Let's Fix Steem By Drastically Modifying Inflation!
Yeah! That'll solve our problems!
At the risk of sounding like a broken record I'm still flabbergasted by the shear magnitude of the changes being proposed.
- Worker proposal system (10%)
- Moving to a convergent linear rewards curve.
- Increasing curation (50%)
- Create a separate “downvote pool.” (15-25%)
I suspect most users will translate the changes into:
- More power for whales
- More money for whales
- Less money for authors
- More downvote abuse
Before you go down that path though, I suggest you ask yourself: Does it really seem like Steem is working well the way it is today? I feel that pretty much everyone that has been here for long enough knows that the system we have in place today is not working.
Does it really seem like Steem is working well the way it is today.
This same logic is what doctors used to justify putting leeches on their patients as a cure-all.
Every one of these ideas is a HUGE change.
It's one thing to implement these changes one at a time, but to propose the best course of action is to make all the changes at once is downright laughable.
What if someone in the Bitcoin community suggested hard-forking to stop the block reward from being cut in half? They would be laughed off the stage and possibly spit on, metaphorically. What if, in addition to that, they suggested that the block reward be returned to 50 Bitcoin? That would be even more laughable.
The changes that the whales are pushing here are 10 times more aggressive than the above thought experiment.
- More power for whales
- More money for whales
- Less money for authors
- More downvote abuse
I don't agree with these bullet points at all (except maybe the last one). The damage isn't going to be done from attempting to change the economic incentives. The damage is caused by completely undermining Steem's credibility as an immutable contract. Who's going to want to invest in Steem when they know a few dozen people have the power to change it in any way they see fit? This fear is intensified by orders of magnitude when we have a history of actually doing it.
Steem is a tipping platform. It doesn't matter how much you tweek these percentages. The entire foundation of this platform revolves around giving money away. There are a lot of stake holders out there who don't want to give money away, and that is the core of the problem: greed. Greed doesn't lessen from any of these changes. In fact, it gives even more opportunity for bad actors to game the system.
The more complex the system, the easier it is to game. Users who are doing the right thing (trying to find trustworthy users who bring value to the platform and pay them for it) aren't going to change any of their habits in the face of these changes. It's the people exploiting the system who are going to pivot and take advantage of the platform even worse than before.
Separate flagging pool.
The military industrial complex has "defense contracts". America spends more on military than the world combined. Because of the way the system is set up, it's actually financially foolish to not utilize warfare and domination to turn a profit. Gotta get that ROI amirite?
Give all the whales a 25% flagging pool and see what happens. It's the same concept. They are given a resource that they basically now feel extreme pressure to spend. Depending on supply and demand for flags, don't be surprised if it costs someone $1 to flag someone else for $10. Clearly, the flag pool won't be as valuable as the reward pool, so anyone looking to buy flags is going to be given an extreme discount. Good luck dealing with that shit-storm.
Moving to a convergent linear rewards curve.
My understanding of the convergent linear rewards curve is that rewards start out parabolic and then shift into linear. This is the poster child for Sybil attack. Want to get more rewards? Create thousands of posts/comments and upvote them just enough to capitalize on parabolic rewards while avoiding linear rewards. In affect, the users who are paying rent to appear on the trending tab (vote buyers) are going to be punished even more for attempting to acquire visibility. Anyone who has a post that starts getting linear rewards will be punished by all the garbage being upvoted to extract maximum parabolic returns from the pool.
Curation 50%
Anyone looking to capitalize on curation now has the opportunity to exploit it even further. Again, it's the bad actors leeching money from the users trying to reward quality content. Honorable Steemians will upvote content no matter what the situation is. Bad actors will upvote content that hasn't been upvoted yet in an attempt to leech as much curation as they can.
Again, Steem is a tipping platform based on giving money away. The amount of money being given away isn't going to magically change based on the curation percentage. Users are going to tip what they're willing to tip; transparent curation doesn't change that.
There's also absolutely no reason to force curation on anyone. It should be a variable determined by the content creator.
Worker proposals
This could be a great idea, however, the governance of such a system will obviously be controlled by stake holders. We already pay 10% to the witnesses to secure the network, doubling that tax to 20% to include worker proposals seems pretty outrageous to me. Regardless, as far as I'm concerned, this is the only idea that has any merit whatsoever.
