This post is a letter addressed to the top 20 witnesses as well as Steemit Inc's CEO. I had intended to send it to them first before publishing it. After reading one of @cervantes post I've decided to publish the letter directly.
I'm still very much interested in what would be the answers to the second question posed in my letter. For this reason, I might send this letter and kindly ask them if they would be willing to answer underneath this post.
A Letter To The Top 20 Witnesses
Hi!
This letter will be sent to Ned Scott, Steemit Inc's CEO and all top 20 witnesses. I'll publish this letter and your answers in the coming 72 hours.
I'm writing with the humble pursuit of improving Steem. I'll ask you 2 questions about linear rewards and provide my thoughts on the subject.
The original Steem Whitepaper states:
"If every voter defects by voting for themselves then no currency will end up distributed and the currency as a whole will fail to gain network effect."
It then argues:
"In order to realign incentives and discourage individuals from simply voting for themselves, money must be distributed in a nonlinear manner."
1. Do you agree with this statement?
2. If not, can you provide a refutation? (Preferably, one made public prior to the implementation of linear reward.)
The whitepaper's full argument is linked below.
Explanations
Ever since I've first read the Steem Whitepaper in April 2016, I've been intrigued as to why nonlinear rewards had been chosen. (As an aside, why less than 2 as an exponent wasn't chosen was partially explained in one of @vandeberg's comment.)
I had my reservations about linear rewards since then. Yet back when linear rewards were introduced, I've failed to fully wrap my head around the whitepaper's argument and thus I failed to express as many concerns as I wish I had.
Today, I'm convinced linear rewards are fundamentally flawed and I've been in support of n^2 since at least November 2017. I'm unaware of any attempt by Steemit Inc to refute the original whitepaper's argument against linear reward.
Steemit Inc Argues Against Linear Rewards
The last time Steemit Inc meaningfully argued for or against linear rewards, they've argued against linear rewards. Here's what the @steemitblog says:
Ideal Curve
In a world with honest people who don't vote on themselves to get "free money for nothing", a simple linear curve, aka n would produce a 1 share 1 vote proportional payout. This is the blue line and shows the ideal situation.
Realistic Curve
Unfortunately, we live in a world where people will attempt to game the system by voting for themselves. If everyone voted for themselves then the result would be simple interest payments and have no economic impact. We believe that groups are more honest in aggregate than individuals. We also believe that whales (accounts with over $500K Steem Power) have more to lose and are easier to police than the multitude of smaller accounts.
Excerps from the Steem original whitepaper:
I've partially reproduced the second part of the whitepaper's argument below. The full argument can be found under "Distributing Currency".
[Even though n^2,]
"creates financial incentive to collude where everyone votes on one thing and then divides the reward equally among themselves"
[And under n^2]
"Larger shareholders... have even greater incentive to defect by voting for themselves than they had under a linear distribution."
[those who have a large investment in a community]
"... also have the most to lose by attempting to game the voting system for themselves. It would be like the CEO of a company deciding to stop paying salaries so he could pocket all of the profits. Everyone would leave to work for other companies and the company would become worthless, leaving the CEO bankrupt rather than wealthy.
Fortunately, any work that is getting a large concentration of votes is also gaining the most scrutiny (publicity). Through the addition of negative-voting it is possible for many smaller stakeholders to nullify the voting power of collusive groups or defecting large stakeholders. Furthermore, large-stakeholders have more to lose if the currency falls in value due to abuse than they might gain by voting for themselves. In fact, honest large stakeholders are likely to be more effective by policing abuse and using negative voting than they would be by voting for smaller contributions."
Commentary
Linear rewards leave selfish upvoters at an advantage. Overall they can engage in the bare minimum amount of work (exclusive self-upvote) maximizing their ROI/influence/wealth, while the rest will inevitably see them diminish. (This "work" can easily be fully automated.)
Flagging doesn't solve the issue, as the flagged rewards are simply returned to the reward pool for anyone to grab, selfish and selfless upvoters alike. (Also, as the value of Steem grows, the incentives for greater ROI grows.)
Superlinear rewards don't prevent all abuses but aren't fundamentally flawed. Investors set Steem's price not philanthropists. ROI is what they are looking for not how much they are giving away.
Conclusion
I've rehashed the original whitepaper's argument against linear rewards of which I haven't seen any valid rebuttal. I've asked 2 questions from which I hope a clearer picture can emerge to the benefit of everyone.
Steem's stakes are huge for all of us. It would have been a lot less risks for me to accept the current status quo but I needed to stand up for what I'm convinced of and for which I haven't seen any valid rebuttal.
Edit: I'm opened to any solutions that could resolve the fundamental issues stated in my post.
Source
Image
https://www.flickr.com/photos/159526894@N02/28405889658
Steem Original Whitepaper
An incentivized, blockchain-based social media platform.
[Daniel Larimer, Ned Scott, Valentine Zavgorodnev, Benjamin Johnson, James Calfee, Michael Vandeberg, March 2016]
https://steemit.com/steem/@liondani/steem-whitepaper-download
https://app.box.com/s/hmq5p0skko40vi55f8pi4j631sqe3los (PDF, props to @liondani)
November Comment
The issue of engagement and of distributing wealth in proportion with perceived quality of contribution is real and very important. However the proposed solution is simplistic and has been argued against already.
Now after a number of months with N^2 rewards (back in 2016) and more than a year with linear rewards, instead of "writing a letter" and then pumping it to trending in order to start a polemic, why not use the blockchain data and do a comparative analysis?
Extract the blockchain data from the 2 periods and look at whatever indicators you think most relevant (wealth distribution for instance under n^2 and under linear). Compare the figures: was it better with n^2 ? Or is it better with linear ? Do a regression analysis if you have to, do covariance analysis if it helps and come with mathematical proof that one or another is better for the goal that you state (which I share and I believe most people share)
I will in some very simplistic way prove the person doing the less amount of work currently have the best ROI. Those who engage ithe least in "proof-of-brain".
That will show that the current system falls short. It does not, in any way, condone nonlinear rewards. Just because we change something that's "not good enough" does not mean whatever we replace it with will automatically be "better". It can very well be ... even worse !
Posted using Partiko Android
This comment is supported by $8.06 @tipU upvote funded by @sorin.cristescu :)
@tipU voting service guide | STEEM Monsters Lottery | Quick SBD <-> STEEM Exchange | For investors.
I agree with the above statement; however, I don't feel that is the correct question to be asking here. The problem we are trying to solve here is not people "voting for themselves", it's how to properly incentivize real curation efforts as compared to automated "gaming" of the reward system.
In my opinion, no change in numbers or algorithm will achieve that goal. No matter what we set the reward curve to, or the curation percentage, it will always be possible to take advantage of the algorithm to gain optimal rewards via automated voting over manual curation.
The only way I see as a realistic possibility to effectively combat that is a crowdsourcing approach (as compared to an algorithmic approach). Currently the crowdsourcing aspect of Steem rewards is clearly broken due to the extreme disincentive to downvote, which is why I am strongly in favor of something like a separate downvote pool which is being discussed.
