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Today I was giving some thought about how Steem could catapult further and realised that users need incentives to buy Steem to achieve some sort of financial reward or benefit by holding Steem.
Feature One - Linear Voting Curve
"The Experiment" run by @smooth, @abit and others has proven to be successful in reviving interest in the old user base and people are coming back just to try out their newly-found voting strength because whales are abstaining from voting and the average user's vote thus carries more weight because it is not competing against whale votes redirecting funds to other posts.
I have seen it first hand where all of a sudden Steemians I had lost touch with are contacting me again in the chats. So basically users now have a near-direct correlation between their voting capabilities and how much Steem they hold, and are excited to test it out.
This scenario however is an artificial one and is more of a moderation approach than an actual feature of Steem, whales are also precluded from voting, under the threat of being downvoted and their reputation reduced which is not an ideal situation either, nor does it make for ideal free market attention economics, because some stakeholders are not voting as mentioned.
A flattening of the rewards curve to a linear or close to linear model is the only answer because that way it is an official feature of Steem that investors can use a guide in their decision making, the artificial model currently in place relies on a few moderators and not truly decentralised and only exist while the said moderators are still present in our ecosystem. With this implementation, whales and ordinary users will be able to vote and one's voting power is directly related to one's Steem holdings in a linear fashion, which is less of a cognitive load and makes for easier gamification and stimulates the desire to hold more Steem Power.
Feature Two - Tiered Steem Dollar Interest rates based on Steem Power holdings
Steem Dollars are back! With the rise in the price of Steem, Steem Dollars have started to be paid out again on post rewards. The existence of Steem Dollars however don't seem to have any direct benefit for the Steem price, so I propose a bit of gamification around Steem Dollar interest rates to help boost Steem Power acquisition.
As a backstory, you may have heard of a new Smart Coin called PIVX, they have a blog here on Steem @pivx and a website http://pivx.org , this project is a privacy coin which runs on a Proof of Stake and masternode consensus model; there is a very clear incentive to buy and hold this digital asset at the 10 000 units mark, which is what is required to run a masternode and earn rewards of around 4.25% APR interest paid daily (citation needed on the daily payout).
Investors are currently scrambling to buy Pivx and create masternodes, it's an easy carrot with a low cognitive reward perception... buy 10K Pivx, run a masternode, earn rewards ... simple! So what do people do ... buy 10 000 coins because that is what the optimum is to invest in this project.
Steem needs similar milestone incentives; Steem Dollars as is could be gamified a little. Why not introduce tiered interest rates based on how much Steem Power the investor holds? So the witnesses will set the base rate and then the tiers above will be base rate + 2%, base rate + 3% etc.
This is a example of what a tiered structure could be like, but obviously can be optimised after some discussion:
Tier 1: 0 to 1000 SP @ 0% interest applied to Steem Dollar holdings
Tier 2: 1001 to 10 000 SP @ base interest rate applied to Steem Dollar holdings
Tier 3: 10 001 to 50 000 SP @ base interest rate + 2% applied to Steem Dollar holdings
Tier 4: 50 001 SP and higher @ base interest rate + 3% applied to Steem Dollar holdings
This sets a clear target of how much Steem users must purchase and power up into Steem Power in order to take advantage of the various Steem Dollar interest rate tiers. I would also motion to take this a step further and suggest that interest can only be earned if the funds are placed into savings, right now savings is only used as a security measure to prevent instant withdrawl by unauthorised parties, but why not treat it as a short-term savings account as well? This makes sense because it will give users a feel of traditional banking savings term accounts.
If Steem Dollars are kept out of savings they will be treated as if in a transactional/cheque or current account depending on the terminology you are used to and earn zero interest, when transferred into savings, the Steem Dollars accrue interest, compounded daily, based on the tier you qualify for.
With more Steem Dollars in savings, it will take some strain off the Steem Dollar to US Dollar peg because of the delay in the release of the savings and witnesses won't have to work so hard to adjust policies to balance the peg.
I would like your comments, feedback and improvements on the above proposals.
Keep Steemin'!
Please vote thecryptodrive witness if you would like to help support me to do more great things and come up with ideas!
How do you see the original justification of the n^2 vote power curve as disinsentivising self voting, and sock puppet voting? This still seems relevant.
I'll reproduce a section here from a great post by @bitcoindoom which supports the n^2 curve, reshared on @dantheman 's blog so I presume it has his endorsement also, for what's it's worth:
The post then goes on to justify down votes to deal with supposed "mining-pools" of voters, i.e. whale collusion.
