SubSteem

in #steemit7 years ago

On SteemSpeak, we often discuss ideas to make STEEM and Steemit better. One idea we've been discussing is the idea of "substeems."

While I did independently have some aspects of these ideas, I must credit the best ideas to @mughat especially for the unified synthesis. You should take a look at the other ideas he has blogged about in the past.

SubSteem
Subtle comp showing how substeems might look. The real change is actually under the hood.


SubSteem Moderators

A user can become a substeem moderator. By doing so, they can join moderation of other substeems and/or define their own substeem(s).

SubSteem URL

Yes, this is partially inspired by Reddit's subreddit idea. But this is just superficial. How the URL looks is not important, but it might work like this:

  • steemit.com/s/travel
  • steemit.com/s/photography
  • steemit.com/s/poetry

Ok, so how is this different from the current tagging functionality? Actually, it's separate from tagging. You could have a post in /s/travel that has five other related tags. In a way, a substeem frees up a tag. But that's also not important.

SubSteem Symbols

When a substeem is defined, it also has an asset symbol. Maybe the symbols could look like this:

  • TRAVEL
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
  • POETRY

Maybe they have to match the URL. But that's not important.

The important thing is that having a substeem means it has its own asset symbol for trading on the internal exchange.

SubSteem Reward Pool

Once there's a symbol, there can be a reward pool. Moderators of a substeem can define the size of the daily pool. Maybe /s/travel likes to allocate 1000 TRAVEL for rewards each day. Maybe /s/photography only allocates 30 PHOTOGRAPHY for rewards each day.

SubSteem Smart Contracts

It'd be easier to implement rules like the reward pool for each substeem if they had smart contracts defining them. This would allow certain substeems to have completely different rules. The rules might be:

  • TRAVEL - Has a typical payout, but second payout is in 2 weeks. The rationale might be because people often take 2 weeks for vacation, or something.
  • PHOTOGRAPHY - Has a typical payout, but the second payout timeframe is in 90 days.
  • POETRY - Has a typical payout but second payout in 1 year.
  • CURRENT_EVENTS - Has a short payout of 6 hours and no second payout.
  • CIRCLEJERK - The smart contract will only calculate absolute votes (both upvotes and flags are counted as 0 weight), has no effect on reputation, payout is always 1 CIRCLEJERK per post, no additional payout timeframe.

It's up to the moderators to define the behavior for their substeem. If the community is unhappy with the parameters, they can be changed, leaving other substeems unaffected.

SubSteem Internal Market

So how does a substeem symbol become valuable like STEEM? Simple, they'll be traded on the internal market.

  • STEEM/TRAVEL
  • STEEM/PHOTOGRAPHY
  • STEEM/POETRY
  • STEEM/CIRCLEJERK

Maybe in addition to STEEM pairs, there can be SBD pairs. If certain substeems become popular, maybe they'll trade directly, e.g.: TRAVEL/PHOTOGRAPHY


So, the idea here is, any substeem can be defined with its own unique set of rules. They wouldn't be bound by the one-size-fits-all rules of the general STEEM rewards. If a particular substeem's rules are unfair or otherwise poorly defined, this will be reflected in the internal market without impacting other substeems.

But if the rules for a substeem are optimal, and the substeem is popular, its value relative to STEEM could rise. People might even speculate on a particular substeem, which would also indirectly create demand for STEEM.

Sort:  

Although it's an interesting idea, it's unclear if this would truly add value to the platform or confuse & divide the user base. I've thought about this model at length, and my gut tells me it's more confusing and dividing than anything. What is the goal or the problem are we trying to solve? It's possible there are more effective methods to solve the same problem

I would just like steemit.com to allow to subscribe to tags at least the same way it does with people.

Only once is a while, (5-15 min a day) do I check to the main reddit, and that's usually either to learn about what the herd is talking about (major world news) or to watch funny and cute pictures of animals.
At this stage Steemit excel in neither of those.

I created this very simplistic issue that doesn't offer a clear solution but I think it expose a very real and obvious problem.
https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/issues/704

I agree with you that it's complicated and has the potential to divide the user base. Maybe the goals of this idea could be addressed in some other way.

The main goal here is to define different reward rules for different types of posts, rather than one-size-fits-all. Other goals:

  • A post that is time sensitive, like news, should not have a 30-day payout.
  • Other languages could have the opportunity to have their own voting pool on the same blockchain (rather than fork their own blockchain).
  • For long-form posts or fiction, some authors might not mind extending their initial payout out to 30 days or longer.

Because they are separate reward pools, it seems like it would be difficult to get consensus to make these reward pools pay in STEEM. It seems like it's easier to just create new tokens with their own pools. Since graphene supports User Issued Assets, it seems like a natural fit.

And since they are their own tokens, they'd need an internal market to set their value. Anyway, that's the progression.

I think if we could simplify it for the non-technical users like my grandmother(not that she is on here). This can get a bit confusing to get around all these different ways you can find success on the platform.

While I don't agree with the confusing parts of the above post (multiple currencies, reward pools, etc), I do think that a little division on steemit.com is something you guys should consider if you're attempting to foster the growth of smaller communities within the site.

If the goal with steemit is just to have one huge community, then disregard and keep on with tags only :)

Sub-steems are a definite future!

Just not sure they each need their own token as it's proven they can be be driven by social desires.

Native blockchain assets - and their incentives - and their websites, such as Steemit - are like boardgames. The game can be designed in different ways, but we don't want to have a thousand different rule sets included in one game because that would make the game too complicated. In a recent @steemitblog post, however, we outline a case for two new aspects to the game's rules - 1. That comments must take a piece of the author/curator rewards. 2. That short posts must take a piece of the author/curator rewards and 3. Medium/long posts must take a piece of the author/curator rewards. In the spirit of this thread, these new rules by themselves should open the game up to be even more playable while not making it all that much more complex.

So maybe, substeems could be common, as tier 1, but the separate token and reward pool is only enabled when an entire community forms around a particular substeem, as tier 2.

For example, say we have a substeem called /s/cn for China. It gets popular enough in its own community that it'd need its own reward pool (and hence, its own token) because stakeholders outside of /s/cn tend to ignore it.

This should allow us to avoid forking into new blockchains.

What happens when someone post into multiple tags? Is payout restricted to one tag/substeem? This may complicate a simpler method of payouts that we use now.

You would only be able to post to one substeem. The tags would work like they do now. They just tag.

For example, you might post to /s/photography and tag travel. Or you might post to /s/travel and tag photography.

In the first example, the substeem is photography and those rules apply. The tag of travel has nothing to do with the substeem, it's just a tag. But I can certainly see how this might be confusing.

This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the second half of Nov 22. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $13.19 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.

See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Nov 22 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.

If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.

This is a very interesting idea.

This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.

Learn more about and upvote to support linkback bot v0.5. Flag this comment if you don't want the bot to continue posting linkbacks for your posts.

Built by @ontofractal

Someone just explained Reddit to me