Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to post some thoughts on the last HF. I have seen a lot of posts with misunderstandings and misinformation. I want to try and clear some of that up. I do want to make clear that I don't have all the answers, and some of what I write here is my own personal opinion. You are welcome to disagree if you want :)
Rewards Pool Recalibration
There was an initial spike in rewards after the HF. This was due to a lot of factors, including a change in how the rewards pool is averaged out over a period of days. Based on the new formula, there was a surplus of funds in the rewards pool right after the HF. Combined with the increase in voting due to the 4x voting power change and whales now being allowed to vote - it paid out a lot of extra.
It was fun while it lasted, but it was not sustainable given the current price of STEEM. As I wrote about in this post, the payments were expected to fluctuate for the weeks after the HF and would eventually reach a new equilibrium.
At equilibrium, the amount of rewards being paid out per day should average out to the amount that is being added per day based on in inflation rules. The rewards pool still seems to be doing some minor re-balancing, but at this point it seems to be getting pretty close to equilibrium.
For the math nerds, here are two links that show the historic tracking of how much is in the rewards pool and how much is being paid out. (Thanks @jesta!)
https://steemdb.com/api/funds
https://steemdb.com/api/rewards
Change to Linear Rewards
Since the day I joined Steemit, there has always been talk about how the platform was 'unfair', and there was no point in participating because it was 100% controlled by the whales. After I had been on the site for 6+ months, and had earned over 10,000 SP - it was somewhat disheartening to have my upvotes only be worth a few pennies. For users with even less than me, their votes were not even worth $0.01.
I have always argued against people who believed the whales shouldn't have as much power (they earned their power based on the rules of the blockchain), but I did agree with the fact that things needed to change if we wanted to build a platform that would scale to 'the masses'. People don't like to play games that they don't feel are possible to win.
The changes in HF 19 changed all of that. Even now after the payouts are down from the post-hf spike, dolphins and minnows have a lot more power. I can add more than $10 to a post if I give it a 100% upvote! Even new users with a small amount of SP can increase posts by a few cents or even a dollar. If you want more influence, just buy more SP. This is a HUGE change compared to pre-hardfork. Changing this was the main goal of the HF - and it succeeded.
In my mind, changing this imbalance will go down as one of the most important changes that have been made to the platform. Having more SP now actually makes a difference with your voting. This has added a lot of value to holding SP (influence), and has not done it in a way that was unfair to our platform's largest stakeholders. It has also made the platform seem a lot more fair.
4x Voting Power
There are mixed feelings on this feature. Some users will see it as a reason to be lazier with curation, and only hunt for 1/4 as many good posts. If people really want to do that, it is their choice, but to me - it misses the point of the platform. Rewarding good content is one of the main reasons we are all here. We can all still take the time to hunt for really good content, but now we have a way to "super reward" the really good ones we find.
It has changed my voting behavior. I find myself voting with mostly 5-25% votes now, and saving my 50/75/100 for really good posts. I do think it is fun to have a little bit more granular control. I haven't found myself voting on less posts, just with less strength. Giving a 100% upvote to an epic post is actually kind of fun :)
Self Voting
There is a very healthy discussion going on about self-voting, and I think it is important for this to continue.
Even if the community comes to a consensus on this though, remember there are no official rules regarding this, and everyone is allowed to use their stake how they see fit. At the end of the day, self-voting is "allowed".
If there are users that are truly abusing self-voting, then hopefully the community will detect it and can react with appropriate downvotes.
My view is that there is a healthy balance. The rule that I suggest (my personal opinion) is the 90/10 rule - Try to spend 90% of your voting stake towards others, and 10% to yourself and friends. This ratio (even if there are some people who don't follow it) will make sure the platform keeps rewarding the good content, while still allowing some indulgence in the basic human nature of wanting to reward yourself and your friends.
The way I see it, we are all stakeholders, everyone gets to chose out to use their stake. It is up to us to use our stake in such a way that we try to grow the pie for everyone, rather than trying to maximize the size of our own individual slices.
There are always going to be people who do things for selfish reasons. It is best not to get too hung up on what those people do. If the majority of us focus on using our stake for the betterment of the platform, then I think we'll be fine.
Trending Authors
This isn't really related to the HF, but I wanted to throw in a few thoughts on it. A lot of the rewards do keep going to the same authors. At this point, I am happy and honored to be one of them :) It was certainly not that way when I started out out though - it took me 6+ months and a lot of hard work to get there.
There is a lot to be said about the people that spend the time and effort to build up a following, and are able to consistently produce good content that their followers like. At the same time, it is important that we successfully onboard our new members too.
People need to feel the ladder is worth climbing in order to stick around. New users shouldn't come to the platform expecting to earn instant rewards just by making one or two posts, but there does need to be recognition and rewards along the way for the ones that are putting in the effort to get there.
Just keep that in mind and try to find the right balance when you chose how to allocate your share of the rewards :)
Bottom Line
My conclusion is that the HF was a big success. It will still take some time for the community to reach it's own equilibrium on proper voting and rewards allocation, but I do think we will get there. The HF has corrected the imbalance at the blockchain level, and has given every user influence directly proportional to their stake. Now it is up to all of us how we use that power.
Reminder to vote for witnesses!
