A New Debate

We have a new debate on Steem.

First of all, the news, at least for me, that Steemit, Inc. agreed to pay for the development of the Worker Proposal System, now rebranded as Steem Proposal System.

There are potentially more points to debate about, because we haven't talked through as a community enough about this system and its consequences.

But right now, the debate is on where should the funding for the new system come from. And there are two options (actually three, but everybody agreed that the third one to generate additional inflation is not an option):

• take funds from donations (plus a few other potential sources and incentizes @theycallmedan pointed out in his comment)
• redistribute existing inflation sources (most pointed to the author rewards); other inflation sources are the annual interest paid on SP holdings, curation and witness reward pools.

First of all I hope Steemit Inc. knows there is a favorable consensus among Top 20 witnesses to this system, because a hardfork is necessary. Otherwise paying for it is a waste of STEEM.

By the way, that's a cool thing the payment was negotiated to be in STEEM, even if it was a USD amount worth of STEEM.

Back on the existing debate. I've asked two questions on the post where our opinions were solicited. I didn't have a 100% opinion on the debate then, but I wanted to contribute with the questions:

What will be the place of a project like Utopian.io in the context of the new Steem Proposal System?

If the second option is taken (inflation shifted from the authors rewards), will the accepted proposals draw funds both from the new system and the rewards from the author/curation reward pools, for posts?

In the meantime, I thought a middle way is a better option, if SPS (Steem Proposal System) is a go.

How about if we kick in the SPS initially with the donations option active (and also with the option to receive all denied payments, instead of being directed to the reward pool, a very good idea from @theycallmedan; if need be, we can also direct the partial curation rewards for early curating that are now returned to the reward pool to the same SPS fund). I believe we can predict the impact of the last two additional options.

When the available funds in SPS drop below a certain level T1, a redirection of inflation should also kick in, to compensate. We won't need an additional hardfork, this logic would be implemented from the start, just inactive until the circumstances call for it. Where the inflation comes from remains to be determined by the community before development begins. When funds will go back up above a certain level T2 (T2 > T1), the redirection of funds toward SPS will become inactive again.

The redirection of funds can be directly at full the 1% (or the full amount considered the best) and I believe that is the easy option.

Or a gradual process, much like the blockchain decides the distribution of liquid payment ratio between STEEM and SBD, based on debt ratio. It can be in the witness power to have a "bias" option for more or less funds going toward the SPS fund, once they are below the threshold. Witnesses could even choose a threshold, which would be an weighted average value between the consensus chosen values, I think.

Does this make sense? What do you guys think, especially if you are not developers so you can understand the inner workings of Steem?

If it does make sense, is it doable from the time/cost/risks perspective? @blocktrades @ned