Token economies rely on sinks and faucets. My rule of thumb is that faucets are 10% of the value of a token. 90% is in the sinks. This adds a new worker faucet, which is useful, and it tweaks the rewards pool which isn't really adding much value to the chain right now. They are both good problems to solve, but they aren't really hitting the area where we need to focus yet, which is finding good sinks for Steem. That said if the SPS is up and we can use it to fund good projects that lead to sinks then it can help us.
Summary
I'm a yes to the SPS. I'm a "no" if it isn't funded, but it looks like it will draw 10% of the rewards pool. That doesn't mean you'll get less. It means you'll get less for posting and if you contribute in other ways that add value you'll have different opportunities to earn. If you add value you'll be able to earn more. So, it's a start... I don't think it's enough, but it's better than zero for sure.
I'm a yes to EIP. When things aren't really working I like to ask the question"How's that working out for you?" When the change to linear rewards came out I put out posts and funded them into trending with words like "clusterfuckening." Hate to say it but I kinda called this, but I didn't call that there can be some amazing parts to linear rewards too. The thing that's missing to me in linear rewards is down voting. I know that the user base is a little terrified of downvotes because of Steem distribution and half-crazed whales, but I think it can really changes how we reward and spend on content on the platform.
I'm also cool with higher curation rewards. I think it'll get more whales piggy backing on content the platform seems to like. Maybe there will be more collusions too, but there's downvote pools to stop that shit. Ultimately, I think the authors that can show more value to the chain and to the whales will begin to earn more.
Tweaking the curve from true linear to a little bit higher is good. It's not a drastic tweak and don't think it will really impact much.
Downvotes, economic violence and economic protection
I've stated an unpopular opinion that I hold that downvotes are a form of economic violence. People put their stake towards rewarding something. Others removed it. I think it's natural and ok, but usually it's done with the intention to silence people or cause them harm. Adding free downvotes sounds scary, but it should really be scary to the shitposters of the world rather than normal authors.
You likely think all violence is bad and that aggroed guy as the leader of a peace group must also think violence is bad. As it turns out I'm a peaceful guy, but not a pacifist. This place is do no harm, but take no shit. Other's can act violently towards the rewards pool. The correct response is downvoting and protecting a communal resource.
Right now it's broken because it costs money to downvote so the whales don't want to do it. They get shit, they lose money, and it's not fun. However good flagging is one of the noblest things you can do because it spends your money to help the common pool. That's honorable. I know this is a little jumbled, but the whole economics around policing and flagging are broken because a whale has to spend upvote VP they could otherwise use to earn to downvote and get shit for it rather than support.
If the whales or any users really has the ability to flag than this place can actually determine good content from bad. That's important. The internet is filled with content. If you're famous or extra special people care about your content, but failing that what the internet wants is highly curated content. That's a very valuable service. Right now we're not really supporting either of those. We're supporting paid advertising through bidbots. I think it's good, but the pendulum is way too far towards bidbots and there's not really content or curation happening. The down voting pool can help.
Take from posts that blow and allow posts that don't blow to go up in value. Take from shitty bidbotted advertisements that don't add anything. Give to authors that do. This sounds like a better system than anyone willing to spend money can milk rewards. It might also mean that bidbots start looking for better authors to protect the votes that go out. Maybe the stake actually starts giving a shit about the content their stake supports...
Maybe then inflation going to post rewards can add value to steem again.
How's the current system working for ya?
Blogging didn't moon this place even after three years. So, we need new ways to reach new users. Steemit has a lot of Steem but thus far they have been unwilling to spend it to market this place. So, we need funding to get the word out. I've been publicly in favor of this before it was cool. I strongly support a funded SPS
Every blogpost is like a mini funding request, but distribution and the current rewards system isn't really functioning to spread the steem blockchain. It's a good time to be a bidbot owner, and not so great for everyone else. But frankly, because the price of steem is so low they are getting a large portion of a pie that's a much smaller pie than it could be. We need something different.
