The reason I wrote this post is exactly because if this situation doesn't change I see no future for steemit.
Steemit is based on the premise that incentivizing user actions on a social media site will increase the quality of content. It's been clear now for way too long that the incentives don't work, why do you think the same people are trending every day? Why are new authors being ignored? Why is the retention rate so poor? Because the curation system is broken.
The point of my post was to offer a solution that will re-align incentives so that quality content can finally rise to the top. The solution is to let authors decide how much curation reward they want to allocate to curators.
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I reckon that there will be an 'arms race' to generate curation rewards, competing for whales' attention, in short order should your suggestion be undertaken.
Rather than mitigating the most egregious flaws of a system intended to be monetized, I suggest that the focus of the system should be to socialize, and the monetization would be reduced.
Capital is invested in order to generate returns, and investing in Steem should generate capital returns. Sucking rewards intended to generate quality content from the rewards pool directly impacts user retention, and causes the value of Steem to not grow, and not produce capital gains.
Delink SP from VP, and let investors achieve gains from the increase in value from Steem, as the platform gains users, and becomes a social media platform in deeds, as the words described it in the white paper.
Adjusting curation rates does nothing to secure the witnesses from a Sybil attack that takes only money to execute, and offers a golden parachute to those that mined most of the Steem in existence today.
Thanks for your frankness in making this post!
That SP = VP gives users "skin the game".
What you're suggesting is using crypto to back Steemit like regular shares that pay out dividends, and VP based on something else (you didn't say).
But if getting rewards for posts still pays, which is must under the core principle of the system, it's just short step to reinvesting in Steemit unless there is increased regulation and rules around how one can invest. In addition, since rewards are not automatically invested, as they are now at least 50% of the value, the system just pays out, which leaves "serious" investors to prop it up.
It's a complete overhaul that loses some of the original self sustaining features. Do you see this as problematic or have I missed something?
As SP weights VP, there is a mechanism for mining the rewards pool, as well as potentiating a hostile takeover of the blockchain. Only delinking SP from VP will eliminate this particular mechanism for profiteering, and protect the witnesses from just being purchased.
It is a radical overhaul, but, have no fear, it isn't going to happen, because those that currently control the witnesses are those most profiting from it, and from the golden parachute of a hostile takeover.
Rewards can still be delivered through VP from the pool if VP is equal, or weighted via reputation, and Steem can still be the best crypto on the market, without creating vectors for profiteering from vote selling, self voting, or other such mechanisms.
We see that such mechanisms really aren't 'self-sustaining' at all, but rather eventually erode the content creation mechanism by discouraging authors because the rewards mechanism isn't rewarding them for producing good content, but being mined by profiteers.
I do not see that any other means of preventing profiteering mechanisms and securing the witnesses from hostile takeover might succeed. There remain other profiteering mechanisms, such as botnets, that my proposal wouldn't affect, but these can be (and will be, eventually) dealt with in other ways.
There just isn't any other way to stop profiteering from mining the rewards pool and discouraging content creation that I can see.
My suggestion is not meant to secure the blockchain, it's meant to distribute rewards more widely and support new users.
Large SP holders won't benefit more than they already do, like i demonstrated in OP, whales are already profiting fully. Even if whales would earn more from such feature, it still wouldn't be a problem because distribution will be much fairer. The real problem is whales profiting while preventing minnows to grow which is exactly what is happening currently.
You are exactly correct, but I do not agree that whales are 'profiting fully'.
As I pointed out a couple months ago during the furor when we first talked about this, whales can expect far higher gains from appreciation in the price of Steem than they can from mining the rewards pool.
At the time BTC was ~$3k. I pointed out that if you bought Steem at ~$1, if Steem went to only 1% of BTC price, the gain would be ~3000%, far more than you can generate from selling votes, delegating SP, or any other profiteering mechanism dependent on mining the rewards pool.
Steem is a better crypto than BTC, and Steemit CAN be a social media platform that becomes the Gorilla King in the space - but it won't as long as the rewards are mined by profiteers.
Simply mitigating the profiteering can but delay the inevitable.
If Steemit doesn't just end profiteering and just allow capital gains to reward investors, another platform will, sooner or later.
Profit is an inherent part of steemit. Users are supposed to upvote good content early in order to profit the most. That's what curation is about according to the white paper. I don't know why you want to end profit, that's the only thing that makes this site different.
I get your point about the value of steem, but I'm not sure investors wanting to profit from the site has a negative impact on the price. Users who want to profit have to stay powered up thus contributing to the price increase. For example I have not powered down a single cent in almost a year now.
The fact that the trending page is the same every day and that the retention rate is poor is the real concern to me and my 'proposal' addresses this.
The issue is not people wanting profit but the fact that users have to act against the platform's best interest to make the most money.
Incentives needs to be realigned so that people can profit while upvoting the things they like and contributing positively to the site.
I don't find profiting and profiteering to be the same thing, and I did try to point out that traditional capital gains are the victims of profiteering, as much as are new users.
In the white paper a discussion of financial manipulation points out that mining the rewards pool will harm the platform, and indeed, suggests that flagging/downvoting is the mechanism intended to prevent this.
As it happens, that didn't work as they said it was supposed to.
I hope you do feel that I am not desirous - at all - of insulting you, or anyone that acts to responsibly attend to financial matters. I'm not.
As you say, it is just a matter of properly aligning incentives. I just feel that as long as VP is weighted by SP, there is an incentive to seek to maximize ROI through voting strategies.
Profit from investments does not require stake weighted VP, as capital gains, when Steem's superb qualities as cryptocurrency bear fruit, will reward investors to higher degree than BTC, IMHO.
Better creative control always makes a better community in my experience. That seems to be what it says, just in a shocking way. That also elicits a response in my experience, not always a happy response but a response still beats a dead fish.
Thanks for the response! I believe your suggestion is entirely viable and identifies a good solution... and we're basically in agreement.
THAT SAID... can "the powers that be" be persuaded to change the curation system without first being very clearly shown that they are-- in effect-- "killing the goose that's laying the golden eggs?" If people-- even if they are just a small handful of the total "population"-- are profiting from their short term actions, where is their incentive to change things? We have to present the decision point of "$2000 a week NOW" vs. "your Steem appreciates by 1000% in three years" and you don't get both. And that may be a hard "sell."
Where do we start, functionally speaking? An analysis of the witnesses... who supports what, and votes subsequently being redistributed?
Dear @snowflakes, bless you for your honesty and i just understand that people who are plain like this i prefer to flock with, hypocrites and beautiful liars are the worst.
About the trending page, i have concluded in my mind that this place is a cult, you dont get accepted in then all you get is cents. So if all witnesses and same set of people makes it big daily- What the hell are we all waiting for if not go back to Facebook and Twitter where there is no dirty politics and favorism!
Fakebook and Twatter actively censor their users. Gargle and Youtool do the same. All of them actively work with the CIA and the like to disseminate propaganda to their users.
Steemit is relatively free of censorship and propaganda, so it's a lot cleaner in terms of politics and harming free speech.
Regardless of what happens to Steemit, I'm not going to those platforms. I've no interest in propaganda, nor in being censored.
I came here to get away from it, and if Steemit fails, I'll go somewhere else.