Stake-weighted voting is a neo-fascist abomination: anti-liberty, anti-equality, anti-humanity
I have ranted about this several times over the last couple of years, but nevertheless I thought it should be reiterated because no one seems to have any memory around these parts. I have thought about the new witness proposals, and taken some time off to think about what I'm missing. I have concluded that I'm not really missing anything, and have to vehemently disagree with fellow witnesses.
Tweaking some parameters will not magically make things better. Indeed, most certainly, they will lead to unintended consequences that'll make things worse. Have we not learned from the last two and a half years? Besides, we have firm evidence and know exactly what is wrong, and no one's doing anything about the actual problem.
Weighted democracies have been a catastrophic failure throughout human history, most notably Ancient Rome, of course. When you put all power into the hands of the rich, it'll always end up in tears. Promoting a dozen people to authoritarian status is the finest way to make an anti-social network. Indeed, Steem is possibly one of the worst examples, given the despots here have accrued wealth through questionable means and could be anonymous entities without clear motivations. Thus far, the motivations are evidently pure short term greed - again, the worst possible trait to establish a healthy social network. (Yes, there are some good whales, and I highly appreciate them.)
To be clear, none of this is a problem for a blockchain project, or a free market project. However, it's a crippling, catastrophic issue for a project that claims to be a humanist social network project. The two options here are: To just make Steem an open information market, and stop the pretense of being a social network. Or radically overhaul the network to be more social.
Fortunately, Ned has realised that stake-weighted voting is doomed for unmitigated failure, a long time ago. I'm highly skeptical about his solution - account-based voting in conjunction with Oracles and SMTs, but it's darn sight more promising than the current stake-weighted voting system. Granted, that's coming from the bottomest barrel standard.
Unfortunately, it's taking a long, long time - 3-4 times longer than initially projected to develop SMTs with Oracles and account-based voting. We don't really have an option right now but to stick with the doomed stake-weighted voting.
So, coming to the point, where this was meant to be a witness update. I will reject Hardfork 21 if it comes with major changes like 50:50 splits and superlinear curve, especially if all of them are packaged together. I can foresee dramatic consequences that could lower content creator motivation and subsequently quality and engagement, among others. Sure, it may or may not make things better in other respects, but it's always going to be a bizarre allocation of rewards as long as you put all of your network in the hands of a few whales. (I know there are some good whales out there, and my hats off to you; but evidently, most don't seem to understand what "social" means.)
My vote is for focusing all resources into inventing a better system to allocate rewards; pending which focus absolutely on SMTs. Of course, as a low ranked witness it doesn't matter, Steem will go ahead with the hardfork, but I'll protest for what I believe is right no matter how insignificant my vote is. To be clear, better allocation of rewards being - the most engaging content and comments on the platform get the highest reward. It'll never be perfect, but currently, some of the worst content ends up with the most rewards, as anyone paying attention to the Trending page will agree. It's currently literally worse than a monkey randomly assigning rewards.
Note, this is not a vote for "doing nothing", but a vote for allocating limited resources into development of something that may or may not work; versus something that has failed us repeatedly from the very beginning.
For people who aren't aware of hardfork rejection: Witnesses can choose to not run the latest hardfork, in effect rejecting it. The hardfork will be rejected overall only if at least 15 of the top 20 witnesses also reject it. If most other witnesses do participate in the next hardfork, and I don't, I'm effectively giving up all earnings and block production, as a form of protest.
I have many of the same issues with DPoS, but we have bigger problems at hand.
I encourage open discussion, however, I won't be engaging with worldviews which show a callous apathy (or worse) for human rights. This is meant to be a social network. Finally, apologies for the sharp tone. If it suggests to you that I'm desperate, you'd be goddamn right.
Plutocracy of rule by the wealthy is always a recipe for eventual decay and implosion. It's not consistent with higher values and egalitarian cooperation within a community. I've talked about this quite a bit in the Winter-Spring of 2017. Steem should evolve to a community-driven decision making process, not money-power rule decision making platform. These new changes only empower the rich to get richer, and will be another failed short-sighted move by those who claim it will help the platform. They are still thinking about money and making STEEM more valuable which motivates them in their decisions.