The Steem witnesses are the elected leaders of the community that power the blockchain. Everybody should learn about the Steem witnesses and vote on who they think is best. If you don't know much about witnesses or aren't sure who to vote for, you can check out this Witness Voting Guide. If you think @timcliff is doing a great job, please consider voting for him as witness! You can vote for witnesses here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Post Rewards
I did not 'decline payout' on this post so that I could donate the liquid portion of rewards to the SteemFest Travel Reimbursement Fund @t-r-f.
This post & comments took me a good part of my morning coffee readings. Nice, informative, actual. Big thanks @timcliff. I feel that in general HF19 was a big step forward in the right direction. x4 voting power increase to me is not worth even talking about. As long as I can select 5%, 1%, (or even a 0.01% here on esteem app) of my voting power , where really the problem is for anyone?
What yet concerns me most is the BOTS. The use, misuse, and abuse brought by all kinds of bots. These community "participants" upvote, follow, unfollow, comment, possibly even downvote/flaging here on the network. Which we call a social network. But do them read? Or see picture? or watch video? What purpose these bots serve, except grow grow grow faster, more more more money, and quick? I feel this area of bot's usage remains yet to be more regulated, changed, improved. Agree? Or I misunderstand something?
Bots are not humans. I am here to interact with humans. Not dumb machines.
Bots in of themselves aren't necessarily bad. As the platform continues to scale to more users, a lot of bots (like cheetah) perform actions that humans would not be able to do on every post. There are still humans to interact with, but the bots serve their purpose too. IMO, there are good bots and bad bots (subjective opinion). The good bots are adding value to the community and improving the platform. The bad bots are serving selfish ends at the expense of the community. (There are good humans and bad humans here too..)
Although I feel that I should have joined Steemit earlier, I also feel that joining Steem after the hard fork 19 is not as bad. I get more power with my votes now compared with what people use to get before this fork was released.
Newbies get the same power as an expert, and users can always buy more Steem Power which will give you better results.
You're missing some of the problems that have come along too Tim. Views are largely down on posts. Especially in minnow land we see fewer interactions. The instinct to horde steempower when starting is strong, so with a few posts, a few votes on posts, and a few on comments you're done for day. Minnows are interacting less. The upside of linear rewards to a minnow is more than cancelled by the lack of views and interactions.
You're also downplaying the amount of autovorotic behavior. If you look pre HF there was about 77MV going into comments. It's close to 400 now and it hasn't all be averaged out. We're seeing what I think will average out to about a 10x increase vosterbation.
I think linear rewards is mostly a good thing, but we wouldn't have to worry about it so much if the distribution on this platform wasn't the top 1% of steem holders own 93% of the steem, and that's before we include @steemit.
I think there are some big problems left over largely from 40x->10x and distribution that I hope the top witnesses take into account.
Thanks for your views though. There are some benefits as you note, but I think it's actually going to take minnows longer to break out now.
There is no question that there have been good and bad impacts from the HF. Most of the 'bad' parts though are based on user behavior. I realize that incentives are largely what drive that, but we do have to work as a community to incentivize and encourage the behavior that we want. The blockchain is the platform/framework that we all use, but it is really up to the community and users what we do with that. I think that the short-term change in statistics that we are seeing is not a true measurement of what the effects are. We are still in beta mode, and things will change a lot more once communities open up and the UI user experience is improved. For now I think focusing on getting the fundamentals right is the correct course of action. I am still confident that this will all play out for the best in the end.
Very true, social incentives I call them. I'm glad you support flagging against self voting abuse (though of course I can't speak to the parameters of this support).
@timcliff @aggroed
As a minnow I am guilty of less interaction then I was with my fellow minnows then before the fork. I use to just randomly go into new introduce yourself posts and drop by to say hi, follow, upvote, and be on my way. I use to also spend more time interacting, or trying help out fellow minnows as well. I’ve noticed some smaller projects people have made to support minnows stop receiving views, and the people running just put out less content now.
So why did my interaction drop?
First part of it is limiting factor of upvote power. I have learned I need to keep mine at or above 80%, and I am super picky now with what I upvote. I’ve noticed once a minnow find this out they are reducing the amount they are upvoting.
Second, lack of tools Steemit has put out for me to properly manage my feed. Sure members of the community have started to create add-ons where you can do things like mute someone resteem ability to your feed, or gain better statistical data. I’m finding myself being more picky on who I follow (I even went and unfollowed a bunch just to keep my feed “manageable.”) I like the idea of a feed but a lot of people who have thousands have described them upvoting someone blog on their feed like “winning the lottery,” the chance is so rare. I see myself being heavily dependent on third party apps in the future.
Third, the weather in Florida is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. I’m spending less time in doors and more time outdoors swimming. I’ve noticed a lot of other people are spending more time outdoors as well. Naturally, not having to vote as much. I get to spend less time here and that not a bad thing, but I’m also not finding the gem of a post by someone who just joined either.
Finally, a few of the tags that where created for minnows usage is either dead or over run by non-minnows. I know better than to use all my tags for the really big things like life, Steemit and so on. As any views there are just minutes if that. This leaves me using a big tag or two and then trying finding the lesser tag where I can stay up for days. Even someone as small as me with help of minnowsupport can stay for days near the top if I find the right tag. I noticed a lot of minnows even I still struggle with this.
I hope in some way this has helped to better understand at less why I am being less active and I can only assume others are as well. Perhaps it will help lead to further discussion on changes beta needs to move forward and retain new users who I have been noticing sometimes never log back in.