Once that is in place, I think the rest of the reward system should be made as simple as possible for people to understand, as this will help the crowdsourcing effort. That is why I am against changing both the reward curve and the curation percentage. I feel those changes will end up being gamed just the same as the current system is now, and on top of that they make things more complicated for users to understand which will hurt the effective crowdsourcing of rewards which I hope we can improve significantly.
I should probably make a more detailed post about my thoughts on this topic when I have some time.
The first thing that popped to mind as well to me was that it was not the relevant question. Interesting.
I have a doubt when it comes to downvoting.
I think downvoting must be part of the system, however, I am worried about a culture of downvoting. Downvotes are perceived much much stronger than upvotes, so if everyone downvotes a lot this may backlash.
It works on youtube though.
I think that's mostly because downvoting is so rare nowadays, and so financially disincentivized, that when it happens it's a really big deal. It will likely take some time for people to adjust to the change, but after a while if it becomes a commonplace thing (like on youtube as you mentioned) then it won't be a big deal anymore.
I downvote over-rewarded posts all the time. I leave a little comment giving my reasons. I sometimes a get a downvote back on the comment. I use decline payout on my comments for protection. It works pretty well.
If they downvote my comment, they are using Voting Power on me instead of themselves. They are inflicting damage on themselves without even thinking about it.
there is no downvoting on youtube, there is only like and dislike, and report - here on Steemit any whale or deepstate sponsored individual can ruin someone's rep by big downvotes, seen it when @berniesanders did it to me
https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/improving-negative-curation-a-downvote-button-vs-flag-explained-condenser
https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/separate-downvoting-power-pool-concept-visualized
The problem I have with the incentivized flags is that rather than be used to crowd-source for quality etc, they will become ridiculous vendetta tools. Can't really claim that the average maturity of the platform is high as if it was, a lot of the problems wouldn't exist in the first place.
I agree that the reward system should be as simple as possible, at least for the beginner stages as the current barriers to entry are already so high due to the complexity of the entire process. The complexity can still exist of course but the average user need not feel they have to worry about it at sign up unless thy are investing in.
I think that's all part of the crowdsourcing. If someone is using downvotes as an attack against otherwise valuable content, then the community can step in and upvote it. Often I've found that people who are the target of unfair downvoting can appeal to the community and come out ahead of where they started in terms of support and votes.
Also, i'm not necessarily saying that what i'm proposing will work, i don't think anyone knows that for sure. But my guess is that it would work better than adjusting numbers in some algorithm, and i think the experiment of the Steem platform as a whole is about crowdsourcing rewards more than algorithmic rewards, so I would like to give it a real shot.
It becomes a strategy to get upvotes as I think we have seen utilized enough.
Don't get me wrong, I am pretty open to experimentation here as long as there is the understanding that it is going to keep getting experimented on to find a point that is best for the community as a whole. No solution is ever going to be perfect so in my eyes, the experimentation doesn't end.
Flags aren't really incentivized in this proposal (we don't know of a good method to do that even if we wanted to), they just stop being so costly. You still earn essentially nothing by downvoting. Your other content does go up every so slightly slightly in payout all else being equal, but it is quite negligible (and your other content too can be downvoted if don't have sufficient merit)
Bad choice of words. Less-disincentivized. Don't get me wrong, I am in support of trying it as I would like to see how it plays out. I understand that people fear flags and that should change (my first flag was from you a very long time ago :D ) and I would hope that it would make people think twice or up their standards before boosting nonsense.
There is no point discussing forever something that can be trialed quite cheaply. Work or not, either way, we would have better knowledge going forward instead of only predictions.
Yeah, as I've seen the back and forth on this topic, it seems to me that every proposal needs a downvoting component for it (and I do like that you say 'crowd-sourced' here, that does seem apt) to work, so I am pretty much in agreement with you here.
Superlinear reward encourages some curation as opposed to the current system that incentivizes exclusive self-upvotes. Good or bad can only be determined by the person doing the curation.
It doesn't and if you read the above section of the whitepaper carefully, no such claim is made:
This states a necessary but not sufficient condition. The white paper does not claim that superlinear alone is sufficient to achieve curation, in fact it states precisely the opposite because it explains the need for downvotes to prevent collusion (a somewhat technical term, but in this context, it means more SP working together to increase the payout of content above its merits; somewhat different from the implied English meaning since there is no requirement for multiple actors, only an increased amount of SP working to self-reward).
Unfortunately the white paper got some of this wrong. It describes the crab bucket model where stakeholders are supposed to pull down others who try to collude to extract rewards. However, in the real world, we have seen that most stakeholders would rather see to their own reward earnings rather than 'waste' vote power pulling others down. The psychology may be valid, but the cost of downvoting is just too high for psychology to override economics here.
Crowdsourced downvotes as described by @yabapmatt also distribute rewards in a non-linear fashion, as follows. If 100% upvote and no one downvotes, the reward is 100% relative to the amount of voting power used. If 80% upvote and 20% downvote, the reward is 75% relative to the amount of voting power used. This is non-linear and satisfies the necessary condition of the white paper. This assumes that downvotes don't deplete upvote power as in the @cervantes/@kevonwong/etc. proposal. If they do then the reward is 60%, but either way, still non-linear.
We think that is a better approach. I wouldn't flat out rule out some superlinear (indeed we have one at my urging in HF20 with the new treatment of dust votes at the very low end), but n^2 doesn't look like a good solution and other solutions are underdeveloped (and, quite possibly, unnecessary).
I really appreciate your inputs!
I implied this as it's implied by the whitepaper.
This isn't a binary thing. It's part of some very complex ever-changing dynamics. At some point, the bulk of the stakeholders even agreed to refrain from voting to a large extent forgoing a lot of rewards.
Very interesting solution. I hadn't understood it correctly so I'm very grateful for the way you've described it. My first impression is that it's a solution I could very be in favor of.
We have two and half years of experience across various other tweaks in the reward system to see basically the same result. Stakeholders, by and large, don't want to waste their valuable earning potential on downvotes or not voting (there are always exceptions but they are precisely that).
Yes it was me (along with abit) who organized and promoted that so I'm quite aware of it. Having been there, I can tell you it wasn't sustainable. Even if abit and I were willing to continue doing what we were doing indefinitely, the other major stakeholders were not, and in the place of the largest stakeholders, the next largest were starting to do the same thing.
That sort of crab bucket approach does not work if downvotes are too expensive. Other than that, it could very well work. I've even said that with cheap downvotes n^2 could work. It might produce different results than what many in the community want in terms of reward distribution, but it might be (probably would be) a whole lot better than what we saw with n^2 and no cheap downvotes.
I agree with most of the points you've made and our disagreements aren't fundamental disagreements.
I wanted to state my truth as clear as possible. The selfless are losing some ROI to the selfish in a flawed system.
Selfishness is not a long term successful approach. Since it's not sustainable. The selfless are losing in the short term frame yes. But they can build up stronger relationships that lasts for a life time. In the end the goal is to use Tokens to produce higher leverage by investing in human brains that think big and long term.
