I have been thinking a lot, lately, about the Voting System, Rewards System and especially the distribution of Steem Power. @dan (@dantheman) has done several posts on the subject and the devs and whales like @steemit, @itsascam, @berniesanders, @ned, @val are working feverishly on trying to distribute SP to more people so that more people have Power behind their votes.
It is a crucial element to Steemit's long-term viability that more people have Steem Power so that more quality content from a larger source of author's reaches the masses (front page). So the fastest way I can think of to distribute Steem Power is to allow it to be Gifted (from one user to another).
Q. Why would Steemit allow "gifting"?
A. It would allow rapid distribution of Steem Power!
Q. Why would anyone "gift" their hard earned and valuable Steem Power?
A. Because having 1,000 Dolphins that can upvote content instead of a few dozen whales will increase the value of Steemit.com, increase the attraction for new members, raise the value of Steemit's Market Share as well as the value of Steem Power, Steem and Steem Dollars.
Q. How would Steemit implement such a feature?
A. That is easy, add a "Transfer" feature to Steem Power just like Steem and Steem Dollars currently have. Shouldn't be more than a few lines of code to enable such a feature.
Q. How should whales distribute their Steem Power.
A. Ideally they would take the Total SP in their wallets, divide it in half (keeping half for themselves) and then distribute the remaining half equally to 100 Users - checking to make sure no one else has "Gifted" a large amount of SP to those 100 users.
Q. What advantages would this have?
A. Well if the top 50 whales "Gifted" half their SP to 100 unique users you would now gain a whopping 5,000 Dolphins that could upvote content and actually make a difference in the visibility of the content as well as the financial reward to the Author of the content.
The Math:
| Top 50 Whales | |||
| Whale Name | Total SP | Distributed SP | Amount per Giftee |
| ned | 3,927,621 | 1,963,811 | 19638.105 |
| dan | 3,054,029 | 1,527,015 | 15270.145 |
| blocktrades | 2,522,910 | 1,261,455 | 12614.55 |
| jamesc | 2,179,259 | 1,089,630 | 10896.295 |
| ben | 2,078,349 | 1,039,175 | 10391.745 |
| berniesanders | 2,057,367 | 1,028,684 | 10286.835 |
| smooth | 1,977,346 | 988,673 | 9886.73 |
| dantheman | 1,740,951 | 870,476 | 8704.755 |
| Val-a | 1,903,527 | 951,764 | 9517.635 |
| poloniex | 1,354 | 677 | 6.77 |
| mottler | 1,420,165 | 710,083 | 7100.825 |
| tombstone | 1,271,734 | 635,867 | 6358.67 |
| steemed | 1,096,136 | 548,068 | 5480.68 |
| itsascam | 1,050,181 | 525,091 | 5250.905 |
| rainman | 1,035,842 | 517,921 | 5179.21 |
| Val-b | 960,001 | 480,001 | 4800.005 |
| Michael-b | 944,929 | 472,465 | 4724.645 |
| Michael-a | 881,328 | 440,664 | 4406.64 |
| summon | 887,524 | 443,762 | 4437.62 |
| blackjack | 681,964 | 340,982 | 3409.82 |
| bittrex | 1,354 | 677 | 6.77 |
| pharesim | 587,654 | 293,827 | 2938.27 |
| cloop1 | 546,368 | 273,184 | 2731.84 |
| steempty | 464,706 | 232,353 | 2323.53 |
| abit | 419,986 | 209,993 | 2099.93 |
| wang | 452,230 | 226,115 | 2261.15 |
| firstclass | 450,216 | 225,108 | 2251.08 |
| riverhead | 451,282 | 225,641 | 2256.41 |
| complexring | 452,273 | 226,137 | 2261.365 |
| skywalker | 430,918 | 215,459 | 2154.59 |
| roadscape | 426,906 | 213,453 | 2134.53 |
| arhag | 402,017 | 201,009 | 2010.085 |
| xeldal | 423,736 | 211,868 | 2118.68 |
| wackou | 410,406 | 205,203 | 2052.03 |
| fuzzyvest | 405,767 | 202,884 | 2028.835 |
| batel | 403,067 | 201,534 | 2015.335 |
| steemit200 | 390,846 | 195,423 | 1954.23 |
| clayop | 372,539 | 186,270 | 1862.695 |
| enki | 364,515 | 182,258 | 1822.575 |
| witness.svk | 356,688 | 178,344 | 1783.44 |
| freedom | 360,650 | 180,325 | 1803.25 |
| nextgencrypto | 348,894 | 174,447 | 1744.47 |
| proskynneo | 355,692 | 177,846 | 1778.46 |
| smooth.witness | 351,442 | 175,721 | 1757.21 |
| kushed | 345,657 | 172,829 | 1728.285 |
| bob | 331,481 | 165,741 | 1657.405 |
| silversteem | 301,094 | 150,547 | 1505.47 |
| alice | 293,468 | 146,734 | 1467.34 |
| au1nethyb1 | 289,084 | 144,542 | 1445.42 |
| bitcoin2016 | 287,227 | 143,614 | 1436.135 |
| Average(s) | 863,014 | 431,507 | 4315.068 |
That works out to "Gifting" 4300+ SP to 5,000 Fellow Steemians and that is with only the top 50 whales gifting half their Steem Power. If the whales are generous there could be even more Dolphins swimming around in the Steemit Ocean.
