The problem is that at a blockchain level (where the votes are calculated) there really isn't a way to distinguish between humans and bots.
A capcha system is the only such proposal, but I am not aware of a way to implement one within the blockchain. Plus, even if we could - it would add a mental burden to the act of voting that would be discouraging to a lot of users.
I prefer the elimination of curation rewards, as it essentially eliminates the incentive to use bots in the first place, unless they are the type that can evaluate aspects of post quality (like plagiarism) that are hard for humans to do.
@timcliff I was curious about your thoughts on a guaranteed payout of the curation reward pool (say 50%) for all whales above the arbitrary 250MV, on a prorata basis according to a weighted average of SP held in exchange for voting power eliminatin (like preferred shares). I proposed this to @snowflake earlier and he's not a fan.
My thoughts are:
What are your thoughts?
If you divide the existing curation rewards up across everybody (those curating and those not curating) then those who are actively curating will get less than they are today.
The 250 MV threshold proposal has been put on pause for now, but if we were to go down that path eventually - there is a very complicated equation to solve as far as making there enough incentive for whales to keep the SP above 250 MV powered up (without being able to cuate/vote), without paying them too much at the expense of the network.
If the 250+ users were only getting 50% of the curation rewards and had to give up their influence - they would be incentivized to just use a bunch of accounts < 250 - because they could make more that way and use all of their voting power.
I went through the math on this... i think on the can opener post.
if you found a way to exclude the steemit account (which, i don't take it as a given that you could. Or that TPTB would be cool with it even if it were possible), and you limited it to just 1GV and above whales, you would be able to offer about 50K sp a week divided up among about 150 G vests, which amounts to around 260 SP a week per Gvest if divided porportionally. This amounts to around 2.6% per year non compounding.
That gets cut in half to 1.3% APR if you include the steemit account. I didnt go through and do an exact count, but my spitball guess based on some quick tallying on steemdb is that if you added in all the accounts between 250MV and 1GV as well, you would end up with something like 1.7% apr not including the steemit account and just under 1% including the steemit account.
You have got my vote, not that it counts! I really do appreciate the enormous amount of effort you are putting in to ensure the successful future of steemit.com - I hope that there is apt reward for you! Someone like me asks a question and they do not get a reply for a minnow, they get a reply for a human.
Respect aplenty!