This is a pretty bold idea of sorts and isn't mine however, I am going to present it without names at this point. If they choose to chime in under the post and join the discussion, that would be fantastic. I spoke to several people at Steemfest about this and there are many facets and possibilities it could bring.
For a little background, ~30% of the stake is delegated to bidbots and used as a passive investment mechanism. This stake isn't passive, it is voting and it effects the organic nature of content. The delegators are free to do what they choose with their stake as we are all aware and maximization is definitely common. Let them maximize 100% guaranteed.
Let stake be 'locked' up via a switch so that it cannot vote but automatically takes 10x 100% vote values from the pool each day at the 2.4 hr maximum rate. What this means is that those who choose to invest passively are silent investors with the percentage of the stake they lock away. They can unlock and use it as stake if they choose under normal rules but while locked, it has zero mobility.
In a scenario only using bidbot percentage. Around 30% of the entire pool is distributed to bidbots each day and they are voting on 0.5% of posts. They vote at a percentage so that the vote will offer some profit for the bidder, and returns somewhere between 80 and 90% to the delegators and owners. For the most part it is not sensitive to the content it votes on at all but it affects things like Trending. This leaves 70% of the stake to be used by all other users.
Instead of this, if the same delegators locked their stake and took max rewards, that same 30% would come out of the pool and into their accounts (50/50 if they choose I guess) but cannot be used to affect any post payout at all. This means that there would be zero 1500 dollar posts in Trending unless organically voted. This means that for the most part, Trending will be completely organic. Even the circlejerkers are likely to lock in large percentages of their stakes.
What this means is that a new user can come into Trending and rather than see 1000 dollar posts, will see 20 dollar posts and those posts will much more likely be better quality or Dapps. This sets expectations of both quality and monetary return and should help with retention. The curation initiatives with minimal delegations will be able to affect Trending also. The ability for a community to downvote rubbish is possible because it is at a much lower range too.
Remember, the switch can be turned off and the stake used (under certain conditions) and considering they are maximizing at 80-90% now, essentially it would be the same as getting 1-2 free flags if they choose. They could also keep some stake free to support authors or projects they want to keep supporting a little.
It is no secret I think that we are moving toward a position where the Steem pool will no longer be distributed to post payouts as SMTs will be distributed instead. This means there will be a true investor layer to Steem. This incentivizes passive and silent investment into Steem as other than holding powered up Steem, they will still have access to the critical factor for the future, Resource Credits. They will be able to own their stake, take from the pool and provide RCs to the applications for bandwidth as well as onboarding activities.
The only risk is that everyone with any stake powers up but that is very unlikely. Most will leave some stake free because they want to have some influence over the content, they wan to be able to reward their audience and the ones they read and of course, many will not earn much locking their minimal stake up. Large stake however could easily lock the majority of their stake and still operate.
This means that the gap between large and small closes massively and the small stake that previously had little say in the order of things, have a great deal more in their ability to affect content. For example, a whale with 500k SP could lock 90% of it and they and I will be voting on the platform with the same stake of ~50k SP. A minnow or group of minnows with a 1000 SP are able to have significant say on the order of content and draw on the remaining pool.
The remaining pool is important here, as whatever is left can only be drawn upon by active stake. Rather that 30% going to 0.5% of posts with the 70 spread to the rest, the (in this scenario) 70% gets spread to the rest but it will be that 70% that is seen in trending. Unless a post has real support, it is unlikely to get pushed into the Trending pages.
This gives more opportunity to real users and real reason to be a quality, compelling and engaging author as once again (or perhaps for the first time) the real network one has developed takes precedence and holds value.
Now, apps might want to still buy position and for the most part this will be relatively easy as most app developers work closely with staked users which means, they just have to say when they are going to post and the whale can flick their switch out of hibernation and use it to bump posts they choose. It won't require a $600 dollar cost to be seen in Trending since the values needed are more in the 30 range most likely.
This seems like a lot of crazy but there are a great many benefits to having actual passive investors that do not affect content organization. It empowers real users, it gives a healthier view, it is more organic, it offers investment potential, locks up more Steem, provides a stable base for RCs, gives small users more say, increases options, decreases voting stake disparity, increases incentives to flag, takes away the need to self vote comments or shitposts 10x a day, reduces circlejerks, adds game into the platform. Does ranchorelaxo stop voting haejin and lock stack for full return instead? Does Parys ever get seen in Trending again? Does Freedom stop delegating and flick the switch instead?
While the interfaces will try to hide Trending and bidbots (I am not a fan of sweeping under the rug), what this does is stop those same buyers from getting votes unless organic. It means that whatever is left in the pool to be distributed will be distributed much wider and more likely to people who create good and care about content and community. They are also the ones more likely to power up as it will take less stake to have an impact on the content they enjoy.
Communities will have more say, the applications with delegations will get more visibility and it will drive users to find places to earn, rather than rely on paid votes. If Steemit Inc made this possible and then delegated stake to distributor apps and curation initiatives, it will completely change the view and health of the platform almost overnight and empower the apps to build strong communities that will be ready for SMTs, and give the RC pools the resources needed via the investor class.
Not only would new users have a healthier view and expectations, they will have bandwidth available to interact for free and land in communities that can help them not only feel at home but also earn their own stake. Rather than the constant struggle, good actors and performers will find themselves among the highest earners on the platform through real visibility and less grind.
We talk a lot about distribution and this will essentially give anyone the chance to take their cut based on their stake but, it will also mean they might not earn more than their 10x vote. It will change the way people delegate to bots and to users and will bring back a reality to the platform unseen for perhaps ever. The smaller accounts, the dolphins, minnows and redfish will be the ones who have the power to distribute and affect the entire ecosystem at the visible layers.
This is a large topic and I have barely scratched the surface. There are intricacies and thought that needs to be put in to work out the best ways but the more I think of it the more I am encouraged to think about it seriously. Why keep trying to stop people self-voting shit 10x a day, why keep fighting maximizers for doing what they are going to do anyway. Give them what they want and let the people who actually care, the people who want to interact and be part of the platform the power to decide what the platform is going to reward. Passive can stay silent and invisible.
There is essentially no risk in doing this as it is all opt-in and is also opt-out. If at any point the locked stake decides that it isn't working the way they would like, they can flick the switch and return to being active on Steem again at any point. It really appears to be the simplest and most elegant solution to returning the ecosystem to a equilibrium point where content and community matters and investors are able to earn guilt free.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts and opening up the discussion.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
Sorry about the long post, it is such a big thing with so many ramifications that aren't immediately obvious, I will have to write followups. I was much better at speaking this with hand gestures at Steemfest.I know I left stuff out....
Thanks so much for writing this up!
The idea was posted before, unfortunately I am not able to find the original post or poster any more. (edit: @meno helped to dig it out! click!)
After more than two and a half years of watching maximizers getting more and more common on this platform, I immediately agreed with the guy bringing this idea to the table. There are a lot of people who'll always go the easiest way to maximize their ROI, and when they screw the original intent of the platform up like it is happening now it's just logical that even the strongest idealist will give in at some point.
We talk a lot about voluntarism, but don't take into account that money makes us do things we wouldn't necessarily do if it wouldn't play a role. Let's stop forcing people to play a game they don't care about and just want their gains. And let's hand over the playing field to those who really want to use the platform as it was intended.
I tried to promote the idea a bit below some posts and in the dev slack, but was generally ignored. Glad we came to talk about it at steemfest and it has some traction in the community now!
I think @tcpolymath wrote about this once... I thought it was great, but got very little traction as far as I know...
how difficult would this be to code into the blockchain? realistically... ?
Here's the original post.
There's some interesting discussion of implementation there that I haven't gone digging father into. But my feeling is that if we can't fit a half-size Steem and half a basic POS system into the space currently occupied by a full Steem then something really weird is going on.
Thanks for sharing your in depth view on the steem structure in your article!
So basically what you are saying is that we need to remove the rshares and replace them with STEEM? If so why don't we have the problem of self-voting in this system? Probably I missed the connection - looking forward to your response!
