SP delegation, which will be introduced in HF 17 will make the process of becoming a "whale" more fluid. Suppose some minnows and a few dolphins could delegate some of their SP power and create a minnow-dolphin-made whale. This is a process that becomes, as I said very fluid. It can change on a daily, maybe hourly, basis.
What potential problems do you see with that?
Putting something at stake (like combining tipping with the reward pool, which I proposed a week ago) will alleviate the effects of mega-whales?
Also, is this a result of the test you ran? Is the test over? Should we expect any other random actions from you that will tilt the reward pool in completely unexpected ways, just so you can clarify some stuff, without giving a dime on what other people are doing or why they are even here, on this platform?
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not upset or angry, I'm incredibly curious. What happened here on Steemit during the last couple of weeks was very, very strange. It felt almost surreal.
I think you might be misunderstanding the point of delegation of power. We don't need minnows and dolphins to unite and create a new whale with 40 megavotes. We need whales to distribute their power to amplify the thousands of votes which are now worthless.
I don't think I misunderstand the point of delegation of power. I understand what we "need". This is not always what we get, though.
Such a feature could be used in the way I described and I was curious to know other points of view. If the Steem blockchain can process dozens of thousands of transactions per second, it could, theoretically, create a different mega-whale every second.
I didn't give it too much thought before I saw the release notes. But now it looks like it increases the attack surface on the blockchain, leaving the reward pool even more vulnerable to collusive behavior.
But I may be wrong. That's why I'm asking around.
You're correct. That feature can be (ab)used that way.
//Edit:
But delegation is not able to change at will. One can cancel a delegation at any time, but to prevent abuse, she only can re-use that SP after 7 days.
That's better. There is a 7 days buffer between the delegation and potential re-use of that SP. In this case, the attack surface is significantly smaller and a mega-whale can be formed only every 7 days. Still vulnerable, but at a smaller scale.
Thanks for clarifying this to me.
with an exponential rewards curve, whales would be penalized (in terms of influence) for doing this. It may be what we need, but it is not nec. what well get.