As from our discussions, I also believe that this is predominantly a problem of misaligned economic incentives. I also don't think it's inherently true that stake weighted voting necessarily leads to rampant bid bots/self voting and a trending page that resembles the spam folder of my inbox, it really all depends on how the economics of the system work.
A blockchain protocol needs to have a sound economic system that correctly incentivizes behavior that adds value to the platform and deters behavior that is harmful to the platform.
With our current system of linear rewards with 25% curation, what is the best way for most large stakeholders to maximize value? Vote selling, self voting etc. Then is it a surprise that 50-70% of all active Steem Power is participating in these actions? No, it's completely expected. Well is this behavior good for the system as a whole? Of course not, it completely undermines the ability of this place to function as a content discovery platform, which inevitably leads to Steem price under performing.
As I've argued before, this is not a problem of individual misbehavior or bad culture or inability to discover good content or bad ui etc. We've just got a flawed economic system that provides the very action we don't want with the highest rewards.
And realizing the fact that if all the stakeholders behaved contrary to their direct economic interest it'll be better for everyone including themselves is not a solution. No individual stakeholder can entirely trust the voluntary generosity of other stakeholders. And the only way to defend your own stake is to contribute to the very behavior that's making it worse for everyone. This is why you're finding it more and more difficult to continue being a 'sucker'.
I still believe with the right economic adjustments, we can make desirable behavior provide competitive or even superior returns to the problematic profit maximization behavior we have currently. Something like 50% curation, modest superlinear (which would incidentally solve most of the spam problems we currently have as well) and increased downvote incentives would be a good rough guide.
Lifting curation is a direct 'cost' as it basically is just a method of reclaiming your vote rewards (100% curation is basically = 100% self votes barring minor distribution differences). However I believe it's necessary for curation to have a chance of competing against the aforementioned behavior that's bad for the platform. Of course 100% curation would mostly defeat any incentive for content creators to create any good content so that can't be a real solution. Therefore, the idea is to come up with the minimum curation % that could still be reasonably competitive to current profit maximization behaviors when other adjustments are made. I believe that 50% is probably in the right ballpark.
The other two adjustments (modest superlinear and increased downvote incentives, for example separate downvoting pool) have the advantage of having no direct cost to the system. Admittedly they have significant indirect costs. On balance though, I think with the right numbers they can push the tip the advantage in favor of good curation over vote selling/self voting when it comes to profit maximization behaviors.
The idea is not to prevent people from maximizing profits. Relying on the collective and voluntary generosity of all the large stakeholders is a recipe for failure. The idea is to align profit maximization with behavior that's better for the content discovery initiatives of the platform.
With respect to SMTs and Good Person Tokens (1 account 1 vote, oracle etc) as a solution, I won't get too much into the details, but I'd say the best realistic case is that it's too far away and we'll need something in the interim. SMTs likely won't come until the end of the year (at best) and they'll need time to mature before they can really help in terms of content discovery and curation (even assuming they work perfectly).
Witnesses and developers should make changing our underlying economics to better align with good content discovery behavior a higher priority.
As I try to spread the ideas below I add my comment not only under the main article but also as response to your comment, because otherwise I guess you wouldn't get aware of it:
Some time ago I formulated some ideas to make self-voting, circle-voting and spamming less attractive by ...
@clayop had a similar idea.
When I wrote these articles some time ago I really had hoped that more witnesses/big account holders would have joined the discussion!
This is an incredibly important subject to discuss. @kevinwong , and some excellent points, @trafalgar
I think something like what @exyle explained here is going to happen eventually.
This way to go is placed somewhere in the middle: The big guns here will start financing / supporting projects instead of individuals. Projects that could give them a nice ROI, compared to selling upvotes. A REAL, LOGICAL OPTION for them to invest in. And these projects will benefit individual creators in different ways. They could be a middle ground: Good for the whales, good for the minnows.
No more "doing it for the right reasons" or "your quality does not deserve it!" or "effing trending page!!"
Unless they really re-think the curating system and make it actually worth it against the alternative, I think this is a more down-to-earth solution.
Incentives are what changes things, not decent or moral behaviour. This is true in every other field - Cheaper solar panels and windmills are what it takes to get off fossil fuel for example - not combined friendly thinking.
You must be from the UK. Such good humor in the vid. Unfortunately, for now, you are right. Incentives are just that: motivation to change.
I am from Denmark, but most Brits who live here says the humour, and the weather is very much the same.
Denmark...the land of the happy socialists. At least that's how most in the US see you folks. I'm composing a post today on what I call Cooperative Abundance... a concept that may, one day, effectively replace socialism, at least in part.
Many blessings. Hope to see you around.
We are not socialists, but a combination of Libertarians and social democrats (which is what you can call social conservatives). There never was a revolution here and we have private property.
We pay high income adjusted taxes to have a free health system, free education etc. That might be the reason for the confusion.
Blessings to you too. I am around most days :)
Interesting. Perhaps you are not aware but frequently when "progressives" here in the States want to promote socialism they point to Denmark as a good example.
Peace.