Conclusion
If Bitcoin reset the block reward to permanently be at 50 coins this would be a totally legitimate economic move. I would support this change. 50 coins every 10 minutes is not a big deal. Getting rid of the halfening event would make Bitcoin far less volatile and more consistent with a real currency that has a solid unit-of-account.
However, it doesn't matter if this is a superior economic change for Bitcoin. What matters is that the trust of the community has been broken. They were guaranteed a certain rule set and now they're being showed that the rules can change on a whim. This same concept applies to modifying the inflation of any cryptocurrency.
On the other side of the coin Bitcoin is known for its immutable nature. Changing it is far harder than any other platform. Sometimes this is seen as a feature while other times it is seen as a nail in the coffin when looking at long term sustainability. A coin like Steem is obviously much more flexible to change.
My worry is that these changes are going to blow up in our faces and we'll be forced to change inflation again and again. At that point, Steem will become a total joke that no one wants any part of. At the risk of sounding like a conservative maximalist, modifying the inflation of a currency is not an activity to be taken lightly. This is a community decision being made at the hands of Stinc and the witnesses, and that should give everyone pause.
In regards to increase curation to 50% I have to say it will be really intersting to see what happens.. especially in regards to voting bots.. could be bad or good.. no idea in which direction this goes.
With the downvotepool I agree 100%.. looking at these flag wars going on here frequently I assume ot would even get worse.
Spot on edicted. Implementing these change all at once seems like a total rush.
I proposed steem to a lot of people. For most of them, it was way to complicated. Others, that actually joined the platform thought the exact same thing you mentioned here. A few dozen people have the power. That's why they didn't continue to invest and engage.
Greed is unhealthy. I totally understand that someone wants to grow their stake. I would do that too. However, there is a balance between contributing to others and growing their own stake.
Do you think quality content is going to be downvoted because of the downvote pool?
I can totally see that after all these changes in one single HF.
It's actually bound to happen unless you feel that 15%-25% of the content on Steem actually deserves to be downvoted. I would say that the real number is closer to 1% - 5%.
What's actually going to happen is that flag wars are going to get way worse. Imagine you have 250,000 SP and you get into a flag war with someone who has 1,000,000 SP. With a 25% downvote pool, the person with a million SP can nullify everything the quarter million stake holder does.
So what does the quarter million stake holder do? They stop upvoting people on the platform and instead they sell their vote for liquid SBD though a centralized service. This liquid SBD can then be used to purchase downvotes at a huge discount because there will no doubt be other whales looking to sell their resource for whatever the free-market will give them. In affect, the quarter million stake holder may be able to nullify everything the million stake holder does with only 25% as much stake.
Adding a resource like this to the ecosystem with zero testing is going to yield a lot of unintended consequences. Clearly, the downvote pool is the worst idea out of all of them.
This sounds horrible. I can't imagine the negative consequences. Brutal.
These are not only big risk changes, they are also not very well thought out changes.
I do not follow how the intended outcome flows from the changes suggested.
All i see is, OH, we have to change our bid-bots to exploit in a different way.
It is not harder to exploit, it is just different.
And, none of this works in the favor of the real post writers and their readers. Anything that doesn't start with them, is just adjusting the rate at which the platform dies.
Considering past forks, it's probably gonna blow up in their faces. Then they'll do a hasty patch...and never adjust the patch further, even if it's half broken.
I also just love how they don't talk about any of this stuff on the blockchain. It just starts trickling out that a decision has been made that's gonna fuck all our shit up.
Promptly stopped reading this nonsense when it's asserted that "steem is a tipping platform". Where's the white paper section that explains why tipping platforms are a fail and that is exactly why steem is not going down that road, I need to roll it up and hit this idiocy in the face with it.
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The white paper is an offensive joke.
Don't try to act superior by quoting it.
Yeah because there was ever one economy based on tipping that worked. BTW, superior is your projection since you think that asserting nonsense nil explanation is all that is necessary.
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Thanks for admitting that all you do is skim content looking for obscure points to nitpick about. I mean it was already obvious before but to see you actually say it out loud is pretty hilarious.
This post is about changing inflation and you latch onto "tipping platform" like a leech. Once again, all your arguments are totally irrelevant, off topic, and incorrect.
Tipping is only one small part of the Steem economy that helps accelerate distribution and decentralization. Said details and explanations are completely unnecessary and out of the scope of the original post.
In order for anyone to create any content suitable for your consumption it would have to read like a legal document. Then again, I bet you wouldn't like that because you thrive on conflict and would hate reading material that couldn't be picked apart.
