Synopsis:
There are more DEAD than LIVE fishes in Steemit due to the skewed rewards and incentives structure which fosters “the rich becomes richer and the poor, poorer” mindset. The current incentive system should be enhanced to nurture Red Fish and Minnows which constitute the large majority of Steemitverse. Steemit's bright future depends on ensuring a sustainable ecosystem that promotes equality, fairness, oneness, and non-violence.
The Problem:
There are more DEAD than LIVE fishes in Steemit. If this trend continuous, the pond will be full of rotten fishes that could poison the whole ecosystem.
Source:@arcange 5.22.2017 steemit post. Couldn't get an updated chart as the site has been down for an extended period of time.
The Root Cause:
The current structure of rewards and incentives is not designed to nurture new Steemians (Red Fish and Minnows [RFM]) to grow and fend for themselves. Both the authorship and curation rewards heavily disfavor RFMs and the lion share of rewards goes to <5% of Steemians – a stark replica of the world we currently live in – the world-state that the Satoshi revolution wants to change.
- The wealthiest 1 percent of the world's population now owns more than half of the world's wealth, according to Credit Suisse report.
- The total wealth in the world grew by 6 percent over the past 12 months to $280 trillion, marking the fastest wealth creation since 2012, according to the report.
- But that wealth around the world is increasingly concentrated among those at the top. The top 1 percent now owns 50.1 percent of the world's wealth, up from 45.5 percent in 2001.
In Steemit, there are basically three ways to “monetize” your "contribution" to the ecosystem: (1) price appreciation of the Steem and SBD tokens; (2) authorship & curation rewards; and (3) incentives in the form of prizes, lottery, gifts etc.
Price appreciation is probably the biggest “profit” that one can make here in Steemit long term. Imagine how much wealth you gain by holding 100,000 Steem when its price skyrockets to $100 from $5 per coin. That’s a staggering $9.5 million! Compare that to a minnow who holds 1,000 SP.
Authorship and curation are what we get from our posts, the calculation of which I believe is outdated Is the Current REWARDS DISTRIBUTION Calculation OUTDATED?. Point aside, I think we can further improve the reward structure to support the growth of RFMs and equally important - to attract more fishes into Steemit.
The table below shows how skewed the rewards and incentives structure is:
Here on Steemit, SP and Followers mean everything while the quality of post means very little. Red fishes and Minnows who barely have Steem Power and followers get a minuscule portion of the rewards: low returns from price appreciation due to low steem power, almost zero authorship and curation rewards due to low visibility of their posts and small followers as well as very little steem or SDB to participate in bidding using bots. Incentives, on the other hand, is different. Its very nature, being "participation based", offers a less biased form of payment but the payout is extremely small.
The Recommendation (Solution)
Before diving into the proposed solutions, let's review the existing rewards landscape using the below visual:
copyrights: [email protected]
In the opposite sides of the above diagram are the inverse triangle representing the number of steemians in each category and a regular triangle representing the rewards each category receive. We all know that Red Fish and Minnows make up the bigger percentage of all Steemians hence the inverse triangle. In terms of rewards however, RFMs get a smaller share as discussed above.
In between these triangles are the DRIVERS. These are the factors that drive who and how much rewards a Steemian gets. SP and the number of followers are the main drivers - the more you have, the more you get. These drivers, however, do not work for RFMs because they barely have any. Hence, we need to create more drivers that would support RFMs. I call this the "battleground".
The Battleground
The battlefront is the area designated by the dotted red line in the above diagram. Currently, there isn't a lot in there. There are bots like Minnowhelper and the likes, but these are not enough. Hence, in my own personal view, there is where Steemit should focus its effort ASAP.
Solution #1: The Reward Pool.
The concept of this reward pool stems from the fact that Steemit exists and thrive because of the collective actions of each and every fish within it. Just like the ocean is comprised of quadrillion drops of water, every drop constitutes the whole, Steemit is no different.
The proposal is to take 10% of all rewards, pool it together and distribute it evenly on a weekly or monthly basis to all Steemians who were active on that week/month. What this means is that the rewards distribution percentages will be revised as follows: 70% Authorship; 20% Curation; and 10% Pool.
