Everyone's complaining about the "whales" taking all of the rewards....what about Steemit, inc. employees who are sucking up over 27% (on Feb. 10) of the total curation rewards on a given day?
Here is an example from 2/10:
Feel free to check out the data for yourself: https://steemdb.com/labs/rshares?date=2017-02-10
Note: I have just scanned other days and this appears to be a common trend.
@berniesanders: your data is not reward distribution, but rshares contribution, which means those curators are actively voting. You can see they're linear to SP.
For reward contribution, check this link: https://steemdb.com/labs/curation?date=2017-02-14
//Edit: self-upvoted for visibility.
Their accounts also distribute the reward pool to a lot of good users, which is a significantly larger amount of potential steem then the curation reward pool.
I suppose one way to fix this would be to allow an account to refuse curation rewards much like you can (and you did here) for posting rewards. The "whale" accounts would then have their curation rewards spread out to all of the other accounts that voted on the posts.
And also away from a lot of good users. just sayin. The same pool still gets distributed wether they vote or not. Them voting makes the distribution different than it would have been otherwise, not necessarily better.
This seems like the easiest solution to me. "Refuse curation rewards" could simply be added to your account settings. I have no issue with Steemit devs wanting to be compensated for their work, but it does suck way too much out of the reward pool. Or maybe even a slider to reduce rewards by a certain percentage, just like you can choose to vote with only a fraction of your voting power. I don't think it's fair to say that the devs can't have any rewards at all, but maybe there's some middle ground that can be reached.
This, of course, requires a hard fork to implement, which means that it's a minimum of 2-3 months away (proposal, community feedback/review, implementation, testing, rollout) and would detract from our velocity on other items in our roadmap.
It's certainly a good idea, but I don't know if prioritizing such a feature in the pipeline to redirect 4% of total daily rewards (especially considering some portion of that 4% is actually being returned to the guilds doing the voting) is worth the loss of focus on our other critical improvements.
As we scale up as a team and organization we'll be able to do more things at once. Right now we are a small team.
(Yes, this is your prompt to refer world-class c++, javascript, and mobile devs to [email protected].)
I know a lot of C++ devs but sadly all of them are happily employed and not looking for new work. ;-)
When you put it that way, as affecting only 4% of total daily rewards, then yeah I wouldn't say it's a critical issue. More of a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. I don't know how much overall bandwidth you guys have, but the roadmap is an excellent plan and I definitely would prefer the team to stay focused on delivering those features. Any extra low hanging fruit that can be picked up along the way is simply icing on the cake.
It's nice to have external confirmation of our reasonableness sometimes. :^)
So what you are saying in the post's title is a lie and you know it.@berniesanders, you are participating in @curie project too so I'm pretty sure you are aware that all the voting power of devs account you mentioned is delegated to the team of curators so do the curation rewards as well. Look at my account's transfers - 100% of the curation rewards goes to @curie's curators.
@val-a this is not true. According to these links:
Your accounts have been getting around 1000 STEEM of curation reward every day, but only ~1000 STEEM transferred to @curie every one week or two. Perhaps there are other transfers that I'm not aware of?
@abit, there is a virtual pool vesting for 2 years, so my payments follow the vesting schedule. I'm considering to change it to 3 months vesting to catch up with Steem's economy changes, but my agreement with @curie states clearly that they eventually will have 100% of the rewards.
Got it. With the old 104-week rule, it's just not divesting quick enough when the pool size was set too small.
From the conversations I have with people here on a daily basis, I would say it's a safe bet that without curie, steemit would have a fraction of its user retention. It has gotten to the point where most people are afraid to speak up for the guilds, but I've found a large majority are extremely grateful for what they do. Now that I no longer qualify for curie I was fortunate to be picked up by Ned's guild... because without the guilds, what could I hope to earn? What could most people hope for here? That someone with a lot of sp happens to be on the home page when their post appears there? Aside from the handful of people who happen to be friends with larger investors, I'd say the chances of a post being hit would be like winning the lottery. I appreciate what you do, and even though many are silent right now, I know I'm not in the minority.
That's you, what about the rest of your coworkers??
