, so it doesn't really hurt anything.
Thanks @smooth. Yeah, the "lol" was real.
Apparently we have flag bearing trolls with nothing better to do.
Thanks again!
Maybe you should try to find something that would actually encourage users to want to power up and use the platform rather than trying to lock in those who are already here. Also, give your "whales" a reason to not want to power down and some might stop. Right now there is absolutely NO reason to not be powering down and cashing out every week, plain and simple.
Something that would encourage more users to power up would be not seeing so many of the whales powering down. I think that's one of the largest psychological hurdles. When the early holders and investors into the platform appear to be cashing out of their investment - while still in beta - it doesn't exactly send a signal to future investors and users that there is confidence that the platform will succeed. It doesn't matter what the motivations are for cashing out. It's a perception problem.
But the question is - how can a whale cash out if they don't earn SBD from curating? They must power down to cash out the rewards. Or...they can engage more in posts and post themselves. However, when this happens, the self upvote becomes another problem and potential for abuse - perceived or real.
So, we have several different issues in play, but the proposed solutions never seem to address them. And the largest resistance that the rest of us see actually comes from whales. At some point, there will need to be a compromise - or we can all just watch the value of Steem plummet, in which case, powering up or down will be moot.
The platform was launched with an incredibly high concentration of stake. There were reasons it was done that way with which one can agree or disagree, but that is in the past and can't be changed now.
The only mathematically feasible way for stake to be redistributed without taking many, many years (as it would to do so via rewards, and even then only if the vested SP remains above 90% which is uncertain) is for existing whales to power down and sell. That is absolutely essential to creating a healthier balance of influence and investment, and discouraging it is harmful.
It will play out to where whales have the stake they actually want, instead of what they inherited from the nature of the launch, and then the power downs will slow to an equilibrium, with a wider base of stakeholders. The sooner we get there the better.
I don't disagree that it's a way to redistribute influence. My point is that the reasons aren't being communicated well - especially to those outside of the platform. Investors only see that there is a lot of Steem being dumped in the market. Users only know why it's happening if it's communicated here on Steemit. There doesn't appear to be much of an attempt to explain why whales are powering down, what that money is being used for if it's Steemit-related, or how it could actually be beneficial.
More transparency and some explanations would go a long way.
Thanks for your response - I believe there's some merit in what you've written but I can't say I fully understand what your suggestions are.
I don't know what the answer is at this point, but I don't think forcing people to either participate (without powering down) or leave (powering down, not able to participate) is it.
I don't have any specific suggestions, but it sounds like he is saying we need to find more things that add value to SP (kind to like promoted posts gave people more of a reason to have SBD).
Right now voting power, curation rewards, and long term speculation of a price increase are really the main reasons to power up. The fact you need about $50k worth of SP to really make a difference on the first two is a big discouragement for most people.
Can we think / brainstorm about more benefits that we can offer people for buying/ holding SP?
Beyond that, let's just add more reasons for people to participate on the platform, regardless of their SP.
IMO the most important thing is to widen the appeal of the platform beyond blogging. That could be the promised marketplace, it could be adding better support and encouragement for microblogging, picture sharing, link sharing, etc.
Blogging is too narrow a market with little growth potential, and one that naturally concentrates contributions (and therefore rewards, under any rational scheme that rewards according to contribution) with a relatively small group of successful bloggers.
That is why there isn't much demand for SP right now. Introduce more visible growth potential and investors will be more interested.
It is almost as if someone who is a himself a blogger designed and built this system oblivious to the fact that most social media users and most people are not and do not want to be bloggers.
Constant tweaking of the rules, apart from its own harms, is a massive distraction from addressing the key critical issues that need to be addressed in order for this system to be viable at all. Without investors wanting to buy in, it isn't, and without much better visible growth potential investors will not want to buy in. Period.
A huge untapped potential still exists with blogging. For instance, zerohedge would be a huge score if they moved to steem. They could get paid for every post (probably $1000s), solve their troll problem, and create a permanent record of their work in case they were attacked. It seems like it would be an easy sell for a marketing department targeting these types of users. The devs should allocate some funds towards this.
But who ever heard of a @dantheman project that didn't involve constant tweaking of the rules?
I'm starting to think you're a sockpuppet of mine I'm posting with in my sleep.
I think trying to widen the appeal of the platform beyond blogging is indeed a great idea. This can attract new investors to join steemit and stabilize the steem price.
Secondly, lowering the interest on steem power should be done asap. People are powering down, simply because they earn more interest than they lose by powering down. The high growth in interest makes everyone want to power down.
This 2 measures combined together will already have a huge impact on the stability of the steem price. Many people will immediately stop powering down.
Maybe the powering down rate should be tied to inflation. 1% is fine when there is 90 percent inflation but when inflation is 230 percent power down is 3% per week.
Yes. That is a possibility. I just think that we need to get our act straight, and start following the white paper. In the white paper the system described seems sustainable.
Can you explain this in more detail? Why would reducing the benefits of holding Steem Power increase demand for Steem Power?
When reducing the earnings for powering up from 0.6% per day to 0.19% as stated in the white paper, people will have less incentive to power down. While today when powering down, the earnings of steem power is still greater than the conversion from steem power to steems. If your steem power is growing even when you power down, why would you power up?
Secondly when doing this the distribution, which is one of the goals, happens also much faster. It takes only 25 weeks to get rid of 25%. At the rate of today it would take much longer.
I agree that the "blogging only" aspect makes steemit unlike the social media it is trying to revolutionize and replace.
Most traditional social media users have a more "consumer" behaviour, rather than "producer" (content creation, i.e. blogging) behaviour; therefore hindering growth and widespread acceptance.
If it remains blogging only, as @bacchist warns we will end up with more spun content.
THIS is exactly what I am grappling with. I'm not a blogger, why am I here?
One word.
Commerce.
Leading by example would be a good start. At the time of writing this comment, both @ned and @dantheman accounts are powering down. This is pretty ironic actually.