The “pool” should be distributed by simply dividing the “pooled amount” by the total number of Steemians who made a post and/or commented on a post for that week/month. It is important to note that Steem Power, number of followers, the number of posts or comments one made should NOT INFLUENCE the pool distribution. It a reward pool created by all Steemians who contributed to Steemit regardless of who they are.
There are several advantages of having this pool. First, it helps unite the whole community and make them feel like one big family who cares for each other. Second, it’s the epitome of the "equality" concept. It also serves as a constant reminder that we are all the same – minnows, red fish, whale, - all are fishes who need the ocean to survive. Third, this will provide new and would be RFMs a steady source of SP and serves as a stimulus to keep swimming!
The bottom line is, Steemit will become the leading social platform (and consequently the price of Steem will skyrocket) not because of the number of whales in the platform but because all the fishes within the ecosystem are healthy and are working harmoniously towards a common goal.
For this reason, I personally think that the reward pool should increase over time and becomes the major source of income for all fishes...but let's table this topic for now.
Solution #2: More Incentives
What I foresee to be a healthy, blooming and flourishing platform is one whose rewards structure is powered by three (not two) factors:
SP + FOLLOWERS + QUALITY = BALANCED REWARDS
The Quality part isn't there where it supposed to be. This is where this second proposal comes into play - we need more incentive types rewards.
Steemit should introduce more incentives like the Pulitzer Prize, Most Influential Steemian of the month, Intellectual awards etc. to recognize and award high-quality posts.
Let me conclude this post with the following quote from Isaac Singer:
source: izquotes.com
May the force be with us all.
I just made a comment today that if Zuckerburg were to look at the Steemit platform he'd see it's number one vulnerability as the inability to recognize that all contributions should have value, and for someone who built his empire on that that will be what he will use if he decides he feels threatened by the Steemit platform, he would build a platform based on everyone's contribution has value regardless of intellect thereby crushing Steemit into the abyss. That's a huge vulnerability to have.
HI I 100% agree with the article and if they can make steemit reward more fair for everyone that would be great.. and your reply to the article is spot on.. thanks for sharing
couldn't explain it better than you did @sunlit7.
Great idea for the seperate reward pool!
I also agree with you on the quality of posts being rewarded unequally. One suggestion i would like to make it to arrange the trending page by some other order than highest payouts. Maybe comments or page views? Something that is more engaging than a simple high paying upvote.
We used to have an ACTIVE tab which listed in order of comments.
Any idea what happened to it or why it was taken down?
Nope. Just gone one day.
We're still in beta. It might come back :)
I agree with you. It would be good to pay for the articles for the level of quality. Each time, the user himself determines how much to give a certain article. That is, to exclude the possibility of poor-quality articles in the trend to give a big payment. Then it will be more fair and creative original posts will start to read more people and give worthy payment. While this is utopia for Steemit. Rich fish will command a parade, and small fish and creative swim, as they can, without support.
I am seeing so much talent going to waste when there is so much untalented posts raking it in. It's baffling. This is why I've heard the good ones drop off keeping all the lower quality content in control. This happened to eBay. All the top sellers with amazing original products to sell got wiped out with all the cheap Chinese knockoffs. We need to encourage and support quality, rather than mass quantity. Time will tell if the platform is worth our personal times.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to change this situation. To write an original article or make a quality product, you need to spend a lot of time for this. Hence, people who want to make money from it quickly will not earn it quickly. Chinese counterfeits for these people are very convenient - you can quickly make a lot of low-quality goods and quickly make money on it. This situation is also in Steemit. Quickly wrote a low-quality article, showed photos, invested money, raised the article in a trend - and got a financial profit. I do not think that something will change in Steemit for small fish and creative people.
Unfortunately, today, what I saw in Steemit, users of Steemit with a small voice power is very difficult to climb up. You can write a quality post, but this post is difficult to notice in Steemitt. They vote mainly for the post that is in the trend because of the invested money. It is not profitable for rich users to notice the post of small fish.
Yes, however luckily this problem can be solved...
There are plenty of options , as long as the community stays involved the problems can be resolved...
I am also a huge fan of the Universal Basic Income implementation for Steem based rewards system.
Completely, unfortunately, the problem does not solve. Not everyone will want to search and read original articles - they will not be able to make money quickly. When an article is in a trend, the quality is often low - many users vote, because there is a large $. To change something, you need to change Steemit work system. That for all the laws were the same. But it is still impossible.