Updated Ideas concerning this:
A. Allow only Whales (over 100,000 SP) to "Gift" their SP
B. Require the "gifted SP" be 1/2 their total SP
C. Require the "gifted SP" to be equally distributed amongst 100 Minnows (could be randomly picked by the system or hand picked by the whale)
D. Require that no "gifted SP" goes to someone with 10k SP or higher. (Should prevent multiple whales Gifting the same minnows)
E. Make the "Gifted SP" part of the giftee's total SP: non-transferable or withdrawable (power down) EVER!
PS - Feel free to gift me Steem or Steem Dollars and I will use all of it to "Power Up" further so my little 4-5 cent votes get bigger.
This proposal won't work. You call the proposed operation a "gift", but really it is a transfer. The whole point of even having SP in the first place is that it's not conveniently transferrable or fractionable, and therefore hard to sell [1].
If you make Steem Power transferrable, then you're setting up the conditions for there to be an open market for Steem Power, which will basically make Steem useless (why transfer Steem when you can just transfer an equivalent amount of Steem Power) and make it so Steem Power is no longer a long-term commitment (because you can just "gift" your Steem Power to someone paying you bitcoins).
If you want to spend your own STEEM to power up another account, the command line wallet already supports a
transfer_to_vestingoperation. I'm not sure if this feature exists in the web user interface, and I'm not sure if it should exist in the web interface because it might be confusing.[1] It's technically possible to sell your entire account by changing your keys, or even to support dividing large SP balances by making some off-blockchain arrangement allowing parties to exchange ownership of fractions of some large account's SP. I've seen surprisingly little such activity to date, nor am I aware of any exchanges / brokers offering these kinds of activities -- all such activity I've seen was posts here or on Bitcointalk.
^This.
I don't think he's suggesting gifting in a way that would globally make SP transferable. He is simply suggesting that whales gift the same way they vote--occasionally, selectively, and with gusto. It would be great, I think.
Exactly, I repeated said "Gifting" by "Whales" not for everyone. Only people with an 100,000 + SP would have the feature enabled. But a second option could be put in as well so they cant gift to any account with over 10,000 SP. That would pretty muture ensure the Gifts are valid and going to help minnows.
It is available in the steemit wallet. In the dropdown you see when you click on your steem balance, select the Power Up option. In the dialog it opens, choose "Advanced."
Good ideas. Maybe not 1/2, but it's a good start to generate thinking and exchange of the idea.
I purchased my first bitcoin ever, $150 worth to invest as SP, after my first day on Steemit and making a post that was high quality but got me $0.00 LOL. I say immediately that SP was important to upvote and create recognition and visibility , and I didn't get much. I have invested another $150 of bitcoin to buy STEEM and power up last week. I value high quality content and am working my way, slowly, to be able to bring more content recognition and visibility in the community.
Take care. Peace. Upvoted.
Hey you doing a great job !
Sometimes it's best to stay away from a gifting system due to bias decisions. There isn't a clear and universal guideline that can be followed to determine who's worthy and who's not, who is a good Steemian and who is a bad Steemian to receive these gifts. We've had some devious catfishes that tricked us all. And even if there was such a guideline, it would be heavily under fire from the ones that are below the bar.
There was a story about a young man who received a hefty allowance from his father (say 2,000$). While on a trip with his friends he dropped his wallet (with those money) into a campfire by accident but the boy didn't fuss too much about it as it was a big fire they built that night. He couldn't do anything to save it.
Flash forward 5 years when he gets his first job and the first salary. The paycheck was 1/4 of what his father gave him 5 years ago but he was uber-hyped about earning it.
Funnily enough, he's camping with his friends again and drops his wallet into the campfire. This time he rushed to get it with his bare hands, burns his hands a bit but saves the money.
The conclusion is that you value tenfold more what you earn than what is gifted to you.
PS. What are poloniex and bittrex doing in the TOP 50 table?
Repeated whale votes to the same authors are a little like gifting but slower. I think they need to power down and send the Steem to valued posters. That would help. but a Steem power transfer doesn't seem like it would be an issue at all.
Great idea, but, to make things easier, would be enough to transfer Steem Dollars and then to move them to Steem Power (which is already possible).
I think the issue is that people can never really reduce how much Steem Power they have. Even if they power down the interest will just compensate. That could change in the long term, but otherwise it will take years to get a more even spread
The distribution is decidedly skewed here. I can understand that some people have invested their own money, but some were just lucky to get in early. It's what it is, but I see a lot of people using this skew as a reason for not joining Steemit. It's still early days, so perhaps there will be some redistribution implemented that keeps most people happy. I'm just along for the ride.
something needs to be done to increase activity but not sure how to make that happen .
Users can do this today without Steemit making a change.
It would require them to wait one week for their first week's payment to get converted, but any whale should be able to get more than enough Steem to do this within one week of a power down. They can also cancel the power down after the first week, to stop it from powering down more than they need to make the gift.
But in my proposal they would be able to gift 0.005% of their SP (half their total SP) to 100 users almost instantly. Where as via the Power Down they would only get .0096% of their steem each week. So they would only be able to Gift to 2 Minnows a week (using my example in the original post)
I doubt that any whale is going to be that generous and give that much SP away for free 😀
You think thats the reason why the do this?https://steemit.com/steemit/@leavemealone/ned-and-dantheman-dump-50-500-steem-on-market-today-wtf-is-going-on
I think a few days of whale vote fasting might lift all the 10c post on the network and build everyone's Steem equally. What we really need is whale fasting not whale voting.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dennygalindo/a-day-of-fasting-on-votes-for-the-whales-9-9-16