One simple way to give incentive for people to power up is resetting the interest growth of the power up to just as described in the white paper. 0,19 Percent per day when powering up. And when powering down total steem power will be turned into steem in 104 weeks. At the moment no-one wants to power up, as the interest on steem power is higher than what they lose when powering down. Making them even earn more steems even when powering down.
Smooth made a good comment about attracting new investors by trying to make steemit into more than just "blogging". But as Dan described earlier you guys are probably working around the clock to do this.
Really Ned. Resetting the interest growth to what is described in the white paper seems to me the easiest way to quickly distribute steems and give the incentive for people to power up. For the rest, I feel the free market will solve the other issues by itself.
The pervasively negative price effects of the current power downs are, I believe, an effect of having too expensive financing early on.....ie giving away too much to cheaply to early participates/investors. There may not be much to do but ride it out and hope it does not cost the survival of the project.
Edit: maybe a reduction in the 300% inflation rate will help address the issue. Though I understand the initial high inflation rate has its benefits, Steemit may not be able to afford it due to the financing miscalculation stated above.
The only way to convince anyone to want to be a part of Steem is to make Steem's value proposition irresistible. There are many many ways of doing that. Here are a few examples of features that would make Steem a much more attractive platform:
#2 can be implemented easily on top of the existing post reward system, as explained in an earlier comment.
#3, #4 and #5 exist already in Bitshares. A merger should be considered (I am also a Bitshares holder and would be favorable to seeing a merger). If Bitshares community isn't interested by a merger, turning Bitshares into a Steem sidechain would do the trick and be mutually beneficial for both ecosystem. And if all efforts fail to negociate a deal with the Bitshares community, Steem should just move on and replicate what is good in Bitshares.
The above would help Steem to be considered as a serious crypto currency in the crypto space, and not just a flash in the pan. Since speculators are essentially coming from the crypto space, being considered a major crypto alongside Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum is key to attracting capital.
RE: crowdfunding
This is exactly how I've been using Steemit already. (You can read on my blog, if interested.) I think there is a lot of potential for this idea and donations don't even have to come out of someone's own pocket, so there's essentially no risk for those wanting to fund a campaign.
I really don't understand why this isn't happening more and why it's not being publicly marketed. (I've mentioned it to other powers on Steemit.) Crowdfunding here would eliminate nearly all of the problems with current crowdfunding platforms. If I had more technical knowledge and experience, I would develop this for Steemit myself. Is there anyone looking into this on the development side?
I don't think it's a good idea to copy features from BitShares.
And this is because .. ?
When I first joined and read the white paper, I hoped whales would be strategic enough to act as a collusive group and avoid dumping recklessly and crush the price of steem. Now I understand that the whales, as a class not necessarily as individuals, are incredibly short sighted, opportunistic, and all too willing to kill the golden goose. I can't see how catering to them to prevent them from dumping without regard for the consequences is good for the platform long term. That basically turns this into a hostage situation.
Some of us wouldn't mind buying more at cheaper prices.
"cheap" is a highly subjective term, particularly if the platform offers more value and long term potential.
What is good for the platform long term is to redistribute stake and be inclusive to new investors so it isn't so absurdly concentrated (with 1% owning 95%, and that is excluding the 'steemit' account). We'll have to agree to disagree on this.
I agree with you there, absolutely. I just think that there is a better way of going about it than dumping it indiscriminately.
Powering down and holding some STEEM without dumping it all is something that whales could be doing to redistribute stake while preserving the value of all stakes. I don't know what it would mean to be inclusive to new investors in an atmosphere of declining prices due to overselling.
But yeah, I agree with you in principle.
@smooth I think that's an oversimplification. Investors have to see that there is an upside and not only a downside. The price can't be low enough for an asset that will only decrease in value. The has been no history of a stable price since prior to July 4th. And there has been no history of prices increasing outside of a speculative bubble shortly after July 4th, and a bounce from Poloniex...
The platform will never attract a meaningful quantity of new investors by demonstrating that it is incapable of protecting the investments of existing investors.
Lower prices are much better for new investors. If I'm looking to invest 10000 USD I would prefer to receive a larger amount of stake for that investment than a smaller. I would also prefer more available upside relative to my fixed (10000 USD) downside. At the earlier 400 million USD market cap the upside was much more limited than it is now (though 100 million USD is still no bargain basement price). That naturally invites more demand from investors who don't want to buy in at an inflated valuation.
@bacchist
I agree with you there. The way to do that is to make the platform better and more appealing, not by propping it up so investors enter higher and get dumped on later.
I do not agree that a low price means that it can only decline, nor that at 100 million cap, it is anywhere near that. Plenty of assets decline to a value that is a more attractive entry point then gain more investor interest, particularly if the actual value delivered by the asset is increased.
@smooth
But the problem is that the pressure is continually downward due to the power-down timeline. Powering down is a two-year schedule. If the largest stakeholders are powering down and selling their stake and this can be expected to continue for at least two years - while they continue to sell more SP from internal accumulation - does this not become a problem with consistent, large downward pressures?
If whales are indeed redistributing their stake, I would expect to see them no longer accumulating through their curating habits and to see newer users buying the SP on the market. But I don't believe that has been happening, according to the figures that are presented every week. There is selling by whales, but there doesn't appear to be the off-setting investment back into the platform by non-whales. The buying of SP is much lower and whales continue to accumulate more through curating based on their large influence.
Am I missing something? Is there an aspect to this that is just lost on me? I don't see the redistribution of influence occurring because the Steem is being dumped in large amounts on the market and being bought by investors. I see some of it being redistributed internally from curating. The actual external investing is lacking. So, I don't know how dumping on the external markets actually redistributes. So far, the only effect that it has had is driving down prices.
@ats-david.