This space needs to evolve into digital jobs eventually if you truly want to maximise ROI. At the moment since it's such a new field everyone is just trying to do some blogging with random stuff. More organisation is needed. Niches + Community systems. And moderators that own various Niches would be an interesting experiment. People focusing on niches that they love. Therefore everyone is getting more of what they want.
Thank you for the discussion.
the only get rich here is the bots. that's the reality, just saying
I do not understand how it encourages curation.
If we have nonlinear rewards my upvotes are worthless unless I upvote the most popular content. So it supresses curation even more so, as my voice is suppressed unless I follow the crowd.
Right now my vote as an example is worth $2. I get to give this to anyone I like. Much easier for me to actually curate and reward what I find valuable.
This is what I want to see answered. Superlinear isn't magically going to make curation happen.
i think the assumption is that people will converge into what's valuable... but as the old saying says: beautify is in the eye of the beholder and to apply it to steem...
One man's shitpost is another man's gold..
When you say "people will converge", you mean when things are superlinear? This isn't going to be true, unless you mean to say "a few top whales will converge". And that's the troubling part for me.
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I've long come to grips with the fact that trending was never amazing... it was different because of how young the project was.
Look at whaleshares, look at the amount of rewards being given... early adopters are potentially killing it... and its linear!
watch a year from now people over there complaining about the same things they do here.
Nonlinear rewards can be gamed by dividing your SP up into a bunch of different accounts. you're not going to stop self upvoting. What we really need is account based voting with accounts verified by oracles, which is coming anyway I believe.
Incorrect as pointed out by @smooth.
It may, but my point is that I would prefer to keep the reward algorithm as simple as possible, and allow the community to regulate it from there. So if the community decides that excessive self-upvoting is bad, they can downvote people who do that, which then removes the incentive that is there now.
Flagged rewards are simply returned to the reward pool and as stated in my post those flagged rewards are up for grab by selfish and selfless upvoters alike, leaving selfish upvoters at an advantage.
Not true. Those second round of selfish voters are also more likely to be downvoted. You have to look at this as a large economy, not individual steps. The first downvote of a selfish voter puts the rewards back in the pool but that doesn't mean selfish and selfless voters are on then equal footing. The downvotes can continue to follow selfish voters indefinitely.
The result is likely to be an equilibrium with far less selfish voting, not only because selfish voters get downvoted, returning those rewards to the pool, but because crowdsourced downvotes change the incentives on selfish voting in the first place. It will not be perfect (nohting is) but it will likely be far better, with more for the pool going to value adding activities.
True but under linear reward, the rewards returned would represent a growing % of the reward pool with ever-growing incentive to defect. If downvotes are crowdsourced my statement is irrelevant.
That entire statement makes no sense. The returned rewards represent either the same % of the reward pool (if all returned) or a smaller % (if only a portion are returned). There is no way for it to increase. I have no idea what sort of convoluted reasoning has led you to conclude this.
They're up for grab for the next least selfish self-voters. The most likely contender for countering selfvoting is independent flagging pool along with burning of flagged reward, which I guess due to technical implementation difficulty doesn't have much traction.
Indeed. It's a loophole with serious issues as I've stated.
Leaving the rest for grab for the next least selfish self-voters leaving the same loophole open as I understand it.
"next least selfish" = Not selfish.
Not sure how you understand it otherwise.
Curation rewards aren't linear now. They are only linear relative to stake. They are not linear in time: early voters gain versus later voters. This one point alone destroys this entire argument that rewards must be superlinear relative to stake voted.
Thank you for your input @blocktrades. Could you please explain how it makes the original whitepaper's argument invalid?
The existing non-linearity already gives an incentive to curators to vote on posts that other people will also likely vote on rather than simply self-voting.
The reason this doesn't work well in practice is at least in part to the fact that most of the rewards go to the author rather than the curators under the current rules.
The other problem is few people understand the real rules which are essentially undocumented and end up fighting shadows.
I'm open to any solutions that resolve the current situation. I'm interested to hear more on this type of solution involving the current % allocated to curators.
Pay more for curators than authors and people will vote for others instead.
Pointing to the whitepaper and appealing to Steemit, I feel like I'm listening to a BCASHer.
I hold the same arguments as the whitepaper and I've stated in my words why so. I'm not appealing to Steemit. I've incorporated the facts and statements mention in this post because I felt they were valuable to the subject.
Alright, to answer your above question to blocktrade, it doesn't make the whitpaper invalid. It just make your title lose meaning. It's not actually linear and never has been.
Fair point but it doesn't invalidate my overall argument.
Isn't your overall argument that you're against linear reward?
Name calling isn't helpful
Is there a way to change the algorithm at this level to better encourage curation or is it only possible through the percentage ratio?
It may help to improve the algorithm at this level, but not if percentages aren't changed, because at 25% shared between all curators and 75% going to the author, the curators are mostly fighting for table scraps.
I would be happy to trial the 50/50 as you know, especially after playing a little on Smoke.io and watching large accounts post much less and spread more. I still believe at this stage of the platform's life cycle, experimentation will reap much larger future gains than the possible short-term losses through errors made.
If there is a decent framework set up that allows for short trials (a couple months) with systematic monitoring and adjustment proposals (revert if absolutely necessary), then the possibility to develop robust solutions is increased. It seems that everyone is looking for a solution to commit to that fixes it all, and there is far too much complexity and unknown to likely find that solution at this point.
Yes, I don't expect everything to magically work on the first try. But I think we can see some decent improvement even in the short term.
The curators are not fighting for scraps, 25% is a pretty decent amount to get. Sure if we would compare it to just self vote it may seem like scraps. But what is a person getting when they curate? They get the leverage of potential to build up Trust and Relationships with a specific person.
By showing you share some of your influence to someone else instead of self voting. The Tokens are never the real leverage. Relationships and Network potential that is the real value. This all comes down to build up Trust with other humans. It's not really about the Tokens. The Tokens works just as blood or electricity.
Even if we give 100% to curators, the best ROI remains exclusives self-upvotes.
You are wrong. Investing in human Trust and Relationships gives the best ROI. A person doing self-upvotes is never going to get the same Leverage and Return as the person investing into other humans. You can scale stuff when you invest in other humans. As you get access to more energy. You can not scale it by investing all into yourself. Coca-Cola spends 3 billion dollars per year in advertising. That is leverage. Same as best ROI leverage always will be invest in people with potential for growth.
This could change through oracles though?
Possibly.
What? That makes no sense at all to me. Maybe you could explain further.
You're right. My statement doesn't necessarily apply 100% of the time.
I can't figure out when it would ever apply, at first thought. In a 100% curation system, the author gets nothing. So you could vote on any content you wanted and you would get the same reward, completely independent of whether it was your content or someone else's.
In such a system, there wouldn't even be additional direct rewards to be gained by making people think your content was "good" by upvoting it yourself, since if they did then vote for it, you wouldn't get any reward from their vote.
