Can we talk about bid bots for a second?

I gotta tell you. I got a few upset DMs in Discord and on the post I created on @minnowsupport about having created a public bid bot for the Minnow Support Project. But I want you to know. We're gonna be ok! Steem is ok. MSP is ok. The blockchain isn't dying. Chicken little isn't even awake. Bid bots aren't the end of the world. They're just a part of HF19.

Wtf is a HF19?

Ok, well, because we're growing and seem to have some turn over on who is active many of you may not have any idea what that means. Like the dish washer in your house you don't know how it works, but it works, so you don't care. Same with Steem, but here's the deal. Software iterations on Steem are tracked by a thing called hardforks. You're used to Windows 7 and 8. And know they are different versions. Here we talk about hardfork 18, 19, and the next one will be 20, which is called "velocity."

In this last HF we changed the way that rewards work. See this platform has a distribution that's pretty scewed. 93% of the steem is in the hands of 1% of the accounts and that's before we take into account @steemit. So, in the old method of voting the effect was exponential because the math was a combination of the number of people voting on something and SP^2 to determine rewards. that SP^2 factor made it so that the problem was exponentially greater. Minnow votes were practically dust. I remember it being a huge day when I got up to a 2 cent vote! So, they changed it from SP^2 to the math just using straight SP. That's the change from exponential to linear rewards.

Thing called reward shares, which is proportional to SP, used to be R^2 now it's just R.

So, now what happens is that it doesn't matter who else votes on your post. You don't get a squared curation effect. You get a linear one. Minnows got a boost to the post rewards they could deliver (a tiny fraction squared is still tiny), whales got a hair cut, and posts no longer needed tons of people voting on them to get a strong reward.

the good

@minnowsupport couldn't help over 1000 minnows a day get started on the platform without the change. The fact that the bot awards any post rewards at all to a minnow is specifically because of linear rewards.

@utopian-io wouldn't exist either. Because the votes wouldn't be worth $250 unless everyone else piled on too. Possible they could get more... but in it's current iteration it can't work.

the bad

Here are some of the concerns:

only shitposters use them
they kill the value of steem
bid bots rape the pool

So, let's talk about the first one. Shitposters only club... I think there is a stigma that if you use a bidbot you're a scammer, but I think this needs to change. I don't know how to get rid of bidbots without hurting minnow support or utopian-io. So, I'm gonna pause for a second and say what if there wasn't a stigma against using them on good posts? If we collectively agree it's ok to use on good posts and we start rewarding high quality content with upvotes is that ok? you run the risk of getting your value pummeled by whales if your reward/views ratio gets too high.

But just think about this. If it's ok to use them on good posts what could you do then? I'm going to put a few bidbots on this post. It's going to be ok. If you do it too it's going to be ok. Promote good content with bots, because if you don't someone else will use them to promote shit content.

bidbots kill the value of steem

Steem is sitting around 90-$1. When I started on this platform steem was usually at 20 cents. We've had a 5x improvement in a year. When I hear people say steem is dead, or fuck this platform or bots have killed it I think they're nuts. Our non-fiat SBD which stands for Steem backed Dollar, which literally means you can turn it into Steem is now getting pumped in part it seems because it's being used by traders as a safe store of value. Eventually people will start using this to trade off of because it takes 3 seconds to move money instead of minutes and there isn't a cost to move it.

So, look, price is way up. Maybe not in the 20 days you have been here, but in the year and a half I have been I'm pretty happy with a 5x return on my starting funds. It'll get better too when velocity and SMTs come out. STeem is gonna tokenize the internet. And you're an early adopter. I just don't agree that bidbots have killed the price of steem.

If anything they incentive holding it. Cause now instead of a shitty return you can make a bid bot and make money running a voting script. That's not a bad way to grow your funds (which is the main reason I'm running a public bot).

Bots rape the pool

This is the short hand, but I think the honest answer is "shitposters who receive bot upvotes are raping the pool." I don't think it's the end of the world that a good post gets an addtional 10-20 bucks if it's good content, if it brings people here, if it help folks understand the platform, or a myriad of other good reasons.

yes, some asshole posts a link and upvotes that spam it's bad, but if they do it enough they'll start getting flagged. So, I'm not sure that's the end of the world either. Flag shitposts with bot votes. Be the current solution to this. Or maybe just ask them to stop shit posting politely and explain the risk to them and the cost to the platform.

My main points

Steem isn't dying.
It's ok to use bid bots on good posts.
it's ok to flag or discourage shit posting.

You should try a bidbot if you haven't already. Put it on your post, make a smart bid by checking http://www.steembottracker.com before you bid, and make a little extra money on your hard work. If you stop judging yourself and others for using this service and allow yourself to benefit and have fun with it (put it on other people) then you're gonna have a good day.

Become and investor in one

If you'd like to become an investor in a bid bot and reap the same benefit as the whales taht use them try this public bidbot: https://steemit.com/bidbot/@minnowsupport/a-bidbot-for-the-people-introducing-msp-bidbot. Low amounts of steem get rewarded.

mspsteem.com

This post was authored on mspsteem.com. It's a clone of steemit.com, but it has a 5% beneficiary to @minnowsupport and is managed by @netuoso.