I don't know exact numbers, but what I know for sure - all the devs value long term ecosystem growth over the short term profit, reaping curation rewards pool is definitely not the strategy anybody who invested any significant amount of their time or money would chose.
Actions speak louder than words.
Don't be too harsh, @berniesanders.
It's hard to know the right choices to make in life.
An obvious choice for you, might look extremely troubling to a group of developers who all need to not only agree, but actually implement the changes in a way that works.
Things are just difficult in real life sometimes, so we need to be understanding, instead of harsh.
This is actually one of the reasons why I'm not a fan of Steem Guild. They revive dormant accounts and vote 150-200 times per day. It crowds out other curators and lessens the influence of all other users. It's better for minnows and dolphins to just leave sleeping whales alone.
it's a good point!
What do you mean by "They revive dormant accounts"?
Im not sure there's much else to this except that steemit inc employees now account for most of the biggest whales (because they committed not to power down for three months after HF16). Not that that isn't troubling in and of itself.
Since curation rewards are mostly linear, one would expect them to vary somewhat linearly with vests... and thats what they seem to be doing on the linked chart.
For example, you seem to have earned 1.22 percent with your 1.843 GV -- about .66% of the reward pool per GV.
Michael (.96%/GV), ned (.94%/gv) and val (.87%/GV) all outperformed you for reward per stake, but not by a huge amount (but they also voted more than you casting 183, 188, and about 120 (weighted average) votes to your 65). But james underperformed you at about .39%/GV (again, the number of votes cast seems relevant.). Dan/DTM, who isnt even on the list, underperformed you by a considerable amount. When you factor in dan, steemit inc is probably performing about on par with you and most of the other whales on reward % gained / stake.
One of the things that seems to hurt your performance aside from casting fewer votes, IMO, is that you always seem to vote after val-b in the posts where youre voting as a part of curie.
As you have very unique position in Steemit ecosystem, I'm glad you're voicing yor opinions of the mistakes made within it. Thank you.
Let's see that common trend in a graph
If you can pull the data, we'd love to see it!
I intend to do a charts project on steemdata so I might! This would be a good one.
Interesting data brought fourth berniesanders!
The developers have seemingly made a honest effort to ensure they remain paid. Can't blame a person for wanting to make money but at the same time kind of sucks for the rest of us without heavily SP bloated accounts.
There's a flip side to that coin. These accounts are reaping curation rewards because they're voting on stuff. What happens when high-SP accounts vote stuff up?
The curation rewards pool is a minority of the total rewards granted each day, and this is only 27% of that.
Long story short? Author rewards are more lucrative than curation rewards.
Is this not the way it was designed before you were brought in?
No point stating obvious network mechanics that shipped with the whitepaper. I believe the issue here is that berniesanders is trying to bring to light is that a large share of the curation rewards are being snapped up by Steemit Inc.
Yes, it's a tiny amount compared to author reward in comparison and I do see your point. But sadly it really isn't a point that makes the situation look any better or worse. :/
I think there is a point in stating the obvious here because the premise of this post seems to gloss over it. A third of curation rewards is simply not that much, in percentage or in real value. For the day in question it's about $3-400 in real dollars.
I don't think that warrants pitchforks, especially when the only alternative is to not curate.
Is that the real thrust of this post, that steemit staff should not vote on anything at all? That's an argument that has pros and cons, but I'm not sure if that's what's being made here or not.
Sure, At the current rates it's a piss in the bucket. I agree with that.
But if by some miracle we hit a mass adoption event and the network's worth sky rockets that 3rd of the curation rewards could be a considerable sum!
4% is 4%. It's simply not that important.
(PS: Those accounts hold 7% of stake, so they're being under-rewarded relative to their stake, presuming no author rewards.)
Nesting.
This comparison is totally unfair. According to this, authors should get zero.
Excellent point.
Hi @berniesanders - for the record, even though I'm part of that discussion I'm not exactly "complaining" about "whales taking all the rewards". My position is that to attract and encourage many new users to the platform, we want to build an economy where the "regular users" can feel like they have a chance to be a part of it.
There is a fine balance to strike (which I don't claim to have the answer to) in that a regular user should feel that by engaging in the platform (and possibly buying more SP) that they will be able to work their way up. It also should not be "free easy money" either though. My personal opinion is that the current "mountain" that a new user has to climb is too steep for most people.