About the only think I could come up with is some indirect benefit of increased fame, but it's questionable how much "positive fame" you would get unless your content was actually good.
You're right it wouldn't make any difference for who people vote so my statement was only partially correct. 100% to curation is an extreme that doesn't make any sense. It was part of what I was pointing at. Again, I appreciate your opinion and I wish more top witnesses would have joined.
Actually not, at that point it doesn't matter what you vote on, you get the same rewards. It comes down to pay-to-vote.
Correct, the highest voting return is to sell your vote because you get the curation value of the vote + money on top of it. Self voting isn't as good, which is why some of the most flagrant self voters moved over to bidbots and got a better return there.
I don't think changing curation rules or amounts will change much. The only real option is community led downvotes of socially and arbitrarily deemed undesirable content.
Changing the curation/author mix reduces the heavy lifting that downvotes have to do. It takes less downvoting to push self-voting or vote-selling down to 50% than to 25%. There could also likely be more collateral damage with the latter. That said, downvotes alone without changing the split may still work. The question comes down to: 1) degree of relying on altruism since they are still not incentivized, 2) effect of remaining downvote discouragements such as retaliation or social reputation, 3) if the free downvote power is smaller than the upvote power there may not be enough to perform more heavy lifting.
Still, it could work.
Best of all is to sell to your vote to someone before the mega bid-bots upvote. You get paid for the vote as well as frontrun for extra curation. You also don't need to have your SP tied up in a bid-bot.
This might be the reason why I get 200 upvotes before I use the bid bots !
I agree. I had to read @aggroed's comment to understand yours.
If you don't agree with people self-voting themselves then down-vote them.
Here's a non-linear system for you.
Also like @Blocktrades pointed out, Curation reward made the system non-linear. Since HF20 (first 15min forgoing of curation reward to author) there are huge economic forces at play for getting a piece of the curation which is acting to counter profit of self-voters.
BTW you're about 1 year too late to argue again't a change that is already been implemented.
I know what you meant but your title seems to completely disregard decisions and the evolution that took place during the last year.
Steem is always evolving and changes aren't set in stone.
Downvoted for pushing your post about 400$ above the top post.
I hadn't calculated how much I've put into the bots. Also, there are some organic votes. Could you refund me that I send to @promotbot?
Refunded, One solution to the problem of having your post at the top for the next 3 days would be to make it dynamic by updating it to maybe include the best reply you're received.
I'll consider updating my post. I didn't have maligned intentions. Using bid-bot is quite fastidious and I simply wanted it to be up there not way up there like it ended up. I used all the bots and should have been more careful and calculated the total...
You mean like all of your rip-off shit posts @transisto?
Flagged for abusing bid bots.
I really would like to see some answers from the addressed people here ...
I am not a witness, and you know my point of view already to agree that a linear reward curve favors self-voting too much, indeed, but that I personally would prefer a curve which starts non-linear (against self-voting) and ends linear (against excessive rewards of single posts).
Anyway: good that you keep asking these important questions!
Amen!
what is it useful to us
@teamsteem (in his article above) and I (in my comment and here) wrote already what we think is useful ... But of course there are many different opinions.
I would like to read the point of views of top witnesses here, too!
It's still okay to post a lot and self-vote a lot under the proposed changed in economic incentives (not sure if OP agrees to all the items in the proposal). It'd just no longer the most efficient move for rewards most users. There'll be outliers of course, but I'll address that later.
Better not to mix up what's best for every individual and new user on the network with what's best for the platform, Steem. The latter should be as equally as important as the former. There's too much of a huge cost involved in linear atm, and it's not like linear has any shades like how we can define mild, medium, and extremely superlinear. Linear is just linear. It provides a different economical modality compared to superlinear.
Linear gives everyone efficiently priced votes, an immediately exploitable feature for anyone to undercut Steem's economy (attention, marketprice) anytime and without risk of overwhelming objections. It can be observed, experienced, and they even check out economically.
Linear creates a perpetually disarrayed attention economy and a discounted pool of Steem, which actually goes against the best long-term interest of stakeholders. We've also learned that n2 is too much so we should go for a softer measure. At least superlinear has different shades, unlike linear.
This is why some of us have proposed somewhere in between linear, n and n2. We just need most of the benefits of superlinear at low-cost, which is why some of us have chosen n1.3 as a ballpark figure. The other two proposal items like 50% curation rewards and a 10% separate downvote pool to plug most of the potential leaks and outliers, but I'll leave everyone to refer to @trafalgar's recent post on it for more info. It's a shame if we were only just supposed to flatten out n2 for its extreme effect, but instead of going to n1.x, we end up with linear (n1) simply because it's way easier to implement? There's a fundamental difference between linear and superlinear.
Thanks for the post @teamsteem, I wish more would look into the economical significance between linear vs superlinear, and why we should move away from what we have today. After the proposed changes, I know I would no longer heavily upvote my dog, cat, cousins, and friends who are generally not very good content creators, unless they improve and become more competitive over time. At least I know the proposed "new economy" isn't going to be actively discouraging stakeholders from rewarding great contributions.
Let's not get muddled up in our need to reward all of our activities on the network. Rewards and activities are separate. We can still post all day and night and vote ourselves, it's just not immediately the most efficient move for rewards anymore under the proposed changes. Instead, curation will be on the same level, if not better. Maybe I like to post a lot, it doesn't mean that I'd want to vote on my own stuff all the time if the economy doesn't encourage it (not as profitable to do so unless other curators really like my stuff). Curation is where it's at. That's what SP is all about.
I fully agree. I wish more people would have joined the discussion.
To reiterate for those that missed it (which appears to be almost everyone) -
As I stated in the comments under @Trafalgar's post, I have a solution to the bid bot issue that steps on no-one's toes and cannot really be circumvented. I wrote about it here. By giving every steem user the ability to mute the EFFECT of votes by allowing them to mute VOTERS - we allow everyone to block out the effects of bots while also empowering users to see more of what they want/need to see. This would also enhance the effectiveness of good curators too since their work would be more visible to those who care and they can then both benefit from their work by reading posts they discover and also then upvote them. This facilitates proof of brain in a pure way that does not involve overpowering anyone and that actually empowers people more than they have been. Empowerment is what is needed here.
I also commented that I see an issue with free downvoting in that the imbalance among user's Steem Power holdings means that malicious whales could literally shut down a large amount of the reward activity for the entire network, which would in turn boost their own earnings. Ultimately, power imbalance that can limit exposure is a problem when exposure is the proposed way to gain power and rectify the balance. This is a fundamental flaw in capitalism too, in the sense that new users (or new born babies) have to join in an old game where monopoly is already established. It's fine to say 'work hard and you can be big too', but in reality that's not how things play out due to the nature of the weighting involved and the ability of the biggest to crush the smallest with little incentive financially for them not to do so. The idea that the big whales who act selfishly to the point of destroying the network would change before they actually do destroy the network, presupposes a level of intelligence and perceptiveness/care on their part about such things - which is already possibly evidenced to be in short supply by the fact that they would have taken things to that point.