No we keep rshares and all of that, but we just make the whole posting-voting-rewards system something people can opt into if they want to participate, rather than something everyone has to be a part of if they want to hold Steem.
Basically self-voting and bidbots are mechanisms to get around the fact that the system forces people to vote in order to get their rewards. So if we stop doing that, they won't need that particular method.
to paraphrase (or add):
interest (earn) without bothering to even look at "content" at all - what to speak of actually reading it, evaluating, deciding how good it is (what normally curation means).
so, yes - system "forces to vote" - but doesn't forces to read :)
or in fact even bother to click on the link of "content" to even as much as open it. just "vote" action (= press upvote button) is good enough for system.
Yes! Thank you @meno, you're the greatest.
Here's the link to the post: https://steemit.com/steem/@tcpolymath/a-simple-radical-change-to-steem-that-could-fix-most-of-our-problems
I'm not a coder... but Savings is already there in the wallet and already gets 9% or 10% or whatever... so I'd guess that most of the code to make this happen is pretty much already written.
Well, I don't code anymore, but I can somewhat think of the logic...
Technically, the rshares would remain the same for the reward pool assignment, that part would not change.
Since vested STEEM already makes ROI (not much mind you) it would be simply adjusting that number, setting conditions to it (ie stake not being delegated out) and creating an equivalent of a switch condition with cool downs and what not.
I used to code, its been a couple of decades now.. but it doesn't seem too hard, at least by comparison.
9 or 10%? interest?? savings dont be makin no money no more mon! Wachu talkin bout mon dis steem wallet be broken mon andf i tink its only a few percentage points aye and not anymore
Has anyone flagged this comment?
This is what I am hoping for if this can get pushed through for a trial.
I think it is hard to get status quo changed and it seems that many are waiting for something to save them. As I just mentioned, this prepares for turning off the Steem tap and makes a nice smooth transition for the Dapps to implement SMTs.
Let's see what others say. Thank you for all of the various forms of support you have provided the platform over the years, and thank you from me too.
Just as @pharesim said, I instantly loved the idea when i was reading through the article. I though hear such a proposal for the very first time and I’ll need to take my time and think about all the implications it would have.
First thing that caught my eye is that it doesn’t seem right to give an option to instantly switch between the locked Steem and SP. People could then just farm 5-7x 100% votes per day, switch to SP influence the platform (and gain curation reward?) and switch back - repeat. Maybe I misunderstood something but it feels like big investors could maintain the option to influence the platform a lot while still farming those "self-votes" EVERY DAY. Thus the lesser users wouldn’t really have bigger say. I think it would be healthy to truly distinguish between "locked Steem and "SP" by implementing similar rule that exists when delegating SP or converting Steem - in other words it would be healthy to have like a week long period when the locked Steem is converting to SP or Steem. Or maybe use the power down rule? So one could "power up" either to "Locked Steem" or "SP" instantly, but it would take long time to power down, but the user would be receiving portion of it every single week (then again the user could power down either into Steem, or into the other "locked version of Steem".
Those are my very initial thoughts about the matter so it probably isn’t anything extraordinary:D. Anyway great food for thought as always bud. Resteemed:)
Yep, the details themselves would have to be discussed and thought through at a much deeper level that I am able to do but I tihnk there would be a way to make it much less gameable than the current system is and increase stake influence of smaller users. I am glad people are talking and thinking about it.
Wow, a 20k SP flag for managing to bring up a discussion, and you don't even give your opinion. I thought better of you @transisto
Due to the lack of reasoning I assume you're afraid of your stupid middleman service becoming useless if this happens. Interesting choice of priorities.
Just to add to the discussion as we've talked about it during SF3:-
Steem has economic incentives (of 25% curation, linear rewards, costly downvotes) that promotes and rewards content-indifferent voting behavior.
With passive staking as per your suggestion, we're effectively reducing the rewards pool that remains to fuel the same voting behavior enabled by Steem's economic incentives (of 25% curation, linear rewards, costly downvotes).
Passive staking helps only to a certain degree. Point (1) above remains. Steem's economic incentives are still aligned to content-indifferent voting behavior, which should be fixed (by going for 50% curation, n1.x rewards, 10-30% free/pool downvotes). Between maximization strategies of taking part in voting or passive staking, being able to influence content by voting remains to be a powerful proposition.
As I said when we spoke, this doesn't exclude exploring 50/50 and discounted/free flagging. I actually think it might make them more effective as it is a kind of reset of the pool resources and a chance to improve overall distribution.
@kewinwong @tarazkp I'd like to see both of these ideas implemented together. We can do better and we should, if someone thinks Steem is working as intended right now, he's clueless.
We have to keep working until we have active curation happening, that's actually trying to embed the best content creators that come our way via giving them stake in our ecosystem. Else they will just leave when they see that in Trending low quality posts are gaining hundreds of dollars. I have to wonder has @ned given this another thought and what is his current stand on this. All he commented about bidbots (that I know of) was "interesting"... Bit lackluster when they have changed the ecosystem inside out, at least with Dan we would have gotten a lengthy post about the issue and I'd understand what the leadership is thinking.
Currently it feels like we all know the ship is sinking, but we hope SMT's will save it and are holding on. @ned please consider doing something other than another frontend... It's not the issue here, listen to your users. Whatever users you will get through fancy graphics, they'll leave because the flawed incentives.
Yep, even a limited pool (it is essentially limited already by bots and circles) is a better view of things. Consider that with a few more delegations the apps/curation initiatives become distribution forces and things could look much healthier fast.
And people like to compare what their posts make to others, when we take out 500 dollar promoted posts, mainstream users won't feel so bad when theirs make only few dollars. Platforms like these have to give a lot of thought to the human psychology. These days hundreds of thousands are spent by apps to scan brains in search for the best colors to be used in apps and such.
The current system sells the idea, that quality doesn't matter pretty hard to normal users we actually want to attract here.
Fyrstikken is user from another end of spectrum, he seems to be happy gaining "cheap tokens" as much as he can, wondering why everyone else isn't quite as happy as he. I wonder what he will do with them all when no real users are left here when they'll choose not to spent their time here viewing ads and feeling bad when some posts make 500 dollars and so on.
When we all will be using our SP through bid bots, what there'll be left? Everyone will log in to claim their gained rewards and sell them for other coins, because SP acts only as a passive way to gain wealth, nothing more. No posts will be curated, no comments made. It's a grim outlook I wish I wouldn't have and currently markets seem to share my view more than the positive one.
But with only few small changes, who knows, Steem could be proof-of-brain blockchain once again. Your post at least has stirred up discussion, and discussion is always good.
Fyrstikken runs a bid bot, don't take his word about alleged aquirations.
I know he does, I also know him from times before Steem. If he's reading this, remember dogecoin?
So I can say, that some individuals here, with big stakes put profits far ahead of any morale and as long as incentives are what they are, they'll continue profiting from it and move on when better opportunities rise, only being sorry for not making more money.
That's why the rules should direct the greediest to act in a way that's beneficial to us all. Now the best route is selling votes and messing up the content discovery, making this platform inefficient and not attractive to mainstream users.
I've been using bidbots to sell my votes for some time now, I see why they are popular, and this whole thing could be replicated with the idea Tarazkp is presenting here while still making the normal users happy, those who actually want to use Steem as a platform to find good content and socialize, and this should be considered and discussed at length until we have better understanding of the pros and cons.
I completely agree. Tempering expectations and user retention is one of my main targets with this.
I am pretty sure that just like the fact that if everyone used bidbots the system would fail (not everyone does), not everyone will lock stake. I don't think I would at least.
Yes, there would still be people who would want to use Steem as intended, to reward good content and doing so encourage these creators to keep coming back with more of their creations, attracting more people here. It's a positive loop that we should encourage more.
I'm not sure if some people are playing some game theory strategy here, where they try to maximize their stake before inflation lowers down with all means possible. With the money some people are making here, I'm seeing surprisingly low amount of advertisement of Steem by them outside this small ecosystem. It is quite surprising. Or are they just shamed to mention it because of the way the ecosystem currently works?
(Quality doesn't matter much). Any day competitor could pop up, which has taken lessons from Steem and has fixed the issue of content discovery.