Go back to lawyering or whatever it is you do. You're completely incapable of stepping back and seeing the big picture, or maybe you just choose to act like that because your brain is giving you some serious dopamine hits from being combative and contrary. Kudos to you, mastermind.
Your "obscure point" reads more like the Basis Of Steem. Nuff said lol.
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The basis of the entire post revolves around the idea that changing inflation without community consensus is a bad idea. Maybe you'd know that if you read it. I thought the title gave it away but I guess not.
I didn't read it because I saw how you were confused as to how steem functions, hence my comment, you think (thought?) that steem functions as a tipping economy, yet there's no such thing as tipping on steem, not that I know of, and certainly nothing to suggest that is how it functions. You may think that the white paper is a cruel joke but it's reasoning is sound and it consequently also explains why tipping platforms don't succeed.
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Every upvote to another person that hasn't been paid for is a tip.
Are you for real right now?
The whitepaper assumes that the best content will be the most highly tipped. The whitepaper is a marketing ploy full of inaccuracies and flat out lies. Proof-of-brain is a fantasy.
I just spent the last couple hours reading some posts from @trafalgar and @kevinwong about the components in the EIP, and I feel like I understand the reasoning behind it a bit better now. As I understand it, the current setup makies it about 4x more profitable to just self-vote, sell votes, delegate to bidbots, etc... The proposed changes in the EIP would, in theory, make it roughly equal to either self-vote or perform honest curation and content discovery.
Do I think that this is the ideal solution? No.
Do I think this is probably an effective solution, and probably the quickest to implement to stop the entire ship from sinking due to crashing into an obvious and apparently circle-jerk-berg? Yeah, probably.
Do I think all self-voting and vote selling is bad? No, not really. There's probably a healthy place / amount of it required.
Is it fair that the 10% funding for the SPS be taken solely from the reward pool? No, I don't think so. If anything, it should come directly from witnesses and stakeholder interest portions, I'd say. They benefit the most from improvements to the system, and should pay the most for it.
Edit:
I wanted to mention that I, personally, think that the ability for Steem to hardfork and adapt and make changes is more of a strength than a drawback. It would be nice though if communities had more say in these factors. I suppose we "technically" vote for witnesses -- but those votes don't have much weight, and things are almost entirely governed by whales (one in particular).
I see it coming.
In future users will be looking back and wanting that community fork..
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Slowly seeling steem to buy bnb coins. Maybe some eos too. Honestly steem is complete shit in terms of investment. While whole market went on a parabolic rise, steem didn't even move from its spot.
My personal opinion would be that's the reason for the changes. They know Steemit's ship has sailed full circle, it's now docked pretty much where's it's going to stay with some slight fluctuations up and down but I doubt it'll ever return to the once glorious highs. It was new, innovative and exciting, that drew people in, by now most who swing among the social platforms have heard of it and depending upon success have either stayed or gone, regardless the reviews are out there now and so is the competition, they now have to find alternate means of making up for the losses.
They found us didn't they? lol
An interesting proposal, one that is interesting for me based on the have nots arguing for it as if it was a great idea. And make no mistake, the Dolphins are part of the have not group if the initial whales decide (especially the one infamous for destroying accounts). Flagging is already dragging out much of the quality "trash" around here, this will exacerbate the problem for sure. Despite learning the true foundation behind this system, I would probably be sticking around, at least longer, if it weren't for so much of the trash being taken out, or others leaving because of it from those in their circles.
Not a fan myself. If someone has a good idea for business, they should either be able to fund it or get the voluntary backing they need. Why should I or anyone else here be forced to fund someone elses business. I know they say we all benefit from it, but I don't see any proposals for making me part owner of the successful venture if it was to become a hit and make millions or billions. Who says they don't jet like Drug wars? Suppose this was applied to the Steem engine or Steem monsters sturctures. They make the bank from it, we make the loss from funding it? Did those profitable ventures really help the valuation of Steem? If so, it scares me to think of what Steem is worth without them.
At the end of the day, the owners (yes, the large stake holders own this chain, everyone else here decides if they want along for the ride) will do what they want. As is their right. Just as it is the right of the rest of us whether we believe with our wallets that the direction is good for us. That is the only way this is in any way a
As the founders with the bulk of the stake, it is their baby to make the
Pause, decide if you can live with it, and stay or go. That is the only option to the majority of us being any part of any "community" decision here.