Steemit is still an infant,so it will probably change a lot in the near future.This is definitely one of the biggest vulnerabilities of the platform.We break up with Facebook,because of the censorship,just to find out the same exist here in the form of powerful whales.We gave up our Youtube account,because the company either demonetize our videos ( and keep the profit),or takes a huge chunk of it.Then we find out the same exist on Steemit as well,just as this post described.That means the original purpose of this platform is already lost and a lot of people won't see any difference of being here.Great post,thank you for taking your time doing the research!
I hadn't realized the wide gap between a red fish and the other elite fishes. Yes, minnows are considered elite from a red fish perspective because it will take some time to get to even that status.
I concur that the current structure of rewards and incentives are not designed to support the newcomers to Steemit. There are talented writers and artists that simply go unnoticed because they don't have the right "connections". Some break out and are fortunate to have their talent discovered, but many of these individuals are the ones that are most active on here. They are able to dedicate more than a few hours on Steemit. Building relationships and connections is a wonderful thing to do on here, but some people are just not extroverts. They love to write or draw or express their talents, but may not have the "social" skills to make the necessary connections to succeed. Or they could be working professionals that don't have time to steemit 24/7, but would like to share their knowledge and interest when they do come online.
There has to be a reward structure in place that rewards active users for them to continue writing and putting out their best works and interests. We need to entice intellectual individuals on this platform. Or else, would they bother to spend hours writing a post when they would only get rewarded $0.05?
Make sense and thanks for the feedback @beeyou. I've seen many high quality posts that did not get even a dollar payout. I can't pull the posts statistics but my guess is, there are more high quality posts that weren't paid fairly than quality posts that received a decent pay out. Hence the 10% reward pool to me would make sense.
The other thing that still strikes me as probably outdated is self-upvoting. I'm sure there were good reasons when steemit was still in its early phase, but now more and more people enter and participate it's at minimum a bit strange that whales can divert quite a bit of payout to their own work. It's a bit like as if people fear that if they cannot upvote themselves it's not really worth the trouble. I would think it's quite the opposite: most whales seem to know eachother and ending self upvoting will probably lead to higher rewards if you post good work. Anyway, my one cent, because that's what my opinion is worth today on steemit ;)... Upvoted and resteemed!
appreciate your one cent, upvote and resteem #ronnie60. there are pros and cons on the self voting and I guess overall this is good for the community since majority of steemians need it. I am more concerned about the downvote than the self vote though as it does not promote harmony and unity. There's wisdom behind why facebook does not allow "dislike" but it's just my own opinion.
Only through bringing up thoughts we can have (a bit of) influence. I understand your doubts about downvotes. It's complicated I guess. But I don't agree that self upvoting is important to whales. Seriously how much more do you need when you're already in the top :-) ... Still thanks for your article though because only through thought and imagination can things be made better!
I know I can write some good stuff, but only when inspiration hits. That's not often enough to rise on steemit. So steemit basically tells me to engage bots and post crappy atricles. That's not encouraging for me. I like your focus on participation and quality. These are things that work.
Earning money is not easy. Most people come here because they think that and give up quickly. That explains the dead fish. That's why I don't mind.
Of course, there are a lot of users with lots of Steempower, raping the rewardpool with their senseless upvotes and shitty posts, but the world isn't quite fair.
You have three choices: Be good, get good or give up. But without hard work, big effort and persistence, success on SteemIt will not come.
I agree.
What about ordering a statestician, scientist, economist or similiar to create a system that they can prove is going to distribute the rewards fairly. They probably have a lot of relevant experience.
Fairly is a subjective term. It's easier to see value in what I create than what someone else creates. Human nature I believe.
I didn't say fairness is an objective term.
but you mentioned scientist. Scientist is normally hard-evidence and about objective truth. Then you mention distributing the reward fairly. Kinda infers that.
great post
great post
i appreciate your work friend!
Now my steem blog could change both your life, world and and how you look at the world in a positive way, please follow me, read my blog and comment if you want me to continue my blog
This post was resteemed by @steemvote and received a 44.58% Upvote
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I don't know which site you're talking about, but you will find an update of this graph in my latest daily stats
thanks @arcange for sharing the link. Glad to know this site exist. very nice stats!