What you are missing is the increase in the money supply (aka dilution). As long as whales aren't buying back their own sales in a sham trade, it means new investors (or at least smaller investors) are accumulating it and the stake is being distributed. Curation rewards are only a tiny portion of the reward pool (currently well under 25%); it is mathematically impossible for curation rewards to offset dilution from content rewards PLUS selling. Not even close.
Currently there is an accumulation of liquid STEEM on exchanges being held either by speculators or perhaps by whales themselves, who are powering down but in fact not selling (we can't know for sure). That is unsustainable and before long that trend will stop. It is the natural evolution of a process where at one time there was 0% of the supply on exchanges (because there weren't any) and now there in approximately 2-3%.
I agree with @smooth here. I remember first finding out about bitcoin when it was around $30 and saw it shoot to $45 by the time I could get accounts set up to buy. I had strong FOMO. It was a bit disheartening to see the price eventually fall to $2, but I'm glad I still saw potential in it and had the opportunity to increase my stake at lower prices with a lot higher potential upside.
I've only recently found out about Steem and see its potential. I still think it has a lot of improvement before it gains traction and see the current phase as a reality check on the initial exuberance, just like the long fall of bitcoin to $2 before eventually gaining traction.
I think one who decided to leave won't do any good in terms of curation and @nextgencrypto probably is a good example of this.
You are ignorant and should ideally refrain from insulting one of your largest investors who also happens to be (and always has been) heavily involved in initiatives that support and promote Steem. Unlike you, I happen to be aware of his involvement with both sponsoring the Steemcleaners team and the Curie project (which is specifically curation, since you mentioned it). I don't know what else he might be doing. Your comment is entirely off base and inappropriate.
props for not flagging, although that might be considered slander...
@nextgencrypto is powering down for a long time, I don't see how he is investing in Steem. How come he became our largest investor? I can only see how he is monetizing on our work.
@ned and @dantheman are both powering down. Are they investing in Steam? Have they decided to leave?
I already explained some of the ways he has invested and is investing in Steem. I see him on steemit.chat every single day working with abuse and curation teams that he is both funding and working on directly. The list was not complete. Since you know none of this, you continue to speak out of ignorance, which helps no one, most notably, yourself.
Kindly refrain from inappropriately flagging my comments because they call you out on your ignorance.
I'm not following political debates closely but as far as I remember nextgen decided to leave back in June not agreeing with dev team on curation rewards, so he started powering down a long be before any other whales.
Anyway calling nexgen largest investor shows your ignorance and this is why I flagged your comment.
Please refrain from misquoting me
"one of your largest investors"
The intent is to reward uses as well as receive rewards for content. I don't see how losing stake weight by powering down helps at all. This means that everyone will either power down and say "forget it, I'm not going to participate anymore because I'm obligated to keep my STEEM POWER up in order to have an influence on voting" or fewer and fewer people will power down (which I don't see happening, as the intent of this is to earn money and still be able to cash out). Users shouldn't be punished for withdrawing their earnings. I think the 104 weeks alone for powering down is fine.
Big whales from dev teams need to stop powering down and selling, that's the only way that gather the confidence of people again. Otherwise, more and more people will leave.
I think both ideas are great, please implement both of them. The loss of voting power for powering down is amazing, and the voting pool is needed very badly to increase interest from new users, and users who have a good reputation but no voting power.
Wait a minute... are more than 80% of big SP holders powering down?
Stop the madness... is this why the price is going down? Noooo, it couldn't be...
Wait.... could we make powering down at this stage less attractive and force those powering down to distribute significantly more to others?
No, no... it sounds too good to be true...
Wait that's exactly what this proposal will solve. Why should people powering down receive the same benefits as those not? If you power down you're out, why should you have any influence on Steemit?
Why would an investor get involved when the amount of liquid Steem released is being increased at a compounded rate per week? If you want out now, go for it, just know that you'll be penalised for it and SP holders will be rewarded.
Tragedy of the commons.
If you power down you are NOT OUT! Not by a 2 year long shot! That's the major and critical difference between steem and the rest of the crypto world! You cannot just pump and dump steem! If you buy it, you are invested in the future for steemit.
The whales are not selling out by powering down! They're getting paid for investing! Why would anybody invest in anything if not to get paid?!
I hope I never have enough money to invest in an initiative that helps people with less money than me because witnessing this entitlement and lack of gratitude is too disheartening. No wonder the wealthiest people in the world only look out for themselves.
Entitlement and lack of gratitude? I don't think so....
That wasn't my intention I was merely stating a few fundamentals given the context of a market and new investors wanting to get in. It's a very risky investment when you know that the amount of liquid stock is increasing at a compounded rate.
When we're looking at what was a 3-400 million dollar market cap the investors will need to have institutional size.
They'll look at the structure and immediately flag it in their heads as not having 'liquidity' and question why all the large holders are exiting. It's just common sense.
I may have been a bit theatrical to make a point. However the game theory of the proposals makes a lot of sense in the long run.
It's really shocking to me that nobody here seems to understand this or wants to actually acknowledge it. Nobody is going to invest if the initial investors are dumping Steem before the platform is even out of beta testing and is sustainable. Maybe it isn't common sense?
I apologise @wingz that comment wasn't really directed at you but at everybody on this thread arguing that whales should not be powering down.
If whales are to be "locked in" by any means more than the 2 years they already are, would discourage anybody else who might otherwise wish to participate.
Somebody else here said it already but if the system can't hold itself while whales power down then the system doesn't work.
If you find that you are in danger of having too much money send it to me.
Lol, no problem I'll send you $100 to write something for me and then you can act ungrateful and entitled by trying to lock me into a contract that forces me to pay you $100 every week to participate in a game of I give you money for content.
That makes having money a very attractive idea. I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.
Is your thinking that given the choice of powering down and voting, the whales would choose to power down instead of vote, and hence whale voting would be eliminated entirely from the eco-system?
Do whales actually make a lot of money from curation? If they don't (and I think the rewards have dropped from the early days), then they'll simply continue to power down, so the selling pressure on steem will remain.