I know that I'd like to keep some voting power for myself to keep rewarding original, and interesting content like this:
and in my mind, the best route to ensure Steem is still a worthy platform to interact in ten years, is to make sure these people get rewarded here.
#metoo
"economic incentives" apart and without going into all those details (techy stuff) - if it is really truly seriously a matter of making a change in voting behavior from "content indifferent" to "Content Attentive" and Interested, about caring for Quality of Content (or at least about bothering to as much as VIEW that Content from inside the post - not from "outside", just its title in the Feed list)...
then there is quite easy and simple solution to accomplish that - IF Steemit Inc. would actually care to do so (yeah, yeah, and if Witnesses "come to consensus" etc). that solution I have explained here. it is basically, in brief: make the Upvote button visible only for those who have bothered to actually Open and Read that "Content" (post) ! :)
bots would "get tired" to open all those links, scroll down to the end of post, find that Upvote button -- all that just to press it to complete the so called "Curation process". (or perhaps bots can't even do all that)
that would help to achieve what you are trying to focus on:
if no one is able to press Upvote button at all from "outside" (from Feed List), but only from "inside" (from within the page of that post) - THAT would certainly INFLUENCE content by voting! and shift the voting behavior from "content indifferent" - to Content-Reading-Compulsory.
however something tells me that present state of affairs - quite perfectly FINE not only for the System itself, but also for all the "Investors" / "Stakeholders". whose main (or only) concern is not the Content itself nor its quality - but the ROI. (and for System - the long-term lock-up of the capital within itself; aka "High Yield Corporate Bonds", the "Mutual Fund" of all those SP "Stakes" combined)
Upvote button easily accessible from "outside" the Post (i.e. without need to open and actually Read its Content) and available for bots or anyone to just press it without need to click the Link (title) of the Post. therefore why bother to do any more than just trivial basic action of "pressing Upvote button"?
since System doesn't require anything else at all and doesn't care at all. then why should care all and any people who come here to Earn? (especially those who has Invested, especially quite a lot!)
so called "Active curation" (LOL! what a term! like "active pressing of Upvote button"? bots are good at that! :D) will not happen - because System doesn't care about it, doesn't require or demand it, because it is not important for it to generate the profits and to sustain itself. It keeps "minting" more and more new tokens "out of thin air" (as Taraz rightly mentioned it some time ago :) ), so, main thing of it is - "generation of connections" (aka "links from clicks on Upvote button" LOL :D) and the fact of "content discovery" aka "Curation" (= which Upvote buttons under which posts titles in the Feed List are pressed and which are not). as long as such "Business" continues - it is quite alright for the System. it is NOT at all necessary nor important to even READ the text inside - what to speak about the evaluation of Content Quality (what is normally meant by Curation).
That's why Stakeholders are being bluntly straightforward now - in making proposals of such ideas ("Lock up Stakes") - so that they don't even have to bother with such a silly nonsense as ANY kind of "Voting" at all. just Invest (= "Power Up"), "Lock Up" and get increased rewards for that (for NOT selling their votes otherwise) aka "Passive Income". funny though that at the same time "improving content" is mentioned at all. because WHAT "Content" or its quality is of any interest at all - if person is fully satisfied with "Earning on Autopilot".
yeah, why not! :)
desire to care about one's ROI is understandable. but there is no need to cover it with some sort of "caring about content improvement" and about "voting behavior" LOL
The STEEM blockchain has an inflation rate which is partially paid to participants who lock up their free STEEM in STEEM Power.
Now free STEEM does not contribute to one's voting power but STEEM Power does.
If I understand your proposal correctly:
This would seem to be a simple change. Instead of sharing the STEEM blockchain inflation rate with all STEEM Power holders, the shared inflation rate would only go to "lock up" STEEM Power.
This method would still give investors in STEEM Power an incentive to hold STEEM Power.
Interesting idea!
Have a great weekend!
Steem on,
Mike
That sounds like a great idea
I like this idea a lot!
For investors, it's actually better than delegating to bid bots because the bid bot income is still variable (ie, if no one uses that bid bot, less is paid out to delegators) and for everyone else it's better because actual popular content could make it to Trending.
Lots of people do spend money on bidbots in order to get their work noticed... say if they're launching a new Dapp and want to get the word out... but we do have the Promoted tab that hardly anyone uses... but I think it would become far more used if that's where all the cool new Dapp info, etc was.
I think Trending would be $60 posts of people that get a couple of whale autovotes and Dtube... but still, that's far more in reach for a newbie than the crazy $1000 posts.
I still think Haejin will still get up there... only because I don't believe that deal is about getting eyes on his work, but more about squeezing as much from the rewardpool as possible... I imagine Rancho gets weekly/monthly fiat kickbacks or similar. Parys and his ilk would die off though, which is reason enough to give it a shot.
It would mean that whales would make that tough decision to either silently invest or actively invest... the active does more good but the silent earns more... which 'should' mean that more quality work is upvoted by active whales.
It's definitely a novel idea... I'd be more than happy to offer the option for silent investors to maximise... after all, they did invest sums of money to make something back on it.
Yep. The other thing that is possible for promotion is instead of one post getting bidbots, the content for promotion gets offered to trending authors and streamers to advertise if they choose. A banner on 50 trending author's pages paying them 10 dollars for the week will get more views and engagement than one post pushed up for a day or two.
Yep, it is hard for me to estimate in my head. I am setting a a high 'lockup' percentage for starters.
Well rancho can take 10x every day as can haejin with no post and no community shit.
Yep, and if there is a percentage option, many will maximize 50-80 and use the rest to play.
Me too. At least worth a decent trial.
I'm very much in favour of such an implementation. Even if it would kill/weaken Smartsteem's current business model.
Actually, I think I made a comment about it somewhere - I even thought I did a post, but can't find one. Separating content-producers from investors looking into making ROI would go a very long way in having a more friendly system!
As we have spoken before, I think there is space for the bidbots too but it will be a changed role and one that is far healthier and perhaps more profitable in many ways as there might be no expectation of earning by users.
This is what I am hoping for and once this happens, user retention will also drive investment interest and ramp up the cycle.
Hope you are well mate.
I had read the post earlier, now rereading it actually is making me more convinced that it might indeed be a good way forward. Along other changes.
So here are some of the sidenotes I was writing down whilst reading the article:
If it's more interesting to just sit passive and I would get rewarded higher as opposed to actively engaging, with my vote, more accounts might sit passive. Bidbots are still seen as immoral, this solution wouldn't be, so you might have more than 30% going in there.
In my opinion big investors should be pushed to commit to improving the platform by voting / delegating content / projects that add value to the Steem blockchain. Long term this is the way to let the price of Steem rise and their own investment.
Than again if they're not willing to do that, I do prefer the passive system suggested here over bidbots.
I do think an idea like this should be implemented together with more incentives to ACTIVELY engage in content curation as a whale as well.
One part I really liked is where you said that if big accounts would lock up part of their stake, the wealth-inequality within Steem has less influence on the content curation. Which might cause smaller players to feel like they matter on the platform, this of course is a huge step forward in my opinion and one of the biggest advantages to this proposed solution!
There would be more than 30 indeed. At least at first.
Let's say that there is 100 in the pool and there are 100 vests drawing from it. Say, 50 is passive locking up that 50 percent. Then, some large delegations go to 20 new application adding 20 new vest draws. Now there is 120 vests drawing from the 100 and instead of the passive getting 50% the active take ~65%. Active users target the applications to earn and power up and they will continually grow larger and draw on the pool. Introduce SMTs and oracles and they might only be earnable through active usage and decent behaviour meaning that it could be possible that the passive stake turns active again. What this does though is take the people who truly want to be passive out of visibility and influence over the content on the platform.
While it is a beautiful idea that everyone on the platform actively involves in improving it, that's just not the reality. We already see it with people who are here, and outside there will be a lot more investors who are just not interested in engaging in this kind of, or even any kind of, social media activity.
There's no other investments which force investors to work for their ROI (well, real estate, but that's a very different market). Usually investors want their "money to work for them".