I'm sure you know, but there is a discussion going on to eliminate curation rewards. While the original proposal was to create two separate classes (whale and regular user), i think it has now morphed into just being a proposal to eliminate curation reward and divide the amount equally among all SP holders.
I think one of the 'problems' with curation rewards right now (which your post at least touches on) is that to get anywhere significant with the "curation game", you need 1. a lot of SP, and 2. to either spend a huge amount of time on the platform, or build a bot. Also, the formula (with the 30 min 'limit') are complicated. None of these make it appealing to new users (IMO).
Yeah, the point of Steemit isn't for the developers to just get rich. Steemit is for everyone.
That's why we use it, and not Facebook or Reddit, or whatever else. (or at least, we use Steemit too)
Steemit is for the people, and it'd be much more preferred to think that intermediate users, such as myself, have legitimate voting power. It's nice to think "just buy the power", but not everyone has the money to just gain voting power. I mean, it asks for a LOT of money, to be able to give the amount of money that'd allow a content creator to go buy a taco or something. Yet, if I did have that power, I'd be that much more dedicated to Steemit.
The most important feature of Steemit is the ability to give to others, without losing anything of your own.
You can vote on whatever articles you like, and know you're actually helping people.
But I can't feel that, because I'm just not rich enough. Oh well. =']
Heh, I feel the same way. These days I'm fairly ecstatic if my vote manages to budge the $ indicator by a few cents, and that's after having spent a considerable amount of time & money to acquire thousands of SP. I can't imagine the euphoria of actually being able to give someone a dollar with my vote. There is definitely something to be said for a more equal SP distribution.
If you're going to propose getting rid of curation rewards, you might as well eliminate SP as well. There's no other use for it, hence all of the powering down.
Also, good luck getting Dan on board with something he didn't dream up himself. Rewards and "power" aren't the problem with Steem/Steemit. It's the ridiculously complicated mess, lack of marketing, slow feature releases, etc. etc. etc. that are preventing adoption.
What if SP earned interest, and curation rewards gone? ..and not like the crazy inflation rate, but a decent rate of return. 10%? 15%? Maybe a sliding scale on amount of SP held.
Regardless if voting influence of SP caps or doesn't cap, as in the recent talks, one can then earn decent interest for being invested in Steemit via Steem Power, and have influence on rewards.
I find myself voting on newer articles because I know will do well, just for the rewards..., same reason I use steemvoteer on a few authors. I know not ideal, but if they are crap or something I hate, I wouldn't. Because of this I would like to see the voting power used up quicker at a higher "power". Such as double my power on half the voting... then one can truly influence and vote for things they actually like. It seems we are allowed to use way to many upvotes, and if we wanted more, that is what the sliding % scale is for.
Maybe the Steem formula doesn't allow for this, I am just thinking out-loud. I am not on any side of the issues, most are over my head, just optimistic the best changes (or none) are implemented.
I'm honestly not that concerned regardless of what is done at this point as I know it will be changed 3 months later...
There isnt enough in curation rewards to do that. If you found some way to exclude the steemit account (and im skeptical that theres a way to do that) you'd be able to offer around 2% apr.
2%? That is all. This is surprising because of talks about ending curation and giving it to whales/moderators. That isn't enough. Thanks for the info!
At that point, all that would be left is influence.
on what? the only rational reason someone would have to pay real money for that influence is to monetize it by self-upvoting.
Not true. Will be writing a post on it soon.
If the post is "so i can use my awesome curation skills to make steemit better and cause the value of my purchased sp to increase" im going to make fun of you. just sayin
lol, well not going to lie - that is a large part of it. prepare to make fun ;)
I think getting rid of curation rewards is a terrible idea. Curation rewards are a major incentive for people to vote. If you took that away, what would you replace it with? Distributing that Steem evenly to all users is simply a different form of the Steem Power interest we used to have.
True, to actually benefit at all from curating (and not make it a full time job) you need to get into the bot game. But there are easy to use services geared towards the average Steemit user (AutoSteem, Steem Voter) that make it simple enough. Anyone serious about curation will stumble across one such service eventually, as I did.