Depends how they vote right. Smooth made 3000 sp last week, dantheman made 700 and donkeypong made 100 (all estimates). Just some random whales I chose but just check their curation rewards if you're curious.
If you are asking a whale to choose between powering down for $20,000 a week, and staying powered up to earn $3000 a week, they'll choose the former.
So there won't be a let up on the selling pressure on steem (and the whole idea behind the proposal was that it would stop them selling - but it won't).
Some are voting to make money while others are not. If you have a lot of SP, then you make money voting anyway. But much of my voting has been upclicking Project Curie's chosen posts and following AFTER whale votes to add a few more dollars for those deserving posters. One can use votes to make money or to help allocate it to others.
Damn man.... you hit it right on the head, @craig-grant I do agree with you fine sir! do it @ned before the weekend, you know its a solid move.
That is his flow..... :)
yes, this is my flow, honesty and transparency is true freedom
First of all, I want to thank Ned for putting these ideas out for community feedback. One of the reasons I disagreed so strongly with the 5 vote idea (in another recent proposal) was that it was being included already in a pending release. Making us an offer we can't refuse is a shitty way to run a community; asking for community feedback is much better. Kudos to you for that.
However, I find it rather disingenuous for you to mega-upvote the first comment that fully agrees with your ideas in this post, since they are meant to provoke an open discussion. (EDIT: You downsized it, which I think is appropriate.)
I think your first idea may have some merit; I need to learn about it more. Curation seems to be working well, from what I can see. Project Curie is discovering and rescuing many worthy authors from total obscurity. I think the site is trending in the right direction with more intensive efforts to find and reward undiscovered and deserving posters.
Maybe the curation pool you describe would help. If so, I would like to learn more.
I do not like the power down penalty, mostly for the reasons that @smooth has discussed in his responses. Not only would it hurt large accounts' ability to curate, but it also would freeze Steemit's redistribution. As @smooth has described, allowing big whale accounts to sell their Steem is really the most efficient means of redistributing Steem to new holders. I might be OK with some movement in the direction of perhaps some "fee" for Powering Down often (if this was needed to address some problem), but I think that penalizing Powering Down in any severe way will hurt Steemit by making redistribution and curation nearly impossible.
Can't we work on developing these other pillars of the ecosystem to help create more demand for Steem, rather than trying to control its use?
I think loss of voting influence for powering down is fair!
I'm pretty new so I'm not sure I understand the voting pool idea. Would I transfer SD to @steemit for example and then my would get a boost in voting power? Or how would it work?
I fail to see how this will increase demand for steem... It seems more like it would discourage new users from signing up. SP is already locked for 2 years, which is probably the biggest reason people don't want to be locked in as there is no guarantee steemit will even be around 2 years from now... and now adding more of a drag when you take away curation rewards... makes it likely the move will do the opposite of what it is intended to do
I agree there should be a cost to powering down a stake. During the distribution phase I can see why many people are powering down. There should be disincentives to this.
Maybe even a reduction in the % of Vests that accrue SP?
a troll got to you, upvoted.
If you value the observations of an outsider...
or and are curious what someone with new eyes sees coming in here...
Ive been watching and learning for about a week. I love what is going on here. And its not just because of the potential to make bits of $ here and there. In all honesty the $ is secondary. At least for me. This place is pure. And raw. Its different, and moving in the opposite direction from the increasingly corporate internet.
But is it possible that what you need most right now to raise value and incentive is not found on the block chain, but in the human element? A healthy, vibrant community cant be built by game theory and incentives alone. That takes people who focus on that aspect intentionally. Not block chain developers, social developers.
sounds like good idea , but i will be left out coz of my reputation score . please note that i have no posts or comments been voted down , used to be (5) before the reputation feature update. something wrong with my account it might be a bug !!! i dont kno.
Why no mention about diversifying steem power contract term?
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/330
Ppl don't buy steem power because of 104 weeks term.
Pretty good ideas.
I curate content by going through the "new" section, each day. If I had more SP this would help get people more payouts. But I don't just upvote anything... hehe...
The Power Down is interesting. I Power Down and then Power Up with the STEEM I get. I read a post a week or two ago saying this increases the SP I get... So I do it. I don't cash out with the Steem.
I support the changes either way. It seems like a good way to incentivise people to certain behavior.
Take care. Peace.
Great idea.
With this more peaple would be able to get knownd.
And the Power down idea is also a great idea, so peaple would hold steem and not power down.
upvoted because you got flagged by a troll
Tanks. Why did this guy downvote this?
Very pleased that the system develops. I express my deep gratitude to people like you!!!
Agree ! Powering down will effect the voting power , this the most brilliant idea so far from you @ned .
I completely agree with you ned. But it's not as easy as it seems. It may conflict with other people.
Hopefully we hear from them if it does.
look at the interest of the people opposing imho. if you listen to the community, the right answer is right there. you have the hivemind of a ton of GREAT PEOPLE here. It would be a pity to not use it...
I think we should create a Poll to get a quantitative response from the community.
upvoted because you got flagged by a troll
Upvoted in recognition of anti-troll patrol
Thanks, I got scared for a minute :)
How would you find curators and guarantee they wouldn't be trolls?
upvotes becuase you got flagged by a troll
The pool can be organized having the follow list as a median....
I think the voting pool idea makes a lot of sense and seems like a better approach than the current system.
upvoted because you got flagged by a troll
Some Good Ideas Here
Keep On Steeming
I Am Still A little New
Learning The ropes
Meeting Nice People Here
Will Stay Tuned
upvoted because you got flagged by a troll
hay @ned... It is a good idea!! :)
upvoted because you got flagged by a troll
Hi Ned I think allowing steem holders to delegate their steem power is a great idea, what would you think about minimizing the number of votes individuals can make so the worth increases ?
edit another thought was to include a star rating system so that users can rate the post quality instead of upvoting then upvotes can be used for really good stuff
My understanding is the upcoming voting power change has this effect. You will now have the option to make your vote worth 8x as much.