I also happen to think it's not enough money to the sps. At current prices it's about $1M usd that'll go into it for the year. That sounds like a drop in the bucket to me. I've been advocating a witness parameter so witnesses can easily change things. If the sps is working and we want to get more funding for projects we should be able to easily increase it. If it isn't we should be able to decrease it. We should be able to do this without another fucking hardfork. This part of the plan sounds very poorly thought out, but whatever...
The arguments against that idea have mostly focused on "what about investors... how will they react to knowing it could change?" I think most people with money haven't even heard of steem, and the first question they ask won't be "can witnesses change inflation rewards to redirect more to a worker proposal system or away from it depending on efficacy of the system?" If they hear about steem and it seems to be a cool project they'll invest, but they need to hear about us and that means we need to reward people for spreading the word beyond our own little bubble- thus a bigger sps.
We are up against tron with a multi million dollar fund and hype. The chain needs a bigger pool to draw from to market what we do and if spent wisely we will raise this place up more than a bidbotted post about some random topic will be able to do.
Steem Alliance
At the end of the day people will have to do the work. Not just machines and code, but people. The steem alliance to me represents the best chance we have to take money that stakeholders are willing to put into efforts to mainstream the chain and actually have something happen. When the SPS is alive I'll be working with the Steem Alliance to request funding and get to work recruiting businesses and growing the Steem ecosystem.
Steem-Engine thoughts
All of this is really the start of the conversation to be having though... The value of a currency is in the sinks not the faucet. While we're sitting here debating how to tweak rewards going out what we should be focused on is how to incentivize systems that sink the token. We need more businesses that need Steem. I guess that's an argument for the DAO, but since it's got so little money going into it that it feels a little ho-hum.
We need more use cases for steem.
That's a major part of what I'm trying to solve with Steem Engine. I want to power an entire internet to make social website with their own currencies, with their own distributions, with their own economics, and underneath it will live steem. That's a super powerful concept to me. We can also add features so much faster than any other group out there, so watch as what steem-engine can do completely outpaces other approaches to this.
One size fits all usually fits no one all that well. The ability to tweak everything to make your community function exactly as you see fit, to be able to build it exactly as you envision it without having a different party in charge sounds awesome to me.
So, I'll build it. And I'll keep building new functionality, new products, and grinding out new deals. It'll grow, new apps will come, and more people will need steem.
Summary
Yes to SPS (but it doesn't go far enough and should have a witness parameter), yes to EIP.
Then let's get to work on the thing that will actually drive this place; more sinks.
It's not that content creation didn't work and didn't add value.
We didn't market it, we didn't let natural markets develop, we didn't fight abuse and there isn't enough distribution.
Make the changes if it ads a sense of confidence, because we need that, but you aren't really presenting the picture fairly.
We have no hype, we have no leadership, we have no vision, we can't easily tell people what we do.
To build a business here that takes real money investment would likely be pretty scary for some.
Look, I'm not a fan of the changes, but they aren't a deal breaker, but it still doesn't promote steem, it centainly doesn't add a sense of confidence and the way it is being handled is just showing off the complete lack of distribution and why that matters in a dpos system. It is also showing off our lack of commitment to any one vision and looks like a bunch of people scrambling. In the words of several top witnesses. "What we have isn't working, let's try this". That is a great representation of exactly why it isn't working.
A huge thanks for all you've built and done as it is some of the best work on the chain.
I resteemed this because of your comment @whatsup, surely, am not the only one who resonates to this line most importantly
After the last time the price of Steem hiked, it kind'a feel like an abandoned project. The fact that the price went up last year means it's a success but for some reasons imho, when Dan and Ned left the boat it seems to have a hard time climbing. I can't help but ask sometimes, was this project meant to last for just two years? I do hope not. It was created in 2016, many market experts are already aware of the market pattern, somehow in 2018 the price went up.. was that just coincidence? Who knows, I can only hope this is not just any abandoned project , God help the witnesses.
EDIT : Somehow it feels like a boat in silent waters, no plan of where to go and I wonder how long can it bob in the water. I wonder what is steemit going to be five years from now ... would we still be alive? Am not the type who goes against changes but I've been skeptic the past forkings after HF18 ... I can't even remember which HF was the one that delivered the best results anymore. I do remember that was the time the reward pool went drained and some lost their post rewards when it was being executed.