I agree. It's also an incentive for smart people to dig for good content and literally curate the site, which is important!
Is this a good thing? As a humble sort of person, I think it would be more reasonable to think that a person votes because they truly enjoyed the content that was posted.
I think many people do, but like it or not greed is a major motivating factor as well. Without curation rewards, we'd probably see a noticeable drop off in voting, and all the bots / auto voting services would pretty much shutdown overnight. Although, since the size of the content creation reward pool would not diminish, the net effect might be to make votes worth more. Each one that you get would be precious.
Yeah, that's sometimes true, but I consider my reputation to be rather high, while my SP is very low, despite writing for awhile, and never powering down.
I'll never be able to actually invest my own money into Steemit, because I work for Steemit publishing my content here exclusively. So they already get half my money.
Yet, I'm extremely displeased with my inability to have a useful vote.
I know the whole "your vote isn't worthless, it starts a trail" thing is noble, but there is a clear difference between a whale/tuna, and a minnow, and it's pretty annoying that I only get half the features that Steem offers, and will never be able to afford anything greater, just because the actual amount of money I'd need to invest to get true voting power is ridiculously high.
Any solution?
Unfortunately I don't think there are any easy answers. It's tempting to say "well just make everyone's vote equal", but that introduces its own set of problems (big investors feel cheated + no incentive to actually hold a lot of SP). If only the disparity between the larger & smaller accounts wasn't so vast... the tough question is how can that be solved in a fair way that doesn't give anyone a raw deal.
Yeah, I would like the bot voting to stop. As a writer, I don't think I care one bit if some bot votes for me, not in a system where a REAL user's vote is worth more.
Why not have votes give money based on both reputation AND Steem Power?
Just give it a little math formula, like "Voting power = SP * 1.(reputation)" or something. That'd be like 1.62 for me. That'd allow people who are big fans of the community to have a powerful vote, as well as people with money and a lot reputation.
That means there will not be two whales: Reliable content creators, AND people who invest money into the platform.
Not only that, but block money for self-votes. This seems obvious even without any other modification.
Yeah, don't take my math formula too seriously, an actual formula that'd work in practice would probably be different.
I definitely support this. I've always thought self voting is kind of weird, and don't do it myself.
An interesting idea, but I wonder if this would just make things even more lopsided. My feeling is that people with high SP are generally also the ones with high reputation, so adding a reputation multiplier might just give even more voting power to elite users at the expense of the hoards of average minnows. Granted, those with high reputation have worked hard to get where they are, so perhaps they deserve a bit of an edge. The difficulty is in balancing it so the disparity is not so great as to make too many people feel that their votes don't matter.
For the record, I made this comic, but that wasn't steemit-related in the original, but some people may think that this suits this topic :)
Which is why I shifted my efforts to mine & invest in Burstcoin. (Alot more $ and people are nice @ Burstnation)
Thanks for the info
thx for sharing
wang in the lead showing 331 votes that day
Curation rewards are 15% of the total rewards pool.
This is 27% of that 15%.
We are discussing 4% of total rewards.
And that makes it all better? It's still 27% of the curation rewards, exactly like I said.
It is my personal opinion that it does pretty much "make it all better". I don't think single-digit anything really warrants pitchforks. The alternative is that steemit staff do not curate content at all, but I don't think that's a feasible strategy. (It's also worth noting that several staff members have delegated their voting to Curie.)
The de-emphasis of curation rewards to author rewards is not an accident. The primary way to earn rewards is via authorship.
Curation rewards going to staff as a result of staff SP being used to curate the site is an unfortunate side-effect of the necessary action of curating good content to make the site more attractive to users.
It would be great if votes could decline curation rewards at vote-time (or per account) but it's not on our roadmap right now due to the relatively small negative impact versus time/energy/diversion of effort required to fix it.
Thanks for the information. I will follow you.
The continuing saga of "The Whales and the Have Nots" ("The Haves and the Have Nots")
As a minnow caught in the middle of all this drama not having the full story or the knowledge to understand most of what is going on... this is what I see. I hope this can be settled in the near future. I want to invite everyone I know to Steemit because I love this community but . . .
Well it surely makes sense why 'development' is going 'slow'