As explained in the Steem White Paper, Steem miners are paid in Steem Power instead of “liquid” Steem. The thinking behind this is to force people to wait 2 years to cash out their Steem and to encourage long term investment. According to the paper “mining difficulty will be driven by those who place the highest estimate on future value. Miners without a long-term interest in the platform will be discouraged from competing. Ultimately this means that the proceeds of mining are less likely to be dumped on the market because they will accrue to long-term believers in the platform”.
The logic is sound and only time will tell whether or not this approach will have the intended effect; however, there is some well-documented research into human behavior that suggests people are more likely to cheat, or in this case perhaps game the system, when the reward for doing so is in the future versus an immediate payout.
Dan Ariely is a Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight. He is an expert and leader in the field of cheating and has performed numerous experiments on how and why people cheat.
He conducted the famous Ten Commandments experiments, where two different groups of students were given a difficult math matrix test and paid cash for each correct answer. The test was administered in such a way to make it possible for participants to cheat. Prior to taking the test, one group of students were asked to recall 10 books they read in high school. Amongst the participants in this group there was widespread cheating. The other group was asked to recall the Ten Commandments before taking the test. The experiment showed a complete lack of cheating in this group, even when the experiment was repeated with a group of proclaimed atheists.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Ariely wrote “One thing that increased cheating in our experiments was making the prospect of a monetary payoff more ‘distant,’ in psychological terms. In one variation of the matrix task, we tempted students to cheat for tokens (which would immediately be traded in for cash). Subjects in this token condition cheated twice as much as those lying directly for money”.
Might this phenomenon factor into the motivation of hackers to try to cheat, manipulate or game the Steem system as a result of the delayed payout of SP? Will people feel less guilty about stealing something if they’re not quite sure whether or not it’s even real?
If you view Steem as a currency, its value is only as strong as people’s belief in it. If you view Steem as a community, people are only going to engage in the community if there is an atmosphere of trust. It’s vital to the success of either that a culture of honesty is prevalent throughout the entire platform.
Why We Lie, Dan Ariely http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304840904577422090013997320