As for some claims to "rollback" changes if it doesn't work. When do changes ever get rolled back once they get adopted by a hardfork? Name me 3 and how long it took to get them reversed.... lol.
I spoke of my disapproval of this 50/50 split as well a few weeks ago, and have been resteeming some posts that are critical of this flawed idea. Resteemed yours as well. Peace.
To be clear, this post is not about the 50:50 split proposal, though I continue to note content creators' grievances. That was just an example; it can be any combination of major changes.
My criticism is that such a change is being discussed at all, whilst no one is talking about the fundamentally critically flawed concept at the root of it. Lipstick on pigs won't ever make them horses.
To be honest, I think your conceptualization of the 'critically flawed concept at the root of it' is so profound that you really shouldn't be involved with Steem at all if you feel so strongly that way. Steem was designed as a stake-weighted system for good reasons.
Yes, you can try to promote some SMT token that is not stake weighted, but you could also do that with another platform altogether; the result would bear little to no resemblance to Steem (for better or worse). Perhaps this would work, but frankly I have my doubts for the simple reason that I do not believe you will get significant investor interest to pour in money where other people (not the investors) get to vote to give away the investors' money. And without investor interest there will be no (or negligible) money to distribute. If I am wrong, then great, someone will have built something useful. But it won't be Steem (whether or not that token happens to be hosted on Steem as an SMT).
Those of us who are doing our best to make Steem work better do not agree that there is only one way to do so. You may describe it as lipstick on a pig but we don't agree that Steem is (or needs to be) a pig. And if you really do feel that way then I would question why you should feel so strongly opposed to these efforts to improve it. After all, there is no real harm in putting lipstick on a pig; the metaphor refers to a decoration that makes no real difference either way. You seem to be claiming something else entirely.
Firstly, I appreciate your response - fair enough. To be clear, I refer to not Steem itself, but rather, the allocation of rewards. Nevertheless, point taken about not being involved with Steem, but at this time, I have invested too much - financially, time and effort - into Steem to leave quietly.
Semantics aside, the pig may be allergic to overindulgence of lipstick. Given, the last dozen applications have failed. Or, the opportunity cost of utilizing resources to doing something different.
I agree about investor interest and SMTs. However, I also think the same about Steem; and that monetizing content from inflation is ultimately unsustainable. Or most crypto tokens, really, which monetize various things through inflation. As well we know, most crypto tokens' value is derived from speculation rather than any real utility. That said, I'm totally fine with refocusing Steem as an open information market rather than a social network.
I don't really know what that means but if you have a proposal to make I would suggest making it.
Okay then, I would reiterate that your objections to the recent proposals to try to improve the economic model are overblown. If the fundamental concept is unsustainable then the proposals make little difference and you are greatly exaggerating their importance. (I'd also note that, if so, then SMTs also have little value since out-of-the-box support for various versions of this model is their primary claimed advantage over other simpler or more powerful token systems.)
If you are wrong that stakeholder allocated inflation is fundamentally unsustainable, then the sincere and reasoned efforts to improve the economic incentives may indeed bear fruit. If not then it simply doesn't matter (and as I noted elsewhere, there really is no tradeoff with SMTs here). To be clear I'm not convinced you are wrong, just not 100% sure you are right. I consider the relatively modest and relatively inexpensive effort necessary to attempt improvements to be worth trying.
One thing I would note is that allocating of inflation-sourced rewards by stakeholder consensus is not necessarily "monetizing content". There are many other possible uses for such rewards including incentivizing developers or marketing. It doesn't have to be content. Indeed I would argue that monetizing content specifically is highly overrated and economically questionable at best.
I don't have a proposal, as I don't understand or care for a free information market. It's basically what Steem has been tending towards anyway. Think along the lines of embracing the bidbot concept, embracing self voting, making it part of the protocol where people buy and sell information / attention through staking of whatever kind, with no governance involved. Forget about any pretense that this is a social network which rewards engaging content and discussions even somewhat appropriately. This is a separate discussion, though, and I'm not the right person for it.
But, yes, this is what I meant as well.