Damn! haha. Youre turning into a grumpy grumpster. lol
Kind of remind me of me. Didnt mean that as an insult. hahaha
I flag trash (and morons). You have received a flag.
The downvote pool is madness. Informationwar and others already get downvoted on their comments and posts as it is due to just a few people who don't like us. This just gives more power to those who have money to silence others or take away their SP earned on a post. Downvotes already have a cost and people weigh the option of downvoting being worth it or not because that is an upvote they are giving up. Giving a pool of free daily downvotes just encourages MORE downvoting, not SMARTER downvoting/curation.
A mechanism for smarter downvoting would be like having a council of people who can agree upon something, and having an ability to use Smart Contracts to actually have mods or something that actually gets "free downvotes" to downvote abuse and bad stuff. Simply giving everyone more free downvotes doesn't actually solve any problems. There is no thought or structure to such a thing, its just "here is free downvotes to use". I would agree having free downvotes would be good if such a council or witness council would be the ones in charge of assigning trustworthy people the status of an "Oracle" or "Mod" who actually gets the free downvotes.
I am 100% powering down my Steem right now, because if these changes really come through Steem in the long run isn't going to be worth much.
Think of telling a friend who knows nothing about Steem that he can buy 100,000 USD worth of Steem, come to the platform and get a 50% return on just pressing an upvote button on ANY post and he can make it back in a year or two. If you truly can get 50% curation rewards you could literally buy a few hundred thousand USD of Steem, upvote anything without any critical thinking and make 50k to 100k USD a year and retire from your day job. It doesn't make any sense.
Does that not sound like a sort of a scheme or something shady? Do you think your friend would believe you that it would be a long lasting platform where anyone can purchase crypto and upvote "anything" and get paid more than his job makes? It doesn't make sense and won't work long term.
It encourages people to just blow a bunch of money on Steem, upvote "anything" which will clog everything up more with pointless shitposts being upvoted or autoupvoted by whales , who are here just to siphon off liquid Steem to sell for profit.
Why do we want to turn Steem blockchain into a place where people can buy in with a bunch of money and make a bunch of money for NO effort.
I think you need to think more deeply about this and the ramifications of such a change.
I think you are misinterpreting some elemental things here.
The rewards are not and will not be 50% of your SP per year. I don't know the exact ROI you can get by voting only yourself but I think it's around 18% or something like that.
And after the possible change to a 50/50 reward system your ROI won't skyrocket to 50%, it just means that the curation rewards will be 50% from upvoted value, 50% for the author and 50% curation. The ROI will still be lower than 50% and that by a lot xD
And sure there will be more downvotes, if ppl see something they don't like it's very possible that they will downvote it after the change and I think that is good because now a lot of trash doesn't get doenvoted because it costs money to downvote and for most ppl it's that they are more generous with their upvotes instead of downvoting something.
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With the current 75/25 payout the ROI per year may be 18%. If it was 50/50 per year it would be between 36% and possibly 50%. You get more if you upvote something before others, and within a certain time window.
It couldbe possible to get a 50% return.
If anything it would be a doubling from 18% to 36% then lets say. That is still quite a chunk of money. There are many people in the crypto world who could buy 200,000 USD of Steem, upvote any random posts just to make money. That would earn them 72,000 USD a year for no effort.
A no effort community filled with people buying Steem just to make profit would not hold up in the long term.
Giving free downvotes to everyone will result in more downvoting, not smarter downvoting or better curating. I would be willing to vote for "mods" or "a council" who actually gets the free downvotes. Those people could be voted for just like how witnesses are voted for.
We need a community fork
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It's simple. They are screaming oppression, establishment, big corporations, blah, blah.
It turns out that their own system becomes just that.
Because they were playing decentralisation game for 3 years, they can't stop.
Solution - keep repeating the same
Real solution, become centralised but smart. Bring some useful projects and excellent content creators and pay them big money.
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Yeah, the guys that have controversial posts are likely to get opinion flagged more, but also keep in mind that every upvote becomes a lot more powerful and this place is filled with unintended consequences. The votes you'll have in your community will be worth more. It'll balance out. Equilibrium is a very strong universal force.