Definitely agree. Less needs to be given to
Those that hold so much SP and more to new users in order to incentivize them to stay. We don’t need steemit to become a place of greed.
right. a better rewards structure would avoid such outcome.
Did you write so beautifully. If we support for small minnows it is super.
This is absolutely true. I was wondering how it worked. But I'm thinking that maybe there's not enough incentive to buy steempower on the market for promoters and others who want their content to be seen by us.
I think its more of a question on how to divide the cake rather than making the cake bigger. The cake will grow bigger as more and more people join the platform.
I like your post, you've a new follower.
My post: Sin otro sentido, hoy comienza el día
thanks @mpfiguera for following. will check you post too though I don't speak spanish.
I've never heard the term "red fish" before... What does that mean?
This post has received gratitude of 17.52 % from @appreciator thanks to: @sandalphon.
Sorry, mate. Your heart is in the right place; but this is a terrible idea.
Who's going to buy up steem knowing that it'll be distributed not as a reward for adding value, but just for being here?
This mindset has done untold damage throughout history; and I think you'll find a lot of the reason a lot of people like myself have chosen to invest in this place, is that collectivist ideas like this one won't be adopted.
You get more of whatever you reward.
If we reward consistent quality; we get more of it; if we reward need, we get more of it.
I've been lurking around and posting / replying here and there. Still I'm wading through lots of crappy stuff, because steemit sends the message that your star will rise for two things: engaging bots and posting as much as you can.
The other thing I find difficult in our modern society is the question of value. How do we determine value? To me it seems we give value only to money. You have a lot of it, then you have more value. It doesn't really matter how you gained that money. To be a person, a living being, has no value. Isn't that weird? Next thought, if people just by being alive don't have any value, then nature (all living beings together) doesn't have value either. Yet we fully depend on nature to live. We need to seriously #unfuck ourselves and allow for a bit more reflection on how things work.
Not sure mate which one is a terrible idea - to share 5% of your rewards as an author to make this community grow or to make a platform that anyone can copy and members can leave at will and take their tokens as quickly as withdrawing money from the ATM. Loyalty and the feeling that you belong to something special is a competitive advantage that cannot be easily copied.
Guess it depends why you're here and what you want from the platform.
I want to write and read top quality blogs.
To attract that, we need to offer big jackpots.
Dan's original vision as per the white paper, has already been very much watered down with the change from quadratic to linear rewards.
Any more movement away from quality and towards fairness will have many investors like myself reconsidering our continued involvement.
are we on the same blockchain?
Excellent breakdown and great solutions
Nice concept & idea
Even the fattest whale should recognize that increased retention of minnows is good for the price of steem and their own account value.
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appreciate the info @bitgeek. Keep it coming!
Sounds like some exelent ideas. It's really hard for a new user starting out to get any exposure. I have over 250 followers in less than a month, but my steempower is less than 10 lol. The curration rewards are non existent for a newcomer as well. I'm in it for the long run though, I'll grow in time...
Two weeks on the platform and the issues you state are hitting me right in the face. Along with my own experience, I've been seeing post after post exclaiming the need for something different.
I think this is an excellent post that clearly states a major Steemit problem and brainstorms solutions with merit.
I see a dichotomy between what could work and what could be adopted. The #1 problem I'm seeing is to understand (which I do not yet) and communicate to the whales how they would benefit. A major challenge with the current success they are reaping. I hear lip service saying long term health of the platform is their priority, but I see actions that say otherwise.
Any adoptable solution has to be a "win/win" now for all. Can we find one?
If we want to use this revolutionary technology to derogate from monopolistic power, why do we re-create it almost instantly?
Thank you for a stimulating post.
reality of life bites not everything rosy
Great idea... The concept of steemit is amzing, but it needs further improvements. Kind of funny that the structure is now reflecting our real world, but then again, not very surprising... resteemed!
thanks for the feedback @tobetada and appreciate the resteem!
I love you ideas, they seem precious to me. Your analogy of Steemit reward distribution with current financial states fascinates me. And most importantly, I quote:'There are more DEAD than LIVE fishes in Steemit. If this trend continuous, the pond will be full of rotten fishes that could poison the whole ecosystem'. Thanks for sharing your ideas!