Any kind of work in a system like this can be automated, and over time that automation improves and becomes accessible for more and more people (often through middlemen, we even see middlemen between the middlemen on steem already, a bot usage service).
The social stigma doesn't hold off everyone, and the more users do something considered bad behavior the less pressure it creates.
Of course the "interest" here is higher than for most other investments you can get, but we're still early on and inflation will drop over the years.
So in the end, by expecting participation, we limit our possible investors to a subset of social media users, software developers, people who use the platform in ways it wasn't intended for, and some real heavy risk takers who believe the idea will outprice the inflation. Offering something to non techy investors who don't want to curate or even self vote 2 or more times a day seems absolutely necessary to me if we want to be successful in the market.
Well from an investment point of view, you're mostly looking for some kind of dividend and hopefully a price increase. At the current time I think it's fair to say that the bidbots provide this kind of dividend to investors, but are definitely putting downward pressure on the price long term.
Again, I do like the passive approach proposed here, but I strongly believe active investors should be getting more out of the platform than passive ones. How to make this a reality is a different matter and likely not easy to solve.
If we look at the whales on Steem for example, we have a lot of them who are very talented developers / community managers / etc. etc., but a lot have stopped doing any of that on Steem as the work vs reward just makes it way more tempting to use bid bots. Even though long term if bid bots remain around, they could very well be the end of growth for Steem.
Making it passive, as proposed here, won't get those people to do more again for Steem in my opinion, where they did have the motivation to do it before bid bots came along. But it would at least likely eliminate most bid bots, which is something I am really looking forward to.
I do think that the proposed solution here is a lot better compared to what we have now with the bid bots, but at the same time I think more incentives for active participation would not be a bad thing either.
I heard this at the same time as you and agree there are some obvious benefits - a purer trending page for one.
Some people may be fearful of their being much less SP to go round content, but I think that the majority that would choose this option are already delegating to places where votes need to be purchased.
For accounts like freedom which currently delegates around 80% to bots and 20% to projects, I would expect the 80% to move over and the 20% remain where it is.
As you mention, smaller accounts may choose to lock some up, but if you are earning more than 10 selfies a day through content/curation, then it would likely be best to continue as you are.
Thanks for the write-up :)
Yep, for most that stake is unavailable anyway since it is purchased.
I would say the same except, it could be that it could go 70/30 since essentially freedom will take full profit from the 70 whhile at the moment it is only getting 80-90%. Essentially that extra 10% is free investment potential for Freedom.
For most small users they would be better off using their stake to build their network, the same as I recommend now instead of giving it to bots.
No worries mate. There is a lot to think about there.
Yes you could be right about that, 10% spare for more projects - winning already there :)
Locking away everything is great if you aren't present, and of course the apps wont want to do this as they are rewarding content creators/players etc, but if you are a larger stake who wants to keep a voice, and potentially have some control of trending, then the stake would need to be available. Very interesting to think about who would like to still like to 'have a say'.
So it empowers the apps to be major distributors and onboarders immediately. SMTs are easy ;)
I think there would be quite a few who would keep some out.
The lock would include SP and RC, or just SP?
Just SP because RC is required by the platform for bandwidth. It means that they could still delegate to the RC pools which would be an additional reason to power up Steem anyway.
Just checking :)
I'm struggling to see a downside to this for both the large investor accounts, the smaller accounts, and the communities trying to push the best of their content upward.
There's a lot to like here. I read the same thing over a year ago but it never saw any traction.
Yep, I am trying to get it some traction. There is a massive potential to get investors in before SMTs are launched to lock up some RCs and helpdrive users to apps.
It is such a great idea. I don't even think you need a switch. You could set it up just like they do for vote buying/swap services where you set a voting power level that if your voting mana drops below your no longer offer your votes for sale. Lets call it a steem power dividend rather than self vote. So in that case if your activity stops and your mana level rises to your preset level after your activity stops it simply starts the dividend (self vote) again. This would allow people who are active to claim the dividend if they simply don't log in while they are on holidays for a week rather than having to flick a switch eveytime you think you might not be back for a couple of days.
That is a good idea too. There are many options with this and the benefits are numerous with very little downside. Because of the flexibility of Steem, it should be relatively easy to trial.
Yep. I think the 30% is on the low side as there are lots of people selling votes that don't delegate but just vote swap. Also there is some stigma. I think you could assume that 50-60% would get locked up. This is fine however as will drive the price of steem up so 30% of 10$ is better than 100% of $0.07.
I used the basic bidbot numbers but yep, 50%ish sounds about right. I also think that it would swing back and forwards depending on circumstances.
Fully support this idea, no point in letting investors break the whole ecosystem in quest to maximize their short term profits.
Your post is #2 at trending when promoted posts are filtered out at the time of writing this comment. For those interested in checking a bit more customer friendly trending once in a while, check http://steemliber.com/
Cheers for the view... not #1? :P 50 dollar posts in Trending are a much more realistic view of organic support.
Voted stake determines into what batch your post gets, each batch contains 20 posts, and in that batch the posts are ordered through voting amount so it's a combination of both, support from stake and number of users. That's why your post is so high and it would only require 15 votes more to gain the #1 spot.
I agree, I'd take wider distribution with smaller numbers over small and concentrated. 50 dollars is still a lot for a post and it would attract masses. If only they'd feel the system is fair and working, they would stick around. Then there would be trust in the longevity of this platform and even 1 dollar reward would mean gaining a share that could possibly grow much larger in future.
Phew, there is a lot to digest in there.
I think I have the main point you are trying to get across but i will have to examine it properly to put all the pieces together. But basically you want to lock investors in with a guaranteed profit to keep them out of the actual site and let the content form and get voted organically where the best rises to the top?
Damn, I have to rewrite the post to just this :D
Yep. That is pretty much it but there are many factors that come into play that aren't intuitive so it takes some work to build the view.
I can't even imagine all the factors that would be needed to fix this in place but i think that the theory behind it is sound. If you take the bots and big number off the posts then it would create a more realistic picture of what is happening.
It's work thinking about and talking about at least. It's hard to know what the plan is for early next year so this might all be irrelevant anyway but it's no harm to open the discussion.
It doesn't even technically need a change to the consensus rules. Someone could create a self-voting service that automatically posts comments on a specific thread and votes whenever above 99% voting power (you just grant it your posting authority). The advantage of doing it as part of consensus protocol is that it would remove the network resource cost, and there would be no risk of being downvoted.
It isn't necessarily irrelevant because it gives a smooth transition into investor class for RCs that are required. Essentially it lays the foundation for turning off the Steem tap while empowering the apps in preparation for SMTs. It is s smoother ride in.
Rewarding passive investors/stakeholders for staying on the sidelines so they don't need to post or vote in order to earn: this is the best way to ensure that those who are posting and voting are the ones who actually care. It would clean up the content in a hurry. I've supported this same basic idea each time it has come up. It's the best economic solution and the simplest way to preserve good content.
If anyone is working on an actual plan involving any of the above ideas, please contact me because I'd like to help with it.
I believe it would too and as this happens, retention increases, more eyes are on content and the space becomes investor interesting and attractive.
There has been a fair bit of interest so far and I think that @pharesim is getting a lot of questions. Thanks for your support on this.
Something like this a lot of people will take advantage and make it even more of a ghost town. I understand where you are coming from, but I would rather see more reasons to participate than more reasons not to.
It is hard to say because while some would step away, those who don't will have more opportunity to be seen, get engagement and interact. It should empower curation groups and apps also so there is likely more movement across them also.
Many just don't care, and they only post because of the money. Almost everyone cares about the money, I don't care what they tell you, if this place offered $0, it would be dead instantly. But many of us care for both and would rather be engaged in both directions rather than completely on autopilot. But it needs to be mutual and more good and fresh content.
This gives the option of whether to engage or not and I think that a great many would actually choose to have a say on the platform as well as create content. There would be no need for those just spewing out nonsense alt content to vote on to do so which creates a more natural space for those who want to produce and take part to be seen and get supported both through votes and comments. I agree, people want value/money but currently that isn't happening for many anyway.