What if you had some sort of 'downvote guidelines'? Those would be tied to a pool of SP delegated to a bot account. The bot could be governed by a jury system (a vote on dpoll maybe). If you invoke a jury(whitelisted maybe) and win, you get the downvotes erased plus a certain percentage. If your invocation is BS and the downvote is deserved, the bot downvotes you even more for wasting people's time. Each juror can get a small upvote from the bot on their vote submission. Jurors can voted in or out based upon their adherence to the downvote guidelines. In this you have a community driven system that could overcome abuse or exploits. To seed the pool, the bot could also be a witness vote proxy that tracked how much witnesses delegated to it. People supporting the jury system can let the bot vote on their behalf and then witnesses would be forced to delegate more SP in order to compete for votes. This would also have the side effect of making the top witness have the biggest SP investment in the platform. Perhaps there could also be a way to incentivize everyone else to delegate to it as well.
@steemflagrewards?
I think it will balance out if there was a sort of witness council where actual mods could be appointed who have the downvote power. And the mods have to be rotated out every so often with other people.
Something like that would be a lot better. On reddit for example having mods who are always in charge leads to tyranny and censorship, as shown by /r/politics and /r/bitcon and /r/news and /r/worldnews. If those mods were rotated out or voted out it would be a lot better.
I would be willing to vote for mods who have the free downvotes, same as how we vote for witnesses.
One of the biggest issues with virtue signaling is that its usually a facade to hide the truth. Forcing people to put their money where their mouth is evaporates most virtue signalers instantly. In an environment where something like steem has mass adoption then opinion flagging will not be nearly as high as you might think.
I really doubt that, outside of a few invincible whales, we will see about the same levels of opinion flagging we see now.
Come to Steemit as a regular guy - you will get 0.1$ and poor UX
Come to Steemit as a Youtube / Insta star, you will be unnoticed.
Come to Steemit as a real-life expert, pray to all the gods to be seen by some strong community to earn 10$
Come to Steemit as a millionaire, buy 3.000.000 Steem to "fix it" and you will be still too small
Or... Just build a new chain, de novo.
Cheaper, easier, no tails, no inherent problems.
Prove me wrong and point out mistakes in my reasoning.
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Yep, fork out the ninjamine, and the math works much better.
We don't have to take their coins, just cap influence at 500mv.
STEEM needs only two sinks.
The first one is holding steem power for RCs. This is already working today.
The second is burning STEEM to advertise on STEEM. If bidbots burn 10 to 20% of their earnings, it will be an amazing sink for STEEM. Yes, investors will get 10% less ROI, but surely they wouldn't mind if it makes the supply of steem go down, leading to higher prices.
This can only be solved in a centralized way (or at least it's way easier). Please talk to @yabapmatt about that he can make a big change through steembottracker.
^ This is exactly my point.
thanks
Yes to SPS and I am ok with trying EIP too, some days ago I had another idea how to incentivize manual/own curation over using bid bots: add a small "fee" for delegations. Let's make delegated Steem Power worth a little bit less than voting with your own/native Steem Power, outlined here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@vikisecrets/hf21-eip-solution-proposal-for-bid-bots-and-delegation-abuse-add-a-small-fee-for-delegations
These were my simple thoughts.....
https://steemit.com/steem/@nathen007/let-s-get-steemit-to-also-take-a-10-cut-and-what-happened-to-the-dcommerce
yeah, I'm a fan of the interfaces to take cuts through beneficiary rewards. Steemit should be highest to encourage other groups to make independent versions. They could give back to the community through it, fund shit. It wouldn't have to be profit, but could lead to beneficial things.
The very first is to stop whale-cheating like selfvotes in HF 20. Steem is dead since HF 20. Forget thinking about other little cosmetics. It makes no more sense since HF20. They destroyed the idea of the Steem, the very good idea of Dan Larimer.
By the way, where is @Ned?
Well written, @aggroed! Let‘s make content on Steem great again!
You taking your bot offline?
Going to stop breaking proof of brain?
Bring back the n2 and an influence cap?
Lol, that's what i thought.