And to be clear, SMTs are very flawed, and I don't expect much. I made it very clear in my post that I'm "highly skeptical". However, I do hold some hope that the competition will lead to someone creating a protocol for their own SMT which might just be sustainable. I'll remain skeptical till that happens.
I would argue that the situation is actually worse as Steem is not tending toward a 'free information market' (whatever that is) but just toward a truly failed economy. Self voting and vote selling is not a direction that leads anywhere useful I'm afraid. We aren't quite there yet but the path is very unattractive.
I share your view that maybe someone will figure out something useful to do with SMTs but I'm also not supportive of betting it all on that possibility while sitting by and watching the rest of the system collapse of its own weight in the mean time. The proposed economic changes aren't guaranteed to work but I'm willing to give them a chance.
Oh yes, of course, I agree, and want no part of a self voting, bidbot network. Unfortunately, that's a fundamental feature of stake-weighted voting, and will remain so after the proposed Hardfork changes. Of course, that is where we disagree, so we'll just have to move on.
Plutocracy is great, if... It's based on competence. But what is the competence here, on Steemit?
If we continue to foster the current system, great, we will have thousands of coins - but worthless coins.
If we somehow, magically pay the best, those who are still not even registered here, we will have much less amount of coins. But that coins are going to worth something, because those will be recognized and accepted.
There's been a lot (I mean a LOT) of discussions about a 50:50 split and a mild superlinear curve (something around n^1.2). I'm against both ideas because anything superlinear favors the whales. As for the 50:50 split, while the argument is to encourage voting and curation, it would benefit the bidbots and (again) the whales. It was argued that with more curation, the authors would get more rewards anyways, despite being a 50:50 split, but to me it feels like an additional 25% tax on the author's work (relative to the 75:25 split). I believe the authors deserve the most credit for their work, therefore I'm in favor of keeping the 75:25 split and a linear curve to benefit the minnows.
P.S. The witness requirement for a hardfork is 17/20.
To be clear, my criticism is that witnesses are wasting their time discussing (A LOT, as you say, which makes it even more wasteful) trifling changes, whilst completely ignoring the real root of all problems mentioned above. Witnesses have been doing this for the last two and a half years, and 20 hardforks later, everyone pretends to have not learned very much. Doesn't matter whether it is 50:50 or 2 minute reverse auction or whatever. It's all hopeless without a radical reinvention of how Rshares are allocated. All effort should be allocated towards such research. If there's no better solution, they should be allocated to SMTs, account-based voting and Oracles, as currently that's the best chance we have. (Even though it's not good enough.)
I dunno how I missed it, but I was unaware of how strongly we agree on this issue. I deeply appreciate your principled stance, and your willingness to undertake the consequences of standing on sound principle.
Thank you.
Glad someone agree with the 50:50 allocation been bad, although it says to promote high stake users to vote content creators but then dose it consider content creators views?
How would high stake users vote when there is no content?
With the current dapps been developed taking steeemhunt for example were the reward was changed totally not depending in your sp be it delegated or not and also system in place to battle exploitation of the system.
I think such projects are the ones making a difference here.
Am no witness and definitely not tech incline but at least am able to read and understand and the idea of moving reward to 50:50 will definitely affect the blockchain.
Users who barely earn and those who depend on bidbot would give the bidbot more returns and indirectly increasing the payout to investors who delegated their sp to bots, with that in mind, I doubt anybody would want to curate when they see the returns been a goldmine from bidbots
Fair points.
The change from 50/50 to 75/25 author/curator which occurred earlier in Steem's history was never justified on sound economic grounds. It was simply wishful thinking to 'reward authors more'. In reality, it has done the opposite as a huge and increasing portion of stake has decided a 25% curation share is insufficient and demands that authors pay 100% of their rewards back in order to get votes. To get any kind of visibility in most cases, authors are now forced to do so, and end up with less than under a working 50/50 system (granted there is no guarantee that a 50/50 system works either).
The proposal to return to 50/50, whatever its other merits (and it can be justified on economic grounds as well, as @kevinwong, @trafalgar and others have done, and I would direct anyone interested in learning how to apply system-level economic thinking to this problem to those posts), is more than anything else a reversion of a tweak which was tried with good intentions but did not produce the intended result.