I think a good litmus is what would Haejin do, and we know the answer to that.
I think it's less about traction and more about getting things like this done. I think it has pretty fair support among the witnesses, but it isn't the priority right now.
The thing that will unlock the potential of steem as a platform is having token creation here. That allows people to pool money, which fosters businesses and earning, which allows marketing, which pull people here, and drives the price up and makes making additional businesses more attractive.
Tweaks to curation and tweaks to steemit.com aren't going to move the masses here.
So, I think there's a political will to get this done, but I think the timeline is after HF21.
I've looked into getting some things coded on the side, but the problem with coding blockchain stuff is that it's ridiculously expensive. Maybe we could fundition something like this, but even this small change is likely something like $10k worth of work. That's easy to do when steem is $10. That's pretty hard to pull off when steem is $0.6 and success isn't guarenteed even if the work is done.
I'd personally be willing to drop up to a BTC into the development of the idea if it shows to have enough support from those having a say.
Id' put some money in too. I'm asking hightouch to put in steem keychain so I feel comfortable using fundition with my primary @aggroed account. I believe he's on board. Hopefully that's done before 2019 and we can touch base and launch a fundition for it.
I'd support it also @aggroed .
I agree but this would also empower the applications as the main distributors of the pool and prepare them and their users for SMT changeover and distribution also. It also helps people better find the apps rather than rely on bought votes for earning as well as improving the engagement level in Trending.
This gives much more credence to the possibility of advertising with users directly that you and I spoke of. I think that in time, it would give @steemmonsters and other apps much more market depth and eyes on.
As you know, I have no idea about the code/cost side of these types of things.
Hope your trip home was comfortable enough :)
I'm not a person who needs convincing. I'm on board with the change. I think it's a good one. I don't think it's as high value as SMTs so if Steemit only develops one of these at a time then I'd say it's SMTs. I'm not sure what the roadmap is after March.
I think a breif stop at curation and passive income would be welcome now that all the key components have been put in place.
I think this is a great idea!
Posted using Partiko iOS
It should solve many problems if implemented and clean up the entire system by satisfying both staked and unstaked.
This is the best solution for these issues I've seen so far. The reality is we need and want more of the investor class because that's what keeps the lights on around here, but we also need to actually operate as intended(proof of brain).
There's a way we can all win and I think this is it. A blog post isn't worth $1500, it's just not, sorry. I think a big problem with people's perception when they're new is their expectations get distorted from the beginning, I think it would be GREAT if trending was $20-$50 organic posts, that would be amazing, and realistic and something that actually has legs and can scale. Sign me up!
Yep, if I am a new user on a dApp getting a dollar or two near the start, seeing 20-50 on Trending doesn't crush, it encourages me.
If we want to do this, far better to disable the content reward pool and lower inflation. The result will be an improvement to the price trend (all else being equal 8% inflation induces an 8%/year downward tilt in the price trend, which looks worse on charts and scares away investors) and further the lower inflation will be more easily understood by investors as attractive compared with the "high inflation, but you can use this secret feature to get paid back if you pull your coins off an exchange [which many investors don't want to do] and lock them up [which many investors also don't want to do]" model.
SMTs can experiment with inflation and distributing rewards while Steem itself has a strong and attractive economic base layer and native coin underlying it all.
It obviously (and mentioned in other comments) requires thoughts into the details and numbers to find the correct balance points (I am far too unqualified for this) but in the interim, it is a partial reset of the rewards pool and allows for 50/50 and flag cost adjustments to have greater and more balanced effects on behavior.
Personally, I am unlikely to lock up my stake (or at least most of it) and that would be even more unlikely with 50/50 curation and the ability to affect content order through both voting and flagging. In my opinion, my voice in developing a healthy view of Steem is worth more to my holdings than a 10x vote return.
I think this would be an excellent thing to do. What I still find puzzeling is how the value of Steem can go up. I mean, every upvote that is given, does just increase the circulating supply (correct me if I'm wrong), so it's basically inflation and lessens the value of existing Steem? In the long term, were will the money come from to make the price of Steem go up? I don't see ads bringing in money to the Steem blockchain.
With the proposed change there's two clearly defined types of investors who'll bring money with them, the ones looking for a good ROI, and those who want stake in the content ranking game. As long as more people want to join one of the two classes than quit, the price will rise.
This could be a smart solution to the core problem of STEEM. Thanks for sharing these results from Steemfest discussions, I have to think about the whole thing.
But you would still stick to curation rewards to encourage voting, right? So those voting would not necessarily lose money in comparison to those benefiting only passively?
Yep. If this happened I would introduce 50/50 and free flags to encourage it even more. It closes many gaps in the system and helps mitigate the feelings of loss. A staked/invested user is able to affect the view of the platform as well as earn at the same time while the posters are able to earn in an environment with much more visibility. It should eventually see more cream rise to the top.
That sounds great. Almost too good to be true. Where's the hook?
This idea is great but you need to answer me this : what happens when an overwhelming majority of top stakeholders opt for the Lock-up Mode? I.e. how do you plan to entice them from not going full staking/lock up mode?
Are authors prepared not to come crying to daddy if everyone with significant stake starts locking up since curation - the bane of this mess from the get go - remains unprofitable and ensures you keep losing significant ROI except you join others to lock up thereby making it possible to see our Trending filled with $1 posts and authors wailing about how much time they invested on producing quality content is worth way more than $1?
This is the case at present but it's into the bots - earning them less/equal than this proposal, but also distorting trending and giving us a headache for the past year or so.
You have to look at which large accounts are actually manually curating, not on a select few, but platform wide to what they see should be in the shop window. There are barely any whales doing this, and not so many orcas. The stake is either going round in a circle, or it is out to bots.
Those who care/wish to have a voice keep some stake for voting or delegating - not even freedom is all out of bots, nor is haejin all out of self-vote (dele to dstors recently).
$1 posts is too low - there is no point me locking stake and I can give an 80 cent vote. And looking at the current top 11 voters for this post:
I would guess 3 of these accounts might lock stake, and the 3 i'm looking at are not frequent voters of taraz's content. The rest have delegated stake, 'love steem', or are content creators who thrive from reciprocal votes from interested parties.
I have never been in favour of security through obscurity. The fact is we cannot prevent the selfish use of stake. So, after thinking about this for a moment... why not?
We should be careful not to offer too many incentives to do this though. It should be exactly like self-voting 100%. Receive 75% of your daily vote value; no more, no less.
Also, what about taking those "burned" curation rewards and distributing them as a proportional bonus on curation rewards across the platform? This would provide a boost to curation, to further reward those who decide to continue curating.
Me either.
What this does is a partial reset of the rewards pool and allows for other trials like 50/50 and free flags to come into pay giving them more chance of success.
When you have your very own SMT - you get to set the consensus in your SMT the way you want.
But it is not true that we are moving toward a position where the Steem pool will no longer be distributed to post payouts
We will pay out STEEM/SBD forever according with consensus, above you see the inflation table. Maybe one of your problems is that more and more people join year over year?
What I do not understand is why you and others are missing out on accumulate STEEM when it is cheap, accessible. Karpe Diem!
It is just a hardfork away to change :D
All things equal, this makes the competition higher and as the inflation drop off starts to take effect, Steem even more scarce. Good times.
Why do you think I am missing out :P
I need to read it a few more times, but I'm getting what you are saying-
There are many aspects to it I can't cover them all but I am trying to give a picture of what it could look like. The importance of having organic support as well as pushing users to applications is vital for the community and actually gives a great deal more power to the communities to have a say.
But HOW can it be done? Who makes it happen? Meaning, is it possible being this is a blockchain you aren't supposed to be able to mess with?
The rules of the game can change in the future as long as the witnesses agree on them. It's not possible to change what happened in the past, but we can very well change the direction we proceed in.
I see thanks for that --
There is a lot to like here but here are some counter points ,
Wouldn't it become a "guaranteed return" with "no risk" as with bid bots there is still an element of market forces ( bid buyers) .
Such position of "no risk - full ROI" is not looked favorably due to crypto scams we have seen in the space.
