The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability. - Simon Mainwaring
Absolutely. And with Blockchain technology, businesses and organisations will either offer full transparency and compete, or fail if they cannot do so.
Background
Yesterday morning (UTC), technical issues made Steemit.com and other sites using api.steemit.com inaccessible, or out of sync - my feed was 2 weeks old, I'd lost a few 100 followers, and my Wallet looked suspiciously lighter.
steemitstage.com though was up and running, and so a couple of savvy users were still pushing out content via this interface. It was here where I noticed this post, and this is the focus of my blog today.
The post above, written by the developer of @smartsteem, received a vote from @smartsteem soon after creation. While other Bid-bot owners have stated they do not use their own service in this manner, I do not see an problem with doing so, as long as they adhere to the same rules as everyone else.
There are two reasons that I feel this bid and post, do not adhere to rules laid out on https://smartsteem.com or provide the transparency required in order to maintain the high level of trust required when dealing in financial transactions.
Where is the bid?
A quick scan through the bidders wallet https://steemit.com/@therealwolf/transfers shows no sign of a transfer to @smartsteem with the memo of the post in question, and yet we can see a 20% vote from @smartsteem in the voters list:
I wished to gain more insight into this, and following our initial exchange of 'pleasantries', offered the following questions to the poster:
The response was a little techie and unclear as you will see, but i think the summary of it is: I voted manually and at around 5 minutes.
The problem here is that neither of these options are possible for the customers of this 'service'. More on this shortly, but for now, where is the bid?
At this point, I am starting to wonder who the real customer is, and if my question is not being understood properly. And so I asked again:
The question is quite straight-forward, and I don't think it is unfair to ask for some clarity. Here is the response:
Numerous points to be noted here I feel.
Who is the customer in @therealwolf's eyes?
Where is the simple screenshot from any of the tools at our disposal which show the bid amount sent to @smartsteem?
An abusive tone, and not for the first time
The summary of this is that a bid was not made under normal circumstances, nor is it clear how much was paid.
This is a financial transaction involving (although not exclusively using) Blockchain technology - everything should be in plain sight.
What about the 30 minute post age rule?
On the home page of smartsteem.com, the following text is displayed:
A 30 minute 'age of post' rule is present - Votes will not be cast before this time.
One of the positive features of this rule is to allow curators to be able to pick up some rewards on the post - a large early vote increases the author rewards percentage substantially, by reducing the curation rewards percentage.
And so what was the time of this bid which added $67 to the value of the post?
Post created: 10:42:27
Smartsteem vote: 10:44:09
I make that a minute and 42 seconds after the post was created and clearly, this is not in line with the rules stated on the www.smartsteem.com homepage.
In addition to the issue of a business not adhering to its own rules whilst lacking transparency, this early vote has reduced the curation rewards of all the users who trusted @therealwolf enough to be producing quality content and sticking to the rules regarding bots - particularly his own.
Conclusions
- There is still no visible proof that STEEM/SBD was sent to @smartsteem. Even if the money is going from 'one hand to the other', for transparency this transaction should be visible to all.
- A simple and clearly stated rule was broken which has allowed for an increased pull of the rewards of the post to the owner, away from the curators.
- The response focuses on the @smartsteem delegators, as if they are the only customers that should be offered transparency.
- The tone and use of language towards me whilst I inquired and asked politely for information was not of a person I wish to do business with, or support
This episode has left me with enough reason not to consider a vote for @therealwolf as a Steem witness.
Thank you for your time.
Asher @abh12345
Witness: @steemcommunity - find out about our project here
having access to blockchain data makes everything more transparent. its sad when people try to game the system but it seem here on steemit, the more someone has, the more they will try and game things.
I have never been a fan of bidbots. I do very much encourage entrepreneurship and when these bots started to appear, I did think, well that's entrepreneurial spirit but I was also aware that in reality the only person to win, was the bidbot owners
Now @smartsteem are using their own bot that others have to pay for. Not only are the profiting from the bids. This is not entrepreneurial spirit, but very scam like behavior.
another bot, bot owner and witness just lost my respect....
take a look at most of the bot owners, they cap the gains (some without even telling you)... I work in the financial sector and if people could lost their shirt but were limited to 10% on gains, that exchange would go out of business... Same thing will happen here at some point... Soon people will realize that they are overpaying, or worse get tired of it and go away, and then these bot owners will have to change their deals. I hope people remember who was who during this time. I don't care if someone wants to make a profit, but don't pretend to be on the side of the community (or people)... These guys are almost to a person, boughtt and paid for by the whales doing their bidding. They are the middlemen taking their small slice to enable the pigs to gorge at the trough.
Hence the continued focus on the delegators in many replies.
They don't care about the bidders, it's just a matter of keeping the large delegator happy.
And if that means breaking the rules listed on your website, and sending non-visible bids, then so be it.
I'm glad you see it... Now if more would that would be fantastic! Thanks for doing your part Asher!
So true! Unfortunately, I don't think we have much of a future as a community if people keep delegating their SP to bots. I wish I had more SP to push your comment back to the top as it was but hey you will just have to settle for my few cents ;)
@paulag
All delegators to smartsteem have been paid accordingly - and of course this isn't shown on the blockchain because it happened internally in a database.
I never said delegators were not paid, however the actions here break the rules as laid down by smartsteem.
