It's kind of breathtaking to me how poorly understood HF21 is. The downvote pool will increase the available flags by 25% at no cost, and the largest flagging force on Steem is Bernie and his bots. Anyone who's paid any mind to Bernie will be aware of how and why he flies flags, and the impact he has had on his targets. In the flagwar with @fulltimegeek, FTG has been completely censored on Steemit, and it's important to note that many consensus witnesses vote for NextGenCrypto, Bernie's witness.
The history of downvotes on Steem is available on the blockchain, and you can verify these facts for yourself. Bernie was not brought up by folks touting the downvote pool, and the history of flags on Steem does not bear out any reasons touted as recommending the downvote pool.
Bid bots extract rewards into the wallets of their funders, and this includes @freedom, consensus witnesses, and many of the most substantial stakes on Steem. Extracting rewards in this way keeps them out of the wallets of less substantial stakeholders, and decreases the size of the market for Steem. Note that EIP in HF21 will decrease author rewards by half, and increase curation rewards proportionately, as well as affect a semi-exponential rewards curve, which will further increase the weight of substantial stake versus lesser stakes. It should be noted that flags and witness votes are stake weighted too, so this will increase the damage flags do, and increase the control of the whales over the witnesses, both directly discouraging broader adoption of Steem and retention of current users.
All in all, every aspect of HF21, but particularly the downvote pool, will increase the concentration of stake in the wallets of those with the most of it, and discourage new users, extant users from remaining active, all of which decrease price pressure on Steem. HF21 is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done to increase the price of Steem.
IMHO @fiveart called it.
I am not happy about this, and will be most happy to be proved wrong, by Steem price increasing, market cap rising, and number of active users growing, but the opposite is true as the market prices in HF21 now, and many large stakeholders, like @steemit, powerdown and prepare to divest asap. I'm not gonna blow smoke up anyone's skirt, and desire folks to do due diligence and exercise prudence in the management of their assets.
All this information is available from steemd, and I recommend folks have a looksee at who mined their stakes, who is powering down, and who votes for Bernie's witness. I did this morning, and found out my proxy was supporting that witness, so changed my proxy. I should have done that a long time ago.
HF21 implementation approaches. Best be prepared.
Hear hear
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