The risk is that it comes out of the pool and the external market forces are still in play. The goal for investors is to increase their coin value and they will still have to find the best ways to do that.
All the PoS coins have a guaranteed return. It would make steem a hybrid of PoS and PoB in that sense.
I am noob about this stuff , can you point me to links to guaranteed return for other POS coins ?
PoS means proof of stake, in this system stakeholders are the block producers, and the more stake they have the more blocks they may create, taking in the rewards.
There are so many of them, I wouldn't know which one to link to. It's basically the other big system next to PoW.
I get the general idea of POS but in my understanding not every POS coin holder produces block , aren't they also ranked liked witness and the top guys make the money??
Even in that case , you are performing a task ( running nodes etc) to get coins in return as opposed to the proposed idea of cold ROI return.
They're ranked by stake, so the big guys make the most. Absolutely no difference to what we'd have here.
You're right about the nodes. This is a technical necessity though, and setting one up is as simple as keeping your wallet open, no effort at all. They need this to have block production decentralized, which is solved on steem by the witnesses.
You also need to see that vote selling already allows for cold ROI, with all the negative side effects. It can't get worse than it is right now.
Valid points ..but let's parse this statement a bit more
In my understanding not everyone makes the same % ROI ( big guy vs small) so the smaller staker gets very low % ROI hence there is an element of market risk , albeit it's more of a winner takes all.
What is proposed here is everyone gets the same % ROI as cold return.
If every staker gets the same % ROI , I concur with your point and find both situations to be quite similar.
Bid bots still operate with a market risk that tomorrow any of the UI may decide to ignore the posts upvoted by them so they have an incentive to keep adapting with the ecosystem.
Hi @tarazkp, I have read your post as well as many of the comments. It seems like most people are in favour of your proposal. I can see some advantages in regards to cleaning up the trending page and creating more realistic expectations in regards to rewards.
Your proposal also takes anyway incentive to both invest and participate in the platform. When I write posts or create contests I give back by upvoting comments and giving out prizes. To do this under your proposal I will be losing opportunities to earn from locking up my Steem power. We need a system that incentivises activity not disincentivises it.
Delegating to bots produces a good ROI because of the many large accounts that are not active. If these accounts lock their stake, the ROI will fall. It could very well fall below the inflation rate unless the witnesses don't mind getting a smaller cut of the rewards.
The value of upvotes of those remaining active will be reduced because of the high passive income. This also reduces the incentive to participate in the platform.
You are losing opportunity now as am I from not delegating SP to a bidbot. If everyone delegated their stake to a bidbot the system would be just as dead yet, 70 percent of the stake isn't delegated to them.
The ROI on bidbots will mean that they are unable to operate. However, there are other factors that come into play and that is that the apps become much more attractive and smaller users actually have a say about the platform view, something they don't have now unless they buy votes.
The other thing people aren't considering is that the apps will not lock up their stake because that is their attracting power at this point. This means that the apps with delegations become transformative forces and the ones that are able to attract users become targets for investment. This is an attention economy and at the moment, there is very little attention paid to it. Taking out the maximizers means that now there is space for organic growth once again, something that is sorely needed otherwise the experiment fails anyway.
If everyone locks up their stake, I guess that means that the Trending page is mine as I will be the only one who doesn't. When it comes to the value of my holdings, maximizing my stake returns isn't not going to maximize the value of it and I am not the only one to think this way.
Great piece of content, @tarazkp I like the way you're thinking!
Does that mean by locking up your stake (or parts of it), you'd automatically get a certain amount of the rewards pool? So there'd be a dynamic share of the pool used for paying the silent investors?
Neat!
I would really love to see how that would look like in real time and its impact on the ecosystem and content structure!
Loved & resteemed - hoping your idea will make it to the hf21 round tables :-)
Yep. What this does is leaves the active stake to control the content views of the platform and makes the discovery and support of users much more organic as essentially it removes the bidbots as delegators can make more by locking up.
What it requires to happen is enough community traction and interest from the right groups. A few mentions and resteems helps so, thanks :)
I'm all in for uncoupling worthwile invest from content evaluation! Those two don't necessarily need to be dependent.
It reminds me of the interview Ned Scott gave to Bloomberg TV not too long ago. When being asked about the relatively low quality of content on Steemit he said:
Here we go: your concept @tarazkp is one possible solution to it - and should be definitely considered in terms of those software updates.
@ned you may want to take notes here :-))
Te benefit of this way is that it underpins the SMTs on top and provides the bandwidth for a lot of new users to act freely. There are a lot of positives involved and it creates more options for users.
I delegate a little bit around the place. Some to bidbots, some on the DLM and some donated to communities. Now, if I can lockup stake for max returns then here's how I play... (spoiler alert voting goes to zero).
Speaking only of my community delegations, I'm best to take those back and lockup that stake and then distribute the rewards to the communities instead. That means no voting on their posts by a steady supply of liquid STEEM. Why, because it gives better ROI to do that than to upvote a minor tiny community post that'll only ever get a couple of bucks in upvotes.
I like the general concept, but the execution/details matter because there are side effects.
THat is fine because while your stake is locked, you have no pull on the pool. That means my active stake has more influence over the content and distribution. The applications won't/can't lock their stake either so they can still distribute also.
While locked stake wouldn't influence the distribution of the rewards in the pool, it would still have the same overall dillutionary effect on the value of steem. If the proportion of locked stake gets huge relative to the rewards pool then the value of each post becomes lower.
of course. The difference is that there are going to be apps (steem delegated must stay active) and accounts that won't lock their stake and will therefore have control over whatever is left. This means that they control the entire view of the platform. There will be others who lock part of their stake and keep part active to have influence over the pool. While you might choose to lock 100%, it doesn't mean everyone will as for some, eyes on and being able to reward is much more valuable than 10x votes.
It seems pretty elegant to me!
So we go from investors using bots, which unintentionally undermines the value of the platform through messing up trending to investors being purely or mostly/ even partially passive, just by taking their 10* 100% daily VP, which effectively leaves manual curators the job of managing trending.
Nice to see a string of purely positive comments and I'm not surprised...I don't really see how bot owners can disagree.... it's a market system, and this option offers investors more choice. They can still choose to use bots, or not!
I think most passive investors in steem would take the purely passive option.... they're probably aware that they're presently a fetter on steem's value by using bots.
It could also make the platform MORE attractive to investors.... I mean, under this proposal, what do you have to do get a (potential) crypto return...?.... Just click a 'passive return' option, rather than the present system of having to choose between which bot to delegate to.
I can already see a new onboarder front end page for investors.... 'want to make a passive return on yr crypto' just click here...'
AND FINALLY.... doesn't this help the platform work closer to like it was originally intended? Investors 'add value' by basically just buying up steem and then leave the content creators to add more value by creating content... something of a virtuous cycle.
I could go on, sounds like a winner!
It's also got me thinking about what % is really bot/ self vote oriented'.... it's more than 30% if you count the Haejins etc.
I like the general idea, and an "investor class" is something I have brought up and petitioned for several times before. Unfortunately, where it gets stuck is that the math never works out in a way that is feasible. It either doesn't offer sufficient rewards for it to be "worth it" for investors to be passive, or it takes way too much of the rewards away from the active users in order to pay for the program.
One thing I would be curious on (I don't know the numbers off hand) is how much "inactive" stake there currently is compared to the active voting stake (excluding the Steemit, Inc. accounts).
This is important, because if a large percentage of stakeholders who are currently not participating in the voting process would like a part of the passive income rewards too, it starts taking a significantly larger chunk of the "pie" out of the active stakes' rewards pool.
The maths might not work in theory, but in practice, would passive investors be willing to take a haircut on returns in exchange for the flagproofing?
If this was rolled out and became the expectation, I could see people heavily flagging bidbotters to make sure their returns were less than they'd get by going passive.
Flagging is drop-in-the-ocean stuff at the moment, but if passive offered 90% of bitbotting's returns, an 11% downvote would be sufficient incentive to go passive.
We currently have about 0.1% downvoting. For anything close to 11% downvoting to become realistic (or even just 11% against the 30% that is allegedly involved specifically with bid bot schemes, ignoring other forms of self-voting) would require a revamp of downvoting as well.