This is my second day in steemit and i'm having a hard time to gain points/score/vote whatsoever. After I reading blog. I found out that i'm one of those red fish who is having difficulty of earnings.
To be honest @jchember, I've been on here for almost a month and I still have difficulty. If you search #newbieresteemday, we have a group that is trying to help out newbies as they come on here. Right now we're hosting several contests, free to enter, that encourages engagement for our newbies and for them to get to know others. Go join the contests and have fun. I have a weekly recap on my blog if you would like to know more about us.
https://steemit.com/superbowlweekne/@davemccoy/super-bowl-week-newbie-edition-day-3-contest-update
These initiatives are awesome. Keep up the good work!
That's an interesting idea to improve Steemit ecosystem and therefore encourage newbies to create higher quality content.
I'm new in this social network and this post made me understand better how Steem works. Although it might be discouraging for fishes like me to start creating content, I believe in this project and I think it has an added value compared to all other mainstream social networks.
Hope to read more ideas like this one and also hope that Steem team takes it into consideration. You gained one new follower!
appreciate the feedback @stanix and I'm very glad to have a new follower!
Super great post. But I do have a bit of a reservation on the reward pool being evenly distributed to everyone who contributed a post regardless of who they are. Our platform encourages everyone to submit quality content and stands to reason that if you have good quality you will be rewarded and vice versa. Unilaterally giving out rewards to everyone without consideration to the content quality will just serve as a disincentive to those who actually work on making valuable and quality content. We have to encourage members to work on their craft. Give them incentives to make themselves better. A reward pool that does not take this into account may just end up being the problem rather than the solution.
I am for the Reward pool. But I also value content quality. A happy medium should be thought out for this.
Thanks for reading this until the end. No intentions of upsetting anyone. Just my opinion.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. The way I look at it, 90% of the rewards to encourage high-quality post and 10% to rewards pool to help new steemians grow is a healthy balance.
Nice :). I would be really, really happy, if you guys could look up my paperpiano and tell me, what you think of this :D.
Thank you
Piano Master
This is such an important message that NEEDS to be said! Thank you for bringing the injustice in the Steemit system to light, @sandalphon! Hopefully, @steemit gets this message and makes a few integral changes to their system before all the minnows die out!
You make some interesting points and I think you highlighted some potential optimisations that could be considered.💊It is quite a complex ecosystem and interesting points in comments by steemians also.💣 Enjoyed this article so thanks and I definitely got some insights from your viewpoints and noticed some correlations with what I see - it seems odd that articles have minuscule value or are hyper-inflated.⚖️
Not a bad idea. I never thought it like that. Hmm...my idea to make steem go up was adding ad banners that operated like promoted tab but sowed ad banners or reddit type ad banners. Advertising would bring new money in and burn alot of steem dollars/ steem.
Hi, i'm new here,
I am interested in promoting the idea of a currency of 'esteem' in our daily transactions and toward this end I will be learning a lot about steemit and its future by reviewing these types of threads and possibly jumping in and giving an opinion, suggestion or observation. I'm also working on ideas for a basic new 'face' (interface/look/feel), as I don't want to just make complaints without working on solutions...
On rewards:
The only measure for the 'quality' of a post should be in the number of upvotes it gets from people who have appreciated the post.
If my cat picture gets more upvotes than a doctoral thesis on a forgotten language, so be it...
Networking, reciprocity and collaboration mechanisms are the things that should bring in the upvotes and the rewards.
Also on rewards:
I'd like to reward the writer that drew me to Steemit - and get rewarded for those I refer that join in... Is there such a reward program?
thanks for sharing knowledge
Fantastic article… I see a lot of potential in these minor changes if they were adopted. As with anything, it will open up exploits, but this would definitely level the playing field for lower-level Entries onto the platform. Look forward to what this may bring to light.
What a great and creative idea you have!
Nice information about steemit blogs
Dude, I've been wracking my brain for quite some time now on how to fix the steemit ecosystem. It's obviously broken and on the track to oblivion. If the rewards structure isn't fixed (and fixed soon) another platform will come along with a better rewards structure and replace steemit. I LOVE your rewards pool idea. The only problem I see with it is people creating fictitious accounts in order to take a percentage of the pool. How would you suggest combating that?