RE: Understanding Steem's Economic Flaw, Its Effects on the Network, and How to Fix It.

[twinner]

Hi Kevin, I assume that some time after the introduction of SMTs the author/curation rewards in STEEM / SBD /SP will be removed from the blockchain protocol and will be replaced by a Steemit SMT. So new STEEM will only generated by the Witnesses, and STEEM will become a application centric "EOS-light". With this move plus the introduction of Oracles the Selfvoting and the Bidbots are gone, even Sell your vote is not longer possible, because Vote-Sellers are probably marked as bad actors in the Oracles. See also https://steemit.com/roadtosteemfest/@twinner/road-to-steemfest-some-thoughts-about-steem-the-steemfest-hattrick-raffle-inside

Comments

[kevinwong]

Hi @twinner. The proposal above consist of very low cost changes for most impact, which was actually very important earlier this year to stay on top, but now Steemit has slipped away in web rankings. Maybe it's still not too late. It's just the content-indifference that could be fixed. SMTs also do not have tweaks for downvote pools, curation rewards, and only have n and n^2 without any ability to support stuff like n^1.3 - they may all be important features for token customization.

@trafalgar addressed the concerns about plans to wait for SMTs / GPTs / etc:-

SMTs and Good Person Tokens will solve this - Problematic View

Maybe. Don't get me wrong, I think SMTs are great. But they're 6 months away and in reality, it'll take far longer for any of them to garner sufficient market confidence to really play a role in the content discovery process. The use of Oracles also impose very high practical cost and a lot can go wrong in reality. Basically they're very far off and a lot needs to go right for them to work effectively. Something like n^1.3, 10% free downvotes and 50% curation is just a lot more direct and simpler and easier to implement. Ultimately we need the Steem base token to have a functional reward distribution too, not just SMTs, which are a big If.

[twinner]

Hi Kevin, short term I also support your ideas. Lift curation rewards to 75%, then there is no need to sell your vote or delegate to bidbots.

[kevinwong]

I think changing only the curation rewards to 75% is in effect the same as what we have now at 25%. There's a symmetry. For example, 0% curation rewards is in effect the same as if we use 100% curation rewards. When it's 0% curation rewards, users will highly likely farm their own posts only, which is the same as if there's 100% curation rewards. It boils down to what the inflation is being used for. That's why we chose 50% curation rewards as one part of the proposal.