This, yes, ALL of this. Me too!
I am a minnow and I upvoted a whale's post last night at 90%+ power and added $100. Amazing!?
Read my posts, rarely beyond 5 mins long. Always hilarious and entertaining!
NO ENTERTAINMENT LIKE THE IDIOT BOX
That's not possible. You can read how it works in my article Common SteemIt mistakes and misconceptions.
It was a 6½ day old post, no more voting going on. I saw the $amount increase by $100 after my one upvote, so was very surprised. Thanks for the good read.
I work very hard on my posts. I engage a lot with others and get very little for what others say is a great posts. I never did vote for my posts but now I do on 5th day. Before payout.
I couldn't have said it better myself! thanks!
This is what I'm talking about with a lot less "institutional knowledge" in my comment question elsewhere on this page.
You can buy the right to votserbate or even to sling mud, and I've seen it first hand. And there is no way to combat the unfair attack by a lesser powered, but more involved and contributing community member. Others with good intentions have to rescue them. Or not. Not a reliable proposition. So all that you said above seems exacerbated by being able to buy into the 1% and attack the 99% who combined, cannot fight back.
I'd wish that in my utopia version of this place that some kind of Rep score was used for influence metrics and the money was separate. That's just my wish.
It's seem I am not fully grasping it all though, since big leaguers have voiced disagreement with my points in "my part" (for lack of a better designation to indicate the comments under mine) of this page's comment thread.
I'm not going anywhere either way. Based on what appear to be some pretty extraordinary growth metrics on my account for my very young 31 days here, I already know I'll get to the "top" soon enough. I'm sold out for steem and steemit, and spend 20 hours a day here more often than not, encouraging, promoting minnows, sharing in the experience and trying to use my powers for good.
I just hope it doesn't end up a spoiled bag of apples because worms who just show up overnight to take advantage of the farmer's hard work.
We're actually in a better position to group together and combat abuse that we were before HF 19. The combined effect of many minnow is actually significant.
Perhaps, but I'm not gonna be the one to ask fellow minnows to scream this is Sparta on MY behalf. It would have to happen organically when they saw it and shat brix. That said, I often campaign for judicious downvotes but it seems to fall on fearing ears, because the only people I see flagging are dolphin or above.
It's true that there is not a culture of it yet. I had an idea a while ago about a way to coordinate minnows into righteous flagging swarms but it would always require crying Sparta 😉
SpartaSwarmBot? Hey that does have a nice ring to it.
So does VigilanteJusticeBot or WitchHunterBot tho. Hmmm.
You blame the increase in comment rewards solely on self-voting? Why?
Good question.
I agree with you arggroed, I spend some time among newbies and I have seen that most of them do not wish to vote or even comment on posts. But then when I visit the hot and trending section, the posts there have a lot of conversation and people are voting and commenting there.
This is why you have become one of my fav. guys on here and why I gave you my last witness vote. You have shown you are not afraid to speak your opinion and as an activist who has been targeted, this speaks to me @aggroed.
Thanks Barry! It's an honor to wear the Dutton Badge on the Witness voting wall.
You are too kind. I have sensed for awhile quietly watching your hard work, that I will likely do a blog on you.
I basically decided that, regardless of the blog post or not the day I gave you that vote and I am feeling still really good about it.
I like you.
Moreoever, I think I trust you and I cannot say that about many people, especially online.
I hope you have a nice night and stop by the
#SteemitCampfire
--
if you find time in the midst of being so awesome.
(:
I appreciate that comment, @aggroed and I appreciate that you and other whales are trying to make the platform succeed and are dilgently watching the effects of HF 19. I do on rare occasions visit Discord, and I do resteeming as a way of helping other minnows.
Steem shouldn't be thought of as a "get rich quick" freeway, but it should be thought of, I think, as a destination spot, and oasis where your creative talent and skills have a place to blossom, and shine, and grow. It should be a place where artists, writers, photographers, and programmers can "cut their teeth" on small to medium sized audiences, and get valuable feedback.
It should also be a place where small communities of faith, or people with similar interests can meet, and build one another up. Thanks again for caring!
"The top 1% of steem holders own 93% of the steem" - I hadn't realised the wealth was quite so concentrated! Globally, in the outside world, the top richest 1% only own about 50% of the world's wealth.
The only thing why I still have my doubts for success of Steemit is that the distribution couldn't really be any worse. Will it matter in the end, who knows? But it seems like the whales can power down while still increasing their share more compared to others. Working as intended? I wonder how a system like this would work with fair and proper distribution at times, maybe one day we'll see.
The whole point of Steemit post HF is to have a stake in Steemit blockchain I think. There are two ways to do that. One is to invest time and value and the other one is to invest money in SP. Having stake means having more influence and more rewards.
Personally speaking, rewards have almost vanished for me. I was getting $20 a day on my posts initially in June but July has been dry. It takes a week to get $15-20. Bad times to be a minnow.
I hear you - I do, but it is to some extent a short-term view. There were winners and losers from the change, for sure. In the long run though, HF 19 will have made things more balanced. For a minnow, more important than the amount they make on their posts, is the exposure and followers that they get. The HF wasn't really intended to fix that, which is really what is needed to help with the issue you are raising. When communities are implemented, there will be a lot more avenues for people with low followings to get connected and meet people with similar interests. When that does happen, having the people you interact with (who will probably mostly be minnows and dolphins) be able to upvote your posts and give something will be really important.