If you can currently place 40 votes worth $0.10 each, with this hardfork, each day you'll be able to place:
absolutely false.
That's not an argument. Care to elaborate?
https://steemit.com/steem/@sigmajin/what-every-user-should-know-about-the-upcoming-change-in-voting
And i think somone have to look of the not show coments and finaly make something about ................. spam flags ???
I fully agree with the powering down losing voting influence. That would prevent people who're just here trying to cash out from being able to affect the platform very much if they want their money. If they want to have more influence, they'll have to keep their money invested! :)
As far as the voting pools go, I think it's a great idea too, but you hit the nail on the head. It could be used negatively and people could sell positions or influence.
To be honest though, anything you do to alter the platform will be seen as a double-edged blade by the community, as there will always be some who dislike it altogether as well as the people who love it.
Keep up the great work regardless, it's honestly just nice to see your involvement in things and that you're dedicated to making positive changes or listening to the community!
Similar to a voting pool (but a little different) you could allow users to delegate percentages of their voting power to individual users and split the curation rewards with them.
It would allow users with a lot of SP who may not have the time or ability to curate well to have a good curator do the work for them, and it would allow good curators who may not have a lot of SP to get better rewards for good curation work.
You're right, but lets reward for stake independent of powering down.
I don't see how further limiting authors access to the money they've earned will help incentivize the platform. I'm not as smart as Ned though...
That's exactly what I wrote just a few hours ago
I think the idea of Powered Down accounts losing their voting power is a good one. This would have an impact of slowing down distribution, however it would support the price of Steem which would result in many users feeling far more positive about Steemit in the short to medium term...
Commitment should be rewarded.
Another option to reward commitment would be to give bonus voting power to those not powering down.
I think this option would do much more to encourage power-ups. Thought I'd throw it out there, it's something to consider.
I saw it after I posted a similar answer.Of course I like it!
This already exists. The longer you participate in a meaningful way, the more SP you earn in the form of rewards and the higher your influence becomes. Rewarding people for time alone effectively penalizes active involvement.
That's true, but is rewarding meaningful participation enough of an incentive? I don't know.
Also, in this scenario, you wouldn't be effectively penalized for active involvement if you are also holding SP long-term.
I like this.
this should be higher!
I agree with this statement but right now we are discussing how to penalize no-commitment!
So maybe it would be better to make a proposal that rewards the accounts that don't power-down
What if the steemit account votes equally for ALL NOT POWERED DOWN witnesses ;)
for the same reason...
"if NOT powering down stake GAIN more voting influence!"
That's a much better way of putting it. Kudos @liodani
commitment should be rewarded: bingo.
one way to notice is that is in number of "comments" and total posts. When i see someone with thousands in each post but like 200 post total[ that includes comments ] that's not commitment, that's someone with the hand DEEP into the honey pot.
It is real nice when both dan and ned down vote each others stupid ideas.
I really think that!!! The ideas of ned presented here, in the form presented are crazy as hell! So they deserve dan's down vote.
So was dan's idea of changes to the S(B)D ... which ned down voted!
Nice to read that improvements on the way or at least discussed because the voting system as it is frustrates me. I am collecting my few steem$$ every day and power up and up cent by cent because I believe in this platform on a long term. I also spend it back into steemit (radiosteem, rewards , promotion etc ...) and don't cash out a dime. I collected 420 so far. Never saw a whale, maybe a couple of times. I suggest to spread all your "power" with more fairness . Power down might be a good solution but not sure if you don't want to upset the investors. I like your first proposal. Whatever it is, find something because your loyal believers and members with good reputation but no SP will let you down otherwise very soon, thinking steemit is a scam. You should find ways that more people sign up and happy to stay.
Hi @ned, here's a simple idea to boost the value of Steem Power for smaller stakeholders: website perks such as avatars.
https://steemit.com/steem-ideas/@demotruk/website-perks-for-steem-power
That's precisely what I proposed to you 5 months ago, and that you didn't bother reading / reverting about, like the other half a dozen structured proposal I made to avoid name squatting, account farming, spamming, plagiarism etc. You are going to say I should stop acting like I knew everything and pulling the occasional "I told you so" stunt over and over again.
But goddammit @ned, yet again you are coming up with a "new" idea that you could have implemented months ago had you paid more attention to what the early community was warning you about.
Anyway, I'm just jaded I guess. Patiently waiting for you to have "new ideas" about everything else I and other early Steemers told you already including name squatting, account farming (that's still ongoing) and the fact only invite-based referral should be subsidized etc. At least I'm glad you have these great flash of insight eventually, even if somewhat of a deja-vu for everyone else who has been paying attention.
I can relate with this... I posted about the voting pools as guilds three weeks ago; no disincentives for powering down four weeks ago; and a variable power up/down function four weeks ago as well.
Am I ahead of the curve or just irrelevant ? :)
I think Dan & Ned are inculcated a lot and are too busy to realize the ideas they express may not entirely be their own. ;)
I think it will always be like a typical freemium game. Most users (95%) never monetize, and have lower engagement on average. What gives them power and distributes it away from those with great engagement/power/monetization is the collective power of the minnows.
A strong focus on enabling a larger user base I think should be a primary goal, and by enabling I mean:
With a user base an order of magnitude larger I think the sum of a ton of minnow votes will collectively provide the incentive it should and the wealth distribution be less of a factor.
Anyway, just spitballing ideas.
"Careful awareness and management of user expectations and incentives to keep in line with game theory & psychology."
Exactly...the system is good...there is a PR problem in the Expectations Department
The only account that can effectively power down to sell steem and not be penalized would be @steemit. What if I wanted to power down to continuously buy SBD but am not leaving the eco-system? I'm not saying that the idea isn't without merit, but I would rather see more incentive to POWER UP as opposed to disincentives for POWERING DOWN.
For instance, one could have discounts on promoted content if paid for in STEEM POWER.