But anyway, on the curves, do you this this argument is no longer relevant or never was?
This works also with something between linear and exponential say n^1.1 and rewards are much flatter.
Are you saying we'd be able to retain some self voting / collusion deterrence at n^1.1 while making it fairer (according to the argument anyway)?
Yes exactly. Much better said
I really like your tiered approach. I definitely think there needs to be more incentive in holding Steem. I'm wondering if there can be some other perks/incentives for reaching specific tiers of SP?
And great to hear from you again my friend.
No.
No.
I could write seven pages why No. But I don t have the time. You can find me on @steemspeak if you want to debate.
Great idea. I think the first has been discussed Ad Naseum but second it very creative.
Pivx actually allows all users to gain interest though the rates might be higher for master nodes. I think stem dollar is inder utilized
Marketing the platform as steem bank where you have savings and a good interest rate (5 percent annual) paid daily would be huge. We really could be first decentralized bank. Dash will be there in a year or so and has better marketing so we need to move fast.
If we are going to have the complexity of steem dollars let's market it!
Great post dude! Good to see your face again :0)
i like the idea of tiered interest.
Agree with the reward curve changes it would really help a lot.
I also like the tiered interest idea - it might work but I would like people to examine the pros and cons in more depth.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Very nice.!!
The best post. 👍
Resteemed :-) I love point 2- this is an amzing idea.
Nice to see you back @thecryptodrive!
I like the steem dollar interest rates based on SP idea! Will be interesting to read the discussions about this!
Thank you for posting @thecryptodrive.
Steemit appreciates hearing from the witnesses. This article will need to be reread...at first glance...the tiered interest rate sounds like an excellent idea.
Cheers.
Fully agree to this. Interested to see after HF17 and whales start to upvote again, what the effects will be on the minnows and their activities. Even with the linear curve, more rewards will be pulled more to the whales side then the situation created currently where whales do not vote at all hence all the power and rewards distribution in the hands of dolphins and minnows.
As a model this seems to me an interesting approach. It 'forced' people to increase their SP when they want to get some interest. You can also argue to remove SBD completely and give interest on SP itself, with a tiered model as well. In addition, you could think of a model in which all posts are always power up for 100%, ie rewards are always in SP, not in Steem and/or SBD anymore. This makes sure that quick cash outs are prevented. The 13 weeks for powering down maybe increased again to eg 6 months, to make sure that the people on this platform are into Steemit for the longer run and not for the quick financial wins. Maybe an experiment can be executed in which everyone who does not power up his/her posts with 100% gets downvotes from the whales, ie no payout.
"The Experiment" is successful ? Yes but also no . I see all whales to power down so ..... !
Happy steeming ! Will consider add you in my witness.
Nice thoughtful post! I think both ideas are worthy of discussion.
I've said before that maybe we fork to n^x curve where the witnesses adjust x like they now adjust SBD interest rate. x is currently 2 but could be 1.1 or 1.5 or whatever seems to work the best, and can be changed by witnesses without another fork. Of course the witnesses have to be trusted to be able to choose x properly, and some think they aren't that good at choosing the SBD interest rate; I have received that as a counter argument.
Gamification is interesting. There is an argument against holding SBD as it is debt and hinders the rise of Steem price. Not sure if giving more SBD as interest is good but I am open to it. Getting more SP here on steemit is an incentive in itself due to higher curation rewards. Maybe just the display of a level, based on your SP holdings, would be incentive enough. People love to show badges and move up leaderboards, so sometimes just the display of number and position is gamification enough. But I'm open to other ideas!
A little over my head and attention deficit quotient, but I will chime in with redundant wandering cloud thoughts as I'm still here ("Mongo only pawn in game of life")
I am here to write, engage, invest what attention span I have left on a platform I believe will support me in so doing as I support it. Thus I for one will keep calm and steem on, though currently enjoying my vote actually counting for 1 or 3 cents during this experiment, and would feel encouraged if that influence were effectively stable and increasing, howsoever that may be effected.
Regarding Feature One, maybe you guys can check my little experiment here.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@blackchen/a-possible-loophole-in-a-flatter-reward-scenario-a-little-experiment
By the way, I support both features. Resteemed.
Mama is due very soon. Did you still want to do a guess the gender post?
Definitely The technologies will keep on changing and more innovative and bright ideas will come