Thank you very much for all your encouragement and support. I have been understanding the paltform since I joined and specially after the HF. I do understand that the best approach is to interact, get exposure to the community and a build a healthy following (by adding value and not at all by follow for follow).
The minnow frustration has led me to interact with people like you and so many great people. I have learned a lot by reading from well established authors here. A notable example is @dragosroua who explained post HF pains in a superb post of his.
I personally think that getting rewards is not the most appropriate strategy to follow; adding value is. Thanks for being generous and supportive, again!
Great post as always, Tim! You are a great asset to this network. I'm very glad you are here. I agree with you that HF19 was a great success. People will always find something to complain about, no matter how many improvements are made. We can either waste time arguing with the haters or we can look for great, constructive criticism, prioritize it, make changes and keep moving forward.
I totally agree! Thanks for the comment :)
this applies to you as well.
Thank you for the wise words Tim. Most of my time on the nextwork has been spent post HF19 as I joined just prior to the end of May. I have had an excellent and I feel lucky time so far here on Steemit. I am also implementing a strategy to continue to reward others and myself, while more like 60/40 than 90/10, but as I continue to produce better content and recirve higher rewards, I find my smaller sized upvote is better given out to help others and show compliment for their hard work. Thanks again for all your hard work! Looking forward to the meet up coming up.
I try and reward people that are following me and comment on my posts, and only reward myself to bump up my comment. I feel like that is a good way to balance it out. Thanks for ya'lls info
Before HF19 that was my practice. It is naturally how people treat their community, those they follow, and who follow them.
I can't do that anymore, because when I do, my VP will not recharge fully. I already need to not vote for a couple days to recharge it now.
I have never intentionally voted my own comments, prolly because I didn't know about bumping it up until I had only 10 votes to cast per day.
Edit: I would have voted your comment before HF19, but can't now.
I think all the hype from the HF19 is slowly claiming down and getting back closer to equilibrium. I believe if people want to watch their rewards go up they have to do two things:
Either buy SP now to speed up your "STEEM TRAIN", or keep the current path you are on. Steemit is not a get quick rich scheme. Focus on making friends and the money will come.
Sounds simple, but of course it isnt
This was an absolutely fantastic summary and analysis. A couple things I wanted to touch on specifically, because I feel the same way you do:
I am absolutely blown away by how much voting power I have now. Prior to HF19, I could sway posts by about .08c, which was something but not a whole lot of anything in the grand scheme of things. Now I have a much wider influence and I feel like I can actually make a difference. As someone who's been here since August of last year, it really feels like an accomplishment.
I really do hope more people view the voting change the way you and I do. I like reserving 100% upvotes for something that really blows me away.
To be honest, just before HF19, I wanted to leave from Steem already. I decided that since my voice does not matter, there is no sense and try. But then HF happened, and it turned out that even my little voice was worth it. And I stayed.
That's awesome!
We all want to feel like there is an opportunity to grow our work here. Time will tell about HF equalizing the playing field. Thanks for posting. 🐓🐓
A very nice balanced post @timcliff. It has been a rollercoaster here since the beginning of the year, but I love it. I can't wait for Steemit to grow exponentially because I trust that will solve the mostly deadly boring and unfair trending section. We need a lot more quality variety here!
The reason the trending section is so predictable is that certain authors are surrounded by cliques. Some of these authors, whose every post is sure to trend, let their 'in group' know exactly when they're going to drop a post, because by timing their votes, that group can substantially capture the rewards for curation of a trending post.
In return the favored author accrues huge financial gain from their posts. Both parties win - but as you point out, Steemit loses.
Even without the timing scheme, just piling on to a trending post provides rewards, and high visibility, which is important to gain followers that like what you have to say.
Hopefully it will sort itself out....it's nausea inducing and at an all time high lately. I've been here 11 months and been active daily. Thank you for your reply.
I'm glad you posted this. A lot of the topics you touched on here are ones I want to discuss during our interview today during the podcast, and I think this would give us a good starting point. I look forward to that interview, and we will be talking to you in a couple of hours!
I look forward to talking to you as well :)
Thank you @timcliff for all the efforts your giving to this community. I have just voted for you as a witness. Some quotes I liked from the post, with some comments:
Exactly. It is Ok to be hard but not impossible.
I think you deserve more influence. This makes me think that reputation should be a factor in the value of the vote not only SP.
I did :) and I believe this HF will make more people want to buy steem.
Definitely.
This a cultural change that most of us need to learn. But keep in mind that minnows do not have vote meter !! So, they only have 4 votes!
Very much deserved.
Thanks! Great comment :)
One small thing - regarding the minnows, you do have more than 4 votes. You can pretty much vote as many times as you want, it just depletes 2% of your remaining voting power each time, so your votes become worth less. Your voting power replenishes 20% every 24 hours, so it does recharge.
Self voting is not work!
i think it also depends on what you consider a good post, i often see really good posts of minnow and they only get a few upvotes and not even reach the dollar, and people with high reputation sometimes post a word and they get so many upvotes which i considerer unfair beacuse people upvote thinking about the money they are getting from that post but not for the content, in this case i think it is ok to upvote your own post and upvote the comments of the people that are interested on you. Even when my reward is only .08 i try to spend it in good posts like this one irrespective of the person that have posted it!