I mostly share your views on superlinear. FYI there is little to no support for superlinear (see for example @cervantes posts showing a chart of witness opinions, IIRC all or nearly all opposed) so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up.
In no way does this bear any relationship to SMTs, positive or negative. Work on SMTs will continue unaffected in any case. There is no legitimate question of 'focusing resources on SMTs' (regardless of whether one feels that would be a good thing or not). since the developers working on SMTs have nothing to do with the community-driven effort to improve the base-level Steem economy and vice-versa.
As I have clarified elsewhere, those were merely examples. It doesn't matter what they are, I'm opposing a bundling of multiple major changes into a single hardfork without adequate simulation and stress testing audits. That's all.
I'm not being ignorant, I have followed @cervantes' post, and the entire matter at large, and thought for several weeks about it before offering my response. And yes, I've had countless discussions with @kevinwong and others privately. The measures being taken are reminiscent of the past, and all the unintended negative consequences they have brought. I disagree with wishful thinking, or making any changes without proper simulation and evidence for the consequences of said changes. I could just as well twist 50/50 into wishful thinking of "reward curators more". (Though to be clear, I do agree it could be beneficial, and you may recall I have argued for it as far back as 2016; so I'm not interested in debating anyone over the merits or drawbacks of this change.)
There is always an opportunity cost. The community-driven effort could be diverted to SMTs instead, to get it ready sooner, and/or with better quality. Whether it's a better allocation of resources is a different argument. On that note, I'm well aware that at this stage I disagree far too heavily with fellow witnesses, and as such realize that the best course of action would be to reject the next hardfork and protest by the sidelines. That is the point of this post, I'm committed to that. Of course, there may come a point where the disagreement is too vast, and I will simply quit the platform.
PS: And no, "going back to the original vision" is irrelevant. One word: Hyperinflation. It's a completely different context now, and it should be treated as such.
Then I presume you will likewise be opposed to hard forks which include SMTs? Because there won't be 'stress testing audits'. In a system like this it is impossible to truly test economic changes without putting the into production and seeing how both the existing community as well as prospective participants respond to them. The best we can do is rely on models and reasoning, but in the end that comes down to a degree of (hopefully educated) guesswork.
Again, how is this standard applied to SMTs?
No it can't, and that makes no sense whatsoever. The community effort has nothing to do with developing SMTs, and can't do anything to improve its quality. In fact, just the idea of wanting it ready sooner (if turned into action, though thankfully that will probably not happen) would as a matter of software development process, more likely impair its quality. SMTs are a development-stage project being pursued via a specific process by Steemit Inc without direct community involvement (nor am I aware of any way in which community involvement would help at this point, or is even feasible).
You may agree or disagree with any specific hardfork proposal, but on the idea of SMTs being a "tradeoff" here is based on a misunderstanding of the process at best. They really are separate.
I'm not suggesting anything about original vision. I'm stating, as a point of fact, that the original change from 50/50 to 75/25 was not justified on any basis other than wishful thinking for an outcome which has never been borne out (not in the hyperinflationary era, and not now either). On that basis alone (and even if not backed by sound economic reasoning, which it is) I would support reverting it. We ought to be more far willing to accept when we make mistakes and revert them (ideally not after waiting two years, but better late than never).
You would be wrong, since that's not the basis on which it is proposed nor considered. That was however the best possible spin on how we have 75/25 now though. Arguably the reality might be even dumber than that.
Simulations can be run using neural network models on testnets. There should be a beta interface where the public can also participate in the testnet. There can be a variety of models to test, and any major negative consequences will be immediately obvious. There will, of course, be outlier scenarios that simulations may miss - it's a given; but we shouldn't have to deal with the showstopping issues we have seen in previous hardforks.
If a major change was truly impossible to simulate, I would like to see them done one at a time. Bundling multiple disparate changes into one hardfork is something I will never support again. We have had this approach fail too many times.
And yes, of course, I would be looking to see the results of SMT testnet, which Steemit Inc has announced will run for over one quarter.