Every point in all of this is unique and we need to dive deeply into every point to fully understand it and reach the best outcome. Soundbytes jut can't cut it here. However, I will say that options that empower without overpowering anyone are always helpful.
This addresses this issue of visibility, and any UI can experiment with different visibility systems right now. It doesn't address the issue of reward distribution. The latter is a Steem blockchain function and can't be changed by UIs.
Yes, I appreciate that my suggestion is a UI feature, however, it does address reward distribution by directly empowering all users to affect reward distribution by disincentivising the use of bidbots in a way that everyone can decide to participate in or not participate in. If this approach gained wide adoption, it is easy to imagine that bidbots would no longer be attractive.
Bidbots do not primarily exist for visibility, that's a secondary consideration, and arguably could be described as an excuse. Even if they granted no visibility whatsoever they would still exist and be used because they would have a small positive ROI (as they occasionally do already). Granted this might reduce their perceived legitimacy (assuming they have some?) and that could be a positive, but this is all very indirect.
In the beginning it was profitable to use bid bots just to increase rewards, but now it is much harder to do that. If people want to sell their votes to each other, that's their business and I don't see that there's anything I or anyone else can do to stop that. The issue for me here is whether or not bid bots prevent true 'proof of brain' from functioning and it is clear to me that they do.
Without something approaching 'proof of brain' - which was an underpinning of the entire Steem network from the beginning, we are left with much less attraction to the eco-system and it's technology for many people.
The only reason I would ever use a bid bot is to increase the reach of my posts and I don't even bother to do that now since I rarely meet anyone who even looks at the trending posts page any more because of the bots. I remember that before the bots, it was quite possible to see some of the best posts on the network in the trending pages, as was intended. Now that just doesn't happen.
They prevent proof of brain from functioning because people sell their votes. When votes are made on the basis of generating a reward vs. expressing an opinion it is not possible for their to be proof of brain. Proof-of-brain = express an opinion.
My point there was that privately selling votes cannot be stopped, but we can take action to empower users to stop known accounts that specifically only sell votes from having any effect on our experience. I believe that the 'Steeve' UI for Steem does this already.
Bid bots make it practical to habitually buy votes, then use the profits to buy more votes - this means that those involved in this 'arms race' will always be faced with the thought that if they stop then they will lose their 'position'. They will have a way of dominating as long as they continue - the pattern is really quite similar to addiction except that it's everyone else who suffers more than the addicted person!
By implementing the voter muting feature it becomes possible for all of us to identify those accounts that violate our own limits in terms of their voting activity - whether it be because we think they sell votes or for other reasons. We can then be empowered to elect to remove them from our experience.
This ultimately might be called 'proof of the will and brain' :)
This statement doesn't seem to be true at all. It's quite evident that giving large stakeholders a larger say under superlinear makes it even more profitable to self upvote. That's primarily why I believe any superlinear proposal needs to not be pure n^x but with a return to linear as the stake increases.
So no, #1 I do not entirely agree with, and funnily enough I haven't really seen a convincing argument for it either. Hell, the curve doesn't appear to matter for maximizers, no matter how you roll. And you need to distinguish between "passive investors" (if you can even call it that), who will choose the laziest way of accumulating tokens regardless of what system you throw at them.
Possibly the only thing I've seen in here that might matter is the statement "less large stakeholders are easy to police" but um.... nope, I don't think this is true. It's not true now, it wasn't true during n^2 (correct if wrong), and it won't be true if we go back.
Fully agree. I remember SteemIt before non-linear rewards. It was abysmal. Changing rules constantly actually undermines faith in SteemIt.
(I want to re-steem a comment)
Since this very basic observation seems to be ignored, there must be some sort of reference debunking what I'm saying (superlinear makes self voting more effective for large stakeholders, all else being equal). Someone kindly provide me with it. Or possibly a simple thing stating that I'm not looking at the right thing at all.
Ok, answering my own question:
Found a table that cited the effects on the weights here. This table was initially surprising to me, but actually it's missing the higher tiers that control pretty much the entire rewards pool (though I'm not even sure what the distribution looked like back then). But at least now I see the point people were trying to make: actually makes it so pretty much only one person can self-vote (the fellow at the very top).
So it appears that there is something I missed in terms of discussing power and self-voting, being highly dependent on the distribution, but still, it is wholly dependent on who on the top is on top exercising their high SP votes, and that would still be of concern to me.
But it boils down to the following: The real reason people are claiming self-voting power is reduced is because the total number of people that can self vote effectively is reduced to just the biggest whales (top 10 lol....). But this is still pretty concerning to me. Here's what it sounds like to me:
Before: Nobody can self vote, look at that. (But there's like a handful of posts getting all the rewards, what the heck?)
After: Oh look, we have more even distribution, but there are more self-voters.
The diversity of content being rewarded has increased, has it not? Is it, or is it not an improvement over the old system? Self-voters is a problem, but concentration is a large problem too, and I now see why superlinear does not work when the existing distribution of wealth is how it is.
I think I just summarized the arguments on both sides. Pick your poison, I guess. If you ask me, I prefer linear.
Not that different in broad terms.
Not really. This is a simplistic analysis that only considers individual self-votes. People are creative in coming up with games, businesses, services, explicit or implicit vote trading agreements (two or more semi-whales agree to each vote for their other's posts, etc.), vote trails with profit sharing, etc. in order to assemble up the necessary rewards to exploit superlinear. It was already happening during the n^2 era and would certainly increase over time.
Pretty much the only thing that superlinear is good for is reducing the absolute number of content items with payout so it is easier to find the undeserving and downvote them. (But, as I've noted elsewhere, this is useless if downvotes are too expensive.) It comes with a heavy cost in terms of making literal self-voting more profitable for those at the top and exploitative team voting schemes more profitable for the rest. Interestingly, the 'mild' superlinear that some propose, while mitigating the degree of rewards monopolized by the very top (or by large schemes), would at the same time increase the number of stakeholders for whom literal self-voting is more profitable (and similarly reduce the necessary scale of team voting to achieve profitability). No free lunch here.
Thanks, this makes a lot of sense. One thing I would venture a guess to, and do correct me if I'm wrong, is that if a group of people pooled SP into one account and had a comfortable SP lead, they could actually self vote and even if everyone downvoted it it wouldn't matter because their influence is that much more than everyone else put together? It's why I mention that distribution is important. The dynamics you mention seem like the case when multiple parties have roughly similar stake at the top?
Yes obviously if enough people pool their stake it could be more than all of the rest disagreed both in theory (at 50%+) and in practice (at some much lower threshold).
Whether it is multiple parties are not doesn't matter that much when people can come up with ways to pool, which they can.
And when only those with the most SP are the fewest amount of accounts, they decide who does and doesnt get rewarded, yet they can't curate the whole platform to vote for everyone's content. When whales stopped voting for a few months, the community decided more, rather than a few who had the concentrated power to decide who gets rewarded. N2 might be better with whales not voting, but not when they do and essentially control most.of the reward allocation on the platform. Unless you want a few ppl to handle voting for who does/doesnt get rewarded on the whole platform, its not good as i see it...
it's interesting that it's the same problem of power-distribution like in the world out there. maybe steemit didn't emancipate enough? what's about a curve that directs most of the power to most of the people?!