You are exactly correct. People pile on to certain author's posts because adding their vote early means they will get a big financial reward on posts that will trend. This isn't curation of quality writing, it is financial manipulation for profit.
Steemit can be better than that.
Thanks!
Well, regarding the fairness, most of the users that have been around for a long time have put a lot of time and effort into the platform/community and worked hard to gain a following. It is not just about posting quality content, it is also about building a 'brand' for yourself and making yourself known to the community.
This post is so good, I find new information in here
This comment has received a 0.10 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.
Oy hakkının %10 kısmını kendin için, %90 kısmını diğerleri için kullanmak çok adil olur.
Hatta, eğer güçlü bir steemit kullanıcısıysan kendin için oy kullanmana da gerek yok.
Bu yazı çok bilgilendirici ve umut verici.
Yes. HF 19 has been a success, the community will eventually find a way to flag people abusing this collective gift. We just need more "seriousness" on the network and more quality articles and comments. Upvoting will find it's way.
Only one thing I have to mention and that is being the first on Steemit doesn't mean you should circle jerk with other people upvoting each other while some great articles and authors are left behind. If people want this thing to last they will think about 2018, 2019 users.
So, do you want 50$ now and 5$ next year. Or do you want 50$ now and 500$ next year?
Thanks @timcliff
I agree. I found that many of the new users to be great bloggers. Some of them have a very high reputation and many followers on other platforms. They deserve a better chance here. HF19 has given them a part of a chance, but elder steemians should do their part too.
10 votes is too few to support new accounts. This is why self votes have dramatically increased in proportion to upvotes of others content. People are used to not having enough votes to upvote content anyway, so they might as well just self vote.
Remember that no new users can use their sliders to have more votes, so they are all limited to 10 votes a day, or VP that doesn't recharge.
How do you suggest fixing that?
Good perspective, agreed.
@timcliff, thanks for sharing your thoughts about HF19. I appreciate hearing about what more experienced users think about it.
I really connected with the following idea: "People need to feel the ladder is worth climbing in order to stick around."
On Friday, an influential Steemit user gave me a reason to "stick around." After reading my post, he recommended if for a curator account. Once accepted my post started trending. I had never had a $10 post prior and on Friday I almost reached $300.
His support helped me gain traction and gain new followers. And when I reached out to learn more about what he did, his knowledge empowered me.
I have only been on Steemit for about 6 weeks. I have learned a lot, but there are some many things I need to learn, and I am not even sure what questions to asked at times.
I appreciate your easy-to-understand articles that help all levels of Steemit users. That is one of the reasons why I follow you!
Finally someone explained why my upvote power was going down on the first week. Thank you! Upvote resteem and follow
That is the perfect explanation to the whole scenario which is going on after the Hardfork. People didn't have enough answers about the same and some people are panicking over this. Thanks @timcliff for clearing this out.
First of all you have cleared the technical details about the hard fork which is not known to many.
Secondly your opinion on WHALES is awesome. I'd like to share my views on this. WHALES has indeed majority of stake on Steemit and actually they deserve this power. They made this platform famous and made it what it is now. So a very big thanks to them. But sometimes, some whales use their own shares for themselves not for upvoting the good content. This thing always disturbs me. They should use their power for a greater cause not for self voting. I am sure you could understand this.
Wish you all the success on steemit. Love your article by the way.
Whales can, and do, use their Steem to help people, and do it a lot. But their Vote Power is linked to their SP. They either can manage their funds responsibly, which means to earn when possible, which the Steemit code links to their curation, or they can be fiscally irresponsible, and curate like a wild-eyed idealist.
Capital markets exist, and offer capital gains to incentivize investment. Steemit, by creating this new way to profit from investment, has caused VP to be used for financial manipulation, rather than simply to promote content by rewarding creators.
Investors do deserve to profit from their investment, but cursing Steemit with financial manipulation in lieue of curation is not a good way to do that. Last month Steem price rose by almost 10 fold, and investors realized substantial gains, because Steemit grew rapidly.
This is an appropriate and time honored mechanism for rewarding investors, and as Steemit grows, that mechanism will work. However, as users are discouraged by seeing 99% of rewards inuring to 1% of accounts, they perceive the platform as unfair, and start to use phrases like 'rewards pool rape'.
Worse even than that perceived unfairness now, is VP decay which leaves us only 10 votes to cast a day. New accounts are floundering, lost in the sea of more established authors and deprived of votes, because many people have resorted to self voting with their ten votes out of desperation.
If new users fail, Steemit will fail to grow, and the financial manipulation of curation will be the only way investors profit, until that fails too, when the price of Steem collapses as Steemit does.
Thanks!
@timcliff your analysis is very correct and I agree with your view point. Let us hope that steemit (as I indicated in my last blog post) will see more success and subsequently take over social media segment in rhe ycomming year (s). Wish you an your team a blessed weekend.
Whilst I agree that upvoting yourself is seen as a minor crime by many, I disagree. I think you should be able to upvote yourself to raise your profile and is especially key for minnows such as myself (I upvote some of my own content).
However, if we are to have a debate about self voting, this needs to include bots and paid up votes, including initiatives such as minnow support. I personally use and support these, but they do not distinguish between good and bad content.