Downvoting hasn't been the same since we moved to linear rewards.
When your vote can add 5c to your mate, or remove $5 from a piece of rubbish; you're going to roll up your sleeves and get yo' flag on.
When your vote can add 50c to your mate, or remove 50c from a piece of rubbish; you're going to look after your mate. We don't need a revamp of downvoting, we need an unrevamp.
Fair point, although there is no current appetite to move strongly away from linear (perhaps small tweaks are possible). So it is either the status quo or downvote revamp. I don't think the status quo is very good.
I don’t think passive will offer anything close to 90% the returns of bid bots though.
This idea actually offers more - 100% of self voting. Can't get more than that.
A small cut of up to 10% going to brains from stakes might work too though, I'd Iike that. Can't predict where investors prefer to sell their votes again, maybe this cut could be set by the witnesses to adjust when vote selling takes over again.
It would only be 50% of current self voting if 2x the amount of stake started participating though. 25% if 4x did, and so on.. If you end up with 10x as much stake jumping in the pool as is currently voting, then pretty much everyone is getting 10% of the current rewards pool, and 90% is going to passive stake.
Don’t get me wrong.. I am not arguing against an investor class proposal, or even this one. I’m just saying it needs to be more thought out and calculated if it is going to have any chance of going anywhere.
Key word there is current self voting. Current values don't matter then any more. Nobody has a right to a certain ROI.
Lower ceiling for passive investors ROI (only those @mattclarke talked about) would obviously be the inflation less witness rewards (less a possible cut) .
And if only 10% of investors want to participate in PoB, that's what it is. At least for those the term PoB would be valid again.
I'm not buying it. There may be some investors who want to participate via passive staking, and others who still want to 'participate' in PoB while distorting and circumventing it. Offering another choice does not guarantee that the choice will be used the way you intend or hope.
It could work, but I don't agree with your suggestion here that PoB necessarily would be valid again.
Yes, it can leave the pool a little dry but at the same time that will also put scarcity on the markets and push prices upward (hopefully) and encourage new users in. While they might not be getting rewarded in Steem, they can be rewarded in SMTs that are powered by that Steem. Isn't that the eventual goal anyway? This should essentially force new users onto the applications and games to earn and give a kickstart of users to all the apps as they transition to SMT distribution instead of Steem.
I think... :)
"also put scarcity on the markets" I don't know if that is going to be true. The overall inflation will be the same regardless of who it goes to. I don't think it is valid to assume that passive investors won't cash out what they earn, which would put the same downward pressure on the market as if a content creator or curator did the same.
If we are bringing SMTs into the picture, why not just eliminate STEEM rewards altogether? @clayop has brought up a proposal along these lines. It is an interesting idea.
I would tend to agree. Inflation is inflation with much the same effect unless it is actually and effectively directed to pay for activities which add value to Steem. Very little current author and curator rewards fall into this category (it would be nice to try to improve that, but unless we do I think you are right).
That would be my preference. My proposal on this was to airdrop a STEEMIT (or some other name) SMT onto all STEEM/SP holders and the latter would take over the rewarding function. Everyone can then hold or buy/sell the token or combination of tokens that they desire: the native/core low-inflation bandwidth and governance token (STEEM) or the inflationary rewards token (STEEMIT).
I’m in favor of that proposal.
I don't see the market scarcity manifesting in any good way. Anyone who is currently excessively self voting or delegating to bid bots is already locked up in SP which isn't trading on the markets. Adding an investor class lockup doesn't change any Steem scarcity as current users "flip the switch". It only could presumably influence Steem price by bringing in new investors who are coming in now on the prospect of sidestepping the original Proof of Brain mechanism of Steem. Essentially we'll be hoping for Steem price appreciation at the tradeoff of making 60-80% of Steem used exclusively for self voting. At that point I think the whole system fails.
Proof of brain as a standalone distribution mechanism has already failed. This idea suggests a hybrid approach to visibly distinguish the returns from PoB from passive income, so those who want to participate in the PoB don't get discouraged by drowning in the rest.
I don't think it's that important. Everyone will get a smaller part of the pie, but why shouldn't they receive some of it too for their investment. Right now passive investors have the choice between ~15% ROI for screwing the platform, or 0 for not doing it. And more and more decide to join the first group, because they're tired of watching the ones who don't care grow while they keep stagnant.
We need to focus on growing the pie.
The bid bot situation really keeps off a lot of people from the outside. While googling for the original post containing this idea I instead found tons of external links talking about how steem is completely broken. And at least regarding the intention it was created with, it undoubtedly is.
I don't really disagree with the overall theory. If (using made up numbers) it turns out that 75% of the "pie" (inflation) is going towards passive investors, and 10% is going to witnesses, and only 15% is left for content creators and authors - I think there is a valid argument to be made that it isn't working as intended. If passive investors can only make 10% compared to what they would get from bid-bots, then that also won't work. Basically the actual math behind the proposal is very important. All of the actual proposals that I have seen so far to implement an investor class have ended up on one of those two extremes.
This idea is not about by which percentages to distribute inflation, but who gets what from the reward pool. Under this model it could become bigger by removing the current interest on SP, but basically passive investors would get the exact percentage they decided to take out of the voting pool. No further math required.
What about all of the currently non-voting stakeholders who may also take a portion of the investor class rewards?
That's their right then, yes. It would probably lower everyone's ROI, be it investment by stake or by brain. That'd also mean broader distribution of the inflation, which isn't a bad thing in my eyes.
The issue isn't to judge 'right' or 'wrong', it is whether the incentives work out. I agree with @timcliff that the math is very important. If something like this gets implemented and not used by the large amount of stake that optimizes returns because the profit is less than some alternative the it will just add to the pile of technical debt of many, many half-thought-out Steem features that are never used, and also won't bring us any close to a better functioning system. Alternately, if it turns out that it is so heavily used that rewards all but disappear, that may be okay but it would be a careful choice that the Steem community would have to decide is what it wants.
I'd also note this is probably inferior to simply turning off the rewards because proof of stake with high inflation has the negative to inducing a (more than otherwise) negative price trend, which is terrible for PR. Also possibly lack of understanding from investors that the inflation is high but they can get back most/all of it via staking. The latter is essentially the original situation with hyperinflation which was a terrible miss in terms of market perception.
All that said I'm not broadly opposed to the concept and I've been one of the most consistent supporters of investor-class stake that doesn't participate in the social rewards scheme. Still, the details matter to whether it will work. Again, too many aspects of Steem's economy and consensus rules have been put in place without careful economic and game theory analysis. We need to do better going forward, not continue the same careless methods and wishful thinking that have gotten us to this point.
also, I'm not 100% sure if we were the original original, but here is my and @snowflake's posts on it from two years ago:
https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/guardian-of-the-steem-universe-a-different-perspective-on-the-role-of-whales-within-steem-ecosystem-part-2
https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/whales-can-the-community-buy-out-a-portion-of-your-influence
https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/update-on-the-whale-buyout-proposal
No, as stated in my reply in the previous comment, this suggestion is a lot simpler in nature.
Edit: found it with the help of @meno!
https://steemit.com/steem/@tcpolymath/a-simple-radical-change-to-steem-that-could-fix-most-of-our-problems
The current reward pool could be devided 50/50 into two PoS/PoB pools.
Let's say Bob is the only one who chooses PoS. He would alone get the 50% of the current reward pool then. Of course it will not really happen, Alice and others would join. At some point ROI in PoS pool would't satisfy Bob any more and he might decide to migrate back to PoB pool. So, some dinamic equilibrium will be found.
The idea is to not incentivize behavior in either way for maximizing profits, but let people choose freely if they care more about ROI or PoB
I didn't plan to intentivise anything, just proposing some solution for this dilemma :
If everyone loves all their stake to passive, we have a much bigger problem. The whole concept of rewarding good content would be wishful thinking then. I don't believe it is.
If everyone loves all their stake to passive- but you don't - then, under my proposal, you alone will distribute 50% of the current reward pool.