Socialism is a bit of a rubber-concept. You could use socialism in a broad general sense meaning a system that takes care of its poor, but almost all western societies except the US has a public health care system for example. If that is what the progressives mean, we Scandinavians are socialists, but so are the Brits, the French, the Canadians etc.
And then it can be a system where you have collective ownership of the means of production. Like communism. We are not that kind of system. We are still a capitalist system.
I think that the US discussion has been a little off when it come to what socialism actually is since McCarthy or maybe even before that.
...and if we took away the $5.4 trillion in subsidies to petroleum industry, that would de-incentivize using petroleum...
There is that too.
Any reasons to think this would be better than n2?
I do support modest superlinear (~n^1.3ish, but capped after a certain point, lets say after 1,000,000 sp worth of votes, then linear afterwards) in conjunction with higher curation (~50%) and increased downvote incentives
I think with n^1.3 you probably get most of the benefits of n^2 (wisdom of the crowds, forcing all 'profitable' behavior into the light, making it difficult to put a price on vote buying, higher curation incentives, gets rid of all 'profitable' spamming etc.) at a fraction of the cost (whales less overpowered, minnows less underpowered)
Basically at n^2, someone with 10x your voting power has a vote value that is 100x that of yours. In other words, they get 10x more voting power PER sp.
Under n^1.3 someone with 10x your voting power only has a vote value that's 20x that of yours. So their voting power per sp is only 2x that of someone with 10x fewer sp. It gives minnows a fairer chance and should be significant enough to enjoy most of the benefits of n^2 outlined above, especially paired with higher curation and more downvote incentives.
Basically it all comes down to trying to get profit maximization behavior to shift from what it is now to actually voting for good content (at least subjectively), but at the least cost in terms of trade offs.
So sure, you can do this by making curation 100%, or with a curve that's n^10 (extreme examples to illustrate this point), but the trade offs are too high. The idea is to shift things around just enough to move the economic equilibrium away from brainless vote selling/self voting but leave as much on the table for content creators and minnows' voting power as possible so they have a worthwhile time being here.
Which retard at stinc originally thought to exclude the 50/50 SP/SBD split from the options curators can choose from as rewards? They really shouldn't sit in on any future discussions of economics pertaining to the blockchain.
Personally I think that it only makes sense that curating should give >50% of the rewards. Think of almost every great artist in history. Were the patrons of arts themselves the best artists and content producers? Fuck no. But wealthy people with discriminating tastes were somewhat successful in funding artists who were good at their jobs.
There is obviously no necessity that just being wealthy means someone has good tastes, or that having a lot of steem power from some shitty pre-mine makes you omniscient when it comes to choosing good art. But if we use common sense there's a clear pattern that arises when you look at people who are interested in art and creative pursuits versus those who are interested in wealth accumulation, and the pattern is that there is not much overlap between the two groups.
Wealth-maximizing individuals aren't going to judge their own content harshly, it's a very sordid affair to publish crap to self-vote or circle-vote on steemit. If we want the network to grow we really do need to minimize the incentive for such individuals to produce any content at all of their own.
It's quite likely that this was all designed as a nice get-rich-quick scheme for the founders, and we're all being strung along as a sick joke, but it would be nice if they at least pretended to know how and why other social media platforms are successful if they're going to be in charge of the one we're forced to use.
Ill speak from a minnow point of view since i think even the voice of the small stake holders has some value.
I agree with your sentiments to some degree. What i think we need to take into account outside the 50%, 60%, 70% etc loss in potential profit for large stake holders is the external effect that stems from our actions on blockchain.
Yes... In the short term it might seem you are at a loss of potential profit but as in real life societal growth depends on more then individual maximization of profit in short term.
Acting in a way that Kevin is doing is adding to the value of the platform. Acting in the way those that self upvote, delegate massive amounts of SP to bots, is hurting the growth of steem.
Our collective approach has a direct implication on the $ value.
What Kevin is seeing is lower gains in comparison to those that act in the way that is a detriment to the platform. And yes i completely understand his frustration.
Throughout human history more often then not those that act to detriment of society profit the most. Dan realized this which is why he put in a constitution on EOS. Pure ungoverned model does not work. People are so flawed that they are willing to completely kill any opportunity for long term gains in order to maximize short term ones. And here the few have all the power.
What we are seeing now is what happens when you let people completely govern themselves without any set rules.
They destroy themselves.
This economic model could have worked if human beings werent human beings.
It depends on one's goals. Are they long term goals of growth and expansion in this emerging trends...or...do you want higher short term rewards at the expense of poorer and poorer long term growth?
People have a choice...let's see what happens.
It does, and is a main factor but it isn't quite difficult to solve this.
I think this issue of excessive vote selling has been in the back of minds of the many regulars on Steem and I wonder what is the consensus between the whales on this? Do the big stake holders even have a place to talk about issues like this?
Can I be so curious why you choose to have 2 accounts? And how do you do that? Do you need to login and logout all the time? And how do you use the upvotes for both accounts? I'm just guessing this takes quite a lot of time?
Great comment @trafalgar ! I am in full agreement, and all ready commented in @kevinwong s latest post! following you now and I really hope these suggestions get noticed, great job!👍👍👍