You mention that the same few content creators get most of the rewards. I have seen this and have no issue with it, if it's deserved, but when they have several hundred dollars on their post 3 secs after posting it, it gets a little annoying!
All very good discussions to have :)
@timcliff, I generally agree that more SP should result in more "control" over the content curation procession. HOWEVER I'd really like to hear your very wise and now tenured experience on "purchased" SP vs "organically earned" SP.
My position is that someone who comes here, spends the time, makes the effort, does the work and earns the SP organically should have much more curation power and most assuredly without question.
But when you can "buy" influence? Isn't that how elections get rigged? And further, damaged? I understand "investing in the platform" is value for us all, and super dee duper important! I've done what little I can do myself (around $550 USD paid in on top of what I've earned organically in my scant 31 days here) but as you well know, (and thanks for the advice during the episode) I have also been the devastated recipient of a massive rage flagging campaign that nearly sent me packing (had I been a mere mortal minnow with less self-esteem and confidence, it definitely would have caused me to quit!) That user merely made a 1 day old account, and put nearly $20,000 USD into it just to go on a hater campaign against a lot of very kind people who were hurt pretty badly by his capability to simply "buy" influence. We cannot all withstand that nor combat it with our own money in many cases.
I know "good" always wins in the end against bad actors, but I really want to hear a justification for "buying" influence from your most credible, completely respected point of view. If you please?
Thank you, from one of your many admirers who cannot believe how much help you dispense every day in the #steem-help channels on chat. So admirable. So needed. So... help me understand your position on this hot-button topic? :D
The platform offers many ways to become vested in the platform. Some users invest time/effort, and other users invest money. We need both to succeed. I think that everyone with SP has a vested interest in seeing the platform succeed, regardless of how they acquired that stake.
Also to point out - if there were no users willing to buy STEEM/SP, then all the rewards the platform handed out would be worthless.
Thanks for that. So you agree with Neo.
Having been the receipient of unwarranted attacks by a user who bought power with no concept of the platforms etiquette or community standards, tying voting power to the money worries the piss out of me.
I can buy a ton of steem, drive the value up and make us all rich, and I'm all for that. Why is that tied to influence, which in my opinion needs to be earned in a community.
I think I'll just buy a country - the people in it who worked their asses off to build it and create community in it be damned.
Well to try and relate it to your buying a country metaphor, if you were to come in and buy a million dollars of SP, you would be paying all the people who helped to build the country. There are a lot of users who use their influence for good, and there are a lot of users who use it for 'bad' (subjective opinion). The line between good and bad is not as simple as people who bought their SP vs. those that 'earned' it. There are people from both ends of the spectrum on both sides.
Alright. You got me there. That's the "click" my brain needed to make. Because we both know it's incredibly unlikely that some Gates or Buffet level gazillionaire is coming to take us away-hey-hey, so I suppose as long as there is some kind of equilibrium of sorts on the balance scale between earners and buyers, all will sort it self out.
I guess I was hung up on a metaphor that might look more like Bezos, buying the Washington Post simply so he could influence elections through such a widely read venue. That's no longer pure, and that makes me uncomfie.
Thank you for your time. I understand your position. I'll just have to bust my ass to catch up to Warren Buffet before he buys the joint and makes us all eat McDonalds for breakfast (if you know about Buffet, that's what he eats every morning LOL)
BTW, for future passers-by, a clarification on my remark. I did NOT say the group of people buying their SP was only going to include "bad actors", just that bad actors could be in that group.
Capital markets have long operated, and do so because they provide gains, which reward investors. The white paper clearly declaims against financial manipulation, which clearly is happening on Steemit, and only possible because VP is weighted by SP.
In May many users came on board, and the price of Steem skyrocketed, rewarding investors very well.
Why should SP be allowed to financially manipulate curation, when capital markets create far more rewarding gains from investment? BTC has no social platform which can be used to mine for profits by manipulating content, and I know of no investors crying that it was a bad investment.
There are a great many vehicles for capital investment that similarly are profitable, and do not manipulate a social media platform for ancillary profits. Steemit is the only platform that this is possible on, and there are problems that are unique to that profit vector.
How would severing the financial manipulation from curation, by severing the SP weighting of VP, be harmful to investors, or Steemit?
Steemit is not the same as BTC. If investors wanted to invest in BTC, they would invest in BTC.. A lot of the value from STEEM (and other alternate currency coins) is what they do beyond the simple financial transactions. One of the main 'value added' propositions for STEEM is the blogging and rewards platform. A lot of the investors that invest in STEEM/SP, do so because as a stake-holder they have influence over how the platform is run.
Well, investors traditionally have control of the Board of Directors, through which they manage the company. Steemit provides nominal management direction through it's corporation, and capital gains as Steem appreciates.
About three years ago BTC was valued similarly to Steem today. Recently BTC was $3000. Were Steem to appreciate to even 1% of that value it would return ~20000% to investors.
Dipping too deeply into the rewards pool chases away the guests, and leaves only the whales swimming in the pool. When the guests leave the Steemit, it's over, and even the whales go home.
Why potentiate that outcome, when to do so you're potentially disabling a 20k% return? Because, as BTC shows, that return is only a fraction of the potential return to the investors in Steem.