Thank you for your comment. However, you haven't answered the questions.
Glad to see that you're starting hard conversations around improving Steem.
I’m just a minnow.
I have been observing some of the accounts on steemit. People with high steem power would want minnows votes but only a minority upvote to the comments made by minnows even if they are good comments. They preserve their vote power and sell their votes. This is unethical and very wrong.
I used to get very annoyed and frustrated until i came across posts by @trafalgar and @holm that the people are not the ones to blame but the steemit economic system is flawed.
Vote buying, vote selling and self voting should be restricted or stopped if possible.
Thanks for your post
Very interesting!
Crypto currency would be good in every run , long short and medium term I am with you
Yes is my short answer to question 1.
Do you think that this is urgent (before SMT urgent), or could be trialed in SMTs when they are ready, or can wait until after SMTs to be implemented 'here'?
With the ideas around a separate down-vote pool / less VP lost down-voting, and a change in the rewards split to 50/50, should these be trialed separately and/or together?
Despite the general feeling that something isn't right, I suspect Steem to soldier on to SMTs without changes. The soldier could well be heavily wounded and smelling of his own crap, depending on the level of 'rent-keeping' before then.
Yes! it is urgent. If not what should we tell people right now? Upvote yourself exclusively until the fix because if not you'll lose ROI to the most unscrupulous.
To the second question, I don't know. These measures onto themselves without some sort of superlinear don't seem to solve the issue. Less costly or free flagging still returns the rewards to the reward pool as I've already mentioned, leaving the loophole open.
Different curation splits will affect the game only if some sort of superlinear reward is introduced.
Your approach might work with a reasoned opponent, but this was arbitrary.
Same with downvotes being separated from flags.
Its not no because reasons, its no because i said so.
Petty tyranny is petulant, and unlikely to repond to reason, ergo, the resistance to sound arguments.
Good luck.
I share some of your frustrations.
I have vested interest in Steem and thus I'm still looking to improve it to the best of my ability. I appreciate your input @freeborangel
Who would waste so much time for an $11k account? That's my question to you.
People who want to influence the distribution of the rewards.
That is absolutely absurd. $11k has such minimal influence...
Indeed. It is the sum of all Steem that influence the distribution. This is a lot of money at play.
upvoted
The premises you’re working from appear different from most. Contrary to the post, reality is that rewards are still non linear today via dust, human appreciation for contributions, and curation.
Beyond that, it’s my philosophy that it’s important to stay open minded and adaptable while building a currency and that is why I described Steem as an Experiment in the Whitepaper.
Indeed it's none linear via dust. I'm not arguing against this.
Indeed Steem is an experiment and we should remain open minded. I haven't argued against this either.
You haven't argued against what I've argued. Your comment doesn't answer the questions my post is raising.
Why should I answer anything here, especially to the OP where the logic is broken? I’ve talked about these Economics in many places over years on Steem, even I suppose with you, and here you are stiff-arming (expecting?) (demanding?) responses and different opinions from the same ol folks.
Here’s one: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/re-dana-edwards-re-ned-steem-needs-you-20181017t014522825z
You are free to answer anything you wish. Me saying: "You're not answering the question" is me stating my mind in a very neutral manner and in no way stiff-arming anyone.
I think it would have been logical for Steemit Inc to rebut their own statement in regard to linear reward to which I haven't seen any.
Most witnesses have indirectly answered the first question I've asked as reported by cervantes' post. The second question has been unanswered by most.
It's one thing to say my logic is broken and I'm not infallible but I haven't seen a rebuttal that I find valid (in regard to the current system advantaging "freeloaders") and thus why I'm standing up to say so. I remain open to being proved wrong.
That's your quote below.
I've never written a post about the subject at hand and thus why I wanted to do it and make my stance as clear as possible.
I will have to apologize, we are having a bit of a "bad hair day". Perhaps I could suggest trying to ask the question on another day. We are running late for the spa appointment. To answer your question, we will never stop rewarding the upper class here in a linear fashion or else they would pull all their money out and the whole experiment would collapse in on its self like a haircut with no layers. Linear rewards are the styling gel that holds us togeather.
Hahaha!
Hello @teamsteem
My name is @pitar
I came out with this
The song is dedicated to steemjet community
Please encourage me
I need more steem to do better one that gonna cover all..
God bless you @teamsteem
@ned delegates to @dtube
@dtube is run by @heimindanger
@heimindanger is a bigot who routinely refers to people as "fag" in a derogatory manner.
Does @ned support bigotry?
Hey @ned, have you thought about ditching 'Trending' as the front page of Steemit. Maybe use the tags with nice thumbnails as the first thing newcomers see instead. I'm sure people come to Steem with particular interests in mind. The 'All Tags' trending page does not really serve that purpose.
If your focus is 'Destiny', you could use that approach with communities.
Yes this was addressed many times before, I don't know why this keeps getting rehashed. What steem really needs is not non linear rewards, but account based voting. In addition I'm calling for account based witness voting, to make it much more decentralized that it is now.
uno gana dinero por comentar?
Al parecer si, jajajaj por fin un español
It's a great experiment. Will take many years to see how it will play out. One big thing that I have noticed is that when something get's backed by a large stake holder that builds up massive trust in the network. That is when magic happens. These I trust you moments that happens from time to time. That is real wealth. Solid networks of deep Trust.
That will say targeted leverage is what seems to make the best moves in a network. Spreading everything too thin, no trust being created. A few empowered brave souls can move waters. People with big dreams that get leverage. Some are better than others to create leverage effects.
So for example my experience with being a content creator and get leverage from dtube every upvote creates a stronger "I trust you" network effect. It creates massive loyalty in the long term perspective. This is not something that can be looked at in ROI since it's a long game strategy. But the fruits and ROI from that will take a longer time to see. As Steem is just 2 and soon 3 years old I feel people are too fast to come to conclusions about the network. So being open minded is what I also try to be.
I see the Steem Blockchain as an experiment in creating Trust between various nodes in a network. And that it can only survive if the nodes starts to Trust and Listen to each other to create a truly empowered node network. But then people have to see the real value which is relationships and loyalty and having bigger visions. Looking beyond wealth. A very powerful Trust network and Tokens wouldn't even be needed after a while. Since the vision would be higher and more evolved where to take things.
I see stake holders at this moment worry about ROI for the moment which makes me question their long term views if they worry about ROI for the moment it does seem like they are not looking at the longer perspective of 5-10 years down the line. Looking at every moment in ROI terms makes human relationships into a small thing. This movement is bigger than short term profits that is a big focus for many. Humans need sort of to evolve into something that looks beyond the short term.
Thanks again for a great whitepaper and Steem experiment!