Having a parameter that witnesses can modify makes a lot of sense to me. Each witness should be able to scale it however they want with the actual weight being a combination of the top 20 witnesses. Avoiding hardforks is a must in my opinion.
use-cases are created in the very moment the technology has utility. Its a misconception in biology that ecological-niches are already out there and the species just needs to jump in. Facebook became big and business followed.
Its always the same: people are accumulating and organizing in a way we call a network. Social media is the very definition of a internets superhub. Around that primitive application of social media, other specialized Apps are born. Steemmonsters was effectively born in that social-hub, which was Steemit.
Building that working social-media around the economy of STEEM is = bootstrapping your dAPPs. Make Steemit work and you will prosper. Let it die and dAPPs like Steemmonsters will become blockchain-refugees like dLive.
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Blogging attracting the masses was kneecapped by the ninjamine and linear rewards.
Does 10 votes giving 10 posts 30% of the pool each and every day, trophy buyers getting another 30%, and 99 percent of us distributing less than 10% or rewards attract more folks than 2k dolphins and 9k minnows distributing significant rewards to 110k posts each day?
Seriously, the disengenousness is becoming visible to more folks each day.
I'd guess that that hinkeyness scares off investors, too.
Yes, blogging didn’t bring attention for 3 years because blogging is dead on this ADHD generation (wtf am I saying? I have ADHD and take meds for that too lol).
I think that the rewards for people with good projects is extremely necessary. We can’t rely of blogging forever. DTube is a great project. Steem Monsters too. Imagine if people could fund such things, or someone bring, idk, smart contracts to Steem??
Thought the discussions about the next HF are very deep and tough, I like the way people are talking. The changes are good. Can always improve, but I am bullish on the community. Maybe this is the hard fork that will change the way hardforks are made in the future (because of the rewards for projects, a hardfork could be a project?... research can be funded, etc...)
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Honestly I feel like the best solution involves improving the advertising system. Burning SBD to put your post up higher is a method similar to what Voice is going to be doing apparently. A slightly better interface that encourages better behaviors could make a bug difference. Make it so burning your tokens can really increase visibility in more ways than one and you have a fully closed loop on fountains and sinks.
I dont know Downvotes are the Key. Imo we should add Like and Dislike without an effect. Only Visual to see what people think about.
And Rename the Upvote Button to Donation / Support. Because nobody can blame about Support / Donation.
Or something like this. Because if it comes to Niche Content. Some Whales can fuck up the niche without additional cost. And the Niche Content cant grow well.
We should support positive things, and work against abuse. We never get a perfect System. Its impossible. But we can make it feel better to use.
Like more User friendly UI and easy log in like Keychain. Make it super easy and Fast to get an account/ wallet.
So some Devs maybe build reddit 2.0 here. With Communitys etc. Or something like Facebook groups. All good things people love on the Internet.
But for this it must be easy to get the Users to the Steem Blockchain.
Think about this Problem. I want to use a Platform and i have to wait 2 weeks or pay Money? That s not what people want to do.
There want to click, Bam 5 mins later you get an account. I know if thats free we have 100% spam here. But it should be really easy and fast. Maybe RC Delegation can help here.
Long Term we need to offer something Awesome for Users. And not only anoying things.
BTW, Steemit starts a Power down again...
Hey Aggroed! Long time. :)
Im just coming back to the conversation so i wanted to ask what happens to people like me that earn above average?
I get dtube votes, 1 orca supporting me from day 1 i came here and a few ocd votes. I have never seen anyone get more then that constantly... or they would end up on trending page which is run by bots.
What will happen when authors lose 10% on SPS and 25% on curation change. There might be some more math to this but it looks like it is 35% in total i will lose.
How will i benefit from changing these things? It only looks like i will be losing rewards.
I love when i get ocd or Dtube votes, not only because i get more $ but because it means the orca that supported me from day 1 gets more curation and thats what i always remember when i get a big post. I want my supporters to make more back.
I just dont know what i will get from this.
How do i gain from losing 35% of my earnings.
I dont want to seem greedy because i appreciate every vote and every person that could just vote themselves or sell votes but instead votes me.
But a lot are saying that this is good for creators and i dont understand how. :(