How can you justify that it is okay for you to break the rules that you set? Answer that question honestly
Of course I will answer this question honestly.
I believe in rules, when they make sense.
The 30 minute curation rule is in place to protect bidders from abusive users who are bidding in the last minute.
In my case - I only wanted to promote my post as fast as possible to help users who have no clue why Steemit was showing old data.
And since I was the only buyer for that part of the vote - I gave myself 0% ROI and promoted the post.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@therealwolf/did-we-develop-a-time-machine
And no - I will not remove the vote, because I paid for it.
I think you should change the name of the bot....I nominate the name 'One Rule' lol. What you have said is no justification. You have entry to a system that is not open to public use and you have abused the privilege.
Did he do it on any other post or only this one?
There seems to be at least one further instance where this 'invisible' bid took place, and further occasions (after the 30 minute rule was imposed), that votes were made prior to 30 minutes.
Oh i see it seems that he really doesnt show transparency on his bid bot its really unfair to others and its sad that to get to the trending in steemit we have to use bidbots
Like the @ifc doesnt use any bid bots but its a great community but a person can just use bid bots and just overtake the ifc(which is whats happening now with a person making the steemit decantalon which shows plagarism in some of the original content in the ifc)
Decathlon*
I just leave this link here:
https://steemit.com/buildteam/@isnochys/re-buildteam-buildteam-high-performance-rpc-full-node-cluster-20180406t091603672z#@therealwolf/re-isnochys-re-buildteam-buildteam-high-performance-rpc-full-node-cluster-20180406t093229616z
Thanks 😎
Part of me is unsure if this is simply lack of understanding in having proper separation of personal assets and accounts with business assets and accounts.
A CEO/employee of a company should never be sending themselves fund to refund/reimburse clients from their own personal bank account. If an A CEO/employee of a company was trying to refund me from their own personal bank account opposite to a corporate bank account I would be rather suspicious. This is not the first time either. While I can understand why a startup’s CEO tends to do this it is something I would hope a more mature project/company would reframe from doing.
I can only hope moving forward that if refunds are not being processed by the main business account for whatever reason than a separate account that only handles refunds/payment issues for that service is established and used to deal with overflow/failure to auto-refund/other issues. This would be increasingly needed if the person starts to operate further down the road other projects as well.
It might also be a good idea for them to look at their own internal policy’s regarding owner or employees being able to use there internal system to vote. CEO’s always have to be extra careful and include transparency in what they are doing. Otherwise issues tend to rise. Sending funds over our blockchain is one heck of transparency that can be easily audited by anyone from the outside.
Good idea - I will create a separate account from where the refunds will be made, but there is a reason why I decided to refund them directly from my account:
Having an account with over 1.7 Million Steempower and daily volume of thousands of dollars is no joke and requires special care - so I try to minimize the amount of logins I do to that account as much as possible.
Yes, a 'good idea' @enjar :)
Monthly gross profit at 6 digits and the business is wondering about a refund account separate to a devs. own wallet.
I don’t know those sounds like rookie numbers to be. Got least push that up to 10 digits of monthly profit by end of Q3. Otherwise we just got offshore the entire blockchain to swamps of Georgia. It's just out of my hands ;)
Perhaps they are a bit low - I'm not even going to investigate that one!
Following up with your post and conversation with therealwolf , I thinks there are some underground shitty things happening on smartsteem. Their voting bot is not transparent
Now that's really interesting! Lawmakers are above the law. How dare you question them?
That's how we roll here :)
a super scammy bot owner. Say it aint so.
Hard to hide here, uh... this transparent glass house we live in called the blockchain :)
Excellent find, I never really understand how the bidbots work. Maybe I'd get it later.
I'll keep on saying this till everyone gets to see it....
STEEMIT WILL GET MUCH BETTER IF WE PUT AN END TO BIDBOTS AND BIDBOT OWNERS, THE HARM CAUSED IS MORE THAN THE INTENDED GOOD, THAT IS IF THERE WAS ANY GOOD PURPOSE FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
THE LEVEL OF CORRUPTION AND OPPRESSION THIS HAS BROUGHT IS UNDENIABLE. I AM ACTUALLY TYPING THESE IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO SHOW HOW SERIOUS THIS MATTER IS.
ANYONE WHO SUPPORT ALL THESE MALPRACTICES CAN EQUALLY SUPPORT TERRORISM.
HOW LONG WILL WE CONTINUE TO WATCH THE COMMUNITY GET TORN DOWN BY GREED AND CORRUPTION?
Thank you @abh12345, for drawing our attention to this
👌
🆒
Blockchain is still one of the greatest thing in this time. It has solved alot of problems, made things easier and brought about transparency
Outstanding...
Leaving a quick spam comment. Feathers being ruffled? ;)
It seems so - but not without reason, as readers can likely conclude for themselves 😊
Taking me back to grade school. Entertaining, that's for sure! :)
this is something new to me, thanks for sharing this information.
PS: I will remove the self vote before the end of the payout (but only if there are no downvotes which I need to counter). This vote is simply for visibility reasons.
..ok
Just a gentle reminder
The post has paid out so I think the comment has too 😞
of course:
last_payout 2018-04-27 12:01:00 total_payout_value 5.432 SBD curator_payout_value 0.031 SBDi am intersting steemit
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100% upvoted