Hello I'm Paula I'm from Peru I'm 19 years old and I found this page that I love the people that follow me I'll be following https://steemit.com/@paulavasquez
Wow I keep seeing your comments and keep seeing ppl downvote you, very weird.
Dear @ned , a bit off-topic and alhough I am a small minnow here on Steemit I am hoping your can answer this:
WHY was the viewcount (eyeball) feature that use to be near the other indicators for our posts (such as upvote, votes, comments) regarding our post was REMOVED a few months back?
I've asked many witnesses but none could tell me why Steemit decided to do this.
This really puzzles and dissapoints me (along with countless other Steemians), as it was the BEST indicator to see how many people were actually having a look at our posts.
I see absolutely no advantage of this feature having being removed (unless I am missing something), as it certainly didn't take up much space on the screen.
Any possibility of getting this feature (post view count) back?
Other than that I love this platform and am very grateful for all you guys do for us.
Sincerely,
@libertyacademy
The viewcount is okay, but it's only view count from Steemit.com. There are so many other Steem websites that can generate views.
The answer back then (the question had been asked many times) was that it was "easy to manipulate" (simply reloading the page with F5 apparently) and therefore irrelevant or worse, misguiding. I am not convinced at all by that argument.
Knowing how many people have actually read a post or watched a video is extremely useful. The fact that the "viewcount" indicator was not perfect and could be manipulated should have been a reason to IMPROVE IT in order to make it more precise, not to remove it all together!
It's like: "Oh, you twisted your ankle and are limping now! It would seem that this leg is not helping you walk well! How sad! ... I'll therefore saw off your leg altogether, so you'll be rid of this bad leg that's making you limp!"
Thank you @sorin.lite. This is the most info I got from anyone on the matter. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to fill me in. I like your way of thinking and your analogy at the end is spot on. It boggles the mind how people can create something wonderful like Steemit, but take away something so precious from it without much thought or consideration. I guess there are things that we just have to accept in life, despite their ridiculousness. Too many. God bless you.
@ned @libertyacademy
WHY was the viewcount (eyeball) feature that use to be near the other indicators for our posts (such as upvote, votes, comments) regarding our post was REMOVED a few months back?
wow. That would be great to see. I am also new to this platform. Writing and Creating. Id like to see what my efforts are doing traffic wise, as votes are minimal.
Oh yeah, you seem new... remembering the eye and all...
One would think.
best comment in this whole thread
Thanks. I just find it really sucks that we can't get a single response of why this has happened from anyone at Steemit. Pretty lame.
A pixel tracking could do this, very easy to implement.
Thanks for the suggestion. Can you point me to a resource that would explain how to do this? And are there some drawbacks of doing this? (such as being tracked by unwanted parties)
i heard it wasnt accurate.. its possible that spiders and search engine bots could easily mess with the real numbers.. and indeed it could be abused by people to artificially inflate it.. just a guess really as im not sure if the views included page loads from people without accounts.
asi mismo
@ned delegates to @dtube
@dtube is run by @heimindanger
@heimindanger is a bigot who routinely refers to people as "fag" in a derogatory manner.
Does @ned support bigotry?
Good news
This comment is supported by $10.39 @tipU upvote funded by @phoneinf :)
@tipU voting service guide | STEEM Monsters Lottery | Quick SBD <-> STEEM Exchange | For investors.
nice.
Hello I'm Paula I'm from Peru I'm 19 years old and I found this page that I love the people that follow me I'll be following https://steemit.com/@paulavasquez
You cannot "monetize" or "incentivize" the creation of "quality" content.
Period. No matter how much One tinkers with rewards, whether linear or not, it does nothing to set the standards necessary to achieve any of the goals outlined in the whitepaper. Curation is not about achieving quality, it's about creating an addiction in the users of Steemit. @ned, why don't you tell these people about your psychological goals for the Steemit platform? Do they know you have a degree in Psychology as well as Economics?
Did anybody bother to read this part of the whitepaper?
Steemit is not about the curation of quality content, and no type of reward system will change that.
Quality Cannot Exist Without Standards
Did you?
"large bounties for good content"
The white paper seems to claim that it does reward quality content.
One of the best things about non-linear approach is unpredictability that non only adds more thrill to the experience but also removes the predictability factor from it. I believe this is one of the most detailed post on this topic. Excellent piece of work one more time @teamsteem. You're simply the best!
Appreciated!
I'm fairly new here but I think as a newbie you need the ability to upvote yourself in the beginning as a means to build yourself up. Maybe there should be a monetary cutoff switch where at some point you can't upvote yourself based on your own sp.
Posted using Partiko Android
Then what's the point of buying Steem? So you can reward others? That's fucking stupid.
That's a good point but aren't you gaining by curating with a higher SP?
Posted using Partiko Android
Barely. Those rewards are negligible.
Well look I'm not a technical guy so I don't know all the in's and out's about this crypto but maybe the curation reward should be increased to entyce people to do that instead. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud.
Posted using Partiko Android
Honestly, I'm torn about the issue because I understand the argument both ways. What are your thoughts on it?
Posted using Partiko Android
@TeamSteem... Excellent Questions & Very Valid points of concern...
Will be Good to hear the answers/discussions/responses because a lot is at stake...
Thank You TeamSteem
Cheers !!
Cheers @sacret-agent!
suggestions:
link the voting influence of the lowest powered account to the higheat using a more balanced ratio, I recommend 5:1.
obtain self votes by voting on others, 1:1 ratio.
implement a vote to consume design so that users must first upvote content before having full access.
remove the 6 day payout limit, this insured that good quality content can be supported by future visitors and will favor quality over quantity.
implement notifications for unreplied comments and replies.
allow voting to maximum daily allowance, allowing users to use maximum daily voting power on a single piece of content. This will cut down on spam voting.
i’d love to read what’s you opinion on my comment as it’ll help me in understanding the situation more and support me in more targeted and constructive thinking to resolve the current challenges.
Curation isn't worth it.
Flagging isn't worth it.
Posting isn't worth it.
Self-voting is frowned upon (and not worth it for most).
Why should anyone buy Steem? And an even better question, why should anyone convert to Steem Power?
The first post I totally agree with @berniesanders. Am I going soft?
Enough said... agreed completely, pay to play this inflation/dilution game to break even if you are insane enough to author/curate 24h a day, 365 days a year...
Why should anyone buy into steem or smt?
Can someone from "The Management Team" answer this question?
I do buy steem every week because it's worth it, for 300 bucks you can be on the trending page and be viewed by everyone.
and still no one cares about your shit posts
LOL, so true, @timcliff has even removed your way of seeing how many bots, eurm viewers visited your post.
And how the hell do smt's given away to 'reward creators' convince me to let go of my steem, let alone btc?
I still haven't seen any use cases, outside experimental reward curves, that make me think I need to buy me some sweet steemapp coin.
First you have to believe there will be SMT's.
If they are gonna save us shouldnt it be easy to point to reasons to buy one?
Bernie, I think you are awesome.