A market for Steem tokens that become locked like with the @null account sounds like a solid idea to me.
Besides this idea for curation pools, have you considered allowing for author groups or guilds?
The guild would be there to allow for proofreading and research from separate parties that would all get a slice of the authors tip reward. This would definitely encourage high quality content.
Guilds! huzzah! https://steemit.com/steemit/@blakemiles84/the-steemit-guild-system
I love this post. I think it is a great idea. There has to be a way to hack it until it is built into the steem platform.
This is my first day here on Steemit. I've watched steemit in the last 3 weeks. I see one great debate here and I'm trying to undestand how much I can...Please don't tell me that Steemit is about to collapse exactly when I've decided to try it!
Not collapsing my friend :) Steemit is only a few months old, it is still a baby learning to walk, it will fall sometimes but it will learn and grow big one day, beyond everyone's expectations.
Growing pains.
But don't be fooled. Existential threats to long term success are always dancing around. Plenty of people would love to see Steem spontaneously combust into a ball of fire, if for no other reason than to gloat over the corpse.
Bitcoin Maximalists like Tone Vays for example.
@ned glad you're thinking about these things, though I generally agree with @smooth (1 could be interesting, 2 is a bad idea).
The big thing that Synereo and others are thinking about to disrupt Steem is more "fairly" distributing rewards to good content creators. If they do this, then they've got a shot. If Steem continually improves at this to the point where the majority of good content creators feel they're adequately rewarded, I don't think Synereo has a shot.
I like that this is all being thought about. My favorite part is where it would be clear that when you power down, that SP loses its voting power. I also like that you would be able to designate a certain percentage of SP to power down. Right now I think it's an all or nothing deal. When powering down becomes relevant to me, I would like to be able to only power down some of my SP.
I know this might sound simplistic, but I think if you focus on the ingredients of happiness, you will find your answer. Making steemit a place that people don't want to leave is the key. I have some ideas that I'm working on.....
...but not disincentivised to leave.
How about "incentivized to stay" instead ?
Shouldn't be any need as long as it takes 2 years to get out. How about improve the platform?
Agree. I look forward to what you will share. I also made a proposal to make steem better. Can you please take a look at it. It has a summary so you can make up your mind quickly if you want to read all of it.
I don't think these proposal touch the core of the issue.
The issue right now is that curating what people like goes against what is profitable. I think we tried to create curation mechanism that attracts good content. However when I curate I am driving by when I vote for something and also how popular that person is. I.e. i will always vote for your content just because you are popular and it is profitable.
People never should vote for me, because I am not. Even if I create great content voting for me is very very risky and it is much smarter to just wait for someone with a good history and vote his next article exactly 30 minutes after he/she publishes it.
Curating is much more a self-fulfilling prophecy than selecting quality right now.
What you propose above does not deal with that.
I think we need to look again at what can we do to attract great content and reward it. And we also need to make sure that new users do not get pushed away.
I have brought several people to this platform that have written what I think is pretty decent content and have not received any votes, we need to figure out how to give them a little recognition. Otherwise they all go back to Facebook.
I have written about your bounty system and given a way to improve: https://steemit.com/steemit/@knircky/the-potential-of-bounties-an-improvement-proposal-for-steem-to-double-its-value
@Ned Please read and give feedback. I also have some ideas about how to improve retention. Let me know if any of my input is useful and I will keep contributing.
This post should have more upvotes.
Just recently there was a post from @gavvet that received 250 votes in less than an hour with 0 comment, this is completely messed up. How is it that 250 people upvoted him and not one person commented? You guessed it, because not one person actually read his post, they just checked author username to see if they would get a good curation reward and blindly upvoted it. Good content gets a lot of interest ( comment ) I think they should only give curation reward to the first 20 people who upvote or something but they really need to do something about this.
Popularity is not that same as "quality". A voting system will always measure popularity (which is something that aggregates across voters) and not quality (which is something people will rarely entirely agree about).
If you want to reward quality the only way to do that is with non-aggregated rewards, meaning you decide what you think is quality and you reward it by tipping with your own money. You are perfectly able to do that now. Do more of it and you will attract more of the quality you seek.
that would actually be a cool idea to have your own tipping "unit", whatever amount that is for you personally, and then simply transfer it to the writer directly. Particularly once you had enough accumulated that each unit was relatively...insignificant (not the right word but you know what I mean). Might look to experiment and maybe write a piece about it. Thanks for the (now obvious) idea @smooth!
Agree with your points. Quality is impossible to define.
You say vote for what I think good quality is. The issue is the curation does not work that way. I get rewarded if I vote the way everyone else is voting. SO instead of voting for what I like, I should vote for what I think is popular.
I think this is not optimal and should be looked at. If I could actually vote for what I like and everyone else too, then I think the platform wold be much better.
@smooth can you please give me some feedback on the proposal I wrote and referenced above. It has a short summary that should allow you to make a judgment quickly. If you dislike it please let me know what? I am certain it is not a waste of your time.
One thing I've thought about is giving certain privileges to different levels of steem power. On Tinder there is a feature where you can essentially mega upvote a user you like.
Maybe for every x amount of steempower you hold you could receive some sort of special vote you could use that doubles the upvote you normally have. Encouraging people to reach certain levels of steem power.
Also maybe you could receive a one time award for every x amount of steem you power up. (Others could suggest what this may be). Maybe a page similar to promoted feed that will bump users who power up into a higher "trending" spot on that feed.
I think the first idea is great in its intent, but it has the same problem all the curation schemes have. Its nothing more than a way to manage the real problem. In a way, its not different than whats already going on with gavvet/DS109/etc. WHat you get from it is a kenesyian beauty contest, where the conent that gets upvoted is far removed from what most people want to see.
So on one hand you have what the people really want. 1 step further from that, is what ned, dan, bernie, smooth and the whales think the people want. 1 step further from that is what l2 curators (like the person your giving steem power to in your voting pool) think ned/dan/bernie/smooth think the people want.