Which is a bad thing, because maximizers will switch their stake back and forth depending on profitability, and we wouldn't solve a single current issue.
I'm not a big fan of these proposals overall, as they essentially just automate what we now would consider "bad" behavior. It's a huge gift to the self voting whales to say, "Here ya go, now you don't even need to spend the hour a day you do shitposting. That was way too much effort to earn hundreds of thousands a year, and as a bonus... you're now unable to be flagged!"
I don't want to cater to an investor class like that. Not all investors are created equal. There's a big difference between venture capitalists who will invest and nurture a startup to growth, and vulture capitalists, who invest only to pick an enterprise clean of all value and ROI before leaving it a destroyed husk and moving on to their next target.
At the very least toggling that switch should also auto toggle posts to be set to "decline rewards." It's a very clear signal that you are not interested in the proof of brain economy and these accounts should not be able to double dip and get their guaranteed non flagable self vote rewards and earn content rewards for posting as well. Alternatively they could forego all Resource Credits. Consider it the "Silent Investor" class. I know I don't want to hear from them. Who wants a troll earning his guaranteed self votes to be able to harass people in the comments with zero chance of financial repercussions? At least in the current system behavior is at least in some way tied to earnings potential. This proposal, if the investors continue to actually utilize the platform, completely divorces the two.
I'm actually happy that more interfaces like SteamPeak are just minimizing the visibility and impact of Trending and presenting better content to new users upfront. Content sorting and discovery will be heavily altered by SMTs and the new generation of front ends that will eclipse Steemit. So again, in my mind this proposal isn't a needed step to fix trending, it's just granting flag immunity to heavy self voters. At least with the current system we get some flag wars brewing and sending a percentage of that back to the organic rewards pool. I'm much more in favor of "flag reform" and normalizing and promoting their use than of placating short sighted "investors."
I also think opting out of voting should remove the ability to earn post rewards and maybe even RC.
I don't agree that earnings by bid bot delegations or selling votes are in any way tied to behavior. The risk is moved to the customer. And that part is wayyyy bigger than obvious self-voters.
Sadly, since post rewards are not stake-weighted in any way, I think these folks may just start posting under another account. Nice idea in theory, but I don't think there is a way to make this effective in practice.
It's a lot harder for a small account which can't boost itself and doesn't give others the hope to get a vote in return to draw a significant amount of upvotes though.
You can boost yourself by buying votes. If you introduce a new incentive to buy votes it is undermining the purpose of the original proposal.
Just keep it simple and make investor class stake unable to vote but otherwise unchanged.
Good point. I'm in favour of small iterations anyway, keeping it simple is the way to go.
This is true. But at the same time, the only real risk right now is that the customer doesn't achieve a positive ROI. I don't have a problem with heavily botted posts on trending getting knocked down a few pegs and losing money, as that at least better falls within the model of bid bots as advertising services. No one should expect to be paid to place their content on trending.
I've always hoped for a revamp of the inbuilt promoted post feature (breaking it out of the segregated promoted tab and into trending content and tag pages) to arise and undermine some of the customer base of the bots. At least then the funds are plainly spent on advertising, are burned to the benefit of Steem price for the whole community and eliminate the bot operating middlemen, and the rewarding votes a post receives from the higher visibility are actually organic.
That doesn't really happen though, and I don't see free flags as a solution. They'd introduce other negative side effects, and his bots would probably just get a little cheaper. We don't have any need for paid promotion besides the inbuilt one (which definitely needs a better presentation).
I think the issue of flags and downvotes could be a very simple solution. A two tier flag system. If a post is flagged for any reason other than rewards, then the author of the post gets the flag. If the post is flagged for excessive rewards, the the person or the bot with the largest reward issued gets their entire amount flagged erased, 0 reward all returned to the reward pool. The other voters that were generic still recieve a little bit from the left over rewards for their curation efforts. If a second person still thinks the reward is to high then the next reward gets removed and so on and so on. It will not take long before bid bots start themselves a list of bad players. It will not take long before rancho type people find another method. If you want fund the new investor pool with rewards that were rejected by the community. Plagiarism and copy paste and spam content will still get flagged and the author still have his reputation decreased, but they would no longer be able to lay the blame of their demise at the feet of an over zealous reward flagger, their rep hit would be well deserved, right now not all people with reps less than 0 are schemers and scammers.
I agree with the flag reform approach , that brings a sense of balance to the forces , maybe a check box in wallet to automatically allocate delegation to a community flag pool ?
I actually need to do more research to find more anti-abuse flagging projects to delegate to. It's hard to find one that clearly articulates a policy and scope of action so that you know what you're supporting. I've also disappointingly delegated to some in the past only to look in and see that they'll be inactive and sitting at 100% VP. It's just a waste of power then! It would be nice if some front ends included information and easy support of a vetted project like the check box you're suggesting.
Concur !!
Ying and yang...
Flags are currently at about 0.1%. Unless downvoting is revamped, they don't play any significant role in expected profits and are essentially irrelevant.
If flags are revamped to make them more normalized and used then you would have a good point.
I think that could be a good idea. I don't think you're going to get much support from the people who run the bidbots because that would take away their primary source of income. But for the regular people, I think it would be a good thing. It would be nice to have an organic trending, because then if you actually make it there, you're able to get seen and get new followers. It takes the work though. Interested to see what else you came up with while you were away. :)
I get the principle behind this and anything is worth a go before SMT's come along.
I think I agree with you and that this just might be a good option. The current system is broken, and we can all clearly see the effects (just look at the drop in the userbase... THAT doesn't happen when people are happy!)
I resisted the profit first mentality for a long time, but even I gave in to bidbots. If you can't beat em, gotta join em. However this, what you propose with locked stake, provides an alternative option and potentially re-opens the trending pages to happy users.
We lose the overly rewarded posts on the trending page (not earning real rewards anyway) and regain trending material based on proof of brain. AKA the intention of the platform.
This is an extremely interesting idea. It will be interesting to hear and see the opinions.
It is the first time I've seen the idea, so I haven't really considered it.
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This post has received a 31.25% upvote from @blockgatorsarmy!
YO! You had me at CIRCLE JERKERS!! LOL. I say we also install more levels of user ship.I AM A SHARK..a very broke, hungry, tiny shark, a shark none the less. What if their were cap levels for the posts reward? Maybe this would help squash some " abuse" .
~RESPECT~
hmmm, Taraz - you amaze with such ideas! :)
basically what you propose here is ... to make the existing system more HYIP than it already is. LOL
(or perhaps more like into Lending platform, if someone rather prefers it... or High Yield Corporate bonds aka "Junk Bonds")
well, at least it's good that words "Investment" and "Stakes" are being used more frequently - it helps to reflect the actual meaning and purpose of this platform (aka "Ecosystem") and clears out the confusions.
however it contradicts the idea of "improving content". because content is not a main goal / aim / focus / concern / interest / objective here. it is "PASSIVE INCOME" or dividends / derivatives. why people would bother to care about content at all (or its quality) - if they don't even need / have to open that particular post to "Upvote" / "Curate" it? even those who do not use bots. "Content" is just a ... LINK in the list, a medium between the act of pressing that "Upvote" button and then getting the rewards 7 days later. LOL
and "Curation" is merely a ... "discovery" of some potentially profitable Links (which can easily be calculated and estimated by all those factors: reputation, wallet size, number of followers, participation in curation-trails and bots)
come on! system does NOT require and practically doesn't bother with "good" or "bad" content or its "quality" or "indifference / interest" to content. system mainly "concerned" about the generation of many connections as a results of pressing that "upvote" button and about ensuring those "long term capital commitments" (i.e. High Yield corporate bonds). so, yeah - may be in this regard idea of "Lock up stakes" - would get the interest. (although locking capital in form of SP already largely takes care of that) but "improving content" - what for? :)
if it already works well enough and smooth, gives the fat dividends (especially considering compound interests)
main concern of the investors (i.e. stake-holders) would rather be - how to bring in ever newer users who would also invest and then "power up". preferably more and more of such. (so that those who are old investors could cashout their earnings)
but hey, you are always able to stir up some active discussions and debates! :D
I like this.
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