See me:
https://steemit.com/blog/@kittykat/i-am-kittykat-just-a-girl-learning-what-this-is-all-about
Let's go on a date
Hi @teamsteem,
I made a full post in reply to your question: post
nice post
The original Steem Whitepaper states:
"If every voter defects by voting for themselves then no currency will end up distributed and the currency as a whole will fail to gain network effect."
It then argues:
"In order to realign incentives and discourage individuals from simply voting for themselves, money must be distributed in a nonlinear manner."
I think so too, Bro! the currency should be circulating and so multiplying.
Improving steemit is all that matters in my opinion. In every endeavor, there is always the choice between listening to your community and using the intelligent feedback for improving your productions OR going against the community. As it is the case with so many things, people need to learn to not take themselves too seriously but put the project in the foreground instead. That's when real progress is made.
This letter actually addressed some issues but too lengthy
I will be waiting for the intellectual discussion among witnesses here so that i can also learn since I am neither a whale nor a witness!
I came across this post two weeks back,what do you have to say about it??
I'm glad to read this!
This dilemma, I think, has divided the platform in apparently unreconcilable bands.
I don't quite understand the numbers, but I wonder if there have been in-between options proposed so that the whales and dolphins (as some of them have expressed) do not see it as a waste of their hard-worked resources to vote for other people's posts (increase of curation percentage, proportional to SP?).
The thing is that some users have blantantly expressed that they don't see it right/fair to benefit others with their votes , as if others are not doing the same with theirs, especially minnows. It's a sad reflection of the inequalities of the "real" world and no matter how oftern it is stated that people have equal opportunity to make the same amount of money/SP, here we can see how much complicated that can be.
Maybe the end result of this dispute will be the corroboration of close humanity is from salvation or damnation (and I'm only losely using the terms in their religious denotation).
It is not unreconcilable. Steem is evolving.
That's encouraging. I really hope so.
What about people with 100s of accounts?
Posted using Partiko Android
Steem is stake based so there's no issue.
Then it will go back to single votes being worthless. Wouldn't whales just spread their stake across different accounts to self vote?
That wouldn't give them any advantages.
They would get all the rewards by focusing their upvotes. they would do the opposite and form cartells
lulz, right... like it has been and always will be.
Ownership of STEEM tokens is highly concentrated in the hands of only a few dozen early miners.
And they sing the mantra, "money talks and bullshit walks" ...
I am sure, "Destiny" will come with its own SMT. Maybe that's the reason our leader is powering down like there is no tomorrow. Just because STEEM is dying... ohhh not because of a failed proof of concept, or bad luck, but by design.
STEEM will crater and never recover.
Let's see what happends when SMT are here.
Ohhh and who are these Whales? who are these Witnesses? Are they all part of the management team?
Well then maybe we should go back to it and see how it works. Along with a 5 day payout instead of 7 to be aligned with the new delegation time.
Posted using Partiko Android
Its actually a disadvantage since it uses up more RC
Hi @teamsteem I'm a bot, and wanted you to know that I've upvoted and re-steemed your post to help you with your promotion efforts! -exp
Excellent point of view
I'm glad you're joining this conversation @dobartim!
I have a totally different concept from Steemit if we want to have a massive number of new users and a large number of successful bloggers.
We need to make a referral system, in this way we get a lot of users and investors.
I would reduce the earnings of investors to 65% for personal voting on personal posts.
10% would get a user from voting on other posts.
25% 25% would be divided into 5 levels of depth of 5% on the referral-network marketing system from all earnings on posts and comments.
I would put conditions that must be fulfilled on a daily and weekly basis if we want to have a profit of 5 depths.
In this way, we get a great mass of new users-investors and a great quality of posts and activities. The focus on technology is great, but the focus on the network of people is even better because it brings money, the value of Steem and Steemit, and we all benefit from it.
The reward system is ok, this is not a web site for donations, Steemit is a business network and we need to align it with the social masses and I give a proposal that I am very sure to work in the interest of all users.
I would like to see you at SteemFest but I'm not in a position because I have scheduled business days.
If you want, I invite you to see us in Macedonia, Skopje after SteemFest.
Those might be very good idea but they might turn out to be very difficult to implement. They are worth exploring.
I already have other projects after Steem Fest or I would have seriously considered it. Macedonia looks like a cool place!
Yes, it is, welcome like a friend and for a business project.
This post has received a 86.59 % upvote from @boomerang.
You got a 100.00% upvote from @upmewhale courtesy of @teamsteem!
Earn 100% earning payout by delegating SP to @upmewhale. Visit http://www.upmewhale.com for details!
I just hope that good will prevail for the good of steem community, nothing more to say @teamsteem
May God bless you all and give you more wisdom and upholding justice.
I disagree, this just gives more powerful to large SP selfvoters, it prevents nothing.
I agree with the underlying principal of what youre saying, I specifcally find 3 to 5 new users every day (new to me not new to steem) and make sure I comment and interact with them along with upvote any human meaningful posts I see.
So I don't think the network needs any code changes in regards to this issue, just maybe some better networking from the users.
Hello @teamsteem
My name is @pitar
I came out with this
Please encourage me
I need more steem to do better one that gonna cover all..
God bless you @teamsteem
Hi @teamsteem, I think that it is good that you raise N^2 vs linear debate again. The survey conducted by @cervantes indicates that the top witnesses are against N^1.3 (mild super-linear) but it wasn't discussed in much depth in that post.
Before too much is thrown around regarding solutions. The problem/s we need to solve need to be clearly stated otherwise the average Steemium is going to question what all the fuss is about. What would help would be a post clearly stating the problems. Are we talking about a rewards problem? Quality of content problem? User interface problem? Content discovery problem? Flow of information problem? All of the above or some of the above. I believe it is a mixture of all of the above.
People generally try to get the highest rewards for the least amount of work. The low effort options, at the moment, are more rewarding than the higher effort options such as creating content and manual curation. Rewards should align to value added to the community. That is just a very brief summary of what I think the problem/s are. This should be articulated a lot further. Once the problem/s are clearly articulated (i.e. majority of the users can understand the problems). We should discuss possible approaches and solutions.
Mostly likely a combination of solutions are required. 50/50 curation split plus separate pool for downvotes appears quite popular with witnesses and fairly split amongst users. You discuss N^2 rewards as a response to 'selfish behaviour'. All these are Steem solutions. The weaknesses of the UI has not been discussed in combination with Steem solutions. There is a lot that can be done with a user interface. Steempeak has already taken a step forward with the use of saved topics, trails and users.
It would be good to look at as many possible solutions and scenarios and how they would work together to solve problems that have been clearly identified and understood by the majority.
Thank you for your very eloquent and on point contribution.
good point! Steemians must help build, establish, grow and multiply the crypto world. at the end of the way, we all will benefit from this.
yes, we really should!
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Nice
Yes a solution to this must be there so that rather self voting the chance to the small accounts should also be provided or else steemit will a platform where either you should have huge money to buy steem power or a friend who owns it, even i am was seeking for the solution lets see what can be the solution.
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Very gooD read, right now if you don’t self vote you are “losing” to everyone else.