Leaving whatabouteries aside, my pledge is a simple one - don't support a hardfork if it bundles multiple disparate changes, with no peer-reviewed simulations and audits done on any of them. It's as simple as that, and I need not discuss it any further. If it turns out simulations are truly impossible, I'll reject the hardfork anyway.
I stand corrected regarding SMT's development. I have seen Steemit Inc looking to hire, and thought witnesses could either join the SMT development team or hire developers to do so; instead of committing the resource of human developers to making changes for the hardfork. Also, do note that this is the first time that the community is developing something, so the separation between Steemit Inc and witnesses/community is new and unclear at this time.
Nevertheless, there's always an opportunity cost. It doesn't have to be SMT. I'm of the belief that these tweaks are a waste of time on a fundamentally broken concept, were the goal to be better rewarding content and engagement as a social network. Were I a top witness, I would spend time and money researching an alternative system. I fully respect witnesses continuing to iterate on existing system, of course. I will dissent, but while we fail to change each others' opinion, we'll just have to agree to disagree and move on.
Your hypothetical neural network models don't exist. They won't be used to test SMTs or anything else. There will be a testnet, but as with previous efforts at a Steem testnet as well as other cryptocurrency testnets, the issue of lack of real economic incentives limits the ability of such a testnet to do much other than serve as a vehicle for functionally testing some aspects of the code (as opposed to how external actors interact with it). I've been involved with numerous blockchain testnets and without exception their usage is never representative of a mainnet with real value attached to it.
On the matter of the proposed economic changes, they are certainly not 'disparate'. They are a package designed to shift incentives in very specific ways. Bundling them is really the only way that makes sense. Indeed some of the changes on their own might well produce worse results than the status quote even if (hypothetically) the underlying theory behind the package is entirely correct and the bundle would work great.
Actually, this is the natural continuation/evolution of a process whereby several community-sourced changes got merged into HF20. That was, to my knowledge, the first time features sourced from outside Steemit Inc. have gone into production, and the current initiative (which may or may not actually proceed) is an effort to take that process that one step further with a community-sourced hard fork proposal (which, indeed, ought to be something that, at least to an extent you might support since it means considering these changes separately from a bunch of other changes being concurrently proposed by Steemit, unlike the way it was done with HF20 or every other hard fork).
From what I have seen, and been told, Steemit's process is very much focused on their own full time employees doing the core blockchain development, in this case SMTs. Much of the progress and process takes place in in private meetings, using internal methodologies in a way that isn't conducive to direct community involvement. As far as I know, none of the witnesses are interested in and/or in a realistic position to consider being hired by Steemit, including several with relevant development skills, so there is no particular overlap here to Steemit's own SMTs development. We have the option to pursue non-overlapping, minimally-disruptive community sourced development, or alternately wait patiently for Steemit to complete their work and package a release for witness consideration. Both are being done to some extent.
I respect your views on not even bothering to make any changes to the existing system even though I don't quite share them.
Yes, I know - simulation, quality assurance and testing processes need to be developed. Frankly, it's shocking they weren't, and explains why after two and a half years the network is more broken than ever. (OK, hyperinflation was worse.) Simulations are never ideal, but they do greatly help develop sustainable, if flawed, systems, that are easier to iterate over. I'm not a software developer, but the same tenets have worked across most professions since the dawn of the industrial age.
As far back as 2016, I have been asking for proper testing processes and peer-review of Steemit Inc's code. If the agenda is to continue whack-a-mole experiments without any evaluatory processes - I suppose it is now time for me to give up and move on. All the best, though, I'd be delighted to be wrong and bidbots dramatically decrease in influence (adjusted for the natural downtrend over the last few months) or disappear in a few months' time.