The reason steem power is devalued is because buyers are priced out of the market. No one wants to pay ten grand to have a vote worth a 5 cents. The best solution to this is to make investment more attractive by basing it on some non linear system.
I get that there can't be hundreds of neds and bernies. But people making real significant investments have to be rewarded with real, significant influence. If not, what incentive do they have to invest?
Personally, I don't like the second idea. Like i tell all the people who complain about whales dumping, Steem's price problem is on the demand side, not the supply side.
You shouldn't peanlize people for powering down beyond the obvious penalty of losing the voting influence they get cash for. All you accomplish by stripping powering down vests of their voting influence is spreading out the benefit of powering down (the cash) but requiring payment upfront. Especially with the price in a month long slide, this is going to make people not want to power up.
What you are actually calling for here are lower market prices. You can't expect to buy in for 10 grand to a system with a 100 million USD market cap and have a lot of influence. Mathematically that just doesn't work. Buy in for a million and you can have a 1% stake, which is a significant, though not huge, influence. Expecting a 0.01% stake to have a significant influence is pretty unrealistic.
The main driver for people wanting to buy in has to be expectation of gains. That's even stated in the white paper (speculative demand). The rewards, influence, etc., that's all icing on the cake. We need to bake the cake first.
A lower market price is certainly one way to solve the problem. And, unfortunately, its the default way, because if nothing changes to increase demand, the market will step in and create a price that reflects what people are willing to pay.
Value comes from utility. Real utility. People who think that something like bitcoin has the marketcap it has today because of speculation don't understand the economics of bitcoin, or where its value really comes from.
If steem had a chance to pick up a significant amount of value from speculation, it was gone weeks ago. Its been sliding too far for too long.
But even if it had picked up more than it did (and i think it could have with just a little luck), the greater fool game has to end at some point. At some point, you simply run out of fools. Especially with a currency that has such a high rate of creation.
This is correct. The problem is that the marketcap is artificially high due to ninja coins. I get that this isnt something people want to discuss, but thats the state of the union. Too few people own too high a percentage of the voting market share that they never had to go into their pocket and buy.
Take all the SP produced in the ninja mine. Now figure out how much its really worth in sweat equity. The matket, sooner or later, will take the price down to a level where its really worth that.
I'd argue that it did, and it still has a lot of that value. It traded for months at a fraction of the current price, with not really much less utility (if any).
Sliding for a long time (and it hasn't even been that long) is largely irrelevant. Many coins slide for months or years only to gain in speculative value later, including Bitcoin.
I'm still not sure what you think you are going to buy in terms of influence for 10 grand. That just doesn't make you a big shot anywhere. At 1 million market cap that gives you 1%. 1 million market cap is unrealistically low by a pretty wide margin relative to a peer group. I think you're off base here.
I don't think it ought to make you a big shot. There's a whole bunch of real estate between five cents and a big shot. I don't know exactly where on that rather large tract I think it ought to be, but somewhere. The reason i use 10 grand as an example its that its typically as high as many people will go on a brand new investment. Off hand, i would guess a fair valuation would be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 10-20 million marketcap.
Bitcoin's gains in value are not speculative, they're based on utility. Specifically, they have been based on the DNM economy (early on) then investments from people in places like china, where money in a bank account isn't really safe (check abits most recent witness report for how we're doing with the Chinese).
There is really not a good example of a crypto (at least not that I know of) that has achieved long-term market cap growth just on the basis of price speculation (of course, there aren't many cryptos that have a long term history to look at).
I don't know... the 1000% price increase in early July, I'm sure some of it was pure price speculation. But to my way of thinking, a lot of that was about utility, or at least the perception of future utility. Making first real payout (which was the July 4th I guess) was a really really big deal in terms of the perception of the utility (or future utility) of the coin. I realize that's a sort of speculation, but its not pure price speculation. If speculation about future utility is what fuels an increase in market value, then there has to be a delivery on that promised utility at some point in the future, or the gains will be lost.
incidentally, on some level i think we agree. the following quote from your comment above is 100% on point:
Also, i think the new initiatives in the release candidate (besides the 5 vote thing, which is awful) like escrow and multisig are helpful with regard to utility. How helpful will depend largely on how easy they are to use.
@sigmajin I have to disagree with you that there is anything wrong with 5 cents. The whole idea of a system like this is to aggregate the votes from many people. If enough contribute their 5 cent vote, then rewards become very significant (especially after applying any kind of consensus bonus, even if not the current one). If it is just you voting and no one else, I'm not really sure how much that should be worth. $1? At that point after you have used 10000 votes (say 100 votes per day for 100 days) in a linear-weighted system, your entire investment would be consumed by rewards/dilution. This makes no sense.
Agree with you that escrows, etc. are adding potential value. If investors see that translated into actual (even anticipated) use, then it will be rewarded. That is the right direction to go here.
POWERING DOWN = LOSING STAKE! WHY NOT ALREADY?!
Forgive my yelling, but that's mandatory, @ned! The message should be clear, you are in IT or you're not. No more double dipping and abuse. Also, if you powerdown you don't receive "interest".
But would you do that? You're one who powered down too, would you sacrifice your influence for money? Or money for influence?
This should happen fast though..the time is running out.
Make it happen, steemit hq! We're counting you!
Consider the case of an author who has been a successful part of this platform for a year or more. All that time accumulating SP. Do you think it is unreasonable at some point for such an author to say "I have enough of a concentrated investment in this system by now, I do not need more" and start powering down? That does NOT mean being "out". Should such an author (who is not only be a major participant and contributor of "work" but also a major investor) be stripped of influence and told that their input is not wanted simply because they don't want their stake to grow forever? I don't think so.
this. At the end of the day, if the system cannot endure a reasonable level of powerdown without the price tanking, then it simply doesn't work.
I think it is balanced when they have the option to power down a % of stake as was also suggested.
Perhaps a good compromise to this is the interest SP generates?
