I thought of this article again because of the question of a friend -- I quote the relevant passage from you here:
Keep in mind that we all share the same reward pool, and while it's not completely fair or utopia and most likely never will get there, if you're "cheating" your way into earning rewards for close to no effort it just means you're taking rewards away from everyone else.
As someone who has been here now four years and is STILL not entirely sure how the reward pool works ... is there an actual limitation on its generative power (per day, per week) or is this more a question of managing Hive's inflation?
There is a limitation in terms of inflation yes, only a certain amount of daily/weekly hive is generated, so your votes basically allow you to direct that inflation towards posts and comments. This inflation is also decreasing over time, about 0.5% less each year.
In terms of limitations in a broader sense it's not really, if and when there's more users here it's most likely going to reflect on the price as well. So in terms of post rewards you can still earn a nice amount of HBD based on price, a post dishing out 100 Hive power and 40 HBD now at current prices may in the future give you 100 HP and 400 HBD if similar stakeholders were to upvote you. Of course with more users and a higher price I expect distribution to be a bit "smarter", maybe people won't upvote you as much at those prices as it reflects on your pending rewards, maybe some start downvoting a bit more often such posts to make sure stake is distributed to others better, etc.
All this points down to really is that if you want to earn a lot of Hive/Power you're better off earning it on times like these when active users are low and competition for it also. Those consistently selling their post rewards/powering down that part may not get the same stake back later. Sure you can say they may not care and just come back for the HBD but who knows what kind of new users will arrive by then, even your best friends and most active upvoters of yours may forget you by then or choose others over you.
Thank you for the swift and timely response.
Well, I am here seven days, rain or shine ... I actually prefer the atmosphere of the bear although the pain of the bear is intense as things just drop ... but I like the fact that in the bear, the people that are here creating are here creating because they want to be. I also see your point about low competition as well... mathematically, grinding it out through the bear means one has a lot done, little by little, by the time the bull returns. I just didn't realize until thinking about it that there might be a limit of what Hive can produce in short-term periods.
EDIT: With that in mind, is Hive ready for a sudden growth spurt -- I mean, a BIG ONE? Let's say 100,000 people rolled in here -- since there is a limit, would Hive be OK?
Yeah I just wouldn't really call it a limit cause I think it can scale pretty nicely. For instance due to the low unique authors at times like these ocd votes a bit extra on hbdstabilizer comments to ensure a stable hbd and return funds to the DHF. If that were to change and we'd see a big influx of new and deserving authors, we'd of course shift all our voting power towards them. At the same time I'm sure the markets, people/investors here would notice and it would reflect on price. This means that for our voting to continue giving people reasonable votes we could give them smaller votes than a few weeks ago before the price change. This also means that those authors who were getting 20-50$ in rewards from us a few weeks ago, their rewards are now worth $40-80 if the price changed, so they received more HP but same amount as HBD as those earning equal sized votes "now" after price change due to increase in new users.
So yeah, bear market is when it's best to post, but just cause there's a certain amount of Hive that needs to go out due to inflation doesn't mean you have to send all of it out to authors all the time. I like that Hive is flexible like that as long as you vote for things that benefit all of Hive and not just a few.
You answered half of this question while I was typing it -- and don't let me take too much of your time -- is Hive ready for a sudden growth spurt -- I mean, a BIG ONE? Let's say 100,000 people suddenly rolled in here -- can the scaling take that?
Noticed the edit and responded to it^^
In terms of technology, yes, it'd be okay and can handle such amounts easily. It might be a bit difficult for all of them to easily get an account right now but if there was a better solution by then (we're also working on our own atm), then in terms of the rewardpool we'd need our curators to start working a bit extra. :P Surely some would be missed the first few weeks but if they look around and see it's working for some of the new users they might stick around to receive curation as well. This is why Hive being distributed wide is important as well, cause when the masses come you're going to need as many curators and stakeholders to take care of them based on workload alone. Smaller orca's/dolphin's now would become bigger with a price increase, and even if price doesn't instantly go up due to the sudden increase in new users I'm sure it would adjust over time.
This is also why ocd is "decentralized" in a way where we incubate some of the most active communities and give them power to nominate posts. They or lovesniper, etc, would surely notice the big influx of new users and they'd get permission to nominate a lot more posts per day than they do now since many would be new authors. This would mean we'd vote for a lot more stuff daily than currently even if it means a bit smaller votes to maintain voting power.
I saw from @demotruk's article that OCD is having success in onboarding, so I figured if anyone might be working on what happens if our concern shifts quickly to needing to onboard and retain many more, it would be OCD.
I hadn't even thought about the curation load ... it does seem like the curators work hard here, and I do my giving-back part with my weekly Peakd collection of the posts I like ... but get even 10,000 more people here ... YIKES... it would take a lot more eyes and hands to make sure that quality posts get curated. Hive is going to need a lot more dolphins, orcas, and empowered communities to handle all that!
Yeah, but each year we're better equipped I believe to handle it, and who knows, some of those new users may become investors themselves and curators. :D
That is true. I remember when I was a redfish and just made it to minnow ... and now, I am approaching triple-dolphin status, and I curate in my own way. It seemed to be a natural progression, and perhaps others will find it so as well.
BUT THEN AGAIN -- and with this, thank you and good night, and I appreciate your time and openness -- I am largely an autodidact, so figuring it out is what I do. Just a thought for OCD's consideration: since there is a plan for onboarding in the works, can a nudge be applied so that people know "Today, you are a redfish, and we support you so you will grow up to be a bigger and bigger fish, and when you get there, remember how we helped you grow up, and here are some tools to help you learn how to do likewise for the newcomers"? The question is just for your consideration with your team ... no need to have a pat answer now.
I don't know if that's the right approach, I guess people will have to decide on their own how they'll use their stake or what kind of "people" they decide to be at that time. :P It's a bit similar how we don't judge people for selling their stake when it comes to curation as long as other requirements are met, can't really nudge them in the right direction if the way they grew was the right direction to begin with, one can hope they'll remember that and pass it forward.
10,000 more active users wouldn't be a big deal because generally when there is such an influx, the regular users are more active too. At 100,000 active users we'd start to get pretty constrained, given that it happens in a short time such that stake has not had time to get more distributed among them.
When you say constrained, would it be because of onboarding bottlenecks, or just because we have to get stake to so many in so short a time?
Only people with a meaningful stake can really affect the curation of posts. All those new users aren't going to be buying Hive Power on the day they join, so if there really was a huge surge in the number of active users, it would take time for there to be an equivalent increase in the number of curators with stake.