So what stakeholder influence exactly is needed to augment those two traditional avenues, and how will basing VP on SP, and all the problems that result from that, benefit those investors whose fortunes it threatens?
If no one ever purchases SP, then how can it ever be worth anything?
Note, I said it was very important to purchase SP and have done so more than a large percentage of users in my short time here. BUT, the question was NOT about buying SP alone. It was about buying INFLUENCE with it. It means that for example, some uber rich dude could come in and out buy NED and DAN -then what - do we welcome our new overlords? What if that overlord is a government?
Why would I buy SP without the influence it gives me? If the government or some rich dude tries to buy a ton of SP, the price of Steem will skyrocket, and I'll be crying all the way to the bank.
He who holds the money, makes the rules. I hope that works out for you. I still want to hear from @timcliff on this. Which is why I asked him by mention at the beginning of the question. Other opinions are certainly unstoppable on a public comment thread, but it is his I am interested in hearing the most.
The same reason to purchase Steem applies to every capital market in existence, and every crypto currency. None of those markets enable financial manipulation of curation on Steemit, the buying of influence, or would prohibit in any way your crying all the way to the bank if Steemit were not manipulable by SP weighting of VP.
Great article! I really like the fact that I finally have some influence, even though i'm still a minnow! I'm now 2+ months in and am slowly building a following and SP so hopefully I'll be where you are 4 months from now!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts @timcliff. Appreciate you taking the time to explain certain things that have been weighing on my mind.
Thank you!
I mostly agree with you. The one thing I would like to see is the ability to set our voting power in a user-friendly way. I know that I can set it through going into the inner workings of steemd, but most people aren't going to do that.
For users with more than 1 MV of SP, there is the voting slider. I am working on trying to come up with a way that users with less SP can benefit from the feature.
Allegedly the mobile app eSteem gives minnows a slider. I don't use it, so I don't know.
Love this perspective on the hardfork. I believe it has been successful and with a little effort you can slowly grow. I'm looling forwars to the future od this platform and to see my growth as it happens.
I joined Steemit just over 20 days, and I must say that it took me a significant part of the last week to understand how steem works.
Now that I know what Steem is and how to make the best use of it, I think I can contribute some quality posts here.
I agree when you say that trending authors indeed worked hard for over a long period of time. The most important thing to do right now is to contribute quality posts and get as many as followers as possible as it can help get a lot of upvotes and your post might get viral.
Does voting often will affect my account? I vote often I feel guilty members voting my post and not to vote them back as appreciation and I would love to give my vote to struggling members to give them inspiration & keep them motivated,.
There is some info on this in the FAQ. Each time you vote, it uses 2% of your remaining voting power. As your voting power goes down, your votes are worth less. Your voting power will recharge 20% each day though.
Do you know the daily amount of STEEM added to the rewards pool? With that information I should be able to estimate something about what the final rewards equilibrium will be.
I've been closely watching the steem rewards decreasing, and I posted some thoughts and quick analysis of it today.
https://steemit.com/steem/@biophil/decreasing-steemit-payouts-will-it-continue
I don't have the formula on hand, so I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it would be 1/365 x current inflation x virtual supply x 0.75.
Is the 0.75 the author fraction? Or something else?
Yes, author/curator.
So that shouldn't affect the fill rate of the rewards pool...
The fill rate should be constant (adjusting for inflation).
Well captured and succinctly depicted. I could not have articulated it better. I have become a strong follower and support your witness pursuit. I believe you can do it. Steem on. We are all stakeholders in this and I hope that these explanations will help improve the way people vote.
Sincerely, I have come to realize that most of the whales here actually deserve better pay. If you consider all the efforts and sacrifices they have made to the platform then an unbiased recommendation should be for them to remain on top.
I had a discussion with one whale recently who told how he invested when there was no hope that this will be a success. After that discussion, I had a totally different mentality about whales. It is easy to join today and start shouting of marginalization because the soup is fully cooked and ready.
Let us keep appreciating those who was here before us. Someday, we will equally be appreciated by those coming after us.
It is not reasonable to say that people who are marginalized are being unfair to early investors. While those investors certainly deserve kudos for their dedication and hard work making Steemit a place where we can all grow, the present dilemma for new accounts is that they are trying to attract votes and HF19 just decreased votes per post by far more than 400%, since many people are self voting out of desperation.
It's possible that those frustrated new account holders won't last, and if they exit the platform, the price of Steem will decrease, causing those investors we all want to profit handsomely to instead suffer losses.
Since the price of Steem is dependent on Steemit's growth, upvoting new accounts is the best way to put profits in the pockets of those investors. We don't have the votes to do it now. @liberosist has proposed a rational, middle-of-the-way, VP curve that would solve that problem, for now.
It doesn't go far enough, in my mind, because it doesn't free whales from the trap of linking their SP holdings to their VP, causing them to either need to self vote out of fiscal responsibility, or neglect their finances in order to curate as the white paper expected them to.
Additionally, people piling on to posts by authors sure to trend isn't curation. It's pandering, and it's profitable. Valuing votes by when they are cast enables groups to time posts, and time their upvotes, to maximize financial rewards. All of these shenanigans are harmful to Steemit. They are working at cross purposes to the goal of rewarding content creators for the value of the content, and are financial manipulations for profit, which the white paper specifically warns is a hazard to Steemit.