One of the issues that the witnesses need to look at, (and likely will not), is how witnesses are chosen. People can talk til they are blue in the face about vote for your witnesses. The fact remains that in the top twenty witnesses, the vast majority of them are chosen by two or three accounts. So when witnesses point out that it takes 17 witnesses to pass a HF, and that in the past they have indeed rejected a HF, it is all meaningless. Fix the witness system, allow accounts to only vote on 5 witnesses. This would show what witnesses are really concerned for the progress of steem and steemit. The users, would decide the direction. After all it is, (steemit), described on the steem.io intro page as an experiment. Let the people decide not 3 or 4 large accounts. What would the top twenty witnesses look like if the top 3 large witness vote accounts were limited to their first five choices? If everyone was limited to 5 choices?
i think you're one of the only witnesses that actually care to improve this platform.
frankly, despite my criticism of steemit (and the dismal trending page) i don't know how much can be done to change things on the platform. The mechanisms in place are able to reward content based on the stake involved, not on the actual essence of the content. Steem reflects the current global wealth distribution anyway, so this mechanism continues to reward those already with enormous investment.
Is steemit simply an example of what wealth looks like, absent of any creativity? Is trending what the world would look like if people only went to school for marketing and learned nothing about art?
at least there's some good here. The fiction community rewards one another in a pretty altruistic fashion. And @curie remains a light in the dark.
there is something: Sublinear curves like this one:
The opposite of superlinear curves.
You would still have stake based voting but there would be a maximum on how much your stake is worth so that whales would not become unlimitedly powerful. Sure you can create extra accounts but that would be a lot of extra work.
Currently Steem supports the curves: x² ; x ; √x and active is x. Let me plot them together:
As you can see even √x would be better for small accounts. And x² would be a disaster for small accounts.
The perceived drawback of sublinear is that it'll reduce demand for large Steem power ups. However, most of the civilised world has a progressive taxation structure, so I'm not convinced aboit the evidence for this. Either way, I've reconciled that any kind of stake-weighted voting is a dead end, with no sustainable solution.
True. but it would only affect 0.1% of the accounts:
https://steempeak.com/steem/@preparedwombat/how-much-steem-power-does-it-take-to-be-in-the-top-10-of-accounts-the-top-5-the-top-1
What surprised be on this Article: I am well in the top 5% of all account and yet still feel totally insignificant.
It's not a matter of how many accounts it'll affect, but what proportion of Steem holdings it would affect. I'm willing to bet top 0.1% holds an obscene supermajority of Steem Power.
Of course they do.
That's why i agree that √x sub-linear won't cut it and I think that only 1-e⁻ˣ sub-linear could potentially fix stuff because is has a maximum power level. Once you approach that maximum it becomes effectively one account one vote.
The trick would be to set that maximum low enough so that there are enough user with a maximum / full vote – Current Dolphin perhaps. Or even lower.
But this is all mute. The top 20 will never agree to curtail there own power that much.
I agree on the importance of SMTs or other solutions to the problem of STEEM being effectivly an oligarchy.
However, I am not sure that 50/50 splits and superlinear curves will change a lot. How can things get much worse, anyway? Superlinear curves were there before (if I gather that correctly), and seem to have some advantages (but some disadvantages too). A 50/50 split could lead to STEEM being more attractive for investors and could thus push the price. It also might lead to whales voting for content. Both would make up for the losses of creators quite quickly.
Could. Might. It's an experiment. Might as well turn out catastrophic.
I am with you when you say that other things should be top priority.
Compare the blue (super-linear) and magenta (linear) curve and tell me it is not a huge change in the wrong direction making making the wales even more powerful.
I don't think we need whale votes. They will only vote for what they find interesting for themselves. And there are only a few of them. They will not lead to diversity of thought.
We need the more engagement for small accounts else they loose interest quickly.
If steem gores back to super-linear I might as well cut my losses and cash in my chips.
Good on you for speaking out. We need more voices to question things, and less cheerleaders.
Yes, we sure do, but I'm resigned to being one of the very few protesting these changes. There's too much money at stake for other witnesses, status quo is profitable. Nevertheless, I have promised sincerity from the beginning, and I'll live up to it. If my views are too far misaligned to other witnesses, it is my prerogative to quit witnessing.
I am 'John Snow' ehn it comes to this, but I did my own take on it earlier...
https://steemit.com/blog/@lucylin/the-reluctant-revolutionary-really-but-it-has-to-be-said-and-i-m-thinking-communism-meets-capitalism
You might be able to pick a bone or two out of it...probably not though...
Agreed