As a content and community guy, I am a huge fan of this idea of dedicating funds to projects that can hopefully increase the price of steem. When that happens, every single group benefits.
I do have a couple of questions:
Is there any way to fund this from revenue outside of the steem ecosystem? Perhaps ads, donations or outside investment? Or perhaps Steemit Inc directly?
If it is necessary for it to come from the current system, would a different split be more effective? For example, would taking 5.5% from authors and 5.5% from witnesses be more effective?
I realize how important witnesses are and have always valued and appreciated their work, dedication and integrity. As a result, I would never suggest significantly cutting the rewards that they earn for their work. I am just wondering if a shift of where some of those rewards come from would be more effective.
My question is also based on the fact that I believe steemit intends to make changes that would make it far less expensive for witnesses to run their servers. Hopefully this savings will offset some of the reduction in rewards if they were directed to this fund.
In addition, witnesses could still earn rewards from this new fund by working on their projects. Many witnesses already do this for free.
If 5.5% is too aggressive, is there another split that would work?
I do agree that funding from outside Steem should be considered, but feel that SPS will be intended to produce capital gains, which directly inure to stake. The authority to decide which proposals to fund is directly based on stake.
The funding should be therefore also directly based on stake.
Making our retention problem worse, or driving more witnesses away, are both existentially problematic for Steem.
Tapping stake across the board does not decrease incentives rewards are intended to provide for necessary and beneficial provision of value to Steem.
All rewards are funded by a "tax" (i.e. inflation) on stake. I'm not sure where else you think they come from.
Unless you are proposing to further increase the already-high 8.5% inflation (in which case the answer is very likely to be a hard no from nearly all stakeholders), then the only way this can be done is by reallocating existing inflation-funded rewards. For various mathematical reasons starting with the Willie Sutton Rule ("because that's where the money is") most or all of this reallocation has to come from author rewards.
I can respect if people think that author rewards specifically are inherently more important and valuable to Steem then a flexible budget system for funding proposals, though I disagree. Author rewards IMO are one way of adding value to Steem by attracting a user base and supporting engagement, but not even remotely the only way. I'd rather have a budgeting proposal system which can decide among competing priorities in how to spend the budget to best help Steem. That could, conceivably include giving the funds right back to authors, if stakeholders (i.e. the ones paying for ALL of the rewards) really believe that is the very best possible use, or it may include other things (marketing, development, promotions, referral programs, etc.), some or all of which could and likely would directly benefit users, including authors, albeit in different ways than direct monetary payment. I would contend we have been sorely lacking in the latter even while more than generously funding the former.
There is more that needs to be done for Steem to be a success than just paying out most of the inflation budget to authors, otherwise it would already be doing what needs to be done and would be on a clear path to success. But I don't believe that to be the case, and I doubt too many other people believe it either.
Finally I would reiterate what was said in the original post: that a significant portion of "author" rewards are currently being used to reward various ongoing projects, community groups, development work, initiatives, apps, etc. and rightfully so. But to the extent those things can shift over to getting longer-term funding via a proposal system, that removes those costs from the regular reward pool, leaving more for regular "authors". I seriously doubt that the net reduction to these "regular authors" would be anything close to 20%.
I know much of this response was not directed at my question, but I still found it incredibly helpful. The main goal we should focus on is increasing the value of steem. When that happens EVERY group benefits. 40% of a pool based on $10 steem is a hell of a lot better than 50% of .25 steem that is for sure. I agree that author rewards are not even close to the only way to attract and retain people (I happen to be partial to games myself). That is why I am a huge fan of the idea of funding development of projects that can help increase the price.
I understand that this is not actually going to be a 20% reduction in content rewards (provided people don't double dip). I was just wondering if the cost reduction to run servers coupled with a new way to reward witnesses for the projects they are running would have the same effect as the shifting of content rewards. If it did, then perhaps a portion could come from witness rewards. But based on quite a few comments I have read, it seems like that may not be wise. Thanks for taking the time to weigh in.
hm , indeed, it still comes down to external input or loss of energy in a closed system over time is inevitable
i read about the advertising ... and getting advertisers to pay in STEEM to place ads would imo indeed work best
but i didnt read much about it after that small mention ...
without external money it can do nothing but devaluate over time, that should be clear yea ?
and from the first look and as it will to many it DOES look like a system to keep the money floating up top ,effectively cutting into post rewards ... which already are at an all-time low
i'm not sure this will be very popular but usually no one cares about that, right ?
... oh well ...
I think Smooth has made the best argument for maintaining the witness pay at the current level (or possibly even higher if Steem price drops). I suggest reading some of his comments in this post.
Thanks! I read as much as I could and feel far more educated on the matter now.
I would love to see more games and apps that people will pay for using steem. I think this fund will help encourage that.