When the price of Steem appreciates, investors accrue handsome rewards, as happened in May. This is a fine way for them to be rewarded for their dedication to the community that has sprung up on top of their effort - unless Steemit starts shedding users, because those users are unable to equally join in the process of growing, and see that it is unfair.
People don't like unfair. Unfair will cost investors money, in the long run, and the difference may be, as we see with BTC, between Steem at $4, or Steem at $4000. What cost self votes then?
Great analysis! The fact that it now makes sense for a lot of people to purchase influence is huge! I think that fact will do a lot of good for the price of STEEM as time goes on.
To anyone reading this comment: I think @timcliff is one of the hardest working people on this platform. If he hasn't received a witness vote from you, I think he deserves your consideration.
Thanks :)
Dude, you are so right.
Making @timcliff one of your witness votes is one of the smartest things you can do on this platform.
--
#SteemitElders
What happens to people, like the 3 billion people who live on less than $2 per day, that cannot buy Steem?
In a Steemit that rewards authors for the content of the minds and the caliber of their character, then those people too could be freed from the prison of poverty. Not all people, perhaps, but many.
That's not a potential Steemit presently has. It should, and it could, were the various mechanisms that permit, and cause, financial manipulation to be fixed, and return curation to it's stated purpose - reward great content best, good content well, and most content some.
Great post @timcliff. I concur, the HF has been a success. It has provided a voice to much more of the community as they now impact the value of more content and are psychologically rewarded by curating. Win-win.
Did you mean that they can more impact the value of the content they can impact with their 400% fewer votes? If they're psychologically rewarded from curating (at a higher rate) then why are self votes skyrocketing?
Wouldn't that indicate the exact opposite: that they are frustrated by their inability to curate and network (thus growing their accounts followers) and resorting to self votes in desperation for any votes at all?
True, with great power comes great responsibility and HF19 is definitely a step up! With the influx of so many new users, it'll take time for people to understand what is the 'right' way to go about things. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thx for the good work have no voting power left
Used it all sorry
That's ok:) Thanks for the comment!
Thanks for stopping by STP and giving us your input. I basically feel the same way about what you had written on this post.
I'll admit, I didn't think we were going in the right direction prior to HF 17 but now I definitely think we're on the right track now. The only concern I have is the content creation but with communities on the way and UIA, things will "self-correct."
Agreed :)
I find the 400% increase in decay rate of the voting power a bitch. One you get into the 90s, it start to drop like stone when you upvote anything! It's like trying to keep a Ferrari on the road! A tricky business!! Class post as always Tim. UV/RS :)
Just change your default vote to 25% and it will be the same as before the HF :)
Yeah the old 40 vote model Tim. My most popular slide settings are 5%/25% and the decay slaying 100%!!! :)
:)
Thanks @timcliff,
I'm new on the content creation and consuming side here and this helped me understand voting and rewards a little better.. Much appreciated. I'm still trying to understand the benefit of not giving someone a 100% upvote all the time and how some upvotes lower stuff but I'm trying to figure it all out.
Well, a 100% vote will use 2% of your remaining voting power. Let's assume that a 100% upvote from you pays out $0.20. If you change your vote and vote with 25% strength, then you will only use up .5% of your remaining voting power, but your upvote will only add $0.05 to the rewards. Hope that helps :)
@timcliff. Ah thanks. That helps A LOT. I figured it was something like that. Now- can you provide clarity around your voting power going down the more you vote. That's still a bit confusing.
Here is a post on it :)
https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@timcliff/minnow-voting-it-is-still-ok-to-vote-40-times-a-day
Thanks @timcliff. This clears things up. Much appreciaeted.
Excellent post and analysis! You've my vote for witness
Cheers!
Thanks :)
very informative my friend
Nice article bro
Do you know about how to know the percentage of profit I had earned from upvotes which I made on posts.
On your profile page, there is a link to "Rewards" with a sub-menu for curation rewards - which shows how much you earned from curation. Steemstats.com (third party website developed by @jesta) also shows a lot more details about the underlying payouts.
Thanks bro
Check this site https://steemdb.com/@mady27/curation
Thank you for this post Tim. It is has a balanced view from every angle and let's me know I have a lot to learn. I am passionate about what I do and give my best according to what I know. So this is the kind of post I need to see more of :)
Thanks and upvoted
It was super cray the week HF19 rolled out, but I believe it's a fair distribution now.
I'm only concerned with 1 thing however: users creating posts for the sake of upvoting them! I've seen some accounts with huge SP creating junk content/posts only for the sake of upvoting them. While this is allowed by the system, I don't think it is fair.
So maybe something should be done to stop this?
If the posts are adding value, then there isn't really a big issue. If they are just leaching off the rewards pool, then hopefully other whales will downvote.
I think you are too optimistic here. People will do whatever makes sense for themselves first and foremost, and consider the long term effects and effect on others second - as long as it does not negatively impact them to do so. There is precedent of this viewpoint in the whitepaper, specifically in the discussion of the Prisoners Dilemma. We need a further change to rebalance this or HF 19 has partially failed.
However it's not all about financial incentives, there is also the social component and it's there that I would feel optimistic, though not as much you 😜
I agree 100%. Great content!
Upvote and resteem
this is really nice and informative, Thanks for sharing this post.
Thank for improvement this useful feature, thanks for sharing @timcliff
Thanks for clearing some of my doubts :) Really helpful!