Staying at linear would have resulted in even less difference, while not hurting the bigger part of the userbase.
I had issues with that part of the EIP from the start, and I saw many many comments of those who are now affected who said they don't like the idea, without being taken into account.
Going to linear was a right step imo. It was done for exactly the issue which is now reintroduced. (I also think the 30 minute reverse auction was good. Could've been even longer.) When the blatant abusers stop eventually, we'll then have to downvote honest users because their voters maximize? You, me, blocktrades, the people on the list up there? I would have serious issues pushing the downvote button for any of them! I would have preferred to stay vigilant and identify smaller circles "hiding in the noise". Way too much collateral damage with the way that was chosen.
To be clear, I like the rest of the EIP. It's only that part that bothers me, but it does a lot.
I'm somewhat indifferent to the reverse auction timer being shorter. Maybe a case could be made for it being longer, but there are trade offs here, though nothing seriously major either way.
Convergent linear forces all profitable behavior into the light to be scrutinized by all. That's it's only intended effect, and it's a big one. You can't downvote what you can't detect in a cost effective, efficient manner. Imagine if we're otherwise in an environment where people are voting honestly, but over time an increasing proportion of stake are using a thousands of dynamic clusters of accounts to give themselves 0.04 here, 0.07 there in countless comment spam. Without the curve these would all be 'profitable' self voting that's hard to detect and will siphon rewards out of the pool until very little is being used for honest curation. Why would I curate honestly for 50% of voting rewards when I can just siphon back almost 100% of it in hard to combat micro spam?
Yes this has the unintended effect of hurting real content and comments under a certain threshold. It's basically a tax on low payouts but there's no other way to stop the above described abuse.
Vote selling, self voting, circle jerking etc are all content indifferent behavior that attempt to extract 100% of the voting rewards. Content indifferent behavior completely undermines the POB system where voting in accordance to one's honest appraisal of content is a must. It's up to the rest of us to keep such abusive behavior in line to bring their profits down using our downvotes so they don't out compete curation. Otherwise, if you can get much higher voting rewards selling votes, why honestly curate or delegate to honest curation?
That's basically the idea. It took a long time for it to all go to shit, it might take a while for it to correct itself again, assuming the EIP is broadly sound. I can't promise it'll definitely get us there, but for something 2 weeks in, it's not looking too bad. OCDB, Smartsteem, bernie, myself, switching sides. Haejin on lockdown. Bid bots businesses falling. Initial signs look ok.
Still a shit load of vote selling and circle jerking etc, but the more people switching sides now that curation is more attractive, the stronger our chances. More robust curation initiatives and downvote tools are still being developed. We're still reeling from the price fall. All things considered we have to fight for honest curation being the dominant behavior on this platform and there are some positive signs.
Theoretical comment spam like you described could be fought with automation pretty effectively imo. Once a farm is detected with the help of a relational database and some sophisticated analysis algorithm, the farm is done, and the cost to set up a large number of accounts puts a huge risk on starting an effort like that. Even with the relatively low account creation cost right now.
Imo shooting all small users because of that possible scenario is the wrong approach.
Also, the scenario you described doesn't need a threshold of an equivalent of currently ~3$
I made a small test. My 13k SP vote adds 6c to a 0$ post, but 24c to one with 30$. Raising the rewards for the big one in return lowers the rewards of the small ones. I will not like this ever. Going to linear was good.
Convergent linear should be very close to a 50-60% tax at the lowest end
From the graphs, it was like -40% value right at the start, and +20% at the peak
I don't know if detecting low level profitable farms is as you as you say. Keeping in mind many downvotes are in the hands of unsophisticated people. Put it this way, imagine Steem was $15 and there's ample incentive to try as hard as you possibly can in sophisticated ways to vote farm while avoiding detect. Making multiple seed accounts, then spamming RC to create more accounts from those seed accounts, then spreading them into clusters with only minor overlap, but moving funds and votes in a way that's dynamic, with comments being a combination of AI and generic messages in a foreign language etc.
Basically imagine you tried your hardest, or even someone considerably more technically sophisticated tried their hardest to evade detection under linear, and compare it to under convergent linear. I'd bet the former would be far more elusive.
Remember, n^2 was someone with 1000x your stake got a vote 1,000,000 your weight. Compared to that, this is nothing.
Also, I believe over time, as your curation project gathers more momentum, it'll easily break out of the starting part of the curve.
I mean, just look at the comments of minnows here and elsewhere. They hate the whole EIP because of this part.
They say we won't onboard the masses like that, and I fully agree. All efforts to fight abusers don't help when all the saved rewards go to the top instead.
There is no enthusiasm for it to be found on the base, the only ones defending it are the ones not affected.
Steem at 15$ would bring the threshold to 300$? I don't want to imagine that.
All data is public, who created which accounts and where funds move. It just has to be done, we have the minds here to set it up.
With this carpet bombing approach we disincentivize new people even more. They don't have the reach, which is perfectly normal, but then they get penalized for it. Even if my project and others get over the threshold (which would require several millions in delegations when we keep up the amount of curation we do right now - besides that I'm not viewing it as our problem mainly, but a problem for the platform as a whole), small users will never feel like their voice matters unless they follow the big ones.