This post is a response to @dantheman's post about negative voting on steemit.
He talks mainly about how a whale can cancel the upvotes of a lot of ordinary members, but also about how whales can abuse the system by upvoting their own stuff, and thereby gaining a larger share of the fixed steem pot (the amount of steem generated in a 12 hour period is fixed and all users are essentially sharing a percentage of it - if some whales benefit disproportionately, it follows that other users have to take a smaller share of the fixed pot).
One way to counter the effect of the whale is to have a very large dolphin class. The minnows cannot outvote the whales - but a large shoal of dolphins can.
The goal to making Steemit both stable and fair is to build a large dolphin class - this is akin to having a large middle class in a nation. Countries with a large middle class are stable because they can and will control the elites as well as help the poor. The unstable countries are the ones with a very powerful 1% and a vast poor with very few middle class in-between.
So how is Steem doing in growing its dolphin class? Here are the stats from Steemd.com
If we define dolphins as members who can give at least 1 cent in a vote, then the dolphins are those whose SteemPower is worth between $1000 and $40,000.
As you can see from the graphic above only 1.19% of members are dolphins. At a push it's about 2% if we assume a portion of the $400 members are actually $1000 members. This isn't nearly enough to stabalize the platform.
How to create dolphins
Everyone who can deliver at least a cent per vote needs to spread their love far and wide. Try to vote for at least five new posts a day, preferably from authors who you haven't voted for before. If everyone does this, then over time members will slowly accrue enough to ensure a dolphin class emerges. If rewards only go to a select few, then what will happen is that the whale class will increase by a couple of percent, but the majority will remain minnows.
The future of Steemit depends on a dolphin class that comprises at least 20% of users. That way they can both control abuses by whales, and help distribute rewards to deserving minnow writers.
To be honest I find more interesting articles in the new section over the trending or hot section. I have nothing to comment on the trending articles but the few comments I make in new post pay a lot more than "strategic voting" on hot topics. Just what I've observed over last month.
So you're saying there's chance? What was all that one in a million talk?
It's like real life - very few people become millionaires, but vast numbers of people are comfortably off and happy - and that's the goal. The dolphins are steemit's comfortably off.
You've got an upvote from this dolphin-wannabe! I agree the distribution of voting power needs to be much more spread out for Steemit to remain viable in the long-term. By the way, forgive me if this is a stupid noob question, but what does MV mean?
MV = million vests. It's the old designation of voting power, before it got renamed to Steem Power.
1 million vests = approx. 200 Steem Power
Okay thanks, that's good to know.
thats very true , iv noticed that voting depend on popularity , if u popular ur post will voted up and thats problem needs to be looked at . iv seen a very good posts with $0.00 on them and thats because there is no whale took noticed to that post , so we need more middle class steemians .
Something to remember: the distribution is skewed towards minnows because Steemit is growing its userbase very fast. When signups are increasing by leaps and bounds, a large majority of accounts are going to have very little MV simply because they're new.
Overall, you've dished out some good advice!
This is interesting, however, I wonder about your 1 cent definition and the evaluation of accounts you suggest. I've watched carefully when upvoting to see if I have an impact yet, and here's the thing, sometimes, I move it by a penny, sometimes two, but sometimes nothing. Right now, my vote, combined with others, has a positive impact I can see, where as singly, that is not the case. I'm nowhere near a thousand dollars in value yet, but hope to be sooner than later.
I think, perhaps the more relevant stat there is the stake percentage. If you notice, the $400-$40,000 bracket controls about 35% of the stake. That more than one third, making them a powerful group. Especially when you consider whales are not acting as a class, and each account in that bracket carries a larger percentage of the stake allotted to that bracket. If they could work together, dolphins could easily shift things in favor of smaller accounts and grow the dolphin school. Create a larger middle class, I suppose.