So does seem like the curation fraction is not the real issue. It may seem like the break-even point is where the ROI is equal for the example posts you mentioned. But what if 4 other authors would accept an even lower return for themselves? You could make even more ROI! Simply allowing authors to give higher curation rewards to attract upvotes, is like the 100 homeless people bidding for only a fraction of the 10 meals. The lower amount any person will accept, the more likely they will get that small fraction of a meal. But it won't be enough to sustain them over time.
The code has to incentivize whales to care for the overall health of the Steem blockchain as the way to increase the value of their investment - and right now, that's through the Steemit platform. I like how you said that the bots are a manifestation of a broken system. Some bots are helpful for the overall system health, others aren't. It does seem like there should be enough data since HF19 to assess where code changes would be helpful.
Alternatively, there's always the possibility that some whales and witnesses are just waiting for hype about any of the new apps or SMTs to spike Steem values, so they can bail out.
You display a keen grasp of the issues and your comment reveals an insightful mind.
Thanks!
It is, if there was a way to pin this to the top, out of thread kind of, I would vote to do that. Wouldn't that be a cool feature?
In my analogy the homeless and 10 meals are the curators and curation rewards not the authors and authors rewards.
The portion of the curation ( 10 meals) will increase accross the board which is absolutely necessary for people to diversify their votes and change their voting habit.
Established authors may still use the same curator/author ratio but new authors who set the curation percentage high are going to earn a lot more than they currently do. ( I've given an example with exact numbers in OP)
Generally speaking yes, if bots are required to make the system healthy then something is missing in the code.
For example bots are needed to support minnows, this mean the incentives created by the code are broken.