Sort:  

Very good post, much better than this one here. I think you explained the potential value of SPS. My concern remains though how do you distinguish between an idea which is likely to be profitable for the ecosystem and an idea which merely receives a lot of votes but which is a "bridge to no where".

How are the votes going to be calculated first of all? Do whale accounts get to rig the vote? Can whale accounts somehow be excluded? Do verified accounts get to vote exclusively or do accounts of a certain age get higher weight in the vote? If it's stake weighted alone then I think you can see what can happen here.

It's going to take a lot of discipline, planning, discussion, on how to rank/rate ideas. My suggestion is we need a way to try and determine how much value or profit an idea can generate for the ecosystem. Such as does it have potential to increase the value of the Steem token?

  • If two ideas accomplish the same thing equally but one of them burns Steem tokens and another does not then do we prefer the one which burns tokens?

  • If two ideas accomplish the same goal but one of them does so in a way which can bring in lots of revenue or investors then should we favor that one?

  • What metrics do we track to determine the success or failure?

Well this is @justineh's work, I can't take any credit but thought it was worth linking as they appeared at almost the same time.

Personally, I believe we are already on that bridge to nowhere and so almost anything should be an improvement.

There are a lot of 'ifs' though. If bot-boosted shit content is downvoted, perhaps stake will come out of the bots to curate as there will be less profit there, and a greater % of inflation heads towards curators.

How are the votes going to be calculated first of all?

Umm, same as before?

Do whale accounts get to rig the vote?

Potentially?

Can whale accounts somehow be excluded?

Not in this proposal, and likely never.

Do verified accounts get to vote exclusively or do accounts of a certain age get higher weight in the vote?

Nope.

I see some of these changes as much larger/more radical than what is being proposed - something for palnet-type efforts/SMT's to test?

SMTs could fix this I think if we can distinguish using SMT holding how verified an account is by percentage or points or something like that.

The concern I have is what would stop whales from simply rigging the votes and then voting for their pet projects without regard for the revenue it generates for the ecosystem?

If you look for example at corruption in certain industries historically such as construction for example? We know how a construction project can end up costing way more than it should and take way longer than it needs to take etc. When people start voting directly on how to spend money it also is historically known to create infighting, even civil wars happen over these sorts of disputes.

I wish more thought could go into the on-chain governance aspect so that we can really know it's what the community wants and that all factions of the ecosystem are equally represented. Example, content producers are a faction, witnesses are a faction, developers are a faction, and different politics are emerging right now favoring one or another faction.

...if we can distinguish using SMT holding how verified an account is by percentage or points or something like that.

Sounds like a job for Oracles
https://steemit.com/ned/@steemitblog/ned-scott-and-theoretical-of-steemit-explore-oracles-on-steem

The concern I have is what would stop whales from simply rigging the votes and then voting for their pet projects without regard for the revenue it generates for the ecosystem?

Ah OK, your previous comments and this one I think relate more to SteemDAO - I didn't catch this initially.

I think the voting here is planned to be stake-weighted, but I could be wrong. I live in hope that those with the largest stakes would wish to grow the value of their holding by voting for the projects they think have the best chance of taking Steem forward in the medium/long term.

I wish more thought could go into the on-chain governance aspect so that we can really know it's what the community wants and that all factions of the ecosystem are equally represented.

See palnet.io for a first glimpse of this. The whales there have been made so on the premise that they wont self-vote and cannot powerdown for a year. And a high stake account 'nopal4u' sits at the top of the rich-list ready to govern.

Pal is interesting. I assume Pal is an SMT right? Doing this with an SMT makes sense but I think the people proposing Steem DAO would have had better success in promoting their plan if they actually showed that there are some good ideas waiting to be funded, some whitepapers, business plans, etc.

"I live in hope that those with the largest stakes would wish to grow the value of their holding by voting for the projects they think have the best chance of taking Steem forward in the medium/long term."

You also have hoped that those with substantial stakes would actually curate, instead of extracting ~90% of rewards into their own wallets via manipulating rewards with those stakes. How'd that work out?

Hope springs eternal, and a sucker is born every minute. Human traits are predictable, and every part of EIP is designed to increase the profitability of profiteering, and that is also a feature of this funding mechanism for the SPS.

It isn't particularly hard to design mechanisms that prevent profiteering, and instead enable investors to rely on capital gains for ROI. Capital gains have encouraged investment for thousands of years. Profits have also been possible from hostile takeovers that extract the value of businesses while eliminating capital gains. Selling the means of production of a company whose stock is cheap enough can create profits. It destroys the value of the company stock though, as well as the company.

The means of production of Steem is creators, who cannot be sold. Their product can be profited from by the various mechanisms enabling stake to extract the rewards creators make possible, though, and we see that ~90% of rewards are extracted that way today. Now taxing that last ~10% of rewards can increase the extraction of rewards before they can create capital gains.

Guess what's going to happen? Well, you don't have to guess. You can simply predict that the same people are going to do the same thing for the same reasons that they have been doing, only they're now going to be able to get more rewards for doing it.

There's no point in hoping some words will change human nature. Reasonably preventing extraction of the economic value of content creation before it can increase the value of Steem is easily doable, and investors - not profiteers - have been provably investing for capital gains since prehistory.

HF21 is not going to change human nature, but is intended to enable the profiteers to extract even more profit. There are no experienced investors on Steem today, because capital gains are prevented. All substantial stakeholders have been, are now, and will continue to act as they always have, and parasitically extract every satoshi of value from the rewards pool before their competitors can. They have the voting power to effect what they want to see, and this is what they want.

I won't have hope until they've sucked every bit of value they profitably can out of Steem, and leave to parasitize their next target. Then maybe we can implement rational mechanisms to create capital gains and attract investors.

It has been determined that you are trash, therefore, you have received a negative vote.

PLEASE NOTE: If you engage with the trash above you also risk receiving a negative vote on your comment.

"The concern I have is what would stop whales from simply rigging the votes and then voting for their pet projects without regard for the revenue it generates for the ecosystem?"

Nothing. This is the kickback generator every corrupt bureaucrat dreams of.

It has been determined that you are trash, therefore, you have received a negative vote.

PLEASE NOTE: If you engage with the trash above you also risk receiving a negative vote on your comment.

"...almost anything should be an improvement."

You must be young. I'm pretty old, and experience has taught me that things can always get worse. Indeed, without extreme measures, things going badly are very hard to keep from going worse. EIP and the SPS funding mechanism aren't radical changes to stake weighting manipulations. All they do is increase the profitability of manipulating rewards mechanism via substantial stake to extract rewards before that value can raise the price of Steem and create capital gains.

It has been determined that you are trash, therefore, you have received a negative vote.

PLEASE NOTE: If you engage with the trash above you also risk receiving a negative vote on your comment.