When whales are powering down, which I do understand is necessary, they have their voting rights, but the 90% of newly mined SP is distributed amongst those who are not. Would give increased rate of SP gain to those who are not powering down and present a solution as a result
Powering down a percentage of stake does not mathematically change the cost of the exit fee. This is an illusion. Whether you power down 100% of your stake for a month or 10% of your stake for 10 months, it works out exactly the same. A penalty equivalent to one year of influence and rewards is charged for any stake that is powered down under this proposal.
I'm not saying strip of ALL influence, but a higher percentage and no "interest" beyond curation/authorship could be a middle ground.
That being said, the solution is not targeting these type of low impact players...
I think it's a good idea to recognize that the longer a person powers down, the less of a stake they would have unless they are active on the site. And if you're active enough on the site to counter the loss of stake every week from the power down, you are "in it." But people have real world financial needs as well, and we can't all be guaranteed consistently high SBD rewards... some can, it seems... but that's another conversation :D
i see that's a convo no one is ready to have yet...
This is the most important point i wrote about it few days ago.
https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/there-is-a-big-flaw-in-steemit
Obviously the whales are not gonna like it but it is necessary to prevent the value going to nothing. As a whale said above they have no incentive to not power down, so Ned give it to them!
Seconded! First thing I noticed after joining, that for the system to work, the power needs to be spread between the users, which is currently not the case. Any model that does that is generally a good thing.
I'm not for "giving" everyoe who has a lot of SP worked for it one way or another. I know I did.
I don't want to be given anything, i just want a system that encourages my work and rewards my commitment while not throwing in my face how others do much better with less everything. That's what discourages a lot of new users, a concentrated number of users getting most HUGE votes.
A decentralization of those votes will bring a wave of hope, encouragement and change.
And for that, I am ALL IN.
I am not for "giving" either, and all SP that I have I earned (some of it "given" for services rendered), it is the spread lf the culture of "giving" as SP for whatever reason, in at least part of the payment should be encouraged. I mean you already receive the post reward partially that way. Sometimes SBD are better, but at others SP is.
I actually think that powering down loses the ability to earn curation rewards would be an interesting thing to try. It would be good that those users could still vote and reward others, they would just get no returns unless they stop the power down. Your curation rewards are the result of you being vested in the future of the site. I like how much time, effort and thought you all put into trying to make this the most effective site it can be!
I also think the voting pool idea is interesting, but it could also lead to "whale" voting pools which might further reduce the number of people being voted up. Anything that could encourage only a select few to be rewarded should be implemented with caution. IMO at this stage in steemit's development rewarding the widest variety of contributors as possible (assuming they create good content) will be the best path forward.
But then why would they vote? The largest investors are the most important here and we're all talking like we can change the rules after they put their money in.
Why is everybody acting like a whale shouldn't get paid for their investment?
Imagine being invited to invest in something which you could only take out gradually over the course of 2 years only to find out that if you want to take your money out you won't gain anything for the investment. What was the point? And we'll never get more investors that way.
Jesus we're not just entitled but ungrateful too.
In reading smooth's take on the situation (plus many others have made well reasoned statements as well), I agree with him. I have changedg mind on the powering down portion of the proposal. Since I don't care for the voting pool idea I guess I don't like any of it then.
That said is the only incentive to vote curation rewards?
That's the entire purpose of curation rewards - to create the incentive.
I really love that you are posting to the Steemit Community to get a discussion started!
To me this is very honorable and valuable. There are so many highly intelligent people in this community and a LOT of really good ideas.
I am here because this platform is already awesome with the potential to be revolutionary! Yet it could get WAY better and this is one of the keys to that. Someone such as your self reaching out to the community to actually discuss ideas/solutions for an IMPROVED platform!
Just that in it self gives me great hope for the future of Steemit. If the founders and developers are willing to have honest dialogue and actually truly consider ideas of the community then improve it WILL!
I would offer up that to me the biggest problem with quality content not getting seen and good authors not getting fairly compensated is the curation system.
I see EVERY day posts that get UPvoted before they even get read. I have talked to MANY people who say they UPvote posts JUST to get the curation rewards and I have even see people COMMENT on posts saying "I didn't like this article but I UPvoted anyways because I wanted the curation reward" This is a MAJOR problem. People who are already "rich" are just going to get richer and the vast majority of people are going to use their LIMITED UPvotes to vote for proven money makers and the people at the bottom even if their articles are good won't get UPvotes because no one can make money on voting their post up....
So I am not going to say what SHOULD be done just simply that this is happening and it is NOT good for encouraging quality content from newbies.
Thank you for starting this dialogue and I hope practical and beneficial solutions present them self!
I Love STEEMIT!
Best Regards~
Steem ON~*~
These are all great ideas imo:
This would be amazing, I would love to see the power of the @steemit account being spread out among lots of undervalued posts and individuals. As it stands a vote from this account is worth $3814 !
As amazing as that would be all in 1 vote, splitting this power up and using it to boost dozens or hundreds a people a day would be a gamechanger.
Another gamechanger, I would love to see this implemented particularly the ability to power down a % of your stake .
The combined effect of those is probably too hard to predict, but I'm excited to see what happens if these ideas become reality.
This the right shit right here!
Maybe it should auto vote the first post of every user. A first post of he day bonus. It doesn't have to be 100% vote. This might lift activity rate if you felt like you should post once a day to get the steemit vote.
That would be too easy to abuse imo , voting should be reserved for human curated quality posts preferably going to "known/verified" but previously unrewarded users. Bringing up the little guys and evening the playing field for everyone is what will help steem succeed in the long run, along with smart incentives/disincentives for curation/abuse .
Comment deleted because it mentioned a competitor's philosophy on rewards and was deemed shilling.
Flagged for irrelevant shilling of a competitor. Whatever point you have to make can be made without dropping in the name as an unnecessary advertisement.
EDIT: I removed flag after unnecessary shilling was removed.
This is something the whales would do if they were smart about their investment..